Playing The Jenga Game With Western Civilization
Our foundational building blocks
When locked in our homes for the collective good, a few Churches, notably the Protestant Churches, pushed back, claiming that the spiritual needs of their members superseded government calls for 'safety.' At the time, I wasn't the most sympathetic to their rallying cries.
The government response was madness, but surely, all we needed was a reinvigoration of the principles of Enlightenment. I was wrong, and they were right. At that time, I was ignorant that the seeds of the Enlightenment period were planted in the fertile soil of Judeo-Christian ethics. And by veiling this truth and removing it from our foundation, we are left teetering on the verge of collapse.
The dangers in removing foundational support have re-awakened this truth in unlikely places. Most notably, Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and founding member of the New Atheists, who now proclaims he is a cultural Christian; political intellectual and former New Atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who recently converted to Christianity; and James Lindsay, who, while presumably still an Atheist, speaks regularly to Christian audiences about the importance of their faith in holding the line against Neo-Marxist/Post Modernist tactics.
In this brief essay, I do not argue that the discussed morals do not arise elsewhere; it only addresses how they arose in ours.
The Judeo-Christian Traditions and Western Civilization
To understand our civilization, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually failed to understand, who validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection.
Economist F.A. Hayek, "The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism"
While Hayek was an avowed agnostic, he concluded religious beliefs, particularly monotheistic ones, provided the moral traditions or practices that allowed for an extended order of human cooperation and flourishing.
Moral practices were defined as those that lie between instinct and reason. Hayek's use of instinct is not the instinctive recoil a child has when placing their hand on a hot stove; rather, he uses this term as the attitudes and emotions that created cohesive bonds for the small groups humans lived in for hundreds of thousands of years. Concrete, common aims created these bonds, providing a shared sense of both dangers and opportunities. While such instincts promoted inter-trust, they restricted intra-trust with others outside the group. Through evolutionary selection, moral practices evolved to suppress this instinctual behavior.
The process selected successful traditions that allowed for collaboration among different groups, creating widespread civilizations that ancient philosophers such as Aristotle could not have envisioned. Thus, moral practices were like tools, but unlike a tool such as a hammer or a wheel, the usefulness of moral practices would not readily be understood and, in fact, often ran against humans' instinctual nature.
As Rousseau famously opined, MAN WAS BORN FREE AND IS EVERYWHERE IN CHAINS. What Rousseau did not understand was that the chain links he decried allowed Western Civilization to flourish. By the 1980s, Hayek noted that, like Rousseau, many academics, including those who embraced hedonism, romantically supported a return to tribal sentiments where loyalty is owed to small groups with hostility to those outside the perimeter.
'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Transcending tribalism with Good Samaritan Parable
A follower of Jesus asked him to define who his neighbor was in the above teaching. He replied with the parable of the Good Samaritan who helped a stranger in need, while others, including a supposed holy man, ignored his plight. While its simplicity has a Sunday school vibe, its implications are foundational. It is a call to overcome your instinctive nature to help or trust only those within your tribe. It is the recognition in the stranger of the shared humanity. And it is that shared humanity that is more important than tribal allegiance.
To label a person a Good Samaritan is to understand that they transcended human propensity towards tribalism. Claims that you cannot understand another's plight because you have not lived their experience runs contrary to this teaching. We all feel pain, sorrow, and loss. That they occur differently is a truth, as is a desire to alleviate the pain of another when there is a shared humanity.
"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." Transcending the act of Ritualistic Sacrifice and Vengeance
Scriptures write that Jesus uttered the above words as he was dying on the cross. Scholars, such as Joseph Campbell, point to Jesus's life, death, and return as representative of the Hero's Journey, which is documented in many cultural myths. Rene Girard, the creator of the mimetic desires theory, introduced a twist to such a conclusion.
Girard believed myths, where a victim is punished or killed, were based on actual events that later became part of a culture's mythology. He hypothesized these were ritualistic killings that occurred in response to Intra-tensions arising within a society. The victim was accused of breaching a taboo or custom. Central to his theory was that both the masses and the victim were unaware that the victim was innocent of the accusations. The elites may know of the innocence and use the sacrifice to display their authority, embedding it within the rubric of supernatural circumstances pleasing a god or gods.
Following the punishment, peace is restored, if only momentarily. Often, a new technology would emerge and be attributed to the victim, creating an important cultural myth. Girard believed the Old Testament, with its story of Job, introduced the concept of a victim wrongly accused of breaking a cultural norm or taboo. This concept was brought to its fullest vision in Jesus, who knew he was an innocent victim of a mob mentality yet called out for forgiveness of those who persecuted him.
While Girard was a devout Catholic, he argued that it was not necessary to be a Christian to understand the cultural implications of both the Old and New Testaments. Arbitrary sacrifices of victims to appease a mob or gods and concepts of vengeance are restraints on creating a shared humanity. Unquestionably, these principles have been repeatedly violated. Paraphrasing Hayek, one should not shoot the message for the actions of the messenger.
Looking Glass Outcomes
Post-Modernists and Neo-Marxists believe a fairer and more just civilization can be created by rational reasoning. So often, it seems as if they are speaking their ambitions through a looking glass. And like a mirror, where everything is reversed, the consequences of their intent create the results they sought to overcome. This is how diversity creates more tribalism. It is how edicts meant to uplift women leave them downtrodden. It is how vengeance arises instead of forgiveness. As Hayek stated, do not measure the morality of an act by the intent but by the outcome.
Before he died in 2015, Girad surmised we were in a new phase of scapegoating. Elites steeped in supernaturalism/transhumanistic/Neitzchesque fetishes to create posthumans constructed from various technologies point to this conclusion where innocent masses are offered up for ridicule while they usher in technology for new myth-making.
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Seems to me that “tribalism” can be, and often is, wrongly accused by those thinking it is bad always and everywhere. What should be understood is that the concept is and perhaps must be seen as broader than an extended family clan. A nation, until very recently, was correctly viewed as a “tribe;” it began from a family, extended to those with values similar to that family, grew as those values were accepted and often modified in joint agreement within the “family,” and prospered, or not, based on those shared “tribal” values.
Charlemagne was acting very tribally as he made war on “outsiders” while forming what, today, we call “Western Europe;” the “tribe” were those within, the enemy all those not of the “tribe.” The beneficiaries of his tribal assaults are all of Western Civ and humanity, as ALL progress, tangible and moral, over the past two millennia has been made by Western Civ.
Western Civ, generally, and America, specifically, if each is to survive, must go “tribal” within and remove any outsiders attacking their “tribe.”
Islam is rising globally by acting tribally. The West is falling globally by refusing to act tribally by killing our enemies.
As for Jesus being about shared humanity and the oft-used out-of-context cheek turning, it was also He who chased out the money-changers, told His followers to buy a sword, gird-on that sword and “follow me.”
Thanks for writing this. I felt myself wanting more about this topic when I got to the end. I have some personal with this topic I am dealing with. Thanks for provoking more thoughts.