Ipocriţi bine-informaţi [Well-informed hypocrites]

Că toate lucrurile pe lumea aceasta merg din rău în mai rău, am mai scris pe MunteanUK, după mintea şi constatările mele sau i-am citat pe alţii (pe Soljeniţîn, acum un an), mai iscusiţi în a descrie aceste triste evidenţe.

Dar ce uşor este să constaţi răul din mersul lumii şi cât de greu este să vezi şi altceva ori să te pui de-a curmezişul acestei prăvăliri!

Se înţelege că nu este sfânt în ceruri care să nu fi văzut nenumărate rele (care au existat în toate vremurile, încă de la facerea lumii) şi să nu le fi deplâns ori chiar să le fi mustrat fără cruţare. Totuşi, niciunul nu s-a oprit acolo.

Vedem şi noi relele, le dezprobăm – în sinea noastră sau, uneori, prin felurite şi discutabile forme de protest exterior – şi, adesea, chiar ne dor.

Din păcate, mulţi ne oprim aici. Cădem în amăgirea că, devreme ce sincer suferim pentru atâtea rele din jur, cumva-cumva tot om fi buni creştini. Sau măcar nu chiar atât de răi precum alţii – cei ale căror rele, chipurile, le plângem.

Toată ziua ne informăm despre mersul lumii, toată ziua vrem să aflăm câte ceva şi părem a fi mai dependenţi de ştiri (luate de oriunde: TV, ziare, Facebook etc) decât de aer.

Facem rechizitorii împotriva lumii, adunând evidenţe despre relele sale. Poate ni le explicăm. Sau rămânem muţi în faţa lor. Ne pare că ne dezicem de ele, dar cu o nesătulă poftă le căutăm iarăşi şi iarăşi, le împărtăşim pe bloguri, le disecăm...

Contabilizăm rele lumii, dar nu vom putea niciodată să le ducem în spinare, pe Golgota, cum a făcut Mântuitorul nostru Iisus Hristos. Atunci, la ce bun să le măsurăm toate?

Iar pentru că lumea este aşa cum este – rea, desigur – ne găsim (pe negândite, fără să ne dăm seama!) scuza ideală pentru a ne slăbănogi şi noi duhovniceşte, astfel încât nu mai găsim puterea de a ne dori noi să fim nici mai buni, nici mai altfel decât lumea.

Ne este suficient să arătăm cu degetul şi socotim acest păcat drept virtute care ne-ar deschide porţile Împărăţiei veşnice.

Unii, neştiind de altă lume, o iubesc pătimaş pe cea materială în care cred că făcându-şi voia cu vârf şi îndesat, ating fericirea, după care va veni moartea, adică nu mai vine nimic.

Aşa cred ei. Alţii, zicându-ne creştini, credem că o urâm pe cea văzută şi că, nefiind precum ceilalţi, aceasta ar înseamna că o iubim pe cea nevăzută. Cel mai probabil, nu o cunoaştem nici pe una, nici pe cealaltă.

Jalnic este că, de fapt, nu ştim nimic din ceea ce credem că ştim. Demersurile de informare, care ne-au devenit reflexe, nu ne duc nicăieri.

Ştim, dar la ce ne ajută că ştim? Cu ce rămânem dincolo de voluptatea de a deschide un ziar sau o pagină web, sub a cărei vrajă mă aflu şi eu (+ destui alţi internauţi, poate chiar cititori de MunteanUK)?

Oare aveam nevoie de opinii ştiinţifice despre suprasolicitarea creierului? Nu vedem ce roade ne aduce (supra)informarea, ce puţin spre deloc ne ajută în deciziile fundamentale ale vieţii?

Ca să nu mai vorbim de starea de spirit, care nu poate fi decât rea, din moment ce suntem conectaţi permanent la relele lumii. Să fim sinceri cu noi înşine: cine stă lipit de televizor sau monitor pentru a citi ştiri bune?

A nu înţelege careva că aş subscrie unei viziuni extremiste de genul “informare = rău”, respectiv “neinformare = bine”...

