March 26, 2012
gratiaetnatura
God, Individuality, Norris Clarke, Unity
Community, Corporatism, God, Individuality, New Age, New Agers, Socialism, The Family, Unity, W. Norris Clarke
Imagine a world with one government. The focus of the government is making sure everyone is part of “one unified happy family.” The state controls all aspects of life. “Diversity” is celebrated in word, but ignored or pushed aside in practice. The government ignores individual differences between people, whether it be athletic ability or behavioral differences–absolute equality is preserved. Most people in this state believe that, after death, they will merge into oneness with the universe and lose whatever individuality that remains. Does this sound like a utopian world to you?
The European Union, which attempts in its own way to re-establish the unity of Europe before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, is supported by seemingly disparate groups: some (though not all) Marxists, Social Democrats, Corporatists and other big government, Bismark-style conservatives. The UK, which has not totally lost its historic independent streak, tends to oppose the Union. At least those who argue for the EU use their minds; the same cannot be said for the cotton-candy brained New Agers who believe in some utopian unity in 2012 (in 1969 it was the “Age of Aquarius”). New Agers, who “feel” without putting their emotions under the discipline of reason, tend toward a vague form of ontological monism and pantheism that totally subsumes the individual. Sometimes the more “thoughtful” New Agers may use (still questionable) arguments from quantum entanglement or the Higgs Field to support their position.
Human beings are social animals, and naturally work together best in smaller social groups. The family is the basic unit of human social interaction, followed by friends, acquaintances, and strangers. It is true that Jesus Christ affirms that all people are our neighbors–that is, we are all human persons made in God’s image, thus not considering a person a neighbor because of his ethnicity is wrong. In His time, the conflict was between the Jewish people and the Samaritans The “Good Samaritan” overcomes the prejudice of the Samaritans against Jews and helps a person in need.
Jesus’ parable should not be used to argue against a hierarchy of communities beginning with the family, where we first learn to love people in spite of differences and learn to deal with fellow human beings, sometimes with much conflict. A person’s first obligation, apart from religious obligations, is to his family, and then to the other groups mentioned above. An emphasis on “we’re all really one” to the detriment of individuals and individual families ignores human nature and will only lead to a socially engineered, artificial society that, in the end, must be unified by the force of government power or by the pernicious influence of large corporations on the general culture. Individual identity is subsumed under a monster state (in socialism) or under the influence of corporations through the media (in corporatism, which, as I always emphasize, is not the same thing as capitalism).
Religion that ignores individual human beings is also pernicious. It is true that human beings, as all substances, are, as Father W. Norris Clarke put it, “substances-in-relation.” That includes relation to one another, to nature in general, and to God. But such relationality does not take away from the fact that each human being is also an individual substance with a personal unity whose value comes from God, the Creator. I have heard rebellious Christians claim that desire for individual resurrection is selfish. It can be, I suppose, but understanding human beings in relation to God and each other surely includes a natural desire to be united to God and to loved ones (and later, to others) in a resurrection world. Unity with God or with each other neither subsumes individuals nor subsume individual communities, though many human relationships will be transcended and become something deeper and far more valuable than relationships on earth. Even the Christian mystics, who in the height of their experience often used language suggesting an ontological monism, in the end recognized that they are created beings, individuals, though they are wholly dependent on God for their continued existence.
Recognizing individual families and small groups, as well as acknowledging the individuality of human persons, implies a less intrusive state as well as smaller businesses oriented to the good of their individual communities. Of course there should be a respect for other people, even those who are strangers, but fundamentally no government or corporation should interfere with the hierarchy of love that is natural to human beings and which forms organic, not forced, communities.
