“[S]o far as I conform to the pattern of human society, I feel myself also to be powerless and at odds with the universe; while so far as I conform to the pattern of my true nature, I am at odds with human society, and it with me.”
dorothy sayers, the mind of the maker
What’s Wrong with the World?[1]
We humans, bless our hearts, think we can solve the world’s problems – war, division, violence, hunger, poverty, injustice, corruption, tyranny, loneliness, pain, suffering, cancer, mental illness, addiction, racism, brutality, degradation, and so on – through better government, better laws, better economics, better engineering, better science, better medicine, better art, better ideas, and better compliance.
By what evidence do we persist in this thinking? Yes, technology has dramatically reduced hunger and poverty, but technology has also caused isolation, division, depression, fear, and anxiety at unprecedented levels. The more our efforts succeed at meeting specific needs and wants, the greater the gap we seem to experience between what we have and what we desire.
That seems like a pretty good definition of suffering: the gap between what we have and what we desire. If we take that as true, then humankind’s attempts to alleviate suffering have, on balance, increased suffering. The world is broken, and each time we fix it we break it again in the process.
Does that mean we stop trying? As Homer Simpson once attempted to soothe Bart after he actually tried (and failed) for the first time, “You’ve learned an important lesson today, boy. Never try.” No, we don’t stop trying. We put forth our best effort, trusting that even failure will be fruitful.
And one of those fruits should be the realization that alleviating suffering is not possible by increasing or improving or optimizing what we have, but only through changing what we desire. You see, the real lesson is that what we think we want is not really what we want. Thus, we need our hearts transformed to desire what will truly bring us joy and happiness, and not only in the acquisition, but in the pursuit.
Too often, humanity is focused on making progress without knowing the destination. Doing so inevitably leads to redefining the goal to fit the “progress” rather than determining the success of the progress by proximity to a predefined and unchanging goal.
The goal, which is our ideal, is something eternal and outside of ourselves. Until we have hearts set on that ideal, we will remain condemned to navigate a maze whose walls we keep shifting in a vain attempt to conform them to our fickle preferences, but instead keep us trapped in a prison of our own making.
The spiritual (and internal) battle between conformance to our ideal and pursuit of our own devices mirrors the decision faced by Adam and Eve when they chose to value the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge above that from the Tree of Life.
Eternal life in the glorious presence of our Creator is our ideal, and yet time and again we choose to follow our own way, the path of pride, hoping to exclaim, “I did that!” Ironically, that’s exactly what we can claim, but in the shame of our own inevitable defeat rather than in the glory of God’s eternal victory.
The ultimate paradox of being human is that the more we exercise the freedom to do what we want, the more we become enslaved to desires that conflict with our true and natural desires. Only in becoming slaves to the desire to see God’s face and live in His love are we made free. Doing otherwise means denying our own true nature.
The more we try to belong to the world, the more we deny the truth that we are not of this world but rather are sojourners in exile longing for home.
We can start orienting ourselves to our true nature by learning how every one of our desires is a bad approximation of our most fundamental and natural desire, which is to be face-to-face at home with God. Pride gets in the way, as we’ve seen, resulting in denying God’s supremacy while elevating our own. The cure is humility in faith, gratitude, and trust in God.
But something less obvious gets in the way as well, and that something is fear. You see, to be fully aware of one’s own deep yearning to be with God is to also be fully aware of one’s inability to be with God while we are living in exile on this earth. Accepting the reality of our exile intensifies our desire to be home.
Such deep yearning coupled with powerlessness is pure, painful, crushing anguish. It can be likened to (although many times greater than) the anguish of a heart so broken that it vows to never love again. Whether we have allowed ourselves to experience the anguish of the unquenchable yearning for God, deep down we are aware of it, and so we put up defenses against it instinctually.
I suppose that is another form of pride, since it is rooted in refusing to leave ourselves vulnerable to God’s love and subject to God’s will. But even deeper than the pride is fear – we are afraid of the pain.
In the midst of this fear and trepidation swirls the disillusionment and outright cynicism that comes from facing the everyday reality that evil exists. Unanswerable questions such as, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” are worth asking, so long as we don’t insist on an easy answer, or any answer for that matter.
Instead, turn the question around and ask, “Why do good things happen at all?”
To those who question how a good and just God could allow evil to exist, consider whether the world would make more sense if God was just but not good, or good but not just, or if evil was a separate and equal power to good, or if God didn’t exist at all. Those are the alternatives, none of which provide a better or more satisfying answer than the riddle of the good and just God who permits suffering.
This is the broken human condition through which God’s grace continues to shine. God speaks to us through our brokenness, calling us to humility and to love as we minister to each other.
Just as imperfection enhances beauty, our greatest weaknesses can become our greatest strengths through the grace of God.[2] Every time we forget that, God gives us a little nudge. Sometimes those nudges come in the form of everyday paradoxes – those realities of life that always seem to catch us off guard despite their ever-present and monotonous consistency.
These are the things to which people often refer when they say that God has a great sense of humor.
