Essays in Idleness

A question, that has been disturbing me for some time, is whether what we call for shorthand “Western Civilization” is salvageable. That it would be worth salvaging (we live in an age of gerunds, don’t we?) I take for granted. We are alive; we have to live somehow; better that it be in a higher civilization, than in barbarous filth. Alas, not everyone agrees with me on this. The great majority, even within my Church, would prefer to live in a moral, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual pigsty of consumerism, in which the swineherds are provided by Twisted Nanny State.

Now traditionally, pigs had extended sharp tusks, that could be death on swineherds. They still have them, but diminished in size by extended breeding, and sometimes even the wee vestigial bumps are removed, at the risk of cracking jaws. This doesn’t lead to the captive suid being perfectly contented; only to his disarmament.

(I have a theory that humans are descended from pigs, not monkeys. I don’t currently believe it, but the argument can be developed in a way that will drive the village Darwinist crazy. Note: the average pig is smarter than a monkey; and can’t be bothered climbing trees.)

But I seem to be distracting myself into zoology, rather than advancing naturalism and realism. Indeed, my self-assigned brief is for supernaturalism. My affection for (the edible, delicious) pigs is just an aside. In the end it must be said there has never been a pig civilization, and the prospect that one may emerge by the ministrations of animal rights activists is, to my mind, dim. Pigs just won’t co-operate.

The human civilizations have each required an unambiguously religious foundation. There can be no order (for good, or when it fails, for evil) that does not refer to something higher than itself. This is as true for the headhunters of Borneo (whose pigs are bearded, and should be carefully avoided in the mangrove swamps), as for the gigantic feral hybrids, without keepers, found in the Canadian wild. Among the definitions of “faith” must be that which holds the tribe, or a people, or a person together, without tyranny. When it is lost, however, everything is lost. Even the pigs tend to get unruly.

(The “red-river hogs” of the Congo swamps are an exceptionally beautiful species, incidentally, with their gorgeous orange fox-like fur, adorable whiskers, decorative black and white facial patches, and thin white stripe along spine and tail. Though as any pigmy could tell you, they are terrible yam thieves, can defend themselves even against leopards, and do not make good family pets.)

Where am I? … Faith. … Our own once unambiguously Christian civilization embraced a supernatural order. The phenomena of collection of Holy Church were not unusual, as civilizations go. What made Christianity unique was the attachment to a “He Who Is” who can actually deliver us from cosmic perils. The hand-held devices we now worship cannot do that for us.

Even at the incontestably pragmatic level: it is time we returned to something that was working. Serve God, in Christ, and He will look out for us. Serve instead some other gods, and He might not.

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POSTSCRIPTUM. — Most of this was brought forward from years ago.