The discussion I want to see, following the shooting in Tucson, is one about the mental health of our youth generally. I have cited the effects of media, but even taking a step back from that, I would like us to start thinking about the future of our culture, of our American and Western civilization generally.
If you wander the halls of most universities, what you will see is pessimism. You will see exhausted minds whose big idea is socialism in some form, as if solving the material problems of life would solve the philosophical and spiritual ones. They are closed minded when it comes to philosophical progress. They have decided that language cannot be used to solve abstract moral problems, since no moral absolutes exist. Obviously, one can study ethics, but does anyone really know or care what ethicists do? I am speaking in general terms.
Since it is politically advantageous for them–teachers unions being huge contributors to the Democrat Party–our professional left likes to talk often about the state of our educational system. Yet, we spend as much as Norway, per capita, on education, and get results worse than countries that spend a third less. Why? Because we do not place the same value on education, culturally, and because we do not teach our children self discipline.
The huge gap I see is one of emotional balance, of psychological well being. When I grew up “cutting” was unknown. Now, children know about it in the fourth grade. A well known Disney actress took it up recently.
As I see it, there is this void in the social/emotional lives of millions in this country, that is the same void that led to Fascism in the last century. What would be totalitarians lack is a charismatic personality. They thought they had it in Obama, but didn’t. He has no character or charm–just the ability to read speeches as if he meant them.
And as I ponder this, I think about how Fascism is always labelled as “rightism”. In one sense, and one sense only, this is accurate: where Communists try to invent a new world, Fascists seek to reinvent the past, to hew to the past, and to radicalize and reify cultural traits that were assumed to exist then, and which are to be praised in the present. Traits such as courage, nobility, honor. This is what Mussollini did, in invoked the “Fasces”, symbol of the Roman Consul, and symbol of the Roman Empire in its youth. This is what Hitler did, in invoking the people–the Aryans, which is a Sanskrit word–from whom all the Indo-European peoples evolved, such as the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and Indians.
In important respects, Fascism should be seen, I think, as anti-Communism. It uses the same authoritarianism, the same appeal to conform to the dictates of a ruling elite, as Communism. Yet it does not require the relinquishing of the past. It rather glorifies and flatters ordinary people with a new found nobility of character, that is best expressed through warfare and the glory of battle, and success, as envisioned and led by a powerful Leader.
But both doctrines start from alienation, from holes in the souls of the people to whom they appeal. They presume emotional problems, most of which are concealed in the motion of normal life. They assume people breaking from within from an abundance of energy they cannot figure out how to express creatively, and with which they are slowly being poisoned. The leader who figures out how to harness that–always through some greater or lesser extent of deception, for totalitarians–can conquer the nation.
What we need is moral reform. We need to recognize that Socialism has no ideas for cultural reform. Comfort is not a creed. It is not a code you can live by. It is the doctrine of the old and tired–the Europeans–who simply want to quietly fade away. I do not see this as the path for Americans. We are much younger, and still much more energetic.
In important respects, I have been wrestling with these ideas since my youth, roughly 16, when I started confronting them. And to be perfectly honest, the ability to reject atheism formally, from a scientific perspective, was important for me. I suppose I would make do as an atheist, but I would not be as resilient, and not as happy.
The older I get, the more I realize worldview is everything. Hitler–who was a rhetorical and psychological genius of the first order–invoked it constantly. He said all the time that the German Weltanschauung was unique, as I understand the matter. He told people they were special, that they had a historical destiny. That science was on their side. That morality was on their side.
And this worked, because people were longing to be told who they were. He met a deep seated need to fit in, to belong, to be CERTAIN of something, in an unsure world.
I think to finally achieve world peace–which I continue to view as a valid and viable goal over the next century, in conditions of freedom–we will have to learn to accept some degree of ambiguity in life. We can agree on general principles, but need to realize that there are some parts of this universe we will never really understand. We need to alter our focus from purported Divine Laws, to rules that clearly work in the here and now to foster happiness, including sincerity, honesty, generosity, wisdom, and love.
Here below, as above, these patterns bring fulfillment. Things, per se, do not. As miserable as many of our poor are, they live like kings of old. Why are they not content with this? Culture. Culture is everything.
And Socialism destroys culture. If we are to survive, we will have to abolish this pernicious doctrine. This is not to say we should not take care of our old, sick, and poor. It means that we should not make the sole value that of egalitarianism. To pretend all people are equal in quality in principle is to eradicate the very possibility of moral progress. Having eradicated the ideal of progress, you get the REGRESSION which currently defines our current cultural decline.
This is a bit meandering, but I think there are some important points here.