Learned Ignorance[3]
Obtaining true wisdom comes through realizing how little we understand about the world around us, about ourselves, and about life in general. This is what Socrates believed, and in his quest to demonstrate it he was executed. While Socrates and all his questions were no doubt quite annoying, that doesn’t seem to justify a death sentence. That is, not until you understand that there is something about valuing wisdom over knowledge that threatens those in power.
By emphasizing the acquisition of knowledge, and in particular the acquisition of specialized knowledge and associated skills, those in power can ensure that the education of the general population will serve the status quo. A knowledgeable and skilled populace leads to building and improving, growing and feeding, arming and healing. But a wise populace leads to questioning and discerning. We can’t have that.
Placing wisdom ahead of knowledge is not just a difficult message for the powerful to hear, it is also a difficult message for the rest of us. So much of our lives is spent accumulating and applying knowledge because so much of our livelihoods depend on it.
We seem wired to crave soaking up knowledge like a sponge soaks up water. Everything appears to incentivize amassing knowledge as if it were treasure, and there is no concomitant reward for admissions of ignorance.
Socrates discovered this as he traveled around trying to find someone wiser than he. Every person he encountered had some specialized knowledge that couldn’t stand up to his Socratic probing. He was left with no option but to conclude that what distinguished Socrates from other men was just one little thing: they all thought (or acted as if) they knew what they didn’t really know, whereas Socrates was able to admit of his ignorance.
Indeed, Socrates realized that as his knowledge expanded, his awareness of what he didn’t know expanded even more. The more he knew, the more he didn’t know. Socrates gained a learned ignorance, which is the prerequisite for wisdom.[4]
It’s no wonder that, in a society that idolizes experts for their special knowledge and that delegitimizes the opinions of the uncredentialed,[5] knowledge reigns supreme and wisdom is valued only to the extent that it is a natural by-product of accumulated knowledge.
Ironically, our ability to learn the critical lesson that wisdom is more important than knowledge requires more wisdom than knowledge.
And so with each generation, we convince ourselves that we have outgrown the lessons we learned (or should have learned) from Adam and Eve in the Garden, from the mythology of Prometheus, from novels like Frankenstein and Jurassic Park, from the development of the atomic bomb, and countless others. The way we convince ourselves is always the same, namely that we just know so much more than our predecessors.
Notice that the case is never made that we are more enlightened than those who came before because we are wiser. That would be a bridge too far. No, we are not wiser, just more knowledgeable; and we are more knowledgeable in a way that makes us less likely to admit our ignorance. So we go on repeating the same mistakes, untempered by any learned ignorance but instead emboldened by blind foolishness.
Wisdom is typically “passed along” rather than formally taught, probably because wisdom is hard to teach. Moreover, there seems to be an assumption that wisdom will inure automatically to the benefit of those who gain knowledge. As such, education focuses on imparting information and knowledge, and in certain respects shaping that information and knowledge in a way that attempts to mold or direct what sort of “wisdom” will ultimately emerge.
For example, in regard to U.S. civics, recent generations have been taught that freedom primarily means self-determination, which has led to the rejection of the religious and moral structure holding society together, thereby necessitating that agencies of the state step in to fill the void, thus resulting in a more overbearing and involved government and consequently less freedom.
As you look around at society and observe areas where our efforts have produced results that are opposite to the originally stated intentions, you can be sure that knowledge took precedence over wisdom.
When wisdom is passed along, be cautious of the source. Because society values knowledge over wisdom, gleaning wisdom from so-called experts is fraught with peril. More often (and when I say more often, I mean almost all the time) you will find greater wisdom falling like pearls from the lips of any ordinary, God-fearing citizen going about his or her daily routine than you will find in the crafted crowing of a highly educated, ivory tower intellectual.[6]
Does this mean that knowledge provides no foundation for wisdom or that wisdom can be gained independently from knowledge? Of course not. What it means is that knowledge and experience should serve wisdom, and not the other way around.
Wisdom that serves knowledge must be distorted to fit, like shrink wrap stretched around a complicated shape. In the process, no room is left to account for what is not or cannot be known – for ignorance. Ultimately, wisdom concerns THE truth whereas knowledge defines MY truth.
THE truth is eternal and possessed by no one. MY truth is ever-changing and owned by me. The primacy of self-invention in today’s society rejects the notion that THE truth exists, instead championing the notion that the only truth upon which I can live is MY truth.
The result is an incredible abundance of knowledge and an appalling lack of wisdom. What is missing from the knowledge we have amassed is the knowledge of our ignorance. Embracing paradox means learning ignorance and thus gaining wisdom.
Unity through Diversity
Variety, they say, is the spice of life. But variety provides flavor only when combined into a cohesive dish. Too much spice creates an unbalanced and unappetizing dish. Variety best functions when it serves unity, and unity can only be realized through great diversity.
Think of a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece is differently shaped and colored to fit perfectly so that when all the pieces are in place, a unified image is formed. When one out of a thousand pieces is missing, the picture isn’t 99.9% complete, but 100% incomplete. The unity of a completed puzzle cannot exist without each piece contributing, and the separation of any piece (or group of pieces) from the rest creates division.
In this manner, societal unity too is stronger and more complete when built from a larger diversity, and such diversity has no inherent value apart from serving cohesive unity. To the extent that diversity fails to serve unity, it is divisive.
