Modern Words

Downward Progress

We were intrigued the other day to read what was intended to be a damning criticism of a US politician.

The time-capsule quality of Cruz’s politics is lost on no one who knew him at Princeton, none of whom could point to a political position that he held 25 years ago that he does not seem to still hold today. For some, that amounts to a laudably consistent belief system. For others, it reveals a man of calcified thinking, dangerously impervious to facts, reality, and a changing world.

 “More than anyone I knew, Ted seemed to have arrived in college with a fully formed worldview,” Butler College colleague Erik Leitch said.  “And what strikes me now, looking at him as an adult and hearing the things he’s saying, it seems like nothing has changed. Four years of an Ivy League education, Harvard Law, and years of life experience have altered nothing.”

Imagine we attended Harvard Law School as a tyro, but with a deep conviction that the world was over 70 percent ocean.  Now, years later, replete with a Harvard Law degree, years of life experience, and presumably wiser, we still hold the same view: that the earth’s surface is predominately water.  Critics could doubtless allege that we were closed minded, of “calcified thinking, dangerously impervious to facts, reality, and a changing world.” 

Whilst the slur would be expectorated full of sound and fury, it would signify precisely nothing.  Well, actually, it would signify something about the person doing the slurring.  Let’s deconstruct.
  Has the makeup of the earth’s crust changed?  Have the facts changed, such that what was once believed to be the case has now been demonstrated not to be so.  Have the fundamental realities of global geography changed?  Not at all.  So, to hold to what one believed thirty or forty years ago reveals not a man who is “dangerously impervious to the facts” but, on the contrary, someone rational and sane. 

Or, maybe the detractors believe that nothing in this life is certain and that the facts keep changing constantly. Who knows.  But if that were to be the case, then it is the animadverters who end up empty minded, for whatever they think and opine today we can be certain that tomorrow “it ain’t so”. 

Artfully suppressed behind all this, however, lies a deeper ideological and philosophical commitment–a belief in evolution, progress, pragmatism, and dialectical advance.  Mankind is moving forward and upward.  Darwin said it were so.  Progress is the one secular force of history that cannot be thwarted.  In this ideological framework one can understand why it is a damning indictment to be accused of still thinking the same things you thought as a teenage tyro.  It would indicate arrested development, a less-than-human state.  It would make you more like a tree than a human being, non? 

No-one contradicts the ideal of growing in wisdom and maturity as the years pass.  The Apostle Paul talked of doing childish things when he was a child, but when he grew to adulthood, he put away childish things.  One expects that an adult will think differently about many things than they did as a child.  One expects a person in the crowning glory of older-age wisdom to be much more advanced in their opinions and wisdom than a twenty year old something infatuated with celebritism, for instance. 

But where you draw the lines is critical.  Some “development” is devolvement.  When the Commentariat accuses a person of having a “calcified” mind, one suspects they are alleging the target is guilty of today’s ultimate ideological sin–to be a denier of modern verities such as evolutionism, or secularism, or dialecticism.  In which case the “wisdom” of age they are referring to–of which they seem themselves as avatars–is actually the devolved idiocy of dotage.  They are the ones showing themselves prematurely senile.
 Take, for example, some of the hot ideological lightning rods of our day.  Firstly, abortion.  If a person was once an agnostic on the matter of killing the unborn, but now holds the view that its the just and righteous thing to do, he has devolved.  He has become more animalistic, less human, less like God.  His mind has become calcified into a state of ignorance. On the contrary, if a person, as a young man, rejected abortion as a vile act of murder, and forty years later not only holds to the same view, but holds it more strongly with an entire lifestyle bent against it, then he is more enlightened than he was as a teenager. 

Or again, if a person as a young man held the view that theft was sinful and usually a criminal act, but now holds the view in later life that the state extracting from some to bestow upon others is likewise theft and sinfully criminal, his thinking has become developed, refined, purified and more advanced.  He has made progress, not just intellectually but spiritually.  But if a man as a teenager held to the view that theft was an evil act, but now as an adult advocates for government expropriating from some to distribute to others, his thinking has degenerated; he has ethically devolved.  Far from making progress, he has descended further into the abyss.  He is farther from the exit to the labyrinth in mature years than he was as a young man. 

Much of what the world calls progress is actually devolution and moral regression.  In the hands and minds of the morally degenerating, “progress” has instead become an idol of destruction, a deadly thing of worship.  Thus, President Woodrow Wilson:

Progress!  Did you ever reflect that that word is almost a new one?  No word comes more often or more naturally to the lips of modern man, as if the thing it stands for were almost synonymous with life itself . . . . Progress, development,–those are modern words.  The modern idea is to leave the past and press onward to something new.”  [Cited in Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012), p.162.]

