Technology, the Market, and the Good

The governing realities of contemporary life are technology and the market. Increasingly, man knows himself, others, and the world as a whole principally through and in these systems.

That is, one's own self, other persons, the world as a whole, are known and defined first and foremost as technological--that is, as capable of manipulation by and subjugation to the a-rational desires and ideally disembodied willings of the self, known precisely and circularly as the unlimited locus of will and desire. "The market"--conceived of as an idealized system for the unlimited production, increase, and distribution of quantified technological power, as well as the maximally efficient application of this power to all areas of existence--is an outgrowth of the same basic idea.

In a sense, these mindsets are as old as humanity itself; and they are of course capable, to varying degrees, of being moderated and integrated into larger ethical, moral, and cosmic systems. Yet what makes our time in many ways so unique is the purity and breadth of their application to the lives of human beings.

To a very great extent, these systems are taken not merely as means, or even ends--they have, rather, precisely the same force that ideas of nature and being hold in philosophical systems. Commerce and technology are treated not merely as economic, but ontic, realities. This is partly due to a general epistomological and societal breakdown; family, community, philosophical systems, and religion have all collapsed, while technology and commerce have only grown stronger. The former seem, increasingly, distant and hard to believe in; while the power of the latter is obvious, inescapable, and, in many ways, truly defining.

The perception of contemporary man, then, is that everything good (in the most basic sense of "desirable" or "perceived as a proper object of the will") is able to be either directly manipulated or purchased. In this way, objects present themselves to our wills and our minds precisely as objects of subjugation or exchange; and the basic mode of interaction between the self and all things not itself is the assertion of technological power. Of course, inasmuch as the self itself is capable of being externalized, subjugated, and exchanged, it, too, is treated in the same way.

This process, however, is essentially incoherent and self-destructive. In asserting its technological power, the self knows the objects of will and desire only as means to these appetites; in so doing, it negates their actual existence, and truly aims, not at them, but rather at itself. Yet when the actual existence and so goodness of the objects of desire and will are negated, so too are the appetites that aim at them. In willing and desiring in this way, then, the self wills and desires its own nonexistence.

In the truth, the good can only be received; that is, grasped and known as actually existing, as it is in itself. To receive the good, then, a real assimilation of the appetites to their object must take place. The will and desires must be ordered to their object, the real good existing in itself, and not vice versa; only thus are they capable of actually attaining it.

For this to take place, the self must, in a real and proper way, submit itself to the objects of its knowledge; that is, it must come to know and will all things as existing in themselves, prior to and above their existence as objects of its own will or desire. Or rather, the two operations must in a real way become one; each object must be willed precisely in its own real and proper existence and desired in precisely the same way: that is, to use the proper philosophical term, it must be loved. Only in this way can the self come to know anything as good--that is, as a true object of the will and desires. Only thus are the will and desires actually capable of fulfillment, and man himself capable of happiness.

The Radical GKC

No modern writer or thinker has more directly impacted my life and my thinking than Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Of course, I am first and last and foremost a Catholic--and this means that I cannot and will not be subject to the narrow limits of any man's ideas, no matter how intelligent, wise, or holy. Still, it is to Chesterton that I owe, humanly speaking, this insight; for he was one of the primary human means by which the saving truths of the Gospel and the Catholic Faith were communicated to me, by the grace of God. Far from the only one--but certainly among the foremost. I call myself a Thomist--but in truth, my thinking is much Chestertonian as Scholastic. I have read a shocking amount of his shockingly large corpus, and continue to draw new spiritual and intellectual truths from it daily.

It is with this in mind, though, that I feel compelled to take a moment to lodge a protest to the use that Chesterton has been put to, and continues to be put to, in the world of modern American Christianity. The general adoption of Chesterton as a luminary of the modern American, ecumenical Christian Right has, to be sure, brought about much good--but it has also seriously deformed the public figure of the man, his thought, and his commitments. We are in great, even terrible danger of losing sight entirely of the real Chesterton--who he was, and what he stood for.

Chesterton was a famously friendly, humorous man, a man whose public enemies were also his private friends--so that, even in his lifetime, there was a general tendency to take him, as it were, as a light, rather foolish figure: a great fat man whose only message was the essential goodness of the universe and the importance of Christian tradition. This much, of course, is certainly true. The modern conservative vision of Chesterton, though, has if anything delivered a far more unforgiveable insult--turning Chesterton into a mere proponent of generic "common sense," an intellectual apologist for whatever variety of Christianity happens to suit one's fancy, a defender of the settled homes and lives of the American middle class. It was in this context that I first encountered Chesterton--and for that I am naturally grateful. Still, if this friendly, inoffensive Chesterton pleases us, it delivers an unforgiveable insult to the man himself.

