A few weeks ago found me waiting at the local mechanic’s for an oil change. In the familiar office, with the smell of grease and the noise of pneumatic tools, I pushed through the large selection of magazines on the heavily-stained coffee table. I quickly found my favorite – Mad Magazine – and was disappointed at what I saw. For one, the artwork had changed completely, computer-print images on glossy pages replacing the ink drawings on pulp of past decades. More disturbing, the stupid and pointless jokes – the reason I have read Mad since 4th grade – had become stupid, pointed jokes – at Trump and the 2nd amendment and border security, and probably other conservative boilerplate issues if I had continued to read. This, a magazine meant for kids and pre-teens, was gushing forth New York political views without a wit of reasoning. The latter is to be expected from Mad, but not the former, exactly for the lack of thought. It was a magazine meant for fun. It has become an object now of propaganda for juvenile audiences.
It was, as Mad would once have put it, as funny as a fart in an oxygen tank, a joke I had laughed at in 4th grade without considering just how a fart might find its way into an oxygen tank. Which is how it should be: things meant for kids and for fun in general should remain light and illogical. Heavy points of discussion, on the other hand, should be backed by heavy ideas. To mix heavy points with light comedy is perhaps the best way to propagandize kids and, on a larger scale, to dumb down a population. Nothing stings as hard as ridicule, even when it is based on a wisp of nothing or even really bad ideas.
This dumbing-down through ridicule is nothing new. I am now reading an excellent book on Christian apologetics, The Soul’s Upward Yearning by Robert Spitzer (PhD and Jesuit priest), who has written this entire book refuting atheism through logic, example, and objective oddities like Out of Body Experiences. It is good stuff, even the logic part, which I thought I didn’t need but found that I did. The sad part of this is that the book is necessary. Until the late 18th century – the century that produced the Deists who helped draw up the US Constitution, as well as the atheists who chopped off heads in Paris – the belief in God was nearly universal among both the educated elite and the peasantry. This was true not only in Europe but in the whole world, and true not only for then but for all time as far as we know, right back to the era of Eurasian Neanderthals. Why the change came about just then in Europe is a notion involving complex scholarship, but the simpler point I wish to make here is that the creation of atheistic culture in general often was accomplished not through great thought but by simplistic natural observation and ridicule. The naturalistic thought was, “well, I don’t see God, so there mustn’t be one,” forgetting about the enormity of the cosmos and the impossible reality of creation all about us. The ridicule part was formed around religious attempts at helping people understand God better through art and myth. Virgin birth - are you kidding? Jesus rising from the dead – now you’ve got to be kidding. None of this ridicule is ever backed by toe-to-toe argumentation, or any thoughtful argumentation at all.
Who started this and why is again a complex issue, but I think we can line up the partisans roughly into two camps: one, those objective observers who have forgotten that everything they observe is through the lens of a created body and a created brain formed OUTSIDE of so-called objective observation; and two, those who see God as an impediment to their desires. This latter group uses both the proofs of the first camp to buttress their claims, and also ridicule to compel the rest of society to “be logical” - that is, to accept their lifestyles or desires. This is not only a European phenomenon now, but also used extensively in current Chinese –style totalitarian governments.
Which gets to the greater point of the essay: this type of superficial thinking leads to really bad government and, ultimately, a really, really messed up society. China shines forth as the greatest example of this, but our popular culture has taken on many of the same elements, as Mad Magazine shows. Ridicule without contemplation is being used to get the society that some think they want and some think that you should want too.
Just what the writers at Mad really want is what many in our information class want, which is God -only -knows -what. But this movement is making, regardless of the desires behind it, a real mess. Suicide rates rise higher and higher, loneliness is a growing problem, marriage and reproduction are fading and nihilism gaining – all side effects of the “great leap forward” of progressive thinking. And all, frustratingly enough, so predictable.
Which is what our book, The Soul’s Upward Yearning, points out so succinctly. The progressive movement is liberal or leftist at the present, but we can forget about that here; instead, the point that Spitzer makes so clearly is that we yearn because we do not have or understand perfection, yet desire it with an aching need. We desire it, he claims, because we are internally aware of it, aware of a horizon of perfection that we cannot achieve ourselves but is built into us. Because there is no perfection in this world that we can observe, this “built in” part must come from something that is perfect, something beyond us, as does our yearning for this perfection. This ‘something’ is often called God.
