Much has changed in the last
century; many would say that the changes of the last hundred years are
more fundamental and spirit shattering than any previous millennia out
of history as a whole. Alvin Toffler even wrote his book, Future Shock,
about the shattering effect of change on the human spirit. It is no
wonder that we feel disoriented by all which has occurred in our brief
lifetimes.
Western Civilization has been
blessed with more varieties of mass communication available to its
greatest thinkers than was ever possible in any other civilization. It
started several centuries ago with the invention of movable type for
printing presses. Within just the last few decades, telephone,
television, and computer data networks have circled the globe, allowing
virtually instant communication to most of mankind.
Still, we are leery of our
rapid progress, and many of us feel that much of what goes on is really
more like a car careening out of control down a mountain road; at any
moment, we could miss a turn and plunge over the side to our deaths.
Still, it is this mass media,
and particularly the publishers of books like this one, which have
preserved our heritage for all of us to read, whenever we wish. There
is no need to travel to Delphi and question the oracle ourselves. The
inquiries and responses of thousands of great men are preserved for
each of us to use as we please.
Some of our great men have
made it their life's work to study the business of what makes a
civilization tick. Spengler drew our road map to what a civilization
needs at its beginning. All civilization must begin with a spiritual
experience, for it is this essential spirituality which motivates
mankind to achieve its greatest possibilities. Spengler defined a
spiritual Spring as: "Rural-intuitive. Great creations of the
newly-awakened dream-heavy Soul. Super-personal unity and fullness."
The first step is thus: "Birth of a myth of the grand style, expressing
a new God-feeling. World-fear. World-longing."
Most conservative scholars
would wonder at how anyone could hope to stir such thoughts in a
population which is wracked with the moral decay of a dying
civilization deep in its own spiritual Winter. Normally, a population
which is wracked by the doubts of crotchety old age is incapable of
even entertaining the great hopes of Spring-like ideas. However, as I
survey the scene, I see those thoughts already among us. They are
disorganized for now, and focused on only limited goals, but they are
there nonetheless. If this book does nothing else, I hope that it sets
those forces free to pursue greater goals than those upon which they
are now focused.
So, what is this Great Idea
which meets Spengler's definition? It has several parts, which I will
first list, and then explain in detail:
A. Mankind Must Become One With The Universe, Living Harmoniously With All Natural Creations, And Wisely Using Those Creations For The Greater Good Of The Universe.
B. "God" Is The Life Force Which Organizes And Drives The Universe; "God" Is Not An Anthropomorphic Entity, Concerned In Any Way With Mankind's Follies.
C. Natural Disasters Must Be Expected To Occur; They Are Natural Creations, Not Acts Of A Vengeful God. Manmade Disasters Must Be Prevented, To The Maximum Extent Practicable; When They Are Deliberately Inflicted, The Perpetrators Must Be Punished.
D. The Three-Fold Mission Of Mankind Is:
1. To increase knowledge of the truth for all mankind, in quantity, in quality, and in dissemination.
2. To increase the happiness of all mankind, in quantity, in quality, and in dissemination.
3. To balance the attainment of happiness and knowledge of the truth such that neither excludes the other but instead both are balanced in appropriate quantities, qualities, and dissemination for all mankind.
None of
the above is truly an original thought with me. Each of the above is
deeply rooted in the thoughts of the best minds which Western
Civilization has provided to teach me. I may perhaps be seen as merely
the first to set forth as written words what many have felt for a very
long time, much as even the words of Jesus Christ as set forth in the
Christian Bible contain little which was new to the Jews of his own
time.81
The historical Jesus merely
called men back to their own better natures. That call could only have
been issued in light of the prevailing world-view at the time Jesus
lived. This naturally limited the scope and substance of what Jesus
could call for. So it is with my own call, above. I call all mankind
back to our own better natures, in light of the world-view which the
best minds of Western Civilization have set forth for us to follow.
1 . Harmonious Natural Living
The
first part of the Great Idea is: "Mankind Must Become One With The
Universe, Living Harmoniously With All Natural Creations, And Wisely
Using Those Creations For The Greater Good Of The Universe." This draws
strength from environmental movements which are already forces to
reckon with in politics. However, my intent is to temper an activist
environmental attitude with the clear necessity of use. The natural
creations are ours to use, but must use those creations wisely, and for
the greater good of the whole of creation, including ourselves.
I believe this to be the
essential distillation of the present environmental movement. However,
my intent is to bring that movement home to the daily lives of all
mankind. Presently, the environment is mostly a concern for larger
social groups, and is only considered for major projects with
significant and long term impacts on our lives. It is a mistake not to
make all of mankind conscious of environmental concerns, and to try to
motivate all mankind to convert to renewable energy and other resources
and less pollution of the environment by acts of mankind.
We also need to change mankind
away from the "disposable society" where the convenience of the user is
the paramount concern, without regard to the long term environmental
consequences. Casually disposing of valuable resources merely for the
sake of convenience is wrong. But this should not be taken as a
commandment to return to reusable glass milk bottles and the like.
Trees are a renewable resource, and they are ours to use. Just make
sure that the packages are biodegradable within a reasonably small
number of years.
