THE CORONA VIRUS, MODERNITY AND GOD      by Peter Corney  (Palm Sunday 2020)

Our present crisis created by the Corona virus epidemic has triggered in my mind a memory of a phrase from the old Litany in the BCP, “from plague, pestilence and famine…and sudden death. Good Lord deliver us.”

When I was in theological college studying for the Anglican ministry in the early 60’s daily chapel was compulsory and every Wednesday we said the ancient  Litany with its memorable refrain and supplication – “Good Lord deliver us.” I can still hear it in my mind!

Written by Cranmer in the 16^th C its language is Elizabethan. Its theological expression is cast in the understanding of the Reformation. It reflects what the reformers believed our attitude, our relationship, and our duty to God should be – one of complete dependence on the grace of God.

This moment of memory and reflection caused me to go to my bookshelf and take down the 1995 edition of “An Australian Prayer Book”, (that has now largely replaced the Book of Common Prayer  in Australian Anglican worship), and find its version of the Litany to compare with the very robust 1662 version. While the AAPB Litany keeps the idea of “saving us from sudden death” there is no longer any mention of “plague, pestilence and famine”. Generally, I think, it’s a much lamer version!

I may be drawing a long bow here but I began to wonder whether I should really be surprised, after all, the 1995 version is a document written in and shaped by ‘modernity’. The modern world of brilliant technology, advanced medicine, prosperity, vast financial resources, and in our progressive social democracies general Social Security, have given most of us a sense of entitled security. All of which has ameliorated much of the uncertainty, fragility and vulnerability of life as it was in the past, and we have got used to it!  And yet, now we suddenly find ourselves vulnerable, exposed, and not only to a rampant virus we can’t yet control. Also exposed is the unattractive side of our natures. We see the selfish hoarding of food and medical supplies, political point scoring among our party leaders when what we need is bipartisan co-operation (although co-operation is improving recently), carping and critical media attacking our political leaders as they struggle to respond to a rapidly evolving crisis.[i] We see people, so used to the unrestrained freedom of individual choice, ignoring or flouting the advice and instructions of government and medical advisors about their social behaviour and putting others at risk. I may be wrong about the modern Litany but the impact of modernity upon our view of life, our expec tations and our behaviour is clear and disturbing. No one wants to go back to surgery without anaesthesia , infection without antibiotics or measles and polio without vaccination’s, but there is much about the society we have created by the uncritical embracing of modernity that is troubling, negative and destructive to a holistic view of human flourishing .

Facing up to the following questions will be a good start. Why, in spite of our unprecedented prosperity, has modernity produced greater family dysfunction, marriage breakdown and greater numbers of children in state care? Why has our incidence of mental health problems risen so much and why have we provided so inadequately to meet the challenge it presents to our health system and society?  Why have our financial institutions and systems produced so much dishonesty, corruption and venal self-interest as revealed in our recent Royal Commission?  Why has the attendance and involvement of average Australians fallen away from Church -going, religious faith and attention to our spiritual needs and their value foundations that historically have shaped our culture? Why, until recently, have we become so insensitive to the destructive impact of our modern way of life on our environment?

We need to reflect deeply on these issues during this crisis and use it to consider what we each need to do to create a more caring, less selfish and more equitable community, one that intentionally supports people in whatever difficult state they find themselves. We need to particularly support marriage and family, children, a holistic education approach, and give attention to the depth and sources of our values. We are privileged to live in a working democracy, but only a commitment to the common good will sustain it and its ability to meet its constant challenges.

What do we mean by ‘Modernity?

