What’s Wrong with the World

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Raindrops on Roses--Part II

The lists of favorite things from you, gentle and gentlemanly readers, have been so excellent that I'm almost hesitant to move on to Part II. This is especially true because your approach to the things you list is so obviously free of wrong attitudes that Part II is inapplicable. And please don't feel that you must now abandon that thread for this one.

But here goes:

The question before us is this: If there are indeed things valuable in themselves, irrespective of any utilitarian value they may or may not have, how is it possible that a love of them and a devotion to them can be corrupting?

There are, unfortunately, all too many answers. One answer is that such a love can be corrupting when we fail to recognize a scale or hierarchy of values and are reckless of the ways in which the promotion of the valuable thing in question may harm other valuable things. An obvious example here is sex. Readers of other posts of mine know that I'm fond of paraphrasing a saying by Denis de Rougemont, cited by C.S. Lewis, "When Eros is made a god, he becomes a devil." The human wreckage of the sexual revolution speaks for itself of the dangers of idolizing one good at the expense of others. The fact that an act or an object is beautiful and wonderful in an intrinsic and non-utilitarian way never means that it is the most important thing or that it should be treated as the most important thing in life, and to do so risks unguessable harm, ultimately and paradoxically, to the beautiful thing itself.

Another and closely related answer is that such a love can be corrupting when we believe that the service of the valuable thing justifies us in doing acts we would normally regard as wrong. So, for example, eco-terrorism is wrong even if some animal species is truly beautiful and valuable.

A danger less drastic in its effects but perhaps more likely to fall upon the enthusiast for some valuable thing or activity is the temptation to theorize too much about the thing, to try to make one's enthusiasm for it part of some larger "movement," to do too much talking and moralizing. This danger is particularly prevalent in our blogospheric age of information, when everyone is tempted to theorize about everything. It isn't enough to love, say, good cooking and to engage in it and trade recipes. One has to make "____-food-ism" part of one's brand of conservatism and to write about how it fits into a political worldview. But as I said in the first post, it is the apolitical and focused nature of an enthusiasm for a valuable thing that is part of its charm, its glory, and its restfulness. While (to return to the earlier example) someone like Podhajsky wrote a great deal about his own ideas of dressage and the training of the young horse, about why traditional dressage is wonderful and beautiful and important, what you didn't find him doing (as far as I know) was writing about how his ideas on dressage fit into his large-scale world-view or political agenda and calling upon those who shared those politics to join him in advocating traditional dressage. He was too busy with the thing itself.

A less obvious form of potential corruption, because it lies on a continuum with an attitude that is not wrong, is the demand that others devote themselves to the same good and important thing to which one has devoted oneself. The list of intrinsically valuable things, if not infinitely long, is huge, especially if one differentiates the "things" at a fine-grained level. While one person may be captured by the some particular form of music, by architecture, or by the traditional liturgy, and may even rightly take it to be his own vocation to promote or preserve that thing, it does not follow that others have the same vocation.This much is obvious, and may seem trivial.

Moreover, it is obviously not wrong to (for example) teach about the beauty of that thing and even in some contexts to try to raise money for organizations that promote it or to ask for help. The Lippizzaners would never have been preserved for Austria if Podhajsky hadn't asked General Patton for help to support them and to return the mares from Czechoslovakia. So advocacy is not wrong. And an interesting question arises: Is not the best advocate the man consumed, the man who really does think that everyone else ought to see things as he does and ought to help? Someone with a better sense of perspective, with more balance and detachment, someone who says, "Well, I know that other people have a lot of other things on their minds, and I can't expect them to be as het up about this as I am" is unlikely to be able to drum up the support needed--in this all-too-pragmatic world--for the causes he cares about. And this is the more true when we are talking not about stopping manifest evils (e.g., abortion, sex trafficking) but rather about positively supporting some good that, in the final analysis, man could live without.

So I am quite sympathetic to the man who focuses on a single cause, especially when it's a cause I personally happen to be able to see the value of. (I get annoyed, of course, with those who are very passionate for causes I care little about.) But I cannot help thinking that he is in danger, regardless of the goodness of the thing. No doubt Podhajsky was in this danger, and no doubt somebody, sometime, said to him, "There's more to life than horses"--which he may have hotly denied. And that danger, to return to the first point above, is precisely to make the thing an idol. A sense of balance and perspective is, in the end, part of seeing things aright.

So let us love the good, the true, and the beautiful. And let us devote ourselves to them with a focused mind, a passionate heart, and, finally, with a clear eye. For the grace to see things in their proper order is one of the things valuable in itself, and one of the greatest of them all.

Comments (17)

Great piece, Lydia.

Speaking from my own (sad) experience, "the temptation to theorize too much about the thing" stems from a will to order all desires to totality - because it is when a desire is cut off from the totality of human needs that it becomes tyranical. The error here is that I presume that my measure or ideas (ideology) can supply this order and unity, when in fact it is beyond me.

The adventure of life is to freely pursue particular true, good, and beautiful things - while at the same time asking Christ to bring these wanderings into the "path of peace." As Frodo sang: "Until it joins some larger way / Where many paths and errands meet. / And whither then? I cannot say."

Poor Bill is probably gritting his teeth at all this Tolkien reference and quotation.

Very well said. I doubt that I could add much to the discussion, but for something that I often reflect on for my sake...

The beauty of the world is so very inspiring. Often I have found myself on a mountaintop in awe, enraptured in music or rejoicing with my family. But as I have grown older, the accompanying sadness to every worldly joy has become increasingly apparent. All things end. If science could prevent death itself, one day the earth will be engulfed and creation will crumble. Futility is ultimately the order of the universe, and is the end for all who hope in the material good, true and beautiful.

Yes, I used to get rather annoyed at the slightest hint of asceticism in anything I read. Having been raised fundamentalist Baptist, I went (of course) through that stage in the late teens and early twenties when I thought it very intellectual to disdain the song "Turn your eyes upon Jesus" because it contained the phrase "and the things of earth will grow strangely dim." "Hmmph!" I thought, "Fundamentalist manicheeanism rides again." Now, it's a funny thing. I play that song all the time.

And yet, if anything, I love the things of earth more than ever. It's hard to understand, but I think it's something Lewis understood very well, and wrote about often, having been something of an idolater of beauty and a proto-aesthete in his heathen youth.

I knew I'd passed through a change in attitude some years ago when I had been rather ill and had had some surgery to my hand. I'd been in bed for a while in a lot of pain and then had waited through what seemed a slow recovery. That fall I was finally better and went out in November for the first walk after recovering. The world was just amazingly beautiful. If you've been stuck inside feeling sorry for yourself for a few weeks, you'll know what I mean. Yet, finally, it made sense to let it all go. Everything was a gift, not a right.

I take great comfort in the fact that God Himself declared the world good. How much more when Christ returns in glory to perfect that goodness!

A danger less drastic in its effects but perhaps more likely to fall upon the enthusiast for some valuable thing or activity is the temptation to theorize too much about the thing, to try to make one's enthusiasm for it part of some larger "movement," to do too much talking and moralizing.

Al Gore.

But as I have grown older, the accompanying sadness to every worldly joy has become increasingly apparent.

This hits home.

how is it possible that a love of them and a devotion to them can be corrupting?

Easy. For I know that I love certain things of this world more than I love God. At least it seems so. The kind of persistent and abiding love due Him gets displaced by love of others. In my daughters, for example, I sometimes think I see all of the "good, the true and the beautiful" that one man can bear. Of course, they'd have none of it if not for His blessings, so thoughts of God nag at the back of one's mind, like an obligation one keeps putting off to another day. But I fear to love Him more, that it might mean loving them less. There have been moments, fleeting and isolated by stretches of time, but... I can say with conviction that I believe, but love is hard. As one of O'Connor's characters said, "Oncet in a while I would think it was coming to me, but it never come."

While I'm not altogether sure in Podhajsky's case, WW ll being a chaotic assault on sensibility,I would think that the problem of detachment is central to the other worldly esthete. There is a denial of what he considers the sordid or commonplace, a refusal to view life and the world at large, trouble or conflict, the unseemly are not allowed to spoil his visions or occupy much if any of his attention.

