Reader Durandel comments on yesterday’s post:
I’ve said for years the West is now entirely made up of infantilized generations. Civilization is built on the back of men. What are we to build with generations of perpetual 14 year olds?
The authoritarian who shows up to whip these kids into shape is very likely going to be communist, atheist, and nihilistic. These people will get what they desire good and hard. I just feel bad for my descendants. And I feel bad for my ancestors too. Just a great civilization and culture, and now we go the way of Numenor but worse, we self inflicted our ruin.
I don’t know what to do with the kids on the culture issue. My faith I will teach and pass down, but I didn’t receive my cultural patrimony that was owed to me, and that’s because my parents didn’t receive it from their parents. And I reject modern Western culture from the time of a German nominalistic to the present, so I don’t have anywhere to take them or move them to to show them and allow the. To immerse themselves in it.
We are going to have to rebuild…but I still feel like we will go the way of Tolkien’s elves…slowly fading out, through genetic assimilation while tiny isolated groups disappear into the background.
My response:
Tolkien’s works honored two types of heroism: the zeal of the Christian knight who, though he may be overmatched by his earthly foes, fights joyfully because he knows that Christ has already secured final victory, and the stoic, honorable courage of the pagan who is entirely without hope but fights just as fiercely because it’s the right thing to do.
Read the works of 20th century Christian authors like Lewis, Tolkien himself, and even Ratzinger, and they seem more informed by the second spirit than the first. Much is made of Christians being in the world but not of the world and “fighting the long defeat”.
As much as I admire these men, I think their fatalistic attitude, most likely imparted by the World Wars, lulled a lot of people into a false sense of soft despair. It’s not a big jump from “We’re outnumbered and outgunned, but it’s our duty to fight the good fight” to “There’s nothing I can do anyway, so I’m off the hook.”
Revolutionary political movements only need 10% of the population to succeed. The Church only needs twelve men. The Apostles took on an empire that was far more ruthless and run by much more cunning people than ours. True, they didn’t live to see Rome conquered for Christ, but their heirs did.
Amid the grim spectacle of the Left’s madness, it’s easy to get caught up watching the train wreck and lose focus on what we’re fighting for.
Imagine a world where the arts and popular entertainment honor fathers and Christians.
Imagine having a functional economy where everyone from rocket scientists to unskilled laborers can find honest, fulfilling work at a living wage based on merit.
Picture cohesive local communities where intact families support one another and look out for each other’s needs without requiring the intrusion of the state.
Parents, imagine not having to worry if your son will be frivolously abandoned by his wife and reduced to penury when she robs him of his house, income, and children with the backing of the state. Imagine not fearing that your daughter will flit from one sociopathic fling to the next while using Big Brother as a surrogate father for her bastard children.
Imagine universities honestly pursuing the truth and teaching it to your children.
Imagine a world that makes sense.
We could live there tomorrow if we really wanted to. The hardest red pill to swallow is the fact that the only obstacle in our way is us.
heroic heroes you can love and disturbingly inventive and evil monsters
