John C. Wright's Journal

It is, indeed, an external argument only, concerned with the use of force, and the proper restriction of the use of Courts of Law. The counter-argument is about morals, that is, an internal argument, concerned with what a man ought to do, he himself with his own life and soul; the counter-argument is nowise concerned with what the state is allowed to compel its freeborn subjects to do. The conversations are on different topics.

If I may without trying your patience, let us contemplate some follow-up questions about the morality of thought.

Suppose I am shipwrecked alone on an island, and I entertain one set of thoughts, dwelling on my sorry lot, and I shall be unhappy in consequence thereof; but if I dwell on another set of thoughts, I shall be filled with grateful joy, happy to be alive.

I will not bother to argue that a happy and confident shipwreck victim has a greater chance of survival, all other things being equal, merely due to psychological vigor, than a gloomy and despairing shipwreck victim. Such arguments are crass humbug: as if mere length of days were the only yardstick by which we judge the value of a man’s life, or as if happiness were desirable only for its statistical effect on the outcome of a Darwinian survival struggle.

Living a happy life and living are moral life are things to be desired in and of themselves, needing no other justification. This being so, the hypothetical raises the following questions:

Does a practical interest in preferring happiness to unhappiness tell me it is in my best interest to attend to the content of my thoughts, and the nature of my character?

Is there is an opportunity cost, a loss and a gain, if I shape my personality toward one end as opposed to another?

Let us turn from a discussion of the happiness of a man alone on an island to a discussion of morals.

Suppose further, by the same token, as a shipwreck victim, I could dwell on and entertain one set of thoughts, and corrode my character, so that I lost the ability to tell right from wrong, and talked myself into deafness when my conscience spoke; or contrariwise dwelt on another set of thought, and become as holy as a hermit in a cave, even if no one else saw me, a man of virtue and good character, serene as Buddha.

To make the hypothetical more interesting, let us say that a supply of morphine, Playboy magazines, bottles of vodka and barrels of beer, and a lifetime supply of suicide pills also survived the shipwreck. Rather than build a hut, chop firewood, or hunt for food, I could beguile the long golden tropical afternoons staring at girly pictures and shooting junk, drinking boilermakers, and, if I fall into a Kevorkian despondency, swallowing an lethal pill. There are no victimless crimes on the island, but surely there is some basis in prudence or pleasure or duty, some sort of moral reasoning I can contemplate, to tell me whether these are good decisions or a bad ones. For contrast, let us also hypothesis that a complete set of the Great Books of the Western World also washed up on shore, including all those works of literature and philosophy, religion and deep thought, that I always wanted the leisure to read, in order to learn how best to live, or how to prepare myself to endure suffering and death with the dignity of a philosopher. Is there truly and honestly no moral rule to consult before I decide whether to read and study these books rather than use them for kindling? Is it merely like preferring pie to cake, a matter of mere taste only, whether I seek comfort from the Bible or the writings of Seneca rather than seek distraction from a convenient porn magazine?  

A more important question is this: do the content of my thoughts, even if I am alone on an island, have real consequence on the content of my character?

Do I have a pragmatic reason, if I wish to be happy, to attend to the content of my character? Does my character affect my happiness?

Do I have a moral imperative (as I ought to seek to be moral, it being axiomatic that all men desire the Good) to attend to the content of my character? Does my character affect my morality and manhood?

If so, since I cannot have good character without good thoughts, does it not follow that morality and pragmatism (each for its own reasons) require that I attend carefully to the content of my thought?

Given that I can influence whether I shall be a man such as I wish to be, or a man such as any good man would despise, is it a matter of moral duty  seek to be a good man?

In other words, even if my base appetites and selfish desires do not incline me, at the moment, to prefer the good, ought I nonetheless seek to be good?   

Should I listen to my conscience even when my base desires for false pleasures urges me not to?

By “false pleasures” here I mean those pleasures that betray you; the one that promise you happiness, but never deliver on their promises— the pleasures that deliver pleasure only at first, and later become a grief, or even torment. I note in passing that the Enlightenment idea of letting each man attend to his own pursuit of pleasure seems not to recognize this category. It is merely a blind spot in their philosophy, a blank spot in their minds. Even though everyone in real life knows, or has heard of, drunks and gamblers and adulterers and gluttons whose inordinate pleasures, escaping all moderate control, drive them like a Napoleonic cavalryman riding his foaming horse to death, somehow the modern thinkers seem not to acknowledge that such men, such ruined lives, exist.  

Now, let us regard your three points.

1. In the pragmatic point, while you have no ability to know what some perfect stranger is thinking in order to judge him, do you admit that I am in a position to know what I myself am thinking in order for me to judge me? Can I make no assessment of my own worth in my own eyes, or compare myself to the standards the conscience discovers in natural reason or beyond it? I am, after all, not a perfect stranger to myself.

Do you grant that it is impractical not to attend to the content of one’s own thought or one’s own character? Do you agree that the unexamined life is not worth living?

There are men who have no ambition other than to live in peace, and not run afoul of the law, and to obey the Powers That Be, whether the laws of the land be just or unjust. Fair enough. But a philosopher, or a saint, has a higher ambition: not merely to live, but to live well: to live as higher ideals demand.

If he is an Epicurean, he wants to live according to rational and moderate pleasures. If he is a Stoic, he wants to live according to nature and the natural duties, in order to achieve serenity. If he is a Christian, he wants to live according to the rational laws of morality and according to the revealed will of God.

Practicality, then, demands that the Epicurean, the Stoic, and the Christian take steps to carry out his program for his life. Practicality says he cannot achieve his ends unless he finds the means proportionate to those ends. Common sense observes that no one can end up with a good character, a well-tempered soul, merely by undisciplined chance and accident. If this is the goal, one must make an effort to achieve it. The Epicurean, the Stoic, and the Christian, all three, would characterize their effort to achieve self-command as a moral effort. Is their characterization correct?

You mention the impracticality of attempting to achieve self-control on the grounds that some thoughts are involuntary, some reactions not able to be controlled. I respectfully submit that the fact that some men have more or less control over their thoughts does not change the moral calculation involved.

Those things a man honestly cannot control are not a matter for moral judgment. A madman, for example, does not by choice or negligence go mad. For this reason, we do not consider madness to be shameful. We do not punish madmen. Alcoholism, on the other hand, has in some men or in others a greater or lesser voluntary component. Custom scorns drunkenness as shameful and public laws punish public intoxication, drunk driving, and other aspects of the behavior.

All temptation has at least some involuntary component; otherwise we do not call it temptation. We do not praise or blame the involuntary component. Only for what a man honestly, by choice or by his negligence, is or should be responsible, do we hold him accountable.

In other words, the argument that, because some involuntary thoughts exist, we should be excused us from any moral judgment about any thought, simply does not follow. The argument would follow if and only if no thoughts whatsoever were voluntary, for then and then only would there be no accountability for the content of thought and character. As it is, in real life, those thoughts that are voluntary would still fall under a moral rule.

Further, the extent to which some thoughts are voluntary or involuntary is influenced by the habits of virtue. Children have no real control over their thoughts and actions. They are below the age of reason, and so must be trained and instructed. They are not born knowing right from wrong. The act of training and instructing a child in the habits of virtue is in and of itself proof that the boundary between voluntary and involuntary thought can be moved.

2. In the logical point, you speak of punishments fitting the crime, but in every hypothetical we have discussed so far, we are discussing a situation where the act has no consequences after 31 minutes. In any case, this is a red herring on your part: I urge you to contemplate that a real man does what is right because it is right, not because someone may punish or not punish him for doing it. Unjust law punish men for doing what is right rather than what is wrong: the consequences in such cases are reversed from what they ought to be. While cowardly and practical men accede to unjust laws, in order to avoid the consequences, just men seek justice, and defy the laws that abridge justice, and they damn the consequences. 

In any case, the self-inflicted punishments of victimless crimes are clear enough to anyone who pays attention to what the real and ruinous consequences are that follow from base self-indulgences. It is the fantasy that one can escape those consequences, or that one can indulge only moderately in vice and emerge unstained, it is this cruel self-deception I say, which makes prudent lawgivers put vice laws on their lawbooks. The victims of victimless crimes are, of course, the wives and children of the men who lose health and sobriety and fortune and life in the pursuit of false pleasures, and the man himself, who abolishes the good man he might have otherwise been.  

