What's more important in the end? Saving Western civilization or saving souls? All serious Christians inherently know the answer to this question, but until recently I assume most - yours truly among them - nurtured hope for the salvation of both.
Though it pains me to say it, I no longer entertain this notion. Though I am far from the first to suggest it, I find myself increasingly accepting the notion that our civilization cannot be saved. Moreover, given its current form and substance, our civilization probably shouldn't be saved. As unimaginable as it may seem at the moment, any attempt to save our civilization that does not include a thorough reordering and restructuring of its current metaphysical assumptions and beliefs is guaranteed to lead to more harm than good.
I say this not from the vast plains of some nihilistic desert or from the depths of some fathomless pit of despair, but rather from the standpoint of priorities. Yes, our civilization is important, but our souls are infinitely more important. This does not imply that efforts to stem the rising tide of evil should be peremptorily abandoned. On the contrary, our spiritual endeavors against evil must intensify in this time and place, but this intensification must be arise from the proper perspective with the right objectives in mind.
Yes, the potential collapse of Western Civilization is tragic, but soul damnation is more tragic by far.
The remainder of this post is a repost from a piece I wrote back in March 2019. I share it now because I believe it reveals my own personal turning point concerning the subject at hand.
For years I considered the current decline of the West and Western Civilization to be a tremendous historical, cultural, societal, and civilizational tragedy. Regardless of where the beginning is placed, there have been many civilizational rises and falls within the umbrella term "Western Civilization." From the ancient Greek city states to the Roman Empire to the more recent falls of dynastic royal empires in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe and the crumbling of the Soviet empire in the twentieth, the history of the West is filled with the ebbs and flows of rising and collapsing empires, kingdoms, and republics.
Civilizations within the West collapsed for a variety of reasons: natural disasters, invasions, over-extension, fatigue, decadence, or a combination of some or all of these factors and dozens more not mentioned. The history of the West demonstrates a simple truth - regardless of the cause or causes, all civilizations eventually collapse.
For all intents and purposes, it appears the current liberal-democratic civilization that has its roots in the Enlightenment and French and American Revolutions of the eighteenth century is rushing headlong toward collapse. This obvious deterioration once caused me a great deal of consternation because, despite all of its innate paradoxes and contradictions, I firmly believed the liberal democratic model had been and continued to be a force of good in the world.
Yet, when I take stock of the absurd and idiotic cultural and civilization pathologies liberal democracies have embraced and promulgate, I have come to one rather obvious conclusion - there is very little good in what accounts for Western Civilization today. Rather than lament the eventual collapse of this current manifestation of civilization in the West, I have come to the point where I welcome it.
Liberal democracies in the West have spun too far away from Reality in their beliefs, policies, and behaviors to make any kind of restoration or return to the real impossible. Our current liberal democratic model distinguishes itself from other fallen civilizations by being the only one that actively seeks its own destruction. The causes for Rome's decadence were many and there were elites who undermined the Empire for their own personal gain, but not to the extent our current liberal, leftist, democratic elite undermines the foundations of their own society and culture. Simply put, our rulers today follow the same strategy a deadly virus follows when it infects its host. Like a deadly virus, our current rulers will not stop until they have destroyed the thing keeping the civilization alive. Culturecide. Civilizationcide. Call it what you will - our elites will simply refer to it as progress.
Now this in itself could be regarded as tragic if the host, that is our current form of Western Civilization, was an ascending one filled with a vigorous strength of the mind and soul inspired by Reality, propelled by faith and reason, and fueled by a sincere desire for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.
Our current liberal democracies are the complete antithesis of that. In my humble opinion, things are so bad we can no longer even classify our current liberal democratic model as an example of a descending civilization. What is called Western civilization today fell out of the sky and hit the water long ago. Our civilization is submerged and sinking fast, with no bottom in sight. Yet, it will hit bottom one day, and when it does, that will officially mark the end.
What will take its place is a matter of speculation, but one must assume the worst. Our current elite are revolutionary in spirit. Their destruction of liberal democracy serves a higher purpose - the implementation of a new civilization. One can easily assume the likely form this new civilization will take.
In the future, historians will undoubtedly sift through artifacts and records from our collapsed civilization in an attempt to understand what caused our technologically advanced and materially-abundant civilization to fall apart so swiftly and dramatically and give way to the totalitarian nightmare that followed. I am certain what they discover will both puzzle and amuse them.
As unbelievable as it will seem to them, future historians will inescapably conclude that our liberal democracies were brought down by little more than a laughable assortment of hare-brained irrationalities and idiotic suppositions defiantly and hubristically imposed upon the people and Reality in the derisory name of altruism and human rights. Simply put, future historians will write us off as irrational fools because we allowed ourselves to be destroyed and enslaved by nothing more than preposterous notions and absurd political correctness.
This is why I no longer lament the eventual death of our current form of civilization. The causes leading to its eventual collapse are too asinine to categorize as tragic. Laughable? Sure. Senseless? Indeed. Silly? You bet.