Who was Chesterton? He was, from first to last, a political and social and religious radical, with enormous sympathies with revolutionaries of every sort. He was also, from first to last, a proponent of the essentially radical, revolutionary, and totalizing aspects of philosophy and religion.

Of course, the main thing that is usually forgotten about Chesterton is the simple fact that he was a journalist--and hence, first and foremost, a commentator on current events, and the social and political trends underlying them. In this, he was hardly ever anything but a rabble-rouser; a man who was not well understood by his contemporaries, not because he was too light and frivolous, but because he was too serious and direct.

The beginning of Chesterton's career as a public intellectual was the Boer War--in which Chesterton played the immensely unpopular role of radical anti-Imperialist agitator. This colonial war, fought for reasons of Imperial policy and economic interests, was immensely, indeed universally popular in England--and, for Chesterton, the object of a thoroughgoing and utterly uncompromising hatred. Chesterton first made a name for himself, not as a proponent of common sense and good fun, but as a young firebrand prone to attending Jingo rallies in order to shout taunts at their participants. His first public notoriety came from the fact that he had the nerve to oppose the British Empire at the very height of its success and universal popularity.

A brief quotation from one of poems gives his own view of this war, and its effect on his life, quite well:

"For so they conquered, and so we scattered,
When the Devil rode, and his dogs smelt Gold;
And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered,
When I was twenty and odd years old;
When the mongrel men the Market classes
Had slimy hands upon England's rod,
And sword in hand, upon Afric's passes,
Her last Republic cried to God."

In his Autobiography, Chesterton says that the Boer War was one of the turning points of his life--for when he realized he hated this war, hated it as he had never hated anything in his life, he was pushed to ask *why* he hated it, to unravel the strands of this most colonial and economic of wars, and develop further his own political and social philosophies. What he realized, gradually, is that what he hated about this war was simply what he hated about his entire society--its capitalism, its industrialism, its racialized Nationalism, its Imperialism, its expansive belief in progress, its lack of belief in God.

Already before this time, Chesterton had had his major spiritual and philosophical crisis, which resulted in his lifelong belief in the essential goodness of creation, and the constant necessity of humble, grateful appreciation of the world, oneself, and one's neighbor. Yet even this crisis was not purely individual; it was, in truth, a very direct intellectual battle with the prevailing philosophical pessimism of Schopenhauer, and a social and religious battle with the decadence of the fin de siecle. Chesterton's declarations of the goodness of things were very far from cries of placidity; they were, once again, cries of revolt. Throughout his life, indeed, Chesterton pursued his enemies on the philosophical field with as much aplomb as any Crusader.

This essential belief in the goodness of things, though, was far from a mere placid optimism--it was a belief found in battle, and founded, as Chesterton was later to say, not on the maximum of goodness, but on its purest minimum. It was also, in Chesterton's belief, the necessary precondition for any real revolution, reform, or progress. If the world was a disappointing, despairing waste, then nothing could be done but passively accept things as they were; but if God and being were, essentially, good, if man were, essentially, precious and miraculous--then this was a recipe, not for placidity, but revolution. If a precious nation were being absorbed by an Empire, it must be defended; if a precious family was being torn apart by divorce or sin, it must be saved; if a precious man were being crushed or starved by industrialism, he must be rescued. There was no time to waste.

The combination of these ideas can be seen at their purest, perhaps, in Chesterton's first novel, "The Napoleon of Notting Hill," written, by Chesterton's admission, in direct response to the events of the Boer War. This strange little parable, then, is from first to last concerned equally with the radical preciousness of existence--and an equally fiery anti-Imperialism.

A quotation from this novel--which is in most respects impossible to describe--will illustrate this well enough. In an early chapter, our main English characters encounter the exiled President of Nicarauga, whose nation has just been conquered by an assemblage of Imperalist powers (England, Germany, and America), who want to open Nicarauga to international commerce. A dialogue ensues:

" 'You need not hesitate in speaking to me,' he said. 'I am quite fully aware that the whole tendency of the world of to-day is against Nicaragua and against me. I shall not consider it any diminution of your evident courtesy if you say what you think of the misfortunes that have laid my republic in ruins.'

Barker looked immeasurably relieved and gratified.

'You are most generous, President,' he said, with some hesitation over the title, 'and I will take advantage of your generosity to express the doubts which, I must confess, we moderns have about such things as—er—the Nicaraguan independence.'

