Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Book 1, Paradise Lost by John Milton
God is dead for many and dying for most. I don’t know exactly when this began in our culture, but the French Enlightenment’s absolute faith in man and its elevation of reason as man’s only and best way to discover truths might be a good place to start. By the end of the 19th Century the industrial revolution vastly extended man’s reach and power over nature, at least so post-modern man thought. With the advent of relativistic thought at the turn of that century the execution was complete, at least so post-modern intellectuals thought.
Now, having killed god post-modern people began the assault on our nature in earnest; first by denying it. One would think that the post-modern intellectuals who rule the world of ideas and thereby shape our culture would have noticed that isolating people from nature would lead to isolated people.
Absent the desire to find God, they and we are becoming zombies. This too should have been obvious to our post-modern intellectual elites. The first symptoms showed themselves in what they considered art, visual and musical; art became merely intellectualized; abstracted; politicized. This outcome too should have been obvious and, unaware, they celebrated the loss not as a loss, but as a renewal of their freedom through their art–think “Piss Christ” or Cage’s “4′33.″
One would have thought that this class would have understood that removing themselves from God and nature would have led to nothingness. Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden in Blood Meridian personifies the ultimate fate of this post-modern culture; capturing, cataloging and killing everything in its path.
All of us must now struggle to believe anything. We are lost; all of us. Only the light of beauty, which is the call to our true selves, may lead us out of our self-imposed dark wilderness of the soul into the light of who we are in a more complete sense.
Beauty is rational; it can take thought to a higher level. As noted in my last blog. it is the harmonious association of things and ideas into a unified whole that strikes a chord in the human breast. We are more than intellect, but alone, the intellect can easily be led astray, becoming Milton’s poisoned fruit; it becomes a call to nihilism.
Be not afraid. The time is coming when we will seek beauty again. We cannot fail because it is at the core of who we are.
Blog No. 84: Restore us, and regain the blissful seat
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Book 1, Paradise Lost by John Milton
God is dead for many and dying for most. I don’t know exactly when this began in our culture, but the French Enlightenment’s absolute faith in man and its elevation of reason as man’s only and best way to discover truths might be a good place to start. By the end of the 19th Century the industrial revolution vastly extended man’s reach and power over nature, at least so post-modern man thought. With the advent of relativistic thought at the turn of that century the execution was complete, at least so post-modern intellectuals thought.
Now, having killed god post-modern people began the assault on our nature in earnest; first by denying it. One would think that the post-modern intellectuals who rule the world of ideas and thereby shape our culture would have noticed that isolating people from nature would lead to isolated people.
Absent the desire to find God, they and we are becoming zombies. This too should have been obvious to our post-modern intellectual elites. The first symptoms showed themselves in what they considered art, visual and musical; art became merely intellectualized; abstracted; politicized. This outcome too should have been obvious and, unaware, they celebrated the loss not as a loss, but as a renewal of their freedom through their art–think “Piss Christ” or Cage’s “4′33.″
One would have thought that this class would have understood that removing themselves from God and nature would have led to nothingness. Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden in Blood Meridian personifies the ultimate fate of this post-modern culture; capturing, cataloging and killing everything in its path.
All of us must now struggle to believe anything. We are lost; all of us. Only the light of beauty, which is the call to our true selves, may lead us out of our self-imposed dark wilderness of the soul into the light of who we are in a more complete sense.
Beauty is rational; it can take thought to a higher level. As noted in my last blog. it is the harmonious association of things and ideas into a unified whole that strikes a chord in the human breast. We are more than intellect, but alone, the intellect can easily be led astray, becoming Milton’s poisoned fruit; it becomes a call to nihilism.
Be not afraid. The time is coming when we will seek beauty again. We cannot fail because it is at the core of who we are.