The Rise and Fall of Culture

Chapter One
An Introduction to Moral Reasoning

We are entering a new millennium. We stand and gaze upon the horizon of opportunity and destiny. Behind us, the gray haze of history diffuses from our individual and communal memory as we individually and collectively drive for progress. And we have accomplished much.

In the last century alone Americans have enjoyed more economic, technological, and scientific advancement than any human generation has enjoyed in any era of history. The list seems endless: we nearly all have indoor plumbing, heating and air conditioning, sufficient food supplies, inexpensive clothing, and housing over our heads. Just a century ago the pursuit of these necessities and comforts were the lifelong preoccupation of the average fourteen hour work day.

But even more fortuitous, most Americans also enjoy televisions, radios, home computers, modern medicine, expanded life spans, healthier living through bio-engineering in medicines and agriculture, civil rights, and liberties shared by just a small percentage of the human population; and an explosive amount of entertainment avenues that once belonged only to kings and dictators.

And more is just beyond our technological grasp. We are beginning to explore our Universe in ways never before conceived. Satellites (the ones that work) are being hurled towards other planets and telescopes are being pointed towards other galaxies and the mysteries of the cosmos are slowly but persistently being unraveled.

And just as our macrocosm is coming into focus our microcosm is being magnified and examined as well. Genetic and biological engineering are making possible new medicines and treatments and may one day deliver the perfect human being, without any genetic flaws, illnesses, or hereditary disadvantages, while also equipped with genetically altered improvements of higher learning and intuition skills and greater physical strength and stamina.

We could go on and on with what has been accomplished in our material world, and what is about to be accomplished, at least as the experts see it. And at this point, many feel that the new millennium will be the dawning age of wealth and reason; a precipice of a new golden age of endless prosperity.

But just one moment. All is not accounted for. And many who stand on this precipice of destiny do so in amazement and confusion. For beneath all the glitter and gold is a universal tug upon our collective human conscience. Deep within our spiritual and social souls a whispering trumpet resounds the warning that all is not well in paradise.

And even more ominous, the gray haze of history behind us forms thunder clouds crackling a warning for our own future: “Remember the reign of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Rome, Spain, England, France, China, Japan, and Germany. Remember the great cycle of civilization and the rise and fall of nations.” Remember the words of Shelley:

“I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far way.

History repeats itself. A fact the present refuses to learn and the future is consigned to embrace. And one must ask one’s self, “Does our future hold a greater empire? A new golden age renewed withing the brotherhood of men? Or the ‘lone and level sands’ covering a once mighty nation?”

Nations rise. Nations fall. But there are reasons for the rise and fall of nations, peoples, and empires. There are reasons. And these reasons are not just based off weather patterns, famines, and power plays. The Ages of mankind are in constant flux and the difference between Golden Ages and Dark Ages are not so dissimilar as one would think.

With all of our progress in the last century many will demand the acceptance that we are entering into a Golden Age. These individuals assert the Dark Ages are forever behind us. But not all agree. And others see clear signs of the white-walled-palace housing the muck and misery of a decaying civil morality. Indeed, the white-walled-palace is the archetypal paradox representing the hypocrisy of surface prosperity covering a multitude of corruptions and horrific offenses. And there seems no end to these “white-walled” contradictions in today’s society. Lets just name a few.

Americans have more liberty to go and do whatever they want to go and do than ever before. But, ironically, most Americans are afraid to walk out their front door.

America has lost its sense of community. And no wonder, night after night and hour after hour news clips reveal a society unraveling at every edge. Government assures us that crime is down. But never in the history of our nation have children murdered children at such epidemic proportions.

Worse than our fears of violence is our general cultural ambivalence towards violence. Hollywood pumps out more acts of murder and mayhem in one two-hour movie than our ancestors of a century ago ever saw in their entire lifetimes. But it is not just violence: pornographic sex, foul language, and a general disrespect for traditional virtues spew from television and movie entertainment like lava and sulfurous smoke from Vesuvius. Such lust for demeaning pleasures takes its toll. A rolling tidal wave of hedonistic ruin has already smashed upon our shores. Now, it simply encroaches upon our souls: darkening our minds, withering our spirits.

American’s general fear of the outside world (i.e our neighbor next door) is a reflection of such a toll. We no longer can leave our children, of any age, unattended at a city park, a corner grocery store, on a walk to school, at a neighborhood party, or even at a friends slumber party. And we must admit, this certainly wasn’t the case just a decade or two ago.