'So your sympathies are,' said Del Fuego, quite calmly, 'with the big nation which—'

'Pardon me, pardon me, President,' said Barker, warmly; 'my sympathies are with no nation. You misunderstand, I think, the modern intellect. We do not disapprove of the fire and extravagance of such commonwealths as yours only to become more extravagant on a larger scale. We do not condemn Nicaragua because we think Britain ought to be more Nicaraguan. We do not discourage small nationalities because we wish large nationalities to have all their smallness, all their uniformity of outlook, all their exaggeration of spirit. If I differ with the greatest respect from your Nicaraguan enthusiasm, it is not because a nation or ten nations were against you; it is because civilization was against you. We moderns believe in a great cosmopolitan civilization, one which shall include all the talents of all the absorbed peoples—'

'The Sẽnor will forgive me,' said the President. 'May I ask the Sẽnor how, under ordinary circumstances, he catches a wild horse?'

'I never catch a wild horse,' replied Barker, with dignity.

'Precisely,' said the other; 'and there ends your absorption of the talents. That is what I complain of your cosmopolitanism. When you say you want all peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. If the Bedouin Arab does not know how to read, some English missionary or schoolmaster must be sent to teach him to read, but no one ever says, "This schoolmaster does not know how to ride on a camel; let us pay a Bedouin to teach him." You say your civilization will include all talents. Will it? Do you really mean to say that at the moment when the Esquimaux has learnt to vote for a County Council, you will have learnt to spear a walrus? I recur to the example I gave. In Nicaragua we had a way of catching wild horses—by lassoing the fore-feet—which was supposed to be the best in South America. If you are going to include all the talents, go and do it. If not, permit me to say what I have always said, that something went from the world when Nicaragua was civilized.'

'Something, perhaps,' replied Barker, 'but that something a mere barbarian dexterity. I do not know that I could chip flints as well as a primeval man, but I know that civilization can make these knives which are better, and I trust to civilization.'

'You have good authority,' answered the Nicaraguan. 'Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilization, what there is particularly immortal about yours?' "

One of the chief morals of the novel, in fact, is precisely this anti-Imperialist and anti-Colonialist doctrine: because existence is precious, because each person and each people are precious, the mere brute dominance or absorption of many peoples by one is a shocking, revolting crime.

Of course, all this was to lead, in short order, to Chesterton's belief in Christianity--but even here (especially here!), his commitment was far from an light and easy matter. For, from first to last, Chesterton's commitment was not just to Christianity in the abstract, but to the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church. Here some clarification is in order. Chesterton did not, in fact, convert to the Catholic Church for some decades: however, even during his time as an Anglican, he considered himself, as many Anglo-Catholics do, not an Anglican, but a Catholic. Even here, though, as he was later to say, he differed substantially from even most Anglo-Catholics; for while they were and are often interested in somehow "Catholicizing" the Church of England, he was interested only in finding and belonging to the Catholic Church. When he came to believe that the Anglo-Catholics were not, in fact, Catholics, he converted to the fullness of the Faith that he had already professed.

This is a somewhat longwinded way of saying that, once again, Chesterton's commitments were far from merely conservative--they were, indeed, revolutionary. Chesterton believed in Catholicism precisely as "the one fighting form of Christianity," the Church on earth tasked with shaping and informing every aspect of society with justice and divine truth. His idea of religion was not merely private or personal, but radically public, social, and even political: "A man can no more have a private religion than he can have a private Sun and Moon."

In this, he was doubly a rebel in an anti-Catholic England where Catholics, especially Catholic converts, were still viewed with suspicion and mistrust. Far from rejecting that controversy, though, Chesterton embraced it; and in his examination of history, he came more and more to see the roots of all the evils he had opposed in the rejection, first by Protestantism, and later by secular commercialism, of the great truths of the Catholic Faith. In Catholicism, too, he found a true justification for the essential goodness and preciousness of existence--a true Internationalism without Imperialism--a social teaching capable of giving true justice to the nations--and most importantly, of course, humility, repentance, the forgiveness of sins, and the reality of divine love.

All of this was, of course, to fundamentally shape his work over the course of his life--first and foremost, of course, his journalistic work, commentating, day in and day out, on the events of his time, engaging in public controversy, giving lectures, and fighting day in and day out for what he held to be the truth.

In this regard, mention should be made of what was perhaps the great work of his life, which defined and indeed consumed its last decades, taking up most of his time and enormous amounts of his own money: the founding and running of his own weekly paper, GK's Weekly, and the concurrent founding and promotion of the Distributist League. These were closely allied tasks.

For this, too, was one of the main things for which Chesterton, at every stage of his life, stood: the complete destruction and dissolution of industrial capitalism. At first, this took the form of the rather conventional Fabian socialism of his time--but rapidly, under the influence of his friend Hilaire Belloc, Pope Leo XIII, and the great Father Vincent McNabb, this anti-capitalism was sharpened and defined into the positive cause of Distributism. This was, certainly, a radical enough cause: the massive division and redistribution of the means of production from the rich to the masses. It was this, more than anything else, that consumed his energies in his last years.

