When Scripture’s creation-based, antropocentric revelation is rejected, and an evolutionary animal continuum (from amoeba to man) is presupposed as the only reality, then human beings begin taking their cues for behavior from the animal world. This rationalization has reached tragically absurd levels today as witness postmodernist writer Steven Shaviro’s longing for the sexual autonomy of bacteria. He speaks longingly of the “fluid promiscuity” of bacteria, “the earths most primordial inhabitants” which are “free from any concerns about origins, any metaphysical nostalgia”.
Most importantly for Shaviro, bacteria indulge in a guilt-free “perpetual orgy” where there is no “clear distinction between copulation and infection”. . .and where there is no linkage between sexuality and reproduction. Shaviro suggests that bacterial and insect models are “nature’s” antidote to culture. He is far from alone in this kind of reductionism.
One can hardly watch the “nature” shows on television without being inundated with this incessant propaganda. Thus the “freedom” of the ape is coveted. Nature is romanticized; and the dark side of the jungle (predator / prey) is jauntily rationalized as if it were all just fine.
Only the spiritually blind can suppress the existential horror which this picture should evoke in man, precisely because he is rational. Such horror, if modern man had his wits about him, would be viewed as teleological, i.e., pointing to the truth and goal (Telos) of human existence. If man were a mere animal or the moral equivalent of bacteria he should not fear death. If his death were as “natural” as an autumn leave falling he would hardly consider death an existential shock as he always does. Unlike the animals,(*) however, which are “irrational…created by nature for capture and destruction” (2 Peter 2:12), man is oriented to another Telos, to the God Who is man’s Freedom and Life, who is the Alpha and Omega of existence.
No Compromise
The sad truth is that “The Light has come into the world, yet men have loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil” (John 3:19). It is not a question of disinterestedly choosing from among world views. Man will either yield to and accept God’s grace, which will then become a “Lamp for his darkness and a Light unto his path”, or he will love and prefer the darkness of his own self-will, the logic of spiritual death and sin.
In France, the late Post-Modern philosopher, Michel Foucault, referred to his philosophy of radical autonomy as a “philosophy of transgression”; as “the will not to be governed”. Precisely.
Aldous Huxley frankly stated,
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption [SH: note that desire preceded investigation]. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves…
“For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to morality, because it interfered with our sexual freedom.” – Aldous Huxley in Ends and Means, 1937.
“True debauchery is liberating. It creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; conversation is not obligatory there: hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person. It is a jungle without past or future…On entering, one leaves behind fear and hope.” — Albert Camus, The Fall
We must have great compassion for (post)modern man. But we cannot compromise where such fundamental differences are concerned. Especially in the area of education. SH, Updated
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(*) Animals do, of course, react instinctually to attack, but, absent the use of reason as we know it, they cannot conceive death in the abstract nor ponder lifes meaning vis a vis death’s certainty.
(**) Steven Shaviro Doom Patrols, Ch. 4: Michel Foucault. Internet Book. 1995 (Link from Post Modernism)
— The Image of God Beyond the Myths
— The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI). “The wealthy, powerful, and sometimes very weird Pritzker cousins have set their sights on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology… Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive an ideology and practice of disembodiment into our medical, legal, cultural, and educational institutions.”
— Gender Reassignment for Children: Cautionary Perspectives From Science
— UK to offer “gay/bi” men vaccines for Monkey Pox
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“Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” —Luke 6:38
— The origins of this sacred devotion
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