Thank you ever so much, D-fendr, for the wonderful excerpt from Chesterton!
Everything that human beings know today in all fields — science, philosophy, history — is the product of human experience and reflection tracing back over millennia. The "small and arrogant" oligarchs are themselves heirs of this tradition. Yet paradoxically they are at war with it, just as evidently they are at war with God. They urge us to "forget" the achievements of our great cultural ancestors, because if we "remember" them, then they can't sell us a bill of goods that will cost us our liberty, dignity, and possibly our lives in the end. As George Weigel has written,
This historical myopia is unhappily reminiscent of the new atheists.... [R]eason detached from the Jewish and Christian sources of Western civilization — and especially from the idea that God impressed a certain rationality on creation, thus rendering it intelligible — has become the parody of reason that is postmodernism; the witches' brew of metaphysical nihilism, epistemological skepticism, and moral relativism that underwrites ... political correctness.... ["The Light of Reason," National Review, June 7, 2010, p. 42]It not only underwrites political correctness, but also sociopolitical radicalism based on pure abstractions. And if history is any guide, such radical projects simply do not work in the "real" world.
From the point of view of our would-be "controllers," human beings become better fit for the "herd" if they can be lobotomized. Since this is largely impractical (at least so far), for them to remain in ignorance of the human past is the next best strategy for controlling them....
Ultimately, that's what it's all about: A self-selected elite wants to control mankind. Or at least as much of it as they possibly can.
C. S. Lewis, of course, delves into the same issues Chesterton has raised, in The Abolition of Man....
Thank you so much for writing, D-fendr!
From the point of view of our would-be "controllers," human beings become better fit for the "herd" if they can be lobotomized. Since this is largely impractical (at least so far), for them to remain in ignorance of the human past is the next best strategy for controlling them....
Every day it seems they chip away liberty, edging and terrifying us into ever shrinking positions in the hive.
This method is a classic military "siege" of a target. In the Revolutionary War they would construct gradually approaching parallel lines towards the object, ditches from which to fire from cover - until the target was battle worn and terrified. The British used it against Charleston; the Americans against Yorktown.