AJ: You are simply an individual. You are one person. But I have a feeling that you have not considered the implications involved when an entire culture and civilizations loses its grounding. We seem to be in a time when 'ground' is lost and processes of chaos make themselves manifest as a result.
Harbal: So once I have considered these implications, what am I expected to do about it?
AJ: In your case? Why nothing at all! Only because you indicate that you see no reason do think, see, or act in any other terms except those that you define as your own. Are you asking that question for a 'hypothetical man'?
Harbal: Yes, but I have no reason to think that he would be any more compliant than me. I don't know how right you are. I'm quite a social outsider, so I probably wouldn't join in anyway.
Well, the hypothetical man would act hypothetically!
But let me help you to orient me (
me in the sense of this person who has these opinions, these ideas). I subscribe to the theory, the view, the opinion, that 'our culture' is in a decadent phase. I have made the assessment that I do not have to look much further (for evidence, for proof) than the people that surround me. And if you'd like I can fill out this idea, this perspective (this opinion) a bit more. Perhaps you will say that I have been captured by
Spenglerian gloom"?
In this thread I have mentioned two sources (two interpretive essays on contemporary culture) that have influenced my views:
Slouching Toward Gomorrah (Bork) and
Ideas Have Consequences (Weaver). I have worked with the ideas presented in these books and been thinking about them for years now. Therefore, I believe that I can say that in a general sense we (*our culture*) is in a decadent cycle.
dec·a·dent (dĕk′ə-dənt, dĭ-kād′nt)
adj.
1. Being in a state of decline or decay.
2. Marked by or providing unrestrained gratification; self-indulgent.
3. often Decadent Of or relating to literary Decadence.
n.
1. A person in a condition or process of mental or moral decay.
2. often Decadent: A member of the Decadence movement.
[French décadence, from Old French decadence, from Medieval Latin dēcadentia, a decaying, declining, from Vulgar Latin *dēcadere, to decay; see decay.]
Question: Where did I (first) notice the 'evidence' of the 'decadence' I refer to?
Answer: In myself. Thus, the issue, for me, became one of moral dimension. And because I was, allow me to say, forced to make a probing self-analysis of myself when I discovered, in my own self, the fruit of decadence (which I would describe as moral decay), I was forced to go through a review-process. How did this come about? And when I did that I realized, as all who do something similar will realize, that I am an outcome of processes that I did not myself begin and initiate, but rather an effect or a consequence of *choices* that others made.
[This idea by the way, Harry Baird, is as you know one of the better ideas developed by those interesting individuals we know as QRS].
That idea has to do with
causation. So, when Weaver speaks of 'consequences', he is speaking of the outcomes of those consequences: what results from choices made.
So what I can say, and with certainty, is that historically when a person and when men have come to the perception that decadence or moral decay have shown themselves in the world around them, and the world inside of them (there is really not so much separation), they are *expected* (here I interject your word) to rise to the occasion and to deal with the issue. Or to put it differently they place upon themselves the expectation of rising to the occasion (and dealing with it).
Now, you might say that you do recognize anything like decadence or decay around you nor in you. In which case you'd have no reason to do any particular thing. You'd not be motivated toward self-regeneration, self-renewal, nor any analysis of "what happened and why".
Yet what I try to communicate has to do with the recognition -- a recognition within Occidental culture, in different places and different nations of course -- that we are in a time of encroaching and increasing decadence. Would you like me to cite examples of the sort of discourse where those I refer to express their views? I certainly can. But for the sake of simplicity, and perhaps a certain drama and effect, I often send up this short
video presentation which manages, I think, to communicate some part of what I am referring to.
I am aware that these are expressions of ideas that are very much pushed to the side today (and vilified to an extent). But I would be dishonest if I were not to tell you that much of what he proposes I agree with. Therefore, you can imagine (perhaps) why I am motivated to ask questions that have to do with how it might happen that people, and culture, might recover itself.
Now within this context it
must be understood that our own Immanuel Can is an exponent of 'renovation' through the act of discipleship to the God he defines. And as you have come into this conversation you must see that differences and oppositions have developed (between his perspective and my perspective but also within a far larger community of persons and ideas).
We have to get
oriented in such a way that our respective positions are clear enough that sense can be made of them.
