Ideas
have consequences
by Richard M. Weaver
introduction
are some ideas ideal? For four centuries every man has been not only his own priest but his own
professor of ethics, and the consequence is an anarchy. It was William O. Occam who compounded the
fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have real existence. The denial of
universals carries with it the denial of everything transcending experience. The denial of everything
transcending experience means inevitably-though ways are found to hedge on this-the denial of truth.
With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of ' man is the measure of
all things.' Mac baths which is spoke with the habitual equivocation of Oracle's when they told man
that by this easy choice he might realize himself more fully.
Aristotle had recognized an element of unintelligibility in the world, but the view of nature as
rational mechanism expelled this element.
One solution was deism, which makes guard the outcome or rational reading of nature. Materialism
loomed next on the horizon.
Social philosophers of the 19th century found in Darwin powerful support for their cases that human
beings act always out of economic incentives, and they completed to abolish man of free will.
The great pageant of history thus became reducible to economic endeavors.
Man created in the divine image was replaced by man the wealth seeking and consuming animal.
Now in darkness man's life is practice without theory Secretly he hungers its for truth.
This book shows the changes that have come over education. The shift from the truth of intellect to
the facts of experience. In the 14th century logic became gramaticized. Here begins the assault upon
definition: if word is no longer correspond to objective realities, it seems no great wrong to take
Liberty with words.
Finally, in an abject surrender to the situation, in an abdication of the authority of knowledge, came
the elective systems. This was followed by a carnival of specialism, professionalism, and
vocationalism, often fostered and protected by strange bureaucratic devices. Losing faith and how
mostly in we became homo faber.
New profits of reform divides sharply into sentimental humanitarians and elite group of remorseless
theorists who pride themselves on their freedom from sentimentality. Hating this world they never
made, after it's the Boucher in centuries, modern Communist revolutionaries and additions move towards
intellectual rigor.
This book tells the story of man's passage for religious or philosophical transcendentalism that has
been told many times. They usually it's told the story of progress. It's very difficult to get modern
people to see it differently.
The apostles of Modernism usually begin their retort with catalogs of modern achievement, not realizing
they hear they bear witness today in version in particulars.
Whoever desires to praise some modern achievement should wait until he is related it to the professed
aims of our civilization.
Let us, look at not whether people have more or have less, but when they are wiser than their
predecessors. This book it hears to the classic proposition that there's no knowledge of the level
sensation, that therefore knowledge is that universals. In this age we see facts substituted for
truth.
Man has become imbued with the notion that industrious acquisition of particulars will render him a man
of knowledge. With what pathetic trust does he recite his facts! He has been told that knowledge is
power, and knowledge consists of a great many small things.
In a society where expression is free and popularity is rewarded they read mostly that which the the
debauches them. The staggering number of facts to which he today has access serves only to draw him
away from consideration of first principles. Modern man size with Francis Bacon in preferring shoes to
philosophy.
Chapter 1 the unsentimental Sentiment
When we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder, we are affirming in effect that sentiment is
anterior to reason. It's not by accident that Shakespeare's villains are good Reasoners. We begin are
other affirmations after a categorical statement that life and the world are to be cherished.
A developed culture is a way of looking at the world through an aggregation of symbols. We no longer
have symbols. We just have convenient perceptions. And we accept contradiction because we no longer
feel the necessity of relating stocks to a metaphysical dream. It must be apparent that logic depends
upon the dream, and not the dream upon it.
The question of how many angels can fit on the head of a pin had incalculable ramifications. The
ground of this answer was a fount of understanding and an evaluation. When a man chooses to follow
something which is arbitrary as far as the uses of the world go, he is performing a fee of abstraction.
In the same I bet our cognition passes from reports of particular details to knowledge of universals,
still our sentiments pass from a welter of feeling to an illumined concept of what one ought to feel.
That is what's known as refinement. Good about
Pictures can be expressed in another way by saying that the man of culture has a sense of style style
requires measure, whether in space or time, for measure in part structure, and it is structure which is
essential to intellectual understanding and style .
