The Throttle, The Brake, and Human Vanity

The Throttle, The Brake, and Human Vanity The Throttle: Accelerating technology, globalism, and climate change also accelerate migration, political instability, and culture shock as change is occurring faster than people, communities, and human cultural institutions can adapt. The Brake: Cultural resistance to change similar to the conservative revolt to the Enlightenment, Western liberalism, and Industrial Revolutions occurring in Europe in the 19th and early 20th century ending in two world wars. Human Vanity: Not only the false confidence that our particular solution that we see so clearly will resolve such complex and dominating issues but that humans are masters of the institutions and movements they create rather than, for the most part, their relatively helpless pawns. ********************** "Thus we are caught between two necessities that form an unresolvable tension. On the one hand, we cannot make this world less sinful; on the other, we cannot accept it as it is. To reject either side is to reject the actual situation in which God has placed those whom he sends into the world. Just as we are caught in the tensions between sin and grace, so also are we caught between these two contradictory demands. It is an infinitely painful position, it is very uncomfortable, but it is the only one that can be fruitful and faithful for the Christian’s action and presence in the world. "This tension must first be accepted and then lived out continuously. We must accept, in repentance, what is irreducibly scandalous about our life in the world, recognizing that it cannot be otherwise. To claim that it can be otherwise is hypocrisy! But to truly recognize our situation in the world assumes that we truly understand its problems. To be honest, we can not accept this tension of the Christian life as an abstract truth. We have to live it, and bring it to life in the most concrete and vital way possible. And besides, Christians must understand that bringing this tension to life is the only real way to help the world on the social, economic, and political level." Presence in the Modern World (1) By Jacques Ellul (1948, rev. 1988) (p.8) #TheSubversionOfDeath #JacquesEllul #TheProblemDoesntStopWithThePresident #PostTrumpAmerica #EurasianismAtlanticism #Putinism #PostTrumpAmerica

The Clash

THE CLASH: I've done A LOT of studying on this in the last three years (for what it is worth).

I'm coming to the conclusion we're seeing a replay of the struggle between two competing worldviews (cultural realities, actually) from the 19th century.

We (as in, the Western world) have a culture that responds positively to the liberal, rational, and empirical values of the Enlightenment ("liberty, equality, fraternity") and the progress resulting from technology and the Industrial Revolution.

Characteristics include:
* individual autonomy
* abstract global ideals (multiculturalism, internationalism)
* logical thinking and public evidence
* economically mobile (mentally and geographically flexible)

And we have a culture that responds negatively to those things and resisting "progress" through the Counter-Enlightenment and Romantic Nationalism.

That culture values:
* inherited community tradition (morality, social roles, institutions)
* specific local realities over abstract global ideals
* irrational (or I'd say "transrational") feeling and private intuition over cold, objective scientific study of a dead, ultimately meaningless univers
* economically rooted (mentally and geographically traditional)

If one reads the following link and imaginatively substitute the modern and post-modern equivalents of the various technological and political entities described I believe you'll find significant connections between what OUR society is going through and what our ancestors of a century or two ago were going through.

#TwoWesternCultures

The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution