That title promises more than I can deliver in a short post; however, I hope to at least be able to address what my memory retains regarding the evolving culture of my childhood years in a jungle mining camp and how it very much reflected the general culture in the United States. The purpose is not to reminisce but to seek to identify our root cultural problem and how to address it.
With regards to “class struggle” so prominent in modern society, please see my post, Class Struggle, as I will not be repeating those comments here, although for a better overall understanding, that post should be considered in tandem with this one.
Cornelius Van Til’s aphorism is true, in my opinion: “Culture is religion externalized.” So, for example, historically, the culture of Europe is drastically different, even contradictory, to that of pre-William Carey India or pre-WWII Japan. The difference relates or related directly to the vastly different dominant religions of each: Christianity versus Hinduism or Buddhism or Shintoism. Even cultures which arose under a predominantly Protestant Christianity differ markedly from those arising under a predominantly Roman Catholic Christianity. Witness northern versus southern Europe, or North versus South America.
Nevertheless, every major Christian confession, regardless of denomination, makes claims to objective truth; such is not the case with other major religions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, other than categorical statements affirming, at best, dubious claims, such as “all religions are the same”. They most certainly are not, as even my Hindu friends will admit upon reflection.
El Pao’s culture in the 1950s was undeniably Christian, although its population was marked by Roman Catholics, Protestants, non or infrequent church-goers. We also had one or two atheists. Outside of El Pao, I remember genuinely friendly relations with Jewish people in Caracas. Our general Christianity did not generate Anti-Semitism, but rather a tolerance increasingly rare today.
All, even those who denied Christianity, lived according to Christian societal norms.
If I were offered Hobson’s Choice of either living in Mexico City today or living there before Cortes’ arrival in 1519, I would not hesitate to choose to live there today, since I do not particularly care for Aztec human sacrifice, whether my own or anyone else’s. I believe the reader would also choose likewise. We do incline towards self-preservation, after all.
And what makes the difference between Mexico today and Mexico before Cortes? In a word: Christianity.
Unlike the era of the Great Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries, the crisis in religion today is not denominational or doctrinal (although I do not minimize such serious matters).
The crisis in religion today, as Harold O. J. Brown put it, is in the “radical sensate approach to truth”. That crisis goes well beyond the walls of any church or denomination and into all of society, culture, and civilization.
In El Pao, although we had our doctrinal differences which were cause of strong, even bitter, disagreements, we all generally agreed that we were to live according to the Ten Commandments; that there was such a thing as objective truth; that we were created by the Triune God to Whom we were accountable; that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh; that Christmas celebrated the Incarnation; that the world was never the same thereafter; that society would not survive a denial of these eternal verities….
We recognized our fallen nature, which would be evidenced in sin and unfaithfulness. But overall we sought adherence, however imperfectly, to God’s Law, although sometimes with grumbling.
This began to change openly (at least to my friends and me) in the late 50s and early to mid 60s. I remember in 1966 an American teacher who received his monthly issue of Playboy magazine; I also recall a friend who showed me where his father hid his own monthly issues.
The aforementioned teacher was also very insistent in cramming Darwin’s evolutionary theories down our throats.
The relationship between the playboy outlook, with its myriad and increasingly degenerate manifestations, and Darwinism is not coincidental: the latter prepares the soil which enables the former to flourish. Of course, pornographic literature preceded Playboy by centuries; however, there is a major difference between the culture in England and the English colonies in 1750 and that of England and the United States in the latter 20th Century: in broad strokes, the former still believed in objective truth and understood that such literature was offensive to God and destructive to society; the latter does not believe in objective truth nor God nor the necessity of morality to the proper functioning of society.
For instance, in the 18th and even 19th centuries, folks had to exert themselves — sometimes traveling across state or even national boundaries — to get hold of bawdy material. By the latter 20th, such material was not only readily available, it was thrust into children’s faces at the grocery checkout, because the conviction that unfettered depictions of such degenerate behavior was contrary to the moral law of God had largely disappeared.
