Author: Carl R. Trueman
Publishers: Crossway
Place of publication: Wheaton, Illinois
Year of publication: 2020
Reviewed by: J.N. Manokaran
What happened to the West? How have biblical values been forgotten and rejected? Such questions bother pious Christians around the globe. Carl R. Trueman has come out with this fabulous, well-researched book, tracing the roots of the symptomatic changes that are witnessed today. “How has the current highly individualistic, iconoclastic, sexually, obsessed, and materialistic mindset come to triumph in the West? (Page 36) This book presents the many accumulating factors that led to the cultural chaos in the West today.
Great Forgetting
Rod Dreher in his foreword sums up: “Because men have forgotten God, they have also forgotten man; that’s why all this has happened.” (Page 12) Christian solution to crisis of modernity is not possible without addressing the Great Forgetting. Throughout history homosexuality, pornography, and sex outside the bounds of marriage were there. However, today, to be sexually inactive is to be a less-than-whole person, to be obviously unfulfilled or weird. The old sexual codes of celibacy outside marriage and chastity within it are considered ridiculous and oppressive. In fact, the sexual revolution has turned the world upside down.
The crisis of identity
“I am a woman trapped in a man’s body.” This shows the crisis of identity, dignity, purpose and meaning of life. The author quotes Charles Taylor to sum up Modern Identity: 1) Focus on inwardness; 2) the affirmation of ordinary life that develops in the modern era; 3) the notion that the nature provides us with an inner moral source. Psychologization of modern life has manifested in sexual revolution, the poison pill that is killing religion and civilization.
Four stages of human progress
The author brings to focus the Four stages of Human in history:
1. Political man: engages activities in public in contrast to idiotic man (Private man)
2. Religious man: Attending mass, celebrating feast, going on pilgrimage, follow liturgical calendar.
3. Economic man: trade, production, making of money.
4. Psychological man: a type characterized not so much by finding identity in outward directed activities as was true for the previous types but rather in the inward quest for personal psychological happiness. Inner psychological convictions absolutely decisive for who they are.
The pollical man was happy to be involved in public. The religious man was glad to be part of a congregation involved in the activities. The economic man pursued Job satisfaction, that was to put food on the table and educate the children. Also involved in trade union or Working Mens’ club. But for psychological man: Feeling is central and wants to do what he feels makes him happy. Hence, for him the community is hindrance to attain his potential.
Two kinds of worldviews
There are Two different ways of viewing the world: Mimetic and Poiesis views. Mimetic view was that of political, religious, and economic man, while psychological man takes Poiesis view. First, the Mimetic view: The world as having a given order (sacred order) and a given meaning and thus sees human beings are required to discover that meaning and conform themselves to it. Second, Poiesis view: The world as so much raw material out of which meaning, and purpose can be created by the individual.
Two ways of interpretation
There are two ways to interpret the world. One way is to interpret a particular event with reference to the universal principle or metaphysical or metanarrative. The second is to ignore the metanarrative and focus only on local. For example: Twin Towers fell on 9/11 because of gravity: true or false. The twin tower fell because of a particular – terrorist attack, and by universal principle of earth’s gravity.
Three worlds
The author brings to focus the three worlds based on worldview or paradigms.
First world is primitive and pagan. Their moral codes are based on myths. It can be termed as sacred myth. Second world characterized not so much by fate, as by faith. Example Christianity. Law condes were rooted in the will of God revealed in the Bible. (Sacred order) Third world is in stark contrast to the first and second world. They do not root themselves in their cultures or social order or moral imperative that are sacred. They do it based on themselves. That is called as the Immanent Frame.
