AMERICA, WE HAD A GOOD RUN Part III

It may feel right to blame Trump and white privilege for America’s implosion but there is a different story. The decline of religion and quality education (Parts I and II) are poisons working through the body politik but those are simple corruptions that are visible and comprehensible. The third poison is more insidious and revolutionary. It might just be the final nail in our coffin.

Remember squealing in delight at hearing “You’ve got mail!”? It was hard to see the downside to such an explosion of information and connectivity. As Custer said to Sitting Bull when he sold him a case of whiskey, “What do you mean, what’s the downside? A beverage that tastes good and makes you feel great, too? What could possibly be the downside?”

No force in history has democratized man like the internet. Vast distances are meaningless. Commerce and the spread of ideas are instantaneous. Instead of relying on McDonald’s to transport culture through the delights of saturated fats, flashy websites and massive commercial platforms now allow us to read thousands of user reviews from all over the world. The world is united in Stooge-ian bliss by a woman choking on a spoonful of cinnamon.  

The ability of anyone to publish without social connection or money has led to an explosion of ideas, many of them bad. It used to be that publishing meant impressing gatekeepers who were both judges of what would sell but also of what was worthy. This had its downside, of course. Herman Melville and George Orwell dealt with punishing rejection before experiencing success. But now, anybody can vomit ideas into cyberspace. Think Alex Jones and Infowars, QAnon, the proliferation of conspiracy theories and fake news. Think of how many terabytes of data have been wasted posting pictures of food.

The Great Sorting

This mass democratization started long before the internet, of course and curmudgeons issued dark warnings long before Omnipotentblog. Printing ended the monopoly of the Pope. Radio and TV ended the monopolies of newspapers. And now with Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, we don’t ever have to be bothered with anybody’s obviously false opinions again. Infinite choice has led to a sort of ghettoization of like-minded communities, a siloing of information and parallel realities. Maybe journalistic standards have always been low but there is no longer any internal pressure to be fair and balanced since there is confidence the other side will be told. We no longer have a common language, a common morality, or even a common understanding of basic facts. In 1953, historian Herb Butterfield wrote, “…the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness—each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked—each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.” Is this not our world today?

Some believe enlightenment is the inevitable byproduct of knowledge; The human spirit, they say, is designed to grow. Aided by greater knowledge, man will inevitably strive towards self-actualization. Conservatives, obsessing over the difference between knowledge and wisdom, say this is bunk. Knowledge is meaningless without guidance, they say. Whether from ancient text or tradition or the old lady down the street who always seems to know the right thing to say, wisdom must be either forged through experience or handed down by others who have already done the heavy lifting. Wisdom is not something that just washes over us. We need a doctrine or heuristic to point us in the right direction. Can wisdom be found on the internet? Certainly. (See Omnipotentblog.blogspot.com) But one has to sift through piles and piles of garbage. And honestly, when one has not even begun to scratch the surface of all the hilarious cat videos out there, who has the time?

Now that information is essentially instant and free, another belief system emerges: With Google, who needs to know anything at all? Mankind has available an instant, voice-operated encyclopedia. We are drowning in a sea of information and yet, we seem to swallow none of it.

My kingdom for a “like”.

A whole new genre of media deemed “social” has led to a great irony: we are becoming more and more lonely. This new generation is the most fragile in history. Seen as a national crisis, British Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a government minister with 200 million pounds to combat loneliness. One American study showed the level of anxiety of incoming college freshman is equal to the average mental patient in the 60’s. Parenting expert John Rosemond states the number of children diagnosed with a mental illness is 50 times greater than in the 1950’s. Suicide has nearly doubled in the last five years and psychiatric intakes at Children’s Hospital of San Diego have tripled. They are adding a new wing. A psychologist affiliated with the program acknowledged that cyber bullying has a nastiness that old-fashioned school yard bullying did not. Dr. Jean Twenge of SDSU has published research showing that social media and smartphone use is not only correlated with depression but is the clear and convincing cause of it

We are in a time where the values of the Enlightenment are being eclipsed by Romanticism. Feelings dominate reason. The criticism of the Enlightenment, especially that of the French philosophes, was always that materialism and cold rationality do not solve the problems of man. Are we not beings of beauty and light as well as intellect? Clearly. But we are also not designed for lives ruled by carnality and instinct. It seems the internet is basically designed for instant gratification and emotional itch-scratching. Are we not better than rutting tribal beasts fooled into believing this sort of thing will lead to happiness?