As for the industrial capitalist order itself, Chesterton had nothing but contempt for it--in his view, it was was chiefly responsible for the godless Imperialism of his lifetime, the bitter oppression of the poor by the rich, the growth of promiscuity and sexual immorality, and the destruction of the chief institution of human society: the family. In one of his weekly columns, he bitterly complained that even the godless tyranny of Soviet Communism seemed preferable, for him, to slowly watching human society dissolved and corrupted by the triumphant forces of unbridled greed, lust, and pride.

When Naziism arrived on the scene, in the last years of his life, Chesterton saw it as the culmination of all that he had come to hate in his lifetime, and in his own society: the racial Imperialism of the Boer Wars, the anti-Catholicism of No Popery, the regimentation and impersonality of industrial society. In Nazi racism, especially, Chesterton saw a truly spiritual threat: racism was nothing other than the deification of pride, the complete rejection of the humble gratitude for life that he had come to believe in as a young man. Here there was no room for compromise: war with the Nazis, he argued again and again, was simply an inevitability. This was indeed to come, though he was not to be alive to see it.

For most of his life, then, Chesterton was something of a rejected prophet; his beliefs and causes regarded as backwards trifles, even if he himself was still appreciated as a humorous and beloved character of public life.

When Chesterton died, in 1936, the world was very far from embracing his ideals or his commitments; nor is it now. Still, his Distributism did find many converts in his day, including, most notably, the great and saintly Dorothy Day. In the end, these ideas, and those of the Papal Social Teaching on which they were based, did play an important role in shaping the post-War world. Of course, this world was to be shaped even more by the economic and cultural dominance of America--and here, Chesterton was far less enthusiastic. In his last years, seeing this dominance start to shape itself, Chesterton commented that, while he still despised all Imperialism, he certainly preferred an Imperialism like that of England's, founded on courage in arms, to an Imperialism such as America's, founded on economic dominance of the world.

Still, in the end, Chesterton was not a cause, but a man; and what he believed in, most of all, was not his own ideas or causes, but rather the Catholic Church herself. When he died, it was with the same faith in the essential goodness of God, and the preciousness of the world, that he had had from the beginning; a faith supported, and increased beyond all measure, by the Cross of Christ.

Among his last words were the repeated injunction: "The matter is now clear; it is between light and darkness, and everyone must choose his side." This, more than anything else, is what Chesterton stood for; and this is very far from easy comfort.

All of this is, of course, only a tiny sliver of the thought of a great man whose mind was infinitely larger than his body. It does, though, pick out in relief details that are often, in our day and age, overlooked and forgotten.

The Internet and Its Discontents

One of the more interesting things about the Internet is that, being a totally abstract plane composed of symbols, images, and other abstractions, it allows ideas, their consequences, and their effects on people and society to be seen quite clearly.

Technology as such is nothing other the reification and externalization of the human will, which itself acts based on the ideas contained in the human mind. Technology, then, always creates systems that are to some extent rational in nature; and as such these systems necessarily shape all those who, as rational beings, make use of them or exist in the environments they create.

The Internet takes this basic principle to a heretofore unseen level. The digital frameworks into which people pour themselves are human artifacts composed of abstractions. The digital identities into which people invest themselves are human artifacts composed of images, symbols, and abstractions. There are no concrete natural substances at all on the Internet; only universalized abstractions. The man who interacts with the Internet takes his place in a vast system of ideas--and he cannot help but be shaped by it.

Most of the characteristic social and political realities of our historical moment are the direct result of the Internet as a shaper of society and personality alike. The identities and frameworks and images and ideas that people imbibe and are shaped by on the Internet have come to profoundly affect and even define them--and so increasingly, whenever people act in the political and social spheres, they act out of those identities and based on these ideas and images.

The modern 'alt-right' is only the most obviously pathological form of this phenomenon; it is far from the only one.

This is not, of course, in itself a negative thing. Human beings are rational creatures, and abstractions and systems are to an extent necessary if people are to find the truth, grasp it, and learn to live it out. Yet symbols and images are, by their very nature, infinitely interpretable and so infinitely deceptive; and even more decisively, a world composed solely of abstractions cannot contain those things of which the world is actually composed: that is, concrete particular substances, including those rational, relational substances known as persons.

Hence it is that people trained in the Internet as it exists now naturally, as a matter of course, ignore and elide natural realities and concrete particulars in favor of symbols, images, and other abstractions; and they likewise learn, in varying degrees, to ignore, instrumentalize, and be indifferent to the actual concrete existence of persons, including themselves.

