A World in Decline
DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE
A WORLD IN DECLINE
by Adam Carroll Draper
Perspective isn’t everything, and ignorance is rarely complete. We are inexorably drawn into accepting life’s banalization, the daily dulling of certainty. It’s like a stain on a favorite shirt that demands for us to throw the shirt away or surrender to wearing the stain. I’m not saying there is no certainty, but it’s elusive. We settle for perspective. It’s unproven, so it’s gnawingly irritating.
It is in this sense that I say that America is at a crossroads. Said a little more starkly, the West itself seems to be fading away. It is quite alarming for those who share that perspective. For others, it may not have any more significance than whether they are still going to be able find retail stores or a good cheeseburger.
It is impossible to miss the upheaval. Perspective shapes why we think it is happening. In his book Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Fouccault, Derrida, Allan Megill gets to the heart of what happened in the West. While you are considering this, play The Doors in the background of your mind to keep the tone in which it is offered, with Jim Morrison singing, “The West is the best. The West is the best. Get here and we’ll do the rest.” Something ate at the foundation of what it is to be Western. The Prophets of Extremity thought the West was doomed to cataclysmic societal upheaval because its moral underpinnings were based upon religion and superstition (I am grossly condensing them to this thought, but it fits loosely enough). Whether you agree with them or not (I don’t believe that faith in Yeshua amounts to superstition), their point is that when the religion that provides the basis for public morality is removed, so goes the very structure of the society built upon that agreement (public morality).
While the American people remain nominally Christian, our culture is hardly Christian. Consider our movies, our music, our art… our law. That last one is a biggie. Harold Berman used the following anecdote to illustrate this point in his book, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Until the 1960’s it was impermissible in most states to put someone to death who had committed a crime and subsequently gone insane. That came from the English Common Law (adopted from the Cannon Law of the Roman Catholic Church), employing the rationale that an insane person did not have the opportunity to repent, so killing him would damn him to hell. The law is the same now, but not for the same reason! As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, we don’t base our law upon “the brooding omnipresence in the sky.” Now, our rationale is that it would be unconstitutional to put such a person to death because it would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Again, same law, different moral basis.
Yes, I said “moral basis.” Law necessarily enforces what the government deems right and wrong, good and bad. Even if a law is designed to establish order or efficiency, it was first agreed (at least implicitly) that such things are good. One could believe that disorder is good (which is apparently the case now in New York, Chicago, Seattle, and Portland). The people are generally law-abiding to the extent that they believe the law is right and/or because they fear the consequences the government imposes upon those who violate the law. Berman argued that a society is doomed whose people do not follow its laws because they agree with them in general, but only obey out of fear of punishment. His point was that Christianity has provided the moral basis for Western societal cohesion, the general agreement about what is right and what is wrong that has held it together. Is that agreement gone? Well, it is certainly not reflected in our laws; and it is not reflected in our popular culture.
Again, whether the West is in decline or doomed to a tumultuous change is a matter of perspective, which begs the question of whether this destruction of the Western public morality was deliberate? “You can’t prove it,” as the band lamented in “This Is Spinal Tap” over the death of their drummer. He was murdered. He choked on somebody else’s vomit. They surrendered to the reality that there was nothing else they could do because, “You can’t really dust for vomit.”
We may or may not be able to prove whether Western public morality has been (or is being) murdered, but there is no doubt that truth and freedom, and even beauty, have become meaningless catch phrases. Consider ee cummings’ perspective:
as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
—long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame
I am reminded of a line from a Pretenders’ song, Show Me, when Chrissie Hynde sings, “Welcome to the human race with its wars, disease and brutality; you with your innocence and grace restore some pride and dignity to a world in decline.” I feel that “world in decline” right down in the hollow of something ineffable. I use all the lyrics and lines and pop references here to throw it on the canvas as it were. If I made a documentary to make this point, perhaps I’d call it “Smear It Like Pollock.” It’s a perspective after all.
After studying the history of world cultures and civilizations, Oswald Spangler concluded that the West as he defined it (which he said started in the eleventh century) was already in decline a hundred years ago. Read The Decline of the West at the peril of your own perspective. Spangler said that a deliberate attempt at ending or changing a civilization is irrelevant to the actual cause of the end because the attempt itself is simply part of the life cycle of the culture. He thought of cultures as organisms. They live and they die. There are phases. Decline and death are phases and they can be observed and predicted.
For those of you who know me, you are undoubtedly expecting me to say something positive or at least funny here, as in the commercial (I think from the 70’s) where the husband extols his wife’s intelligence and asks her to, “Say something smart, dear.” She says dryly, “Your tie is on fire.” I will respond to the death of Western civilization with a banal aphorism only found in a banished cigarette ad from Reynold’s Tobacco Company (right here in my home town), “You can take Salem out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of Salem.” We are not simply Americans or Western, all that came grew out of the source of its cohesion, Christianity. He Lives! America will not simply die. This country grew out of a fervent idea that we are a “City on a Hill.” Christians wait in joyful hope of the return of The King. We not going to stop now. “The light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.”
I heard a story (and I have no idea if it is true) that someone had written on the Berlin Wall, “Gott ist tot, Nietzsche” (God is Dead, Nietzsche). Next to it, someone had responded, “Nietzsche ist tot, Gott.” Nothing is certain but God. If our God be for us, who can be against us. Our God reigns, and he will not be mocked. I will leave you with Isaiah 46: 8-13:
8 Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors. 9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: 11 Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it. 12 Hearken unto me, ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness: 13 I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry: and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory.
Yeshua HaMaschiah Bah! Jesus the Messiah is Coming!
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