Posts Tagged ‘Virtue’

The Great Barbarism of our Day

In a world bereft of objective value, nothing is good in itself. People and things are judged valuable only if they are deemed beneficial for something else. The only “real” value is economic. As a result we’re witnessing the systematic degradation of everything. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is good per se.

The Vice of Self-Confidence

Society is terribly insistent on the virtue of self-confidence. We attend seminars to get it. We go on diets to get it. We work out to get it. We go to church to get it. We seek praise to get it. We religiously post to Facebook to get it. Yet, with every poorly “liked” post, or failed diet, it wanes. Like caffeine, no matter how long we hope to have it, it eventually ebbs away.

Two Roads to Live On

Thoughtful observers are in agreement that our culture is sick. We are morally confused. We are cracked, violated, and vicious. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think we’re much worse than any previous culture. The difference between earlier cultures and ours is not in terms of our lack of virtue, but the lack of knowledge of virtue. As Peter Kreeft so boldly puts it, we are the most freakish culture in the history of the west—because we have loosed our lives from the pursuit of God—and we are the weakest culture in the history of the west—because we no longer act based on objective moral principles, and thus have no objective standard with which to judge and no objective source of power for change.

Feed, Fatten, Fornicate

We are a culture that likes to keep our heads down. Focus on “the stream of experience”—the feast of video, food, sex, gaming, money, mindless entertainment . . .whatever . . . that is continuously carted before our noses, lest we take a breath and look up.