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“Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.”
-- Mark Steyn, "It's the Demography, Stupid" for The Wall Street Journal
Thus begins a long but most read-worthy doomsday piece. You know how Monk has a thing for apocalyptic tales - why die alone, right? Mr. Steyn sees Western civilization dying before the relentless forces of "primal Islam":
'Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose--as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.
'That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb.'
I'll quote his longer rant on multiculturalism at the end, which has Canada at the center of his wry and withering analysis and wit, as Steyn is a Canadian himself.
The meat of Steyn's argument is the demographic one about the vanishing birth rates of advanced Western nations as compared with the growing Muslim population, and how the former has meant the acceptance of mass immigration of Muslims into the West. Given current circumstances, it's not difficult to see the dire implications that Steyn draws regarding the prospects for Western civilization, with the recent French riots being a leading indicator of the growing crisis. He is sensitive to the racial cast of his argument, and he explicitly makes a broader point:
'The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%.'
Personally, when I have thought about the large immigration of non-Europeans into the West, I fancied a happy outcome in the end, thinking that this may be how more peoples and such regions as the Muslim Middle East may assimilate and finally become more liberal and secular, even as recent events mean that a lot of growing pains may have to be overcome at first, so that in the end Western civilization and Western countries would not have to be such a white thing anymore while remaining free and liberal as well as prosperous. I am an optimist that way, contrary to the Hobbesian pessimism that generally marks my perspective. Even if the odds are against it, I still hope for a happy ending.
___ ___ ___
Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society. It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug.
Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, the prince of Wales did, the prime minister of the United Kingdom did, the prime minister of Canada did . . . The premier of Ontario didn't, and so 20 Muslim community leaders had a big summit to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque. I don't know why he didn't. Maybe there was a big backlog, it was mosque drive time, prime ministers in gridlock up and down the freeway trying to get to the Sword of the Infidel-Slayer Mosque on Elm Street. But for whatever reason he couldn't fit it into his hectic schedule. Ontario's citizenship minister did show up at a mosque, but the imams took that as a great insult, like the Queen sending Fergie to open the Commonwealth Games. So the premier of Ontario had to hold a big meeting with the aggrieved imams to apologize for not going to a mosque and, as the Toronto Star's reported it, "to provide them with reassurance that the provincial government does not see them as the enemy."
Anyway, the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died down, but it set the tone for our general approach to these atrocities. The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say, there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the West is awash in an epidemic of self-hate crimes. A commenter on Tim Blair's Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline: "Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash from Tomorrow Morning's Terrorist Attack." Those community leaders have the measure of us.
Radical Islam is what multiculturalism has been waiting for all along. In "The Survival of Culture," I quoted the eminent British barrister Helena Kennedy, Queen's Counsel. Shortly after September 11, Baroness Kennedy argued on a BBC show that it was too easy to disparage "Islamic fundamentalists." "We as Western liberals too often are fundamentalist ourselves," she complained. "We don't look at our own fundamentalisms."
Well, said the interviewer, what exactly would those Western liberal fundamentalisms be? "One of the things that we are too ready to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the intolerance is something that belongs to other countries like Islam. And I'm not sure that's true."
Hmm. Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you're nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists. In other words, just as the AIDS pandemic greatly facilitated societal surrender to the gay agenda, so 9/11 is greatly facilitating our surrender to the most extreme aspects of the multicultural agenda.
For example, one day in 2004, a couple of Canadians returned home, to Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto. They were the son and widow of a fellow called Ahmed Said Khadr, who back on the Pakistani-Afghan frontier was known as "al-Kanadi." Why? Because he was the highest-ranking Canadian in al Qaeda--plenty of other Canucks in al Qaeda, but he was the Numero Uno. In fact, one could argue that the Khadr family is Canada's principal contribution to the war on terror. Granted they're on the wrong side (if you'll forgive my being judgmental) but no one can argue that they aren't in the thick of things. One of Mr. Khadr's sons was captured in Afghanistan after killing a U.S. Special Forces medic. Another was captured and held at Guantanamo. A third blew himself up while killing a Canadian soldier in Kabul. Pa Khadr himself died in an al Qaeda shootout with Pakistani forces in early 2004. And they say we Canadians aren't doing our bit in this war!
