awiseman wrote:I think you're on the right track about the two World Wars in how they left a scar on the psyche of Europeans. I think those wars demoralized us and caused us to lose confidence and faith in our purpose as a people. It's sad to think we were on the verge of colonizing space, but now the greatest challenge we face is the fake gender wage-gap and addressing white male privilege. Sigh...
Well, I think one has to linger over this issue a bit. First, these were entirely self-produced. Whatever happened, and why ever it happened, had nothing to do with anyone else except the various European nations. Therefor, there is no one else to blame. It could, if one wished to avoid the issue, be termed a *grand mistake*, but the actual fact seems to be that it was self-generated.
So, it is true indeed that it not only 'left a scar' (that is the superficial understanding, the surface) but that it exteriorized something very strange, very ugly and also very evil. Now, the result of the opening up of that evil, and the recognition that it happened, did have many other repercussions. I see it as a sort of 'disassociation from self' and the beginning of a profound self-criticism. But I do not see how one could avoid the repercussion of having to deal, fully and completely, with what all that meant.
'Purpose as a people' is a
romantic phrase. What purpose has this people? What purpose had this people? To discover purpose in this sense is to discover something far more comprehensive, and more demanding, and more difficult of accomplishment, than any of the (rather easy to say) declarations that you make.
If there is to be, shall I say, a 'resurrection' of a people, and a diverse group of European nations, it will not ever come about through declarations shouted or bold assertions.
The conversation is interesting, and links (in my mind) to the GF Project because it demands things from people. It demands clarifications. It demands that a man's spiritual life have tangible and concrete links to his quotidian life, in all possible senses. It does not allow any sort of escapism, nor romanticism, nor 'pose', but demands that a person become completely sober and conscious.
I think that David and Dan (and also Kevin) do not know quite how to relate to this turn, and yet these questions, issues and problems, and what is needed in our time, do have a relationship to the rigor that they, at one time, proposed and insisted on. Put another way, one who seriously delves into the real insides of the spiritual questions (metaphysics and ontology) will have to answer all the questions, issues and problems that have come up here. They're not disconnected.