Crossing the Threshold of Hope (NOT optimism)

Any civilization, no matter how otherwise superior, can have a crisis of confidence. Even one that proudly calls itself American. Or Chinese. 

One especially traumatic instance in recent history is China’s Century of Humiliation (c. 1846-1949) at the hands of the West (and, sadly, of Britain in particular). A distinctly ugly episode, at least in the Chinese experience, that the present regime in Beijing never tires of browbeating us into remembering and being ashamed of. Rather as if it had ended just 3 years ago, and lasted all of the previous 300. Indeed, almost as if we Christian Westerners were the only ones capable of such heartless atrocities. And yes, I'm sure there is something uniquely humiliating in having suffered the sort of crisis of confidence that engulfed 19th-century China. Imagine it: You're the kind of civilizational empire that produces all that it needs from within itself, and so believes itself to be both commercially and intellectually - maybe even spiritually? - self-sufficient. Only to be bludgeoned into finding out that an alarming segment of your population, at all social levels, has a craving for a foreign product as sordid and debilitating as opium.

Again, this is all to the West's permanent, irreversible shame. My point is that, throughout the period in question, the Chinese governing classes were suffering a crisis of confidence; they were experiencing nothing remotely like a crisis of conscience. They began to doubt the superiority of Chinese civilization; they didn't begin to wonder if that civilization was supremely horrible (say, because of its brutal settler colonialism, or because of all the adjacent occupied/absorbed peoples it had stripped of their identities). They questioned China’s competence to rule the greater part of Asia; they didn't doubt or disparage China’s right to exist. 

Whereas I think many today - both pro- and anti-Western - would quite plausibly argue that the 21st-century West is undergoing a crisis of both kinds. I.e., our Western elites haven't been merely investigating, and self-recriminating over, what the West has done wrong; they've begun to doubt, and in some quarters even to deny, that it has ever done anything right. In short it would seem that, regarding belief in itself, and conviction as to its own basic worth, today's West is a royal mess. But if so, just when did it go wrong? Or, assuming it deserved to go wrong because of its unique and unprecedented awfulness, roughly when did it begin to go off the rails?

For some no doubt highly personal reason I keep coming back to the year 1970, and my native America. We had just successfully invaded the moon, and soon we would find ourselves rather audaciously invading a then-little-known place called Cambodia. A milestone - or even a blueprint? - book also came out that same year. In it, author (and soon-to-be National Security Adviser) Zbigniew Brzezinski proclaimed that no less than the entire industrialized West was in the throes of a massive, irreversible transformation: it was, quite literally, between two ages - both technologically and spiritually. He might just as well have termed them two aeons, or two epochs. Everywhere he seemed to suggest that the spiritual, no less than the technical and economic, implications of this new age were utterly revolutionary. So much so, indeed, that as it unfolded, there was no telling what ostensibly permanent truths (or even "eternal" revelations?) might prove themselves more or less obsolete. Or at best, mere artifacts of some narrowly agricultural or industrial phase of mankind's upward march. And so, of course, largely unable to survive the rigors of a "transition to technetronic society." 

Which is not to say (at least as I read Brzezinski overall) that for him all pre-technetronic cultures were equally ill-equipped and unprepared. Years later, as an esteemed foreign-affairs guru and global geostrategist in the decades following his Carter Administration stint, he would go on to discern in both Chinese and Islamic civilizations a certain resilience, or perennial relevance, to the coming Age that might well be found sorely wanting in many Western traditions. Certainly he would show none of the elegiac pessimism towards the former's survival prospects that he displays, time and again, for what he calls Western "traditional religion;" possibly Western territorial democracy; but above all, Western traditions and practices of national sovereignty.

Now among these "endangered" traditions of the West Brzezinski nowhere, to my knowledge, directly specifies Christian orthodoxy. Rather, he seems merely to presuppose the durability, and enduring relevance, of core Chinese and Islamic traditions, as against the transience and fragility of their Western counterparts. But I find it interesting that, among our foreign-policy elites of the past generation, not a few have accepted what I like to call the Brzezinskian premise of a most-justly-aggrieved-against-the-West China and Islam: a Dynamic Duo to whom we Westerners owe at very least a kind of penitent deference, if not outright accommodation. And these even to the point of the very closest geopolitical/economic convergence and collusion. Certainly this accommodation has seemed to be a strongish current among certain of our Western elites at least up until, say, the watershed year 2016. My point is that, for much of the recent past, these elements seemed quite buoyed by the cultural resurgence and renewed confidence of mainland China and Sunni Islam; they appeared, and continue to appear, nowhere near as concerned about the challenging - some might say beleaguered and endangered - demographic prospects of Christianity throughout much of Asia and Africa today.