In the course of the fatal shootout of al-Kanadi, his youngest son was paralyzed. And, not unreasonably, Junior didn't fancy a prison hospital in Peshawar. So Mrs. Khadr and her boy returned to Toronto so he could enjoy the benefits of Ontario government health care. "I'm Canadian, and I'm not begging for my rights," declared the widow Khadr. "I'm demanding my rights."
As they always say, treason's hard to prove in court, but given the circumstances of Mr. Khadr's death it seems clear that not only was he providing "aid and comfort to the Queen's enemies" but that he was, in fact, the Queen's enemy. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the Royal 22nd Regiment and other Canucks have been participating in Afghanistan, on one side of the conflict, and the Khadr family had been over there participating on the other side. Nonetheless, the prime minister of Canada thought Boy Khadr's claims on the public health system was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate his own deep personal commitment to "diversity." Asked about the Khadrs' return to Toronto, he said, "I believe that once you are a Canadian citizen, you have the right to your own views and to disagree."
That's the wonderful thing about multiculturalism: You can choose which side of the war you want to fight on. When the draft card arrives, just tick "home team" or "enemy," according to taste. The Canadian prime minister is a typical late-stage Western politician: He could have said, well, these are contemptible people and I know many of us are disgusted at the idea of our tax dollars being used to provide health care for a man whose Canadian citizenship is no more than a flag of convenience, but unfortunately that's the law and, while we can try to tighten it, it looks like this lowlife's got away with it. Instead, his reflex instinct was to proclaim this as a wholehearted demonstration of the virtues of the multicultural state. Like many enlightened Western leaders, the Canadian prime minister will be congratulating himself on his boundless tolerance even as the forces of intolerance consume him.
-- Mark Steyn
xXx
“Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries.”
-- Mark Steyn, "It's the Demography, Stupid" for The Wall Street Journal
Thus begins a long but most read-worthy doomsday piece. You know how Monk has a thing for apocalyptic tales - why die alone, right? Mr. Steyn sees Western civilization dying before the relentless forces of "primal Islam":
'Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose--as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.
'That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb.'
I'll quote his longer rant on multiculturalism at the end, which has Canada at the center of his wry and withering analysis and wit, as Steyn is a Canadian himself.
The meat of Steyn's argument is the demographic one about the vanishing birth rates of advanced Western nations as compared with the growing Muslim population, and how the former has meant the acceptance of mass immigration of Muslims into the West. Given current circumstances, it's not difficult to see the dire implications that Steyn draws regarding the prospects for Western civilization, with the recent French riots being a leading indicator of the growing crisis. He is sensitive to the racial cast of his argument, and he explicitly makes a broader point:
'The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%.'
Personally, when I have thought about the large immigration of non-Europeans into the West, I fancied a happy outcome in the end, thinking that this may be how more peoples and such regions as the Muslim Middle East may assimilate and finally become more liberal and secular, even as recent events mean that a lot of growing pains may have to be overcome at first, so that in the end Western civilization and Western countries would not have to be such a white thing anymore while remaining free and liberal as well as prosperous. I am an optimist that way, contrary to the Hobbesian pessimism that generally marks my perspective. Even if the odds are against it, I still hope for a happy ending.
___ ___ ___
Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society. It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug.
Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, the prince of Wales did, the prime minister of the United Kingdom did, the prime minister of Canada did . . . The premier of Ontario didn't, and so 20 Muslim community leaders had a big summit to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque. I don't know why he didn't. Maybe there was a big backlog, it was mosque drive time, prime ministers in gridlock up and down the freeway trying to get to the Sword of the Infidel-Slayer Mosque on Elm Street. But for whatever reason he couldn't fit it into his hectic schedule. Ontario's citizenship minister did show up at a mosque, but the imams took that as a great insult, like the Queen sending Fergie to open the Commonwealth Games. So the premier of Ontario had to hold a big meeting with the aggrieved imams to apologize for not going to a mosque and, as the Toronto Star's reported it, "to provide them with reassurance that the provincial government does not see them as the enemy."
Anyway, the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died down, but it set the tone for our general approach to these atrocities. The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say, there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the West is awash in an epidemic of self-hate crimes. A commenter on Tim Blair's Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline: "Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash from Tomorrow Morning's Terrorist Attack." Those community leaders have the measure of us.