As Dorothy Sayers articulated:
“The vital power of an imaginative work demands a diversity within its unity; and the stronger the diversity, the more massive the unity…. [A] creative work in which all the characters automatically reproduce a single aspect of the writer’s mind is a work lacking in creative power.”[7]
Similarly, as held by the Catholic Church, “The very differences which the Lord has willed to put between the members of his body serves its unity and mission.”[8]
So we must ask the questions: (1) what is meant by diversity; and (2) what is meant by unity?
In today’s society, these are terms loaded with political significance and not-so-hidden agendas. But that doesn’t mean we should avoid them. To the contrary, they are perfectly good words that capture what is perhaps most wonderful about creation. As such, we should not let the political dictate whether or not we use them, nor in what context. In that spirit, we proceed.
Diversity is not a goal, it’s a fact. The rich complexities of the natural world provide endless opportunities for unique variation even among nearly identical things. It’s like living on the edge of a fractal or riding along a curve of a strange attractor in that the tiniest perturbation this way or that can produce monumental differences down the line.
Life is designed to explore all the nooks and crannies of possibility-space in its constant quest to multiply variety by variety. For humankind, this manifests in each individual vastly more than in groups. Groups may share superficial traits such as skin tone and semi-ficial things such as interests, but the variety and diversity that exists within each “identity group” spans the entirety of possibility-space in a way that groups do not.
In other words, there is much more diversity within a given identity group than there are differences between identity groups. Grouping people by superficial traits and common experiences doesn’t honor diversity, but instead leads to weaponization of diversity for division.
When people are convinced that those outside of their identity group are so different that they cannot share with them the most fundamental of human experiences – those that involve belonging, acceptance, compassion, brokenness, fear, anxiety, and love – then diversity has been perverted to destroy unity.
Too often the same affinity biases that preserve shallow conformities in a workplace are utilized in the formation and exploitation of identity groups when advocating inclusion in a way that in fact promotes exclusion. The intersectionality game is one of classify to divide and conquer, which tends to deepen feelings of separation across identity groups rather than invite the kind of empathy that recognizes commonality across all human struggles.
Pretending that the most important human traits are the things that classify people into identity groups is reductionistic and dehumanizing because it minimizes the meaningful diversity of each individual, which is the kind of diversity that lifts up all people in dignity when celebrated.
Every individual has something to contribute to this world that no other individual can, whether past, present, or future. Recognizing true diversity requires us to see each individual through God’s eyes, which is to say as a person who is beautiful and loved just as they are at that moment – as a person whose weaknesses can glorify God just as much as their strengths, and as a person who was known uniquely by name and with every hair on their head counted even as they were knitted in their mother’s womb.[9]
Seeing people this way unites us to them both through what we share in common and in what makes us unique. Identity group classification, on the other hand, is an artificial barrier that short circuits any effort to see individuals instead of others and to minister to each other’s brokenness.
Unlike diversity, which is a fact, unity is a goal and an eternal ideal. Whether the ideal of unity can be attained is not the issue, but it should always be our aim. Why? Because our great diversity was created in the image and likeness of unity.
Unity is what results when all of possibility-space is combined into a single, unified whole. As such, each of us with all of our unique and diverse traits are really just little approximations and imperfect reproductions of what would otherwise constitute perfect unity.
Unity does not result from taking the least common denominator. Unity does not result from extracting only commonalities. Unity does not result from forming an identity group.
Rather, unity is more like forming a choir that sings with a single voice by gathering up and combining all possible different voices. Paradoxically, unity is multiplicity, and the greater the multiplicity, the greater the unity.
St. Paul tells us that the greatest unity that can be assembled from creation is our arrangement in God’s Church, the body of Christ:
“But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect.”[10]
How startling to realize what St. Paul is saying, namely that we need unity in our diversity not so that we can make up for our weakness, cover up our dishonor, or mask our unrespectability, but so that these things that would otherwise bring us shame in isolation may now glorify God through the unity He has created in us!
The testing ground for unity through diversity is that basic building block of society – the family. Because a family is comprised of people thrown together mostly by fate and only somewhat by choice, we are apt to find much more diversity in our families than among our friends, co-workers, or interest groups, with whom we are virtually assured to share some common ground.
And when the common ground becomes less common, those relationships are easily re-prioritized. In your family, you must learn to get along with others whose temperaments, interests, attitudes, values, and beliefs are not just different but potentially diametrically opposed to your own. In the process, you develop a capacity for love and acceptance that have nothing to do with affinity or agreement, but rather are fashioned around the necessity of mutual self-sacrifice.
Even dysfunctional families can exhibit a modicum of the type of unity that can only arise out of diversity. This is why the family is the most important building block for a healthy society, because in the family is where we learn to unify in diversity.
The more the concept of family breaks down and is replaced by the pursuit of individual desires unmitigated by negotiating around (or deprioritized in favor of) the needs of others, the fewer opportunities we have to learn what it means and what it takes to live in unity with diversity.
A good friend taught me a wonderful lesson in Hebrew numerology. One stands for unity because it cannot be divided. Two stands for conflict because no two individuals are alike and therefore will come into disagreement. Three stands for the harmony of opposites, essentially combining the properties of one and two in a way that differences are maintained while unity is served.
Like embracing paradox, the conflict of the sacred tension is not meant to be resolved but preserved because that is the only way to maintain unity. In the next post, we will revisit this notion in the context of the paradox of the Holy Trinity, which is our ultimate model of family and of unity through diversity.
Labor, Leisure, and Love
As creative creatures, we were made to create. And creation isn’t limited to artistry, authorship, and invention. All legitimate work is creative or transformative of something in some way, including of the worker. Thus, all legitimate work done by humans has value and inherent dignity.
But just as much as we were made for work, we were also made for leisure. Muscles left unrested after a workout cannot be properly repaired and built up. Labor can be sustained for only so long before fatigue eats away at productivity. Peak performance, and even ordinary performance, require periods of rest.
Creation cannot continue without recreation (or re-creation). Both labor and leisure must be properly oriented toward love, which is the third thing we were made for. Love requires that we care for ourselves, for others, and for everything entrusted to our stewardship. Love ensures that our labor and leisure are directed to the good and are not used to turn good things (or bad things for that matter) into ultimate things.
So where’s the paradox?
The paradox resides in the mutually-dependent relationship among labor, leisure, and love. An imbalance between work and rest reveals the absence or disordering of love, resulting in exploitation and objectification, greed and sloth, corruption and abuse. Conversely, work and rest properly balanced and ordered through love upholds and celebrates human dignity while promoting a selfless and sustained contentment and fulfillment.
In other words, it turns out that mankind was not made for labor and leisure, but rather that labor and leisure were made for mankind. Without them both, and in proper proportion, we are hopelessly lost because we are without purpose, meaning, or belonging.
In American society today, too many work too hard for too long with little rest, all in the hope that they will be able to enjoy full-time leisure at some later date. Accordingly, work becomes a ‘necessary evil’ and a means to an end, instead of being considered a gift and an opportunity for the manifestation of one’s creative energies.
The ever-elusive ‘work/life balance’ too often means making a little bit more time for family and then squeezing that little bit into the bottom of the priority stack so that it doesn’t interfere with productivity. I once heard an executive speak about the importance of spending more time with family and then moments later, without any sense of irony, invite his team to consider their co-workers as their family.
Work/life balance rarely involves the taming of one’s career ambitions, but instead places more pressure on every moment of family time to be “quality time.” Lapses into “leisure” become laden with distracting thoughts about projects and deadlines. To this, the book of Sirach cautions: “The wisdom of the scribe depends on the opportunity of leisure; only the one who has little business can become wise.”[11]
This is why hobbies are so incredibly important for spiritual health. They represent the satisfying and sustaining combination of labor and leisure that both challenges and refreshes. Through hobbies, we express what brings us joy and meaning – the stuff that elevates the body, mind, and soul together in unison. In practicing our hobbies, we create primarily for creation’s sake and not for profit or personal aggrandizement, otherwise they would not be hobbies.
Such creative acts are necessary for us to thrive, such that without them we would stagnate. But modern culture emphasizes consumption over creation, as if the pleasure of being entertained could ever be greater than the joy of contributing beauty.
We spend vastly more time, money, and effort (or lack thereof) in being passively entertained than we do in actively creating, and that trend is being compounded and accelerated by the ever-growing capacity of artificial intelligence to generate our entertainment. Why in the world would we want to cede acts of creative expression to generative A.I.? Do we care that little about the nourishment of our own souls?
The delicate balance between labor and leisure, which was always susceptible to disruption, is now at risk of complete obliteration in our voluntary surrender of creativity to silicon-based artificial ‘minds.’ If art is truly the signature of man,[12] then such a surrender, if successful, would signal man’s final abolition.[13]
The love line that tied labor to leisure has been severed, or at least extremely frayed, in our effort to separate and compartmentalize those aspects of our lives. But a proper work/life balance cannot be achieved on a ledger, like increments and decrements on either end of a scale.
Labor and leisure are not two separate things that we are called to serve at separate times. They are made of the same stuff that fuels our participation in God’s creation. They are two sides of the same coin, which is God’s own currency. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.[14]
The Freedom of Obligation
In the final scene of the movie Jerry Maguire (no, not that final scene – the “You complete me!” final scene – but the final, final scene) Jerry and Dorothy walk hand-in-hand-in-hand with Dorothy’s five-year-old son, Ray, through a little league baseball park, no doubt on their way to living happily ever after.
But the audience is left with a nagging wonder about whether their relationship is built on a foundation of love or on the obligations borne out of what drew them together, including their love for Ray and their dedication to the same professional values.
Skepticism over the sincerity of Jerry’s love for Dorothy is understandable given that Jerry originally married Dorothy out of a sense of duty after she stood by him during his (apparent) professional downfall. Jerry is nothing if not a man of commitment. He sticks. His ‘yes’ means yes and his ‘no’ means no.[15]
I recall friends expressing dissatisfaction with the ending (again, I mean the very, very end, not the “You complete me!” scene, which was nearly universally lauded). They were dissatisfied because they were hoping for a Hollywood romance moment that never quite came.
To me, however, it was clear that Jerry and Dorothy were approaching their marriage like an adventure rather than an attraction, embarking side by side into the unknown, understanding that the journey would change them and that they would do it together.
This is what it means for a man and a woman to be joined as one flesh – not the intensity of the feelings they have for each other, but the depth of their commitment to live their lives no longer for themselves, but each for the other.
When Jesus talked about the wisdom of building a house on rock versus the foolishness of building a house on sand,[16] His words applied to building anything that is supposed to last, like a marriage. In the case of marriage, commitment is like rock whereas romantic love without commitment is nothing but sand, unable to weather the wind and the rain.
Obligation may not seem sexy, but it affords rock solid benefits, and not just in the context of marriage. In any relationship, as well as in a prayer life, there will be difficult and dry times. Obligation keeps you moving forward in perseverance.
In any relationship, including a relationship with God, there will be times when trust will be tested. Obligation builds your ability to trust as well as your trustworthiness. In any relationship, including in a spiritual community, there will be choices that overwhelm and temptations that derail. Obligation is the antidote to the dizziness of freedom that paralyzes and to the illusion of seduction that distracts.
Only love that is a duty can be free of anxiety and preference and therefore perfected.[17] Anxiety abounds in all the possibilities of free will, and so love being obligatory removes anxiety by removing all possibilities other than love.
Free will is best exercised through the discipline of limiting choices, and obligation helps ensure that the limits are externally imposed rather than self-imposed. Self-imposed limits are subject to change with mood and whim, since they are unobligated to any eternal ideal.
If determination falters at the first sign of a fight, then perhaps there never was anything worth fighting for. “The principle is this: that in everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure.”[18]
Without obligation’s aid in perseverance, you might never get past the obstacle, thus missing out on the greater joy that awaits on the other side. “In everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when no one would do it, except for necessity or honor.”[19]
Modern society views obligations as chains and shackles, but the alternative is enslavement to one’s own desires, however fleeting or petty. The mastery of self means freedom to choose one’s path unhampered by overriding appetites. But self-mastery must be directed to something greater than ourselves, something eternal and unchanging, something worth fighting for.
Commitment to a higher purpose is the only thing that can transform us from subjects serving our own desires into kings able to bend those desires to serve a higher purpose. Indeed, in so doing, we are imitating the example of Christ who by His obedience unto death demonstrated royal freedom.[20]
The word ‘religion’ is an Old French word derived from the Latin religio, meaning obligation, bond, or reverence. As such, being ‘spiritual but not religious’ is the equivalent of being in an open (that is, non-monogamous) marriage. “I mean, I like currently find God really, really attractive and fun to be around, even though He sometimes gets, like, really intense and stuff, so I just want to, like, be free to see other gods too, ya know?”
Just as having an open marriage is another way of saying that your partner is not worth your commitment, so too being spiritual but not religious is another way of saying that you appreciate how God is there for you when you need Him, but you aren’t ready to commit to changing your life for Him. Is it any wonder that the marriage success rate is massively higher for those who commit to regularly attending church services?
It seems that the ability to bind oneself in an exclusive relationship is the key to freely experiencing love, not to mention peace, joy, and meaning. How can anyone say that they have truly loved unless they have lived completely for someone else? As Chesterton said: “Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”[21]
Quick Hits
Where you keep your treasure, there you will find your heart.[22] The heart that yearns to return to the spiritual world lives apart from the heart that covets what the world and society values.
These two desires, for the treasures of heaven and for the treasures of the world, have been separated from almost the very beginning – on day two, in fact, when God separated the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.[23] From that moment on, seeking the desires of this world was destined to conflict with seeking heavenly desires.
In a way, this marked the birth of paradox.
Look around at life in society, pick almost any topic or issue, juxtapose it against humanity’s true intended nature, and BOOM, instant paradox! My guess is that, if you dig deep enough, every one of these paradoxes can be traced back to the conflict between heavenly desires and worldly desires. But don’t take my word for it, try it yourself.
To get you started, I offer below a few ‘quick hits.’ If none of these tweak your paradox nerve, never fear because Chesterton will be coming to the rescue.
- Virtue Breeds Vice
This is the paradox that began the paradox project, which became this blog, if you recall from the opening post. In a nutshell, the widespread societal exercise of virtue rewards a society with general and often vast prosperity. The vaster the prosperity, the more that complacency seeps in. Complacency eats away at the vigilance required to maintain virtue, and without vigilance to protect virtue, vice grows like weeds among the wheat.[24]
- Collectivism Benefits the Elites
Ostensibly, collectivism is meant to gather the largest pool of resources, wealth, and talent so that the pool may be distributed equitably to meet the needs of the masses. However, the necessary collection and redistribution will always be controlled by a small group of people whose special role confers power and status along with the resultant sense of entitlement.
Even the most well-meaning elites cannot resist succumbing to the “dragon sickness” – that corruption of the soul brought about by access to concentrated hordes of wealth or power. Equitable distribution of wealth cannot be accomplished through the direct distribution of resources, but only through the distribution and acceptance of responsibility at the level of individuals, families, and local communities.
