Mystic Revolution

Not with a bang, but with a malnourished whimper, will the new vita moderni perish. It will not be slain by fundamentalist revolutionaries or by the new breed of Chestertonian man, but rather, it will starve. 

Louise Perry wrote a fabulous article quite recently entitled “Modernity’s Self-Destruct Button.” She says this:

“Put bluntly: The people on whom modernity depends are failing to reproduce themselves, which means that modernity itself is failing to reproduce itself. Most voters have no idea that this is happening. Nor do most politicians. But it is happening nonetheless, and we are experiencing its early ­stages in the form of diverse political crises across the modern world.”

The death of modernity, she postulates, will likely be much more boring than we fantasize. It seems that modernity is not compatible with living. I find it interesting and quite telling that, in an age of comfort, we are essentially conquering ourselves in the absence of an outside conqueror. This is evidenced not only by dropping fertility rates, but the obvious example of suicide, or our first-world consumption addiction. We are killing ourselves with comfort. I think this is the genius of what Perry points out- that perhaps humanity was not made for modernity. As most things, it reminds me of the Matrix:

“Did you know that the first matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where no one suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that as a species human being define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.” 

-Agent Smith, The Matrix

Struggle and battle are part of who we are. It unites us. Incidentally, this is why the wise dictator will always have an Immanuel Goldstein- because if you can’t unite your subjects through love of the dictator, you must unite them through hate of the enemy. 

What shall we say then, to this coming modernity-death? I offer two thoughts. 

The first is this: that God often gives us what we want, to our own detriment. This is counter-intuitive, but true. Consider when the Israelites asked for a king. 1 Samuel 8:1-18 says, 

“When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beersheba. Yet his sons did not walk in his ways but turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” So Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

The modern man has not asked for a king. We did ask for progress, though. Look where that got us. 

The second thought I would propose is that Godly parents are more valuable than ever before. 

I am 19 years old, and unmarried. I have thought much on the topic of children, and, as many who have gone before me, have questioned the ethics of bringing a child into this world “in a time such as this.” After all, it’s my opinion that we’re headed for a dystopia, or apocalypse, or something. In any case, I don’t believe that our future is necessarily bright. Is it good to have children now?

I have come to this conclusion: that now, more than ever, it is not only ethical but necessary to have children. Not to perpetuate the machine of modernity or for the future economy, but actually quite the opposite: to train up young minds to live perpendicularly to modernity. This conclusion was strengthened by the excellent article written by Grant Martsolf of the Savage Collective, entitled “Every Day Do Something That Won’t Compute.” He writes:

“Any parent knows that raising children, despite the joys, is exceptionally difficult. To actively choose children, one has to really believe that it is something that is worth doing, that there is a deep purpose and meaning in the act itself. This is especially true in a Machine economy where we are constantly bombarded with advertisements for various desirable consumer products and experiences. Without some deeper sense of purpose and meaning that guide childbearing, children are merely another good that can be obtained to satisfy our novel appetites. Children are left to compete in a crowded marketplace against other products and experiences with no external purpose that might render children ontologically more desirable than an Aerostream. Sometimes children win out but often they do not.

Ultimately though, choosing to have children is an act of hope. You really have to be hopeful that there is something worth passing on to those spawn. In my younger years, my vision of the world was formed extensively by the work of Stanley Hauerwas, a great philosopher, theologian, and curmudgeon. He puts it this way. “For Christians do not place their hope in their children, but rather their children are a sign of their hope… that God has not abandoned this world.” He is speaking to Christians using Christian framing, but this feels universally true to me. Maybe not the part about God abandoning the world but that there is something in the future that is worthy of hope. Choosing to have more children is implicitly an act of hope, an act of anti-despair. Without such hope, I would be likely to choose the most pleasurable and expedient thing in front of me like vacations and brunches. A child is certainly not that thing.”

You can look at it one of two ways, then. You can look around at the nihilist world and say that this is no world to bring a child into. Or you can look at the nihilist world and see that now, more than ever, we must raise up our children to be people of hope. 

Hope in what?

Hope in the work of Christ on the Cross.

Hope in the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Hope in renewal and peace. 

Hope that Christ is the ultimate Reality, the big-T Truth. 

Don’t succumb to the vicious, viral boredom that infects the mind, body, and spirit. In the face of all, have hope. That’s how we fight the system, the brutal clamorous machine of hope-theft that numbs the mind, fattens the body, and banishes the famished spirit. If you are a parent, raise children that know when to sing, and when to fight. If you are merely a wanderer as myself, tell the stories of your heritage. Use the machine- don’t let it use you.