The Age of Evasion
April 22, 2013
ALAN writes:
In your post on the “Religion of Peace,” you quoted a newspaper statement that Americans are “searching for answers.” That struck me as hilarious and true. I immediately recalled a remark Ayn Rand made in a speech in 1960:
The truth about the intellectual state of the modern world … which distinguishes it from other periods of cultural crises, is the fact that what people are seeking is not the answers to problems, but the reassurance that no answers are possible.
— Philosophy: Who Needs It; Ayn Rand (1982), p. 71
Modernists are searching not for answers but for new and improved excuses and evasions, because there is nothing Modernists hate more than responsibility and accountability. The first responsibility of any grown-up is to see that X is so, i.e., that there are certain realities that cannot be evaded, papered over, or defined out of existence. But this is precisely what modern Americans – “Liberals” and “Conservatives” alike – assiduously refuse to see. To borrow a phrase from English professor Eric Larsen, modern Americans are “a nation gone blind.” They are morally obtuse.
Evil exists. Some people are evil. Not all people want the same things. Conflict exists and is inevitable between and among all people. Ordinary men and women have understood these things for centuries. Modern Americans do not want to understand them because they stand at odds with utopian fantasies like diversity, multiculturalism, tolerance, and open borders. People who imagine they are “searching for answers” are engaged in an extended game of “Let’s Pretend,” a game reinforced by those in charge of what is absurdly called “The Law.” A history of Americans in the twenty-first century may well be called The Age of Evasion.
When Lawrence Auster and I were boys in the 1950s, America was still a nation of men. Today it is a nation of Eloi.
— Comments —
Debra C. writes:
I think Alan is on to something here. It reminds me of the way in which Adam and Eve hid from God in the Garden of Eden after disobeying Him; with that bite they knew they were guilty and their immediate response was to hide, as if they could — for, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Modernists have a vested interest in conjuring “new and improved excuses and evasions” much the same as Adam and Eve did; they must at all costs evade the truth about their sinful condition before a Holy God because otherwise they would have to give up what is most dear to them: the worship of self and the fulfilling of every sinful desire.
But since the conscience must be assuaged (Romans 2:15), Modernists construct a system of belief that permits them to indulge in self-righteousness; in multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance, equality, and yes, open borders, they have found a convenient cover under which to hide their sinful condition, to deny it, and continue living in rebellion against God. This is why they cling so tenaciously to the liberal utopian dream world.
And it occurs to me that our government is institutionalizing The Age of Evasion, as Alan calls it, which does not bode well for American souls — and by extension, our civilization.