An illustration of this may be made by comparing Wilde and Burke. Don't gag!

Wilde was blissfully unaware of the precipice towards which he was heading. Excellent food, constant dining, witty repartee, theater, and of course Bosie Douglas, were the stuff of his life.

There were problems at home and abroad, and problems looming large in Wilde's life, but he refused to see them.

For Burke the connection between the beautiful and the noble often merged with the affairs of the world. His comments on the French revolution, his recall of Marie Antoinette, his view of the Crown as symbolic not only of order but also of grace, are examples of the merging of refinement and statecraft.

The whole man casts his eye on the world, absorbing as much, good and bad, as he can. Through this the beautiful is only enhanced while wisdom is encouraged.

I don't think it's so much that things of earth are growing strangely dim.

It's that I am growing strangely dim. The things themselves are fresh to the fresh.

What Bill says about loving beloved people more than one loves God opens a whole topic on which I've never felt I had things clearly understood, even intellectually. I cannot, myself, come up with a scenario in which I can imagine that being put to the test where I would believe I was, in fact, obligated to _demonstrate_ that I loved God more than my child or spouse. For example, if someone told me that I was obligated to up and leave them and go be a missionary to some far-away land, I'd say that had to be a false statement about God's will, because obviously it would be _wrong_ to desert my family in that way. I have no idea what sort of evidence Abraham had, but if I started hearing a voice telling me to put my daughter on an altar and stab her, I'd get medical help. And so forth.

So it ends up being sort of subjective: "Do I love God more than I love my child/husband?" Um, probably not, but what does that concretely mean, either way? David Livingstone left his wife Mary (so I've read) to end up in the poor house back home while he went off to evangelize and explore Africa. Does that make him a hero for loving God more than he loved Mary? Not in my book.

Ed the Roman, what you say about yourself growing strangely dim is interesting. Of course as we get older we become less able to take in the beauty around us even of the ordinary and non-heavenly physical world. We (at least I) just get tired. One of the best things in Lewis's _Great Divorce_ is the notion that the ghosts have to "become real" so that they can are strong enough to endure the physical reality and goodness of heaven. I take it that this is part of what the Apostle Paul means when he says that (ordinary) flesh and blood cannot inherit eternal life.

"I have no idea what sort of evidence Abraham had"

None. It was a 'teleological suspension of the ethical'. Kierkegaard solved that long ago. Like, duh, that's SO nineteenth century.

Livingstone was regretful later on in life. He said 'I have but one regret and that is that I did not feel it my duty to play with my children as much as to teach... I worked very hard at that and was tired out at night. Now I have none to play with.'

"None. It was a 'teleological suspension of the ethical'. Kierkegaard solved that long ago. Like, duh, that's SO nineteenth century."

Well, thanks. Now that that's cleared up, I never need to think about the question myself again. Especially since the concept of a "teleological suspension of the ethical" is so crisp, clear, and helpful.

Something along the lines of 'God, being all powerful and all knowing, can suspend and contradict His own moral laws'. The Abraham story throws a nice little wild card into the annals of Christendom... god is rational, with a 'but'.

I cannot, myself, come up with a scenario in which...I would believe I was, in fact, obligated to _demonstrate_ that I loved God more than my child or spouse.

Somewhat different from your example is Thomas More's, who, by the swearing of an oath, might have rejoined his family and that daughter he loved so well. He didn't, though I don't know what agonies he endured on the way. It would have been an agony for me.

As for Abraham, I think that if God were speaking to you He'd make sure you knew it.

Of course as we get older we become less able to take in the beauty around us even of the ordinary and non-heavenly physical world. Maybe. But as the time bears down when it will all be taken away, I feel that I'm trying harder than when I was young, a sort of grasping at the world before it slips from view. Maybe we don't take in as much, but make more of what we do. And I agree that we do get tired. Good thing, too, or we'd never go gently, etc.

William Luse writes,

But I fear to love Him more, that it might mean loving them less.

Not to worry, these loves don't steal from each other; they're not the same kind if they do. When I read this, it only encouraged me to love them both, my children and my God, more. As somebody once said,

A perfect love casts out fear.

Nice, KW. I'll work on it.

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