{"id":360,"date":"2009-09-03T21:34:05","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T21:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html"},"modified":"2009-09-03T21:34:05","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T21:34:05","slug":"a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html","title":{"rendered":"A Pagan Take on Conservatism’s Contribution to Modern Irrationality. Part I."},"content":{"rendered":"

The argument I am making about modernity’s intimate
\nconnection to nihilism and irrationality is in many respects a classic
\nconservative argument.  <\/span>Yet
\nconservatism is as infected with the virus of nihilism as the strains of
\nmodernity it perceptively criticizes. 
\n<\/span>(This is part of a project of mine investigating how a Pagan view of reality changes how we
\nview the world – I will post another essay on liberalism soon.  I am an equal opportunity offender. )<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nThe finest conservative thinkers are men such as Edmund
\nBurke<\/a>  and, far more recently, Russell
\nKirk<\/a>,  and Michael Oakeshott<\/a>.  They shared a kind of ecological
\nsensibility towards society.  <\/span>We
\nare immersed in society, and within its networks of customs, ways of life, and
\ntraditions, which taken together make us who we are and provide the foundation
\nfor our way of life.  <\/span>From a
\nconservative perspective a society is more than the present generation, more
\nthan a simple arrangement for living together.  <\/span>It includes its past and its future and we have obligations
\nin both directions.  <\/span>We are part of
\nsomething bigger than ourselves.<\/p>\n

Immersed as we are within society, we can never stand
\ncompletely outside to judge or re-order it.  <\/span>Because we do not fully understand our society and never
\nwill, we should approach change cautiously, piece meal and only when it will
\npretty obviously lead to an improvement in people’s conditions.<\/p>\n

This attitude is EXACTLY what a knowledgeable
\nenvironmentalist would say with respect to our approach to manipulating a complex ecosystem.  <\/span>At one time conservatives were often
\nmore environmentally friendly than their liberal and left wing opponents.  <\/span>That they are no longer so is a
\nfascinating issue but carries us off topic.<\/p>\n

Genuine conservatives have always been skeptical of
\nliberal optimism about improving humanity’s lot.  <\/span>They doubt the belief that with enough knowledge and
\nexpertise we can transform our society, and in trying we might do it serious
\nharm.  <\/span>This does not mean doing
\nnothing, but basic problems can never be solved, only ameliorated for a
\ntime.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have a great deal of sympathy for this position.  <\/span>I was a conservative once, some decades
\nago, and my own liberalism remains deeply influenced by it.  <\/span>But despite its genuine strengths,
\nconservatism has fatal weaknesses that when taken together have generated an
\ninteresting connection between Western conservatism and the nihilism it attacks
\nin modernity  <\/span>I will argue that in
\nthe long run it is as guilty as secular modernity in its inability to provide
\nan ethical foundation to society and is incapable of solving the problem it
\nsees in others, as well as providing legitimation for the excesses of religions
\nof will and commitment.<\/p>\n

There are two such weaknesses.  <\/span>The first is in the kind of society they want preserved, the
\nsecond is the reasoning they use to preserve it.  <\/span>The story is complex and this overview leaves out lots of
\nfascinating details.  <\/span>But I do not
\nthink distorts the picture.  <\/span>Because the argument is long for a blog, I will deal with the
\nfirst weakness in thi post, the second in one to follow<\/p>\n

Conservatism’s First Tragic Flaw<\/b><\/p>\n

Speaking broadly, traditional conservatives have often
\nlooked backwards to the Medieval world as having many virtues absent in today’s
\nmaterialistic world.  <\/span>In particular
\nits religious base and sense of place within a hierarchy gave people a
\nrootedness and  <\/span>sense of living in
\na meaningful world that today is often lacking. Here is where conservatives
\ntake some very insightful observations, and began to miss their point.<\/p>\n

I want to return to the conservative insight that
\nsocieties are like ecosystems, held together by networks of relationships far
\nbeyond the ken of any person immersed within them.  <\/span>I agree.  <\/span>But
\necosystems are not static, they do not usually reach some stable climax until
\nacted upon from without.  <\/span>Most
\nimportantly, many ecosystems gradually undermine the conditions they need to
\nsurvive, and shift into another such system.  <\/span>Think of a lake gradually transforming into a swamp, and
\nthen into a meadow.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same is true for societies.  <\/span>Let’s look at many conservatives’ Medieval ideal, built on a
\nreligious foundation of monopolistic transcendental masculine monotheism.  <\/span>This kind of social ecosystem depended
\non almost everyone being powerless, fragmented, and ignorant about any but the
\nmost local affairs.  <\/span>In ecological
\nterms these conditions were like a region’s rainfall, seasons, and
\ntemperatures. If one of these conditions was significantly changed, it would
\nset in motion currents that transform the entire system.<\/p>\n

If I had to pick one thing that undermined the Medieval
\nsocial ecosystem, it was the invention of the printing press.  <\/span>Suddenly the scriptures that provided
\nthe moral foundation for society no longer became a monopoly of one
\ninstitution, but became widely available. 
\n<\/span>Any literate person could read and interpret or misinterpret scripture
\nfor themselves.<\/p>\n

When the printing press made the Bible available to many
\nreaders, multiple interpretations emerged, all claiming to speak for this same
\nmonopolistic ideal.  <\/span>Unable  <\/span>to find a way to reconcile their
\ndifferent readings, in time many ruinous religious wars resulted.  <\/span>The Medieval world was shattered never
\nto return.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>I think what I have written so far is not very
\ncontroversial, although it is cast into a broader conservative\/ecological
\nframework.<\/p>\n

But the advent of printing caused an even deeper
\nsubversion, one that bears more straightforwardly on Western
\nirrationalism.  <\/span>Catholics, Lutherans,
\nCalvinists, and others tended to use their own claims to Biblical literalism to
\ncriticize their opponents for not adhering to scriptural meaning.  <\/span>Literalism had always been a theme in
\nChristian religious disputes, and where the line between myth and history,
\nallegory and factual claim, could be drawn had never been clear.  <\/span>Disputes on these matters had
\ntraditionally been settled by one side suppressing the other.  <\/span>But now there were too many sides with
\ntoo many of their own sources of support.<\/p>\n

Since these disputes could not be resolved by one side
\nsuppressing the other, it seems the role of literalism grew.  <\/span>Having a ‘literal’ meaning to back you
\nup strengthens your case. 
\n<\/span>Religious reasoning became less symbolic and mythical, and more
\nliteral.  <\/span>As an unintended result,
\nWestern religion became increasingly hostage to factual claims that reason and
\nevidence could either support or rebut. 
\n<\/span>Religion, which addressed the meaning in life, became more and more
\ndependent on methods of argument that explicitly set aside questions of
\nmeaning.<\/p>\n

This increasing literalism also meant the text itself
\nbecame vulnerable to being rebutted by evidence that negated literal
\nclaims.  <\/span>If the Bible is wrong
\nabout some fact or other, some historical event or other, how can it be the
\nliteral word of God?  <\/span>Since God
\ndoes not error, if it is wrong somewhere, how can we be sure it is right
\nanywhere?  <\/span>Only if other evidence
\nbacks it up.<\/p>\n

For many the result ultimately was the displacement of
\nGod by science and history, and the problems I described in my first post on
\nmodernity and irrationalism: that with the world meaningless and no higher
\npower, ws not the result nihilism?<\/span><\/p>\n

This is conservatism’s first weakness.  <\/span>By holding the earlier integral
\nMedieval society as their ideal, and by insisting that the religion appropriate
\nto the West was Christianity, conservatism imported into their philosophy just
\nthose factors that had led to the collapse of the old integral world it
\npraised.  <\/span>Scripturally based
\ntranscendental masculine monotheism depends on widespread ignorance and
\nfragmentation if it is to be a stable foundation for a society because its
\nmonopoly depends on very few having access to scripture, and those few that do
\nbeing integrated into a single religious hierarchy that can squelch divergent
\ntrends.<\/p>\n

From a Pagan perspective this is a fragmentary image of
\nthe Sacred.  <\/span>Because it is
\nfragmentary, it was inadequate to cover people’s religious intuitions and
\nexperiences, and had no way to respect the diversity that necessarily arose
\nwhen people were able to search and think on their own.  <\/span>So long as people remained weak,
\nignorant, and fragmented, an overarching authority could enforce orthodoxy, but
\nif any of these enabling conditions changed, it would fall apart.  <\/span>The invention of the printing press did
\nthe job.<\/p>\n

Conservatives recognized that reason and empirical
\nevidence alone was insufficient to maintain a strong social moral structure,
\nand argued with considerable logic that religion was a necessary element if any
\nsociety was to maintain its moral integrity over the long haul.  <\/span>But they chose to meld these arguments
\nwith a focus only on a fragmentary dimension of humanity’s religious heritage
\nand experience, one that had never been able to maintain itself as the only
\ngame in town except through suppression of other views, and that could not
\nhandle peaceably a diversity of interpretations within its own ranks.  <\/span>The internal strains that arose when
\nits institutions could not handle diversity ultimately led to the rise of the
\nsecular West, and the problems conservatives worried about.<\/span><\/p>\n

When they worried about these problems, they shot
\nthemselves in the foot, or higher, in the head. 
\n<\/span>I will examine this Second Tragic Flaw in a following mini-essay.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The argument I am making about modernity’s intimate connection to nihilism and irrationality is in many respects a classic conservative argument.  Yet conservatism is as infected with the virus of nihilism as the strains of modernity it perceptively criticizes.  (This is part of a project of mine investigating how a Pagan view of reality changes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,9,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pagan-spirituality","category-social-and-political-theory","category-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nA Pagan Take on Conservatism's Contribution to Modern Irrationality. Part I. - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Pagan Take on Conservatism's Contribution to Modern Irrationality. Part I. - A Pagan's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The argument I am making about modernity’s intimate connection to nihilism and irrationality is in many respects a classic conservative argument.  Yet conservatism is as infected with the virus of nihilism as the strains of modernity it perceptively criticizes.  (This is part of a project of mine investigating how a Pagan view of reality changes…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Pagan's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-09-03T21:34:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gus diZerega\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Pagan Take on Conservatism's Contribution to Modern Irrationality. Part I. - A Pagan's Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Pagan Take on Conservatism's Contribution to Modern Irrationality. Part I. - A Pagan's Blog","og_description":"The argument I am making about modernity’s intimate connection to nihilism and irrationality is in many respects a classic conservative argument.  Yet conservatism is as infected with the virus of nihilism as the strains of modernity it perceptively criticizes.  (This is part of a project of mine investigating how a Pagan view of reality changes…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html","og_site_name":"A Pagan's Blog","article_published_time":"2009-09-03T21:34:05+00:00","author":"Gus diZerega","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html","name":"A Pagan Take on Conservatism's Contribution to Modern Irrationality. Part I. - A Pagan's Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-09-03T21:34:05+00:00","dateModified":"2009-09-03T21:34:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/09\/a-pagan-take-on-conservatisms-contribution-to-modern-irrationality-part-i.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Pagan Take on Conservatism’s Contribution to Modern Irrationality. Part I."}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/","name":"A Pagan's Blog","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Gus diZerega","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2","name":"Gus diZerega","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","caption":"Gus diZerega"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/author\/gdizerega"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}