Anyhow, more and more I find it convenient to see 1970 as a kind of Great Turnaround Year for our time. A year in which at least we Americans began a long, slow progress - arguably culminating in the decade 2005-2015? - towards something that I myself (prejudiced observer that I am) can only call self-infatuation. A year in which, if not the majority of us Yanks, possibly the greater part of our elites? began to exchange hope for optimism. Or rather, more precisely, the point at which an influential many in the West started becoming more and more hopeless about everything God has made of Man, and ever more feverishly optimistic about everything Man could make of himself. 

And not without reason, one might contend. After all, the latter was something we could see and touch, possibly even measure, document, predict. But above all, act upon (that sacred modern imperative). As for the former - the Divine making of us - well, it's not like any of us were actually present when God (assuming there is a God) created man. So just how, then, do you gauge, and gain access to, and utilize productively the effects of an event that you never saw take place? And which might never have even happened? Much less try to assess, or retrieve, its supposed fruits, benefits, virtues?

By a number of measures, then, one might plausibly argue that the period since 1970 has been  one of immense progress. But in particular if, by "progress," one is measuring the extent to which loss of faith in Divine providence has been compensated by a proportionate increase of faith in human ingenuity, and audacity, and optimism. But especially, I think, when we consider this "new" faith against the backdrop of the kind of universe we were then coming to believe in: a world in which one's confidence and preparedness for the future are only as strong as one's contempt for the past. Or, to put it less starkly, a world in which one's power to accept, embrace and productively exploit change - aka PROGRESS - is only ensured by the degree in which one looks critically, skeptically, or even dismissively at what previous ages might have deemed permanent truths. Or perhaps even at the very notion of a permanent truth, accessible to all human beings?

Of course, just what all this might portend for a new papacy, or for the global and geopolitical future of the Catholic Church, I won't presume to guess. I know next to nothing about the new pope, and haven't got the faintest notion of whether and how far he will be either relevant or redundant to the challenges facing this present strange, extreme time.  A time in which, one might argue - and wherever its masses throughout the world may be trending - its more globally-minded elites persist in putting their faith in truths that are continually evolving and "improving," rather than truths that are permanent. My one prayer and hope, then - though it's a prayer in which I invite all Catholics and other believers to join me - is that our new pope is, and will remain, a man of hope, rather than optimism; a man of permanence, and not of Late Twentieth-century Progress.

Pray for the peace of Kyiv (however it may be found).

Make Russia Catholic Again.

A Most Complicating Elite

Competence is most always a good thing. But there are times when it's not exactly the best predictor - much less guarantor - of prudence, or judgment, of proportion and restraint, of discernment, or even of humility. And sometimes it can seek out extreme ways of testing and proving itself, and others, the implications of which may be very disturbing. And not always in a good way.

For instance, these past ten years or so,* I've been struck by the sheer glut of highly competent people - both in churches and out of them - who like nothing better than a good stiff challenge. And sometimes the bigger the better. In fact (if I didn't know better), I'd say they may even seem depressed, or demoralized, when they find an otherwise efficient procedure running a mite too smoothly. To the point, indeed, where many seem almost driven to insert a fresh challenge, or to hunt or scrounge around for one, in situations where in fact little or no pre-existing challenge exists. Almost as if (as I've ranted in other places), there were nothing really worth doing except in the degree that it's difficult.

*So maybe it is all Trump's fault?;)

But now imagine that more of the world's visibly effective people were to choose simplicity as often than they chose heroism. Imagine if, for a change, even a bare majority of all the conscientious, focused, purpose-driven people in the world simply did the simplest, most obvious, most humble duty lying in front of them. Even if it meant nothing more than holding a stiff, heavy door open at the right moment for a person on a walker. Instead of seeking out - say, for the purpose of distinguishing themselves - some task that's more complicated and challenging, which might lay two or three or four steps down the road. Which latter task they choose, not because it's the one most natural to them, or reflects some innate gift or propensity or talent. Or even the one that gives them the most joy.  Rather do they choose the more difficult (heroic?), less immediate task, because it's the surest way, these days, of being taken seriously by certain People Who Count. And of gaining the confidence of these People Who Count. And of being lauded and promoted by them. Because, in the final count, isn't it only through these latter's earnest mediation, and intercession, and sponsorship, that any of us can be effective at all? 

Or maybe even just keep our jobs?

The Return of the Naive; or, My Hopeless Unfitness for this Great World

Yes, maybe I'm just naive, on these recondite matters. (As no doubt I am in so many of the ways of this most wisely elitist, esoteric, complexity-loving Great Global World.)

But why is it these days, I never fail to be amazed at all the various podcasts out there - most but not all of them hosted by women - which presume to dispense every sort of urgent advice to lovelorn young men. Or if nothing else, love-perplexed young men.

What I notice - and again, it may be just my incurable world-dullness - is that, however wide-ranging the prescriptions may be, they seem in general to boil down to tips on one vital issue: how to succeed in being everything (and why should she settle for less?) - EVERYTHING every self-respecting attractive woman supposedly wants in a man. Everything except, of course, for being oneself. Because everyone knows how limited, how hopelessly quaint, how pitiably antiquated that resource most always turns out to be. 

What bothers me most is the compulsively analytic, break-it-all-down, almost chemical focus of all this. Really, since when did masculinity - or any other component of male personal attractiveness - come down to something as simple and manipulable as a lab formula? As if what any of us has been made were a thing somehow elixir-able, distillable, reducible to something else, that we in our bold shrewdness "create", or concoct, and control. And so may freely spice and doctor up. Usually, I notice, more or less to the death of any real flavor. Again, as if any bottling we do, any mere potion we make of ourselves didn't cut us off irretrievably from an illimitable Source. As if, indeed, any reduction we perform on what God has made, however well-seasoned, weren't always a thing done at immense risk, and inconceivable cost, to both chef and preparation. But all the more, as in this case, when the latter two are one and the same creature.

And yes, I know there are lots of love-perplexed young women out there who seem more or less obsessed with control. (Which in practical terms often translates into obsession with a controller.) And that is commonly rooted in a kind of horror of anything hinting at real vulnerability, whether in themselves or in their prospective partners. At least in the relationship's so-called initial phases. Which ensuing clash of Titans typically not only erodes any basis their (mis)union might have had in friendship; it pretty much precludes any possibility of friendship between them in the future. With famously glorious results for our 21st-century Western stabs at marriage and raising families. Indeed, I wonder if our modern attempts at bringing "up" children would be half so hellishly hard if their parents weren't so busy trying discipline each other.

Again, I realize this is the glorious world we have made, whose latest Great Global version comes with the same old injunction, only this time still more imperative: ADAPT OR DIE. My question is, What's all this got to do with adapting to the God who made us? Except, of course, as a brilliantly efficient method of driving us ever farther away from Him?

On Being Maritally Perfect

These past 2-3 months, my good friend of 34 years has been living through the rapid - in fact, accelerating - implosion of his marriage of 40 years and 4 children. 

Saddest of all, it seems to be moving fast in the direction of a fairly punitive divorce. A divorce he's done nothing to contest. A complicating factor is that they're both evangelical Christians, who have been attending the same church for decades, and who share roughly the same views on theology and politics. To paraphrase Bernard Shaw, here are two very different people divided by a common religion. Neither does it help, in getting a grasp of the broader situation, that she is a pillar of the church: esteemed, respected, admired, listened to, confided in, sided with, by almost everybody. Plus she's also my friend.

So I tried to explore with her, in a recent conversation, how he might over the years have been unduly critical, or what might have been his more unreasonable demands and expectations. And I think she made it pretty clear that there were none. At all events, he wasn't channeling, or siphoning, or stifling their marriage in a way that made it harder and harder for her to be herself. No, again and again she made clear that the real sticking-point was not any demands he made on her. Rather it was his non-compliance - or more often, imperfectly willing, or imperfectly affectionate compliance - with what, surely, any serious Christian would have considered minor and reasonable requests for favors. And these, yes, in addition to any shared household chores he likely had already completed; but again, utterly reasonable in nature. And yet for some reason he persisted in feeling, and reacting, as though he was being nagged and hounded, whenever these issues came up. And kept telling her: "Stop treating me like a child." Her reply: "But you are a child."

When I asked her what he seemed most to expect from her, or from their relationship, apart from  those moments, passages and periods of real warmth and affection where they genuinely seemed to understand each other (and when all his duly appointed tasks had been completed), her answer was: "To be left alone."

Lately it seems to me that, at least here in America, a lot of married people expect from their spouses a strange and distinct kind of perfection. A standard that, however limited it may be in its particular sphere and range of expectations - say, household chores, emotional attentiveness, responsiveness, mind-reading, mood-gauging, etc - is nonetheless very exact, and exacting. The assumption seems be that one's spouse,  while not exactly a god (except maybe of his/her own personal and immediate perimeter), is nonetheless a radically free agent with regard to two key areas:

1) all moral endeavor they undertake - or are asked to undertake - and 

2) all moral outcome. 

In other words, within this limited sphere of defined expectation ("Gosh, ALL I was asking was . . ."), spouses are fully capable of being every bit as good - as appropriate, sensitive, responsive, reinforcing, completing, etc - as they want to be. With no margin for failure. Because, after all, they have absolute control over themselves. And therefore can safely be considered the gods of themselves. Such that in the event they fall short, it can only be because they've been either not trying, or trying not nearly hard enough. Thankfully WE, being (at least by comparison) the perfect husband or wife, are always on hand to help. Better yet, our help is essential to their grasp of their duties, for a huge variety of reasons. But especially given that we've already been applying ourselves so rigorously, and thoroughly, not just to framing the standard of excellence we've set for them, but to living it, weighing and measuring and judging ourselves by it. To the point where by now it practically breathes through every pore. Why on earth, then, should anyone - and least of all our spouses - be so ungrateful, so mean-spirited, so distrusting of US (of all good people) as to refuse our help?

After all, we're only doing the best we can.

Yet surely the proverbial fact remains: the race isn't ALWAYS to the most swift. Nor even to the most morally certain and sure. Worse yet, sometimes the result obtained isn't even directly proportionate to the effort expended. Or to the exertion and strain and heroism of that effort. Or, worst of all, even to your own self-consciousness, as it were, of how much you're really trying to do your best, to be the idealest imaginable husband or wife. Sometimes the BEST result - the best anyone could ever have wished for or imagined - is proportioned most directly, not to the fury of your fretting and striving, but to the patience and quietude, the attentiveness and heedfulness with which you consider the limited creature in front of you. In short, sometimes you achieve your best results by understanding first the nature, the needs, maybe even the yearnings?, of the one you're trying to change. Rather than by treating him or her as someone almost incidental, or experimental, to what may be the real project at hand: i.e, your use of your spouse as a gauge, as it were, by which to measure the moral worth or progress, or moral perfection of the story's real hero - namely, You the Changer. Almost as if You, and your Moral Integrity, were the fount from which all other good flowed; so that any good coming even from God must pass through you. Or indeed, as if striving to "be perfect" yourself were always the best way of helping someone else attain perfection. Whereas there may, in fact, be times when even husbands and wives don't need a strenuous moral exemplar, much less preceptor. Sometimes all they may need is someone to listen, and observe, or even simply pray. And in any case, always trustfully and expectantly, resting in the knowledge of that One who alone can perfect any of us with fulness of wisdom and love, and not just abundance of urgency, or zeal, or expertise.

It's a rule, I'm told, that has been known to apply even to marriages of 30, 40 or 50 years. Because after all, what is it you're really trying to achieve, with your husband or your wife? And how will you know when success has been reached? If ever?p Most importantly, is it chiefly your own moral integrity that you've been called by God to secure, demonstrate, vindicate? Or rather, is it the real spiritual growth, maturity and happiness of your spouse? I.e., that same one whom (presumably) you've been doing your very best to love and be patient with, and pray for?

A Gabbard Worthy of the Sword

Ah, you ask, but is the sword - i.e., this present US administration - worthy of the scabbard?

There are some things only time can tell, of course, and likely that is one of them. But I do find it more than a tad significant that the once-doted-on ex-Democrat is without even well-wishers - much less fellow-travelers - from anywhere within her former party. Including the man whose 2016 presidential candidacy she apparently risked a good deal to endorse. 

Then again, one may dislike - or distrust? - her for all sorts of reasons and agendas. And I suppose not all of them unreasonable. (Though I do feel something like pity for anyone who presumes to doubt her - as opposed to, say, Samantha Power's? - professional competence.) But more than anything else right now I'd like to know who are her most visceral haters. And more to the point, what are their real, most visceral motives and agendas. Oh, I'm sure they have something to do with what we used quaintly to call "foreign affairs", and America's "standing in the world." Still I wonder: Just what does it mean to hate, detest, despise, revile, etc, a political figure whose only political hatred, to the best of my knowledge, is directed towards something perhaps most accurately described as jihadism. In short, her one most pressing foreign crusade has always targeted those who are, at least as much as any other contenders - and conceivably far more than even those lame, vile, pathetic, diabolic, retrograde, brilliant, bestial,  omniconspiratorial, omni-incompetent Russians (3rd paragraph from bottom) - the enemies, not of this or that country or bloc (or even of God's Chosen Country), but of the human race. 

Again, say what you like, wring your hands, clutch your pearls, what have you. I for one will continue to be relieved that, after what seemed like an interminable Senate confirmation process, the best woman finally, actually won. As opposed to the worst available woman being merely handed a nomination.