On Faith and Peace – Ep. 26: Our Own Depths Part-2
If the human being is a mere body, taken only in its corporeal dimension, then the progress of humanity is only a biological development, and we must resort to theories of evolution to explain it. Such thinking reduces humanity to the level of the animal, searches for him among the animals, and turns anthropology into a description of the farmyard.If he assumes himself to be one of the animals, the individual will make material happiness into his ultimate goal. Pleasure, entertainment, and personal interest will become his ideals. And anything that facilitates these ends will be privileged above all else. In such a system of values, or rather a chaos of values, there can be no profound thinkers, resolute scholars, or diligent artists. Even if they could find a foothold, they would eventually be forced to cede to particular interests or else become dependent on the state. The recent history of our society exhibits this tendency all too well.Nobody can deny that what afflicts people today is the materialism of modern civilization. We have grounded our scientific inquiries into life, consciousness, and human behavior on hypotheses darkened by naturalism. We have destroyed everything traditional in visual art and literature, we have pumped delusion and mockery into everything, we have shaken social institutions from their foundations, turned governance and politics into an awful arena of mendacity and deception, and poisoned the family and the social body. Considering all of this, modern civilization seems to have cost humanity at least as much as it has offered.From the perspective of “materialism,” our civilization appears to be rooted in a gluttony that promotes greed and ambition over peace and satisfaction. More opportunity, more production, more credit, more profit, more comfort, more prosperity: it always promises more. As long as we misinterpret our true essence in this way, we will be captives to the very things that were created to serve us.We live in a world where the profitable is typically preferred to the beautiful and the true. I think this is the essential reason why we have failed to overcome our present adversities. The “genius” of our age has exaggerated the value of science and technology and supposed religion, morality, virtue, and aesthetics to be unnecessary and useless. The shocks and sicknesses experienced in our nation and around the world will continue until the day we overcome this inversion of our values. I wish we had been awakened earlier to the true essence of humanity.Spiritual reality is the truth of history and is embedded in it like a deposit of gold or silver. Once this spiritual reality is revealed, profit and entertainment no longer have significant places in the hierarchy of human values. This spiritual essence is what distinguishes us from the rest of creation. All other creatures pursue their interests within the natural order. It is only human beings who pursue a meaning that transcends creation. Animals do not have religious sense or moral concern, they do not struggle for virtue or desire artistic creation. These are available only to the human heart, their sole devotee. The human being, born in religion and swaddled in morality, practices the pursuit of virtue and expresses himself through art. From the works of the most primitive tools to the marvels of modern expression, every voice and breath, color and line, form and pattern radiate from the prism of human nature.Today, many of us wonder at the instinctive work of animals: the spider web, the bird’s nest, the beehive, the beaver dam. But it is we ourselves who are truly astonishing. The horizons of our genius extend to eternity. This is true despite the fact that today, many of us are ignorant of the true values, the knowledge of which could elevate us to the summits of existence. Until then, only God knows how many more terrible tragedies, how many more floods of blood and tears, our materialistic vision will cause.
Netherlands