It was no coincidence that, preceding or concurrent with such changing norms, we also witnessed an increasing intolerance of the Christian religion. That is not accidental. The writings of Marx and Engels and Nietzsche, the godfathers of Communism, Nazism, and Fascism — all anti-Christian to the core — are frightening in their depictions glorifying man without God. To wit:
“The New Testament is the gospel of a wholly ignoble species of man … These little herd-animal virtues do not by any means lead to ‘eternal life'” — Nietzshe
“We … reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatever as eternal, ultimate, and forever immutable moral law …” — Engels
“We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society … which is creating a new communist society … We do not believe in an eternal morality.” — Lenin
“The proletariat can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages …” — Marx
“The state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” — Marx
“A revolution is the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon another … [and] must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries.” — Engels
Why are we surprised at Stalin’s gulags, Pol Pot’s killing fields, Mao’s forced famines against tens of millions, Castro’s murders, and Hitler’s gas chambers? They were merely faithful followers of their founding, anti-Biblical prophets and literature. They did not “pervert” Communism or Fascism or Nazism or Nihilism: they successfully imposed such on millions. And their descendants, mostly in western corporate and university boards and faculties, are busy imposing the same.
How can they succeed?
By the foolish submission of millions to a “radical sensate approach to truth”.
What does this mean in practice?
Brown and Sorokin are helpful here. They trace three phases in culture: the Ideational, the Idealistic, and the Sensate. The first sees spiritual truth and values as virtually the only truth, with God and the Scriptures “as the highest and truest realities”. The second is a compromise between the ideational and sensate, but inclines more to the ideational in that it places a higher value on eternal verities while not ignoring physical realities. The third is interested only in the material things and is accompanied by a rapid degeneration in culture “not only in the technical sense that they no longer form part of a well-functioning integrated whole, but also in the sense that they are morally blameworthy and merit condemnation.”
History has no record of a system of liberty, tolerance, and harmony having been created from a sensate approach to truth. Conversely, the historical record is littered with the remnants of peoples and institutions who perished because of their founding upon or descent into such an approach to truth.
As a first or second grader in El Pao, I vividly recall my teacher talking about her belief that there are levels or grades in hell. She said that Hitler would certainly receive greater punishment than a common thief who did not repent. Such musing by a teacher today is inconceivable.
As a seventh grader in El Pao, my “Playboy-reading” teacher barely hid his unbelief, but nevertheless respected the Christian norms of the culture in which he thrived. For example, in a discussion about the Beatles, he said something along these lines, “I won’t deny that many of my colleagues play Beatles music in parties. But is such music as long lasting as, say Bach or Beethoven? We can have fun, but we need to be careful to continually learn that which is permanent.”
In his sensate approach to truth, he still retained the old “ideational” or “idealistic” bearings which built the civilization which produced him. However, he failed to see that a society will eventually choose one above the other. And our culture has chosen the sensate.
And now, if we care about our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, we must face the need to return to the Truth. Most of us would readily condemn a Stalin or Hitler; however, have we paused to consider how their approach to truth has become the prevalent approach in our own corporate, educational, cultural, and even religious institutions? Do we really believe that our own homes are immune to such?
How do we push back? By unflinchingly proclaiming the truth — objective, truth — whenever we are given an opportunity to do so. We must not retreat from affirming that some things are good and others are evil and that such is defined by God, not man. And we must recognize that there is nothing new under the sun. After all, it was in the Garden of Eden when man first attempted to define the truth without God: “Ye shall be as gods, knowing [defining] good and evil”.
Teach your children to not mock their grandparents and great-grandparents’ simple faith. The generations whose faith was implicit and simple have done far more to preserve and expand our liberties and peace than generations of multi-degreed faculties and administrations in all Ivy League colleges.
For those who wish to read and understand these themes at a deeper level, I recommend The Sensate Culture, by Harold O. J. Brown, and also The Crisis of Our Age, by Pitirim A. Sorokin.
Harold O. J. Brown (1933 – 2007)
Pitirim Sorokin (1889 – 1968)