Radical Islam is what multiculturalism has been waiting for all along. In "The Survival of Culture," I quoted the eminent British barrister Helena Kennedy, Queen's Counsel. Shortly after September 11, Baroness Kennedy argued on a BBC show that it was too easy to disparage "Islamic fundamentalists." "We as Western liberals too often are fundamentalist ourselves," she complained. "We don't look at our own fundamentalisms."
Well, said the interviewer, what exactly would those Western liberal fundamentalisms be? "One of the things that we are too ready to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the intolerance is something that belongs to other countries like Islam. And I'm not sure that's true."
Hmm. Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you're nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists. In other words, just as the AIDS pandemic greatly facilitated societal surrender to the gay agenda, so 9/11 is greatly facilitating our surrender to the most extreme aspects of the multicultural agenda.
For example, one day in 2004, a couple of Canadians returned home, to Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto. They were the son and widow of a fellow called Ahmed Said Khadr, who back on the Pakistani-Afghan frontier was known as "al-Kanadi." Why? Because he was the highest-ranking Canadian in al Qaeda--plenty of other Canucks in al Qaeda, but he was the Numero Uno. In fact, one could argue that the Khadr family is Canada's principal contribution to the war on terror. Granted they're on the wrong side (if you'll forgive my being judgmental) but no one can argue that they aren't in the thick of things. One of Mr. Khadr's sons was captured in Afghanistan after killing a U.S. Special Forces medic. Another was captured and held at Guantanamo. A third blew himself up while killing a Canadian soldier in Kabul. Pa Khadr himself died in an al Qaeda shootout with Pakistani forces in early 2004. And they say we Canadians aren't doing our bit in this war!
In the course of the fatal shootout of al-Kanadi, his youngest son was paralyzed. And, not unreasonably, Junior didn't fancy a prison hospital in Peshawar. So Mrs. Khadr and her boy returned to Toronto so he could enjoy the benefits of Ontario government health care. "I'm Canadian, and I'm not begging for my rights," declared the widow Khadr. "I'm demanding my rights."
As they always say, treason's hard to prove in court, but given the circumstances of Mr. Khadr's death it seems clear that not only was he providing "aid and comfort to the Queen's enemies" but that he was, in fact, the Queen's enemy. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the Royal 22nd Regiment and other Canucks have been participating in Afghanistan, on one side of the conflict, and the Khadr family had been over there participating on the other side. Nonetheless, the prime minister of Canada thought Boy Khadr's claims on the public health system was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate his own deep personal commitment to "diversity." Asked about the Khadrs' return to Toronto, he said, "I believe that once you are a Canadian citizen, you have the right to your own views and to disagree."
That's the wonderful thing about multiculturalism: You can choose which side of the war you want to fight on. When the draft card arrives, just tick "home team" or "enemy," according to taste. The Canadian prime minister is a typical late-stage Western politician: He could have said, well, these are contemptible people and I know many of us are disgusted at the idea of our tax dollars being used to provide health care for a man whose Canadian citizenship is no more than a flag of convenience, but unfortunately that's the law and, while we can try to tighten it, it looks like this lowlife's got away with it. Instead, his reflex instinct was to proclaim this as a wholehearted demonstration of the virtues of the multicultural state. Like many enlightened Western leaders, the Canadian prime minister will be congratulating himself on his boundless tolerance even as the forces of intolerance consume him.
-- Mark Steyn
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-04 09:32 pm (UTC)From:Not to mention better opportunities to become independently wealthy. ;)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-05 07:38 am (UTC)From:The points are interesting--in a vaguely old-fashioned way though. It is fascinating just how narrow a focus Mr. Steyn has because I think he is a marker for some of the bigger philosophical problems we have in the world today. He does cover a few nice points from the recent birthrate book I read, however, even if he offers a much more curmudgeony and conservative stance.
Sort of ironic, too, the idea that multiculturalism is somehow hurting us in a fight against a kind of xenophobia. It ignores whole levels of analysis. The list could go on and on...and we've probably talked about nearly every counterpoint to his before. He offers a nice summary though for a kind of jumping off stage.
I do think he is right that what people worry about is pretty important. That is, perhaps, the key to understanding some of the culture wars. What do we really value? We're having an inner-Western conflict over that ourselves. In that way it is global struggle and the question is "what is civilization?" And I think Mr. Steyn is "worried" about the wrong things.
It isn't the progressive agenda that is a suicide bomb...the progressive agenda is our only hope against not only militant fundamentalism, but stagnant conservative thought as well. I'd say that is why I believe in progressive values...it's the only set of beliefs that offers hope via intellect and thoughtfulness against all sorts of cultural problems that plague the world. Mr. Steyn's view simply doesn't fit in the postmodern, complex world that we're forced to live in these days. Oh, but I wish things were as simple as he seems to want.
If the fundamentalists are the ones who are multiplying, I'd like to think we can encourage people to raise our birthrate while also holding firm on the progressive items which define us from every society that has come before. I'm not sure the free world is necessarily safe, but if it is to survive it has to overcome the Steyn's of the culture in addition to jihadists and falling birthrates.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-05 06:57 pm (UTC)From:And if only the world could be just about ideas. I'm for progressive values, myself, but these have to be achieved in a world where hatred and violence exist as much as ever before, whether you want to label the age as post-modern or not, and there is no pretty idea that will dispel them, because the world really isn't that simple. There is still this primal element to the world that we don't just evolve out of, but we have to deal with it.
Regarding birth rates as well as religion, I think you and Steyn have something in common. You may have noticed that he does not care for secularism, counting this as part of the progressives' time bomb. In accord with his religious value is the idea of promoting higher birthrates, as this is something that, ironicially enough, otherworldly types save to favor more - more babies!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 09:38 am (UTC)From:No, ideas themselves aren't going to win the day, but the trick is to also remember that we must not give up ideas in the task of overcoming our primal nature. It can be overcome only through cultivation of our more advanced aspects. To be a little Voltaire, "we must cultivate our garden."
The progressive system has broken down (not my idea here, someone said it on NPR recently) because most obstacles have been overcome. Or a great deal of movement forward has been made. Just because the world is a much better place than 10, 15, 50 years ago doesn't mean we can stop or have no more work to do.
Conservatives and fundamentalists will indeed win if progressives do nothing positive moving forward because the former are "default" positions. They rely on the past, the way things were, no intellectual steps forward. Traditionalists get their way if no better alternative is proposed. Which perhaps gets to our sticky political situation, our lack of education, etc..
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 01:59 pm (UTC)From:Now, I think there is some irony in that quote. I think the point was to forget such things as our higher aspects and grand ideas, and that people would do better just to work and live their animal lives, forgoing the notion that the world was perfectible or even very good.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 10:29 am (UTC)From:He may have been skeptical, but I'd say Voltaire was far from the idea you describe. That would be more of what was being satirized.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-08 11:04 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 07:13 am (UTC)From:As one of my favorite modern authors, Adam Gopnik, puts it in a New Yorker article on Voltaire and Candide:
"Voltaire did not believe that there was any justice or balance in the world, but he believed that bad ideas made people bad. The villains in the book are not, as in Samuel Johnson’s exactly contemporary and parallel “Rasselas,” the fatality of the world and the mortality of man. The villains are the villains: Jesuits and Inquisitors and English judges and Muslim clerics and fanatics of all kinds. If they went away, life would be much better. He knew that the flood would get your garden no matter what you did; but you could at least try to keep the priests and the policemen off the grass. It wasn’t enough, but it was something."
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 09:59 am (UTC)From:Um, the message that is actually in the book, in the very scene where the line about cultivating the garden at the end. Having suffered all the strifes of the world, going beyond clerics and judges, and having asked around for wisdom, they find the right note in visiting with a simple Turk and the happiness of his family. When Candide marvels over his well-being and suggests that the Turk must have a magnificent estate, the Turk gives the line that is the springboard for the line about cultivating the garden:
'Only Twenty acres,' replied the Turk; 'my children help me to farm it, and we find that the work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice and poverty.'
