What’s Wrong with ‘What’s Wrong with the World’?
A reader with name of Flaming Phonebook asks a few burning questions, and called forward an imaginary Modern to give witness to the reasoning behind the Modern mind, discussed at (g’normous) length in my manifesto here.
I have read your essay from start to finish.
Let a respectful cap be doffed! You have heroic patience.
I praise you for its ease of understanding and for its completeness.
Thank you for your kindness, but the essay was neither as clear nor rigorous as it should have been.
Several times points occurred to me, which you then elucidated yourself. I am left only to further explore the base motivations of the Modern, in which I think I agree with you but may understand the psychology better, and the conclusion, in which I am sure I do not agree with you. For the former, and for the sake of my clarity, I now assume the persona of the Modern:
As an intellectual exercise, allow me to assume the persona of the Ancient. Unfortunately, the kind and sage ancient like Socrates is beyond my powers to impersonate, so I will play the sarcastic and condescending Diogenes.
My ultimate desire is that I fulfill my whims. I do indeed want what I want when I want it. This may be impossible, but it is not illogical. It is the same A=A tautology you accuse me of ignoring.
Dear Imaginary Modern,
Assuming your desires do not contradict with each other, and do not contradict reality, and do not conflict the desires of other men (whose dignity is no less than your own), why yes, in theory such impulsive and immoderate desires are not illogical.
However, a person whose passions and appetites just so happen, without any habituation of virtue, without any training in self-control, to be harmonious both within himself, and with others, and be properly directed toward their natural objects, would be a beast as mythical as a Chimera.
Unless you are a prelapsarian man or an unfallen angel, your whims have no chance of avoiding conflicts with your other whims, and no chance of avoiding false pleasures, long-term unpleasure, conflict with your fellow men, conflicts with the Natural Law. We can take it as a given that desires, left to themselves, are illogical.
And, to say it another way, it is better for me to get something for nothing than it is to get nothing for nothing, or to get something for something (equal or greater), or to get nothing for something.
Certainly if, as you sit under a peach tree in paradise, sleeping with your mouth open, a passing breeze should shake a peach free from a branch, and it should just happen to be ripe, and if it should just happen to fall into your open mouth, so that the good of the peach can be enjoyed with no more effort than to close your jaws, why yes, in theory getting something for nothing has no drawbacks, and in theory an uncontrolled or impulsive desire that a windfall just so happens to satisfy is cause for gratitude.
The logical contradiction arises when you are ungrateful for the windfall, and think the wind owes you a peach.
The contradiction with reality arises when you open your eyes from your nap, and see that the world around you is not the garden of paradise. Instead you see a world suffering what economists call a scarcity of resources; a world suffering from what scientists call the Second Law of Thermodynamics; A world whose motto is “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” and whose slogan is “Whoso Does Not Work, Shall Not Eat.”
The act of labor, such as hunting or herding or sowing, is undertaken for the satisfaction of remote future appetites, not for the sake of immediate whimsical appetites: logic suggests that to train the passions to such ideas as “pride of workmanship” or “contempt for sloth” is both useful and right, if you wish for the interval between labor and the enjoyment of the gain of labor to be tolerable.
‘Tolerable’, here, means that your appetites and passions, instead of rebelling against reality, cohere with reality: a basic definition of happiness is when you get what you will to get and avoid what you will to avoid.
I have used the example of labor to gain food to sate the appetite of hunger, but any number of other examples could be used for any other species of appetite.
The good of society is only of value to me if it aids my good.
I am not sure how you mean this sentence, O Imaginary Modern. If your “good” includes not merely your whimsical appetites but also your long-term best interests, your interest rightly understood, then to avoid being a spoilt whiny brat is one of those goods that society with other mortals is right to grant you.
If your “good” includes both rightly understood goods and wrongly understood goods, then self-indulgence in wrongly understood goods is both harmful to yourself and to your surrounding society.
You see, Imaginary Modern, you are under a severe misapprehension. You are not one of the passengers on the royal barge of life: you are one of the rowers, and we are all in this narrow boat together, and there is a storm brewing.
The burden of proof is on you to prove to society that we have any interest or duty to protect you by our laws or support you by our efforts. If you fail to prove that you will be a useful, enjoyable, and productive member of our society, it is in our self-interest to cast you into exile beyond the walls of our civilization, so that you can starve in barbarism on your own.
