"Non-religious westerners are just as liable to eschatological* fervor as religious people anywhere. Marxism is an eschatological ideology (a godless religion in its own right, really)," writes Donald Sensing of One Hand Clapping:
So the philosophical and ideological origin of the modern Left: Rejecting the idea of a divinely shaped world yet to come, but believing, all evidence to the contrary, that human beings are fundamentally good, most Western ideological eschatologists found a natural fit with Marxism-Leninism: the present order must pass away, and we can build something better on our own. The violent destruction of the present order, if necessary, had a natural fit with Marxism from the beginning.
The Left, rejecting as a basic tenet of its faith the major features of Western societies, came to romanticize heavily non-Western, non-capitalist cultures, especially those of the Third World. The village society became idealized, always assumed to be populated by selfless, caring people whose spirits (never souls, which might need saving!) were uninfected by the crass materialism of capitalism. This was their Eden, the Ideal Time from humankind had sprung; Marxism-Leninism provided the framework for transforming Western societies into a New Jerusalem. Over time, and not a very long time, the Left idealized anyone who opposed the West, no matter how cruel, oppressive or personally repulsive he might be: Castro, Che, Mao, Saddam and others. And now Osama.
We're talking here about Jean Jacques Rousseau's "Noble Savage," a product of wishful thinking elucidated by Steven Pinker in his 2002 tour de force, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.
*Sensing defines eschatology and fills out the definition in historical terms that resonate for our times:
Eschatology is the theology of last things, the time when history reaches its final fulfillment. Of the world's great religions, only three are eschatological: Judaism, Christianity and Islam . . . In all three religions the establishment of the end time is the establishment of the ideal time. It is when the present world is either destroyed so that perfect world can take its place, or the present world's corruption is excised and creation is purified and restored . . .
Most Christians have held through two millennia to the idea that the Kingdom of God, preached by Jesus, is just as much a present spiritual state of community as a coming physical reality. The Kingdom is within us now, although we can never achieve it fully on our own efforts. Nonetheless, we must do the best we can . . . But eschatology becomes evil when its adherents see only their own purity and others' sin. When they see the present state of affairs - always of others' affairs - as wholly corrupt, godless and faithless, then it is a short step to religious radicalism, what we have come to call religious fascism . . . If the eschatologists are both radicalized and evangelistic rather than monastic, then the result is holy war, jihad. Holy war focuses on destroying sinners, not converting them.
As we've blogged here and here, "Christian or not, we believe deeply that the denial of 'life's dark side in ourselves' is the key to what's wrong with the utopianist left world view."
Comments