On every side today, people say it doesn't matter what a man believes. But suppose he does take his
believes seriously? Then what he believes places a stamp upon his experience, and he belongs to a
culture, which is a league founded on exclusive principles.
It is characteristic of the barbarian, whether he appears in a pre cultural stage or emerges from below
into the last days of the civilization, to insist upon saying things 'as they are".
Good intention is primary, but it is not enough: that is the lesson of the experiment of romanticism.
Every group regarding itself as emancipated is convinced that its predecessors were fearful of reality.
It looks upon euphemisms and all the bales of decency with which things were previously draped as
obstructions.
Question: did the disillusion of social mores lead to increased lawsuits?
Philistines cannot see that knowledge of material reality is a knowledge of death. It is a downward
told which puts an end to an life of ideals.
Rage provides many examples of the ravages of immediacy, the clearest of which is the failure of the
modern mind to recognize obscenity. The failure to recognize obscenity has coincided with the rise of
the institution of publicity. It is proud of its shamelessness.
Magazines and tabloid newspapers place before the millions scenes and facts which violate every
definition of humanity. Scenes and intense private great. The serves entities they testify to man's
loss of points of reference and his determination to enjoy the forbidden in the name of freedom.
Burke saw that does who have no concern for their ancestors will, by simple application of the same
role, have none for their descendants. The decision of modern man to live and they hear now is
reflected in the neglect of aging parents. Before the elder generation was cherished because they
represented the past; now they are voided for the same reason. Children are liabilities. All is for
the detached here and now.
In huge cities this sentiment of friendship with so way. Friends, in the vulgarism of modern speech
become pals.
When basic sentiments weaken their invariably follows a decline of believe in a hero. To see the
significance of this, we must realize that they hero can never be a relativist. They hero is the
person farthest removed from pragmatism. This is an absolute:.
In addition, the disappearance of the road ideal is always accompanied by the growth of commercialism.
There is a cause and effect relation here, for the man of commerce is by the nature of things a
relativist. This explains the tendency of all organic society's to exclude the trader from positions
of influence and prestige.
That community based on metaphysicals has a common feeling about the world. This enables all of
vocations to meet together with out embarrassment.
The refusal to see distinction between David Anna Dell, between the sexes, between friend and enemy
(Distinctions which late at the core of chivalry) the determination to melt all into a formless unit of
mass and weight, this is the destruction of society through brutality. Civility is as structure of
differences neuroscience can make man much.
Chapter 2 distinction in and hierarchy
The terms mass and society are contradictory. Those who seek to do things in the name of the mass are
destroyers. The history of our social disintegration began with the on fixing of relationships in the
14th century, but the effort to do away with society entirely did not become programmatic until the
19th.
If we attach more significance to feeling and then to thinking, we shall sound, by a simple extension,
attach more to want to a then to deserving.
The lower class, close to the reality of need, develops a manly fortitude. The upper class bears
responsibility they cannot avoid leading a life of drama. Between them is the ever-growing
middle-class. The middle-class loves comfort, risks little, and is terrified by the thought of change.
Best the final degradation of Baconian logic is that knowledge becomes power in the service of
appetite.
To Tocqueville comfort became a goal when distinctions of rank are abolished and privilege is
destroyed. Such egalitarianism is harmful because it always presents itself as a redress of injustice,
whereas in truth is the very opposite.
The contemporary political campaign is shameless and then it promises everything. The quality isn't
disorganizing concept insofar as human relationships may in order. Fraternity directs attention to
others, a quality to sell.
Those parts of the world which have talked good about theleast of equality have in solid fact of their
social life exhibited the greatest fraternity.
It has been said countless times in this country that democracy cannot exist without education. The
truth concealed in this observation is that only education can be depended upon to bring man to see the
hierarchy of values. That is another way of saying what has also been affirmed before, that democracy
cannot exist without aristocracy.
When even its institutions of learning serve primarily the ends is a gross animal existence, its last
recourse to order is destroyed by appetite. The mere notion of infinite progress is destructive. If
the goal receives for ever, one point is no near it than the last. All we can do is compared to
meaningless yesterday's to a meaningless tomorrow.