Historically ‘Modernity’ is roughly that period of our history that runs from the beginnings of the industrial revolution in the 19^th C to the present. It includes the evolution and growth of the Western free market financial system, modern communications, marketing and consumerism, and now the rapid growth of high technology, modern medicine, etc. It is marked socially by the move from the village to the city, rural to urban, from communal cultures to more impersonal large cities where our     ideas of authority and responsibility have evolved away from communal ones to more individual ones. Some social commentators would say that in the West we have now moved to ‘hyper individualism’ which is the mark of ‘post modernity’. The present preoccupation with identity politics would seem to reflect this.  [ii]

Modernity is also linked to ‘secularism’ and its effect on our sense of the sacred and the transcendent. Charles Taylors writing has shown comprehensively how this has developed historically, philosophically, theologically and socially in his “A Secular Age.”  [iii] The modern urban industrial world has gradually closed us off to nature, “the heavens” and the transcendent. This has been a gradual process, it’s as if we were at the Australian Tennis open and while absorbed in the game on the centre court, due to a prediction of rain, the roof of the stadium has been gradually closing to the heavens and we didn’t notice!

We have become ‘materialists’, not just in the sense of being seduced by consumerism, marketing  and the cheap and ready availability of goods and services all in multiple choice  – “ Which mobile phone in which colour with which apps with which payment plan would you like?”  We are now also ‘materialists’ in the sense of gradually coming to believe that reality is defined only by the material world of the physical. We no longer seriously believe in a ‘metaphysic’, that reality includes that which is bigger (Meta) and greater than the physical and material. This has been reinforced by a popular form of ‘scientific materialism’ whose tendency is to reductionism in its approach to knowledge and knowing. Its belief or doctrine is that the only ‘real’ things are the material and physical – energy, matter, atoms, particles, forces, etc., things we can measure.  It’s a bit like describing music as just fluctuating air pressure that the human ear is capable of detecting. It’s an accurate statement as far as it goes but there is so much more to say!

This greatly limits the field of the exploration of knowledge and wisdom and it has nothing to say about the questions that are of most importance to us and the meaning of our lives: – What is a satisfactory ethical basis for determining what is right and wrong? What is the nature of Justice, love, goodness, honour, beauty and truth? What is a virtuous life and why should it be pursued rather than a completely self- interested one? What is the nature of evil and how should we respond to it? How do we create a free society that is based on a view of the common good?

Also the loss of a strong historical perspective and knowledge from general education has also impoverished us intellectually. This is often joined by what C S Lewis called “chronological snobbery” where modernity’s pride in its achievements has treated as premodern superstitions the knowledge, wisdom and spirituality of the past and so discarded them.

These ideas in their popular form have closed much of the contemporary mind to the idea of the transcendent and the deeper reality of God, though not entirely as Taylor points out.[iv] It leaves our culture in a kind of existential vacuum of meaning and purpose and eventually produces for many a vague and perverse nihilism. Cultures abhor a spiritual and moral vacuum and so they seek to fill it with substitutes, this leads either to seeking constant superficial distraction or entering into denial or despair. All are evident today but we may see them challenged or exaggerated by the current crisis of the pandemic, particularly as our normal distractions are removed by isolation.

Some of us will be touched by loss and grief by this virus. We may lose loved ones, family, friends, and colleagues. In this present ‘fallen’ and imperfect world how to live involves also how to grieve. Loss in its various painful forms is one of our constant companions in life, and at a time like this it becomes a more familiar and threatening one. It may come in the form of a loss of Job and financial security or in its most painful form in the death of someone we love. The Christian faith tells us that the way for us to grieve and survive is only by first loving the one who will always be there and will never pass away. The answer is not to stop loving life and family and friends but to encompass life and our loved ones in our love for God and His love. Only in this way can our grieving be suffused with hope, the hope that is bought by Christ’s death and resurrection, which has transformed death and ushers in Gods coming Kingdom in which “God will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev 21:4.) In the words of Augustine it is a hope that is guaranteed by the one “who can restore what has been lost, bring to life what has died, repair what has been corrupted, and keep thereafter without end what has come to an end”.[v] Our love for the ones we love and their love for us is preserved and hidden with Christ in God.

