It has been a while since I have written anything
substantial here. There have been any number of embryonic blog posts kicking
around in my head for months. I read Graham Richardson’s “Whatever it Takes”, for example. I wanted to write about how weird
it was that he could come from a background in the Catholic Left and write
about the years when all the important forward defences in the culture wars
that were to come were abandoned, without mentioning them at all; but mostly I
wanted to write about the renewed sense of gratitude and appreciation I had for
the role of the Centre Left in winning the Cold War. Richardson’s memoir is
devoid of moral content, beyond a sort of crude sentimental tribalism, but in
terms of outcomes – which are what counts – it was incredibly important that
this country had people like him occupying that Centre Left idea space and
tenaciously defending it. This made a home for people who might otherwise have
ended up further left, if that place was empty. Richo’s Labor Right faction,
and even more so his arch-enemies of the non-Communist Labor Left, seems to me
to have filled an absolutely essential role as the real frontline enemies of
the Evil Empire in Australia. That is the critical theatre in the war for
hearts and minds: that place in idea space where those who could go either way
are.
Then I have been meaning to write about a feeling that has
been preying on me worse and worse this year, the feeling that I have trapped
myself in the middle of nowhere, by setting up the perfect I have imagined as
the enemy of the good that actually exists. Like Blake said: “I must create a
system, or be enslaved by another man’s”; but having done so I am in Lord Acton’s
position: “absolutely alone in my essential moral position, and therefore
useless.” Day by day Western Secular Culture – which I was quite comfortable
in, c. 1990 - becomes more ridiculous and repulsive to me, driving me away. It
has no sense of proportion at all, and it is in the thrall of a groupthink, a
Grundyism as narrow and obsessive as the worst of the Victorian Age, the
intellectual foundations of which make Scientology look like a respectable
ideology. Then day by day Dar-al-Islam – which I was quite enamoured of, c.
2000 –brings forth some new horror. These things push me away, and make me long
for the culture and ideology of my youth, the culture and ideology that created
Western Civilisation: but then there is Laudato
Si, and I am kicked away...
I want to belong; I do not want to be entirely alone and
useless. But I cannot bow to be the slave of another man’s system. I cannot
assert anything I do not truly hold to be true. Here I am, stuck.
So I give myself this command: seek a sense of proportion
yourself, first. Take the beam out of your own eye. What does it mattter what
happens to Western Civilisation? It has been fatally injured since 1914. It has
done what it came into the world to do, it has spread its seeds, it has brought
the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the shores of the Ubangi and the Summa
Theologica to Vietnam, and there is no corner of the world where the ‘good bits’
of Western Civilisation are not ceaselessly alive, a vision in the minds of
men. So it is dying, now, but it has been dying a long time, and every day it
is a smaller proportion of the world’s population, the world’s wealth, the
world’s knowledge. Remember, never have more people lived healthy and
productive lives then right now, today. Never have we known more; never have we
had more. Look at the world, and exult at it. What is happening in the parts of
the world where most of us live? The Renegade Mainland Provinces have abandoned
their profoundly anti-human One Child Policy; is this not the best piece of
news of this century? Of course it is. Look at India: when you were young,
remember how it was mired in unproductive economic policies, a hairsbreadth
away from dictatorship? Remember a little more than a decade ago, the trains
burning in Gujarat? See how Modi, the leader of the free world, is pursuing
policies that lead to economic growth, is avoiding communalism. Look at
Indonesia: a peaceful democratic change of government is not news anymore;
remember what happened there, in the last years of the 20th century.
Remember what East Timor was, and what it is now. Look at Nigeria: there has
been an election, and a leader has stepped down, and a new one has stepped up;
no tanks in the streets, no massacres. Look at Chile: how much better is it
there now, then when you were young. Look at Myanmar! Look at Turkmenistan,
even: is it not better there than it was, a decade ago, when the fruit loop was
running the show? All across the world, there are places that were charnel
houses when I was young – Cambodia, Mozambique, El Salvador, Uganda – where people
like me go on holiday now, where the inhabitants are gainfully employed making
things to sell me, where there is no-one with serious traction advocating
policies leading to poverty and genocide.
How crazily, unbelievably better of this world is then what
we imagined when I was in grade school? The nightmare futures of overpopulation
and nuclear war they scared us with? This is an awesome world.
I don’t need a system.
I don’t need to be enlaved to another man’s. I am useless, but I am one
of seven and half billion. What cosmic arrogance and gall is it, for me to aspire
to be anything other than useless! I will stay today in my lonely empty spot in
idea space, and exult, for I have regained my sense of proportion.
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