ASK SPENGLER Of
vegetating animals, annoying in-laws,
etc
Dear Spengler , I
have some questions. First, do you really think that
the mass of people comprising any given country's
population actually worry, on a day-to-day basis, about
the underlying philosphy guiding their actions? Thinking
of the Europeans for whom you predict extinction, do you
really think population growth has declined in Europe
because Europeans have collectively made a conscious
decision to eradicate themselves? Would it not be
simpler to assume that they are wealthy enough to afford
contraception, and "educated" enough to know that a
large family is no guarantee of future security, at
least in their own, immediate lives? In other words,
aren't the Europeans simply making an "animal" decision
to be more comfortable, rather than agonizing over
clashes of civilizations and their
philosophies?
Second,
living in Sweden, one can't
help feeling that Europeans have turned their secular
humanism into an ersatz religion, complete with the
unprovable dogma, proselytizing priests and intolerance
of other faiths - in particular their own, former
Christian faith - that secularists are quick to ridicule
in bona fide religions. I am wondering what
opinion you have of the secularism that Europe
embraces.
As an engineer, without a humanities
education with which to evaluate these questions, I hope
you have time to
comment.
Thanks, MC
Dear
MC, Clearly it takes someone without a humanities
education to go straight to the heart of the matter and
ask the right question. No one but academics and a few
sad, strange misfits care about ideology as such; most
people simply live their lives. For most people, one's
life is not one's own, however; it is of one substance
with the lives of ancestors and descendants. It is worth
living because it participates in eternity, through the
promise that something of us will be remembered, just as
we remember those who preceded us. This kind of memory
requires a common language and a common set of
references across generations, and this we call culture.
These considerations apply to every pagan tribe that
ever lived. But Europe was created out of the
melting-pot of barbarian invasions from the 1st century
AD, through to the Normans, in which small tribes, like
Beowulf's Geats, died out with terrible regularity.
Christianity offered the tribes a life beyond the
extinction of their nationality. European culture is an
uneasy compromise between the pagan associations of
culture across generations and the Christian promise of
universal redemption. As Franz Rosenzweig showed so
brilliantly in the third section of his Star of
Redemption, it is the day-to-day experience of the
individual member of the congregation, the daily liturgy
and the liturgical calendar, that make up his religion,
not the apologetics of the theologians. The same is true
for Islam, I have ventured.
Christian universalism failed, and
the pagan aspect of Europe predominated, in the 19th and
20th centuries, and two world wars were the result. In
Why Europe chooses
extinction (April 8, 2003), I
have tried to come to terms with Europeans' lack of
interest in reproducing themselves - an effort that must
be tentative and conjectural, as we have no documented
examples of that sort of thing outside of a few
Neolithic cultures that have had the misfortune to
encounter the modern world.
Europeans failed at
being Christians and failed at being pagans. Modern
prosperity gives them the means to amuse themselves
while waiting for their race to perish, but I see
contraception and so forth as a means rather than a
cause.
In European secularism I perceive nothing
but emptiness, the "hollow men" of Eliot~{!/~}s poem.
Fellini's La Dolce Vita portrays for me the ennui
and enervation of the European
spirit. Spengler
Dear
Spengler, I always find it strange that you
comment so much on Western demise on Asia Times Online.
Anyway, I'm going to call you out on
something.
"America remains, despite its faults,
the only nation on Earth capable of true generosity, and
its spirit is Protestant."
Were America
capable of true generosity, then certainly other nations are
as well. Were all nations capable of true generosity,
then certainly America is not capable of such. I don't
buy the idea that America is in some ways extra-national
and somehow so special it makes it
irreplicable.
Beyond that, the battle between
American Christianity and Middle Eastern Islam and
European secularism isn't so easily categorized. There
are always many sides to the journey. Victory is not
neccessarily victory and defeat is not neccessarily
defeat. The battle might very well leave both houses in
ruin.
As far as modern art or modern science
holding life as of no value, I hardly think this is the
case at all. Much, if not most, of modern art and
science is not nihilistic. As far as genetic
engineering and human transcendence go, these could be
seen as highly unnihilistic and humanity-advancing
pursuits. Despite the great bulk of
Western/Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization viewing
these things otherwise, there are a great many people in
the world who would beg to differ.
If the
Christian world and the Islamic world were to burn each
other out in some great bonfire of self-destruction,
perhaps only the Jews will be left to remember
them. Milton He
Dear
Milton, America is a new people called out
from among the nations, and as such has at least a
residual sympathy for every nation and ethnicity. It is not
a nation in the sense of the word that derives from the
Latin term for birth; other nations are defined by
birth. America is defined by a political objective and a
personal choice, namely immigration. It is a
fundamentally different kind of nation, made possible by
the Christian concept of a "New Israel" called out from
among the nations. I suggest you read John Winthrop's
1630 sermon A Model of Christian Charity,
widely available on the Internet. Sadly, you are correct
to observe that Western civilization and radical Islam
might destroy each other; if the Jews were the only ones
left to remember them, it would be a miserable little
band of Jews indeed. I write these essays in the hope
that this outcome might be
avoided. Spengler
Dear
Spengler, I read with
interest your article [The sacred heart of
darkness, February 11, 2003] but
there are some mistakes or cover-ups that I must
correct.
"The future Cardinal Mazarin not only
succeeded Richelieu as prime minister, but almost
certainly (according to new evidence published by
Anthony Levi) was the father of Louis XIV." Among
historians this is a legend and Levi's book isn't
considered as a serious book.
"Habsburg Austria,
the embodiment of the medieval Catholic empire, became
the target of the French messianists, because it was
precisely this model that the French desired to
supplant." Definitely not in the 19th and 20th
centuries! The hatred for the Habsburgs' Catholic empire
came from a widespread leftist and nationalist ideology
born with the French Revolution and culminating around
1900.
"America is an obsession. The fact
that America twice saved France during the 20th
century merely reinforces the French sentiment of
ultimate irrelevance. Centuries of accumulated bile ooze
and gurgle in mortification." This assertion is as stupid
as to say that America hates France because France
helped creating America ... During World War I, America
saved nothing; it lighly intervened in 1917. During World
War II, yes, America saved France. But the dislike of
America by French people doesn't date back to that time.
It's just that America clearly is the third imperium
that must be defeated. Frederic
Greiling
Dear Mr Greiling, Whether
Louis XIV really was Mazarin's bastard is of little
importance to the story. The United States became the
world's only superpower because Europe destroyed itself.
Richelieu, Tremblay and Mazarin set in motion the
destruction of Europe during the Thirty Years' War
(1618-48), in which Catholic France supported
Protestant princes against Catholic Austria. They did so
out of religious messianism, believing that France, in
the immortal words of Jake Blues, was on a mission from
God. That finished off Christian Universal Empire as a
practical concept, in favor of the perpetually warring
nation-states of Europe, which eventually bled each other
dry. The French have no one to blame but themselves and
their silly national mystique for the fact that America
is in charge. That said, Richelieu and his colleagues
were extraordinary men, worth studying as role models
for modern diplomacy and intelligence. If you prefer
other historians to Anthony Levi, please share your
thoughts with ATol
readers. Spengler
Dear
Spengler, The world; this physical creation is so
beautiful. I thank God for it every day. But why are we
so crazy? Given this breath, this gift of life, how can
we turn and kill each other? I am amused by evangelical
Christians who track down and kill their enemies when
Christ told us to turn the other cheek and love our
enemies. He said that even evil people love their
families and friends. There's no benefit in that, He
said. But to love one's enemies, that is divine! I do
not believe that Jesus would drive an SUV, nor do I
believe He would countenance a preemptive strike, no
matter how evil the enemy. Mike North Carolina,
USA
Dear Mike, Yours is a characteristically
American view. You take as a norm the tiny proportion of
the world's population that left the Old World behind
and moved to your shores, and then ask why other people
seem crazy. In fact, American evangelicals' interest in
the rest of the world, prior to September 2001, was
extremely limited. To the extent evangelicals cared at
all, they funded or performed missionary work, including
quite creditable efforts to bring basic services to the
extremely poor in Latin America and Africa. As I argued
in
Why Islam baffles
America (April 16, 2004), America's
Protean nature, its embodiment of creative destruction,
threatens the existence of other religions. Put yourself
in the other man's slippers if you want to understand
why everyone does not think the way you
do. Spengler
Dear
Spengler, I work in an area with large enclaves
of Lebanese, Yemeni, and Iraqi immigrants. I have been
told, in every conversation in which the subject was
mentioned, that it is not uncommon among Lebanese, and
actually preferred custom among Yemenis and Iraqis, to
arrange marriages between first cousins.
In the
royal families of Europe, who for centuries have been
intermarrying cousins, we have seen deformities,
insanity, and hemophilia. We have also seen the
"thinning" of the blood of people like the Amish, who
recently began allowing their members to marry
Mennonites for lack of new blood strains.
If we
extrapolate this practice to entire cultures, which, for
centuries, have been intermarrying cousins, would it be
unreasonable to wonder if something has happened to the
physiology of the average person in that region? Might
not the volatility in the Middle East - the suicide
bombings, the reactionary and oppressive doctrines, the
temper-flaring, and the proclivity to take to the
streets and chant hyperbolic slogans, have some root in
cousins marrying each other and having children over and
over again for generations? I only seek to ask a
question here, and I have no preconceived answer to it,
lest some small-minded person decide to reflexively
condemn the question as fascist
cryptophrenology. Janissary
Dear
Janissary, That is a possibility that never
occurred to me. I suppose it is possible. In-laws are
the single most annoying thing in the world.
Consanguinity implies that everyone is everyone else's
in-law, so the collective level of annoyance might reach
levels undreamed of in other
societies. Spengler
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