There are two sides - those who believe in TBV-DH-- and those who don't.
TVB-DH is Truth, Beauty and Virtue in Divine Harmony.
All the elements are necessary or else you are, whatever you may suppose about yourself or assert about youself, batting for the opposition.
Truth, Beauty and Virtue are defined in the traditional, natural, spontaneous way - as what any decent person (not a radical or revoutionary) of several or many religions would have said 100 years ago and throughut history until the modern era.
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The opposite view needs a name and I suggest CUS-DC, meaning Corruption, Ugliness and Sin - generative of Demonic Chaos.
Even one of these will suffice to put you on 'the other side' - because Chaos is a positive value for this ideology.
So an aesthete like Oscar Wilde, who embraces ideals of traditional and historical Beauty and deplores Ugliness, will nonetheless be on the CUS-DC side, because he was (in his work and pronouncements) a moral subversive who advocated ethical inversion. He therefore, from the TBV-DH perspetive, embraced Chaos
Or TS Eliot comes out in this side, despite his self idetification as a traditionalist in religion and politics; because he was a radical and innovator and subversive in his poetry - and this created Chaos rather than Harmony. Eliot would have needed to repent his modernist poetry in order to move onto the side of TBV-DH - and I don't think he ever did this.
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CUS-DC is not, therefore, symmetrical with TBV-DH because Choas is not symmetrical with Harmony - Harmony requires a unity of purpose and ultimate meaning whereas Chaos is the absence of that meaning.
The function of this division is to clarify the identity of the two sides in what the CUS-DC side has dubbed the 'culture wars' - but what is properly seen as the spiritual warfare between Religion on the one hand, and on the other hand the mainstream socio-political-ethical ideology of the past 50 years - which is entriely composed of variants of Secular Leftism.
(Some secular left variants are self identified as 'Right' rather than left - including all the mainstream conservative and republican parties, nationalists, patriots and libertarians; because unless the party puts a religion first as the basis and bedrock of the state and society, then it is of-the-left.)
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This analysis takes us as far as Religion-in-general - but not as far as Christianity. For example, Orthodox Jews would generally find themselves solidly on the same TBV-DH side of this division as Christians.
But 'spirituality' does not function as equivalent to Religion, unless it is based on Divine Harmony as an ideal. DH requires a unifying purpose, meaning and structure - and not all religions provide this, and even-fewer 'spiritualities' do.
It is, indeed, the Divine Harmony aspect which gives meaning and force and point to this distinction. It is one thing to prefer TB&V and to advocate traditionalism - but this, in and of itself, is feeble, fragile and may be counterproductive; unless TB&V are seen as different facets of what is ultimately unified by the divine.
Don't you find clunky initialisms like "TBV-DH" to be a sin against "B"? What's wrong with "Good" and "Evil"?
ReplyDelete@WmJas - Click bait and novelty value. We evangelical Christians are driven to such expedients... If it attracts one extra reader above the regulars, who is induced to consider things differently, maybe it is worth the irritation of those who are already on-side?
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that your world view is fundamentally very similar to that presented by the Warhammer 40K mythos. A sizable number of books, games, artwork, and even a few short films are set in this mythos: as it is an entirely "made up" subcreation, it is largely a product of Imagination and thus has a surprising amount of truth (and corresponding lack of Political Correctness) in it.
ReplyDeleteThe central conflict in the Warhammer mythos is between the forces of Order, led by the God Emperor of Man, and the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, led by the Chaos Gods and their innumerable demons and corrupt human agents. The Emperor is very clearly a version of Jesus reworked for the setting, while the demons and other minions of Chaos have a very classical feel to them.
The 40K mythos is set in the far future, where humanity has spread throughout the galaxy. Advanced technology has not changed the spiritual nature of humans much, so the situation is rather bleak, with humanity beset by cosmic horrors on all sides (most especially from within.) What is interesting is that there is almost no cynicism in the mythos: the God Emperor is *always* portrayed as having humanity's best interests in mind and is constantly working to further the Divine Plan. Likewise, compromising with the Forces of Chaos in the slightest way inevitably leads to ruin.
The loyal servants of the Emperor are usually portrayed as having, if not physical beauty, a palpable aura of decency, while those tainted by Chaos usually become ugly and wretched. Other "alien" races exist in the setting, they have their own religions that do not involve the Emperor, but must also cope with Chaos, occasionally forming allances with humans to fight it.
A brief search of the Internet should give some indication of the amount of time and creativity poured into this subcreation, which is remarkable given the consistency of the vision presented by it.
@Rober - Yes I have vaguely heard of this - but don't play any games myself (although I know a bit *about* D&D - mainly from reading Order of the Stick comics).
ReplyDeleteDr Charlton - Everybody does the S part of CUS-DC. Do you mean people are in that category if they do S and feel no guilt or remorse?
ReplyDelete@Anon - I mean pro-sin. The usual thing is to say that sin is not sin - more recently that what was called sin is actually good. Mostly this is in reference to sexual sin.
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