Thursday, July 06, 2006

Secular philosophy is a sophisticated child's game

Lawrence Harrison’s new book,
On pp. 36-37 of the book, Harrison lays out a helpful summary of those traits that are characteristic of the “progress-prone” culture vs. the “progress-resistant” one. They fall under four main headings:
  1. “Worldview,”
  2. “Values and Virtues,”
  3. “Economic Behavior,” and
  4. “Social Behavior,” with a total of 25 subcategories, or "factors."

Regarding the subcategory of “destiny,” the liberal victim is beset by “fatalism and resignation.” With respect to “time orientation,” their obsessive focus on past or even present grievances discourages working hard for the future. Under the heading of “wealth,” liberals clearly regard it as a “zero-sum” enterprise, which lies at the heart of their income-redistributing policies. Likewise, knowledge is “abstract, theoretical, cosmological [hey! I heard that], not verifiable.” Exactly. As we have had occasion to discuss many times, liberal academia (specifically, the humanities) is filled with deranged, kooky, abstract, unverifiable and utopian cranks. The rest are just crazy. The one last subcategory for Worldview is religion.

I don’t believe for a moment that modern secularism is more rational than my transrational religious philosophy. In fact, by comparison, merely secular philosophy is a sophisticated child's game. Furthermore, it remains to be seen if the secularized, hyper-rational societies of Western Europe will even be able to survive their irreligiosity. By and large American religion hardly dismisses the world--rather, it promotes achievement and material pursuits. It is probably too material for my tastes.

The next heading is Values and Virtues, which has three subcategories,

  1. ethical code,”
  2. the lesser virtues,” and
  3. education.”

The next main factor is Economic behavior, which has seven subcategories...The last main factor is Social Behavior, which has the most subcategories, ten. posted by Gagdad Bob at 7:19 AM 2 comments

No comments:

Post a Comment