Bruce Logan
Back in the 1950s (my childhood), before instant news on television, short movies (shorts) were shown in cinemas before the feature film. They varied between news items and documentaries. Often the documentary would finish with a voice-over, “just another step in man’s conquest of nature”. I was captivated.
Decades later I discovered that nature is never conquered. The “conquest” of nature, the overreach to create heaven on earth, is a con-trick. It’s always about control by a political or religious elite: a vainglorious attempt to impose their version of Utopia on the rest of us.
Nevertheless we continue to be obsessed by what can only be called “chronological snobbery”; forever hopeful of creating a social justice Utopia. The first thing the Utopians must do, following Frederick Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of values”, is rewrite history. The old humanity must be destroyed and the new one created.
The method is to disconnect children from their heritage and to deny their inheritance by politicising morality and identity.
The observable virtues of human character, courage, self-restraint, humility, loyalty to family and country, reverence and compassion must be translated into political values such as diversity, ‘tolerance’ (which is really affirmation), psychological self-esteem instead of moral self-respect and the creation of an identity out of self-realisation rather than from loyalty to family and nation.
The authority of the classical and Christian virtues – the superstructure of human character – relies on a child’s understanding of the past, responsibility in the present and hope for the future. They nourish the child’s mental and spiritual health.
The new manufactured child is so politicised that he or she is seduced into believing that the world must be reshaped to suit the “sacredness” of his/her own desires.
The most recent contemporary expression of the great transvaluation is the claim that we can conquer nature by declaring our own sexual identity. The linguistic ambiguity of gender which follows, must be imposed to control the national story. Everything is fluid.
That continuing and authoritative ambiguity is made obligatory by the social justice gatekeepers. The natural family must be seen as an institution of pathological abuse. The “We” of nationhood is denied; religious devotion and love of one’s country are made a fanatical exercise in hypocrisy.
Denying transcendent truth, the biology of male and female must be undermined. The self must choose its own identity in order to survive. And that identity in 2021 is found almost entirely in race or what used to be called sexual behaviour but is now called orientation or gender.
For most of my lifetime, we took for granted that identity was a natural consequence of intergenerational family order. Now identity is rooted absolutely in race and sexual behaviour. As the Teaching Council Aotearoa declares, “race is a power construct.”
It’s a lie. A lie that is enforced by virtue-signalling elites. The media, many university faculties, government ministries, some churches, and even commerce have submitted to the doctrine of self-creation. They are society’s rhetoric runners.
The ancient Greeks gave us four cardinal virtues: courage, justice, moderation and wisdom. However, as they pointed out, justice, moderation, and wisdom need to be reinforced by courage. And it is courage that has been undermined by the endemic denial of permanent truth. Without that, courage has no sustenance and the other virtues are merely instruments of power. There is nothing to be courageous about.
That is bad for everyone but especially for young men. They become wimps, forever unfulfilled and immature. We should hardly be surprised that mental health disorders are increasing with such rapidity.
And if there’s nothing to be courageous about, the self-creating individual demands the support of the state to confirm and protect his or her identity. The great sin is not pride but offence. The cure is not humility: it is hate speech legislation.
Young people need to be challenged. Integrity is about the development of one’s character. It is not about protesting our way to Utopia. Of course, character development is difficult because it requires experience, discipline and wisdom and that’s the problem. Virtue-signalling anarchic protest costs nothing. Any similarity it has with virtue is purely coincidental. It conquers nothing; neither nature nor self.
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