- Pursuit of (Un)Happiness
A human chasing happiness is like a dog chasing a car. Neither realize that the goal is achieved in the chasing, not in the catching. Typically, when we pursue happiness we pursue it through accumulating influence, possessions, or experiences.
Once the pleasure of acquisition has faded, as it always does, its dissipation reveals a hole even deeper than the one it filled. The expectation of attainment is never met in the actuality of fulfillment. Blessed are those who learn early in life that pleasure is more of a dulling of misery than a state of happiness.
Happiness is something that can only be glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, with peripheral vision. When looked at directly, it vanishes. If you want to be happier, work for the happiness of others. If you want more out of life, expect less.
- The Joy of Suffering
We tend to equate joy with a feeling of elation evoked by good fortune, whether experienced or anticipated. In that sense, joy is a natural reaction to something good that happens to us. Rejoicing is subtly different. To rejoice is to consciously respond to the triumph of goodness over suffering.
Rejoicing is not a reflex or reaction, but rather a response or a choice. And without suffering, we are not afforded that choice. The tendency to run away from suffering is present in every one of us. Time and again we seek pleasure to mask suffering. But suffering is unavoidable, and unless we understand it and experience it, we will never learn and grown in love and compassion.
When we turn our focus from ourselves and our despair over suffering and instead pay attention to how goodness is working in the world, we find opportunities to take joy. In this refocusing, suffering is reconsidered from being an obstacle to becoming the necessary path.
While we don’t seek suffering, a life committed to avoiding suffering will produce anxiety not peace, emptiness not meaning, and fear not joy. As Chesterton said: “Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy.”[25]
- Practicing Death
Listen to society and you might hear the following pieces of advice for overcoming fear of death. Live life to the fullest. Yes, ok, good advice. Develop healthier habits to extend your life. Sure, why not. Above all, stop dwelling on your mortality. Absolutely NOT!
Death holds power over us only because it remains shrouded in mystery. The best way to alleviate the fear of inevitable death is to get to know it better. Memento mori, the discipline of meditating on one’s death, reminds its practitioners of what infuses meaning into life, enabling them to better live with purpose.
Socrates was on board, believing that the whole goal of philosophy, his trade, was to practice dying and death. In death, we face being stripped of everything to which we have become attached in life. Everything we know will be replaced with the unknown. Practicing death means practicing letting go in preparation for the final and ultimate detachment. If your entire life was spent accumulating, how can you be ready to let go?
As with any skill, detachment takes practice. What physical possessions do you fear losing even though they get in the way of living with purpose? Practice letting go. What desires have latched onto your heart, leaving it too full to experience joy? Practice letting go.
The better you are at letting go of attachments, the less scary death becomes.
- The Management Paradox
All organizations are flawed and in need of change, whether that change consist of minor tweaks or full overhauls. To become a change agent in a flawed organization, which is to say in any organization, one must achieve a certain level of influence.
But one’s level of influence depends highly on a demonstrated ability to produce results within the context of the organization’s culture, which is similarly flawed. This invariably involves seeking and getting promotions based on exhibiting characteristics valued by the organization, thus being rewarded for behaviors that are engendered by the (flawed) organizational culture.
Inevitably, this leads to the development of a layer of management and non-management influencers who share a certain set of commonly selected traits that reinforce rather than mitigate the organizational norms and values that the change agent originally sought to change.
Thus, affecting real change from within is hardly ever possible. The only ones left satisfied are the outside consultants.
- Dystopian Double Vision
George Orwell’s dystopian vision warned of the tyranny of oppression in which a central power controls all thoughts and behaviors. Aldous Huxley’s dystopian vision warned of the tyranny of abrogation in which citizens willingly trade rights for comfort and freedom for security.
While these seem to be starkly different forms of tyranny, perhaps the differences are only a matter of perspective. Oppression, after all, is in the eye of the beholder.
Proponents of applying Big Government solutions to all life’s problems might be inclined to view tyranny through democracy-colored glasses; whereas those who advocate limiting and dividing powers are apt to see any governmental step as treading on them. So articulated, the dystopian double visions appears divided along political lines, at least here in America.
Paradoxically, the common world view of those more inclined to the Huxleyan vision, the modern left, holds that oppression is what prevents people from living according to their basically good nature, and that oppression can only be alleviated by regulation, which is for the common good.
Conversely, modern conservativism resonates more with the Orwellian description, holding that human nature has the capacity for evil due to its brokenness, that the societal incentives provided by community, culture, and church are the best ways to encourage people to choose virtue, and that this is best accomplished when the government leaves people alone.
Chesterton Lightning Round
While this book has been, up to this point, liberally sprinkled by Chesterton’s witticism, which can be expected to continue, we would be remiss if we did not pause for a quick dip in the pond of paradoxes inked by the prince himself; for Chesterton understood that truth itself springs therefrom.
The Chesterton selections below, identified by essay or book chapter, relate to paradoxes encountered living an everyday life. From this small sampling you will understand, if you don’t already, how Chesterton’s hand has been guiding our journey all along.
- “The Twelve Men”
In this essay, Chesterton sets forth his oft repeated belief that the most important things in life should be left to common people. The experts and specialists can be trusted with trifles like discovering the solar system or cataloging a library, but decisions about life and death, freedom and imprisonment must be left to ordinary folks. That’s why a jury is made up of ordinary people.
But why twelve? Well, if Jesus Christ saw fit to give twelve unimpressive, ordinary men the authority to bind and loose the sins of the world, how could we do any better? Common, ordinary humans can be trusted with important things because they are the ones who have a plain, matter-of-fact relationship with the truth. They also know that truth is very often paradoxical even when it is practical.
Chesterton said, “The four or five things that it is most practically essential that a man should know, are all of them what people would call paradoxes. That is to say, that though we all find them in life to be mere plain truths, yet we cannot easily state them in words without being guilty of seeming verbal contradictions.”
He listed a few of those things:
- “One of them, for instance, is the unimpeachable platitude that the man who finds most pleasure for himself is often the man who least hunts for it.”
- “Another is the paradox of courage; the fact that the way to avoid death is not to have too much aversion to it…. Whoever will lose his life, the same shall save it.”
- “[Yet another is] the more a man looks at a thing, the less he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing the less he knows it.”
Chesterton had the knack of seeing the plain truth in paradox because Chesterton understood that this world is not the ultimate reality, and most often is its inversion.
- “On Lying in Bed”
Chesteron said, “If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals.”
Major morals are those eternal notions of right and wrong that make us either a friend or an enemy of God. Minor morals are the fashions of the day that ensure our neighbors don’t look askance at us when we’re out for a walk. Social media combined with cancel culture amplified both the outrage for violating minor taboos and the neck-breaking rate at which the taboos change.
The media darlings of yesterday woke up today only to find that their tweets from last week, once considered a model for all, are now some sort of forbidden “-ism.” Meanwhile, all types of depravity performed under the mantra of “this is my body” are celebrated, in utter willful ignorance of the unfathomably beautiful and eternal gift we were given when the same words, “this is my body,” were said in self-sacrifice[26] rather than prideful self-worship.
A life spent in pleasing the world’s fickleness and satiating one’s own appetites is a life spent neglecting the health of one’s soul in pursuit of vanity. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world just to lose his soul?[27]
- “The Toy Theater”
Chesteron said, “The man writing on motherhood is merely an educationalist; the child playing with a doll is a mother.”
The most serious thing we can do is play. Play has no reason other than playing. When actions become a profession, they cease being a means unto themselves and start being a means to an end; they become derivative.
We work to make money so we can someday afford to play. We work to obtain power and influence so that we can pursue our desires. Work is rarely done for its own sake, and when it is it becomes a hobby, which is a form of play.
In another essay, Chesterton wrote that, “the true object of all human life is play.”[28] In comparing Earth to a task garden and Heaven to a playground, he suggested that the essence of human life – what we were made for – was play.
The man who as a child once knew the high seriousness of play spends the rest of his life trying to recover that lost wisdom of innocence. This sentiment is captured wonderfully by the poem, “Lied Vom Kindsein” (or “Song of Childhood”) by Peter Handke,[29] whose opening lines are (in English and in Deutsch):
When the child was a child Als das Kind Kind war,
It walked with its arms swinging, ging es mit hängenden Armen,
wanted the brook to be a river, wollte der Bach sei ein Fluß,
the river to be a torrent, der Fluß sei ein Strom,
and this puddle to be the sea. und diese Pfütze das Meer.
- “The Riddle of the Ivy”
Chesteron said, “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.”
People refer to vacation travel as “getting away,” as if the joy resides in simply being somewhere else. But true joy comes only upon returning home and discovering this almost magical power to see familiar things from a new perspective, as if for the first time.
There is fatigue in familiarity from saturation of the senses that dulls the mind and darkens memories. The disorientation of traveling to an unfamiliar place awakes the mind and the senses such that the first glimpse of home from afar on the journey back really seems like a first glimpse.
Travel works to remove the presumptions of familiarity while leaving the intimacy intact. In that regard, encountering paradox functions much like traveling to a foreign land.
- “The Wildness of Domesticity” from What’s Wrong with the World
It has been said that wealth buys freedom. Chesterton challenges this bit of modern wisdom by challenging the modern notion of freedom. It is the trap of prosperity to believe that the only freedom worth pursuing is the freedom that can be purchased. This is not life-affirming, but life-denying.
For Chesterton, “the difficulty is not the problem of poverty, but the problem of wealth. It is the special psychology of leisure and luxury that falsifies life.” The trap is baited by the false notion that the home is a prison of monotony.
“But of all the modern notions generated by mere wealth the worst is this: the notion that domesticity is dull and tame. Inside the home (they say) is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. This is indeed a rich man’s opinion.”
In a society that enjoys vast prosperity, all are susceptible to embracing the rich man’s opinion. We are led to believe that adventure is available only through wealth, and so we pursue wealth rather than pursuing adventure. In this way, wealth shackles and burdens.
True freedom comes from understanding that there are no prerequisites to adventure’s call, and indeed that even those daily inconveniences can be opportunities for adventure if only we considered them as such.[30] “For a plain, hardworking man the home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.”
Wealth buys the fantasy that freedom and adventure are found outside the home, which in turn creates the false impression that the home is dull and tame.
- “The Common Vision” from What’s Wrong with the World
Chesterton said, “But what men like is not the triumph of superiors, but the struggle of equals; and, therefore, they introduce even into their competitive sports an artificial equality.” Here Chesterton is speaking to the nature of two things: competition and men, as in male humans.
As to competition, what fun is it to demolish an inferior opponent? When we succeed against resistance, we want to be assured that the resistance was indeed formidable. Competition is not an event, it’s a process. While competitors seek glory in winning, the purpose of such a singular drive to win is ultimately not in achieving glory but instead in the pursuit of improvement towards excellence, and not just for one’s self but also for one’s opponent.
That is why, even though we battle with all our strength and determination to avoid defeat, defeat in competition does not defeat us, but strengthens us for another battle. Come victory or failure, there is always another battle. That is the whole point.
As to the nature of men, Chesterton views the almost compulsive need for fairness and balance in competition as a masculine trait. How deflating to give every ounce of effort, to leave everything on the field, in eking out a victory, only to discover that the opponent wasn’t really trying. How much more deflating to dominate an altogether inferior opponent.
Vibrant and virtuous masculinity demands a battle among equals where both sides have a real chance of victory and of defeat. If this is true, then at least in this one way, transwomen (that is, biological men) who compete in women’s sports have successfully discarded a part of their manhood — the part that values a hard-fought victory and reviles the easy triumph of superiority.
As Chesterton warned, “this is the huge modern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul.”
- “The Universal Stick” from What’s Wrong with the World
Chesterton said, “In short, he must (as the books on Success say) give ‘his best’; and what a small part of a man ‘his best’ is! His second and third best are often much better.”
In modern society, we revere experts, and one becomes an expert by specializing in a narrow field. Specialization requires that we seek to be become a virtuoso in one thing, and preferably the thing that we do best.
However, when we compare ourselves to others who do that same thing the best, we might find that we are quite mediocre. Whereas if we compared ourselves to others who specialize in the thing we do second or third best, we might find that we are among the greats.
Staking too much self-worth on success in a professional specialization risks a lifetime of bitter disappointment, particularly when that specialization was chosen because it was one did best. Perhaps the better advice is to measure success on one’s second and third best as well.
- “The Modern Surrender of Woman” from What’s Wrong with the World
Chesterton said, “[N]othing is necessary to the country except that the men should be men and the women women. We knew this; we thought the women knew it even more clearly; and we thought the women would say it. Suddenly, without warning, the women have begun to say all the nonsense that we ourselves hardly believed when we said it.”
For Chesterton, Feminism, at its core, was about eradicating the line between the feminine and the masculine by conscripting masculinity and denigrating femininity. In this way, Feminism declares masculinity to be superior in such a way that to deny women from accessing the advantages of masculinity would be a violation of their civil rights.
This cements the false idea in society that femininity is somehow inferior, while at the same time shaming men for being too much like men. Thus, both women and men are encouraged to pursue a diluted version of masculinity; meanwhile the virtues of femininity are abandoned to wither and die.
[1] The title of this section is taken from G.K. Chesterton’s book of essays on social criticism, What’s Wrong with the World.
[2] 2 Corinthians 12:7–10
[3] The title of this section is taken from a book written by theologian Nicolas of Cusa in 1440, called Of Learned Ignorance.
[4] Of course, the true beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. Proverbs 9:10.
[5] For example, while being questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee in her confirmation hearing to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson stated that she was unable to provide a definition of “woman” because she is not a biologist. Such an attitude represents complete abdication of judgement to the expert class.
[6] Chesterton said that the most important things should be decided by ordinary people, because those things require wisdom. Trifles require specialized knowledge, and so they can be left to the experts. “When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.” G.K. Chesterton, “The Twelve Men” from Tremendous Trifles.
[7] Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker.
[8] Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, paragraph 873.
[9] See Matthew 10:30, Luke 12:7, Isaiah 43:1, Psalms 139:13.
[10] 1 Corinthians 12:18-23
[11] Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 38:24 NRSV-CI.
[12] See Chapter 1 of Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, observing that one of the few things we really know about prehistoric humans is that they created art on cave walls. From the very beginning of Man, Man was set apart from other creatures in that Man was the only creature able to create.
[13] “Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal car… Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.” C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man.
[14] Matthew 22:21
[15] See Matthew 5:37.
[16] Matthew 7:24-27.
[17] “Consequently, only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured. This security of eternity casts out all anxiety and makes love perfect.” Hong and Hong, The Essential Kierkegaard, “Works of Love.”
[18] G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World.
[19] G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World.
[20] Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, paragraph 908.
[21] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.
[22] Matthew 6:21.
[23] Genesis 1:6-8.
[24] “But while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.” Matthew 13:25, NSRV-CI.
[25] G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.
[26] Luke 22:19
[27] Mark 8:36
[28] G.K. Chesterton, All Things Considered, “Oxford from Without.”
[29] The poem inspired and was prominently featured in the beautiful 1987 film, Wings of Desire, directed by Wim Wenders.
[30] As Chesterton put it, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”