Above is the cover of a book written by Hiroo Onoda, the fabled Japanese WWII soldier who was sent to fight in the Philippines in 1944 but didn’t surrender until 1974, nearly 30 years after the war’s conclusion.
His dogged stance strikes me as symbolic of much conventional wisdom today. That is, we focus exclusively on the ephemeral ideas of the last few decades that only seem new, but that’s shelf life has come and gone. In much the same way as our blinkered hero, Onoda, we seem neither willing nor able to perceive, much less reorient to, life’s innate dynamism. (And don’t get me started on the underlying structural clarity of existence, both moral and spiritual.) We’re determined to fight tired old battles, all the while pretending they’re the wave of the future.
Which is ironic given that all I’ve heard over the last few decades is how we all must change. It’s our age’s official dogma.
Roughly a year ago, I wrote a blog post (https://climbingthewalls.org/new-and-improved/) discussing this very topic after having attended one of our granddaughter’s high school graduation ceremony. “Change” was the singular focus of every single speaker, bar none, faculty and student alike.
Notably, as I pointed out at the time, there was absolutely nothing said about eternal verities, those unchanging, time-honored truths capable of guiding these young students through life’s inevitable challenges and difficulties, even, dare I say it, the changes manifest therein.
Rest assured, while the message was exclusively about “change,” the clear implication was that this was not about just any sort of change – only the kind that conforms to the now-ossified, idiosyncratic vision of the anointed, the credentialed class, not least those among the education-industrial complex. Be it known, any deviation from its pseudo-authoritative, lofty judgments is not change at all, but treachery and subversion.
To wit, the current status quo thinking dates back to the end of WWII when a new paradigm emerged in response to its cruel and callous devastations.
Specifically, it came to be settled dogma that the two great wars of the 20th century had been caused by nationalism or, more generally, the “closed society.” The new imperative was to eliminate what R.R. Reno has called the “strong gods” that bind people together.
Instead, a new “open society” would foster peace. The idea here was to make human commitments weaker, more dispassionate, and values more fluid and undefined. If there’s nothing to fight for, people won’t.
This type of thinking led to the creation of a new “international order,” defined, not surprisingly, by the newly victorious United States, the then reigning champion of freedom and moral virtue.
And who would administer this new world order? The nascent technocratic bureaucracy, that’s who. This managerial regime was necessary to guard “democracy” against the obvious excesses of the “demos,” the electorate, the general populace.
The underlying assumption was that human nature is inherently evil, as is all human agency. Thus, the elect, the enlightened few, were tasked with nothing less than “managing” all of human nature.
Among other things, this necessitated “educating” the great unwashed. For, as N.S. Lyons puts it, “dis- or misinformation,” as defined by these same all-knowing arbiters of truth, leads necessarily to “goose stepping.”
In similar fashion, the world must be made “safe” at all costs. Too much reliance on self-initiative or individual freedom is far too dangerous to risk. Life must be managed so that it is rendered safe if not boring, absent accountability. Unsurprisingly, this has led, among other things, to stagnation and a loss of societal dynamism.
This project also involved eliminating all “closed society” values such as religion, national identity, even local identity (family, church, etc.). Anything that binds people together in meaningful ways is suspect. Cohesion is bad. Intrinsic values such as loyalty, courage, and valor betray a rejection of the “open society’s” managerial authority and power. After all, the minute you stop regulating human beings, trouble lurks.
It is this “new” sort of “progressive” change that has come to dominate our national discourse (as well as my granddaughter’s graduation ceremony). Yet one might well ask whether the fruit of such change has produced the kind of benevolence and abundance so promised.
The fact is, this oligarchy of experts, the managerial technocratic state, is now floundering. Its failure is increasingly obvious to many if not most. And yet the arbiters of this ideology, rather than seeing the handwriting on the wall, are doubling down in the face of its unabashed failures.
The unipolar fantasy of the United States and Europe is crumbling in the face of an emerging multipolar world. Meanwhile, our country has been hollowed out through the ruthless exportation of manufacturing jobs overseas where slave labor cuts costs. Add to this the importation of cheap labor through illegal immigration.
Unemployment, drugs, and despair decimate the middle and working classes in those places time has left behind. Remarkably, the “winners” in this scheme, rather than showing understanding and mercy toward those their policies have helped destroy, punch down on these “losers.” Such reprobates simply need to “learn to code” or “rent a U-Haul,” to move away from their homes and to a more hospitable economy.
During this same period, wealth disparities have widened dramatically through globalization and the financialization of the economy, even as the country faces unprecedented and unsustainable debt.
I could go on. In the end, it’s as if our elites have come to consider the country a mere commercial zone rather than a place its citizens call home. Yet the fact is, the economy exists for the country, not the other way around. Such a simple truth seems all but lost.
Which brings me to my final and perhaps most important point. Biblically, we humans are created equal and commanded to steward our world as co-creators with God. When we remove human agency from the mix, the result betrays God’s intent, by definition.
And though my middle name is Calvin (after John Calvin, the Protestant Reformer), I reject the idea that human souls are so blackened with sin and evil that we are absolved from our God-given responsibilities. Just the opposite.
When we sin, we are called to repent, and to then begin anew, not to shrivel up in the corner, impotently licking our wounds, deathly afraid of our shadows.
For, in the end, God gave all human beings a will. Such can be used for sacred or profane purposes. The will is, in and of itself, a neutral entity, neither good nor bad. It all depends on how it’s used. But we cannot, and should not, deny it as a essential gift from God.
So, when a small group of elites decides that they alone can determine what’s best for everyone else, we should object. For humanity itself depends upon it.