The
Modern World hates those who are content in lowly stations. The
servant who is happy to serve is considered insane. The man who keeps
his head out of political affairs is taught that he is misguided and
needs to take charge of his own destiny. The housewife is derided as
being either too stupid or too foolish to work on some higher
pursuit. As much as the Modern paradigm claims to be for and by the
Common Man, it is so only on the condition that this Man put away his
Commonness, and quickly, in order to take his place amongst the
elite. We see this truth being preached, albeit stealthily, wherever
democracy is. Popular culture, modern education, and even
contemporary political philosophy all show this, and, indeed,
typically take pride in it.
This
attitude of total derision for a lower-class life is often contrasted
with the Traditional view of things by those who hold it. Modernists
love little more than to expound upon the fact that in prior times,
the average person was hopelessly condemned to the life of a farmer,
tradesman, monk, or wife, with only the most minuscule hope of moving
to a different station. The people of bygone ages, we are told, had
no political influence, very little ability to acquire an education,
only the slightest chance of becoming wealthy, a frightening lack of
autonomy, and so on; and were, in short, treated little better than
beasts. But now, it is joyously claimed, the average person is
infinitely better off. Everyone is given equal influence in the
government, anyone can at any time attend a college or change their
career in order to follow their dreams, modern economics allow anyone
with the proper drive to become a millionaire, et cetera. All told,
the story goes, there is no good reason to take a low station. The
Modern World has done its best to allow anyone to reach any position
in society, and people in higher positions have more of an impact on
the world, more material success, and more great accomplishments, so
why would someone not do his utmost to rise as high as possible?
Why
would someone keep his head out of politics when he could be doing is
part to right the wrongs of the world? Why would a woman content
herself with being a housewife when she could be accomplishing the
goods of a doctor or a civic engineer instead? Why should I take it
easy when the prestige, money, and authority of the next promotion
are within reach? These questions tear at the minds of Modernists,
and the fact that people often stay in lowly places when an
Enlightened worldview can find no good reason for it brings them
great distress. Thus, the leaders of the Enlightened world pour vast
amounts of energy into rectifying said fact. Wellfare programs spring
up in an effort to give the poor the tools to rise that they have
been so cruelly deprived of. Massive amounts of birth control
supplies are sent to the 3rd world, so that the women there can be
freed of any and all bonds keeping them from pursuing the success so
common in the West. Even the eugenics movements of the 20th century
began as proposed solutions to this problem, created when a few
people came to the simple conclusion that the only rational
explanation was that the lower classes were inferior, and must be
eliminated for humanity to progress. The contemporary forces of the
Enlightenment do everything they can, and have been doing everything
they can for a long time, to make the existence of low stations in
society obsolete. And yet, people still inhabit these stations, some
even still cling to them, and some bold Traditionalists even go so
far as to defend this fact and say that it is a good thing. This
utterly baffles Modernism, and forces it to conclude that something
must be direly wrong, for why else would such a problem survive when
under such assault?
But
this confusion, and indeed, the entire attitude from which it
springs, is something that must be entirely rejected by all
supporters of a sane, Traditional civilization. It is a gross
misunderstanding of the nature of the world that only someone trapped
by the darkest claws of materialism would ever conceive of. Someone
with a proper understanding would not ask, “why are there still
people in the lowest stations of society?” but would rather
inquire, “why shouldn't there be?” After all, is happiness
contingent upon material success? Is a vote the only possible method
of exercising civic virtue? Have all the great Saints been wealthy
statesmen? Quite to the contrary on all counts, so what does it
matter that some are rich and some are poor? What does it matter that
some men work like dogs to make their living? There is joy in hard
work, and many people have derived great spiritual satisfaction from
it. Why should we worry so much that a man chooses not to think about
politics? Is it not far better for him to devote that energy to
caring for his wife and children? And besides all that, there is the
cornerstone belief of Tradition that there are many sorts of people
for many sorts of things. It is true that there are many people who
could do immense good and derive great satisfaction from a position
of political power, but there are also many other people who would be
so overwhelmed by their responsibilities that they would be unable to
do anything. There may be women who would be at their best as
doctors, scholars, and artists, but there are also others whose
greatest joy and strength is maintaining a household. All told, it is
more than enough to say that the Enlightenment's position on the
matter is simply foolish. Lowliness alone has no intrinsic effect on
the quality of one's life, so there is just no reason to care either
way.