Nu vreau decât să constat cu tristeţe că, oamenii simpli, primitivi (adesea dispreţuiţi de noi, bine-informaţii lumii de azi) au învăţat, fie şi de-a lungul veacurilor, să se adapteze la condiţiile de mediu, indiferent cât de potrivnice ar fi fost.

Noi, oamenii moderni (complicaţi, sofisticaţi) nu am reuşit încă – şi oare o vom face vreodată?! – să ne adaptăm avalanşei informaţionale din jur.

De peste o sută de ani, ceea ce observa Oscar Wilde este valabil şi astăzi, pentru toţi ipocriţii (între care mă tem că sunt cel dintâi!) – atât creştini, cât şi nereligioşi:

“Omul bine informat – acesta este idealul modern. Iar mintea unui om bine informat este ceva înfiorător. Este ca un magazin de vechituri, numai monştri şi praf, cu toate articolele preţuite deasupra valorii lor”.

[Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la/For all the posts on this blog go to: Contents/Cuprins]

Răzmeriţele din Anglia – faţa hâdă a nihilismului [Riots in England – the hideous face of nihilism]

Într-o lume în care oamenii nu ştiu de unde vin şi nici unde se duc, trăind doar pentru ‘aici şi acum’, cei mai mulţi păstrează, totuşi, convenţiile care fac suportabilă viaţa în societate.

În afară de ‘a se simţi bine’ nimic nu are sens pentru omul contemporan, de parcă ‘aici şi acumul’ ar ţine o veşnicie. Doar că majoritatea se menţin între limitele a ceea ce numim civilizaţie, ştiind că ceea ce ţie nu-ţi place, altuia nu-i face.

Aşa or fi şi cei mai mulţi dintre britanici sau măcar cei cu care am interacţionat eu. În ciuda amoralităţii, a aroganţei şi a ateismului exprimat mai mult sau mai puţin agresiv, în UK se păstrează aparenţa regulilor sociale.

Toţi se amăgesc că lucrurile au rost, câtă vreme există cariere care să hrănească slava deşartă, vise (prefabricate sau nu, căci cine mai visează pe cont propriu în ziua de azi?) care să îţi dea sentimentul că viaţa ta contează, plus zeci de locuri de vizitat într-o viaţă, mii de filme de văzut, infinite bunuri de cumpărat, plăceri şi distracţii.

Pentru a avea acces la toate acestea, convenţia socială larg răspândită şi însuşită este că tre’ să pui osul la treabă – să respecţi regulile şi cutumele sociale, să înveţi, să te duci la serviciu, să faci bani în mod legal (de alte scrupule de ordin moral rar se ţine seama în zilele noastre) şi să-i cheltuieşti astfel, încât să nu lezezi drepturile altora.

Mai sunt însă şi alţii, care dau de pâmânt cu toate regulile amintite, răbufnind precum în aceste zile, într-un val de violenţe nu fără precedent în Anglia.

Deşi, în trecut, răzmeriţe similare au avut conotaţii rasiale, iar eşecul multiculturalismului este una dintre cauze, dimensiunea etnică a turbulenţelor nu este covârşitoare.

Între huligani se află oameni de toate rasele şi etniile, încă şi din alte pături sociale decât cele mai defavorizate. La fel, între victime şi cei care au ieşit să apere proprietăţile vandalizate s-au numărat şi indieni, pakistanezi, turci sau români.

Pe de altă parte, se poate subscrie eşecului multiculturalismului faptul că cei ieşiţi pe străzi formează o cultură aparte, nihilistă, care a fost nu doar tolerată, ci şi încurajată.

Este vorba de cele 6-7 milioane de britanici care trăiesc din ajutoare sociale – din care, cel puţin înainte de criză, îşi permiteau chiar şi vacanţe low cost în Grecia sau Turcia – care nu au lucrat nicăieri din din tată în fiu (fiind la a treia generaţie de şomeri).

