Treatise on The War on Separation
Hello, everyone. It certainly has been a long time since we here at Phalanx have managed to spend some time on our humble loudspeaker to the world, but I am pleased to announce that I will undertake a well-intentioned endeavor to begin contributing some thoughts on a regular basis.
For anybody who cares, here's a quick update of the main authors of Phalanx and what we've been doing with our time:
Jason received his commission from the United States Navy and was stationed at the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia. He is currently underway on deployment to the Persian Gulf where his battlegroup is conducting air operations. Obviously (since he's in a combat zone), the details of his exact location and activities are not for mass consumption, and there's a good chance that I've said too much already. I'm going to have to check my closet for government operatives before I go to bed.
417Fan is currently pursuing a very prestigious education and has moved out of state to do so. Also he got married. Those items are not listed in the order of their significance or importance.
Open_Skies is working full time in corporate America and is biding his time until he can start his own business. In the meantime, he lives in a house with two Kenyans, and the experience has been quite eye-opening.
Anyway, I would like to get started on the topic of my post, and that is the idea of separation. I don't mean separation in the sense that a married couple is spending time apart, or that the border collie has gathered all the sheep on one half of the pasture and all the goats on the other half. No, the concept under review this evening is the separation that exists in the realm of the mind - the separation of ideas, if you will, although I will freely admit that such a phrase strikes me as cheesy.
There is a war against separation in our culture. People have taken the idea of "America as a melting pot" and ran farther with it than Forrest Gump ever ran in his life. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of guy that advocates keeping everything separate. Just to head off all the haters in advance, please let me say the following:
I am not a racist. I live in a house with two Kenyans. I am the minority in my house. English is not the number one spoken language at home - Swahili is (specifically, the kikuyu dialect). The separation of races is not the issue here.
So what is the issue? Simply this: ideas that were once separate are now melded together or ignored completely. There are five areas of separation under fire in American culture today that I will do my best to describe. In this post I will discuss the first four and introduce the fifth. I will discuss the fifth in my next post, whenever that may be. The first separation:
Good and evil
There are those in America who wish to dispel the notion of good and evil. According to them, there is no such thing as good and evil. The only evil is to acknowledge evil, or worse, fight against evil. Here's why they think that:
If you acknowledge that there is evil in the world, then you must fight it. It makes no sense to allow evil to continue if it is in your power to eliminate it. However, if you do not wish to fight, then this presents a very problematic situation. On the one hand, there is evil in the world, but on the other hand, you don't really care to fight against it. How does one solve this dilemma?
If you do not wish to fight, simply remove the reason for fighting. If you remove your reasons for fighting wars, then you are free to pursue your life as you wish to pursue it without this pesky idea that it is up to you to fix what is wrong in the world.
(I would like to quickly acknowledge Jason, here, and his amazing contribution in this regard as he serves as an officer on board our fighting fleet. For those of us who still choose to recognize evil in the world, we will also recognize those who fight it. Jason is one of those who fights. God bless you, sir, and may peace and safety be yours always.)
Thus, the anti-Jasons of the world choose not to recognize the evils of their day, and instead adopt a postmodern attitude about the whole good v. evil debate, which is this: there is no such thing as good and evil, just vague perceptions about who or what may or may not fall in such metaphysical categories. This attitude is most succinctly summed up in the oft-quoted phrase "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
I'm reminded of an ancient Greek word that describes that sentiment, and that word is "hogwash." Okay, so it's not ancient Greek, but it still applies. There is good in this world. There is evil in this world. For the sake of the one, we must recognize the other. If we recognize the other, we must fight it. Go fight the good fight. Don't delude yourself into thinking that evil doesn't exist. Evil is out there. Go pay a visit to Charles Manson if you have any doubts.
(By the way, a note to any dissenters that may or may not be inclined to post a reply - if you think you're clever by turning my good v. evil argument around and grouping me in the evil category, just remember that you're not very clever. Or original. Just FYI.)
Pure and profane
The second separation is that between what is pure and what is profane. If you don't understand what I mean, let me assure you that this is a very simple distinction and I will simultaneously argue my point and clarify the issue as follows:
The ubiquity of cursing in America is a sign of the war against the idea that there is that which is pure, and that which is profane. The once-upon-a-time standard in America dictated that profanity had no place in the publice forum. That standard has been lost (along with several others). The use of profanity in public and even on TV has ballooned in recent years. One can stand in line at the grocery store and hear people behind them swearing as part of a normal conversation. It's gotten bad enough that the F-word is used as an adjective in the present progressive as an additive to virtually any part of speech available to the English-speaking world. Last month as I was traveling, I enjoyed a six hour layover in Chicago during which I walked from Union Station to the Shedd Aquarium on the shore of Lake Michigan. One way was about 3.5 miles, and I lost count of the number of people I passed who used curse words. Go read Rolling Stone magazine. Those guys don't hold back at all.
For those of you who use profanity - don't display your lack of intelligence. If you swear, you obviously don't know how to communicate your thoughts in a descriptive, intelligent manner, so you resort to vulgarity. Go read the dictionary and find some more vocabulary to use. You will come across much smarter in the world, I promise.