Man has never been healthier, wealthier or safer. We have also never been more sad. And we are becoming more ignorant about real life by the day. Of course, the internet doesn’t turn people into drooling masses; People turn people into drooling masses. It’s just a tool. But misused, it is a doomsday device of stupidity, insularity and loneliness.

The solution is to go out and meet someone for conversation. Read a serious book that is not political propaganda. Lie down on your lawn at night and contemplate the beauty and majesty of the stars. Reconnect with God through prayer or song. And for crying out loud, stop looking at your phone so much. Except when the new installment of Omnipotentblog comes out. Obviously.

AMERICA, WE HAD A GOOD RUN Part II

Increasingly, America is ruled by two tribes of lunatics, snapping their fingers, ready to break into a dance fight at any moment. While Trump has indeed cranked it to 11, he is but the cherry on top of the banana split. How did we go so wrong?

West Side Story

American education was once the best in the world but as early as 1948, Richard Weaver wrote “…we have lost our grasp of the nature of knowledge...” Schools have become “social centers…where teachers, living in fear of constituents, dare not enforce scholarship, and endeavor to turn classes into democratic forums…” And, while knowledge alone will not make citizens more moral or kind or refined, a nation cannot be great without great schools. The 2015 ranking from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which includes countries like Tunisia and Kazakhstan, puts the U.S. at #39 in math, 24 in reading, and 25 in science.

One problem is the deep resistance to reform embedded in teachers’ unions. Unions tell us that teachers are the bedrock of society. But if that’s true, wouldn’t it be important to have good teachers? And to have good teachers, shouldn’t we be able to fire bad ones? In California, where fruit and common sense are stopped at the border, one teacher fed semen-laced cookies to his students. Several victims now have eating disorders but the district had to pay him $40,000 to quit due to the arcane steps required to fire someone. In 2014, a California judge ruled the state’s lax teacher tenure violated students’ civil rights. He was overturned.

Yet, dangerous as general mediocrity is, perhaps the bigger danger to the republic is the pervasive indoctrination that saturates everything from English to Home Economics. “Ohhh, Omnipotentblog. Isn’t that just another whiny conservative trope disproved by this Huffpo piece I read the other day?” asked a friend, a professor at an elite university while sipping cherry Kool-Aid. (True story.) Well, the liberal Atlantic disagrees. In “Admit It, American Colleges Do Indoctrinate Students”, Conor Friedersdorf argues that it does happen but it’s generally a good thing.

Gresham’s law in education states that content that leads to credentials more easily will replace that which is more difficult but has higher intrinsic value. With the advent of Gender, Ethnic and other grievance-oriented programs as well as the infiltration of those values in most other subjects, the bad replaces the good. This material naturally displaces traditional education not only because it is favored by instructors but because time and resources are limited. And when you have a society to indoctrinate, American History and Shakespeare must go.

If you approach two random professors sipping lattes while complaining about the Nixonian conservatism of that imperialist dog Leon Trotsky, they would likely have difficulty naming a Republican colleague. According to one recent study, the ratio of liberal to conservative professors is almost 12 to 1. Economics, the most conservative profession is a mere 4.5 to 1 but in history, the ratio is over 33 to 1. What’s shocking is how these numbers have shifted in the last 50 years. A 1968 study put the ratio in history departments at just 2.7 to 1. As recent as 2004, liberal history professors outnumbered conservatives by as little as 9 to 1. One recent study from Stanford found that conservative-leaning law professors face overt discrimination in promotions and hiring. Another study of social psychology professors noted 37% would not hire a conservative and 44% thought their peers would not. 37% also believed their peers would discriminate on a grant review. My defensive friend points out that STEM professors are generally not communists. While true, STEM students are less than 40% of all graduates, which means the overall ratio for non-STEM fields is far higher than 12 to 1. Primary and secondary education are no better as 85% of elementary and 87% of High School teachers identify as liberal.

