Today

One of the methods to understand decline is to focus on aesthetics. Aesthetics is contrary to technique. Every civilization uses technique to fulfill aesthetics. But aesthetics exists in the work, especially in the master work. But what is a master work? The full realization of the prime symbol of a civilization in a particular work of a particular mastermind.

Today we live in an era of technique, because the prime symbols of our civilization have already been fulfilled. The work is the technique itself. Nothing transcends the technique. There is no work after it. That is why our art today is consumed, but not felt. It is not even art at all, it is a commodity. Even Nobel prizes are consumed commodities. Art requires universal transcendence, in the same way that Euripides transcends till today, in a way that it also transcends commodification. However the Roman Coliseum was consumed, and there it lies in ruins. So our stadiums, our gigantic museums and government palaces will lie in ruins. Why? Because there is nothing else to do but to expand the technique. And the technique is self-destructive. Our technique has reached nuclear capacities after all. Just finish drawing the graph. Do the math.

The technique is banal. The banality of technique. We as individuals, by virtue of our individual rights, are mere products of modern technique. Technique ourselves! Professionals! Qualified labor! Human bodies turned into commodities! Vacations? Commodified festivities! What is it that you cannot see? Progress is the fancy name of decline. Development is the elegant but mediocre synonym of mass consumption. It's pathetic. Aren't you happy about it? We should be happy! That's what our individual rights are after all: commodified individual guarantees so that we become functional members of the capitalist form of production. Do you really think that there is an inherent care for our individuality? We function better in the system with that protected individuality of ours. If we are not functional we are thrown into unemployment. It's that simple; that banal. Homo economicus is the non plus ultra of the banality of our modern existence.

But there is nothing wrong with this. There is absolutely nothing wrong. What is inevitable cannot be wrong. Otherwise the world would be pure wrongness, and that only leads to suicide. No we don't have to commit suicide because of the mediocrity of our times. Rather we have to die tragically. Of course those that see die tragically; nostalgically. Those that don't see die banally. The world of fairness and justice and of individual rights has its virtues. Everything goes. God, the True God that died in the cross is dead. But dead where? In our hearts. He doesn't speak to us anymore as modern men. Our banality prevents it. God doesn't speak to banal beings like us, products of technique, commodified biological bodies. We have reached the point of even consuming the Holy Scriptures! Of producing and distributing them en masse!

No, there is nothing wrong with decline. Decline is liberal; at least for now. Decline summed up with capitalism can become something more monstrous than the banality of the mediocrity of liberalism. It can become totalitarianism. It has already shown its face! But its not dead. It's far from dead. The only thing remaining is that Caesar's laurels crown the man commanding from the White House. That Nero signs the presidential orders and vetoes the congressional legislation. He will become the legislator! And this we can't avoid.

I wonder who will be the Christians of our age. Who will be those from which the new civilizations will be born, hundreds of years from now, after all our fancy technology and wonders of engineering lied wasted by our own nuclear bombs. We only have to crown the Caesar. That, then, will be all.

Worldly Knowledge, the Gift of Fools

Daily we are invaded by doubt. Some tell us, "go to mass," and it works for some people. Others say, "read the Bible," and it works for others. Both work for me; however the direct reading of the Bible creates a stronger bond with the Truth, especially if you care more about the Truth than about social conventions. This doesn't make me an Evangelic, or nothing close to it, but I'm among the group of Christians that is too curious to simply take the priestly sermon for granted.

Today I want to make a comment on the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. The reason consists in my perennial debate with faithless friends, that putting all their trust in the knowledge of this world, ignore the case of other-worldliness. Some are modern rationalists whose faith is deposited in science and its recent technological achievements, and the impression of so much innovation in so little time have left them dazzled and deceived, making them think that any other kind of truth is impossible. Others are pessimists that do not recognize what is human in our condition, and think that we are just body and nothing more, like animals reinforced with this strange epiphenomenon called mind, leveling the holiness of our spirit to basic instincts. What has St. Paul to say about this?

Quoting Isaiah, St. Paul says of God: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." For how long have we been debating, fighting, even making wars, for what we take to be the scientific truth, the true knowledge of the world, just to be proven wrong the next generation? We boast of a knowledge we don't know if we have, trusting our senses and our limited capacities to judge, as if they were faultless. "Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Corinthians 1:19, 20).

"Among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification" (1 Cor. 2:6, 7). Who can deny that every single paradigm of knowledge that we have created has come and passed away? This doom of worldly knowledge, this recurrence of proving ourselves wrong, should be a lesson to humble ourselves and drop completely any attempt to know anything fully. Some contemporary philosophers of science claimed this, but, didn't St. Paul spoke of it two thousand years ago already? The wisdom imparted by Christianity, on the contrary, is a wisdom of faith; universal, unchallengeable by reasonable arguments, pure and simply human, spiritual, unpolluted by matter and body and logic. This cleanness from worldly knowledge, its support based strictly on faith, is what makes it perfect.

But where has this wisdom come from? St. Paul answers: "God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. 2:10, 11). What is the spirit? That which precisely makes us different from the rest of matter, and the animal kingdom. Worldly beings don't have self-conscience, because they have no spirit. The spirit is this metaphysical, otherworldly quality of humans to know themselves, and this self-conscience is what leads to know God. And from this knowledge beyond the wisdom of the world, humans have faith in contradistinction to any other living being.

To close this comment dedicated to worldly knowledge "Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly to God. For it is written, [in Job] 'He catches the wise in their craftiness,' and again [in Psalm 94] 'The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.' So let no one boast of men" (1 Cor. 3:18-21).

For those that like logic, picture for a moment a Creator of the world and all its rules, including logic. He who is before those rules cannot be dictated by those rules. He who created them is beyond them and above. If human minds can only be partially acquainted with those rules of the world, his acquaintance cannot reach the level of the Creator. But this is not so quite true. Our acquaintance through apprehension is limited to this world and its rules, but we are actually acquainted with the Creator through revelation and faith. That is, when He shows himself to us through the Spirit as St. Paul says, but it is folly and ridiculous to even pretend that we can decide to know him through science and reason at our initiative. The gift of the Truth of the Lord is bestowed by Him unto us, and to us only belongs faith in it. Anyone claiming truth through worldly knowledge is nothing but a fool, a clown in the eyes of God, like so many scientists, philosophers and intellectuals of our days. And sometimes, it must be granted, we fall into the temptation of belonging to this caste of universal fools.