Complex Polymers and Human Society

Civilisation as a Thin Translucent Skin

We have argued many times that human society is "thick"--that is, it is multi-layered, complex, and variant. It is a thoroughly complex polymer.  This truth is either denied or repeatedly ignored by Unbelief.  People who seek control over the world or human society all start with an assumption that society is pretty thin and distinctly one-dimensional.  A few laws here, a bit of education there and nirvana will be upon us before lunchtime.  Or to change the metaphor, Unbelief unsheathes a sword and approaches human society as if it were a skeleton.  In so acting, Unbelief takes upon itself--whether it admits it or not--the mantle of a god. 

Ironically, one of Unbelief's more more prominent sects these days are the Greenists, who constantly remind us that the environment is a multi-layered, complex, mutually dependant entity, such that a few tweaks here can have enormous ramifications over there.  Notice, however, that when is comes to "doing something" about environmental degradation, more often than not their proposed solutions are both legalistic and one-dimensional.  Are people over-weight?  Ban fats and sugars.  Is the atmosphere over-saturated with carbon dioxide?  Ban the internal combustion engine and legislatively require battery-run cars.  The Greens very definitely regard human society as a skeleton through which they can see clearly and their sword is big enough to dismember every bone in sight.  The irony of this contradiction becomes even more acute when one considers that if the physical environment is intricately complex, human society is exponentially more so.

Human society cannot long continue as a good and blessed realm if the "mundane things" are not right.  Take for example the mundane dimension of how people regard one another.
  The Christian perspective is derived from the law of God: we are to thy neighbour as thyself.  This one law binds every human being, every soul.  The Unbelieving perspective has lots of alternative "laws" as to how people should regard other human beings: egalitarianism of goods and property; the greatest good for the greatest number; class or racial affiliation; universal non-discrimination; anarchistic license; property based meritocracy, and so on.

The critic may observe that this represents a contradiction in our argument.  The Christian has one law--a mono-dimensional standard which treats society simplistically.  Unbelief has many laws, and so reflects society's rich multi-layered diversity.  In fact, the reverse is true.  Loving one's neighbour as oneself is the only standard that allows society to become immensely varied and richly complex.  It means that one loves the rich man and the poor man alike.  One loves and regards oneself a servant of the master and the slave; the child and the adult; the male and the female; and all ethnicities.  Unbelief, however, in its relentless crusade for its One Principle, will demand and enforce conformity everywhere. 

Some Unbelievers have advanced the criticism that the Christian law is "too extreme".  Peter Hitchens observes:

. . . my brother Christopher states that "the order to 'love thy neighbour as thyself' is too extreme and too strenuous to be obeyed.  Humans, he says, "are not so constituted as to care for others as much as themselves." [Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great (New York: Twelve, 2007), p. 213.]  This is demonstrably untrue and can be shown to be untrue--first, through the unshakeable devotion of mothers to their children; through thousands of examples of doctors and nurses risking (and undergoing) infection and death in the course of caring for others; in the uncounted cases of husbands caring for sick, incontinent, and demented wives (and vice versa) at their lives' ends; through the heartrending deeds of courage on the battlefield, of men actually laying down their lives for others.  We all know that these things happen.  If we are honest, they make us uncomfortable because we are not sure that we could do such things, though we know them to be right and admirable. [Peter Hitchens, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), p. 132.]

The glue that holds society together comes not from the iron fist of the law, from rules, regulations, diktats, and Sharkey-like Orders, but from millions upon millions of daily respectful kindnesses.  From these grow a complex, multivariate, organic society.  Hitchens, again:

And when it comes to the millions of small and tedious good deeds that are needed for a society to function with charity, honesty, and kindness, a shortage of believing Christians will lead to that society's decay.  . . .

Mutual benefit ceases to offer any kind of guide to behavior.  Who is to say, in a city ruled by a single powerful and ruthless family from an impregnable fortress, that the strongest man is not also always right?  In fact, the Godless principle that the strongest is always right has been openly declared as recently as the twentieth century in Mussolini's Italy and operated in practice in Hitler's German, Stalin's Soviet Union, and in many other states.  [Ibid., p.145.]

The Christian one absolute law governing all human relationships--to love thy neighbour as thyself--allows a complex, diverse, and richly variate society to come into existence and flourish.  Unbelief, however, cannot tolerate such diversity: its idol-du-jour must have conformity or else.  It is the inevitable outcome of man acting the demi-god, of asserting quasi-divine rights and powers over others in the name of some abstract principle (be it socialism, communism, capitalism, egalitarianism, libertarianism, idealism, feminism, racism, Islamism, or whatever else may be conjured up on the day).  The inevitable fruit of such faithless arrogance is the destruction and dismemberment of human society.

Civilisation at that point becomes the thin translucent  skin of an elderly dying man.