So goes the logical part of his book in a nutshell, but it also points to why our current attempt to create the perfect society without God is and will continue to be such a failure. As Miley Cyrus said after Trump won, (paraphrase) “Life would be paradise if we all had Hollywood morals. Instead (sob) we got Trump!” We almost choke with laughter ourselves at this comment, but she has made a sincere point: that she believes that her morals, created entirely from objective human sources, can create a paradise. Yet, if we wish to remain objective, we know that we cannot create a paradise ourselves. We cannot observe perfection directly, and thus cannot even get a blueprint of what that perfection might be. Rather, that comes from a source most call God, but we can call ‘cosmic intuition’ for those who cringe at the “G” word. Although we cannot obtain perfection with that source in this world either, we can get our direction from it; that is, we can get, as we get from religion, an idea of what perfection is, and how best we can approach it. It should be needless to say, as it once was, that mere human thought and even more self-interested actions can never get us there – not even close.
Yet we are being told, now apparently even in grade school, that there is some sort of moral perfection to be had if we just listen to the mavens of culture, those very people who mock those who are deeply affected by ‘cosmic intuition.’ Incredible as it should seem, writers like those at Mad Magazine actually believe that they have the right to steer youth in the right direction - a direction they get from where?- through vapid ideas and infantile humor. Wherever that direction might be, if it is not from and towards the Source, then it is towards a direction that will not lead us to a better society, let alone perfection. Given this, its direction must bring disappointment first, and then chaos, as with the French Revolution, and then, if persisted, doom.
This is logical, but perfection and visions of paradise also logically point beyond us, and beyond logic. It is this, this “beyond logic” dimension of potential human experience that atheists of both stripes dismiss or ridicule. They would not if they would follow it, as the wise have done for millennia, but their arrogance and ignorance keep them blind. It is what the biblical phrase, “the blind leading the blind” is telling us to avoid. But we are more and more trapped in the objective, and mocked for attempting to strive beyond it into the realms of intuition and metaphysical perfection – into the realms where true genius and holiness lie. Da Vinci understood this, as did our own modern-era Einstein. The writers at Mad Magazine apparently do not. I don’t know for sure about everyone else, but I think it would be more prudent to follow the examples of Da Vinci and Einstein. To follow Mad might be as funny as a fart in an oxygen tank, but when the storms rage and the oxygen tank becomes a matter of life or death, I don’t think I’d be laughing.
A few weeks ago found me waiting at the local mechanic’s for an oil change. In the familiar office, with the smell of grease and the noise of pneumatic tools, I pushed through the large selection of magazines on the heavily-stained coffee table. I quickly found my favorite – Mad Magazine – and was disappointed at what I saw. For one, the artwork had changed completely, computer-print images on glossy pages replacing the ink drawings on pulp of past decades. More disturbing, the stupid and pointless jokes – the reason I have read Mad since 4th grade – had become stupid, pointed jokes – at Trump and the 2nd amendment and border security, and probably other conservative boilerplate issues if I had continued to read. This, a magazine meant for kids and pre-teens, was gushing forth New York political views without a wit of reasoning. The latter is to be expected from Mad, but not the former, exactly for the lack of thought. It was a magazine meant for fun. It has become an object now of propaganda for juvenile audiences.
It was, as Mad would once have put it, as funny as a fart in an oxygen tank, a joke I had laughed at in 4th grade without considering just how a fart might find its way into an oxygen tank. Which is how it should be: things meant for kids and for fun in general should remain light and illogical. Heavy points of discussion, on the other hand, should be backed by heavy ideas. To mix heavy points with light comedy is perhaps the best way to propagandize kids and, on a larger scale, to dumb down a population. Nothing stings as hard as ridicule, even when it is based on a wisp of nothing or even really bad ideas.
This dumbing-down through ridicule is nothing new. I am now reading an excellent book on Christian apologetics, The Soul’s Upward Yearning by Robert Spitzer (PhD and Jesuit priest), who has written this entire book refuting atheism through logic, example, and objective oddities like Out of Body Experiences. It is good stuff, even the logic part, which I thought I didn’t need but found that I did. The sad part of this is that the book is necessary. Until the late 18th century – the century that produced the Deists who helped draw up the US Constitution, as well as the atheists who chopped off heads in Paris – the belief in God was nearly universal among both the educated elite and the peasantry. This was true not only in Europe but in the whole world, and true not only for then but for all time as far as we know, right back to the era of Eurasian Neanderthals. Why the change came about just then in Europe is a notion involving complex scholarship, but the simpler point I wish to make here is that the creation of atheistic culture in general often was accomplished not through great thought but by simplistic natural observation and ridicule. The naturalistic thought was, “well, I don’t see God, so there mustn’t be one,” forgetting about the enormity of the cosmos and the impossible reality of creation all about us. The ridicule part was formed around religious attempts at helping people understand God better through art and myth. Virgin birth - are you kidding? Jesus rising from the dead – now you’ve got to be kidding. None of this ridicule is ever backed by toe-to-toe argumentation, or any thoughtful argumentation at all.