Even so, it is in fact possible to create technological systems, as well as systems of ideas and abstractions, that communicate truth, goodness, and beauty--systems that mediate and embody and make known the concrete existence of persons, the world, and God. This basic principle is the basis of the sacramental economy of Catholicism--as well as essentially all cultural and artistic production, of whatever sort.

The problem, then, is not so much the existence of abstraction as (1) the relationship of abstraction to reality, and (2) the particular ideas reflected in our systems. It is not merely that the Internet is abstract, but that, as it exists now, it relates to concrete realities in certain ways, and embodies certain ideas; and so causes great harm.

If we are unsatisfied with our society and its politics, we would do well to look to the Internet; if we are unsatisfied with the Internet as it now exists, we would do well to look to the ideas, the philosophical and moral conceptions, that it is shaped by and shapes. If our ideas, embodied in the Internet, torment and destroy people, make their lives a living Hell, and plunge them into falsehood and shame and hatred--then there is something wrong, not just with the Internet, but with our ideas, and ourselves.

If we wish to actually save our society and ourselves, there is no other option but sincere repentance founded on the examination of conscience. To examine our conscience, as individual persons and as a society, requires a recognition of the systems we have built and lived in, what ideas they embody, and the relationship of these ideas to the concrete reality of other persons, the world, and God.

Let us pray that God will give us all the ability to do this, soon--for all our sakes.

Manicheanism, Good and Evil, and the Sorrow of Christ

The Manichean is the person who believes that evil can and ought to be be entirely externalized: that it is a separate substance from the good, capable of being isolated, identified in its purity, and removed. Yes, the Manichean may truly believe that this evil exists within himself as well--in the same way, say, that there may happen to be some sand or granite mixed in with the cup of water he's drinking. Still, the water can be boiled, and these bits of external matter removed. Maybe this evil is very widespread indeed, mixed in so much that it comes to form the very substance of people or places or societies, so that there is, in the end, no real hope of separating them without destroying the things infected. Very well, then; societies and people and objects are all capable of being destroyed if necessary. The situation may be very dire indeed; but when all is said and done, the *solution* is quite clear: find the evil, isolate it, separate it from the good, cast it away, and be done.

If we treat evil in this way--and, I believe, pretty much everyone in our society does--then this will define and circumscribe all our responses to it.

To begin with, we will strive to become very sensitive to evil: its taste, its smell, its touch. We will expend great efforts trying to isolate evil in its chemical purity, to figure it out, what it is, what makes it tick. The more we do this, the more we will find ourselves in a constant state of *annoyance*: aha, I have detected it! I have smelt it, I have tasted it, I have sensed its presence. This annoyance will give way easily to rage: whenever and wherever we find it, we will want to point out this evil to others, to crush it, smash it, excise it. This rage is, in a sense, unbounded; there is no natural limit to it at all, since in its essence it aims at nothing less than the complete removal and annihilation of the evil inasmuch as it is perceived. In any event, our task is clear: we will exercise all our powers to find evil, and then to see it mocked, hated, despised, rejected, and denied--until the victory is won, and the substance of the good remains alone, as it ought to be.

Either this, or--if it ever seems that this victory is impossible--nothing remains for the Manichean but utter despair.

This is not how the Christian views evil, nor can he ever react to it in this way. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, Manicheanism and other dualistic systems are essentially the opposite of Christianity. This is quite right and proper, for Christianity has always viewed evil in a completely different light, and defined it in completely different terms, than the dualist.

For the Christian, evil strictly speaking does not exist. The definition of evil, according to the Catholic tradition, is simply a privation of being. Evil, in other words, is nothing other the absence of what ought to be there.

There is, for the Christian, only one unlimited and eternal Being--and from this arises a cosmos of limited, partial beings, existing in harmony under the governance of their sole Cause and End. Each limited being has a nature, a partial and participatory being, and an end at which it aims. Each being is, inasmuch as it exists, operates according to its nature, and achieves its end, necessarily good and true and beautiful--for by these things, it participates in the goodness and beauty and perfection of the first and undiminished Being from which it comes.

Evil, then, is not a substance alienable from the good: it is rather the reality of the failure of creatures to participate in the Good as they ought to.

Evil then, is nothing other than a diminishment of what should exist; the failure to gain something beautiful, good, and true that is aimed at: that is, a tragedy. Evil is a wound in the living body of the cosmos governed by Eternal Goodness.

For the Christian, then, evil can never simply a matter of *annoyance*: nor can it be a matter of limitless rage: and least of all can it ever be a matter of final despair. Rather, as the Christian tradition shows, evil can only really be dealt with in two ways, exemplified by the life and works of Christ our God.

In the first places, one can react to the presence of evil with *anger*; that is, with a limited drive to action to correct and chastise and set right. The rightly angry person is not seeking to isolate and annihilate evil, as though it had any existence of its own: he is seeking rather to find where a particular creature or system of creatures has gone wrong, and then work to correct it so that it will exist and operate as it should--and to do this, of course, he will first have to understand and appreciate that creature's existence, its nature, its aims, and its place in the cosmos governed by God. Thus, Christ casts the money-lenders out of the temple, so that the House of God will be as he knows it should be: he teaches on the Mount, so that men will live as he knows they should be. Yes, he preaches at the same time the real possibility of eternal damnation--that is, final and permanent exclusion from the vision of God. But for the Catholic, not even the damned are entirely annihilated; not even the damned are entirely separated from God. They still exist, dependent on his Being, and serve his Will, and his Justice.

Yet anger is not, and cannot be, the principal way with which Christians respond to evil; for it is not the principal way with which Christ responded to it. For all evil, inasmuch as it represents a diminishment, a loss, of what is aimed at and desired, by each creature and the cosmos itself and God, represents first and foremost a tragedy: that is, something for which the correct response is sorrow. Christ truly defeated evil, after all, not in the Cleansing of the Temple, but on the Cross. It is here that he willingly bore and took into himself all the evil of men and of the cosmos--and suffered it. In the Catholic tradition, it is dogmatically maintained that Christ suffered on the Cross for all men, including even the damned: and in many Catholic mystical texts and visions, Christ is shown as suffering and mourning even for the eternal loss of the damned, whom he has loved and desired. Christ mourns and suffers, for those whom he willed to be with him forever are forever lost.

For the Christian, the response of God to the evil of the world is the Paschal Mystery, the Cross and Resurrection of Christ. The love of God responds to evil by mourning for it, and suffering it, so that what has gone wrong may be set right, so that what has been been lost may be restored, and even increased: so as to bring all things and all persons to the Source of their Being, and unite them to it forever in love. The Good is never alone.

When the Christian looks out at the world, then, when he perceives evil in it, in his neighbor and himself, he does not perceive a Manichean substance to isolate in its purity, root out, and cast away. He perceives rather the violation, the diminishment, the loss of that which is good, true, beautiful, fair and desirable, and most precious: human souls, for whom Christ died. And like Christ, his deepest, truest response must always be one of sorrow. Often, yes, anger is called for, to defend the good, to prevent its utter ruination, to set things right: but always, in his heart there must be the same love, and the same sorrow, that dwells in the heart of Christ--as well as the joy that comes only by the Resurrection. In this is our hope, and in nothing else: Christus mortuus resurrexit.

The Manichean, then, defeats evil by casting it away from himself, and rejoicing: the Christian defeats evil by taking it into himself, and suffering. This is the greatest divide there is, or could be.

God help us.

Bastille Day

Yesterday was Bastille Day, a holiday that grows more bittersweet with each passing year.

I am, as far as that goes, a totally unreconstructed Catholic: I hate Reformation and Enlightenment alike; I am a Distributist.

Still for all this, I am not really a reactionary; I am not even a monarchist.

Nevertheless, we live in a reactionary age; and it is good for us to recognize this.

The sins and evils of our civilization have been piled up so high that they are now impossible to overlook or ignore. The politics of the present and near future will be largely or entirely premised on reactions to this present state of affairs, and its evils. For some, this will be a recipe for outrage, an endless reactionary anger that will search far and wide, through both the past and the future, for weapons to mock and destroy and undo--in this, there will be less and less difference between progressive and conservative reactionaries. For others, it will lead to despair, and all that comes with it, especially a blind and desperate willingness to submit and accept and surrender to anything or anyone that promises meaning or escape. For many, perhaps the majority, it will simply require better drugs, easier comforts, the first and vileest of which is arrogance, and the most human of which is perhaps irony.

These are not discrete categories; they will be difficult to tell apart, as indeed they already are. Trump channeled outrage, appealed to despair, and in practice gave entertainment: in this, he found a winning combination which the mavens of #theresistance are already employing for their own purposes. These are, I think, the basic elements of our future politics; and since American politics is consensus politics by necessity, they will rarely be found in their purity.

Still, these are all, in their essence, reactionary stances, and reactionary forms of politics. They are premised on the presence and unavoidability of unbearable evils. They are little more than the various poles of the Lost Cause.

There are grave dangers that come with reaction, though; and the greatest of all is the loss of any balanced, human perspective on reality, any real attempt to come to grips with the world as it is, and how one ought to live in it. The future, though, will belong, in the end, to those who can in fact do so; those who have some vision of the New Jerusalem on which to build, not those who can do no more than squabble in the ashes of Babylon.

But there is also a less grave, but still important, danger that comes with reaction; that we will do grave injustice to our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers: that we will lose all sight of, and all touch with, whatever good truly existed in our civilization.

Everyone these days is talking about liberalism--though usually under the aspect of that amorphous and unbearable status quo of neoliberalism, or the even more degraded and repulsive substitute of libertarianism. For libertarianism is simply liberalism without liberality--that is, without any of the genuine sympathy and humanity that made the ideologies of the Enlightenment even remotely bearable by human beings. Neoliberalism, on the other hand, is simply liberalism without liberty.

We have lost, as a civilization, any sense of what was once meant by liberty, as well as any idea as to why such a thing would ever be desirable. In this, those who defend liberalism commit the gravest injustices of all.

Those who defend liberalism today are generally engaged in defending technological power, technocratic knowledge and control, and universal moral indifference. The boons of freedom they defend generally boil down, at the end of the day, to their own individual ability to live in luxury, moral wantonness, and disregard for the sufferings of others.

Worshiping liberty in this sense is simply the worship of negation, if it is not simply the worship of the self.

This is not, of course, a new ideology in itself; indeed, in the trueest sense, it is as old as the Garden of Eden. Nor is it exactly new to our civilization, whose crimes and abominations of at its height are past recounting. In this, liberalism was all too often often nothing more than a convenient ideology of the powerful and the immoral: slave-owners and Imperialists and eugenicists and robber-barons.

But for all this, there was something else, too, that our civilization once possessed: something that made men fight and bleed and die and suffer to free slaves and build Republics and gain rights and welfare for the poor. This was not precisely liberalism, as we now understand it and speak about it; but it was, at its heart, a love of liberty. And is there anyone today who can even understand this liberty, let alone defend it?

Men of the past lived a life they saw as basically good and desirable; something worth aspiring to, and dying for. They lived in families and communities, with songs and traditions and histories and legends. They grew up, married, worked and ate their daily bread, prayed and worshiped, suffered and died. And in this life, they saw it as desirable that they be free from certain evils, from certain bonds, that made such a life impossible or unbearable. If men were subject to a King who recognized no rights save his own, who stole from and imprisoned his people and did violence to them, then they should be set free from him; if men were slaves, subject to beatings and violence and the breaking-up of their families and the iron laws of the market, they should be set free from this; if men were imprisoned in factories and company towns, paid starvation wages or else left to die in masses according to the whims of their employers, they should be set free from this, too. Perhaps, even, in a Republic such things would be less likely to happen; perhaps, in a Republic, the rights of all could be guarded, so that they could live well. In any event, Republic or no, there should be freedom.

As a perspective on life, this is lacking in many important ways; it is far too naturalistic for the Catholic Church and the supernatural goals and desires she brings with her. It too easily and quickly degenerates into a mere comfort and luxury, producing a disregard for the sufferings of all those who are despised or hated or safely out of sight. Then, too, all too often it trusts far too much in the goodness and decency of man, and the stability of human life in this world; it is easy for it to believe that it needs no help, no grace, and no penance for sins.

And, yes, too, there were certain arrogant, "enlightened philosophers" who supposedly argued for liberty and were inseparable from it--though oddly enough, most of these were fervent supporters of tyranny.

But when all was said and done, there is a reason why men fought and died and suffered for our civilization--because they loved their fellow men, and because they loved liberty. Not because they loved technocracy, or because they loved a libertarian ideology of the absolute validity of contracts, or because they loved their own absolute autonomy and power, or because they loved that ultimate moral indifference that allowed them to care nothing for the sorrows and sufferings of others. They died because they loved their homes and their families and their children and their nation; and because they wished these things to be free.

It is well that we should remember this.

Repentance

In the end, we will all be forced to face the truth. It is a terrible thing, but it can only be escaped for so long; and the longer we run, the harder we fight, the more we strive to flee from it it, the more terrible it will be when it finds us at last.

This is the only thing to ask for, the only thing for which we should pray: to repent, now; to have all our lies and illusions torn down, now; to learn, somehow, to live in the truth, now.

It is one thing to pity those who suffer in the truth--they will have their reward, if they do not taste it already. We should pity far more those who do not suffer in the truth, those who live in the secure solitude of their own lies and comforts, who will have, in the end, nothing save the fragile, falling walls of their own indifference. It is these for whom Christ wept in the garden. He wept for them, because they could not weep for themselves.

I have lived all this, have drained this cup to the brim, and I know its bitterness well.

I know also that there is one other thing for which we should pray: mercy. It is a terrible thing to face reality, a terrible thing to repent--as terrible as waking from a dream. This is why we must all pray, always, for ourselves and for one another, that God will be very gentle with us: that he will show us the truth with love, and help us to be able to bear it; that he will take us by the hand, and embrace us with tenderness, even as we stand face to face with the Cross. This he has done for me, a thousandfold; and I am grateful. May he do it for us all.