Parents could say to children: “I say so, no ice cream.” But when the child grows up, that hierarchy does not work. People in their thought pattern could move from first or second world to third world. Abandonment of a sacred order leaves cultures without foundation. “Third world cultures are really just therapeutic cultures, the cultures of psychological man: the only moral criterion that can be applied to behavior is whether it conduces to the feeling of well-being in the individuals concerned. Ethics, therefore becomes a function of feeling.” (Page 79)
History is rejected
History is rejected as worthy of respect and source of wisdom for the present. Technology plays a role in cultivating an attitude that sees the past as inferior and thus downgrades the value of the past. Or history is one long story of oppression. Historians are divided in the third world: Reactionaries who use history to justify oppression. Radicals who use history to unmask the exploitation it embodies. History is about victimizers and victims, with the former being the villains and the later the heroes. “The Western world of today generally credits youth with wisdom and sees old age as corrupt, myopic, or behind the time.” (Page 127) Children and teenagers are lecturing to the older people
Society is to be blamed
Philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes that Social institutions breeds corruption and wickedness. Before advent of social institutions human beings had simple desires connected to simple needs that were simply satisfied. Society creates rules that is contrary to simple life. Hence, a good huma being is regarded with contempt by cultivated society, perhaps even as a criminal. According to him Pity is the foundation for ethics and Aesthetics as key to morality. Self-love is natural state of good, as well as for self-preservation.
Unacknowledged Legislators
Poets, prose writers also influenced and shaped the society. They are called as unacknowledged legislators.
1. Poetry putting the listeners or readers to authentic reality, that strips away corruption in society and connects them to more universal and authentic nature.
2. Poetry and poet fulfills an ethical task of ennobling the humanity.
3. Poetry as political and revolutionary.
4. Poetry and prose used to attack organized Christianity, promote political liberation and idea of sexual freedom.
William Wordsworth writes about inward emotion and also rustic or country life. Bored with industrialization and upset with French Revolution that demonstrated reason alone is not enough. Hence, he brings aesthetics into focus. Poetry is the result of forces of nature moving the poet to give them literary and artistic expression.
Shelley asserts that human beings are unprepared for reasoned arguments until such time as sentiments like love and trust have first been cultivated. They believed that Art must play a central role in the moral reformation of humanity as reason is inadequate. Thomas De Quincey: Everything could be seen from two perspective. The weaker perspective is from moral view from pulpit, another is aesthetically. Murder could be seen as sin from pulpit and seen as aesthetic act.
Art as Deathwork
Art was creative outlet for first and second world. For third world art, is termed as deathwork is designed to undo the deeper moral structure of the society. “Deathworks make the old values look ridiculous.” (page 97) Piss Christ – a crucifix is shown submerged in the artist’s urine. Andres Serranio is not simply mocking the sacred order – he has turned it into something dirty, disgusting and vile. Religion is not just made untrue; it is made distasteful and disgusting. Human identities are being flushed away like aborted fetuses. Deathwork: the most sacred is flushed down the toilet without second thought.
Pornography is a deathwork that romantic sensibilities are made to look silly. “The sex in pornography is presented as an end in itself. Yet sexual activity in a second world has a sacred significance as part of a relationship, as part of personal history, as something that – given its connection to reproduction-links past to future, and as the necessary precondition for culture.” (Page 99) The message is: sex has not significance beyond the act itself.
Social imaginary
Social imaginary is the way people think about the world, how they imagine it to be, how they act intuitively in relation to it. First, there was the promiscuous behaviors. Second, with progress of technology, that behavior is made easy or facilitated: in the form of contraception, and antibiotics. Third, technology enabled to minimize or avoid the natural consequences of such behavior. Unwanted pregnancies and diseases could be managed or cured. Four, since consequences did not impact much, it was justified as plausible behavior and the arguments against it became muted. Five, the behavior itself became socially acceptable.
There is a sympathy for those who portray themselves as victims of authorities or oppression. “The intuitive moral structure of our modern social imaginary priorities victimhood, sees selfhood in psychological terms, regards traditional sex codes as oppressive and life denying, and places a premium on the individual rights to define his or her own existence.” (Page 63)
Cultural pathologies
Acceptance of gay marriage and transgenderism are simply symptoms of cultural pathologies. “Just as some choose to identify themselves by their sexual orientation, so the religious person chooses to be a Christian or a Muslim.” (Page 25)
Psychological man
Political, religious, and economic man was outwardly directed to those communal beliefs, practices, and institutions that were bigger than the individual and had co confirm and cooperate to find meaning. “In the world of psychological man, however, the commitment is first and foremost to the self and is inwardly directed. Thus, the order is reversed. Outward institutions in effect servants of the individual her sense of inner well-being.” (Page 49) The psychological man goes to institutions like schools or churches to perform, not to be formed, perhaps, formed by performing. They go to school or church not to be challenged, but to be affirmed and reassured. Traditions institutions should be transformed to the psychological self. Human identity has become so plastic and statements such as: I am a man trapped in a woman-body. For psychological man – personal authenticity is found through public performance of inward desires.