Who started this and why is again a complex issue, but I think we can line up the partisans roughly into two camps: one, those objective observers who have forgotten that everything they observe is through the lens of a created body and a created brain formed OUTSIDE of so-called objective observation; and two, those who see God as an impediment to their desires. This latter group uses both the proofs of the first camp to buttress their claims, and also ridicule to compel the rest of society to “be logical” - that is, to accept their lifestyles or desires. This is not only a European phenomenon now, but also used extensively in current Chinese –style totalitarian governments.
Which gets to the greater point of the essay: this type of superficial thinking leads to really bad government and, ultimately, a really, really messed up society. China shines forth as the greatest example of this, but our popular culture has taken on many of the same elements, as Mad Magazine shows. Ridicule without contemplation is being used to get the society that some think they want and some think that you should want too.
Just what the writers at Mad really want is what many in our information class want, which is God -only -knows -what. But this movement is making, regardless of the desires behind it, a real mess. Suicide rates rise higher and higher, loneliness is a growing problem, marriage and reproduction are fading and nihilism gaining – all side effects of the “great leap forward” of progressive thinking. And all, frustratingly enough, so predictable.
Which is what our book, The Soul’s Upward Yearning, points out so succinctly. The progressive movement is liberal or leftist at the present, but we can forget about that here; instead, the point that Spitzer makes so clearly is that we yearn because we do not have or understand perfection, yet desire it with an aching need. We desire it, he claims, because we are internally aware of it, aware of a horizon of perfection that we cannot achieve ourselves but is built into us. Because there is no perfection in this world that we can observe, this “built in” part must come from something that is perfect, something beyond us, as does our yearning for this perfection. This ‘something’ is often called God.
So goes the logical part of his book in a nutshell, but it also points to why our current attempt to create the perfect society without God is and will continue to be such a failure. As Miley Cyrus said after Trump won, (paraphrase) “Life would be paradise if we all had Hollywood morals. Instead (sob) we got Trump!” We almost choke with laughter ourselves at this comment, but she has made a sincere point: that she believes that her morals, created entirely from objective human sources, can create a paradise. Yet, if we wish to remain objective, we know that we cannot create a paradise ourselves. We cannot observe perfection directly, and thus cannot even get a blueprint of what that perfection might be. Rather, that comes from a source most call God, but we can call ‘cosmic intuition’ for those who cringe at the “G” word. Although we cannot obtain perfection with that source in this world either, we can get our direction from it; that is, we can get, as we get from religion, an idea of what perfection is, and how best we can approach it. It should be needless to say, as it once was, that mere human thought and even more self-interested actions can never get us there – not even close.
Yet we are being told, now apparently even in grade school, that there is some sort of moral perfection to be had if we just listen to the mavens of culture, those very people who mock those who are deeply affected by ‘cosmic intuition.’ Incredible as it should seem, writers like those at Mad Magazine actually believe that they have the right to steer youth in the right direction - a direction they get from where?- through vapid ideas and infantile humor. Wherever that direction might be, if it is not from and towards the Source, then it is towards a direction that will not lead us to a better society, let alone perfection. Given this, its direction must bring disappointment first, and then chaos, as with the French Revolution, and then, if persisted, doom.
This is logical, but perfection and visions of paradise also logically point beyond us, and beyond logic. It is this, this “beyond logic” dimension of potential human experience that atheists of both stripes dismiss or ridicule. They would not if they would follow it, as the wise have done for millennia, but their arrogance and ignorance keep them blind. It is what the biblical phrase, “the blind leading the blind” is telling us to avoid. But we are more and more trapped in the objective, and mocked for attempting to strive beyond it into the realms of intuition and metaphysical perfection – into the realms where true genius and holiness lie. Da Vinci understood this, as did our own modern-era Einstein. The writers at Mad Magazine apparently do not. I don’t know for sure about everyone else, but I think it would be more prudent to follow the examples of Da Vinci and Einstein. To follow Mad might be as funny as a fart in an oxygen tank, but when the storms rage and the oxygen tank becomes a matter of life or death, I don’t think I’d be laughing.
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