My hope is that you have no idea what I’m about to say.

You may read the subject and leap to social issues in early 21st century America.  You might readily think about the Catholic vote, and the present turmoil, and it might skip across your mind that neither party’s nominee for President is Catholic.  You might be thinking about the separation of church and state, and the role clergy should and shouldn’t have in influencing voters.

Word association is such that I might have no idea what you are thinking.

At any rate, as genuinely entertaining and exhausting as the current election cycle has been, and as contentious as social issues are (bleeding even into economic issues), none of these are my immediate objects.  In medical parlance, I believe they are symptoms of underlying conditions.

So we’re about to get “meta,” to take a deeper dive beyond the turbulence and drama of the surface, with the hope of understanding what fundamental forces are at work.

Now, to parameters and conditions:

• I concede that this is only my view.  Certain parts are drawn from others, because I find them convincing, but the synthesis of the whole (such as it is) is mine, and I am only a man thinking.
• I welcome discussion, correction of facts, and so on.  The condition is that it is non-partisan as possible.  Imagine yourself arriving from the future, or from an alien race.  What do we find here?
• None of this is likely to win you an election.  It’s not tactics, it’s not strategy – it’s a giant step back, to observe.
• The initial Catholic character of this flows from the previous points:  We are in this world, but not of it.  The world is fallen, things are not as they were meant to be.  But all of this world is passing away (and we rejoice at that).  What, then, is such a pilgrim to do?

If you are discontent with the current state of politics, perhaps a deeper understanding will give you peace.  Peace does not sell, but it does satisfy.

We come to some paradoxes then.

If leftism is subjugation of the earth – the drive toward civilization, away from natural order – then isn’t more leftism equivalent to more civilized institutions and behavior?

If rightism is respect for the natural order, then isn’t more rightism a drive toward primitive living, before industry, science, and all the rest?

They seem quite the opposite.

That is, conservatives seem to prefer everything that happened in America from 1776 through the 1950’s, give or take a few years.  Conservatives love ‘murica – liberals aren’t accused of that.

They prefer industry, they prefer making the most of all potent energy resources, they prefer capitalism and business, they prefer social traditions (very orderly, structured).

Liberals, for their part, are more closely associated with the back to earth movement, to doing what one feels, to giving the benefit of the doubt where certain practices go against the cultural grain.

They have been marching since the 1960’s, starting with the sexual revolution and gradually conquering the media, education, and politics.  In many cases, they have undone what existed, rather than build new institutions.  (Same-sex marriage is not a new institution – it is the loosening of an old one).

What gives?

If this big idea is correct about leftism and rightism, we have already alluded to the next layer:  Whatever leftism established a generation ago, rightism is now defending.  Whatever leftism is pushing, no one wished for a generation ago.

There is yet another layer.

In America there is a Christian tradition, one inextricable from its founding.  The Christian religion is properly ordered, so that it forms tight institutions, bright lines, and produces many goods on Earth.

For any progress to be made – and we are in the age of the Progressive – these institutions, this Christian grip on the structure of society, must be undone.  The work of leftism, in this case, is to erase whatever may be attributed to the natural order, or to God, in favor of what man might do for himself.

It is, indeed, a push to subdue the earth.  And men.

Meanwhile, modern rightism looks like a paradox, because it ought to be a drive toward the natural order – but it looks like a drive toward anachronistic technology and social structure, and filthy fossil fuels, and unjust wages.

Think of someone who is not conservative, if you want a true sense of rightism.  Think of a reactionary.

Here is someone who quite seriously would reinstitute a monarchy (with all of its quirks and flaws) and restrict the vote, and champion the formation of socio-economic classes because …

That is what happens in the natural order.  In nature, the fittest survive.  The powerful get what they want first, and the weak receive the crumbs.  If anything.

The natural order, you understand, is not about equality.  The liberal push for equality is necessarily a synthetic effort, because men are not equal.  And men are not equal to women in the natural order.  And no beast is equal to a human in the natural order…and so on.

The conservative is only defending what your forebears installed.  The reactionary looks at at fixed point further in the past, and identifies that as the true balance in human affairs.*

Christians will no doubt have observed something here:  Original sin is a move to the Left.  That is, the original disobedience of God was a play for power on the part of humans.  Humans wished to subdue reality, and know it.  Know it for what purpose?

“…then your eyes will be open, and ye will be as gods.”

It is enough to shudder.  But!

As punishment, God brought down the natural order on humanity – hard.  Women would suffer in childbirth, and man would raise produce only by the sweat of his brow.  And all would die.

Natural death is the far end of rightism.

So, it is correct to say that the Old Testament is story upon story of humanity in dissonance with the natural order, and suffering greatly because of it.  And God, by grace, and mercy and love, saving them.

The New Testament is widely seen – if not in these terms – as a move to the Left, and all of Christianity is sometimes mocked because of this transition.

But they should not spurn the transition so quickly.  By Christ’s sacrifice, God gave humanity an escape from the extreme Right, which was NOT the extreme Left.  It was neither, and both.  Step back and see:

If you were a two dimensional creature, how could we begin to explain the third dimension to you?  You would necessarily flatten all of our words and actions, so that you could understand them in your two dimensions.  We could not really explain it at all.

And you would be right, and wrong.  Mostly wrong.

That’s the role of Catholicism.  At its best, and its core, it says to all the world – “Yes, but none of this is quite right.  Look – you are going to live forever.  Forever.  Now, how does that change things here on Earth?”

It might make you more of a rightist.  And more of a leftist.

But mostly, it would make a resurrectionist, with your eyes cast above you, which neither the left nor the right can comprehend.

* And again, chronology is not critical in and of itself – it is something of a tape measure, to let us know how far left we’ve come.  The Reactionary might also push for things that are in the spirit of a monarchy, but have not ever existed.  In that sense, if he is successful, the Reactionary is looking toward the future, through the past.  Chronology is not strictly useful.

Let us add a little depth to the metaphor.

The human being – and the human race, by expansion – possesses two drives which we in the modern world call “Progressive” and “Reactionary.”

Left and Right, or “To subdue the earth” and “To heed the natural order.”

Now, the metaphor is that of Cthulhu, swimming.  The current pulls everything to the right, toward the natural order, terminating in a sheer fall – certain death.  Therefore, Cthulhu swims left, to escape the turbulence and danger of the natural order.

The further he swims left, the less imminent the danger.  He might finally relax in the water, even become playful.  Yet, dangers still exist, and since he knows everything to the right becomes more threatening, he swims left.

And now the water is much calmer, still pulling but requiring very little effort to resist.  Cthulhu might begin to impose his own design on the river, building a place to be seated by the bank or small dams to break the water.  He will lose the exercise of those muscles which preserved him in the rapids, in favor of skills that enhance his pleasure and comfort in these less troubled waters.

New dangers await.  Stagnant water harbors bacteria.  His muscles have atrophied – if he wanders too far down river, he will surely drown.  Other creatures compete for food, and even as the apex predator he can be overwhelmed by a mass of them.  Moreover, there is an indescribable sense of discomfort, of not quite fitting in one’s environment, which the great beast cannot understand.  That, quite simply, is that he was made to rule in stronger waters, to challenge himself, to conquer mighty forces.

Proceeding left has always brought him pleasure and comfort – progress – and so he swims further left.

The metaphor can continue, but it will become complicated, even convoluted – if it has not already, for your tastes.  Let us look and see something.

There is a sense of melancholy about this metaphor, I think.  That is, Cthulhu – the complete body of a human society – is never finally satisfied and safe.  And someday he will die, his body carried along, ever more rapidly over the edge.

The human restlessness is such that it will want to challenge the rapids at times, but not for long.  Wanting for some activity to challenge his mind and body, imagining even that his survival still depends on it, man swims ever Left, requiring that he impose his will more and more completely on reality.

Somewhere up the river, he thinks, is Utopia.  Then he will be happy.

Now, “up” is correct, but the river is two-dimensional.  The way out of the river is not upstream, but up, out-of-stream.

If this seems like nonsense, or incredible, or the perfect answer – welcome to religion.  Religion is the pull of humanity up out of the river of this world.  It is the third dimension, which might elicit these varied responses from two-dimensional creatures.  One’s subjective response does not render it void.

Indeed, a properly ordered religion must position itself up, out of the river, and from that height throw down a rope.  If Cthulhu – a human society – will grab it, he will be saved both from the dangers of the Left and Right.  And it must be a strong rope, held up by a mighty arm.

“Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.”  – Joseph de Maistre

We come to explore why the series is called Politics..and Catholicism.  (Sure, go for a James Lipton voice there).

Earlier I made reference to properly ordered religion.  We will admit, for the sake of discussion, that a plurality of religions might qualify as properly ordered, even though they cannot all be 100% true.

We saw last time that the building and development of civilization just is a move to the left of the natural order.  It is an attempt by a population of humans to buffer themselves against the unrelenting current of the natural order (such forces as entropy and predation, which is entropy at 4x speed).  In so doing, a population can succeed so well that they are capable of swimming beyond stasis, further left, upstream.

This Cthulhu will do, unless there is some compelling reason (or force, or impulse) not to.  Some restraint, some dissonance with the population’s experience and expectations against reality, perhaps.  Or else some overwhelming incentive, worthy of abandoning the promises of swimming further left.*

Before stating the expected thesis…what is so bad about swimming ever to the left, anyway?  Didn’t we say that way lies Utopia?  Even if it is ever receding, doesn’t this indicate the desired and everlasting march of human progress?

(Perhaps you see a river in your mind, and a far-off horizon.  The Utopia is exactly like the horizon, but it is so haunting and alluring – not almost spiritual, but actually so – that the emptiness of the horizon reflects a world where natural dangers are erased, and life is lived tranquilly, with perfect understanding of everything.  Even the present feverish pitch of sexual fixation and exposure is suffocated and vanished, only a means to this godlike end.  Yes, I have tasted and seen…)

The problem is two-fold, and unfolds like proofs for the existence of God.  On the one hand, you have the historical account – every time we’ve tried Utopia, it ends in absolute disaster.  Look to any revolution and the events that follow.  It is easy to point to Stalin’s Soviet Union, but consider the “enlightened” French Revolution, when so many rationalists found themselves enraptured in a murderous frenzy.

On the other, it is a practical impossibility, which is why it so often ends in bloodshed.  People cannot be depended on to act with perfect virtue, no matter what traits are called virtuous.  You can call stealing good, or murder innocent – and people will violate them.  In order to silence the signal of human discord and rebellion, those humans must be exiled…or exterminated.

It is not only discord, but it is also the human inability to completely comprehend everything, which is necessary for controlling all variables in an environment (including an artificial one).  Ask a film director how difficult it is to make a movie exactly according to his vision – and then he has no control at all over the theater, or your living room.

Such a paradise cannot be achieved on this side of Glory.  It is utterly opposed to Glory, moving ever to the left, where men are made into gods, and all the natural order is destroyed, terminating in the abyss.

In other words, that way lies irreversible damnation.  Once walk through the gates – leave all hope behind.**

What shall it be, then?  The primal, fearsome end of the natural order, which is death?  Or the everlasting oppression of one man, or some men, dominating all the others, destroying that which conflicts with their designs?

Enter religion.  And you thought they invented “Hell” just to scare you.

*Here we have an understanding why suffering typically provokes a move further to the left – over time a population will inevitably lose members.  The reflex – not the reason, mind you – is to swim further away from the danger, not to live in harmony with it.  Therefore, a wealthy country experiencing relative peace will come to find smaller and smaller losses as intolerable as the great losses it once suffered.  If we have swum this far upstream, the rhetorical question goes, we can surely swim further and provide comfort/security/wealth to even more of our population.

**Yes, Hell is real.

Bring yourself back to the early days of humanity.

For all of us, even the experts, this is going to be a guess.  There is a saying that the least educated person in a historical period is more an expert of his time than the best scholar today.  This seems obviously true, and more true the more one thinks about it.