Aceşti nefericiţi cred că toate idealurile nihiliste – acest ‘mă simt bine, aici şi acum, fac ce vreau’ al cetăţenilor oneşti (care îşi plătesc cu ore de muncă şi alte constrângeri asumate distracţiile râvnite) – li se cuvin. Pentru că aşa au fost învăţaţi.

Trăiesc în locuinţe de la primărie (council estates), trec prin şcoală ca gâsca prin apă (fără şanse intelectuale şi/sau financiare de a urma studii universitare), ajung să îşi petreacă multe nopţi prin şanţuri de beţi ce sunt, umplu închisorile, dar şi spitalele, cu probleme cauzate de obezitate, alcoolism şi fumat.

Se întâmplă şi ca un asemenea asistat social să conceapă 10 copii cu 10 femei diferite sau chiar 15 copii cu 13 femei. În paralel, se înmulţesc şi cazurile de mame singure la a treia generaţie. Părinţii şi odraslele trăiesc numai din banii contribuabililor.

Invers de cum cred majoritatea britanicilor, că responsabilitatea individuală trebuie să primeze într-un regim democratic, aceste milioane de iresponsabili nici nu pot concepe aşa ceva, pentru că au fost condiţionaţi altfel.

Statul social/al bunăstării comune (welfare state) a făcut posibilă situaţia, astfel că o bună parte din clasa cea mai de jos a societăţii (underclass) nu mai trăieşte ca în Marea Britanie a lui Charles Dickens (muncind pe rupte, de la cele mai mici vârste, deşi există şi excepţii), ci într-un paradis al nebunilor.

Condiţionaţi să tot primească degeaba, ca nişte câini ai lui Pavlov, nu este de mirare că, uneori, când procesarea stimulilor condiţionanţi o ia razna, aceşti oameni trec la a-şi înşfăca imediat lucrurile la care poftesc.

Şi nici măcar nu vor ceva cu adevărat, căci nu fură ca orice hoţ chibzuit, ci dau iama prin magazine în faţa a milioane de camere de supraveghere (CCTV).

Sau sparg pur şi simplu, ca într-un joc video – maşini (neştiind ce e aceea să plăteşti rate şi asigurări), prăvălii (fără să fi ştiut a se încadra într-un program de lucru) sau capetele altora (pentru care nu simt niciun fel de empatie).

Absurdul faptelor nu este un motiv de a descuraja comiterea lor, în condiţiile în care întreaga lor viaţă este fără sens. Cât despre pedepsele cu închisoarea (rapid aplicate, dar socotite prea blânde!), nici acestea nu-s decât o binevenită diversificare a absurdului cotidian.

Nici în închisoare, nici la lumina zilei, oamenii aceştia nu se vor simţi mai bine sau mai liberi; ei sunt deja robi ai unei culturi nihiliste, care nu este exclusiv specifică Marii Britanii şi nu se întâlneşte doar între cei mai săraci.

Huliganii, vandalii, răsculaţii, scandalagii etc sunt faţa hâdă a aceluiaşi nihilism în care îşi dorm viaţa limitată la ‘aici şi acum’ miliarde de pâmânteni, care nu găsesc alt sens al existenţei decât în ‘a se simţi bine’.

Majoritatea reuşesc să se simtă bine în perimetrul convenţiilor sociale, alţii rupând orice bariere. Dar ce înseamnă cu adevărat Binele şi de la Cine ne poate veni foarte puţini mai ştiu.

Nu ştiu nici cei ieşiţi pe străzi, dar nici parlamentarii care s-au înfruptat cu neruşinare din bani publici şi poate nici premierul care şi l-a luat drept consilier pe unul dintre vinovaţii în scandalul interceptărilor telefonice.

Evident, niciun altul decât dumnezeul-ban şi nu au nici pisicile grase din fruntea băncilor, care s-au grăbit să-i anunţe pe cei cu magazinele făcute ţăndări şi scrum că trebuie să îşi plătească în continuare ipotecile.