As
a matter of fact, what is truly baffling is the Modernist sentiment
on the matter. From a Traditional standpoint, it is nearly impossible
to see where they got their intent focus on eliminating political
class structures in the first place. It is only by a careful analysis
of the Enlightenment itself that the origin of the concern becomes
clear.
The
stated goal of the Enlightenment thinkers was to be entirely and in
every way rational. Unlike the supposedly superstitious and ignorant
folk of bygone days, they were going to apply pure analytical reason
to every problem, and use the same engine that gave birth to their
modern technology and global empires to discover the final truths and
most perfect practical applications of every field of thought.
Anything that they could not dissect, calculate, engineer, or
otherwise analyze was put to the Guillotine, and replaced with
something more, “rational.” Ultimately, they hoped and claimed,
this would create a utopia, as they successively studied, understood,
and did away with every source of human misery, and constantly
created greater and greater sources of prosperity and happiness.
And,
if the world was the way that the Enlightenment believed it to be,
perhaps this would have worked. Perhaps their ideology was so
successful because people saw that if their basic assumptions were
true, they really would create a utopia. The problem is that the
creators of the Enlightenment did not realize (or did not care) that
by concentrating so exclusively on the material, the measurable, and
the rational, they blinded themselves to all things spiritual,
intangible, and emotional. To an Enlightened mind, if it cannot be
put in a lab or mathematically proven, it does not exist, even should
it be a brute fact such as virtue, joy, or God. This is the attitude
that caused them to formulate the metric system, and also such
foolish things as the proposed ten-hour division of the day. The idea
that an holistic, organically-developed system such as the Gregorian
calendar could have any merit in comparison to a
carefully-calculated, “rational” replacement was not just
challenged by the Enlightenment, it was mocked and declared the
height of stupidity due to nothing more than the underlying
assumptions of their philosophy. Ironic as it may seem, the
Enlightened mindset actually demands that any concept which is not
materialistic and modern be thrown out without any rational analysis.
Modern thinking simply cannot cope with anything that is not
physically quantifiable, as is self-evident from even a passing
consideration of contemporary politics and culture. This limitation
forces Modernist thinkers to look at everything as if it were some
sort of machine, which they only judge by the output B it will create
if given the input A. Duty, happiness, spiritual growth, love, and
dozens of other critically important concepts besides simply have no
place in the Modern paradigm. They are not material, so they are
ignored.
Realizing
all this makes it easy to see the reason that modern thought hates
everything about the lower classes. A wealthy and industrious banker
can generate millions of dollars of revenue, provide the funding for
dozens of productive businesses, and insinuate himself into the
echelons of government, all while still having a family and attending
church weekly. Therefore, to an purely post-Enlightenment analysis of
things, he is not just more financially successful than a blue-collar
working father, but is actively better than him in a way that is very
nearly moral. It does not matter how crippled his spirituality is,
how little he sees his own children, or how much stress his work puts
him under; he has a greater material effect on the world, so,
rationally speaking, he is simply greater. And what could be more
despicable to our contemporary materialist spirit than a domestic
mother? A stay-at-home wife and mother is, at least in the popular
view, an active material drain on the world, who produces no truly
usable goods or services at all. She is therefore subject to the most
vicious of attacks and insults, being characterized as a lazy
parasite and a useless hanger-on to everyone around her. The vast and
comprehensive benefits she produces in every non-material sphere are
meanwhile invisible to her attackers, no matter how strongly they
affect the world.
So
we see, in a humorous twist, that Traditionalism is, in fact, more
rational than Rationalism. It is self-evident that there is more to
the world and to life than material output and influence, and any
society that does not realize this is doomed to suffer as society
suffers today, with its populace in the grip of nihilism and
depression, and the leaders of its culture and thought incoherent and
useless. If we want to make a better world, a happier world, a more
sane world, the first step is to reject materialism, and one of the
first effects of that rejection is the realization that simplicity
and lowliness can be good, and sometimes our aspirations should be
low.
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