Chapter 3 fragmentation and obsession
people say you cant turn the clock back. When they say this they assumed we are stuck in the moment.
But in declaring that we wish to recover lost ideals and values, we are looking toward and ontological
realm which is timeless.
This is not a voyage backward through time but he returned to center. it is seeking the one which
endures and not the many weeks change in pass.
It is also expressible as a movement for unity to individualism.
The more one moves towards details the less you can understand that. It is better to recover
understanding.
The philosophical doctor is in charge of the General synthesis. The assertion that philosophy is Queen
of studies means more to him and a figure of speech.
As the philosopher of receded into history, this task was taken over by the gentleman. The most
important thing about the gentleman was that he was an idealized, though his idealism lacked the
deepest foundations. Now the gentleman has been ousted by politicians and entrepreneurs.
The South tradition of learning was the Roman tradition of eloquent wisdom. That's why the most
creative political figures of America Jefferson through Lincoln to Wilson have come from the South.
But the Civil War brought to the do this humanism and thereafter the South has turned to commerce and
technology.
By far the most significant phase of the theory of the gentleman is its distrust of specialization.
Therefore science is not a pursuit for gentleman.
Plato reminded us that it any agent inquiry is important to realize whether we are moving toward or
away from first principles.
Since liberalism became a kind of a official party line, we have been prohibited from saying things
about raises religions, or national groups. This is because there is no categorical statement without
its implication of value and values begin divisions among man.
Now fanaticism has been properly described as a redoubling of ones after after ones came has been
forgotten, and this definition will serve as a good introduction to the fallacy of technology.
Gentlemen who are holes in themselves don't for ever chase after external things. That is why
character is often an obstruction to the wheels of economic progress.
Modernism is in essence a provincialism, since it declines to look beyond the horizon of the moment.
It is apparent, moreover, that a those who are in rebellion against memory or the ones who wish to live
without knowledge; and moreover we can tell from their conduct that they act more than others on
instinct and sensation than others.
Chapter 4 ecotourism in work and art
The sin of egotism always takes the form of withdrawal. Self absorption is a process of cutting
oneself off from the real reality and therefore from social harmony. Middle ages scholars were humbled
by their learning. Thus they had perspective. In opposing conception comes with Francis Bacon. He
said knowledge is power. If the name of knowledge is domination, then the businessman is more
important than the philosopher.
Eventually the utilitarian becomes enthroned, the worker is taught work is used and not worship.
Accordingly, workers organizations except in their practice the idea that labor is a commodity. That
is when they began the capitalist technique of restricting production in the interest of price.
The been the last things not a subordinating self to end butter subordinating end to self. It would be
an unpopular man who should suggest to the present generation that work is a divine ordinance. When
folks do or due to the sacred, they must be forced. This that's the table for tyranny and imperialism.
In opposition to the orthodox view of human nature, which acknowledged original sin and preached the
necessity of education and restraint, romanticism taught that man has a natural moral sense which can
be relied on not only to recognize virtue but to delight in it . The important consequence for
literature was the sanctioning of impulse, which now became the subject of endless exploitation.
The Romantic deluge followed at the beginning of the 19th-century. There appeared at this point a
group of great expressionist. Shelley cried, I fall upon the thorns of life, I believe this is
indulgence in egocentric sensibility. Henry James and numerous poets, sought careful attention to form
would say this subject matter of Romantic art. Concurrent with this attempt to escape bankruptcy
through brilliance of form was another which sought to escape it through imagination. In one respect,
the romanticism who became symbolists were not faithful to the premises of the movement. In another
way, they were very faithful. Symbolism is a reaction against the deification of the material world.
The symbol bites nature points to the world beyond the world.
Let us now turned in the story of music, space and medium which as Schopenhauer observed is uniquely
related to the will. The degenerative influences upon music parallel closely those upon literature.
Mozart expresses the aristocratic and architectural qualities of the social order. He is with out a
suspicion of discomfort. The port tents of change came with Beethoven, whose sympathy with the French
Revolution must not be overlooked. Composers sought effects, designed contrast and imitations, strove
for climaxes, they turned to the expression of bizarre or perverse feeling.
Although wild, music was taking on a decidedly public character, which manifested itself in the growth
of opera in concert. As one student has put it, the 19th-century brought in the journalists of music.
Rather than expressing eternal structures, it was looking at subjective emotions. Music was now fully
secular and ready to follow the divergent tendencies of the time.
Music had its Impressionist movement. With Litzs and Debussy especially if turned to the exploitation
of color and atmosphere. It conjured up visual images. In its highest form this music was
architectural; and then became thematic; and, finally textural. This is a movement away from the act,
must an integrated ideal toward a collection of fragments.
Jazz has no need of intelligence; it only needs feeling jazz, by formally repudiating restraint by
intellect, and by expressing contempt and hostility toward our traditional society and more is, has
destroyed this equilibrium between reason and sentiment. It is understandable, therefore, the jazz
should have a great appeal to civilizations fifth column, to the barbarians within the gates.
The driving impulse behind jazz is best grasped through its syncopation. When it indicates spiritually
is a restlessness, a desire to get on, to realize without going through the aesthetic ritual it seems
to say; let us dispense with the labor of earning effects. Do we not reading in this another form of
contempt for labor?
Playing now becomes personal; the musician seizes a theme and improvises as he goes.
People say jazz is the music and the quality and it is made big gains in the fight for freedom. As far
as the negative idea of freedom does the idea of freedom from a that's true.
It is a music not of dreams the drunkenness. The highest centers have been proscribed said the lower
may be uninhabited from executing their reeling bats. Here indeed, is a music to go with empiricism.
Greek art that its variety through using their shared mythology in beautiful ways.
Landscape shifts from that story to technique. As painters turned towards landscape and still live,
the prevailing interest in the physical world became reflected in art.
Egotism says that man's destiny in the world is not the perfect himself but to lean back in sensual
enjoyment.
When masses of man reach a point to which egotism reigns so blandly, can their political damnation be
far distant? They've rejected their only guarantee against external control, which is self-discipline,
taught and practice programs like the four freedoms, with the vague political unrealism, instead of
helping the situation, serve only to codify error. It is that presumption of egotism which renders
people unfit for the philosophical anarchy.
Chapter 5 the great stereoopticon
"Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and collect a newspaper". Neitzsche
The problem which disintegration places in the lap of practical man, those in charge of states, of
institutions, of businesses, is how to persuade to communal activity people who no longer have the same
ideas about the most fundamental things.
These leaders adopted the liberal solution to their problem that was to let religion go out that
replace it with education. The great stereo optic on has three parts the press the motion picture and
the radio.
Socrates stood firmly against writing declaring that would only be a means of propagating false
knowledge and encouragement to forgetfulness. For Plato truth was a living thing not wholly captured
by men even in discourse. But faith in the printed word has raised journalists to the level of
Oracle's.
There's much to indicate that modern publication wishes to minimize discussion. The stereotype whole
phrases these are often chosen not to stimulate reflection but to evoke stock responses of approbation
or disapprobation. This source of distortion scratch that
One source of distortion is that newspapers thrive on friction and conflict. By the attention it gives
misdeeds, and makes criminals heroic them politicians larger-than-life.
Jefferson observed at one time that would be better to have newspapers and lacking government and have
a government and lack newspapers. Russia has controlled their media we've created a public relations
officer. This is because institutions of every kind are coming to feel that they cannot permit an
unrestricted access to news about themselves. Spin is big.
Hollywood and New York lifestyles are exaggerated to soothe the morbid appetite of the thrill seeker.
And that's becoming normative. It is been said the tragedy is for aristocrats, comedy is for the
bourgeois and farce is for peasants. A Nietzsche, a Kierkegaard, a Spangler- it is impossible for
journalism to take these people seriously. The existence of one threatens the existence of the other.
Plato's analogy of the cave shows perfectly what's going on.
The successive perception of successive events is empiricism; the simultaneous perception is idealism.
Need we go further to account for the current dislike of long memories and for the hatred of the past?
Remember Plato said before loss of for must have a good memory.
Chapter 6 The spoiled child psychology
Having been talk for four centuries that we are going to conquer nature we now get upset whenever we
don't get exactly what we walked. The scientists have told us is nothing we cannot know.
Propagandists have told us is nothing we can't have.
The idea that we need effort to become better left education with romanticism. Society until it is us
campers are appetites and plates are in go until were not fit the struggle of any type. The spoiling
of man seems always to begin when urban living predominates over rural.
If cities encouragement to believe that his superior to the limitations of nature science encourages
him to believe that he is exempt from labor.
Athenians sat outdoors on stone to behold their tragedies; the modern New Yorker 6 in an inclined flash
armchair to witness some play properly classified as amusement. When the Greek retired for the night,
he wrapped himself up in his cloak and laid down on the bench like a third class railway passenger.
In the ages faith man fixed their gaze for many years on some in movable object towards which they're
constantly tending. And they learned to repress the multitude of petty passing desires in order to be
better.
In Thomism, based on Aristotle, even the Catholic Church turned away from the asceticism and rigorous
morality.
Hardness is a condition of heroism. Exertion itself to now, endurance, these make the euro, but to the
spoiled child they cannot the evil of nature and the malice of man. The modern temper is losing the
feeling for heroism.
World War II was described as a job. It was a job to do so the boys could come home to the bourgeois
existences.
The attempt of the United States to make military service attractive by offering hi hey, free college
education, and other benefits looks suspiciously like bribing that child with candy.
Chapter 7 the last metaphysical right
Are first positive step must be driving a new the alleged between the material and the transcendental.
This is fundamental: with out dualism and we should never find purchase for the pull upward.
We must teach that there is a world of ought.
We can begin by denying that what ever is is by definition right. We must reawaken the prospect of
living again in a world of metaphysical certitude.
The last remaining metaphysical right is that of private property. This is the right of all free
people.
This is not to be confused with the private property rights of finance capitalism. For the abstract
property of stocks and bonds, the legal ownership of enterprises never seen, actually destroy the
connection between man and his substance.
One danger when corporate properties are vast an integrated is it's just a slight step to transfer them
to state control.
Our society has gravitated towards a monsterous functionalism. This utilitarianism points to an
identification of the right with the purposes of the state. Here we see a crude materialism taking
precedents over metaphysical rights.
Obviously, in our society, your material well-being is more important than my right to control what is
mine. I am taxed, and that is given to people who don't have enough. When nearly everyone agrees net
the greatest goods are not material.
It's not a coincidence that liberal education (that is education centered on ideas and ideals) has
done best in private institutions. They are less concerned with vocational matters.
One reason the state seems fit to take your property, is that they can't understand how anyone can be
guided by something other than themselves. It's an attack on the belief that you have ideals.
No society is healthy when it sells its members to not take thought of tomorrow because the state will
underwrite their future. The ability to cultivate Providence, is an opportunity to develop itself
worth.
If one surveys the economic history of the last for the past several centuries, he will see a decline
in craftsmanship. He will also see a government's default on their loans. Both of these point two the
topic of honor.
In the old days it was the practice of a maker to put his name our product, and the pride of the family
was linked with the maintenance of quality. Nowadays finance capitalists use of 80 names: general,
standard, international, America, which are masks. Having a real name might require having a character
a character stands in the way of profit. The invented names have a kinship with the dishonest
hyperboles of advertising. One common venture capitalist trick is to buy up an honored name in cheap
in the product.
The genius of value seems to take in the wings along with the other essences which nominalist would
deny.
Now politics, arts, everything, has come under the rule of Darwinism. Men is primarily a food and
shelter finding animal. It has come to be assumed that politics is merely a handmaiden of economics.
We can see this when the European economic community gets rid of currencies that represent cultures
that are thousands of years old.
During the great Depression all economic activity was put under political direction. Here and in
Germany
man's character emerges in the building and ordering of his house; it does not emerge in the
complacency with state arrangements.
Chapter 8 the power of the world
The agents believed that there is a divine element in language. Language has control over things.
Therefore many gifted in speech are feared or admired. We see it in the potency ascribed to take
indications and curses. We see it in the legal force to give an oath or your word.
To discover what a thing is called according to some systems is essential step in knowing. Many say
all education is learning to name correctly as Adam and animals.
Wisdom came to man in Christ was the word made flash.
One of the first major steps in the direction of the modern skepticism was Occams defeat of Aquinas.
He taught that ontological referents should be abandoned in favor of a pragmatic view of language.
Words have become psychological segments of the imagination, just useful signs.
Semantics, which I shall create as an extreme outgrowth of nominalism, seems an inspired by two things:
a feeling that language does not take into account the infinite particularity of the world and a phobia
in the face of the autonomous power of words.
And they believe that words did not described the journal qualities. They agree that we cannot step
into the same river twice.
Therefore, they stand endless hours cataloging all possible meetings a word could have. At the same
time they take into account the circumstances of the user, apparently in an effort to correlate him
with the world of becoming. (This is like romanticism regarding a work of art as the expression of the
artists emotional condition at the moment of its execution)
they want language to reflect truths, but qualities of perception.
The reflect the ideal that ideas are hallucinations and that the only normal, sane person is the
healthy extrovert, making instant, instinct is adjustments to the stimuli of the material world.
S. I. Hayakawa's language in action notes one group calls money to the our employed relief and another
social insurance. Socrates might note that they are confusing attributes and essence.
He argues that the totality of the world (including the emotional) has a realness not evident in
abstracted words. This reminds me of the book, the user illusion. It shows that words and
consciousness only capture a tiny part of reality. Of course words abstracted are not anchored. And
Semanticists see prejudice in every word. He seem description in every word. Aquinas said, "every
form is accompanied by inclination. The aim of semantics is to dissolve for a thereby destroyed
inclination in the believe that the result will enable a scientific manipulation or investigation.
Our argument is that the removal of inclination destroys the essence of language.
Without cutting stands on words for welfare exam place them in our scheme of the use. Democracy is
often rudderless. It involves fighting. Hayakawa says that this fighting will be unresolvable and
endless. Democracy implies disagreement. That is part of the world of men. Only children believe
they can have it all without conflict.
Jesus said "suppose he did I come to give peace on earth? I say you, no; but rather division. "I
agree not peace, but a sword".
Whatever it is unique defies definition. Definitions must compound on some kind of analogy of the same
with another thing. This can mean only that definition has ultimately secular. People say it has no
anchor. But it is anchored in emotion.
Remember Plato said all conventional definitions about reminders of what we already know. When
searching for a word the meaning precedes the word. The is ultimately intuitive. semanticists are
wrong language is not a series of pitfalls, it is a great storehouse of universal memory and knowledge.
The whole tendency of empiricism and democracy in speech, dress, and manners has been toward a
plainness which is with a symbolic significance. MacArthur suggested to the Japanese that allowing
kissing in movies would be a step towards democratization.
If asked who has taught you up the things you need to know in life, scientists would not score high.
Definitions are important. Exaggerations cover ignorance and justified distortion. Consider all of
the things now called fascist.
So along with the right of property, we must rehabilitate the word. This will require a study of
literature on the one hand and logic and dialectic on the other. Great poetry is an antidote to
sentimentality and brutality. Poetry teaches the power of symbolism. The ideas that they are things
that are not provincial in either timer space. Translation discourages slovenliness in the use of
language. Journalist could use such training. If journalist knew their business, no one would be in
it who could not render the great poets.
It's not a coincidence, that Greek and Latin stopped being taught at the time materialism rose.
As for dialectic its most important component is that it makes people define things until people say
that good doesn't just mean for me.
If the world is to remain cosmos, we shall have to make some practical application of the law that the
beginning was the word.
Chapter 9 piety and justice
Let parents then, bequeathe to their children, not riches, but the spirit of reverence -Plato.
Though it is an unpopular word, he must say the modern world is impious. When Plato wants to talk
about piety, in the meno, he chooses to focus on a person bent on parracide.
He says he doesn't have enough knowledge to charges farther with murder. To act contemptuously against
an ancient relationship.
In our contemporary setting, the young man stands for science and technology and the father for the
order of nature. Progress is measured by ourselves on nature on what's natural.
Mankind will no longer admit the right to existence to things not of his own making. Be that religion
be that eternal curves. Things that defy the cosmos are constantly celebrated in media.
Piety admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego; nature are neighbors and the past.
On nature-nature represents an order that was here before we arrived. When we meddle with it, often it
is impious and evil occurs. Continually warring with nature is not assigned a superiority to her, its
proof of a preoccupation. A kind of imprisonment by her.
In contrast, the Puritans were largely dead to this world. We find a countryman has a superior
philosophical resignation to the order of things. He gets less agitated by the cycle of birth and
death he worries less.
At one extreme is total immersion, which leaves and man sentient but on reflective. At the other is
total abstraction, which leaves to a philosophical denial of substance (this is like a flight to the
city or immersion in technology). Both extremes have problems. We should neither respond to natures
every impulse (escape with drugs and tv) or work hard to violate her. Either path makes nature our
king.
Our neighbor-
we should have enough imagination to see into others' lives. Barbarians have no compassion.
History-
The present is nothing. The future or projection. As we have reflection and memory, the past should
be very important to us. Are those who died heroes really dead? It is not an idle question. They
live on his forces. We should be pious towards them.
Among the Romans, piety towards the dead was seen to be part of the plate tonic concept of justice. It
was part of rendering to each is due.
Modern civilization doesn't know that it's due to anything.
We obliterate such historic solids as the difference between men and women. Putting women on the level
of male is a degradation. She becomes more at the mercy of economic circumstances. Her superior
closeness to nature, her intuitive realism, her ability to attack the sophistry in mere
intellectuality, makes her superior. Worthy of chivalry.
After the gentleman when, the lady had to go to. No longer protected, the woman now has her career, in
which he makes a drab pilgrimage from two room apartment to job to divorce court.
Next we consider in piety towards people which generally goes by the name of loss of respect for
individuality. Not individualism, with its connotation of irresponsibility. Individualism is a direct
invitation to selfishness. But personality is that little private areas sell flood in which the person
is at once conscious of his relationship to the transcendental and delivery community. He is a
particular vessel, but he carries some part of universal mind.
It would be tedious to point out that rationalism and the machine are overwhelmingly against
personality. Rationalism is suspicious of transcendentalism. In machines and personality do not mix.
Deviation from the proletariat norm will likely become the heresy of the future.
Part of our hate for the past is our desire to base judgments and institutions on free speculation, to
expel sentiment. Social science today provides as with rationales, but are contemptuous of history.
Pious today is a term of approach or ridicule. Modernism encourages the opposite of piousness, that is
rebellion. Modern man becomes angry and asserts the should be no obstruction of his wishes. It
becomes a deification of his own will. When we ask modern man to accept the substance of nature and of
history we ask them to harden himself.
All that keeps the world from chaos are certain patterns, Dell understood and surviving through the
force of inertia. Once these disappear, nothing separates us from the fifth century A.D. one feels
that the modern world is calling for madder music stronger wine.
They can be shown in the every case that the loss of the leave results in some form of bitterness.
Ancient cynicism, skepticism, and even stoicism or products of the decline of Greek religion.
And bitterness is always an incentive to self-destruction. When it becomes evident that the world's
rewards are not adequate to the world's pain, and we feel no connection with the past or the future
(just the present) a simple calculation demands the end of all.
People say they wanted one living we must ask whether or not there willing to pay the price.
Are you ready to grant that the law of rewards is inflexible. One cannot have more than one earns.
Are you prepared to say that comfort may be a seduction and that the fetish of material prosperity will
have to be pushed aside in favor of starter stuff? D.C. the necessity of talking about duties before
you talk about freedoms? These things are hard. And nothing is more certain than that we are all in
this together