This is why we must all bear each other's burdens, love one another, intercede for one another, without any exception at all, before God; for in the last balance we are all the same. No matter our sins, no matter our virtues, we will all, in the end, be forced to face the full and terrible truth of who and what we are, and what we have done, to ourselves, to each other, and to God himself, suspended on the Cross of his love.

Let us pray, then, for repentance and mercy, for ourselves and each other and the world. There is no other hope.

Trusting God

We speak very often of trusting God, but all too often, as I know from bitter experience, this is nothing more than a facile collection of words. We "trust God" to give us what we desire; and when he does not, we feel our trust has been betrayed, or misplaced. This is the trust of the consumer, or, at best, the trust of the distant, distrustful child.

This is not the sort of trust God desires of us. Here, it is helpful to consider the root meaning of the word "trust," in all the languages I know (Greek, Latin, English): to entrust something to someone. In this sense, trust is not vague and sentimental; it is quite practical and concrete: I have entrusted this valuable thing to you, and in doing so, I have given up whatever power I might have over it. It is now in your control, rather than mine, and you have the power to do with it whatever you wish. Yet in giving it, I *trust* that you will preserve it, that you will do well by it and me; and most of all, I trust in the pledges you have offered me, that you will keep the promises you have made. I trust you to love me.

This is what God desires of us: that we should entrust every thing we possess, every thing we are, from the lowest to the highest, to him. In this, it is far from sufficient merely to entrust to God our highest and best thoughts and desires and ideas, the "religious" or "moral" or "successful" side of ourselves. Inn fact, as Christ on the Cross, God desires far more to receive our sins, our wounds, our sufferings, and our terrible humiliations, all our lack of control and understanding and dignity. Not only this, though--for do our lives in this world not consist just as much of innumerable tiny things--indifferent, trivial things--things hardly worthy of our own or other's considerations? Christ desires these as well.

In this life, we will have, necessarily, many desires. Most of them will be for good things; some of them, inevitably, will be disordered in some way. Much prayer, though by no means all, consists in the expression of our desires to God--and this is right and proper. Still, all too often, we pray, and ask, in way that is fundamentally without faith. We ask God to grant our desires, yet at the same time we keep our desires, our fears, our hopes, entirely under our own control and power--and in doing so, we center our prayer in ourselves. We do not truly entrust our desires to God: that is, put them under his power, give them to him in such a way that they become his rather than ours. And for good reason--for the alienation of the self from its own desires is a terrifying and painful thing. Yet if we do this, we will find, in all things, a peace that is denied those who trust in themselves.

Then, too, we will have sufferings, torments, pains, things that overwhelm and humiliate us. Often, we pray to ask God to take them away--and this, in itself, is right and good, as Christ prayed in the garden. Still, here, too, we pray very often without trust. We do not entrust our sufferings and pains to God, in such a way that they become his; that is, in such a way that he may choose not to take them away at once, that they might become in fact, a participation in the Cross of Christ, of infinite love for human beings and for God. Often, too, we are ashamed to entrust to God our own human weaknessess, our natural desires for health and happiness and peace. We feel they are a discredit to us; that we should be stronger, better, able to bear sufferings and humiliations with perfect composure and resignation; this is madness, since even Christ cried out on the Cross. All our human and natural weakness, all our desire for release and relief and escape from suffering, is Christ's as well--and we must give him what is his. Even what is most imperfect in us must become his, to do with as he pleases.

All of this is, and should be, absolutely terrifying--for it is the real and tangible giving of our deepest selves, of all in which we repose our confidence and from which we draw our sense of control and assurance, into the total power of another.

In this giving, though, we trust, quite rightly, in the love of God for each one of us. For we have two real and tangible pledges of this love from God, to which we can always turn. In the first place, there is the love of God present and manifest in our creation and preservation at each moment, in love; the love by which he entrusted to us, and continues to entrust to us, the great and terrible gift of existence, to do with as we please. In the second place, though, and far greater, is the eternal pledge of God's love made manifest in the Incarnation and Cross of Christ. If God loves us so much as to seek to give to us his very self, to entrust himself and his divinity to a weak human body and soul, and then to entrust that body and soul to Mary and Joseph and the sinful Apostles, and finally to Pilate and the priests and the soldiers and each and every one of us to torture and crucify and crown with thorns: then how can any of us fear to entrust ourselves to him? If this is not a love worthy of trust, there can be no such thing.

This is the challenge of the Christian life; to trust God, and in doing so, to entrust everything to him. It is not easy, by any means--but I speak from experience in saying it is far easier, and far more blessed, than any other path we can follow. For in this path, we will be led and guided by God himself--and in all others, we will be led and guided only, in the end, by ourselves: and God is far greater, and far kinder, than ourselves.

God be with you all.