Cowardice may be the defining sin of our times - such an extremity of cowardice that people are afraid even to think virtuously.
Modern Man has no courage, because he has no reason for courage: nothing to be courageous about.
Acts of the most disgusting cowardice are observed and reported daily, without comment or even with approval - almost any excuse of expedience, of fear of risk - or the mere possibility of risk, is regarded as sufficient to justify cowardice of men or women.
And if there is real courage, it is undercut and dismissed by cynicism - the same cynicism that justifies cowardice, erodes courage.
Modern Man takes cowardice to new levels.
In the past people knew what they ought to do, and realised that cowardice was when they did not do what they knew they ought to do. Thus Men convicted themselves of cowardice.
And as CS Lewis remarked in The Screwtape Letters; to know one's own cowardice - to know that one failed to do what one ought to have done because of cowardice - is a really horrible feeling. It is one of the worst forms of guilt.
And Modern man is so systematically and frequently cowardly, that this self-conviction would be intolerable - If he allowed himself to have genuine moral principles...
However, by pre-surrendering to evil, by denying the reality of God and thereby emptying his soul of natural Goodness - Modern Man acquits himself of cowardice. We are indeed Hollow Men, Men-without-chests...
Without God - without any God - in a universe (supposedly) created from random change and blind causality - there is no compelling reason to be virtuous; and cowardice can be redefined as Nothing-But a psychological control mechanism, a manipulation by religious authorities (as indeed some of cowardice sometimes was).
Insofar as Modern man has any conviction it is that he has a duty to be happy, attain pleasure (especially sexual), avoid suffering - and therefore, avoid trouble, and keep on the right-side of those with power.
In the past, there were those who resisted alien occupying nations at great person risk and despite great personal suffering. The Resistance.
And there were those who collaborated - who made the best of the actually-existing situation, and made most of the opportunities they presented - the cowards who systematically did-the-wrong-thing, and benefited immediately and personally in terms of pleasure and avoiding suffering.
However; the collaborators mostly knew exactly what they were; their actions indicate that they were convicted by their own conscience; but other motivations (e.g. fear, greed, lust, conceit) were more powerful than shame or duty to conscience.
Now The West has been permanently occupied by aliens - by a strategically-evil Establishment, by a ruling and governing class who actively and openly lie-to, exploit and oppress the People.
But there is no resistance: resistance has evaporated.
Why? Because for Godless cowards there is never any sufficiently-compelling reason to resist.
We are all collaborators now, pretty much. Yet most Modern people lack sufficient integrity of conscience to acknowledge this simple reality to themselves, even in private thought.
So, in reality, we are something worse than collaborators.
6 comments:
When meeting an agent of invaders and being presented with an opportunity to collaborate, where all the risk, reward, and consequences can be grasped and considered at once, a single big decision can be made.
What we have is this decision broken up into a million little decisions, typically in the form of "do something that is slightly inconvenient but the right thing" vs. "do nothing and be comfortable." And choosing to do nothing feels like it's not a decision, it feels like the moral problem has been avoided completely, but constantly doing this makes one feel powerless and makes life feel meaningless.
One way out of that life-disconnecting trap might be to realize that every decision, big or small, has a moral aspect to it as a result of the expected consequences of it, that every situation is an opportunity to be courageous--and therefore can be adventurous!
@Joe - My own experience has been that the decision about whether to collaborate with evil alien masters is not like one decision broken up into pieces - but many, many significant decisions - coming at me again and again every few weeks, accelerating, getting more and more obviously evil.
Any decision to collaborate is never 'enough' - more and more will be asked of you, until anyone with a soul and centre to their being cannot miss it (however, a soul and centre is precisely what Modern Man has self-destroyed).
In my case the demand for collaboration was noticed mainly in relation to honesty; the requirement to be dishonest, to mislead, to exaggerate beyond truth - despite being in 'science' and in 'academia'.
To the point that these institutions went from being almost-totally honest, to almost-totally dishonest over a span of about twentyfive years.
Needless to say, hardly anyone objected, or even noticed (zombies don't notice this stuff); and would strenuously deny that it has happened despite that they personally lie (strategically, carefully) every working hour.
In the USA today, one of the favorite conceits of collaborators is to pretend they are part of "the Resistance", an affectation which carries no risk and earns lavish praise from other collaborators.
@Dexter - Yes, indeed - the descendents of yesterday's Radical chic, or Tenured Radicals. In Britain such people usually have been given titles (e.g. Sir, Dame, Lord, Lady) - yet still preen themselves on being edgy counter-cultural rebels.
You mention zombies in your response to Joe's comment; I believe that accurately describes the state most people are in. Whenever I have lacked courage to do or say something in the past, it always felt as if a little part of me died - right then, right there - never to be recovered.
I presume most modern people have experienced thousands if not tens of thousands of these little internal deaths due to cowardice and really exist as nothing more but zombies - the walking dead. Reminds me of a quote from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar - "Cowards die many times before their deaths . . ."
Many people, Christians included, look at courage/cowardice through the perspective of risk/reward. Many justify their cowardice by claiming a show of courage would make no difference and change nothing in the grand scheme of things. I used to believe this myself when I was younger, but as I have grown older, I have become acutely aware that every cowardly act has a huge effect upon the grand scheme of things.
@Francis - "Many people, Christians included, look at courage/cowardice through the perspective of risk/reward."
Yes, I agree. No credit is given for courage that does not lead to a positive, worldly outcome - and then it is retrospectively reinterpreted as merely expedient behaviour (that the courageous person 'knew' things would turn-out alright, therefore he did not need courage).
When courage makes no perceptible difference, or seems to have triggeered some bad outcome - then it is relabelled stupidity; because (it is assumed) only stupid people are inexpedient.
Or, and I have often seen this, courage is labelled as selfishness. Because somebody doing what they know to be right usually causes trouble of some kind for the people around them, for example their colleagues at work.
Therefore principles adhered-to with courage are represented as a kind of selfish self-indulgence - because the consequent adverse effects following an act of courage (which is why courage was necessary) are not restricted to the individual who exhibits courage.
(An individual in a bureaucracy who refuses to comply with an evil diktat will be dealt with partly by punishing his boss and colleagues. Thus the boss and colleagues will attempt to impose bureaucratic compliance, always. The dissenter is blamed.)
I suppose of of this emphasises that courage just-is a transcendetal virtue with transcendental value, or else it will not exist at all - being lost within calculations of worldly expediency.
It is because we only acknowledge the material, and lack the transcendent, that we lack courage.
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