Juridic, răspunderea pentru cele petrecute va fi pusă pe seama unora sau altora. Dar nici de ar sta zeci de ani la puşcărie, cum poate ar risca în SUA, este probabil ca în peste 90% din cazuri societatea să nu obţină civilizarea lor.

Moral, vinovăţia este a întregii societăţi britanice, care de sute de ani nu ştie cum să rezolve problema indezirabililor. De la expulzările către coloniile americane şi Australia până la ‘welfare state’, toate soluţiile au dat greş.

Dresaţi permanent de expunerea la cultura celebrităţii (Celebrity Culture), construită în jurul unor nimeni care se închină zilnic idolului ‘fac ce vreau’, ce pot să înveţe aceşti oameni? Nicidecum a deveni cetăţeni responsabili, ci să decadă în neoameni.

Sociologii vor căuta explicaţii sociale pentru cele întâmplate, ideologii de toate culorile – cauze politice, bogaţii – vor da vina pe săraci, iar cei din urmă – pe bogaţi.

Mulţi se vor întreba stupid, ca ateul Ed Miliband, “de ce atât de mulţi oameni simt că nu au nimic de pierdut şi totul de câştigat din vandalism şi jaf?”, rămânând orbi faţă de adevăratele înţelesuri.

Chiar aşa, bună întrebare: de ce? Oare va mai înţelege cineva că orice motive iscodite de mintea omului de azi (fie vărsate cu năduf, fie descrise ştiinţific) nu pot lămuri nimic, dacă nu se pune degetul pe rana supurândă din UK – abisul spiritual?

În lumea de care aminteşte Alexandr Soljeniţîn, în care oamenii au uitat de Dumnezeu, violenţele fără sens (de fapt, niciun fel de violenţă nu are sens, din perspectivă creştină) vor deveni pretutindeni regula, nu excepţia.

Aşa cum ţara aceasta a deschis calea Revoluţiei Industriale şi, graţie Imperiului britanic, a întregului progres (termen discutabil, desigur!) al omenirii din ultimele 2-3 veacuri, poate că tot aşa, ce s-a petrecut pe străzile din UK este imaginea profetică a omenirii de mâine.

[Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la/For all the posts on this blog go to: Contents/Cuprins]

Why ALL things are going from bad to worse [De ce TOATE lucrurile merg din rău în mai rău]

Beyond chocolate bunnies, painted eggs, lamb steak, and the utterly un-Christian binge eating and drinking associated with ‘celebrating’ Pascha by many (maybe not only in Romania?!), we all feel that things are going from bad to worse in the world.

The civil war in Libya (leading to another oil price hike),  the nuclear emergency in Japan, the ongoing effects of the Wall Street crash of 2008, the subsequent world economic crisis, the persistent fiscal crisis in the Eurozone (EMU), the looming food crisis…

…along with all sorts of surging ‘personal crises’ (death, disease, divorce, unemployment – to name but a few of the commonest) are showing that the world drifts farther and farther away from the relatively optimistic 1990s and early 2000s.

For this part of the world (Eastern Europe), the fall of Communism (1989-1991), the opening of the Schengen Area for Romanians (2002), and the prospect of EU Accession (2004 & 2007) were reasons to hope for the better.

Not anymore. Fewer and fewer of the hopes blossoming in the past two decades appear likely to ever turn into ripe fruits. Some of those phantasms may eventually prove to be bitter fruits.

Every now and then, some of us may be enjoying temporary ‘successes’, nevertheless, we cannot be ignorant of the self-destructive tendencies of the world around us.

Of course, there are all sorts of blind ideologues that keep saying that everything bad (namely the current global economic crisis) “will pass,”  and things will return to ‘normal’ sooner or later.

Wasn’t Ceauşescu equally confident that his unchallenged reign would last? Weren’t many blind ‘thinkers’ between WWI and WWII who imagined that Hitler could be ‘appeased’ and peace safeguarded?

