Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Nihilismus, Walker Percy; Beispiel: Pendler (commuter): Orientierungslosigkeit; alles gleichsam bedeutsam = gleichsam bedeutungslos; entweder - oder;

Kurzinhalt: emotionally inclusive ... Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, St. Francis ... in our scientifically-informed nihilistic society, "needs" such as food, clothing, shelter, affection, etc., are the only categories our "experts" have for understanding our problems...

Textausschnitt: "EITHER/OR"

14c Walker Percy, American novelist and convert to the Catholic faith, wrote extensively about how modern nihilistic alienation eats away at the foundations of the western world today. And much of the problem with regard to it, as he discerned, is that so much of what is offered as a cure only makes the alienation worse. At one point in his writing, he considers modern man under the guise of an "alienated commuter" who finds himself bored or even in a state of anxiety as he rides through the familiar landscape of his journey to and from work. From within that context, Percy offers the following example of a cure for that commuter's alienation and what effect that cure would likely have on him:

Take these two sentences that I once read in a book on mental hygiene: "The most profound of all human needs, the prime requisite for successful living, is to be emotionally inclusive. Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, St. Francis were emotionally inclusive." These words tremble with anxiety and alienation, even though I would not deny that they are, in their own eerie way, true. The alienated commuter shook like a leaf when he read them.1

14a Percy's point is that the alienated commuter would likely be far more alienated by the "cure" than he already is by the disease. For, in our scientifically-informed nihilistic society, "needs" such as food, clothing, shelter, affection, etc., are the only categories our "experts" have for understanding our problems. But the commuter does not suffer from some sort of failure to have his needs met. What the commuter suffers from, what makes the landscape around him either boring or the source of intense anxiety, is the fact that he can no longer "place" himself within that landscape. He no longer has either solid ground beneath his feet or defined compass points at his disposal to identify his own niche within that larger reality. His problem is not a lack of "emotional inclusivity", but a lack of a sense of reality which would give ultimate meaning and significance to his existence within the landscape of his life. As Percy puts it, "he is horrified at his surroundings—he might as well be passing through a lunar landscape and the signs he sees are absurd or at least ambiguous."2 His problem is not that he is insufficiently inclusive, but that he has no basis on which to include or exclude anything. Nothing signifies. (Fs)

16a And when nothing signifies, to be more inclusive means simply to expand the nothingness until everything is consumed by it. This is doubtless why, in his other work of non-fiction, Lost in the Cosmos, Percy speaks metaphorically of the modern self as a "black hole". (Fs)

16b The problem of alienation today, therefore, is indissociable from the problem of nihilism. If all beliefs, all actions, are to be regarded as equally significant, meaningful and valuable, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that they are also equally insignificant, meaningless and valueless. The inclusivity of "both/and" is not a solution to our alienation, but simply another way of clothing it. In the final analysis, Percy's efforts to satirize our society were attempts, as he put it, "to destroy mushy American liberalism. The mushy way of approving everything which is 'life-enhancing,' or 'self-improving,' or 'how to cultivate personality.' To cut it down to an either/or—I'm always trying to cut it down to an either/or—it has either got to be one way or the other."3 (Fs)

16c To act as though inclusivity were an end in itself is to deny the fact that, until we are able to make some judgment about the nature of reality itself, we have no basis at all for knowing what ought to be welcomed and what ought to be rejected. We do not, after all, welcome cancer cells or the AIDS virus on grounds that to reject them would be an insensitive and uncaring act of intolerance. Before we are in a position to make judgments as to what to include and what to exclude, we must first answer some very hard "either/or" questions. Either there is an objective reality or there is not. Either there is an intrinsic order to this universe or there is not. Either there is absolute truth or there is not. Either there is absolute good or there is not. (Fs)
16d Percy stated quite flatly, with regard to his novels, that they are "an attack on the 20th century, on the whole culture. It is a rotten century, we are in terrible trouble." Few would want to have to defend this century. But if there is any silver lining to be found in its closing years, it is the realization that an either/or choice has become virtually unavoidable. With every day that passes, it becomes more and more apparent that one cannot have both the Christian faith and secular liberation. (Fs)

17a As Chesterton, himself a convert to the Catholic faith, wrote more than seven decades ago: "The present writer ... is personally quite convinced that if every human being lived a thousand years, every human being would end up either in utter pessimistic scepticism or in the Catholic creed."4 Were he still alive, I think he would grant that today the choice between the two is so much clearer that an ordinary lifetime would more than suffice to arrive at that conclusion. Walker Percy, in a self-interview for Esquire, explained that he had become a Catholic because, as he put it, "what else is there?" He then posed to himself the question, "What do you mean, what else is there? There is humanism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, behaviorism, materiahsm, Buddhism, Muhammadanism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy." His answer: 'That's what I mean. (Fs) (notabene)