You also argue thus: “So to be perfectly consistent, you may judge my thoughts as you like, save that you may not give voice to your judgments, and I may respond in kind by judging the thought of your judgment, and so ad infinitum. I say that thoughts are no moral evil, therefore disagreeing with that thought is also no moral evil.”

Here I apologize and confess myself baffled. I simply cannot follow what you are saying. I do not see why “to be perfectly consistent” I cannot voice my judgments about your thoughts, even if I use no force to coerce you to agree with my judgments. Criticism is not trespass nor assault; it is not even slander. I do not see why your ability to disagree leads to “ad infinitum” or what your point is. Are you arguing we must avoid an infinite regress? No such point is in evidence. When two men disagree, the argument might indeed continue without conclusion; or one man or both might modify their conclusions after due consideration. The mere fact of the disagreement says nothing to the relative merits of the case. People disagree both about issues where no conclusion is possible, and about issues where one is.

If my disagreement with your thought that thoughts are morally neutral is also morally neutral, then I am free to disagree, for I do no immorality by voicing disagreement. Is that your point, or where you trying to say something else? I am afraid I am lost here.

3. The emotional point, I can not answer. My emotions are the opposite of yours, and what appeals to your emotions leave me cool and unmoved.

I am not a fan of self-indulgence. I have contempt for those who yield sovereignty of their reason to their appetites.

My reason tells me is pointless and illogical to rail against the injustice of a universe because we lack perfect self-control; my emotions tell me it is unworthy.

The Stoic seeking self-command or even the hedonist seeking moderation must seek self-discipline; no morality is possible without self-discipline. Morality, indeed, might be defined as the self-enforcement of the rules that otherwise a theoretically a perfect justice should have a right to force us by coercion to obey, but that it is more meritorious, on our part, to obey out of love of justice or a sense of duty.  

Even an imperfect attempt to live without vice is nobler than railing against the imperfections of fallen man, and surrendering to those vices. Only a perfectionist would argue that, perfect self-command being impossible, license for all evils of the mind is therefore permissible.  The perfectionist merely ignores that there are degrees of perfection, and says that no bread is better than half a loaf.

I don’t understand the idea that “if there is a morality of the mind, then there is no situation where man has full license without control.” What do those words mean? Full license to do what? Why would such a license be desirable?

The situation where every man has full and absolute power to indulge any desire that happened to crop up in his imaginings, wholesome or perverse, moderate or gross, strikes me as the condition of Hell, and a particularly diabolic form of self-torture at that. I am sure Sartre could write an interesting play on the theme. 

To blame the universe for creating desires with no means to satisfy them is pure childishness. The universe has equipped the mind, in grown-ups, in sane men, with the power to judge desires and to set aside those that are futile, self-destructive, illicit or perverse. Those desires that cannot be set aside by an act of will, can be set aside by a trained habit of virtue, faithfully exercised. Those desires that even virtue cannot suppress, nevertheless do not have a warrant unless reason warrants them, and therefore must be resisted to the degree fallen human nature permits, or divine grace provides.

If a child cries because he thinks the moon is a lemon pie that he wants to eat, that child has no right to traduce the universe for creating in him such a foolish desire. He is responsible for what he desires, no one else. Even if he cannot control them, they are his, in much the same way a man’s own children are his: if he cannot take responsibility for them, no one else can.

The power to set aside the desire to eat the moon is given to men; whether they chose to exercise and strengthen it, or to undermine and weaken it, is the first and paramount decision of moral reasoning.

Are there temptations men cannot resist? Perhaps so. Men are weak. Are we excused from the duty to resist temptation merely because temptation often wins? Oh, Hercules! Are we allowed to throw down sword and shield and flee the battle merely because the Persian outnumber us, and their horns and flags and brave plumes daunt us? Is it not nobler, whether victory or defeat awaits, to close ranks, ready the spear, and rally to the standard to which we are pledged? Cowardice is unbecoming both in battles of the flesh, and of the spirit.

You would never, ever take off your helmet during combat, unless you were suicidal, but in a film the audience has to see the handsome actor’s face to see his emotions and reactions.

I thought the duel between Miraz and Peter was well done. They seemed evenly matched, they got winded and got wounded; it seemed like  a real fight. Peter’s youth and vim was almost overmatched by the cunning, reach, and strength of Miraz. I could pick nits and make minor complaints, by why should I? It was a good scene despite any minor flaws.

Let me emphasize again, these are very, very minor objections. Even really good stage fencing is juststage fencing, not real fencing. It is a movie; it is supposed to look good, and PRINCE CASPIAN, in my opinion, looks really good.

Not every movie can have a fencing scene like the dread pirate, Roberts, facing Inugo Montoya atop the Cliffs of Insanity as in PRINCESS BRIDE.

I unfortunately have a deep-seated mistrust of teen-girl warrior-glamor-models, which is a very popular trope these days. It is an article of faith with some people that young girls are equal to professional soldier, strong as linebakers, tall as bold grenadiers, tough as Marines, mean as Viking berserkers.

Now, a well-trained girl against an untrained man, I would believe the girl could hand him his head on a platter. Training counts for a lot. Even an athletic guy with good reflexes holding a sword for the first time cannot lay a blade on someone with as little as a year or two sword practice. He does not know how to stand or hold the weapon.

But a short and slight girl, even well trained, against a linebacker in forty pounds of plate armor, him with buckler and broadsword, her with a slim and unsharpened stick? Let her stand back and shoot him with a bow, and give him an nice puncture wound to the lungs or heart– that I can well believe will knock him off his feet and put him in his grave. A hard slap with a wand to his helmet? I don’t see how that would deck him. Boxers have to be hit in the face pretty often & pretty hard before they see stars.

Again, we are talking about a movie. The same blow, if filmed from a different angle, or with a different sound effect, might look more realistic. Make it look like he is being hit in the throat rather than the gorget. Part of the art of convincing the audience is establishing the character: I am willing to believe the four-pound superninja death-mouse with his letter opener can kill a grown Telmarine. But Susan was established to be an archer, not a Kung Fu killgoddess. I assume she can shoot like Robin Hood– she has the skills and memory of a grown up Queen, and a Queen of Narnia, too, and her bow was given her by Father Christmas himself.

As a viewer, I am not hard to please, not hard to convince. But the movie maker has to give me something to work with.

I will happily suspend all sorts of disbelief for a good cause, or for the sake of a good story. The theme of the Martial Maiden is as old as Brandemart and Britomart, Camilla and Penthelisea. Give me something to work with, and I can suspend my disbelief like a champ. Britomart had a magic lance; Pentethelisea was a daughter of Mars, a war-god.

But just the casual assumption that young glamor models fight as well as tall and bulky veteran thugs is too arrogant an assumption for me to swallow casually: it stinks of Political Correctness, which I call that special art of pretending unreality so blindly that one feels free to be offended with the obvious.  

The benefit of an idealistic ideal is obvious. A knowledge of the universe surrounding gives man, or a group of men, a confidence born of orientation. He knows whence he comes and wither he goes. The central role of revelation— the sense that he has life’s answers— and the central role of reason— the sense that he can find whatever answers he does not yet know— give to the idealist a spirit adversity or opposition will not quail. The benefits are magnanimity, courage, optimism. Anyone who follows Aristotle’s metaphysics is likely to follow Aristotle’s ethics. Anyone who follows Aristotle is likely to live as a great-souled man.

Aside from this hard-to-define benefit I call confidence, there is a benefit more easy to define, and that is, ethics. Any philosophy or religion that address ultimate issues has a skeleton on which to hangs the living organs of an ethical philosophy, and in intellectual structure to resolve (where possible) intellectual disputes that arise within the system (depending on how robust it is). A solid philosophical foundation can support a tower of conclusions; a deeply-rooted tree can fling out wide branches.

A third benefit: the completeness and universality of an idealistic world view lends itself to a many-sided world-view. The philosophy, once a metaphysic and ethic is established, can speculate with rigor, and perhaps fruitfully, in areas like aesthetics, or other theories equally far afield.

I call ‘pragmatic’ any ideal which sets aside questions of deep and ultimate things, dealing instead with human questions closer at hand: questions of how best to live, how prudently to seek happiness, how to deal with sorrow and death given total human ignorance of what meaning (if any) human suffering has, and given total human ignorance of what (if anything) lies beyond death.

An example of a pragmatic philosophy is Stoicism. The Stoic concerns are almost exclusively ethical; questions of duty and propriety. The Stoics never dwelt long on metaphysical or spiritual questions, and their account of the cosmos and man’s place in it is sketched in so roughly into the Stoic scheme of thought, that it can be changed or discarded without the least effect on the rest of the philosophy. Some Stoics held that the stars were divine beings, or glorified a cosmic mind called ‘Pronia’ or Providence, others bowed to a monotheist form of Zeus or Deus, while others held that the gods dwell in bliss and take no notice of men and ask no worship of them. An atheist can be a Stoic. Whether you are a Stoic or not depends on what you hold to be the nature of desire and the proper attitude of the soul toward desire. It does not depend on what you think about the stars.

Epicureanism is another example of a pragmatic ideal. It is a world view based on Pleasure as Stoicism is based on Duty: it is saved from mere vulgarity by the recognition of the “pleasure paradox”— namely, that immoderate pursuit of pleasure leads to displeasure. The Epicurean seeks only prudent and moderate pleasures.

The best modern-day example of an Epicurean is Ayn Rand.  She upholds the pursuit of selfish pleasure as the highest ideal, and the fountainhead of all virtues, but she defines the pleasures to be sought, and the fashion of the seeking, only as those worthy of a rational and heroic being; or, in other words, a prudent and moderate pleasure.

Here again, the Epicurean or Ayn Randian is unconcerned with ultimate realities, life after death, metaphysical subtleties. The Epicurean is concerned with his one life on this Earth, none other. One can be a theist or atheist Epicurean, or agnostic, indifferently.

An example of a pragmatic religion is Taoism. Ultimate questions are not asked or answered: the Way is the Way, and it cannot be spoken. One lives by seeking harmony with the troubled world all about; but the center of the wheel does not move. If this religion has any doctrine of reincarnation or resurrection, I have seen no hint of it in what I have read. It urges obedience to rulers and benevolence from them. It suggests a detachment from suffering parallel to what a Stoic seeks. Taoism is primarily concerned with ethical realities, or personal quietism.

The main drawback of a pragmatic ideal is that it is defensive and negative, cynical and weary, rather than positive and expansive. Pragmatism is the sign of a defeated people, people who have lowered their sights from high things to deal with every-day matters.

Noble as the Stoics were, they flourished in the day when the ideals they sought to articulate were dying out, as a matter of common culture, from Rome. The Imperium was sweeping away the remnant of the old, fierce Republican culture and its old, hard virtues. The Pagan religion was not answering the spiritual needs of the people. The boundaries no longer expanding; no new lands were becoming Roman.

It is an interesting historical observation to note that Epicureanism has never been the main cultural myth of any society. Ayn Rand’s libertarianism might be a perfect philosophy for an expanding, industrialized version of America, in some parallel timeline where America was not founded by Pilgrims seeking religious liberty, and not peopled by men with families who want to pass along their way of life, their culture, intact to their children. But, as a matter of fact, while Randianism has many points in common with the Enlightenment philosophy of the Founding Fathers, it falls short. It is too stunted a code to fill the buckled shoes of those Founders, who saw human rights as naturally endowed by a Creator. The American Revolution was not in the name of Reason, as was the French Revolution, but also had roots in those deeper things, mythic realities, where pragmatic minds cannot reach. These are men who vowed their lives and fortunes and sacred honor to the proposition of liberty. That is not something an Epicurean, for whom nothing is sacred, can articulate a clear reason to do. A Randian can swear by his life and his love for it; but on what grounds can he swear by something bigger than one man’s life?

A pragmatic ideal is useful for preserving a man, or a culture, from further philosophical degeneration; but pragmatism does not have within it a spirit of new growth. The ultimate purpose of things is unknown. No goal larger than life can be aimed at.

Too often, it seems, pragmatism slips into cynicism, and even the every-day, practical matters allegedly easily handled by these hard-headed thinkers, are answered with increasingly impractical and unreasonable responses. Here we stumble into the third category of ideal.

A corrupt ideal is one where the link between the mind and reality has been completely severed. In the same way pragmatism is the resignation that certain ultimate realities are beyond human knowledge, corruption is the resignation that every-day things are beyond human knowledge; whereupon simple standards of decency and indecency, right and wrong, good and bad, all fall by the wayside.

A corrupt ideal is one that sees no grounds for right and wrong in life, and refers to all of life as a power struggle between implacable contending powers, men, historical forces, nations, groups, races or genes: an endless war with no peace treaty possible. 

An example of a corrupt religion— perhaps the most corrupt in history— is that of the Aztecs. Their gods roared for human blood, and failure to provide the slaughter of men, women and children in ever-increasing numbers would darken the sun and destroy the universe. The Aztec could not live in peace with his neighbors, because the Aztec gods did not demand worshippers or even slaves, but victims. Far better to be conquered by raging Paynim, who can be placated by conversion to his religion, or payment of the tithes of submission.

Of corrupt philosophies, the modern age has produced them in more number and abundance than healthy philosophies, so much so that the words “modern philosophy” can almost be taken as a synonym for the resignation of reason in all things.

The result of a corrupt philosophy is not a timid pessimism, as you might expect. No; the result of a corrupt philosophy is a loud, thunderous, furious crusade to destroy every pillar of decency and virtue supporting the common roof of our shared intellectual universe. The know-nothings are not content to retreat from the world stage in peace, admitting they know nothing; they wish to drive from the public eye anyone who claims to know anything. The moralist, the philosopher, the theologian, the economist, anyone who makes a positive claim that man is more than machine, more than animal, and under a unique burden to live up to the natural moral law that reason reveals to him— these are the enemies of the modernist.

One of the more entertaining, and shocking, moments in my life was watching a public debate during which attorney Alan Dershowitz (he of the O.J. Simpson fame) made the point that no one knows right from wrong, true from false… and he bellowed this bromide into the audience, pink-faced with ear-quivering rage, eyes blazing, in tones of ringing and magisterial, nay, godlike authority, each word like a clanging iron bell. There was no certainty in life, no final answers. That was final. That was certain.

The irony was apparently lost on this earnest little man, not to mention the logic of it.

Somewhere beneath all this storm and thunder, he was trying to make the point that, since we must all be agnostic on questions of personal morality, no one has the right to impose his beliefs one on another by enforcing a moral code at law.

Now, this is a classical piece of soothing modernist reasoning. Whatever cannot be proved scientifically, such as moral reasoning, should be set aside as agnostic, a matter about which reasonable people can differ (so goes the thought). Science has proven that morality cannot be proven, no more than the ultimate prime can be derived, or an angle trisected with ruler and compass! Therefore to insist on moral rules is unenlightened, and we all know that Thou Shalt Not Be Unenlightened is the Whole of the Law, Amen.

The irony of deducing a moral imperative from a posture of radical moral agnosticism is lost on the modern mind, which is entirely too sober and Germanic for its own good.

In any case, what starts as a perfectly reasonable plea for tolerance (Don’t lynch the Black Man! You do not know for certain that mixed marriages are morally wrong!) degenerates to moral retardation (How do I know cannibalism is wrong?) then to total moral paralysis (You come home and find your thirteen-year-old daughter in bed with her teacher, Mrs. Froomey. Join them? Why not?! How do I know incestohomolesbopoly-pedagogic paedophilia is wrong?).

The reason why I call it corrupt is that such radical unreason is not content to rest in the paralysis of skepticism. The logic of its position forces it, step by step, away from merely saying “science cannot prove morality” (or whatever silly variant of this axiom the particular modern dogma embraces) to a positive opposition to whatever is normal, either truth in language (witness Political Correctness) or respect for life (witness the Terri Schaivo affair) or respect for democracy (witness activist judges) or respect for law (witness the chic admiration paid to rioters, thugs, killers, Che) or respect for the family, or respect for the innocence of children, or respect as a concept in and of itself (witness simply everything in modern society). In the name of freedom, or in the name of nothing at all, everything good is dismissed by a corrupt ideal as an evil, and there is practically no evil, no sexual perversion, no act of theft or terror, no lie, which the new and modern and enlightened morality not merely excuses, but lauds. What we call evil, they call good.

Of course, one cannot run a brain, a household, or a civilization, on a corrupt idealism. The corruption can only exist for so long as there is a healthy idealism in the environment to feed from and strangle. It exists by virtue of its hypocrisies and shortcomings, its failure to live up to the logical result of it nihilistic culture-of-death axioms. It exists because grown-ups continue to go to work and pay the bills, and keep the wheels of industry in motion, the torch of civilization burning, feeding a culture increasingly infantile, and increasingly hostile to everything the grown-ups work to do.  

Once the remnants of pragmatic sense of duty, or idealistic sense of life, are dead in the public mind, nothing remains but a bitter gangland struggle over power, and a total and absolute devotion to falsehood that permeates every level of society: witness the Soviet Union from the Stalin days onward. 

Is it possible to reverse a civilization committed to a corrupt ideal, once the corruption has set in? I strongly doubt it. The battlefield here is all in the mind. Facts do not change people’s minds on a philosophical or religious level, which is the level we are talking about. The modern philosophy paralyzes the rational faculties like a snake’s gaze paralyzing a small bird.

Once one is convinced that reason is insufficient even to determine perfectly obvious things, nothing can convince reason to take up the dropped weapon of reason again. Convinced by what means? By reasoning? That is the very faculty modern thinking impeaches.

 The modern philosophy also unleashes the most powerful and selfish forces in the human psyche, such as the sexual impulse, or envy, or acquisitiveness, or self-righteousness, by granting a blanket indulgence to any act of selfishness and cruelty. In a world where there is no right and wrong, one can always criticize an act of self-command or self-sacrifice as inauthentic, or hypocritical, or oppressive; which therefore makes the opposite act of self-indulgence or selfishness a matter for admiration. Caine is being true to himself and his inner child by striking down Abel, who must have been a bit of a holier-than-thou prig anyway.  Lancelot is just being true to his inner romantic needs by gallivanting off with Guinevere. How dare Arthur oppress them by means of that patriarchic old-fashioned tabu called marriage?  

The combination of a captive reason and a sovereign appetite is impossible to beat. A generation of smug, self-satisfied spoiled brats raised by a generation of smug, self-satisfied spoiled brats, are not going to fall out of bed someday, and start talking like Marcus Aurelius or Cato of Utica, or reasoning like Jesuits. 

There is none of that in IRON MAN. The US military is the good guys. The bad guys are warlords and smugglers and evil guys who were evil in the comic. There is treason, torture, murder, revenge, paralyzer rays, dancing stewardesses, shrieking eels, true love, repellor rays — okay , no shrieking eels. But the film has all the good things in it I wanted to see. Almost all. Well, except no Mandarin. Maybe he will show up in the sequel.

Here is the big new, though.

Marvel Announces Feature Film Release Slate: Iron Man Sequel and Thor in Summer 2010 and Two Avenger-themed Movies in Summer 2011

In order to focus its attention on maximizing the success of an Iron Man sequel and the launch of Thor in the summer of 2010 and because Marvel believes that the summer is the optimal time to launch a new property, the Company will not release a self produced film in 2009. Marvel plans to launch its 2010 film slate with the release of the sequel, Iron Man 2, on April 30, 2010, followed by the launch of Thor on June 4, 2010. Additionally, Marvel is planting its feature film stakes for summer 2011 with an Avengers-themed summer – a two-picture project which will debut on May 6, 2011 with The First Avenger: Captain America (working title), followed by The Avengers in July 2011.

These are the days of the Golden Age for Sciffy Movies. Doubt it not, true believer.