Thoughout the ages, right before ‘worse times’ struck mankind, the world was never in short supply of the same kind of hallucinating optimists that we can hear these days.

To me, worse things appear much more likely to happen in the world than better ones. Yet there should be no room for despair in the heart of someone clinging on to the truth that Christ is Risen!

To those dismissing this salute as ‘anachronistic’, to those truly aware that it is the only thing world of believe for the past two millenia, to believers and unbelievers alike…

…I am dedicating the following text written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is a comprehensive explanation (a speech from 1983) of why things are going from bad to worse in our world.

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“Men Have Forgotten God”
(from The Templeton Address) – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval.

But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance.

And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.

The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century.

The first of these was World War I, and much of our present predicament can be traced back to it. It was a war (the memory of which seems to be fading) when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation which could not but sap its strength for a century or more, and perhaps forever.

The only possible explanation for this war is a mental eclipse among the leaders of Europe due to their lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them. Only a godless embitterment could have moved ostensibly Christian states to employ poison gas, a weapon so obviously beyond the limits of humanity.

The same kind of defect, the flaw of a consciousness lacking all divine dimension, was manifested after World War II when the West yielded to the satanic temptation of the “nuclear umbrella.”

It was equivalent to saying: Let’s cast off worries, let’s free the younger generation from their duties and obligations, let’s make no effort to defend ourselves, to say nothing of defending others-let’s stop our ears to the groans emanating from the East, and let us live instead in the pursuit of happiness.

If danger should threaten us, we shall be protected by the nuclear bomb; if not, then let the world burn in Hell for all we care.

The pitifully helpless state to which the contemporary West has sunk is in large measure due to this fatal error: the belief that the defense of peace depends not on stout hearts and steadfast men, but solely on the nuclear bomb…

Today’ s world has reached a stage which, if it had been described to preceding centuries, would have called forth the cry: “This is the Apocalypse!” Yet we have grown used to this kind of world; we even feel at home in it.

Dostoevsky warned that “great events could come upon us and catch us intellectually unprepared.” This is precisely what has happened. And he predicted that “the world will be saved only after it has been possessed by the demon of evil.”

Whether it really will be saved we shall have to wait and see: this will depend on our conscience, on our spiritual lucidity, on our individual and combined efforts in the face of catastrophic circumstances.

But it has already come to pass that the demon of evil, like a whirlwind, triumphantly circles all five continents of the earth…

In its past, Russia did know a time when the social ideal was not fame, or riches, or material success, but a pious way of life. Russia was then steeped in an Orthodox Christianity which remained true to the Church of the first centuries.

The Orthodoxy of that time knew how to safeguard its people under the yoke of a foreign occupation that lasted more than two centuries, while at the same time fending off iniquitous blows from the swords of Western crusaders.

During those centuries the Orthodox faith in our country became part of the very pattern of thought and the personality of our people, the forms of daily life, the work calendar, the priorities in every undertaking, the organization of the week and of the year. Faith was the shaping and unifying force of the nation.

But in the 17th century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an internal schism. In the 18th, the country was shaken by Peter’s forcibly imposed transformations, which favored the economy, the state, and the military at the expense of the religious spirit and national life.

And along with this lopsided Petrine enlightenment, Russia felt the first whiff of secularism; its subtle poisons permeated the educated classes in the course of the 19th century and opened the path to Marxism.

By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened.

It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that “revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.”

That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism.

Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions.

Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot.

The 1920’s in the USSR witnessed an uninterrupted procession of victims and martyrs amongst the Orthodox clergy. Two metropolitans were shot, one of whom, Veniamin of Petrograd, had been elected by the popular vote of his diocese.

Patriarch Tikhon himself passed through the hands of the Cheka-GPU and then died under suspicious circumstances. Scores of archbishops and bishops perished.

Tens of thousands of priests, monks, and nuns, pressured by the Chekists to renounce the Word of God, were tortured, shot in cellars, sent to camps, exiled to the desolate tundra of the far North, or turned out into the streets in their old age without food or shelter.