We must also always recognise that grief and loss are complicated and often infused with anger at the world and God, even with ourselves. To reach the point of bringing this to God and reaching the hope described above can be a very slow and difficult journey for many of us, even if we have been Christians for many years.  Never the less it is in this hope that as Christians we live and grieve and die.

Peter Corney.

Footnotes             

[i]   Although one very positive thing to emerge in the last few weeks has been the way the state Premiers have put aside party politics to create  what is now in effect the decision making body for the whole country chaired by the P.M. during this crisis.

[ii] The philosophical roots of Post Modernism take us back to the post WW2 emergence of the Existentialism of Sartre and Camus and the 60’s – 70’s social revolution. In fact a reading of Camus’ novel “The Plague” is worth doing while you’re in ‘lock down’!

On the sensitive issue of gender and identity politics it is important to note that where identity politics has taken on racism and discrimination it has helped to push modern society to be fairer and more just on many levels and so sits in the best tradition of Western liberalism. But at its extreme edges it can fall into the socially fragmenting tendency of Post Modernity’s hyper individualism. The democratic social project requires a ‘social contract’ where individuals accept their responsibility to the common good as well as their right to individual freedom. There are always tensions in this ‘contract’, they can only be managed constructively by consultation, listening and genuine community, but hyper individualism is often the enemy of these.

[iii] “A Secular Age” by Charles Taylor published by Harvard U.P 2007. See also the article by Taylor in the Hedgehog  Review Fall 2010  https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/does-religious-pluralism-require-secularism/articles/the-meaning-of-secularism. Also James K.A. Smith’s very helpful primer for Taylors rather large book!  James K.A.Smith “How (Not) to be secular –Reading Charles Taylor” pub. Eerdmans 2014.

[iv] Taylor points out we are, as he puts it, “Cross pressured” – conflicted about our experiences, the rumour of transcendence persists in our lives in all sorts of ways through music, art, literature, nature and relationships of love, and even in our encounters with evil that we cannot explain just by our rationalisations from sociology and psychology.

[v] At this time I have been reading James K.A. Smith’s very thoughtful journey with Augustine and his life, “On The Road With Saint Augustine –  A real world spirituality for restless hearts,” pub.Brazos Press 2019. I am indebted to Smith for these thoughts on loss and grief and for the quotations from his very helpful book. See p. 212-217.

Praying the Psalm’s – a confession! by Peter Corney

As a young man at theological college I found the discipline of the daily chapel services and the saying of the psalms sometimes a chore, sometimes boring, and sometimes a blessing.

Full of energy, impatient to rescue the world, more an activist than given to reflection or meditation the daily saying of the psalms mostly went past me, although sometimes the depth of their cries to God arrested even me!

But like all good disciplines their daily repetition meant their phrases seeped unconsciously into my mind. But to seep into my heart required something else – the experience of the inevitable difficulties, pain and disappointments of adult life and ministry. For the psalms are the cries of men and women who believe in God and are trying to serve Him in the ordinary challenges and often unanswered questions of life as well as its joy filled moments – the moments when Gods presence is felt like lightning or when He seems absent or silent.

They are the ancient yet constantly contemporary prayers of God’s people. They have been prayed for thousands of years by Jews and Christians. As a Christian I am immensely thankful for my ‘spiritual great grandparents’, the Children of Israel and for their preservation of these cries to God from the heart.

Even those awful imprecatory psalms where the prayer calls on God to curse and judge those who have taunted, wronged or hurt us, yes even they resonate! For those cries have been in my throat too in my darkest moments of self-pity, self-righteousness or anger, thoughts and feelings that, thank God, in the end drive me back to Christ on the cross bearing my sins and the suffering and evil and violence we are capable of inflicting on one another. Drawing me to cry out for forgiveness and the strength to love and forgive those who treated me badly or unjustly as Jesus commanded and to leave the judgement in God’s hands.

The psalms are not for the spiritually faint hearted!

