I had another sickening moment of serendipity today that brings me back to you, another moment of alignment that brings a laugh and a questioning of universal realities and truth. 

To mark my return from my mini-hiatus, I had in mind an article I’ve been brewing over for quite some time, something about the collapse of Christianity in our culture and the inability of anything to well fit the spiritual vacuum left in place, with money and personal gain being the only shared motivation I see upholding our American society.

As always, I struggled where to start, writing only a note down reading as follows:

I have spent my entire life believing Christians are idiots. To commit one’s self to a religion so overburdened with historical baggage; to hold that self to certain fundamental precepts that go repeatedly unmet and unfulfilled; 

So the lesson breaks, ends before truly starting. It wasn’t working, the words were not flowing, and if the words do not flow I do not write, as I will not force naturally flowing inspiration. The words will come in time as they wish, I am merely the vassal for their creation. Why create what’s unwanted?

So I thus ceased my diatribe and picked up a book I’ve been flicking through for the past few months on and off, Gladstone and Liberalism, from an old Teach Yourself History series published in the 50’s. It’s a pretty little old book, and I always love the quality with which we once created small objects. As it is not the most exciting of reads, I read a chapter here, a chapter there; it’s something touched with little frequency. Attempting to break from my block, I picked up the book to begin the fourth chapter and read the following excerpt. It’s a bit long, but the entirety warrants inclusion now: 

Gladstone, who in his old age was regarded as a reckless man with revolutionary ambitions, started life not as a reformer eager for a share in such bold enterprises, but as a Conservative on guard for principles that seemed to him a great danger. In particular he mistrusted the dominant influence among active reformers. In January 1832 he wrote a long letter to his father on the subject of utilitarian philosophy. This, like many of his letters, runs to several pages, but is summarised by Morley in these few sentences: ‘New principles, he says, prevail in morals, politics, education. Enlightened self-interest is made the substitute for the old bonds of unreasoned attachment, and under the plausible maxim that knowledge is power, one kind of ignorance is made to take the place of another kind. Christianity teaches that the head is to be exalted through the heart, but Benthamism maintains that the heart is to be amended through the head.’ Gladstone saw in this doctrine that enlightened self-interest was the true guide to conduct, private and public, a danger such as Ruskin saw in the onrush of industrialism. To Ruskin the machine age, devouring the beauty of nature and of noble and ancient buildings that repeopled the silent past, threatened to impoverish the imagination and the memories of the British people. To Gladstone Benthamism stood for something like the machine age in the world of consciousness. Its analysis of motive and its simplification of relationships of life seemed to him to impoverish men’s spiritual faculties and to destroy the sense of obligation and the Christian spirit of fellowship in which he found the ties that unite men and keep societies together. 

Pretty rollicking stuff, eh? It seems to speak almost too presciently to our times and our current shared social condition. I everyday watch young people commit themselves to unwanted and unfulfilling life choices and patterns purely because of financial temptation and no clear belief in their self-worth and innate spiritual value. We no longer see ourselves as people first and foremost, but live in this purgatorial state between man and machine. How many students spent their summers on their phones, computers, or consoles? How many of the rest of us spent our days the same?

Abstract notions of “spirit” and “faith”, notions like an “examined life” seem ludicrous, hippy nonsense that has no place in our data-driven days, and so depression reigns, suicides rise, and the vision for the long human future fades as we focus instead on just tomorrow and ourselves. 

I want to engage you, have you give me a response if you have one: where do you think our American society exhibits true care for its people and reveals any real obligation to the headier truths of enlightenment laid out in the founding. Yet it is perhaps these enlightened principles that lead us to these self-indulgent times, for what gains come from liberty and freedom more than the self? The concept of individual freedom rings radical in the historical chorus because it needed individual responsibility to uphold it, a sense of higher purpose, good living, and empathy for our fellow man’s suffering. Christianity in America, as a social force, held the lesser vices in check, made ignorant men at least fear for their souls, if not their descendants. Christianity is perfectly formulated to prey on the ignorant for control, but much of the messaging and reasoning for control was for our own human good, for stability and structure wherein we could grow into our better selves. The utter dominance of the church only came about to fill the vacuum of Rome, which itself also helped create the conditions to help advance human science, art, culture, engineering. 

Now that a new vacuum comes about, what shall take Christianity’s place? Something must exist that unites mankind, something must bring us together, and if nothing of great worth or benefit comes about, it shall be fear, insecurity, and cutthroat selfishness that shall unite us all. 

I write of Christianity specifically because I write from the west, from America, and ours is a creed rooted in Christian tenets and practices, if not outright Christian law (though damn close), but the same trends move the world. 

Gladstone diagnosed our modern ills when they first began to exhibit symptoms, and nearly 200 years later, we are now on the other end of that epoch, and we see where it has led us. We abound with the “passions of improvement” in the world today, methods whereby we can reconfigure the likes of education, economics, politics, morality itself, but we do so with no transcendental goal. We move forward with creating better living conditions for others to reduce their suffering, but in reality we just replace one suffering with another, an ignorance of comfort and knowledge for an ignorance of purpose and faith. Without these, where will we tether ourselves when the storm comes?

Every individual is born equipped with the ability to self-examine, but we are tricked out of this power and never told to face the flames, electing to instead endure constant burns. 

We see society begin this process of self-examination, and the required changes that come with it, in pockets at a slow and steady rate. The rising trends of localism, minimalism, innovative thinking to otherwise intractable issues. People like Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang attracting attention and support thanks to their radical approach to answering our deeper ills, just for their ability to acknowledge our state decay and rot. The rise of populism speaks to the disenfranchisement of so many people across the political spectrum from a contented and fulfilling life. 

What’s my point? 

I don’t know that I have a point I’m trying to make, I just want people to see what’s happening, to admit the state of the world and accept that changes must come. Our values have led us to a knife edge. We all know that we must change the value systems as they currently exist. We reading this are the ones who must figure out how, for we must assume that nobody else will. We must assume nobody else is doing so currently, otherwise we too regularly allow ourselves to pass these burdens off to another unequipped for the task. We are the creators of change, we are the masters of destiny. Act like it. 

In truth ‘spiritual animal’ wer a term for man

nearer than ‘rational’ to define his genus; 

Faith being the humanizer of his brutal passions, 

the clarifier of folly and medicine of care,

the clue of reality, and the medicine of care,

the clue of reality, and the driving motive

of thatt self-knowledge which teachet the etick of life

Bridges, Testament of Beauty, IV, 1131.