Avoidable problems in the contest between traditionalism and the Modern World
Most of us are familiar by now with the inherent conflict of some traditionalist societies and the Modern World. Shrinkwrapped outlines some of the problems on one side:
I wrote about the difficulty the individual Muslim man has in acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to become a full participant in the modern world. The confluence of child rearing practices that enhance the narcissistic vulnerability that interferes with mental flexibility and an educational system that reinforces a rigid and closed approach to knowledge are dual handicaps that even the brightest young men have difficulty overcoming.
Unfortunately for the entire world, modernity presents an impossible challenge for the Muslim world’s traditionalists; in too many ways to enumerate [here are a few of them -- ed.], Sharia is incompatible with modernity. As a result, as they become more connected, cognitive dissonance and anxiety increase. In the face of rising anxiety people, and cultures, tend to regress. Such regression tends toward the increased use of the psychological defense of splitting, when in order to simplify the world and decrease anxiety, the binary distinction of “all-good” versus “all-bad” is adopted.
These are concepts we have discussed many times here. We think that the problems of traditionalist society have been pretty well defined at this point. What concerns us most today is that the Modern World itself is failing to meet its obligations in important ways. We’ll mention three:
– (a) by failing to teach new generations about the history and reasons for the West’s spectacular progress over the last 130 years, we diminish the critical role of scientific and logical thinking, giving way to dangerous and destructive magical thinking — Global Warming hysteria is but one small example.
– (b) By its headlong rush into vulgarity and its celebration of licentiousness, the Modern World has set itself up for a reaction, perhaps violent and intolerant, from forces seeking a return to moral and societal-order codes more prevalent throughout history. This is a pattern that has recurred throughout man’s existence. The Renaissance, for example, carried within it the seeds of its own destruction.
– (c) perhaps most disheartening, the failure of the West’s elites to defend the cornerstones of liberty like free speech is a recipe for future disaster. The Modern World isn’t going to die, as much as the traditionalists would like it to. Rather, if provoked enough, the Modern World just might remove the traditionalist problem, on way or another. However, by failing to defend the underpinnings of civil society, among the greatest of which is politically-incorrect free speech, the Modern World and its elites are setting themselves up for a future less free and less civil than the past, even in victory. The Roman Republic was superior in a number of ways to the Roman Empire, after all.
We see little in recent events that encourages us to think that the West has sufficient self-correcting mechanisms in place to avoid some nasty, unnecessary, self-inflicted wounds. There is enough human suffering to go around in the unavoidable clash between tradtionalism and the Modern World without the elites of the Modern World making it far worse than it needs to be.