From Solzhenitsyn's 1983 Templeton Lecture, reprinted in "The Solzhenitsyn Reader", this protest against the metaphysical calamity modernity has brought to both the communist East and the capitalist West:
Today's world has reached a stage that, if it had been described to preceding centuries, would have called forth the cry: "This is the Apocalypse!"Yet we have grown used to this kind of world; we even feel at home in it.
Dostoevsky warned that "great events could come upon us and catch us intellectually unprepared." That is precisely what has happened. And he predicted that "the world will be saved only after a visitation by the demon of evil." Whether it really will be saved we shall have to wait and see -- this will depend on our conscience, on our spiritual lucidity, on our individual and combined efforts in the face of catastrophic circumstances. But it has already come to pass that the demon of evil, like a whirlwind, triumphantly circles all five continents of the earth.
We are witnesses to the devastation of the world, be it imposed or voluntarility undergone. The entire 20th century is being sucked into the vortex of atheism and self-destruction. This plunge into the abyss has aspects that are unquestionably global, dependent neither on political systems, nor on levels of economic and cultural developmenet, nor yet on national peculiarities. And present-day Europe, seemingly so unlike the Russia of 1913, is today on the verge of the same collapse, for all that it has been reached by a different route. Different parts of the world have followed different paths, but today they are all approaching the threshold of a common ruin.
More:
The West has yet to experience a Communist invation; religion here remains free. But the West's own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the "pursuit of happiness," a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short-lived value. It has become embarraassing to appeal to eternal concepts, embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system. Yet it is not considered shameful to make daily concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the contninuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our own generation alone, the West is eluctably slipping toward the abyss. Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism.
And:
This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is becoming the mark of today's free world. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance -- the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become. The contemporary developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money.This deliberately nurtured hatred then spread to all that is alive, to life itself, to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly hate, for art is fruitless without love. In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the place of God.
Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.
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"I'm actually struck by how unoriginal he is and how shallow and blind he is to how true democratization- incremental devolution of real power down the social pyramid - works out in history."
One really needs few words to marvel at the arrogance and intellectual provincialism Jillian displays here, her utopianism, and worse.
But I suppose I understand what makes her capable of such breathtaking arrogance: under her paradigm, one can't really judge this as arrogance or utopianism, or anything really. It just is. It's simply a series of words in a world devoid of meaning.
Sometimes Jillian's fallacious line of thought comes whizzing by so fast, one has to ponder it to really appreciate how ugly it is:
"Sure it's a messy and horrifying thing..."
Ehh, but what's a few broken eggs if we have a tasty omelette, right Jillian? We're only talking about something on the order of 100 million innocent souls, give or take a million. Million there, million here. Sure it's a messy thing. But if utopia is right around the corner, well! That's something isn't it?
"...they ignobly go out in pursuit of their material needs and resentments and settle scores with their supposed historical enemies."
But come on guys, we're talking the greater good of dialectical materialism here! It's ignoble, sure, although I'm not certain as to what basis I can qualify using that word. What is ignoble, anyway? In any case, we're talking about breaking the shackles of the proleteriat! Are you with me? Say let's go! We only need some more pixie dust...
"As Solzhenitsyn did himself after 1950 or so."
And now we come to the horrific dark void at the center of Jillian's way of seeing the world. In her sphere, Solzhenitsyn's "score settling" by writing works of literature exposing true evil are the moral equivalent of Communists purposefully starving, torturing, imprisoning and subjugating untold scores of innocents. Oh wait, I'm sorry. I used the word "moral." That makes Jillian wince. Well, the equivalent, anyway.
"...score-settling isn't the historical end point"
No, no, Jillian's right. The worker's paradise is at the end of the line. We just need to break a few more eggs. Amazing, really. The atheist's ability to equivocate never ceases to cause one's jaw to drop.
I think Houghton's being too harsh on Jillian. However her statement
"But it seems like heating with wood or beating of children and wives or anti-Semitism. Those were once imagined to be eternal conditions too"
Does seem pretty naive. Child and spousal abuse may not be defended in the developed world, but they certainly still occur. Anti-Semitism has declined, but in most Muslim countries a majority have an unfavorable opinion of Jews. It's not limited to Muslims though, in Poland 27% have an unfavorable opinion of Jews and in Russia it's 26%. In 2006 28% of Jordanians blamed "the Jews" for bad relations between Muslims and the West while in 2005 60% of Jordanians believed "The Jews" were the greatest influence on US foreign policy. In 2005 Poland 15% stated "the Jews" were the greatest influence on US policy and in Germany 12% did. (Pew Research)
I don't really agree with Solzhenitsyn's statements, but they're in line with a Russian Orthodox tradition. Russia is in many ways a bit of a chauvinistic society that deems itself, somewhat rightly, to have preserved a greater degree of Christian tradition. So its view of Western mores and history is at times negative. And I think what he says about the "pursuit of happiness" is not precisely wrong as in the culture's are built on that even if the laws aren't. So there's some tendency toward hedonism and alienation. Russia from Dostoyefsky onward sees itself as saving us from that. However Sayyd Qutb felt the same about Islam. Not that Solzhenitsyn is anything like Qutb, but his idealized vision of Orthodox Russia is not too much more realistic than Qutb's vision of the Caliphate. Solzhenitsyn's vision is no doubt a more noble one, morally and spiritually, but I think it is still unrealistic and downplays the negatives. Russia has many good qualities, but I think at times Solzhenitsyn (and Dostoyefsky) are extreme in their praise of its root culture or its role as an example to others. They're nationalists and if you're not a Russian I think it makes sense to take their nationalism with a grain of salt.
(And I'm aware Ross is of some branch of Russian Orthodox, but that's how I see it)
"The concepts of good and evil ...... have been replaced by political or class considerations of short-lived value." I think it's true.
And what is also interesting, while people are becoming individualists, separating themselves from their neighbours more and more, the more concern they show about what is happening on the other side of the globe. That flash-mob about Tibet is a good example. I guess the majority of those who filled internet with hysterical cries about human rights would spit on problems of their neighbours. Condemning evil in other countries is the easiest way to feel onself noble and politically conscious citizen at abolutely no expence. Of course I believe in existence of people who care not only about rights of faraway peoples, and the fact that common people started to feel obliged to influence events in the whole world, often in countries of antipodes, is the sign of our times, whether it's good or bad.
By the way they showed on eof Solzhenitsyn's last interview, where he said "God forbid nationalism", he also said militant nationalistic statehood is repulsive to him, if i remebered correctly.
"Sometimes I think the major purpose of liberals is to provide conservatives with the reasons not to commit suicide." Jillian
TR: Rod is unusual. I would go so far as to say very unusual. (American conservatives who like France and have a life history of converting to Catholicism then Orthodox is a demographic pretty much limited to him, so far as I can tell)
In most studies church-going conservatives are happier and more optimistic than liberals. And in many ways rightfully so. America is a country that for the last 140 years has had no revolutions, civil wars, or invasions. The two main parties have remained the same in that period. We have a greater rate of churchgoing than most developed nations and more rural life than many of them. Although at base America is steeped in a kind of libertinism and radicalism, in actual reality it's a fairly conservative nation.
Liberals on the other hand tend to worry more. Especially about environmental collapse, sexism, homophobia, AIDS, death, and the general fact the world is imperfect. A conservative doesn't expect the world to ever become perfect, is skeptical even of improvement in some cases, so is happy with any improvement that arrives.
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