Psychological Happiness
Sittlichkeit: There is a need for the expressive individual to be at one with the expressive community. “What is vital to notice is that recognition is therefore a social phenomenon. It is important to me to have my identity recognized, but the framework and convention both for expressing my identity and for that identity being recognized are socially constructed, specific to the context in which I find myself.” (Page 63) Psychological man demands right to psychological happiness. The expectation from the society is changed institutions, practices and beliefs that would reflect a therapeutic mentality that focuses on the psychological well-being.
Does it make you happy? That means can have sex with anyone. Technology gives a helping hand. Contraception minimizes the risk of unwanted pregnancy. Condoms prevents spread of disease. Mutual consent is there. Hence it is presumed as right not as a sin.
Notion of honor or dignity
The identity in the society was based on the notion of honor, that had social hierarchy. A person has to simply learn to think and act in accordance to one’s position. Social hierarchy have been demolished by two factors: First, technological and economic changes. Second, intellectual developments have proved lethal to traditional, hierarchical ways of thinking.
Identity turned inward, a move that is fundamentally anti hierarchical. Modern society experienced a paradigm shift that identity that is based on Dignity, which is being a human. “For the individual to be king, society must recognize the supreme value of the individual.” (Page 63)
Person and behavior’s
In traditional thinking a person could be separated from the behavior. God loves sinner and hates sin. However, the behavior itself becomes the identity. “The person who objects to homosexual practice is, in contemporary society, actually objecting to homosexual identity. And the refusal by any individual to recognize an identity that society at large recognizes as legitimate is a moral offense, not simply a matter of indifference. The question of identity in the modern work is a question of dignity.” (Page 69)
Plastic People
The basic content of the psychological man is not the sexual content. psychological man thinks he can make and remake personal identity at will. For such plastic people, there is a need for a metaphysical framework and a society with a particular social imaginary. There is a plausibility for self-creation. If a person could transform oneself by adding things; they can create a world for themselves too.
Attack on family
Marriage is most odious of all monopolies. By making one woman the exclusive property of one man, it creates jealously subterfuge and general social corruption. Marriage is against natural human instincts. Organized Christianity alienated human beings from each other and destroyed their true freedom. Christian morality is really immorality dressed up in righteousness.
Emotivism
Emotivism means: all moral judgements are nothing but expressions of preferences, attitude, or feeling. Emotivism uses the moral concepts and moral language negatively. Emotivism is a moral theory as well as social theory. It is subjective. They say: I know in my heart it is a good thing.
Three thinkers
“The modern self and the culture of the modern self clearly find their immediate roots in intellectual development that took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” (Page 193) Three different thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and Charles Darwin directed towards and shaped the modern culture. According to God is dead. God does not exist. “To dispense with God, however, is to destroy the foundation on which a whole world of metaphysics and morality has been constructed and depends.” (page 168) David Hume his disciple argued that God is necessary presupposition for moral discourse. “With Nietzsche we see clearly two pathologies of our present age receiving philosophical explication: the tendency to be suspicious of any claims to absolute moral truth and a rejection of religion as distasteful.” (Page 173)
G.W.F. Hegel wrote that the central dynamic in this historical process is its general character, or ‘spirit’. Karl Marx turned it upside down and made it material. For him God and religion were opium for masses. Marx said that religion is ideological oppression. Religion is function of alienation.
