From a letter of August 4th 1940
There is something very strange about this war. The nations that have been subjugated were not beaten in the field, they fell to treachery and internal corruption; to lack of morale and lack of the will to victory.
The key to their fall may be found in the words: "he who would save his life shall lose it, and he who will lose his life for My sake shall find it."
Those who prefer security to freedom have lost both.
England stands alone and happy. All war gloom has gone. There is confidence in the future and pride in the present. Power is rising within us like a tide. The inflowing of a new life impulse is making itself felt.
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Letter 36 from The Magical Battle of Britain, by Dion Fortune. The war letters of Dion Fortune, edited by Gareth Knight.
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This insight of Dion Fortune referring to a very particular and unusual time and place has general validity. After the Second World War, there was a massive and (so far) irreversible collapse of Christianity in Britain. It was replaced by an overwhelming focus on this-worldly and material matters - i.e. what DF here terms "security".
Nothing mattered to post-war people except security, happiness, prosperity, comfort, convenience and diversion.
And, as predicted, this has led to the erosion, and incipient near-complete loss, of all of these - but especially security.
Dion Fortune was talking about nations - but the same applies to individuals.
Although we all (to some extent, sooner or later) crave security: there is none to be had in this mortal world; and the attempt to ensure it will bring the opposite - because by seeking security primarily, we will become oriented away-from reality.
Unless the material is located in the spirit, unless the mundane is situated in the divine, this-world in eternity - then the material, mundane, this-worldly Goods will not merely be lost - but thrown-away.
2 comments:
No one safe until all are safe was the most recent/contemporary expression of security pitted freedom. Sadly, people in general failed epically there, and continue to do so even now.
The lure of security/safety is a strong. It doesn't help that it is one the chief "go-to" tools of manipulation and coercion. The only way I have managed to counter the lure of security (most of the time), is to remind myself that I can never really be secure in this world, but I can be free, at least spiritually, which is much more than the "at least" implies.
@Frank - This safety/ security motivation seems to follow from disbelief in any continuation of existence beyond biological death - a clinging to life (until things get nasty, then clamouring for painless death).
It seemed like a rational argument to say (as many used to say, a few generations ago, and a few famous atheists still claim) that human life would be better when Men abandoned the "manipulative nonsense" promising Heaven after death. The idea was that people would then concentrate fully on making this world a better place - and/or looking after this planet.
Yet this did not happen, but instead the opposite. It turned out that (as Steiner put it succinctly) when men ceased to believe in God they developed an intractable mental sickness - symptoms of which include being incapable of thinking coherently, or learning from experience.
The fact that such symptoms afflict those who seem the most devoutly religious in The West only proves that they are not - in fact - genuinely religious. i.e. they do not really believe what they say...
As we saw, in spades, in 2020; when nearly all the devout churchgoers revealed that they were among the worst of security-obsessed safety-firsters.
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