A review by Peter Corney of “Strange Days” by Mark Sayers. (With a brief essay on the question of hope and the future)

Mark Sayers recent book ‘Strange Days’ (published by Moody 2017) is a very insightful and readable book and I thoroughly recommend it to thoughtful readers. He joins a lot of dots both political and cultural about our troubled times. It also points a way forward for those attempting to live a faithful Christian discipleship in today’s world.

The following comments take an in depth view of chapter four ‘Civilisations striving’ in which Mark attempts to answer the question ‘why in the West are we so anxious today?’ It’s a very relevant question when you realise that in spite of all our prosperity one in four young Australians currently suffer from some serious form of mental ill health from severe anxiety to depression and self harm.(These are the figures quoted by Dr Michael Carr Greg one of our leading experts on adolescent and young adult mental health. The figures are borne out by all the major surveys conducted over recent years.)

Chapter four sees 1989 as key date in recent history. Prior to 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union the world was dominated by the Cold War between the democratic/ liberal West and Soviet Russia. The West lived in fear of the spread of Communism and the ever present anxiety of a possible nuclear catastrophe triggered by a conflict between the two power blocks.

1989 is when the dismantling of the Berlin wall took place and so became a symbol of the collapse of the Soviet state and the failed utopian Marxist vision and the end of the Cold War.

With the end of the binary conflict between East and West it seemed that a new more positive international era was possible:

• The EU was developing – a symbol of growing nation state co-operation.
• Marxism was defeated as much by free market liberal Western capitalism as by weapons, and China another communist state was opening up and also embracing a form of the Western economic model.
• History seemed to be at one of its turning points and Francis Fukuyama wrote his book entitled ‘The End of History’, by which he meant we could now leave behind the struggle and chaos of the 20^th C (WW 1 &2, The Great Depression and The Cold War) and embrace a new era of peace, globalism, prosperity and multiculturalism. There was a new optimism.

Mark makes the point that this optimism was a revival of an old one that has been part of the Western dream ever since The Enlightenment in the 18^th C. The Enlightenment had many very important ideas for the Western mind, but two are very relevant to this discussion:

1. With the advances in science and knowledge we believed that we could bring in a brighter and better human future.
2. There was a growing confidence in human perfectibility, what we could call Optimistic Humanism. But along with this went a playing down, and in many cases a rejection of the Christian doctrine of the fallen and imperfect nature of humans.

At the end of the 19^th C there was a great confidence that with universal education, better social conditions, prosperity, better health, with our new psychological knowledge and with better prisons and mental health institutions, etc.  we could work our way to Utopia. This was also accompanied by dreams of a new international order of rules of co-operation and peace.

But this was all shattered and destroyed in the blood and carnage of WW1. This was followed in the 1920’s by the financial crash and the Great Depression and then the rise of fascism in Germany, Spain and Italy, WW2 and the Jewish holocaust. The Marxist dream ended in the totalitarian nightmare of Soviet Russia, the Gulags and the deaths and of millions of people and the beginning of The Cold War.

Now the events of 1989 seemed to offer a new start a renewal of the suppressed Western dream of the Enlightenment. It seemed progress was possible once more politically, morally and materially. Our technological advances were racing ahead, the internet and the W W Web was evolving with its immense connecting possibilities. The EU progressed, multiculturalism, economic globalism, ‘the global village’ emerged and ‘one world’ seemed possible again. The development of human rights and individual freedom advanced. From 1989 a new generation of young people were educated in this hope over nearly 30 years.

In 2008, 19 years after 1989, Barak Obama was campaigning for the presidency of the USA with the theme of ‘HOPE.’ As part of his campaign in July he went to Germany and stood in the symbolic city of Berlin where the wall had stood. Standing near the Brandenburg Gate he made a speech to a huge crowd in which he said “This is the moment to secure the peace of the world without nuclear weapons……..this is the moment we must come together to save the planet…..the walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls that must come down.”   He was elected on Nov 4^th the same year. The Obama presidency may be seen as the pinnacle, or the last gasp, of the new popular hope and optimism before the chaos that was descending upon us again gathered its present momentum!

