Above Us Only Sky
Douglas Wilson
Suppose with me for a moment. Suppose that about fifteen nano-seconds after the Big Bang all the trillion-plex trillions of atoms all joined hands together, forming their molecules, and then they all ran pell mell down the corridors of the space/time continuum, making history as they went. Some scientists think they all yelled whee! but I myself suspect it was something more like arghh! The question is hard to determine because apart from a few staff writers at National Geographic, nobody was there really.
What is not hard to determine is what this would entail, if true. It would entail John Lennon being a certified moonbeam. Go over his famous Imagine with a thoughtful eye and ear, and the only thing that makes any sense whatever would be the chord changes. But if, as he avers, the only thing above us is sky, then the chord changes making sense . . . doesn’t make sense.
Without transcendent reality, we don’t just lose transcendent reality. We lose everything down here as well. Without transcendentals, nothing coheres, nothing binds, nothing sticks. And you can’t go down to your shop in the basement and work up a transcendent reality to help get you by. I’m looking at you, Sartre. They have to be fixed, immutable, given. They have to be grounded in the character and nature of God.
A blind concourse of atoms, even when massaged by mysterious forces called natural laws and convenient processes like natural selection, cannot produce the kind of world we actually live in. They can produce the kind of world that carbon-based lust-bundles wished they lived in. Given all this materialism, the next natural step is some form of unsupported blind leap existentialism. And the central existentialist dictum — that existence precedes essence — means that anyone with a will (what’s that, by the way?) can impose that will on the plastic nature of reality around. Thus it is, though being a man, Bruce Jenner can self-identify as a woman, Rachel Dolezal, whiter than the pope’s knees, can self-identify as being black, and now, right on schedule, a 52-year-old transgender father self-identifies as a 6-year-old girl.
I myself self-identify as the next president of the United States, and when the bad guys see what’s in these executive orders, they are going to totally panic.
And so, despite the aesthetic glories of a peacock’s rear end, the advanced engineering that went into a chimpanzee’s wrist, the nobility of a stallion on a ridge, we are invited to imagine — great word to use, actually — that there is no Heaven. Nothing ultimately matters — except of course, peace, love and understanding. But wait. Why do those three things matter? Their dome is “only sky,” just like all the other godforsaken atoms.
So then, having totally destroyed any possible basis for any kind of real morality whatever, they assert — through a shrieking exercise of raw power — that we must all submit to the system of morality that they just brought up out of their basement. But let’s have a little reprise of Lennon, shall we? Shall we turn it around? Shall we run their little ramshackle moral system through the song that eats all moral systems for breakfast?
The rape culture on American campuses? The cosmos doesn’t care, man. Americans own millions and millions of unregistered guns? Atoms configure themselves in this way sometimes, that is true. The patriarchy remains unsmashed? The universe stands aloof — indifferent, cold, uncaring, hostile . . . in fact, rather like a man. Svelte and yet buxom young women suffer under the hetero-normative gaze of fraternity boys? The space/time continuum has no complaint department. No refunds given. Gaze away. The most obvious feature of all of this is that nothing changes no matter how grievous the issue might actually be. The American legacy of slaves in the cotton fields for centuries, sweating under a blazing sky? Above them, only sky.
This whole system must come down, and everything related to it — materialism, evolution, relativism, the works. Their tower will fall, but not because we are so adept at toppling things like that. We actually don’t need to be. The citadels of unbelief will soon enough collapse into a small mountain of pomo-rubble because their architectonic system was actually devised by some sophomores on the third day of spring break. We are not sure what the motive force behind this grandiose scheme was, but all the bikinis were a big part of it. That’s just not serious philosophy, man.
No comments:
Post a Comment