Charles Darwin advocated evolution as how human being emerged on earth. “Darwin’s theory of natural selection, effectively made any metaphysical or theological claim concerning the origins of life irrelevant.” (Page 186) For both Nietzsche and Marx, then, sacred order was a sign of psychological sickness.
Sexualization of the revolution
Sigmund Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. His influence was much wider than psychoanalysis and political theory. “Freud’s fingerprints are all over the Western culture of the last century from university lecture halls to art galleries to television commercials.” (Page 203) He gave this idea of happiness a specifically sexual turn in identifying with genital pleasure. Freud gave a compelling myth of pleasure principle as more important than procreation. The sexual problems from the sphere of morality were taken to medicine, which continues till today. He also wrote that there are three elements: id, ego and superego that has shaped the culture of the West. Following him others; Godwin and Shelley regard monogamy as immoral as it brings – personal frustration, the prostitution, the adultery, the subjugation and commodification of women, and so on. Freud thought that the unhappiness, this discontent, is itself the foundation of culture and should have outlets for the release. Science and arts are the avenues. Alcohol and drugs are also other options.
The triumph of the erotic
“Sex now pervades every aspect of life, from elementary education to commercials to Congress and the Supreme Court. Everywhere one looks, the erotic-sexual desire-has triumphed.” (Page 272) Two important reasons: Artistic movement of surrealism and social acceptance of pornography. Hugh Hefner Playboy was accepted as mainstream, pornography was the natural successor. For a psychological man and the therapeutic society, happiness is personal psychological wellbeing, pornography detached from real bodily encounter provides personal satisfaction and pleasure. Pornography detaches sex from any ethical context. Sexual activity post-Freud is not, in and of itself moral or immoral. It is just an activity.
The Triumph of the Therapeutic
“Gay marriage is plausible because of the wider transformation of the social imaginary.” (Page 303) Judicial opinion is that there is no rational basis for defining marriage as between one man and one woman. A child in the womb is not a person. Does not know past, present, and future. Is not autonomous. Infants are not persons and hence do not have right to live.
LGBTQ+ movement
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queers have made an alliance and open for more with the indication of + sign. “The alliance between the L and the G it is a political coalition forged on the basis of a common enemy-a socially and politically enforced heterosexual normativity.” (Page 353) The LGBTQ+ movement is compared with the Civil rights movement. Because like civil rights movement it ‘demands for society to recognize the dignity of particular individuals, particular identities, and particular communities in social practices, cultural attitudes, and, therefore, legislation.’ “Nothing short of full equality under the law and full recognition of the legitimacy of certain nontraditional sexual identities by wider society has emerged as the ambition of the LGBTQ+ movement.” (Page 53-54) Triumph of the erotic in art and pop culture, on triumph of expressive individualism
Christian response:
Christian belief is equal worth of all individuals as they are created in the image of God. Expressive individualism states or claims to give dignity but detached from the sacred order. Hence fragile, fickle, and futile. The 21st century world is like that of second -century world where Christians had to make a difficult choice. The choice was opposed or ran afoul of the authorities.
The author provides three keys for response this culture of psychological man.
1. Christianity is first and foremost doctrinal, hence teach truth fearlessly, without compromise.
2. The Church must be community, indeed an authentic community.
3. Protestants need to recover both natural law and high view of the physical body.
Conclusion:
The author has well covered the three eras: Pre-modern (Primitive), Modern and Post-modern in an excellent way. Pre-modern people perspective: “I Believe that I am.” Fearing God, respecting sacred order and living faithfully. Modern perspective: “I think that I am.” This era resulted in questioning everything and bringing Reason as all important. God was exiled, reason was exalted, and revelation or sacred order was rejected. Postmodern perspective: I feel that I am.” The consequence is looking inward, emotions become supreme. An individual becomes sovereign and has the audacity (foolishness or ignorance) to relabel sin as good and expects culture and context to support and affirm him/her. Neither reason (intellectual) nor emotion (experiential) is adequate enough to arrive at the truth, For Truth is revealed and appeared, receiving in faith is the only way.
#jnmanokaran
#jninsights
#carltrueman
#modernself
#bookreview
jnmanokaran 