Paul Keating in a recent article in The Australian (Sept 23/24) makes the point that American administrations from Clinton on failed to take hold of the opportunity to reshape the global order for good in the post 1989 period and Obamas rhetoric was unfortunately better than his achievements. Keating says “There was no coherent American strategic plan for the post- Cold War world. It was the biggest opportunity lost”.

And so the chaos emerges again – The following are some key events that I have selected to Show how it has emerged since 1989.

1991 The Gulf war, Iraq invades Kuwait and the US and allies defend Kuwait. The instability of the Middle East begins to gather a new momentum. (Note: From 1980-88 Iraq and Iran had been involved in an extended conflict that cost over one and a quarter million lives.)

1999 ISIS is founded – an apocalyptic and more extreme version of Al Qaeda founded in 1988. It becomes a magnet for Islamic fundamentalist frustration and anger with the Wests domination of Islamic countries and Islam’s dream of a world- wide Caliphate or rule.

1991-99 With the break- up of Yugoslavia the historic tensions between the Balkan states breaks out in a major conflict in which serious war crimes and genocide take place and threatens Europe’s security.

1999 Putin the ex KGB Colonel becomes Russian PM and begins to re assert Russian power again in Europe.

2000’s Islamic terrorism begins in the west.

2001 The US Twin Towers attacked by Islamic Terrorists (Sep 9/11)

2002 Bush’s ‘Axis of evil’ speech

2003 US invades Iraq

2007-8 The Global Financial Crisis. Discrepancy in wealth distribution accelerates in West.

2008  Russia invades Georgia and claims territory – extended conflict ensues.

2011 In may Osama Bin Ladin killed by US special forces in Pakistan.

2011 The Arab Spring blossoms – a desire for democracy but is generally suppressed except in Tunisia.

2011 The Syrian civil war begins and the attempt to oust President Assad.

2013 K. Rudd “Climate change is the great moral, environmental and economic challenge of our time”

2014 Islamic Terrorism escalates in Europe.

2014 The Syrian conflict escalates triggering massive people displacement.

2014-5 Refugee/ displaced persons crisis reaches critical stage with massive people movement, the largest since WW2, the UN est. is 59.5 million. (Currently the figure is now est. at 65.6 Mill.)

2015 – 1 million refugees flood into Europe

2014 Part of Ukraine invaded by Russia. Civil passenger jet downed over Ukraine by Russian missile. Echoes of the Cold War re-emerge!

2015 Paris Climate Change Conf. Emissions targets are now urgent.

2016 Brexit . Right wing and Nationalist parties gain momentum in EU

2017 Trump elected. Obamas dreams unravel!

2017 N Korea threatens nuclear attacks. Echoes of 1950-53 Korean War and nuclear fears.

HERE WE GO AGAIN, BACK TO CHAOS!

Mark expresses the disappointment that underlies our anxiety about all this with a graphic image at the end of chapter four. The reason we feel as anxious as we do is that we don’t see what we expected. We came running in to the new world with arms raised like a boxer waiting for flowers to flood the ring. But as the darkness swirls around us, our posture shifts. Our arms slouch in confusion, as if to ask, “What is this?” Expect Utopia and dystopia is jarring.

He quotes Robert kagan the US Journalist and cultural critic who tells us that our hopes were a mirage and reminds us what the real world is really like. The world has not been transformed. In most places, the nation- state remains as strong as ever, and so too, the national ambitions, the competitions among nations that have shaped history. And so we return to the Enlightenment dream and once again have to face the facts that it remains an overoptimistic one based on an overoptimistic view of human nature.

Like in a movie this is the background music to our times. No wonder we are anxious! Speaking of movies it seems prescient that this year the much anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 iconic futuristic film ‘Blade Runner’ has just been released this October in Australia. The sequel “blade Runner 2049” is set in a time 35 years on from the original setting. The visual effects are stunning but bleak. The director Denis Villeneuve says, It’s not a bright future. It’s a very dystopic vision. I hope what we depict won’t happen.  So do we, but it may just crank up our anxiety a bit more!