How prescient those words were.  How damning they have become.  The people have turned away from the Living God to something “new”.  Except, all they have done is turned back to the Baals, to the stupid, dumb gods of a former benighted era.  And they and their age have become like them, as stupid, as dumb, as benighted.  Progressive.  Enlightened. New.  These have become modern words to serve ancient dank, dark, and depraved deities.  No progress there.  Just calcified minds.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Cooking and Counting 

Goo-Mongers – Postmodernism
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, 13 July 2012

One of the charges that is laid at my feet with some regularity is that I am an autodidact, unaccountable to no one, and that this unfortunate fact makes me pop off from time to time, and to do so in ways that are clean contrary to what is taught by the certified experts and gatekeepers.

There is a lot going on here, not the least of which is the confusion of certification with education. But that part of it is another topic for another day. For the present, I would like to present a brief explanation and defense for what I would describe as the biblical approach to being contrarian.

“I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts” (Ps. 119:99-100).

This approach eliminates the cocksure sophomore as well as the argumentative crank.

>A Sad Passing

>Four Step-Brothers Have Inherited

From an obituary printed in the London Times . . .

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

– Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
– Why the early bird gets the worm;
– Life isn’t always fair; and,
– Maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense went into serious decline when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. His health declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense also suffered a severe beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I’m A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

>Arrogance of the "Educated" Class

>Labouring Under a Regimen of Fools

The Scriptures make a distinction between knowledge and wisdom. To know something is not the same as being wise with respect to it. For example, one may be highly educated in the intricacies of how a hunting rifle is constructed, its technical specifications, the peculiarities and functional applications of its calibre, the specifications of varieties of loads and what is superior for what conditions, its design provenance, the laws of physics operating when it is fired, and where that particular rifle fitted into the panoply of hunting rifles, past and present.

Knowing about all this does not ensure that the rifle will be used properly, safely, and effectively, without harm or damage to oneself or others. The Scripture warns of the dangers of knowledge when it says, “knowledge makes arrogant, but love builds up.” (I Corinthians 8:1). In the Bible wisdom has to do not only with accurate and correct information, but the proper use and application of that knowledge to life. Wisdom is the happy condition of acting in a manner condign with the Creator as His sub-creator in His created world.

For many in the modern world, knowledge is the equivalence of wisdom. The our rationalistic age a wise person is the one who knows more, who is educated.
Thus, it has become increasingly common in political and social discourse in the United States (somewhat less so in New Zealand) to speak of the “educated classes” and the “uneducated classes”: the former are superior, smarter, wiser, and better fitted to rule than the latter. Probably the most offensive thing about Sarah Palin to the liberal left in that country is that she is deemed uneducated, not part of the educated elite. She is therefore ignorant or stupid or both. She is consequently deemed completely unfit to be a political leader in the Republic.

In Biblical terms, however, it is possible that Palin may be deemed wise, and her political opponents, although Ivy League educated, fools. In Scriptural parlance, having read more books does not make one wise; it may merely mean one is a more loquacious polysyllabic fool. (In this vein, it is salutary to remember that when Ronald Reagan was campaigning for the Presidency, his political opponents and the media constantly portrayed him as simplistic and semi-idiotic. Without putting too fine a point on it, the narrative about Reagan was that he was dumb. He was not part of the educated class. Yet there are few now who would question that he was a highly effective President. In a similar vein, George Bush Jr was constantly caricatured as ignorant and stupid, a bumbling fool. Now with him there was a slight hiccup in the framing because he was a scion of the Ivy League: but he mangled his sentences (due to dyslexia) and that proved he was ignorant. Because he could not use words properly, he was obviously a fool, and was lampooned accordingly.)

In New Zealand, Anne Tolley, Minister of Education has regularly been smeared and attacked by her left wing political opponents, and by teacher unions as being ignorant, stupid, obtuse, and dumb. It is the same syndrome. Generally those on the left see themselves as being fundamentally smart because they are clever enough to promote statist solutions to every perceived problem. Their opponents are believed to be ignorant because either they don’t see the problem in the first place, or if they do, they don’t understand the only fundamental solution, which is always a state run, central government one.

Using the Bible’s authoritative frame of reference we may acknowledge that a particular political leader may be highly educated, clever, smart, and intellectually sophisticated. But that does not make him or her wise: it may only serve to make them more dangerous. If, in their self-referencing cleverness, they pursue and enact laws and policies which are not condign with the Creator and His world, great damage will be done. Fools they will have proved to be.

Humility always attends the truly wise, for they recognize that they have no calling, authority, or right to attempt to remake the world in their own image. The truly wise consider themselves to be stewards, responsible to God, appointed and restricted to sub-creation, not original creation. The wise know they must work within God’s frame; fools attempt to make a new world after their own image.

In our day, unfortunately, education often is inseparable from foolishness. To be under the aegis of the educated classes is not a pleasant prospect. For in our day, the “educated” are taught to be self-referential. They have been instructed that to be educated means that you have the knowledge, skills, insight and wisdom to be able to make a new world as it seems good to you. Because one is so endowed one deserves the people’s respect and trust. One supposedly is therefore fit to lead and govern.

The Proverb says that one of the most difficult things for the earth to bear is when a slave becomes king. We can add to that. It is very difficult for a people to bear leaders who equate education with wisdom, who think that their education justifies their self-referential stupidity and foolishness.