Saturday 5 November 2016

'When there is no dream left worth dying for, then the people die.' - John Fitzgerald at Albion Awakening

It is the unquantifiable and intangible – not the immediate material reality – that carries most weight.

The bare historical record tells us that Arthur ultimately failed in his mission. He was killed in battle, and his restored Roman Britain crumbled before renewed Saxon onslaughts two generations after his death.

Yet as an icon and exemplar, his achievement is unparalleled. His legacy can be glimpsed in figures such as Joan of Arc, Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill, individuals who set the odds at nought and fought on for their dream when surrender seemed the only common-sense option.

These themes are pregnant with significance for our own times. 'When there is no dream left worth dying for, then the people die.' Would Carausius recognize in our society the same germs of dissolution that compromised the Roman Empire? Civilisations, history tells us, tend often to disintegrate from within...

The same holds true for the creaking spiritual and intellectual foundations of the West. Enfeebled from within by a sceptical, overweening secularism, we turn our backs on our patrimony, 'refusing to inherit' (in Roger Scruton's phrase) the deposit of religious, philosophical and political wisdom handed down by our ancestors.

Our moorings have been cut, and we are without recourse to that transcendent Deity who once animated our civilisation. If my truth is as good as your truth, then all 'truths' are equally worthless, and we leave nothing more than a vacuum for our children to inherit.

Nature, as we know, abhors a vacuum. Vacuums will be filled, one way or another. In rejecting its past, the West has laid itself open for conquest and exploitation, either at the hands of a corrupted ruling class or through the ascendancy of a rival civilization with a clearer sense of mission and identity.
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/arthur-of-britain-last-emperor-first_4.html

2 comments:

Sean Cory said...

One of the things that strikes me is that every step of the way there have been voices of warning raised about the consequences we would face if we abandoned X or proceeded to implement Y. Men like Chesterton and Lewis, heads of churches and even politicians and journalists all gave warning. They were all ignored or scoffed at as old stick-in-the-muds and fuddie-duddies standing in the way of wonderful (and inevitable) Progress. The drum beat for "change" and "science" and "modernity" drowned them out and eventually resulted in marginalizing or silencing or replacing them with more "forward looking" persons. But the warning voices never ceased altogether and continue today at sites like this one and in some churches and even among a now very small number of politicians and public figures.

The point is that we have no excuse. Some of us tried to remain faithful and pass the lessons of faith along to the children. Most of us simply ignored the warnings. More than a few worked to silence the warnings. But we have heard them nonetheless even if only as noise in the background. Add to this that in the modern world in many places - and especially in that part once known as Christendom - we have the power to cast a ballot to determine who leads nations and large corporations and even in some churches. The people who run for office do make themselves clear in their beliefs though it often requires some effort to determine what these really are. The overwhelming majority in the west are literate and have access to tremendous amounts of data about who we are voting for. And we have all of recorded history to look back on for examples of what is likely to ensue if we choose A or B or C. There really is nothing new under the sun.

We have no excuse.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Sean - No excuse, true.

But, once religion is gone or made into mere self-expression/ lifestyle; then it seems that most people will in practice sacrifice anything for the 'freedoms' of the sexual revolution - or perhaps more accurately, they would not give-up the consequences of the sexual revolution for any other possibility.

(Linked with the immersive addiction to the mass media)

That is the current situation. Of course, given that religion is natural and spontaneous, people may at some point wake-up.