Monday, September 19, 2011

Perversity of the secular mind

Imagine a little girl crying after falling and bruising her knee. The natural HUMAN impulse would be to come to her 'rescue', comfort her, tell her everything is going to be alright.

According to the naturalistic worldview (not to mention the nihilistic one), life is ultimately a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing.

Now imagine a man possessed of such a view encountering such a little girl and responding to her plight by telling her: "Listen, young lady. You think you've got something to cry about? Let me tell you something. Your crying is pointless. Your life doesn't even have a purpose. It counts for no more than the life of a bug. Go tell that to your mommy."

What human being in his right mind, even if he were convinced that this view were true, would not consider it the greatest tragedy of human life? How could this not be the most unnatural, perverse, and disgusting fact of the human predicament? Every natural desire has its natural fulfillment. Thirst has drink, hunger has food, fatigue has sleep, etc. That the human heart, however, should find itself burgeoning with unfulfillable aspirations, hopes, dreams, loves and yearnings -- how could this not be a tragedy of colossal proportions?

Today on the way in to work, I happened to tune in to NPR, where a man was being interviewed about the rediscovery of a work long forgotten by most of the world of popular culture: the epic poem On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura), by the Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius (ca. 99–55 BC).

Lucretius' view of the world is naturalistic materialism. In other words, matter is the only reality. There is nothing outside of or beyond this natural material world -- no supernatural, no spiritual world, no unseen world of souls or minds. Everything is explicable ultimately in terms of atomistic materialism. Sound familiar?

The remarkable thing about the NPR interview, however, was the exuberant tone of the conversation on air. Lucretius' work had lost popularity with the advent of the Church, because there was no room in such a Christian world for views such as his, the interviewee explained. Moreover, he stressed, Lucretius' vision is BEAUTIFUL, because there is no heaven above us or hell below us. Just us and the world. Without any greater purpose. We're just here. Then we're gone. No deeper mystery. And Lucretius is just so ELOQUENT about all this. Isn't this WONDERFUL!!

It's one thing to find such a vision of human life "compelling" (and there are plenty of arguments against finding it so). But it's another thing altogether to be filled with such fevered ENTHUSIASM for such a view.

Imagine the interviewee encountering the little girl crying, not only trying to persuade her that her life is pointless, but that she should find this fact "beautiful" and "wonderful"!

What a piece of work is secular man, how perverse in reason, this quintessence of dust who rejoices in his nullity!

Which ties in nicely with the contemporary rebirth of enthusiasm for the "Wisdom of Silenus" of ancient Greek folklore, according to which the best thing of all is never to have been born, not to be, to be nothing; and the second best -- to die as quickly as possible.

Smile. Have a nice day.

9 comments:

Rachel said...

I share your perspective.

Just the other day I read that Terry Pratchett (author of the smart and funny Discworld saga) has Alzheimer's and has declared his intent to kill himself: "I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod.... Who could say that this is bad?" I can! It's a terrible degradatiojn of human dignity. God offers the royal gifts of life, grace, and eternity... and Pratchett chooses nothing more than a drink and an iPod. To him it really is a fine and noble thing; to me it's so sad and banal.

It also reminds me of Thomas Merton's description of how he nearly died in his pre-conversion days, and how he felt anger and spite at the universe, but no fear at all, nor any sense of the awesome realities he might face after death.

Anonymous said...

As a philosophy student at Berkeley in the 70's, I remember very well being required to read Lucretius but never once required to read Augustine or Aquinas.
-gravey

Lady.Rosary said...

Wow. What a strong point of view. For me, there's more to this life that naturalistic materialism if indeed you could call such natural. I think many would beg to disagree with him.

J. said...

"What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! How obscure and gross his prancing and chattering on his little stage of evolution! How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self approval of his biological by-product! this half formed, ill conditioned body! this erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of the engine, and between them man, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!" --Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Kudos, Sir. That was so well written

Anonymous Bosch said...

Terry Pratchett, Alzheimer's victim declared his intent "... to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod...."

The irony is that he could be listening to some biblically-charged piece like the Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet whose very words could serve as an indictment of his life. But of course his enjoyment would be "purely aesthetic." Perverse indeed.

Anonymous Bosch said...

This gives new meaning to the phrase, "culture of death."

Andrew M. Greenwell said...

I read that work, many years ago, and was utterly amazed and the hopeless and cynical materialistic view. I found it so distasteful that I am amazed it has any audience. Its message was just plain ugly, devoid of beauty.

Confitebor said...

Lucretius' dismal vision may have lost "popularity," but it has never been entirely forgotten -- thanks to the Church, which made sure it was copied and recopied.

Our culture has made a covenant with death, as Scripture says, hence the nihilistic, suicidal enthusiasm for Lucretius and Wisdom of Silenus.