I recently read the observation (unfortunately, I forget where) that the paranoid sense that your world around you is decaying is usually a projection of a massive ego. Your body is decaying slowly with age, and so you assume that the world must be as well. It seems, therefore, that the cure for being a paranoid wingnut who sees decay all around him, usually in the form of eager fornication, would be to cultivate a little humility and believe that the world will go on even after you die. These thoughts came to mind after reading Rod Dreher launch into one of his more paranoid rants about how the great evil of America, our tolerance of desire, is the driving cause behind the housing bubble burst. No, I’m not kidding. (Via Crunch Con-watcher Roy Edroso.) From what I can tell, his logic pathway works like this—modernists, with their enthusiasm for the individual self and its rotting desires have created a culture of permissiveness, a culture that compelled everyone from the borrowers to the banks to Wall Street to engage in the creative economic shenanigans that created the housing bubble. All this is due to a moral rot at the center of our society. He seems to sincerely believe that there was no greed before the doors blew off and people were permitted to indulge lust. That the era of the worst excesses of capitalism, the Victorian era, was also an era of buttoned-up repression of the sort he thinks is the only salvation of humanity doesn’t enter into his equation.
Lost in his own despair about his inevitable decline and death our internally rotting culture, Dreher begins to envy poverty-stricken nations that are managed through a heavy dose of Muslim fundamentalism. Our fundamentalists are weaklings!
The solidity we enjoy now is a facade; we have been living on the capital of centuries of cultural development in the West, but we have badly overextended ourselves. The Islamic nations — yes, they’ve lived lives of relative poverty, misery and unfreedom. I wouldn’t trade places with anyone living there, and neither would you. But. But, but, but. They will endure. Robert D. Kaplan saw this for himself, traveling from chaotic western Africa to Cairo. Both places are filled with very poor people, but Cairo, it had a lot more order than anarchic west Africa. The people there managed to live more humanly because of Islam. They had order, they had unity, they had purpose. Islam gave that to them. It also extracted a tremendous cost from them in terms of personal liberty. But they survive tough times. Islam tells them right from wrong, and as Charles Curtis has eloquently written on this blog in recent days, provides them with a sense of communality that is immensely powerful, and which we in the West can scarcely imagine.
It’s intriguing, because there’s a tacit understanding in this passage that religion is the Big Lie. In theory, Dreher (who was Catholic and then switched to Orthodox) believes in Islam as much as I do which is to say not at all. But he’s drawn to it, because he believes that Islam has greater power to function as he thinks a religion should, which is to oppress the people. This is why I get so frustrated with pro-religion arguments that point to the good that religion can do. (Which aren’t limited to those who think oppression is a social good—liberals also argue for religion because of things like community and charity.) All of the benefits of religion do not make the existence of god any more true, or the tenets of the faith any more real. While there’s going to be a level of construction for any method of ordering society, I prefer ones that are more transparent about how they are constructs. Religion lies, argues that it has access to a fundamental truth that it doesn’t. At least democracy admits that it’s a construct created to maximize fairness. Dreher admires the certainty that he thinks that fundamentalist Muslims have, but I think it’s weird to admire certainty in a belief you think is false.
The post is so very, very telling, though. The language of internal rot and decay is contrasted with the concept of “surviving”—the dominant metaphor is that of aging and death. The attraction to fundamentalist religions really seems rooted in this egotistical desire to convince yourself you can escape the conclusion that’s been foregone since you were born. Fred at the Slacktivist has noticed this common thread through the Left Behind series—the Rapture is predominantly a huge fantasy about never dying. The fantasy about going to heaven after you die isn’t comforting enough. American fundamentalists had to also add this strange belief that you’re going to be transported up into heaven sci-fi style, without having to suffer the indignity of physical decay and rot that comes with death. Desire, especially sexual desire, is a reminder that we’re flesh-bound creatures, not transcendent souls, and so desire must be quashed to uphold the no-death fantasy. The obsession with procreation that Dreher has in spades is just more extension of the ego, a little fantasy of achieving eternal life through having children as if they were copies of yourself. Anti-choice politics get called “pro-life” because birth control is an admission of creaturely mortality and refusal to feed the denial beast.
Bill Hicks gets it really well in this rant he did about “pro-lifers”—listen to the whole thing. His notion of “pro-lifers” protesting funerals is just awesome.
26 Responses to “No, you really can’t take it with you”
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I saw Bill Hicks live once–so much fun.
