At the heart of the degeneration of the First World has been the overt exploitation of the generation gap by the left's counterculture across the world. It is an unmistakable factor not only in elections but more so in social, political and cultural trends. At the heart of this exploitation has been the elevation of the "wisdom of youth" on the one hand and the portrayal of adults as bigoted, old fashioned and ignorant.
There is of course all the reason in the world for people who want to exploit a society to pander to the most immature, gullible and naive group within that society, who are most likely to think with their emotions and have little life experience to work with. The "wisdom of youth" is three parts idealism, four parts rebellion, two parts outraged cynicism and one part fresh perspective. It shouldn't be dismissed, but neither should it be unrealistically elevated.
The French revolution was preceded by a worship of the naturalism of Rousseau. Like all the egotistical elder philosophers who light the match while rarely suffering its consequences, the ideas of Rousseau contained the seeds of the youthful chaos of the last several centuries. To Rousseau civilization was theft, culture was degeneracy, order was oppression, technology an evil, the common good supreme to the individual rights, property a crime, sex is detached from commitment, the middle class is beneath contempt and only the savage is virtuous.
There is little of any principle that political radicals and philosophers have preached of the "wisdom of youth" that Rousseau had not already set down. The Age of Terror, just like the Age of Aquarius, was in truth the Age of Rousseau-- who was to these as Marx was to Communism.
Rousseau's vision is the social vision of the egotist, a seemingly ideal world in which convention has been disposed of and one's natural instincts in harmony with the common good reign, and it is naturally embraced by youth in age after age. It is the vision of the pied piper, replayed through art, music, literature, theater and all the varied entertainments of youth.
The elder egotists who plot to make revolution know quite well that it is made by the young and so they play pied piper, teaching the ideas of naturalism, and playing the tune that leads the next generation out of the city and the village and into the forest. And when the liquor and drugs are flowing, the steel guitars are pounding, protest signs are raised high, terrorist groups are building bombs in Manhattan basements and flowers are braided into hair before being tossed in the mud-- the counterculture's pied pipers state their terms to the parents. Social transformation.
The pied piper forced the parents to pay for the return of their children. The counterculture forces a nation to pay for integrating its children back into the fold as adults by adopting the values of the counterculture. Thus the divide is seemingly met, the piper is paid and adults find themselves in a world whose values and ideas no longer make sense.
"Give me the child and I will give you the man," the counterculture says, echoing the Jesuits. And when we look at the modern Democratic party, we can see the man-- the men and women they have become. And looking at the Obama rallies, we can see what is yet to come.
The counterculture cultivates the natural dissatisfaction of youth, breeding it and grafting it into an outright hostility and even hate for their own country. This time the pied piper's price to be paid is Obama for President. It's turning over the country to those who hate it and adopting their values. And just as in the 70's, the 1970's or the 1790's it's much too high a price to pay.
We have already accepted the ideal of the noble savage, detached sex from commitment, treated civilization as a plague, heaped contempt on the middle class, attacked property rights, elevated the common good over individual rights. Rousseau's Pied Piper has played the tune from which modern Western society derives its value systems, listening eagerly for the voice of youth to tell us how to be more "natural" and "open" to the authentic call of the inexperienced and unbiased life. Now the question is whether we will wake in time and reject the piper and the tune or become lemmings, allowing the counterculture to lead us off a political cliff and into the abyss.
Comments
Excellent post. We must awaken from our slumber. As a Catholic, I can tell you the Jesuits do not speak for all. As Mark Twain commented, "youth is wasted on the young." I believe they are all deaf.
ReplyDeletegood post!
ReplyDeleteEveryone appeals to youth/fad culture - media, fashion, the auto industry, politicians, grocers you name it. It's a societal imperative to be hip and cool.
ReplyDeleteG-d forbid we ever be left in the hands of an American culture catered to AND taken over by youth.(with Obama as President) Prophesy says when Mashiach comes youth will have the face of a dog.
The fruit of the Leftist education system. Talk about "Chickens Coming Home To Roost!"
ReplyDeleteAs Dr.Sanity quotes...
"Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at: first, that influences of the home are 'obstructive' and verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective ... It is for the future scientist to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen."
Bertrand Russell quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the head of philosophy & psychology who influenced Hegel and others – Prussian University in Berlin, 1810
So, I always thought it was the Germans who were the bad-guys here, not the French.
In fact, Dr.Sanity includes Rousseau among those who inspired the founding fathers. (sorry no more scholarly refs., but it's not a topic I have a lot of background info on at the moment - if you could supply some good links, though...)
@ UDIYAH
ReplyDeleteONCE UPON A TIME IN MOSCOW...
"Once Rav Vidrevitch and Mr. Wissatzki were walking in the street together, and on the way they saw the young and rich strolling with their dogs large and small. They knew most of the people and saw that in the case of those who had small dogs the owner was leading the dog, but with those who had large dogs, the dog was leading the owner.
Mr. Wissatzki commented, "What do you think about that Rabbi, the young generation have found new friends - dogs!"
"What should I say?" answered the Rabbi. "They want to create a new world order - that we should all be led by dogs, and the richer the person the larger the dog."
(NOTE: that was an aside to a much more important topic, love of a fellow Jew, which bears emphasis more than, and especially because of, the negative aspects of these times.)
The newest generation in America is a spoiled one with large numbers of vain and arrogant members, who, in their ignorance, pursue the "leaders" who appeal most to their narcissism.
The Pied Piper is in a sense a good analogy for his ability to entice these undiscerning children away. But in another sense it is not at all accurate, since in the story the Piper had earlier preformed a valuable service to the populace. Our modern pipers are nothing more than parasitic wastrels who wouldn't know how to perform a public service if their lives depended on it. Unfortunately, if we don't reject them, our very lives (or at least livelihoods) will be in the balance.
The Rebbe said not to fight the darkness by striking out at it, but by increasing in light. Do a Mitzvah, ...or assist our fellows in Israel who are doing one we can't outside The Land. Then the darkness, which has no real existence, melts away.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I must disagree, while we should indeed continue to do positive things, we must also directly combat the darkness or be swallowed by it
ReplyDeleteif a man comes at you with a knife, giving charity at that moment will not save you unless you rely on a miracle
when the darkness grows, you must directly resist it, both through positive actions and through active resistance
I don't think blowing a shofar of warning to people, shouting out troubles from the ramparts constitutes fighting evil in some kind of arena directly.
ReplyDeleteBut what Sultan does IS a mitzva since he "cries aloud and spares not" as it says.. something most today are not doing but instead saying 'peace peace when there is no peace and easy things and that "everything is ok" or the worst phrase: its all good, which is the biggest sinful statement on the face of the earth.
Navi'im said we would reach a time when people refused to speak out about evil.
...if a man comes at you with a knife, giving charity at that moment will not save you unless you rely on a miracle.
ReplyDeleteWe have to do both. What I meant was that JUST striking out at it is insufficient.
And, remember, our Sages do say that charity saves one from death.
If done properly mitzvahs, especially charity and honoring parents, might have even prevented that guy from coming at you in the first place.
However, once he is after you, then you should do all you can to stop him. And, if you can manage to defeat him, then you should definitely increase in doing good to hopefully prevent a recurrence.
At least that's my feeble understanding of what my Rabbis have taught me, and they've been right a lot more than anyone else.
Ytba you are assuming the sultan does no mitzvot? You are very wrong.
ReplyDeleteAlso I disagree that he is striking out at evil.
What he is doing is warning the rest of us when,where,what,how and who evil is so that we need not learn the hard way.
Someone has to be a watchman on the walls and the Sultan is exactly that in this day of everyman for himself.
tzedakah can make you worthy that save you from death, but it does not preclude actively dealing with a problem, whether it's at this moment or a developing threat
ReplyDeleteyaakov avinu pursued three courses, prayer, diplomacy and a preparation to fight
"yaakov avinu pursued three courses, prayer, diplomacy and a preparation to fight"
ReplyDeletelol
That was the precise eg., I was going to use, but refrained because it didn't illustrate the point I was making, because (as I was taught) he did that because he didn't want to just rely on the good he had done already, in case it wasn't sufficient.
Anyway, I think we agree, but I was just stressing something I learned from watching a talk by the Rebbe the on Gimmel Tammuz, in which he emphasized the importance of doing good, which I thought wasn't being stressed enough.
After all, if Yaacov Avinu had no good deeds, he really would have had what to worry about, and we might not be around now to talk about him, even with his other preparations.
And, no, Lemon, I am not saying Sultan has no good deeds. I just thought a little more emphasis needed to be placed on them, IN ADDITION TO whacking the evil, which SK does so very very well.
One does not put emphasis on ones good deeds in a public venue unless one is only doing them for the sake of looking good in public.
ReplyDeleteAnd a mitzvah is not a good deed..
it is a command.
Lemon,
ReplyDeleteIf one considers that the term "good deed" is misused in reference to acts that aren't necessarily Mitzvahs, then in that case you are correct. But that's not how I was using the term.
Since "there is no good but Torah," keeping the "commandments" (Mitzvahs) of the Torah is therefore the only thing that can be truly called "good," and it is therefore perfectly legitimate to refer to keeping the commandments as "doing good deeds."
I was not referring to performing some act that gives someone a warm fuzzy feeling of self-satisfaction, and confusing that with a Mitzvah. Although someone might get such feelings when performing Mitzvahs, the feeling is not what makes it good. And, if one doesn't get that feeling when doing a Mitzvah, it doesn't mean it isn't good.
Oh, and SK, ...
you said - "...it [tzedakah] does not preclude actively dealing with a problem, whether it's at this moment or a developing threat."
I said - "...once he is after you, then you should do all you can to stop him."
But that is the same thing. Yes, you added the part about a "developing threat" but that just means he's coming after you from a little further away. So, it really is the same as what I said, just with a bit more detail.
Now, speaking of "good", ...good night.
It is time for those of us in the Judeo-Christian West do something to turn the tide back in our favor. We have a lot of enemies, both foreign and domestic, who want to destroy our civilization. It doesn't even have to be militarily. It can be by destroying us from within. They corrupt the people and the society by weakening our values and our culture. They've been doing a great job at it for decades. It's time people woke up and did something about it. Many of us talk lip service, but we don't take real action to change things. If we don't do something soon, it may be too late.
ReplyDeleteHow very well said!
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Marx, Engels, Alfred Rosenberg, Ben Gurion, Mao and some others in the same vein mere more or less in line with Rouseeau - even if not full on par ideologically, the strategy is always the same: the ideologues conceive, the agitator "intellectuals" (in our days in form of lefturd bloggers) agitate, and the masses rise.
The permanent mistake (or crime) or the right is apathy, complacence and cowardice. So far I haven't seen even one one right-wing blog advocating the fortifying and joining the militia, or even better, forming a Jewish militia.
It's like the haredim "fighting" the gay parade by burning trashcans in their own neighborhoods instead of, well, we know what.
Words, words, words and no action.
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