I finished my two-volume biography of Goethe, by Boyle,
this morning, and as I am still incapacitated by my ankle surgery,
I decided to start another book immediately… I decided upon
“The Discoverers” by Daniel Boorstin, and what he writes about first
is gaining one bearing’s, (although he doesn’t actually use the word
bearings) through time and space…to mark out where one is,
is to mark out the land or terrain that one lives in… to use
clocks is to mark out one’s bearing in time… with each new understanding
of one’s bearings, one can mark down where one is at all time…
but this physical understanding of knowing one bearing’s,
also includes knowing one’s bearings not just in time and space, but
in idea’s, formats, ideologies and ism’s…
we can gain our bearings by adapting to an ism or an idea or
an ideology… think about the Catholic Church…we can know
exactly where we stand in relation to god via the teachings
of the Church… and the church can even provide us with
physical bearings… think of the rather elaborate physical
underpinnings of the church… the earth is the center of the
universe… all the universe revolves around the earth…
and the bible is quite clear that Man is the highest pinnacle
of all created beings… thus we can see that even physically,
human beings are at the pinnace of existence, but we stand
below the Angels… thus our place in the universe is clearly and well
marked out…like a modern day GPS device, we can pinpoint to
the foot, exactly where we stand in relations to, well everything…
by using the teachings of the Catholic church… we know exactly
where we stand in the universe…
thus we can, by ism’s and ideologies, pinpoint exactly where
we stand in relations to other things…
by the use of the conservative ideology, I can pinpoint my
exact place in the universe… as is the same for a liberal
ideology… so what does this mean for modern man?
We have lost both our physical bearings and our intellectual
bearings with the “death of god” with the new ism’s
and ideologies, we no longer know exactly where we
stand in relations to other people… thus the modern search
for a morality/ethics that can place us in relations to each other…
the loss of traditional ism’s and ideologies, means we have lost
our bearings in regards to those traditional ism’s… for example,
politically, until the American revolution, democracy wasn’t even
considered to be a possibility… the only political possibility until
1800 was a monarchy and they still exists in the 21st century…
but what is the value of a monarchy in the 21st century?
why it gives one a bearing to us socially, the culture, politically…
we know where we stand if we live in a monarchy…
our precise location is known to us, socially, politically,
culturally in terms of the monarchy…and here we begin to
understand the attraction of the past to the conservative…
by holding onto the past, the conservative can know exactly
where they stand in relations to others, socially, politically,
culturally… the attraction of the fixed knowledge of the past means
a conservative has one’s place fixed, in time, space, and for our modern
age, context…there is the creation of fear in the conservative if they don’t
have their bearings for their time, place and context…
to fix one’s bearings is vital, perhaps the most important
aspect of being conservative… to know exactly where one fits
is the basis of all conservative thinking…and if they don’t know,
their exact place in the universe, the conservative panics and is then
consumed by fear…
so ask yourself, are you consumed about knowing your exact
place in the universe? do you need to have ism’s and ideologies
that tell you exactly where you stand in the scheme of things?
I would submit that would suggest you are tied into the past,
for only in the past are you truly and securely safe from the
uncertainty of the modern world.
Kropotkin