What’s truly ironic, is that the Terri Schiavo nonsense WAS pro-lifers protesting death. He was prescient! I’d love to hear what Hicks would have made of that.
I know. I’m not superstitious, but his premature death predisposes me to believe that the universe is fundamentally unfair.
I see leanings that Rod Dreher describes in religious terms as being the same old Rightwing Authoritarian crap, just dressed up in religionist clothes.
It’s not really the religious aspect of Islam he finds attractive, it’s that “They had order, they had unity, they had purpose. Islam gave that to them.”
One could easily see him and people like him speaking in admiring terms about a whole lot of other cultures and regimes that (at least for a while) brought/imposed on their population “order, unity, purpose”.
A Godwin violation is awfully tempting when describing that kind of attitude…
I’ll leave a link to this instead. This was one of the episode of Star Trek TOS that really made an impression on me as a youth…
That the era of the worst excesses of capitalism, the Victorian era, was also an era of buttoned-up repression of the sort he thinks is the only salvation of humanity doesn’t enter into his equation.
I do believe you are right, but we must be careful — this may be a case of mis-attributing a correlation. Perhaps the buttoned-up repression of the Victorian era arose in reaction to certain excesses — both the moral excesses (in terms of personal virtue and in terms of treatment of the poor) of the upper classes in the Regency period and to the excesses of capitalism.
Personally, while, as a quasi-religious person, I am a big believer in moral discipline and building of character, you cannot count on government enforced morality (if only because the government is likely to get it wrong — c.f. the abortion debate in which the enforcers of morality would love to ban abortion even when abortion is the most moral choice to make, e.g. in the case of abortions required to prevent morbidity/mortality) to keep people on the moral straight and narrow. Indeed (and I just blogged about this), even moral, upright people (and I mean truly moral people, not poseurs pretending to embrace morality to cover something up, c.f. M. Scott Peck’s comments on who goes to church and why) do make mistakes. And, as even Jesus would tell you, you should judge the tree by the fruit — and it is the fruits, not the trees that matter.
If you want government to help make sure people act ethically, have laws that regulate those actions — as we liberals often propose and conservatives oppose. The Nisbet-ian idea that we can gain liberty from government regulation by enforcement of a moral society may be attractive to some, but it’s as pie in the sky (as well as self-serving for those with an agenda and special vest interests) as anything conservatives have projected onto and accused liberal moonbats of being.
Does this also explain Atrios?
WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I’m puzzled by this as well. I see this sort of belief all the time, especially in people who defend the policies of the President.
“At least he sticks to his positions” they’ll say.
“Yes, but those positions have been proven to be wrong” I’ll reply.
“Well, at least he’s not a flip-flopper. I can’t trust those Democrats on anything”
“Maybe you could trust them to accept overwhelming evidence that contradicts their own preconceived notions? You could try that.”
I find it immensely sad that some sections of our society have come to value being stubborn over being right. Perhaps that’s what Dreher has done.
Islam is the dominant religion in Western Africa too, barring certain areas where Christianity and Vodun are predominant.
I can’t stomach anyone romanticizing Islam for its “order” so I’ll just leave you with a link to a wonderful Huckabee pic: We are SUCH infidels.
I should have thought, perhaps..
That Hamas..running under the banner of Sunni Islam
and Hezbollah…as Shi’a are both
really way more socio-cultural systems.
Which serve particularly well amongst the underserved,
the poor of Southern Beirut and the
immiserated crowding the confines of Gaza.
That would seem to be their appeal and the touch-stone
from whence clearly their strength derives.
Catholicism across Europe in all the dark days before the Enlightenment [and still] both kept the peasantry trod firmly in place -down- and brought them succor, as well as certain order and sustenance.
[Heaven, for example, as ‘a better place to come’
after all of their totally sh*tty life-times in the the rot of the Catholic Dark Ages]
Or not?
The world is decaying around us. Here’s my proof:
Entropy increases.
They had order, unity, purpose and made the trains run on time. Oh, not . . .?
People who believe in simplistic crap make me itch.
Mrs Nice Guy
Uhh… I like rotting culture. It usually ends an era and a fertile ground for wacky new music.
(which give me lots of idea for next posts. The Rotting culture series here I come ! wooo )
DAS, I wasn’t suggesting a correlation. I was rejecting the correlation that Dreher believes exists.
It’s that old authoritarian desire for certainty and simplicity. “He made the trains run on time, and even if he didn’t, he wanted to but those [fill in the blank]s wouldn’t let him!”
