Have you ever had the sense - say, in a dream - of a place long familiar to you that was somehow slipping away from your mental grasp? A place so slowly, subtly, insidiously changing, and to such an imperceptible degree, that any day now you expected to wake up and find that, whatever surface likenesses remained, its mood and spirit had altered almost beyond recognition? So that, regardless of its previous moral norms and expectations, the ones it now presented to you seem all but diametrically opposite? Except that, of course, no matter how jarring the seeming abruptness of change, it was understood that you needed to "get with the [new] program" as soon as possible.
I don't pretend to know how far this image might serve as a parable of our times - say, of the past 60 years. But this much I know for sure. I had for much of my life a rather comfortable stereotype of the world I grew up in (roughly 1960 to 1990). Everywhere I looked, the tacit assumption seemed to be that advanced industrial societies consisted of a certain very predictable, indeed natural majority of people. They consisted largely of people who, whatever their level of talent, ambition or achievement, were mostly content to help others, or even to help themselves, in ways that entailed reasonably light levels of suffering, hardship or challenge. At all events, the general run of people were not seen as likely to go out of their way to "knock themselves out" - either for themselves or for others.
Whereas in contrast, for some reason I seem to see no shortage of busy, important, results-driven people, in this Great Global World today, who are willing, or even proud, to suffer. And not just on account of some gross, sordid vice to which they're either stubbornly or hopelessly addicted. The fact is: Not all self-harming people are compulsive gamblers, drinkers or drug addicts. Nor are they necessarily harming themselves, or risking real harm, chiefly for the sake of mere pleasure or self-indulgence. My point is that most of us want moral assurance, in one degree or another; most of us want some positive sense that we are, in fact, doing good, or doing the right thing. Often, too, the greater the good we think we're doing, the greater the (re)assurance we can easily come to believe we need. And have a right to demand. Indeed, we may at times be willing to go to immense, even world-unsettling lengths in order to get that assurance. Sometimes even just to prove our sincerity and altruism. Or the depth and authenticity of our love for even one person or family. (Whether the often narcissistic individuals who seem to demand such proofs are ever convinced by our efforts, much less softened and humanized by them, is another story; more on that below.)
But now consider this further point: if bright, ultra-motivated people are willing to go to often wrenchingly sacrificial lengths for a mere handful of individuals, why, think what can be accomplished - what can be stirred up - when they do so for an entire city or country, or corporation, or continent. Or global economy. And all for the sake of some incommensurably greater good. One not perhaps to be attained in our lifetimes. But surely decades, or even centuries, down the road?
Now this stirring-up is, I think, well under way. And has been for some time. By my reckoning, for at least the past 30 years or so. In short, the demands for often excruciating public sacrifice that were once most typical of the more idealistic and illiberal forms of communism, socialism, fascism, etc, now seem to have pretty thoroughly infected just about every strain of neoliberal capitalism. More and more I see talented people of every sort who are to willing to incur, and even to inflict on themselves and others, huge, painful sacrifices for the sake of an idea or ideology, a career or company, some model of productivity or progress or self-transcendence. Or even some vision of global progress, or holiness, or righteousness (however defined). Almost as if the entire planet were poised uneasily on a threshold Between Two Ages. And of course, the sooner we all passed over that threshold into the Glory Beyond, the better for all concerned. (Or most, in any case?)
I won't presume to guess as to what are all the upshots of this trend. But so far, the best I can tell, it has succeeded in creating - or at least accelerating? - a world of breath-taking, heart-pounding excitement. And hammering, if not harrowing, change. For me anyway, it's as if all sorts of otherwise responsible high-achieving people wanted nothing better than that the world should become, as nearly as possible, like some high-intensity video game, or blockbuster action film, or sci-fi/horror/apocalypse saga.
Nor am I insisting that this is obviously a bad thing. We all know how boring life would be without lots of the kinds of attitudes - and people - that get things riled up. Without, e.g., bold dynamic sentiments like impatience and exasperation, and indignation (especially over what one KNOWS is a righteous grievance). Yes, even if those emotions sometimes lead to what might otherwise be described as violence. Indeed - one might ask - how would this world ever move forward, without the challenge and uncertainty of near-constant excitement? Or if not near-constant, surely always seething and rumbling on the rim, like a (supposedly) dormant volcano?
Most urgently, how else but by these challenges would we be able to test the mettle of anyone, and so find out what anyone is REALLY MADE OF (that sacred American question). How else can strong be separated from weak, so that at last we can determine who is most worthy of authority and power? Of prosperity and success? Or even of mere survival?
And yes, I'll admit, the above arguments may quite likely succeed in creating a far more socially Darwinian world than anything we've hitherto known: a global social order in which only the most evolutionarily fit will shepherd (what's left of) humankind into a gloriously indefinite future throughout the galaxy and beyond. And really, who can argue with a path - however "cruel" or harsh - that all but ensures the limitless prolongation and expansion of the human race?
But now recall what I said earlier about the place of love in all this. And in particular about the extreme lengths to which people may go in demonstrating love to those who in a sense despise it; who not only take far more than they give, but are only the more confirmed in their narcissism, the more vehemently we try to love them. And then consider the difference between two kinds of love. Between when we love vehemently - or even "aggressively" - and when we love patiently. Between strenuousness on the one hand, and gentleness, and hospitality, on the other. Between pleading with people who disdain us - even to the point of appeasing and accommodating them! - because, after all, we know we have the right answers; vs listening to and observing these same people, and asking the right questions. And then consider how often it is, that the more we knock ourselves out - and then brood on the nobility and sacrifice of our good actions - the more of a burden we become, both to ourselves and to those we're trying to help. Not to mention to our fellow-helpers.
Most of us know what it's like to love others in those forceful, definitive, decisive ways that give us both - lover and beloved - almost in equal measure, a foretaste of purgatory. And therewith, perhaps, no small amount of suffering on both sides. But now imagine that more Busy Important People were as willing to love as they are to suffer. And not just to love in some self-proving purgatorial way. As if the Father in the parable were to go not only chasing after his Prodigal Son into the far country, but immersing himself in his lifestyle - maybe even getting robbed or beaten by the son's companions! - just to prove himself sacrificial. But rather let's concede, for sake of argument, that these same BIPs were at last willing to love more nearly as God loves, and indeed longs to love us. Imagine if most of us were able to love, not just zealously, but appropriately. You know, as if the Way in which our loved one was originally created actually mattered. Or even secreted within its lowly depths some residual wisdom, and grace, and beauty of its own, apart from our micromanagement. Some primal giftedness that even We Globally Enlightened, with all our august learning, experience, expertise and holiness, might learn from: if only we could hear. As distinct from the way our beloved - not to mention most everyone else - must needs be recreated, reconfigured, etc, to conform to our modern operational or other global necessities. Imagine, in short, loving any human creature in such a Way as to give even our prodigals - nay, even our most hardened enemies! - the kind of foretaste of heaven as would make them actually want to go there.
As opposed to, you know, their merely wanting to stay out of hell. Or even purgatory.
The resultant world might not be nearly as exciting, turbulent or change-obsessed as the one we've come to enjoy these past c. two-and-a-half centuries. The devotees of real-life video games, for one, would most certainly have to seek their entertainment elsewhere. But I suspect the emerging human globe will be one far more capable of Real Progress - i.e., far more nearly a colony of Heaven than of any earthly empire - than any historic earth we've ever known.