Tragic? No way.
Though it pains me to say it, I no longer entertain this notion. Though I am far from the first to suggest it, I find myself increasingly accepting the notion that our civilization cannot be saved. Moreover, given its current form and substance, our civilization probably shouldn't be saved. As unimaginable as it may seem at the moment, any attempt to save our civilization that does not include a thorough reordering and restructuring of its current metaphysical assumptions and beliefs is guaranteed to lead to more harm than good.
I say this not from the vast plains of some nihilistic desert or from the depths of some fathomless pit of despair, but rather from the standpoint of priorities. Yes, our civilization is important, but our souls are infinitely more important. This does not imply that efforts to stem the rising tide of evil should be peremptorily abandoned. On the contrary, our spiritual endeavors against evil must intensify in this time and place, but this intensification must be arise from the proper perspective with the right objectives in mind.
Yes, the potential collapse of Western Civilization is tragic, but soul damnation is more tragic by far.
The remainder of this post is a repost from a piece I wrote back in March 2019. I share it now because I believe it reveals my own personal turning point concerning the subject at hand.
For years I considered the current decline of the West and Western Civilization to be a tremendous historical, cultural, societal, and civilizational tragedy. Regardless of where the beginning is placed, there have been many civilizational rises and falls within the umbrella term "Western Civilization." From the ancient Greek city states to the Roman Empire to the more recent falls of dynastic royal empires in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe and the crumbling of the Soviet empire in the twentieth, the history of the West is filled with the ebbs and flows of rising and collapsing empires, kingdoms, and republics.
Civilizations within the West collapsed for a variety of reasons: natural disasters, invasions, over-extension, fatigue, decadence, or a combination of some or all of these factors and dozens more not mentioned. The history of the West demonstrates a simple truth - regardless of the cause or causes, all civilizations eventually collapse.
For all intents and purposes, it appears the current liberal-democratic civilization that has its roots in the Enlightenment and French and American Revolutions of the eighteenth century is rushing headlong toward collapse. This obvious deterioration once caused me a great deal of consternation because, despite all of its innate paradoxes and contradictions, I firmly believed the liberal democratic model had been and continued to be a force of good in the world.
Yet, when I take stock of the absurd and idiotic cultural and civilization pathologies liberal democracies have embraced and promulgate, I have come to one rather obvious conclusion - there is very little good in what accounts for Western Civilization today. Rather than lament the eventual collapse of this current manifestation of civilization in the West, I have come to the point where I welcome it.
Liberal democracies in the West have spun too far away from Reality in their beliefs, policies, and behaviors to make any kind of restoration or return to the real impossible. Our current liberal democratic model distinguishes itself from other fallen civilizations by being the only one that actively seeks its own destruction. The causes for Rome's decadence were many and there were elites who undermined the Empire for their own personal gain, but not to the extent our current liberal, leftist, democratic elite undermines the foundations of their own society and culture. Simply put, our rulers today follow the same strategy a deadly virus follows when it infects its host. Like a deadly virus, our current rulers will not stop until they have destroyed the thing keeping the civilization alive. Culturecide. Civilizationcide. Call it what you will - our elites will simply refer to it as progress.
Now this in itself could be regarded as tragic if the host, that is our current form of Western Civilization, was an ascending one filled with a vigorous strength of the mind and soul inspired by Reality, propelled by faith and reason, and fueled by a sincere desire for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.
Our current liberal democracies are the complete antithesis of that. In my humble opinion, things are so bad we can no longer even classify our current liberal democratic model as an example of a descending civilization. What is called Western civilization today fell out of the sky and hit the water long ago. Our civilization is submerged and sinking fast, with no bottom in sight. Yet, it will hit bottom one day, and when it does, that will officially mark the end.
What will take its place is a matter of speculation, but one must assume the worst. Our current elite are revolutionary in spirit. Their destruction of liberal democracy serves a higher purpose - the implementation of a new civilization. One can easily assume the likely form this new civilization will take.
In the future, historians will undoubtedly sift through artifacts and records from our collapsed civilization in an attempt to understand what caused our technologically advanced and materially-abundant civilization to fall apart so swiftly and dramatically and give way to the totalitarian nightmare that followed. I am certain what they discover will both puzzle and amuse them.
As unbelievable as it will seem to them, future historians will inescapably conclude that our liberal democracies were brought down by little more than a laughable assortment of hare-brained irrationalities and idiotic suppositions defiantly and hubristically imposed upon the people and Reality in the derisory name of altruism and human rights. Simply put, future historians will write us off as irrational fools because we allowed ourselves to be destroyed and enslaved by nothing more than preposterous notions and absurd political correctness.
This is why I no longer lament the eventual death of our current form of civilization. The causes leading to its eventual collapse are too asinine to categorize as tragic. Laughable? Sure. Senseless? Indeed. Silly? You bet.
Tragic? No way.
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