While this dingbat doesn’t like Islam he likes the way the leaders of various Islamic sects reduce everything to simple, ideological concerns. He wishes Christians still did that, just you know, not those crazy PMD, Left Behinders. They’re scary. But if the Pope were even more nuts and dogmatic, this guy would convert so fast…
Well, I actually agree that we have too much of an attitude of “permissiveness” in that we, as a country, often over consume, pass the buck, and avoid responsibility as often as possible, but to pin this on the left is rather misplaced. In fact, the gross oil consumption, war mongering, and buck passing these days seems to be coming from the finger waggers themselves, which is, methinks, why they have grown fever pitched lately.
If this man truly wanted personal responsibility and “morality” to become more prevalent in America today, he might try secular humanism or environmentalism. I realize those on the left can also be self-serving twats looking to distort emotional issues towards their own agendas, but from a policy standpoint there’s really no arguement.
If there’s one thing I learned being an English/History double major, is that every time in every society on record had large groups of cultural commentors believing that they were the last ‘good’ generation, and that the contemporary culture/political culture was a moral sewer leading them to ruin.
They might have had a point in Rome around 475 or so, but they were there day in, day out, all through history.
Hell, it’s everywhere - the entirety of my high school believed that they were the last ‘good’ class.
Things aren’t getting any worse. I stick to the opinion that with several notorious blips (2001-c2009 in the US; 1919-1946 in Germany, etc.) things generally improve for most people.
Sometime ago a Roman Catholic apologist by the name of Peter Kreeft wrote a book called Ecumenical Jihad-sort of a manifesto for traditional believers in the world’s religions to band together and oppose all sorts of -isms. That’s the kind of mold Dreher fits into, plus his crunchy-conism,
which sees traditional societies that haven’t been influenced by Westernization as superior to ours. Where he differs from multi-culturalists on the left of course is his fetish for traditional religion worldwide, especially of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic variety.
I don’t agree with this guy that society needs order and repression, but at least he’s honest about it.
Move to a cool city, or even visit locals, and you’ll invariably hear how much cooler it was in the Golden Age. The Golden Age was always just after the correspondent got there, but just before you did.
I’m not sure that The Fear of End Days and the Reverence of the Golden Age don’t spring from separate impulses (though if you buy them both today, they’ll throw in Dismissal of Present Trends, your treasure to keep, for absolutely nothing).
Hard to say.
I wonder if Dreher has been reading Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss.
Anyone who can find The Power of Nightmares on youtube or bittorrent is encouraged to do so.
On another note, I do feel like I am surrounded by the decay of democracy and the environment. I do have a sizable ego, but I don’t think these are related.
I think of the world as decaying, but that’s related to my fear of environmental degradation, peak energy, and scarcity of basic resources (fresh water in particular). Is this all the fault of my narcissism?
Having lived in both West Africa and Cairo, I can assure you that Dreher is completely full of shit. Cairo is a total clusterfuck by almost any reasonable standard of judgment. West Africa is generally worse, but it’s not because of religion: most West Africans are quite devout, though it’s often to more than one religion at once.
The reason WA is more of a clusterfuck than Cairo has nothing to do with religion. Go read about the history of French and British colonialism in Africa: one thing that will stand out is that when the colonists had to let go of their colonies in the 50s and 60s, they purposefully drew the borders so that the newly independent states would be as dysfunctional as possible. In WA, the ethnic, cultural and linguistic similarities tend to run east-west: people along the coast are pretty similar to one another, but different from the people 100km inland, who tend to be pretty similar to one another, etc. So the French drew the boundaries north-south, thus ensuring that each country would have a problematic mix of people. This kept them financially and culturally dependent upon France.
You can look at the history of Iraq and see the same phenomenon writ large.
I can’t count the times I’ve had the annoying idiot vs. evil fuck argument. I’m firmly in the evil fuck camp, myself.
One of the few things that really sticks with me years after majoring in history is that there is always, somebody - usually a male authority figure - complaining that the world is going to hell and that the new generation lacks respect.
Sniper, the problem with you and really your whole generation is that you lack respect. God, sometimes I feel like the world is just going to hell.
In other words, Dreher wishes westerners were more likely to “Believe, obey, fight!”
Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, dude - at least it’s an ethos.
I thought this was a “both / and” blog?
Amanda, you’re just soo post-feudal. Get over it.