All these Christian martyrs went unswervingly to their deaths for the faith; instances of apostasy were few and far between.

For tens of millions of laymen access to the Church was blocked, and they were forbidden to bring up their children in the Faith: religious parents were wrenched from their children and thrown into prison, while the children were turned from the faith by threats and lies…

For a short period of time, when he needed to gather strength for the struggle against Hitler, Stalin cynically adopted a friendly posture toward the Church.

This deceptive game, continued in later years by Brezhnev with the help of showcase publications and other window dressing, has unfortunately tended to be taken at its face value in the West.

Yet the tenacity with which hatred of religion is rooted in Communism may be judged by the example of their most liberal leader, Krushchev: for though he undertook a number of significant steps to extend freedom, Krushchev simultaneously rekindled the frenzied Leninist obsession with destroying religion.

But there is something they did not expect: that in a land where churches have been leveled, where a triumphant atheism has rampaged uncontrolled for two-thirds of a century, where the clergy is utterly humiliated and deprived of all independence, where what remains of the Church as an institution is tolerated only for the sake of propaganda directed at the West, where even today people are sent to the labor camps for their faith, and where, within the camps themselves, those who gather to pray at Easter are clapped in punishment cells – they could not suppose that beneath this Communist steamroller the Christian tradition would survive in Russia.

It is true that millions of our countrymen have been corrupted and spiritually devastated by an officially imposed atheism, yet there remain many millions of believers: it is only external pressures that keep them from speaking out, but, as is always the ca se in times of persecution and suffering, the awareness of God in my country has attained great acuteness and profundity.

It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity.

The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West’s own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness.

It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West.

This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without.

Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West has ceased to be seen as anything more lofty than the “pursuit of happiness,”  a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions.

The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short lived value. It has become embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system.

Yet it is not considered shameful to make dally concessions to an integral evil. Judging by the continuing landslide of concessions made before the eyes of our very own generation, the West is ineluctably slipping toward the abyss.

Western societies are losing more and more of their religious essence as they thoughtlessly yield up their younger generation to atheism.

If a blasphemous film about Jesus is shown throughout the United States, reputedly one of the most religious countries in the world, or a major newspaper publishes a shameless caricature of the Virgin Mary, what further evidence of godlessness does one need?

When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one make an inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts?

Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis – race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society.

Amid all the vituperation we forget that the defects of capitalism represent the basic flaws of human nature, allowed unlimited freedom together with the various human rights; we forget that under Communism (and Communism is breathing down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable) the identical flaws run riot in any person with the least degree of authority; while everyone else under that system does indeed attain “equality”– the equality of destitute slaves.

This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is becoming the mark of today’s free world. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance–the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become.

The contemporary developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money.

This deliberately nurtured hatred then spreads to all that is alive, to life itself, to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly hate, for art is fruitless without love.

In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himsef in the place of God.

Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.

With such global events looming over us like mountains, nay, like entire mountain ranges, it may seem incongruous and inappropriate to recall that the primary key to our being or non-being resides in each individual human heart, in the heart’s preference for specific good or evil.

Yet this remains true even today, and it is, in fact, the most reliable key we have. The social theories that promised so much have demonstrated their bankruptcy, leaving us at a dead end.

The free people of the West could reasonably have been expected to realize that they are beset by numerous freely nurtured falsehoods, and not to allow lies to be foisted upon them so easily.

All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: without this, no exit will be illumined, and we shall seek it in vain.

The resources we have set aside for ourselves are too impoverished for the task. We must first recognize the horror perpetrated not by some outside force, not by class or national enemies, but within each of us individually, and within every society.

This is especially true of a free and highly developed society, for here in particular we have surely brought everything upon ourselves, of our own free will. We ourselves, in our daily unthinking selfishness, are pulling tight that noose…

Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder.

Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die.

And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.

To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned.

Only in this way can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our bands be directed to setting them right.

There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.

Our five continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during trials such as these that the highest gifts of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will be ours alone.

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