“Please excuse me, dear Amos, my brother in Christ, but it seems to me we’re not talking about the “reason” of certain “conservatives” here. We’re talking in much more general terms, about the spinelessness of people who choose not to live in, nor carry on, the tradition in which they were raised. As if it had no value, or relevance to the personal/social conditions of our “
Spirited: In extension of betty’s astute observations I add that spinelessness is the consequence of three interlocking spiritual conditions:
1. Moral relativism, or lack of discernment between right and wrong
2. An overiding desire to be liked, popular, fashionable, etc-—at all costs
3. Willful ignorance (ie., distaste for immutable truths and moral absolutes)
I am not sure where you are finding disagreement vis a vis talking about the “reason” (reasonableness?) of certain conservatives. I certainly agree with you about the spinelessness of much of our party’s leadership. Do you believe they are justifying their spinelessness by claiming to be reasonable? Perhaps you could clarify your distinction. I do not want to miss a cogent concern.
Look like I got messages mixed up. My comment in the previous post should have been directed at BB. Sorry Irish. I think reasonableness as I discussed it and spinelessness are virtually interchangeable.
Finally, I am awake. It has been a slow morning. I think your 3 legged stool named spinelessness is right on. The article referenced earlier, America’s Ruling Class, made much the same distinction. For these so-called leaders being a member of the club is more important than their personal values. The nation suffers under this brand of leadership.
Thank you for your most perceptive insights on these matters, dear spirited irish! Of the three conditions you give — moral relativism, the desire for approval from our fellow men, and willful ignorance — the first seems to be the most fundamental.
Notwithstanding, it seems fair to note that not all ignorance is "willful." Some of it is deliberately promoted by our deplorable American public educational system.... For instance, when you start to see American history textbooks showing up in classrooms that begin the story of our nation with the Civil War, you know something is very wrong ... or you should know that. Sigh....
Once upon a time, education was regarded mainly as the transmission belt of a people's culture and civilization from one generation to the next. In the meanwhile students were taught critical thinking skills and habits of study that enabled them to acquire valid knowledge on their own; i.e., without being "told" what the "valid knowledge" is.
Nowadays, public education at all levels is little more than a trade school to grind out future taxpayers whose only civic responsibility is to be preoccupied with their personal lives as worker bees and taxpayers, and to leave the business of the state up to the experts.... [This is the essence of the "Prussian model" which so impressed John Dewey.] Beyond that, it's about the "socialization" of of the rising generation — not into the traditions of their inherited past, but into the "new order" the progressivists want to create, using these children as the "material" out of which to build the new order of progressivist preference....
But I digress. Bottom line for me, this "spinelessness" (as dear brother in Christ Amos succinctly puts it) is above all else a symptom of profound spiritual disorder, starting with persons, and radiating out from there into the general society.
Plato well understood that a given society is only as good (or as bad) as the generality of the goodness (or badness) of the individuals who compose it. If the preponderance of the people is disordered, then the society they form necessarily will be disordered also.
The genius of the classical thinkers was to realize (among other things) that when social disorder reaches a certain critical mass, it takes a tyrant to step in, to "clean up the mess" and set things "aright" again.... [According to progressively, increasingly debauched standards of "right.")
The problem of the order of human souls goes back to Heraclitus at least, and Plato drew on his insights. The order of souls is related to the order of natural reality itself: The universe is fundamentally lawful in its behavior. In other words, its order is subject to a universal, unchanging logos "common" to all, that is beyond finite, physical, changeable nature; thus this order, this Logos, has long been recognized (at least over the past 7 millennia of human history and experience) as divine in origin. Heraclitus put the matter this way:
Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it — not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard of it for the first time. That is to say, although all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be without any experience of it.... My own method is to distinguish each thing according to its nature, and to specify how it behaves; other men, on the contrary, are as forgetful and heedless in their waking moments of what is going on and within them as they are during sleep. [Fragment 1]I'm running long and so must soon conclude. First just to mention that, to Christians, this Logos is the Word of God, the Son of God, Who Is Alpha and Omega — first to last, and the order of everything in between....But though the Logos is common, the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own. [Fragment 2]
Those who are awake have a world one and common, but those who are asleep each turn aside into their own private worlds. [Fragment 89]
It is not meet [fitting or suitable] to act like men asleep. [Fragment 73]
Those who speak with the mind must strengthen themselves with that which is common to all.... For all human laws nourish themselves from the one divine — which prevails as it will, and suffices for all things and more than suffices. [Fragment 114, emphasis added]
Also to mention that it is very clear that for these ancient thinkers, the men who are "asleep" are suffering from a pneumopathological condition, a/k/a, a spiritual disease. Plato called it nosos — his descriptive word for the psychic condition of anoia, a word that can barely be translated into English nowadays, but which definitely suggests a flight from nous, from reason itself; Aristotle called it nosemos; the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero later called it aspernatio rationis — that is, "contempt for reason."
I'll leave it there for now. Thank you ever so much, dear sister in Christ, for your wonderfully thought-provocative essay/post!