As little as we know about a culture within history, so much less do we know about a culture prior to history.  The densest and most surely communicated channel just doesn’t exist – that of language.

The first human population had to be focused on survival (what else was there?) and build from there.  Build what?

It appears that they built a system of the division of labor – hunters and gatherers – as well as migratory patterns in response to environmental stressors (eg. availability of food and weather patterns).  All of these practices are very much aligned with the natural order – as far to the right as humans get, if you will.  In fact, taken as pure concepts – which they surely weren’t in practice – you have virtually no subjugation of nature happening here.  Rather, you have nature leading the dance, and human beings following her lead.

I say they surely weren’t pure concepts, because toolmaking in human predecessors dates back a couple million years.  This would certainly be an imposition of human design on nature, the first small step in subduing the earth.  Such artifacts are the earliest signs of leftism (if you will).

One might persist that innovations like knifes and spears simply brought humans onto a level playing field with their would-be predators.  Indeed, other animals also demonstrate rudimentary toolmaking.  Moreover, a spear is surely not a gun, which seems to give greater advantages to the human over the animal.

All such debate ends, then, with the dawn of agriculture.  Somewhere between 13,000-11,000 BC, we find evidence of cultivation, even seedless figs!  Farm animal domestication occurred around the same time, all of which enabled the development of permanent settlements.

This imposition of human design upon plants and animals, I maintain, is a leftist impulse.  I am just a guy thinking, of course, you may call it whatever you wish.  But I think you will begin to see some phenomena explained the longer you entertain this idea.

Now these are the first great leaps of humanity.  Writing developed +/- 10,000 years later, and this enabled the communication across space and the transmission across time of incredible amounts of information.  This accelerated learning and innovation, as there was a steady and growing foundation of information to build from.

Skip ahead +/- 3,600 years, and you have the printing press (notice the diminishing time between major advancements).  Gutenberg’s invention is credited with all manner of advances, including a higher literacy rate, the faster spread of more information, and the wider spread of that information.

The more disparate innovations are shared, the more they accelerate innovation.  One mind makes a leap forward; another observes it and has some mental door unlocked for him.  He enters the next room and makes another leap forward.

Along the way, and directly related to these innovations, are advancements in science and technology.  And these too, according to our earlier big idea, are leftist moves in human activity.  Simple knowing – as in science – is arguably neutral, but you see how easily “and technology” follows.

And technology is certainly an imposition of human will on nature.  Look around you!  Subdue the earth, indeed.

These innovations occur in other areas of human endeavor, as well.  We have not plumbed deeply at all, and I will scarcely mention such others – law, politics, economics, culture.  They read like the headings of an old newspaper, things which might change over time, which people like to know about.

The sum total of these is what we call civilization.  The impulse to impose our will on the existing order is a leftist impulse, while the impulse to accept and preserve the existing order is a rightist impulse.  The leftist impulse drives toward utopia, which is always receding in the distance; the rightist impulse drives toward the natural order, which took us tens or hundreds of thousands of years to escape from.

We all know, in our basic instincts, that we prefer civilization, the imposition of human order, upon the natural order.  But the natural order just is the ruling order – if you do not resist it, or build against it, you are pulled back into it.

Does any bridge or dam last forever, unattended?  Have you ever seen a building which was abandoned 100 – even 20 – years ago?  The natural order is always pressing on us, always driving on.

So, Cthulhu is ever watchful of that looming eventuality, and ever swimming left against the current to escape it.  That just is what civilization is.  As long as Cthulhu – the collective human population – desires this protection from the pure natural order, it must swim left.

But Cthulhu is not intelligent enough, being a great beast acting on drives and impulses, to know when it has swum too far to the left.  Without some respect for the natural order – which is all we have, there is no other natural order – without some understanding of it, we do not understand how to order our civilization at all.

Remember, a constant and pure drive in only one direction is the road to destruction.  You only have to choose your destroyer – nature to the right, humans to the left.

To avoid this, we need some corresponding power which holds civilization in tension, which honors the rightist impulse and respects the leftist impulse, and appropriately restrains them both.  This we call religion.