Man and God
"God is man, and man is God."
-Marx and Engels
"God is dead."
-Nietzsche
We have somehow come up with the idea that God is not a real entity in the sense that He operates independently of man (when I say man, I mean "mankind," so before anybody freaks out, just be aware of that little distinction, if you will). What is really going on here?
Everyone who advocates the "man is God" position is showing an attitude of arrogance and superiority the likes of which is heretofore undocumented in the history of wisdom literature. Pretty much this: "Every culture of wisdom before me was wrong and stupid, and I am right. There is no god and it is silly and unintellectual to believe the opposite."
For anybody who has any sort of beginner's knowledge about theology, God is not as easily explained away as all that. However, because it's getting late and I am getting somewhat tired of typing, I will let you investigate the theological implications of this "man is God" idea and instead argue my point my means of counter-questioning.
To all of you who say "man is God," or that there is no God, I would like to ask the following questions:
1. How do you know? Do you know because somebody else said so? That's an awfully weighty thing to say based simply on what somebody else said. Or do you know because you've thought it out yourself? Have you ever been wrong about something before? Of course you have. I hope to God you're not wrong about this one. Besides, logic and reason (properly followed) lead right to God's doorstep. Read Part 1 of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.
2. If you're right, then why does it even matter? If God is merely a figment of man's imagination, then why are you even bothering to change the mind of someone who is following a non-existent entity? If following God brings them happiness, why can't you just leave well enough alone? Who cares if you think that this new revelation will bring them some sort of intellectual freedom - if they are happy and content, and if there is no God, then what does it even matter?
3. What if you're wrong? Let's say Rupert says there is a God. Jacob says that man is God (the equivalent of saying that there is no God). Consider the following:
If Jacob is right and there is no God, then nothing matters. Jacob and Rupert both die and nothing happens. They go to the grave and that's it.
If Rupert is right and there is a God, then Jacob is in big trouble. When Jacob and Rupert die, Rupert's got the afterlife made for him, and Jacob has some serious explaining to do to the God he thought was a fantasy. (As a matter of propriety, I hereby choose to end this scenario before the concept of hell is introduced. That's a discussion for another day.)
Man and animal
Because we have been taught that man is simply the latest evolutionary trend and in no way higher or different from the animals outside of a biological context, we as a culture have naturally drawn the corollary that man is merely another animal, on par with any other animal that has developed as a result of the proverbial amoeba that crawled out of the prebiotic goop. And yet we are surprised and indignant when the kids in our schools harm each other. I'm not talking about a couple of boys getting into a fight on the playground; that's just what boys do. What I mean here is exemplified in the Columbine shootings in 1999. On the day that he and his friend killed 19 students plus one teacher, Eric Harris wore a t-shirt that said "NATURAL SELECTION." If Eric believed that humans were simply animals, then of course he would feel no moral objection to killing his classmates, at least no more than if he had gone deer hunting.
Check out what these teens did to a Mexican immigrant: http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/25/immigrant.killing.ap/index.html
If they are taught that a human being is simply an animal, then why does it matter if you murder somebody? PETA, the foremost and most militant group of animal activists, put a program together a couple of years ago called "Holocaust on Your Plate." PETA members traveled across America displaying pictures of barbecue juxtaposed to pictures of tortured and cremated Jews in the Holocaust. The thesis of this program is that there is no moral difference between barbecuing a chicken in your backyard and cremating a human being in the Holocaust. If you barbecue a chicken, if is just as if you barbecued a person in Auschwitz because humans and chickens are equal moral agents. How stupid is that?
And finally, the last issue of separation I would like to address...
Man and woman
Again, in case anybody has an issue with the fact that I put the word "man" before "woman," I would like you to know that I arbitrarily listed man first in recognition of alphabetical order. I would also like to distinguish that my use of the word "man" in the previous bolded titles is meant as a synonym for "mankind," not the male half of the human race. The fact that I even feel it's necessary to explain idiotic things like that is a sign that some folks out there take offense to just about anything.
Anyway, if you wish to see my thoughts on the difference between men and women, please read my Treatise about that subject that is archived on the left. What I wish to say about it is that men and women are, in fact, different, and I mean in more ways than just physiologically.
However, there are some in our culture today who wish to erase that notion of difference, which is a dangerous thing. I'm going to skip all of the fluff and get straight to the point:
If there is no difference between men and women, then we are interchangeable. And if we are interchangeable, then there is nothing that a man can do that a woman can't and vice versa. Also, if there is no difference, then it does not matter with whom one has sex. And that, my friends, is the basis for the call of legitimacy for homosexuality. If men and women are the same, then the sex of the person you have sex with is of no relevance or importance.
As I said before, I am going to expound on the idea of homosexuality in my next installment. Please feel free to comment about the material thus far, but if you are inclined to do so, please observe some degree of respect and decency. I am not a Nazi any more than you are.
Grace and peace be unto you!
posted by Open_Skies at 7:15 PM
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