Is there evidence students are brainwashed? In a slightly dated study, two researchers found only “slight shifts” in ideology.

But when analyzing the numbers, the “slight shifts” are rather striking. “Far left” students more than doubled while the “far right” cohort dropped nearly a third. Conservatives dropped by 10% while liberals enjoyed a 25% bump. This is hardly insignificant.

How did education drift so far from the broader culture? The social ferment of the 60’s did lasting damage to the nation and education was not spared. In 1969, armed, militant black students, angry over Cornell University’s pervasive “racist attitudes” and “irrelevant curriculum”, seized control of a dormitory. Death threats were phoned to professors who had previously opposed them. Thomas Sowell, a black economist and Cornell professor until 1968, did not experience the alleged mass racism on campus but he did have harsh words for the president at the time, James Perkins, whom he described as “a veritable weathervane, following the shifting cross-current of campus politics…the quintessential appeaser and dispenser of pious rhetoric”. With their demands happily met, the militants walked free.

Another Cornell professor at the time, Allan Bloom, wrote in “The Closing of the American Mind”, that “universities gave way under the pressure of mass movements and did so in large measure because they thought those measures possessed a moral truth...” Perkins “had a mixture of cowardice and moralism not uncommon at the time…(he) thought he was engaged in a great moral work.”

In 2018, on American campuses, leftists now feel empowered to threaten violence, physically assault conservatives and journalists, rip posters out of teenaged hands, shout down speeches, riot, and commit an extraordinary number of other fascist and violent acts. This happens because the ideological progeny of James Perkins support it.

Jonah Goldberg describes the 1930’s as a “fascist moment”. A world-wide depression had shaken confidence that democracy could solve problems and there was great affection, fawning in fact, over movers and shakers like Mussolini and Hitler. WWII changed this, of course, but that doesn’t erase the fact that there was a time when many viewed the Bill of Rights as crusty and stale. Is Western Civilization having another “fascist moment”? The left has made serious attacks on the 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, and 10^th amendments and many on the right embrace a president that, while unfairly slandered as fascist, appears thoroughly annoyed he has any restraints at all.

When an entire generation expresses fondness for socialism but can’t even define it, it’s time to admit our schools have failed. Fixing education would be a daunting task. Perhaps when Millenials start running everything and really making a mess of it, panic will ensue and a correction will begin. When that time comes, God willing, maybe we should start with the teachers and school books first. 

AMERICA, WE HAD A GOOD RUN

or

WHAT THE BLEEP IS GOING ON? 

Part I

My last unfinished blog asked whether America was in decline. I had data on crime, drugs, mental illness, declining morals and other issues which clearly pointed to an unravelling. And then my laptop was stolen, yanked from my feet at Starbucks. I chased the man but…(sigh)…I’m fat. I lost the computer and the piece. And some sweet headphones. Bastard. Surely the incident was just a coincidence but a year and a half later, it now seems silly to even ask such a question. Of course everything’s going to hell.

Why?

A few years ago I became obsessed with the Enlightenment, Western Civilization and the Reformation. Millennials were rejecting universal dogma about free speech and embracing socialism. SOCIALISM! As grandma would say, “Oh, for cryin’ out loud in a bucket.” I thought if we better understand the cultural blessings we take for granted, maybe we can save them. I was not alone. Pieces on the Enlightenment have become a cottage industry. Famous economist John Maynard Keynes once said, “Ideas rule the world. In fact, little else matters”. Well, for the first time since the industrial revolution, the West is questioning the very ideas to which we owe our existence.

To counter the horrors of the Wars of Religion (1517-ish to 1648) and the centuries-long tension ignited by the Reformation, some felt the answer was to reject objective truth itself. To paraphrase John Lennon, if there’s no belief, there’s nothing to fight over. Hence, we live in a time where cosmopolitan debunkers scoff at notions of Natural Law and timeless truth as crusty and primitive (except for that one truth that says there is no truth, of course). With straight faces, they swear they have no ideologies; They’re just, you know, pragmatic. Two giants of modern Christian thought held this view in utter contempt. C.S. Lewis in “The Abolition of Man”, wrote that a hard heart (believing in nothing) is no defense against a soft mind. He was likely intentionally echoing G.K. Chesterton who said, "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing—they believe in anything." The future seems to have vindicated them.

