Idolatry in the West
"in order to promote killing in civilized societies it must be legalized under deceitful names. Yet liberal societies seem happy to be deceived exactly to the degree to which they have developed into societies of covetousness." Ok ... I know you need more before you know where this is going ...
I am reading a book of essays on the ten commandments. This is in a section talking about the relatedness of all ten commandments, primarily through the command not to murder. He goes from there to make the point that we are a society dominated by want and covetousness and the more the claws of greed entangle us (from human traffiking to slave labor for our cheap consumer goods, to "designer babies" and whatever else technology deems to sell) the more we will redefine sin and morality.
Bernd Wannenwetsch continues: "the culture of death is essentially marked by the business of redefinition. In defining our own humanity we claim the property rights that entitle us to distribute life and death according to the self-images we draw." We redefine life, we redefine the world and we redefine men and women and in the fury of it we are lost as people connected. The greatest pummeling seems to be regarding family. At another section he talks about Peter Singer's secular wisdom of universal responsibility: "One has no more ethical duty to one's own daughter than to a girl of the same age ten thousand miles away in Bangladesh whom one has never seen and whose name one does not know." Neuhaus points out in one of his Public Squares that this abstract utilitarian principle is a "view from nowhere." "While the abstract principle of universal responsibility, in theory, commits us to care for anyone, we face the fact in practice that we cannot care for everyone." So we give up on caring for our own family so we can care for the whole world and find that we are again playing god and caring for no one but ourselves.
I have decided that nearly every modern philophy is a thin veneer over craven selfishness.
SO, we need to give up our cravenness and love those who are closest to us. If you can do that you are doing more than most today (though not much compared to our ape-like ancestors of the last 2000 years ... oh wait, maybe those neandrathal fundamentalists are right about something ... maybe its devolution, not evolution).
I am reading a book of essays on the ten commandments. This is in a section talking about the relatedness of all ten commandments, primarily through the command not to murder. He goes from there to make the point that we are a society dominated by want and covetousness and the more the claws of greed entangle us (from human traffiking to slave labor for our cheap consumer goods, to "designer babies" and whatever else technology deems to sell) the more we will redefine sin and morality.
Bernd Wannenwetsch continues: "the culture of death is essentially marked by the business of redefinition. In defining our own humanity we claim the property rights that entitle us to distribute life and death according to the self-images we draw." We redefine life, we redefine the world and we redefine men and women and in the fury of it we are lost as people connected. The greatest pummeling seems to be regarding family. At another section he talks about Peter Singer's secular wisdom of universal responsibility: "One has no more ethical duty to one's own daughter than to a girl of the same age ten thousand miles away in Bangladesh whom one has never seen and whose name one does not know." Neuhaus points out in one of his Public Squares that this abstract utilitarian principle is a "view from nowhere." "While the abstract principle of universal responsibility, in theory, commits us to care for anyone, we face the fact in practice that we cannot care for everyone." So we give up on caring for our own family so we can care for the whole world and find that we are again playing god and caring for no one but ourselves.
I have decided that nearly every modern philophy is a thin veneer over craven selfishness.
SO, we need to give up our cravenness and love those who are closest to us. If you can do that you are doing more than most today (though not much compared to our ape-like ancestors of the last 2000 years ... oh wait, maybe those neandrathal fundamentalists are right about something ... maybe its devolution, not evolution).
Comments
That's the hardest work of all. Good post, J.