Being rooted is perhaps the most important and the least understood need of the human soul. (Simone Weil, L’enracinement)
The West has arrived at an impasse, which may be summarized by a simple question – how is it to exist? For many decades, the ritual of sparagmos has been enacted, a relentless tearing apart of the living body itself.
This sundering is deemed urgent and necessary by present-day Bacchants who, by all thyrsi available (legislative, educational, cultural), busy themselves with destroying Western religion, ideas, history, culture and morality, all of which are despised as “oppressive,” or “regressive.” The rallying cry is, “Progress!” and, of course, “Vae victis!”
Leading the thiasus are “theorists,” such as, Will Kymlicka, who act as maenads that shout out utopic oracles and therefore are much fawned upon by the political elite and various ivory-tower types. Before long, these exclamations become government policy – so that a nation may be made “better” than what its particular history actually created.
The appetite for perpetual social engineering is deep indeed.
the West can no longer say why it should continue to exist
And what do these builders of brave-new worlds envision? A state without history, without culture, without memory – a rootless people, intent on cultivating intensely private worlds wherein they may find that which is lacking in public space.
But why must this be done? Why this self-destruction? Why is the root of the West deemed noxious?
A gallimaufry of explanations bestir themselves to swirl into some sort of answer. Just take your pick:
- A kleptocratic globalist elite seeks to strip away the wealth of nations so that it may reign supreme in a new world order. The desire to be the “king of the world” is ancient and potent.
- A withered Marxism holds sway over the educational and cultural industries, wherewith students and citizens are trained and conditioned to be rootless and nationless, for the benefit of ideologues.
- A feminized culture that cannot think past modes of nurturing, so there are only winners, never any losers – all goaded by a feminism that is openly allied with radical Islam.
- A militant secularism hell-bent on destroying all vestiges of Christianity to usher in a new age.
- A frenzied technocracy which ceaselessly designs highly complex gadgets to entertain and divert simpler and simpler minds, thus ensuring itself of limitless growth. This machine MAKES fascists, because an unthinking population is the most compliant.
- A heady self-deification (selfism) which is packaged as “freedom” or “rights,” and which therefore cannot separate hedonism from responsibility.
- Large geopolitical players who are eager to flex muscle and use cash to recruit pliant henchmen (i.e., politicians) to make geographical room for all their ambitions.
There are no moderates, sides must be chosen.
Torn asunder by such assaults, the West can no longer say why it should continue to exist. Its root, its meaning used to be Christianity, where personal morality and public virtue converged to fashion a civilization that others envied.
an unthinking population is the most compliant
Western reality now stands emptied of meaning – and thus virtual reality reigns supreme, where individuals are “free” to cut-and-paste whatever meaning their whims invoke, for they have been taught to believe that reality is fluid and choice is king – “life is what you make it.”
This leaves only two real possibilities for the West.
Either it dies off and disappears and lets others take over (needless to say, the cultures of these others do not have a good track record when it comes to building societies that are the envy of the world).
Or, sparagmos can lead to resurrection, a renaissance, where the culture of the West may be recovered – and its root (Christianity) may again be nurtured.
How is this to be done?
Certainly not through politics, which has decayed into a sport, where team loyalty pits one citizen against another, and winning by all means is key. Thus, politicians by nature have evolved into creatures without vision, who exist solely to have a go at the levers of power so they can then retire with burgeoning bank-accounts (see above re: geopolitical players).
Certainly not through education which long ago abandoned truth and is now nothing more than a warehousing facility for the young (extended daycare centers) in the grand debacle that is the state trying to raise people’s children. Thus, a degree now means knowing which correct beliefs to spout, and which correct political posture to espouse. Merit and wisdom were the first casualties.
Certainly not by way of the family which has been effectively dismantled (hence the mindless “pronoun wars”), where parents are “friends,” who exist solely to please their progeny; and as the kids grow older, the greater grows the fear of these parents, lest they be unfriended.
And certainly not through churches (especially the mainline Protestant kind), which belong in the thiasus, for they eagerly negotiated away all their core doctrines – and now stand for nothing at all. In the process, these churches transformed their flock into heathenish Bacchants, lest they be deemed “regressive” in the eyes of the world. The Founder of the church himself made this pertinent observation – you cannot serve two masters. The churches have chosen which side their bread is buttered on.
In other words, institutions of any kind are incapable of saving the West from itself because these institutions are themselves the enablers of its destruction – annihilation is never chaotic; it is systematic, meticulous and thorough, and always initiated and sustained by well-run institutions.
annihilation is never chaotic; it is systematic, meticulous and thorough
This leaves only one avenue – the piecemeal winning of minds by valiant men and women who must recoup those good ideas which created the West (Christianity at all costs).
But such work is treacherously slow, for it involves the process of conversion – where bad ideas must be replaced with good ideas. And this can only be done one bad idea at a time, one possessed soul at a time, one confused brain at a time.
How can life be good without good ideas?
And there is no guarantee of success, since the destruction by the Bacchants is so total and there may not be any living root left to nurture into new growth. Perhaps the seed must be planted anew.
And yet, even if one mind is converted, the conversion of many more becomes possible, and Western civilization may yet hope to sprout into the good sunlight of truth.
But let us not be fooled. There are many dark days ahead and much failure; the proverbial, “Blood, sweat and tears.”
We shall first have to witness the self-desired destruction of Western civilization. And then, like busy tillers and sowers, we must clear away the rubble, lay out the vineyard and husband what remains of the vines – or plant new ones.
Perhaps the time truly has come for the West to die, a time for the dead wood to be lopped off and burned – so its civilization may be planted in truer, richer soil. Without death, there can be no resurrection.
To paraphrase a famous admonition – what has it profited the West, that it gained the whole world and yet lost its soul?