We hear from the most obnoxious of atheist evangelists that purging religion will usher in a golden age of reason. David French’s Post Christian America: Gullible, Intolerant and Superstitious disputes this. French recalled how his Harvard classmates sneered at the absurdity of the New Testament but thought reincarnation was “cool”. French lamented seeing Harvard students walk in and out of the witchcraft store and he described one friend talking about her son’s “Indigo Aura”. 

Mother Jones noted a rising belief in astrology.

Not strictly an American phenomenon, Europeans are embracing their own silliness. In the Wall Street Journal, Naomi Schaefer Riley writes that “In Austria, 28% of respondents say they believe in fortune tellers; 32% believe in astrology; and 33% believe in lucky charms…(“They’re after me Lucky Charms!”) More than half of Icelanders believe in huldufolk, hidden people like elves and trolls.” She quotes Baylor scholar Rodney Stark who stated, “More than 20 percent of Swedes believe in reincarnation…half believe in mental telepathy.”

In National Review, author and professor Clay Routledge remarked that decline in religiosity is connected to more belief in ghosts, UFO’s, and clairvoyance and that those who reject traditional belief often embrace what he describes as “supernatural-lite” beliefs, “often wrapped superficially in the language of science and technology, making them more palatable” to the irreligious. He noted, however, that those rejecting theism are often still influenced by it. Finnish researchers found that both theists and atheists exhibited similar levels of physiological stress when reading aloud statements daring God to cause harm.

Routledge wrote that while many are finding nontraditional substitutes for church, “there are reasons to doubt that those are effective substitutes for religion”. He writes that the substitutes are more individualistic and focused on personal interests rather than social duties and interdependence. They are belief systems that lead to loneliness. Routledge called religion a “uniquely powerful” resource for meaning because it “binds individuals to a meaning-sustaining social fabric.”

“Let us not neglect meeting together, as some have made a habit, but let us encourage one another…”

                                                                                                                       Hebrews 10:25

Suicides have risen an alarming 30% since 2000. One author noted that the average anxiety of the incoming freshman was equal to that of the average mental patient in the 1960’s. Parenting expert John Rosemond claims that mental disorders in youth have increased 50-fold since the 1950’s. In a piece on Intellectual Takeout, Marcus Roberts noted how the same Clay Routledge documented this increase in suicide as due in part to a crisis in meaning.  Routledge says there is much empirical evidence for existential anxiety being tied to substance abuse and other mental health issues. Roberts writes, “…the changing landscape in the USA is undermining people’s sense of meaning. The decline of neighborliness, the shrinking of the family and the diminishing of religion are all posing serious threats to a meaning of life. Americans today are less likely to know and interact with their neighbors, they are less likely to believe that people are generally trustworthy and to feel that they have individuals they can confide in.”

Millenials are the least religious generation in history. Is it a surprise they are so lost? British Prime Minister Theresa May called loneliness a national crisis. She appointed a minister to tackle a problem believed to affect over 9 million in her country. I would argue, however, that loneliness is but a symptom. In “Man’s Search for Meaning”, existential psychologist Viktor Frankl described how his fellow concentration camp victims displayed great disparities in reacting to the crisis. Those who rejected nihilism and embraced their God or connectedness and service to others were able to stave off despair. What shocked him was that, in the midst of the depths of some of the most profound human misery—starvation, typhus and imminent execution—some appeared…happy. They knew that whether in life or in death, in abundance or suffering, life had meaning.  Witnessing this changed his life.

I am a deeply religious person. I see religious thought and behavior everywhere because I know what that is. I see non-believers often as no less religious than churchgoers. People need meaning. They need to be part of something bigger than themselves. I think this is what drives many social justice warriors. The big battles against racism were already won but they want to fight the same evil. So they tackle the horrors of offensive Halloween costumes and ethnic food in the cafeteria. Maybe they need some of that old-time religion.