And it is in response to the
AntilapsarianesquePanglossian arguing that Candide essentially restates the Turk's lesson, putting off Pangloss gently and saying that they should just work their garden.I believe this is unsterstood best more literally that I suppose the abstraction you give it, for the literal rendering makes the context more sensible, especially when you consider the whole rest of the book, which is about so much more than inquisitors and clerics, going indeed to the idea that the human condition is one of suffering and struggling. I particularly think of that scene on the ship when Candide and Martin interview all the passengers and indeed find that all feel their life to be the worst of tales and torment. In the end, the surer path to personal contentment seems to be not to think so much about it, but to just to just work directly on one's betterment.
Apparently, you and I prefer the anguish of ideas over labor. Hopefully, you might yet make a living out of that and make that your garden, maybe.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 05:25 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 05:38 pm (UTC)From:I've only read it with the idea in mind of the dark Voltaire humor of making fun of the suffering and struggling in life with the rationalist metaphorical garden of improving the world and his head-on with fatalisms, dogmas, etc..
I will admit, however, that Voltaire was a complex individual...who is to say he wasn't even more darker than we all realize and really meant it in this much more literal way. Perhaps he even meant the garden as a simplicity-refuge Buddhist type philosophy of taking refuge in life's little things. A Zen Voltaire maybe? I dunno. Certainly an interesting idea.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 06:33 pm (UTC)From:Just remember that we are talking specifically of that line about 'cultivating the garden' as used in "Candide." I was thinking that you are overlooking the tree for the forest.
In reading the book, I think he transcends whatever philosophical baggage he carries, making the work more of a stand-out in the process. I have thought of his mood being in the spirit of that Tolstoy-will to resort to serf-like life of work, with that temptation to chuck over all the intellectual wrangling, which can sometimes feel like mere intellectual masturbation - and that Voltaire ultimately gave vent to that feeling in "Candide."
And rather than thinking of my view as being particularly dark, I agree more to your characterization of it being zen-like. It is only 'dark' as against the idea that we can obtain some sort of enlightened world. It is true that I don't think that is a real possibility, and that the world will continue to be what it has been - as in his time, so it is today, the same world of corruption and injustice and strife, and people struggling amidst all of this to realize some personal well-being.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 07:28 am (UTC)From:People often accuse Buddhism of being atheist for the fact that it doesn't place a God-head at the center of its attention. Its focus is on adjusting one's mental status to the world rather than dreaming of adjusting the world to one's mental status. And I do think there is some of that in Voltaire that you highlight. I am not one to say that Voltaire wasn't sometimes tired of his own philosophy. The Age was named after him...a heavy weight given his troubles and viewpoints.
I suppose maybe that is his genius though is that there are muliple levels to his work. I do still take the line though that the predominant theme of the work is, yes, that philosophical speculation is useless. But I think Voltaire's point was the further step that positive action to change adverse situations in the real world requires real-world analysis. Which brings us back to the Zen.
Zen isn't about just sitting in the moment...it is about trying to be absolutely present and manifest to one's fullest at that preceise moment (and every moment). So yes he is talking about cultivating a garden, but it is a garden that stands in contrast to the rest of the work as a place where cause and effect are known and work has benefit rather than the emphasis on hard work as a virtue in itself that goes with the "suffering all part of a master plan" mentality being satirized.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 09:46 pm (UTC)From:I think you are actually projecting our Western values onto the Eastern religon/philosophy of zen. I don't think the actual practice is about real world analysis and progressive change. Indeed, I think it literally is more about sitting in the moment - zazen over social activism. The orient is more passive and introspective that way.
You said that you are going to re-read "Candide" and bear in mind my perspective. I do urge you to forget about everything else you have read and studied of Voltaire. Pretend that it's an anonymous author, and that all your thought is to be limited to the text of this story. I think you may then better apprecite my point about the book and the idea of working in the garden amidst a strife-filled and tragic world.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-11 07:42 am (UTC)From:I'll try Candide though, honestly, my reason for reading usually involves getting to know the author better...sometimes I think the little bio at the beginning is more interesting than the work itself. I'm always about context, but a new perspective might be interesting.
I dunno, it sort of reminds me about the binding of Isaac story from the Bible though...is it a beautiful story about faith? A sick child abuse tale? An existential metaphor as Kierkegaard would have it? *sigh*
A Correction
Date: 2006-01-06 07:22 am (UTC)From: