[from HRH Jonathan]
The revolutions and idealogical
upheavals of the late 18th century did indeed accomplish
more than most monarchists give them credit for. Although it may be
true that they were little more than lawbreaking thieves and tyrants,
they did cause an event of a sort rarely seen anywhere in the history
of the world. A gross and total shift in the ideals and beliefs of an
entire cultural group; that is the legacy of the revolution.
It was a shift that seems at first
glance to be impossibly sudden and dramatic in comparison to other
such events, but that is because we do not take in the whole picture.
It is impossible to understand any historical event without
understanding the event that preceded it, and the history of the
revolutions in America and Europe is sadly often without this
background.
The foundation for the change was
built by the Protestant Reformation. The rejection of authority and
dissent against the ruling paradigm that were the result of that
upheaval led to several strains of thought which could not have
existed if Catholicism had remained supreme in the West. Then, for a
time, the larval forms of what we would now call nationalism,
statism, and colonialism were the dominant forms of new thought.
It was through that that the
revolutionary ideas were eventually born. It was against the fiery
national spirit, constrictive statism, and cruel colonialism that the
revolutions of England, France, and America were first conceived to
fight. They were created in reaction to a paradigm that had become
cruel and faltering through no fault of its own.
The feudal structures and hierarchical
symbols that remained in Protestantized countries at the time were
truly broken governmental mechanisms, but it was not their fault. The
idealogical foundation upon which they had been built had been
removed; any system subjected to that will break. The great
revolutionary thinkers, however, did not realize this. They attempted
to overturn feudalism, religion, and every other old way of running
things because they envisioned them as all being constrictive and
tyrannical, when the opposite was indeed the case.
The resulting Enlightenment philosophy
and doctrine drove the violent revolutions in France and America,
which inspired the rest of Europe to change their ways.
A paradigm of Catholic thought and
feudal hierarchy was overturned in less than a decade. A handful of
radical thinkers at the edge of society managed to thrust their
beliefs to the center stage of public thought in what was, in
historical terms, an instant. Equality, liberty, and brotherhood;
autonomy, independence, and uniqueness; atheism, progressivism, and
modernism; all are but the long-lived fruit of that movement.
We all know this, even if we do not
realize it. Even if you have never, ever thought of this directly,
those philosophical beliefs have influenced you. This probably isn't
shocking to anyone. What I do find shocking as I run into it, and
what has disturbed me over the last year and a half as I have begun
to notice it, is how deeply the concepts of the revolutions have
penetrated.
Like all complete beliefs, there is a
deep, underlying assumption to revolutionary values. Just as
Catholicism is only what it is due to a belief in the words and life
of Christ, the philosophy of the revolution exists as a side effect
of a certain belief. This conceptual locus has never been named, only
its derivatives have ever had the honor, but it might easily be
called the Philosophy of Self.
The Philosophy of Self is, in fact, a
simple belief. It takes the ages-old truths that no person is
inherently morally better than another and each person is entitled to
their just measure of freedom, and transmogrifies them into
idealogical giants. Using these things as the basis, not a
derivative, of their thought, the revolutionaries returned to the
basic questions of morality that had been answered eons before.
The doctrine resulting from that line
of thought, and the movements that it inspired, are common knowledge.
What does not appear to be common knowledge, however, is how deeply
the Philosophy of Self permeates every single aspect of society in
the modern age.
The core message of the revolutionary
Philosophy is one of individuality. What the writers and instigators
of the revolutions may not of realized is that by using equality and
freedom as the most basic belief, they were making it the highest
belief.
This would not have been a problem for
other groups if revolutionary thought had gone through the stages of
evolution normally embraced by a new philosophy. But of course, that
did not happen.
The Philosophy of Self is a pernicious
dogma to hold. Like all great ideas and successfully ideologies, it
has a sort of appeal to it. It appeals to human nature. The
philosophies of the revolutionaries have a unique sort of invocation
of our desires to be free and unbound by rules, and they even have a
sort of call towards our compassion and charity. After all, should
not the lowest be as free as the highest? Is it proper that the
strong rule by virtue of their own strength?
This appeal, coupled with the violence
surrounding its early rise, gave the Philosophy a sort of momentum
that carried it through the world. First it changed the governments
of Europe, then that continent's economic and moral opinions, then it
associated itself with progress and science. This continued and
continued, and continues to this very day.
The Philosophy of Self has inserted
itself into every aspect of our current lives. It has taken over
religion, first within Protestant churches, then through the opinions
of some within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church; to say nothing
of Judaism. It has trickled into culture, both current and classic.
Even the literary romantics, who nominally were against the
Enlightenment, used themes of self-determination and individual
expression with reckless abandon.
How many times has fiction impressed
upon you the importance of going against the flow? How often is the
message of the day something about how hierarchy and separation are
bad? How much have you internalized it?
The revolutionary Philosophy even
became central to the assorted States of the West just as the
countries of the West began to think of themselves as States. Because
of that, all fervor, all dedication, all politics, all dialogue, all
patriotism; every single action within the political sphere became
contingent upon and dedicated to the Philosophy of Self. Everyone
with even a spark of dedication to their country sooner or later has
to embrace modern thought now.
But enough explanations, let us study
the effects of this eminently curious development.
First we shall look at the example
that strikes closest to home for me, and probably will for most of
you; let us look at what this has done to the Catholic Church. How
and what has happened are subtle, but cannot be ignored. Parish
councils, altar girls, political discourse, increased focus upon the
nun and the lay over the priest and the monk, nationalist tendencies.
If you look at all the things that began roughly half a century ago
that were never before seen within the Church and see the entirety of
what has happened, you will realize that those branches which are
truly heretical are only the tip of the iceberg.
The Philosophy of Self, you see,
cannot bear to see one of its believers differentiated from the
others in any way. If all are equal, and it is all about personal
expression, then how can one person be capable of an expression that
others are not? In some areas and minds the Philosophy is strong, and
churches have been excommunicated due to truly heretical actions; in
others it is weak, and we see only minor effects, building up in such
a way that we do not realize their existence.
This is far from the only effect of
the slow conversion of the West as a whole. Look at the military,
where even the eternal necessity of and dedication to pragmatism have
done nothing to prevent women from being exposed to the greatest of
dangers. Look at the hoops that countless thinkers have jumped
through to justify religious pluralism; the constant efforts to
insist that everyone holds the fullness of the truth, even when they
disagree.
Look too at the most horrible and
disastrous of the effects as the arguments of the revolution are
taken to their logical extremes. Transgenderism, homosexuality,
radical feminism, etc. If is possible and allowed to one group, it
must, under the Philosophy of Self, be possible and allowed to all.
I look around and see a world where
every barrier is being leveled and every rule broken, no matter how
many reasons they had for being in place. I see a possible future
totally counter to human nature. And what is most terrible is that
because this is the Way Things Are, it is almost impossible to see.
Even we of the royal family cannot truly escape these ideas, because
they are literally everywhere.
One of the goals of Edan must be to
enact a paradigm shift away from these beliefs, no matter how
localized. Because until that happens and the cycle of the Philosophy
of Self is broken to at least a few, the revolutions that fought the
Church will still stand victorious.