A brief essay

The following is a brief essay by Peter Corney in response to the questions  all this raises about hope and the future and whether our anxiety is well founded?  Does this mean history just keeps repeating itself? Is there no hope? What is the Christian response to this? One way of answering this is to contrast Secular and Christian Humanism and their different hopes.

Christian Humanism vs Secular Humanism and a basis for hope.

If the Enlightenment view of Optimistic Humanism is too optimistic and flawed by blindness to human imperfection and our fallen natures, what is the Christian vision of our human potential for good and progress and how does it work in this imperfect and fallen world?

Three key ideas in a Christian Humanism:

1. We are made in God’s image, his character is stamped on our hearts, but we are also fallen.
2. So we are capable of great good in both social and moral progress, but also great selfishness and evil and the misuse of power.
3. Christian humanism is both idealistic and realistic.

• Idealistic: It is hopeful it says we can make substantial progress in human society but we are not utopian. Our model is the values of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Jesus says in the Lord’s prayer “ when you pray say; “Our Father…..May Your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. The prayer seems to assume both a present and future dimension to the Kingdom.
• Realistic: But our Christian idealism and actions also need the moral guidance and corrections of Gods laws and Jesus’ teachings to restrain our weaknesses and fallen natures. Western culture has reflected these and introduced them into our laws and social norms and institutions over 1,000years of our history. Remember that institutions like the UN, the Charter of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice were developed primarily by Western leaders who were either convinced Christians or strongly influenced by Christian values. (People like Dag Hammarskjold the first UN general secretary, Jacques Maritain the French Catholic philosopher and humanist, Charles Malik the Lebanese Orthodox Christian Philosopher, theologian and diplomat, and Eleanor Roosevelt the wife of the US president. Malik followed E. Roosevelt as the Chair of the UN Human Rights commission and as President of the UN General Assembly.) We also need the Gospel to transform our fallen natures. PT Forsyth put it this way, “Public liberty rests on inward freedom; and the cross alone gives moral freedom and moral independence.”

But despite our best efforts the NT tells us that the Kingdom of God will never be completely realized by us now and awaits God’s final intervention in the process of his plan of salvation in the renewal of all things in the new creation. (Rom 8:18-25) Till then we live in a tension between the powers and values of the Kingdom of God whose fulfilment is coming towards us and the powers and values of the Kingdoms of this world that are passing away. The balance between these powers will ebb and flow till ‘the new creation’. Sometimes it will ebb and flow because of Christian cultural success or failure, sometimes because the fallen worldly powers prevail and sometimes for reasons hidden from us by God.

The Churches role and the individual Christian’s role now is to live out the values of the Kingdom in our Christian communities  and families and act as ‘salt and light’ in our social, economic and political communities, and at the same time evangelise so more people will embrace the kingdom of God and its values.

Peter Corney Sept 2017

“Assertive self-interest and social decay” by Peter Corney
Why an unrealistic view of human nature undermines democracy and human flourishing.

“Never underestimate the power of self-interest.” Paul Keating

In 1944 not long before the Allies final victory over German fascism and the demonic forces unleashed by the Nazis in WW2 the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote his memorable book “The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness”. It is a spirited defence of democracy and a reminder of its dependence on an honest and realistic view of human nature. This view Niebuhr maintained was underpinned by the Christian understanding of reality and its view of human nature. In his introduction he says that the political philosophy on which his defence of democracy rests is “informed by the belief that a Christian view of human nature is more adequate for the development of a democratic society than either the optimism with which democracy has become historically associated or the moral cynicism which leads to the abuse of power and which inclines human communities to tyrannical strategies for solutions to situations of social decay.” The tyrannical strategies he had in mind of course were those of Nazi fascism and Soviet communism.
Writing as he was at the time of the unfolding knowledge of the scale of the Jewish holocaust and the human catastrophe that had taken place in Europe his warnings cannot be taken too seriously by us now. His warning is never to underestimate “the power of human self-interest, both individual and collective in modern society” He says that “evil is always the assertion of some self-interest without regard to the whole”; by the whole he means the common good, including the wider international community of humanity as well as the individual nation state.
Niebuhr is concerned that Western liberal democrats and secular idealists have too superficial, sentimental and optimistic view of human nature. It does not account for the potency of individual freedom for both creative initiative and destructive self-interest. That is why freedom needs a frame-work of order and objective values that transcend the individual. It is why moral relativism is in the end corrosive to society and democracy. It is why the Post Modern emphasis on the rejection of absolutes and their substitute with the autonomous authority of the individual’s perspective unmodified by any transcendent set of values and meaning, will lead to a particularly destructive form of self-interest.
It is sadly ironic that what at first may be seen as a way to self-fulfilment turns out in the end to be self-destructive. For, as Niebuhr points out, that for true and full human flourishing the individual needs not only personal freedom but also community, communal responsibility and obligation, because he is by nature social. He cannot fulfil his life within himself, but only in responsible and mutual relations with his fellows, “The individual cannot be a true self in isolation”
Niebuhr’s views are very relevant to our current situation in Western culture where the quest for individual freedom has reached an extreme and destructive hyper individualism. Anne Mann in her recent book “The Life of I” has described it as a form of social narcissism. Personal freedom has been redefined, having broken loose from its Judeo/Christian influences where it was understood as a freedom from our tendency to a dominating self-interest so that we might be free for the service of God and others, “love God and love your neighbour” . It is now about the unrestricted freedom of my will to choose whatever I decide. It has become what Friedrich Nietzsche that influential prophet
of unrestrained freedom of the will predicted and championed – “the triumph of the will.” (For an insight into Nietzsche’s disturbing ideas and their tragic logic about human nature once the Christian faith is rejected, see the quotation in the reference notes below. )
A major problem with the current view of personal freedom is that it leaves people trapped in their own limited interior world of subjective feelings, impressions and limited perspectives, a world that is frequently disturbed and dysfunctional. For adolescents and young adults in particular they are left without any larger and more objective framework of meaning with which to make sense of their questions and to navigate a very confusing world. Coupled with prosperity and consumerism and the growth of a culture of entitlement and exaggerated individualism they are set upon a journey that will lead them into a life style of destructive self- interest. Remember Niebuhr’s penetrating insight that “evil is always some assertion of self- interest without regard to the whole.”
Nietzsche in “The Gay Science” has a very arresting image in which he describes what will happen when Western culture leaves the stability of its Christian heritage and moral framework. (It is of course a result he approved of, his whole intellectual energy was devoted to overcoming that heritage and what he believed was its repressive hold on the Western intellect and spirit!) He says it will be like leaving the stability of the land and launching out onto the restless uncertain sea. “We have left the land and embarked….we have burned our bridges behind us – indeed we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us….Woe then when you feel homesick for the land….there is no longer any land”. His prediction is a devastatingly accurate description of 21st C Western culture.
Through Existentialism and Post Modernism Nietzsche’s ideas have filtered down to influence a new generation of Western intellectuals who, having driven out transcendent values and Christian faith, have succeeded in contributing to the creation of a spiritual, moral and cultural desert in Western culture. With its old moral energy fading, it is now focussed almost solely on the creation of material wealth but in increasingly unequal distribution. The Wests moral confusion, its growing social and relational instability and restless uncertainty about its ultimate purpose is fast approaching Nietzsche’s graphic image and with it comes a crisis, a storm that will sink individual flourishing and endanger even democracy itself.

Peter Corney aphantom@ihug.com.au
(For a more detailed treatment of some of the themes in this essay see “The death of the Contest of ideas” on the Website/blog )

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