Posted on 05/29/2011 4:57:40 PM PDT by Salvation
And best of all, it will be Home--the place where you were always meant to live--not the drab, shallow, meaningless and truly absurd and wholly artificial low-level theme park that our so-called thinkers and social-engineering types have spent their lives (and yours) convincing you that you ought to be content with. It is the world humans were meant for.
Beautiful, Dunstan, just beautiful! Well said!
ping
This is, first and foremost, what I mean by the narrowness of the new ideas, the limiting effect of the future. Our modern prophetic idealism is narrow because it has undergone a persistent process of elimination. We must ask for new things because we are not allowed to ask for old things. The whole position is based on this idea that we have got all the good that can be got out of the ideas of the past. But we have not got all the good out of them, perhaps at this moment not any of the good out of them. And the need here is a need of complete freedom for restoration as well as revolution.
We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition. There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past. He cares as little for what will be as for what has been; he cares only for what ought to be. And for my present purpose I specially insist on this abstract independence. If I am to discuss what is wrong, one of the first things that are wrong is this: the deep and silent modern assumption that past things have become impossible. There is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying, "You can't put the clock back." The simple and obvious answer is "You can." A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour. In the same way society, being a piece of human construction, can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed.
There is another proverb, "As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it"; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again. We could restore the Heptarchy or the stage coaches if we chose. It might take some time to do, and it might be very inadvisable to do it; but certainly it is not impossible as bringing back last Friday is impossible. This is, as I say, the first freedom that I claim: the freedom to restore. I claim a right to propose as a solution the old patriarchal system of a Highland clan, if that should seem to eliminate the largest number of evils. It certainly would eliminate some evils; for instance, the unnatural sense of obeying cold and harsh strangers, mere bureaucrats and policemen. I claim the right to propose the complete independence of the small Greek or Italian towns, a sovereign city of Brixton or Brompton, if that seems the best way out of our troubles. It would be a way out of some of our troubles; we could not have in a small state, for instance, those enormous illusions about men or measures which are nourished by the great national or international newspapers. You could not persuade a city state that Mr. Beit was an Englishman, or Mr. Dillon a desperado, any more than you could persuade a Hampshire Village that the village drunkard was a teetotaller or the village idiot a statesman. Nevertheless, I do not as a fact propose that the Browns and the Smiths should be collected under separate tartans. Nor do I even propose that Clapham should declare its independence. I merely declare my independence. I merely claim my choice of all the tools in the universe; and I shall not admit that any of them are blunted merely because they have been used.
This is good: The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
I think that is so true today. The problem why Churches across the board are emptying is that people don't like the challenge that Christianity poses. And making it 'easy' does not help, rather it does the contrary.
bttt
Here's to the Irish, whom God has made quite mad,
For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad.
CC
Placemark.
My very first cryptoquote, I think it went like this: “Consideration for others
and good manners are the two main charachteristics of a gentleman.” G.K. Chesterton. 30 years ago.
Think of the rationale for the beginnings of the organization to which Gabriel Symes belongs (the last crusade) and the explanation given concerning the mere camp followers vs. the insiders of the nihilists:
"Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue,' and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak--the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths"--and the policeman lowered his voice--"in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave.
"They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody."\ "
Then think of the fruits of National Socialism and Communism, the insistence on abortion. It is enough to chill your blood.
As a healthy antidote to that attitude, recall one of my favorite quotes from the book:
" “It is things going right,” he cried, “that is poetical I Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.”"
Cheers! Next assignment for you (if you like The Man Who Was Thursday): read Chesterton's The Flying Inn (timely today!) and Belloc's The Servile State.
For Chesterton's more whimsical fiction, I recommend The Club of Queer Trades; for more serious, try The Napoleon of Notting Hill; and you must Must MUST read his collection of short stories The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond and the Father Brown mysteries.
Sorry, did I let my enthusiasm get away with me again? I *love* Chesterton.
Cheers!
I also wanted to put this bit he wrote here, and note it was written over 100 years ago, and applies all the more today...
When a dead body is rotting, it does not diminish; it swells. Ignorance of this elementary truth is at the back of nearly all our political blindness. When we speak of a decaying people or a dying institution, we always have somehow the notion of their dwindling; of sparser and sparser tribes gathering on their mountains, of meaner and meaner buildings arising in their skies. But it is not so that social bodies really rot. They rot like physical bodies, being horribly distended from within by revolting gases demanding egress. Institutions, like corpses, grow larger and larger as they grow more and more shapeless. A dying monarchy is always one that has too much power, not too little; a dying religion always interferes more than it ought, not less. Our own country is really in this state of swollen decay, and the test of it is this: that every function of the State has grown more formless and more vast. Every power, public and private, has been stretched long past all sane definition and we live under a government of entangled exaggerations. It is a government that has all the practical effects of anarchy. Indeed, it is something worse than chaos; a warring polytheism. It is a conflict of incalculable autocracies, under any of which at the moment we may fall.- G. K. Chesterton, The Monstrosity, Daily News, March 11th, 1911"
Fantastic and truthful quote. Oh, my!
The Everlasting Man is a great book, but it’s slow going because it makes you think. I found myself reading some passages several times to soak up what he was saying. Chesterton could be quite humorous and at the same time manage to convey some very profound thoughts.
I like this thread title too, until about a year ago I had never heared of Chesterton.
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