Imagine you are outside the gate with the winter nightfall coming on, and the first echoes of the wolves hang on the cold wind. Imagine you are pleading with the fathers of civilization to allowed the privilege of coming inside, and enjoying the benefits of our protection. It is not persuasive to begin the case for yourself to announce that your loyalty to the city extends no farther than what benefits we give you.
The good of God, if there is such, is only of value to me if it aids my good.
As above, this depends on whether we are speaking of your true good or a deceptive appearance of good. Christians take the word “God” to be a synonym for “good” — therefore to speak of good outside God is a paradox.
But even those who do not believe in God cannot possibly maintain that all things that seem good in this world turn out actually to be good; that all plants found in nature are nutritious and un-poisonous, that all foods are healthy in any amounts, that all anger is righteous, that all lusts are true love. Even a child below seven knows enough to know sticking anything it picks up in its mouth is bad.
Even if I seek right and righteousness by the proper moral code, it is only because right-in-general is conducive to good-in-particular (me being the particle).
Again, I am not sure how you mean this sentence, O Imaginary Modern. If the soldiers who protect you from invasion, or the police who deter and avenge robberies and trespasses, or the mother at whose bosom you suckled, asked for an immediate reward from you to carry out their duties to you, or, as you seem to imply, repudiated all duties and merely followed those whims which pleased them, your life would be miserable and short.
Any status I can garner unto myself, whether it be wealth or fame or honor or correctness, only has value because it satisfies my will. Ultimately, I should be omnipotent, a god who outstrips even yours by commanding logic as well as the real world. A should cease to equal A if it is convenient for me.
At this point, a rational conversation with the Imaginary Modern must cease, for we civilized men must fall upon him with straitjackets or with truncheons and either imprison or kill him.
If you repudiate reason, what basis is there for reasoning with you? If you say society, God, and reality exist merely to sate your omnipotent whim, why can I not say, with equal logic, that society, God and reality exist merely to sate my omnipotent whim, and my whims are more belligerent and bloodthirsty than your own, including (as it does) a desire to smite Imaginary Modern men and slay them with the edge of the sword?
If you repudiate reason, on what are you relying for your safety and the sanctity of your person? If you repudiate reason, why are you assuming your life is sacred, or should be protected the laws of civilized men?
But it does not. Reality is not subject to my whim. This should not be ascribed without argument to a flaw in my whim, when it could just as easily be a flaw in reality–that reality is bigger and more complex than I am, or that it was here first, is insufficient argument, since if my will is flawless I can will them into insufficiency.
Sorry, I don’t understand that paragraph, or even know what the subject is. Is there a word or phrase missing?
Therefore I face a prisoner’s dilemma, in which the other prisoner has already given his evidence. Reality has declined to cooperate with my will. The minor-sentence option of the dilemma has been rendered non-applicable. My only options are to yield to reality and give it the zero-sentence result while I suffer the maximum-sentence result, or to act spitefully and damage reality to whatever extent I can. The former option is illogical, since it denies me status. Therefore, my only option is to deny, destroy, and degrade reality, even at the cost of my own soul.
Reality is not a person who can enter into the prisoner’s dilemma style game. I don’t know what “minor-sentence option” means. I cannot tell if this paragraph is meant to be metaphorical or not. These seem to be words strung together without rhyme or reason.
Here I end the use of the persona. Obviously I don’t think any Modern would say that with precision, even to himself, but I think that is the underlying postulate.
I hope to have shown by that statement that it is possible to reach the Modern position by a logic, albeit one that does not stand up to scrutiny.
Maybe so, but I cannot follow the reasoning. The premise seems to be not merely false, but insolently, arrogantly false. The world owes you a living, and when the world does not give you what you are owed, you seek to destroy the world, and since you cannot destroy the world, you destroy yourself. Is that the argument? So might a whining toddler throwing a temper tantrum announce, had he the power to articulate his impotent wrath. So might the seven deadly sins listed in Part XX speak, if they were given voice.
The argument of your Imaginary Modern that starts with whim-worship (arrogant lustful gluttony combined with sloth) and ends with a desire to destroy reality (envy combined with wrath) is perhaps the most perfect example of pure evil anyone can imagine. The only thing that could make it more evil would be if this argument were uttered by a stupid person who thought he was smarter than that rest of us, or a perverted person who thought he was more moral than the rest of us, and the grounds for the high self-assessment of his reasoning was the fact that he rejected reason and thought, and the grounds for the high self-assessment of his righteousness was the fact that he embraces indecency and grotesque evil and rejects goodness and mercy.
But of course, that would be ridiculous! No one could be that smug and insufferably unselfaware!
My position as (what I aspire to be) an honorable hedonist (as described in part XV of the essay) is that the direction and the purpose of progress is to bring me asymptotically to the same high status the Modern seeks, and that it is therefore not futile to engage reality non-destructively.
But
I do not think that Christianity will be effective in curing the madness of the modern era any more than philosophy is. Christianity today lacks certain criteria that it possessed in the pre-industrial-revolution, pre-Victorian, pre-Crazy-Years time, and which were necessary to make it the mother of reason. In that time, the Christian man had far less contact with non-Christian thought; he met fewer people in general, which means fewer non-Christians; he had no Internet on which to argue, no libraries that stocked Ingersoll or Rand (hmm. . . Nah!); for that matter, he had less time to consider such ideas if accessed, being more concerned with economy and survival. Also in that time, the priesthood had the pick of the intelligent, the cultured, the well-read to give the church respect and authority; today respect and authority are more likely to be granted to those following the destroy-reality path of the Modern.
I do not see how any of this has anything to do with the viability of Christianity. Early Christianity in the West, and all Christianity after the Seventh Century in the East, and all missionary Christianity is exactly the type of minority Christianity surrounded by a non-Christian majority you describe. We Christians do not need to be in charge to be right. Indeed, the difference between post-Christian England, where the Anglican Church is established at law, and Christian America, where the Constitution specifically forbids establishment, could not be clearer.
Exposure to Ingersoll and Rand is just as likely to drive someone toward Christianity as away, depending on whether or not the image of a life of meaningless selfishness is attractive or repulsive.
Christianity is not false, but true, and therefore does not require that it be insulated from non-believers, and does not require the pick of intelligent and well read to give it authority and respect, any more than the periodic table of elements needs chemists to give it authority and respect.
To say that the leisured ancients, such as Aquinas or Augustine were too concerned with mere survival to reflect on Christianity is not merely a false statement, it is so insulting and stupid as to merit no other answer than a donkey laugh. Puh-lease.
The technology available today is, justified or not, another blow to the potential of widespread re-Christianization. A potential Modern may conclude that more good for him has come out of industrial plants and laboratories than from churches.
The Christians built those industrial plants and laboratories, and when they fall into non-Christian hands, they have an odd tendency to turn into gulags and gas-chambers. You are talking mere nonsense.
And what cannot be ignored either was that in the times when it reigned, Christianity had certain force of arms and influence over those who held arms than it does today.
I point to the Coptic Church, which has existed in Egypt since the Second Century, and have never enjoyed the force of arms. I point to Poland, which retains her Catholic character despite half a century of groaning under the Soviet boot heel. I point to America, where the Christian majority voluntarily laid down its force of arms, which lead to a flourishing of Christianity. The places in the modern world where Christianity is spreading most rapidly (Africa, China, Southeast Asia) are places where Christianity is not the established religion and is not enforced at law. The places where Christianity is dying (England, Germany) happen to be places where the Church is part of the government.
So I believe the return to Christian values you think is necessary is only possible after a great cataclysm–that the new bloom must be fertilized with dead men. Mere demography is not enough to build the momentum needed to overcome all the factors that work against Christianity taking root.
But you hedonists have aborted your children. I and mine are adopting children from Red China. Christianity is spreading faster than Islam throughout the world.
And even if it did, what would prevent Christian reason from generating Modernity a second time, with the exact same problems?
Interesting question, albeit slightly optimistic. I suspect the Prince of Darkness, who rules this world, has something worse than a second Modernity planned for the future.
I don’t believe that you are suggesting a perpetual oscillation between Christianity and Modernity, but I also don’t see how the same Christianity that is able to win against Modernism is able to hold against it, since winning and holding comprise two different sets of requirements.
If Modernity were merely some natural human philosophy generated by honest men who were acting in their own perception of their own self-interest, I might agree.
But that is not how I see the world.
I am a Christian: the world is a battlefield halfway between heaven and hell, and battles whose gain or loss have effects reaching to eternity take place in hidden corners of the world you will never see, in back alleys were drunks slumber, in prisons, in poorhouses, on sickbeds, on deathbeds, in private confessional booths, in the hidden hearts of sad and tormented men who faces you look on every day, seeing nothing but the polite outward mask they show the world.
I see the world as something as dread and perilous as fairyland, where to pluck a forbidden fruit from a sacred tree means death, or to hang a suffering god on a tree of pain means life.
You cannot see the glamour and drama and danger of this world, because you only see the world as a natural thing.
To me, the world is deeper, far more dangerous, far more filled with hope. You have nothing to fear but pain and disease and death. I fear damnation. You have nothing to hope for but a happy life. I hope for the bright, resounding glory of eternity, golden bliss beyond words and beyond imagining; and I will then see for what reason of Sons of Light shouted with joy at daybreak of time, when the stars were made.
I do not see Modern madness as merely human. No human wants to die, or wants to be insane; no human deliberately and methodically tries to undo the world of civilization and return to the poverty and misery and toil and filth and servitude of barbarism.
I therefore conclude (even though you will mock my conclusion as impossible or silly) that Modern madness is an attack, heresy, a deception, a lie, told by the Father of Lies. It is the work of Hell.
Yes, yes, I know that to you this will seem as if I am blaming unicorns or UFO’s or UFO’s piloted by unicorns for the ills of the modern world.
But this model has the advantage that it explains the facts without requiring that I think of my fellow men as suicidal nincompoops. Instead, I think of them as orcs: merely the pitiable victims enslaved, by means of their slavery to their vices, to a Dark Lord. This model also suggests that the downfall of the Empire of Modern Madness could be as sudden and unexpected (if not inexplicable) as the downfall of the Berlin Wall; the success of the Sons of Light could be as sudden and unexpected (if not inexplicable) as the success of the American Revolution.
You cannot reason with the villains in an Ayn Rand novel. Neither can even a superman like John Galt save them. The most he can do, like Buddha, is stand aside and let the illusionary world destroy itself. The John Galt strategy consists of letting the world, not to mention innocent bystanders like Eddie Williers, go to hell. To someone who wants both to save our civilization and to save the doomed and foolish orcs from their tyrannous master, this is not a very hopeful strategy.
You cannot reason with the villains in an Ayn Rand novel. But you can pray for them.
No, I think instead that the way out of Modern madness must lie in an entirely different method, neither scientific nor Christian. Christianity is inviable to the point of being an anachronism,
Pshaw. Eternal things are never out of date. Christianity is not an idea whose time has passed, it is an idea whose time has not come yet.
… and science is insufficient to aid mankind for all the reasons you ascribed, and it is indeed becoming insufficient even in the empirical areas. It is not even necessary to be non-empirical to confound science; it requires merely to be uncontrolled.
I don’t understand what that sentence means. Uncontrolled?
When science cannot run experiments, it is stymied until more data arrive by time and by luck. Paleontology told me as a youth that a great beast called a brontosaurus once roamed the Earth; they now tell me it was a mistake. Astronomy has no hope of answering questions on the nature of planets and distant stars without more info, which ain’t coming any faster than 300 megameters/second. Climatology, well, we know how accurate that is; at least paleontologists aren’t asking that I cap-and-trade fossil credits. But certainly science cannot aid man in being man. The science that runs controlled experiments on man is only the science of Mengele.
I freely admit that I do not know with precision what method will arise to save man (if any will; doom is always a possibility), but I do think it must be fungible, available to the common man to understand and put into play in his own life, without needing kings or priests or professors to ordain it. If nothing else, I seek such a method for my life, concluding that the best I can do to save the world is to save myself and lead by example.
The message of Christ is simple and clear enough that you do not need a degree in theology to understand it.
The poor and miserable and hopeless, the widow and the prisoner and the orphan understand it. The message is powerful enough that some men devote their lives in service to it, giving up home and family to do so: those are the priests at whom you so glibly scoff, whose mere existence is a powerful witness to the Christian faith, and who seek, as you do, to save the world by example, and save themselves by repentance.
The faith of Christ is the faith of the common man. An intellectual has to overcome his own precious precociousness to understand it. Even those who mock the faith by calling it a “meme” pay homage to its enduring power and infinite appeal. It is a model that explains as much of the universe as can be explained, and which correctly identifies as mysteries those things which, by their very nature, the mind of man cannot explain: my experience has been that other models of the universe are grossly deficient in some basic way, either lacking in hope (as paganism or Buddhism, which regard the world, and fate, as something to escape) or lacking in faith (as socialism, which has no faith in human nature) or lacking in charity (as Objectivism).
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
