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The Surreal Fantasies of Western Man
We live in an electronic paradise that is allowing us to retreat from any meaningful contact with another human being.
I can now barricade myself in my own small fortress in the American Southwest and order a pizza or groceries by tapping on some keys. I can leave the money on the front porch in an envelope and peer out the window and wait for the delivery person to leave and without having to say a word to another person my hunger and thirst has been satisfied.
There are beneficial uses of the internet and there are detrimental uses of the internet.
Your carefully constructed virtual world will allow you to monitor the outside world. You can express agreement or rage by sending a flood of electrons into space, in fact extra electrons with each keystroke to make sure your message is heard by someone in another virtual word. If your ideas are challenged one way to protect your virtual world is to retreat into silence rather than a self examination of your ideas.
We have gone from no man is an island to everyman is becoming an island. My virtual world is worth defending, yours is not.
There is a group of people in the Middle East that also use computers. They are also seeking paradise. A paradise that can only be obtained by murder and the destruction of any object that predates their empty theology.
We have a President that is ignoring the ISIS threat. A President that has constructed his own virtual world. He speaks to carefully selected audiences and ignores any criticism of his ideas of how to create a better world. He has seen the pictures of slaughter and destruction wrought by ISIS, but there is a difference in seeing rather than facing the victims of ISIS. Not only does our President turn his face away from the victims of ISIS he no longer faces his critics in his own country. Unfortunately President Obama is not alone in his willful ignorance.
There are some messages that are on the internet worth reading. I’ll leave you with some quotations from one of those messages I read today.
These are the thoughts expressed by Luigi Negri, Archbishop of Ferrara-Comacchioin in his essay: “The End of Western Civilization is in the Museum of Mosul.”
Published in Culture, Foreign PolicyI hope that the technological means which our society uses – and oftentimes abuses – can vividly preserve for future generations the images of such terrible scenes of barbarism which we have been able to see “live” in different parts of the world.
This is rage, much more demented than barbaric, against the artistic expressions of one of the greatest ages of world culture, which have been handed down with devotion and respect from one generation to another, from one culture to another, from one civilization to another.
And so culture and civilization are not exclusive, unlike the case of this horrendous ideology, even if it is religious. Culture and Civilization are inclusive and even know how to incorporate cultural and historical realities not born from the limitations of their proper milieu; thereby becoming all the more enriched.
This civilization, whether we like it or not, is now ending if it has not truly and already ended. The horizon is marred by the black flag of the Caliphate, under which lies dead the freedom of conscience and of the heart, of movement, the liberty to live in a dignified way, and to profess one’s own convictions in a free and responsible manner.
This atrocity, all atrocities have been transformed into casual occurrences by the surreal fantasies of western man. He can quickly read of them in newspapers or on social networks; news headlines flashing at the bottom of the television while he eats tranquilly; as if they were current events from another world.
Civilization has ended. A society on the brink of death would not even have the capacity to initiate an authentic and critical examination of its own life. If it would do so, what shall be unveiled are all those who, knowingly or unknowingly, have arranged and continue to prepare in more diverse ways its own death.
These are all those who have persecuted dialogue beyond all limits; all those who deep inside themselves have more fear of the Christian Faith than the barbarism of fundamentalist Islamic Ideology.
Maybe, the responsibility can be claimed, above all, by all those who have apostatized; while apostatizing from Christ, they have apostatized from themselves. Since man is always intimately linked to a society; by apostatizing from themselves, they have destroyed civilization.
It’s beautiful, isn’t it?
Heh, sorry . . . but lately my interactions with other human beings have left me feeling more misanthropic than usual.
Or to engage in meaningful contact with other human beings when physical constraints would make it otherwise impossible.
Perhaps that is why the Left loves the idea of collective humanity after all dealing with individual human beings can be a messy business.
With you, here, Midge…Though, I do take Doug’s over-arching point, as well.
Our foreign policy is the “Prevent Defense.” Trade yards for clock.
By the way, if you’ve never seen it, obtain and watch the Acton Institute’s The Birth of Freedom documentary. They make the historical case for the linkage between freedom and Christianity. (The trailer gives a good taste.)
It’s largely the collectivist push of the left that leaves me wanting to just retreat from other people. The left wants to be in your business 24/7. They refuse to recognize the dividing line between public and private. You are not even safe from the diligent busybodies in your own private home. Not even in your own private thoughts. For the left, politics is everything, and everything is politicized.
Even your morning coffee.
There are few politics-free zones left anymore.
“I’d like the sausage and onion sent to me and nobody talk to me about these issues.”
“Mr President, you do need to go read a speech later.”
You don’t think Michelle would allow him to have sausage, do you? Maybe arugula and onion.
The internet can be an excellent way to communicate and provide a person interaction when they are unable to leave their home. Ricochet gave me an opportunity to engage in conversation during the year I spent caring for my dad. One of the manifestations of his Alzheimer’s was no desire to interact with anyone outside of his own home. During that year he never mentioned my name. Just hearing my name in a phone conversation and seeing my name in a Ricochet conversation brought me a sense of comfort. Without Ricochet and a telephone I would have been as isolated as my dad.
The other side of the internet is the example of Adam Lanza, the Newtown, Connecticut shooter. Even though he lived in the same house as his mother he only spoke to her through emails.
The pic up top made me think of this.
I’ll look for the documentary. Thank You.
Drew I believe that the Left is not capable of reacting to ISIS due to their moral relativism. The rationalization of there is no truth has extended to there is no good and there is no evil. There might be a subconscious realization that socialism uses the same principle of coercion that ISIS uses to impose their will and to suppress conscience. That coercion was just as brutal under Communism and Nazism. The Obama administration has been willing to practice religious oppression, just ask The Little Sisters of the Poor.
I do believe the problem is not that our President has isolated himself in a virtual world but that he does not share a common belief in western civilization. I wish he would go find some version of Sim World and shut us out , but I tend to see more active participation promoting causes inimical to the west on his part.
Is the West up to the challenge or will it shrink and fade away, that is the essence of our times. The left are cowards as courage requires faith in something larger than secularism. If you destroy family, God and Country in the minds of the young, then the West will lose and a dark age will descend. Family, God and Country have been in the crosshairs of the progressives for sometime now and if anything, the technology has been a bulwark against a monolithic media and message by fragmenting the world into millions of channels.