This is in no way intended to
be radical environmentalism. This is intended to be a call to keep
doing what we are already doing, more of it, and with a greater
willingness of the population at large to participate. It is also
intended to be a call to focus scientific research on problems in the
environment before they reach crisis proportions, which will include
assessing environmental impacts of products before they are marketed to
the general public.
Mankind is the only animal
which has been granted the ability to alter our own environment to such
a degree that we can actually kill ourselves off as a result of our own
incompetence. It is only within this century that we have recognized
this risk, and we still grapple with the basic aspects of the
consequences of this fact. Mankind must attempt to control our own
population, because the alternatives of a lowered standard of living
for all, radically unequal standards of living, and exhaustion of our
natural resources, are each unacceptable to rational mankind.
2 . God Is Indifferent To Mankind
Many
of our great philosophers and historians have noted that many of the
essential attributes of traditional god entities are anthropomorphic,
which tends to indicate that it has been mankind who created each of
these gods in our own images. The Durants spend a chapter of The Lessons of History
looking at religions used by various civilizations down through time.
Based upon history, you cannot truly argue for a god which favors one
religious group over another. Misfortunes are visited on mankind with
predictable randomness and without regard to the piety of the
population in question.
So, if God is not this
anthropomorphic entity which we, as Christians, were trained to adore,
then what actually is God? Since God is indifferent to mankind, we are
left to our own devices to decide this question for ourselves. I reject
the atheist belief that there is no God, because the atheists have no
basis for knowing that. In fact, the atheists are the ultimate
skeptics, at least on the subject of God, and skepticism is simply one
more aspect of the end times of any civilization. It is the agnostic
belief that rings most true: we do not know the true nature of God, and
perhaps we will never know. But those of us who look at the universe
say, again and again, there is so much order here that it cannot really
be just one cosmic mechanistic accident. There must be some life force
which moves the universe at the most basic level. Since we clearly do
not know the nature of God, our scientific training compels us to
advance a thesis on this subject, and that thesis seems to be: God is
the life force which organizes and drives the universe towards creating
order out of chaos (i.e., God is anti-entropic). With a choice only between random chance and such a life force, the life force is the only rational answer.
For reasons which are
discussed at length in the Durants' book, past civilizations have
always enlisted God as part of the police mechanism of the state. This
naturally required that God have both anthropomorphic and supernatural
capabilities so that the chosen God could fulfill its mission of
"divine surveillance and sanctions." The "Santa Claus" syndrome
actually trains our children that our God is at least an imperfect
enforcer of such sanctions. As life goes on, people learn that they can
get away with the most horrible atrocities, with consequences only when
caught. The people of the United States are insecure in the here and
now because they have, in essence, placed their faith in a policeman
who does not exist. Modern man does not fear the anthropomorphic God of
the Christians. Of course, there is no reason to fear the God defined
herein. But at least we will not place our faith in a false God, which
we will know to be false the moment that no aid is supplied in our time
of need. As Lincoln said: "you may fool all the people some of the
time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't
fool all of the people all the time." This is, in essence, the epitaph
of all anthropomorphic Gods. With our new God, defined herein, we are
at least not subject to such failure.
3 . Man's Follies Are Man's Follies
There
has long been a tendency to blame God for natural disasters. Our
generic term for such events is "an act of God." I am certain only the
fact our anthropomorphic God does not really exist has protected
mankind from the wrath of God for all this false blame for otherwise
natural occurrences.
If you look intellectually at
known natural disasters, each is a result of mankind getting in the way
of occurrences which mankind ought to have expected to happen. High
winds, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, droughts, plagues, and
so forth all occur with great regularity in those regions commonly
subject to them, and with less regularity even in other regions of the
world.
One thing is certain: these
are not acts of a vengeful God. The innocent is just as likely as the
guilty to be afflicted. In fact, since the innocent predominate in the
population at large, the innocent are truly more likely to be afflicted
by any particular disaster.
But we must sometimes ask: how
innocent are these innocents when they have chosen to stay in the known
path of disaster, but have failed to take adequate precautions against
that known disaster? One or two hurricanes strike Florida each year.
Should not buildings in Florida be constructed to withstand the most
devastating hurricane which can be expected during the lifetime of that
building? And how is it that every few years the midwest suffers
through yet another "hundred year flood?" Even our own government is
growing tired of shelling out disaster relief on such a regular basis.
In my opinion, all disaster
relief ought to be accompanied by a risk assessment, and the disaster
relief ought to be conditional on the recipients taking reasonable
steps to prevent the need for future relief. If we not only allow
rebuilding, but even finance it with low cost disaster relief loans,
then the rebuilt structures ought not be subject to being destroyed by
the same disaster occurring again. This is only common sense.
As for manmade disasters,
these are simply criminal. Whether due to criminal neglect or a
designed plan, manmade disasters ought to subject the perpetrator to
the usual penalties of the law. And to some degree, this principal can
interact with the above one for natural disasters. If a structure has
been negligently or deliberately placed in the path of a natural
disaster, then the person or persons responsible for so placing it
ought to also be subject to penalties as defined by law.
But the true bottom line for
us is that all mankind ought to be responsible for its own actions, and
that includes responsibility for avoiding natural disasters.
81 Jesus mostly taught from the Torah and the prophets, the holy scriptures of the Jews.