America has more information at its fingertips than ever before. But our public education process is at an all-time low. In many inner-city schools, sixty percent of high school graduates cannot read or write above a third-grade level. Many school administrators are cheating themselves, reporting false test scores to get increased government funds. And many of our highest institutions of learning have replaced deft intellectual challenge with good old politically correct brow beatings. A great veil of stupidity has descended upon America, from the children to the adults, from the laborers to the leaders. All this with the entire Library of Congress just a mouse-click away.

America is wealthier than ever before. But the average American family is just three house payments away from being homeless. And the American treasure vault stands bankrupt with over four trillion dollars in “I owe you’s.” The politicians declare a multi-trillion dollar surplus will solve all our financial woes. Yet the surplus is more paper-projections than money in the bank. And with social security, medicare, health insurance, the national military, and a host of other government programs, services, and institutions at the very edge of the financial brink, one with a prudent mind must wonder with austere cynicism how a government without a single instance in history of financial solvency for any of its programs can, with any seriousness, claim a surplus that, regardless of political parties and positioning, has already long been spent in the ravenous furnace of government machinations. Whatever our economy, the gap between the rich and the poor continues to expand, government intervention continues to be incompetent and even detrimental, and personal and national debt flourishes without recourse.

American government was built upon the genius system of separation of powers, representational elections, and above all, self-government. Today however, a recent President and Congress have usurped traditional constitutional morality in an apparent successful attempt to maintain personal powers and dominions. What is more shocking, however, is that the news media, the people’s first line of defense, has remained effectively silent at the moral outrage of it all. Not that the media has not reported the stories. Indeed, they have done so ad nauseam. Yet the stories are reported without any constitutional, social, or moral contexts. Instead, Americans have simply seen endless arguments and political spin all of which have been based on polling data and contemporary interpretations of private versus public character issues instead of the tried and true arguments grounded in the historical obviousness of moral reasoning and social responsibility. The media itself has lost its moral bearings and clearly pursues a liberal agenda. Ironically, the greatest damage done is to the liberal morality and to the national conscience as a whole. From here on out, the national stage of politics and journalism has no moral authority whatsoever. They have squandered their authorities for votes and ratings.

Even more grievous is the politicization of the role of the Supreme Court. Now the culture war is being fought full-force within the non-elected halls of judicial high priests, who make war on religion and civil rights in the name of religion and civil rights; passing judicial review on many legal and moral issues of our times without any constitutional authenticity for their decisions or their actions.

Dozens of writings from our genius forefathers have declared that government attracts the amoral and ambitious. “Beware,” is their message, “Lest you fall to wolves in sheep’s clothing.” But no matter, most prominent authors of our constitution have been re-branded anyway, as dirty and racist old men who took advantage of their own.

The contradictions in our society are numerous and great. But perhaps nowhere are they more poignant than in the nationwide attack and meltdown of the traditional family. The traditional family is the bedrock of this and any nation’s prosperity and posterity. But today we have more single parent families, divorces, welfare family incomes, and a severe retardation in the understanding of gender roles and heterosexual child rearing than any advanced civilization in history. The homosexual agenda has pushed its way into every hall of government and nearly every middle school in America under the guise of tolerance. Now, the greatest asset to a wholesome and progressive society, the traditional family, hangs a few tight strands away from utter collapse.

We are entering a new millennium. Will it be a Golden Age? Our science is great. Our technology remarkable. Our wealth incredible. But the Marcellus of our soul whispers, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” And despite our great advances in science, we remain a people imprisoned by waste, greed, and confusion.

What shall deliver us from this human condition? A new millennium? Or will a new date only record the time of our fall?

We can make the new millennium a Golden Age. We can overcome this human condition. We can banish poverty and disease and corruption, if for no other reason than our souls constantly will it.

But we must pay the price for the Good Society and the Golden Age of Liberty. And the price has never changed. It remains the same today as it did in all of history and as it will in all future generations. The price is the standard by which all free people’s are judged: by society, by history, by their great great grandchildren, and by God. The price for true freedom and progress will always remain correct moral and religious principle.

As George Washington declared:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, and are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men & citizens. The mere Politican, equally with the pious man ought to respect & to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private & public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the Oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that can be maintained without . Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure-reason & experience both forbid us to expect that National can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

And Samuel Adams,“A general dissolution of Principles and Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader . . . If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security."

Let us remember that these declarations were not made out of context, but in the midst of our nation’s greatest struggle to identify and procure those qualities which would ascend the common people’s lot above the monarchy and tyranny which engulfed the world at that time. No other nation on earth collectively sought the wholesale civil freedom for the masses as did America when these words were spoken. even then did she do so upon the backs of slaves. Hypocracy to be sure, but hypocracy born of world culture and common world government and not from American moral foundations. A fact which has escaped most American historians now teaching in our most esteemed universities.

 ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE

Posted by john at March 26, 2004 03:45 PM