I have a question
. . . and I'm hoping you'll be able to provide some insights pertaining thereunto
Well, now, let’s see, what’s been transpiring since last I compiled a list of real-time mutations of daily life in what’s left of Western civilization? It’s no less a heady brew than we’ve been experiencing.
Jack Teixeira has leaked top-secret national security documents, apparently with no grander motivation than to impress his Thug Shaker Central buddies. (Peter Lorre’s I’ll-bet-you’re-impressed-with-me-now-Rick line, delivered with an oleaginous beta-male grin, in Casablanca came to mind.) Teixeira’s stunt has left the Pentagon reeling.
The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and the United Network for Organ Sharing is going to start distributing kidneys based on race.
The cobalt, coltan and tungsten which are necessary to make smartphones, and also to power the electric vehicles that the climate alarmists are determined to shove down our throats come from mines in the Congo that depend on brutal child labor and wholesale clearing of forestation.
You’ll recall that Tucker Carlson’s presumably real feelings about Donald Trump came to light in tweets from right after the 2020 election. He hated him passionately and found him demonic. That’s so yesterday. Carlson has resumed his place within the Very Stable Genius’s stable of bitches with a Fox News interview this week. One highlight was Trump saying that Kim Jong-Un, Xi Xinping and Vladimir Putin are “all top of the line.” A classic Trumpism along the lines of his characterization of World Wars I and II as “beautiful wars.”
Okay, that’s enough. My anxiety level is rising past my Venlaxafine’s ability to surmount it.
So here’s my question, and it’s being posed to you, the readers of Precipice, a smaller universe than the general public (if only for now!). I feel confident in saying that the basis for a sense of community here is, as I put it on March 5, is the matter of “(how) to unravel four centuries of modernity, to reintroduce the notion that the purpose of human existence is to discern the real nature of this universe we inhabit, to see that it was created by a sovereign and transcendent God, and conduct ourselves accordingly.”
I occasionally - no, disturbingly frequently - get a voice in my head saying that I don’t have to put myself through this. I could continue my writing career doing features on food, businesses and inspiring people. My arthritis notwithstanding, my guitarist chops are in good shape and I continue to see growth in my musicianship. I have friends who are genuinely fun people to hang out with. I’ve written here before about what my church has come to mean to me.
But with regard to that last blessing I enumerated, let’s not kid ourselves.
Aaron Renn frames it with bracing bluntness, but I believe that is what’s called for:
Society has come to have a negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order. Subscribing to Christian moral views or violating the secular moral order brings negative consequences.
So, here’s my question: How do you remain solidly grounded as you maneuver through a world such as ours? There’s a good chance you’re a Christian. Is your personal salvation and the opportunity to do nice things for the fellow human beings you encounter in your daily life enough?
Do you ever get anxious?
How do you deal with the dearth of beauty, nobility and transcendence in the modern world’s artistic expression? Have you ever been pressed to use goofy pronouns that obliterate grammatical norms when referring to, or addressing, the gender-confused? How do you fit heightened nuclear danger into the lens by which you view the world in which you live?
This is no small matter to me. It impacts my effectiveness as a functioning human being.
I hope you’ll leave a comment, or participate in Chat.
What is that genuinely solid ground of which I wrote on the About page here at Precipice?
Looking for hope, people. If it’s too much to ask of the time-space realm, then give it to me straight.