Monday, April 23, 2007

the world, which we call for freedom of choice

More discussion about this freedom which we so zealously fight for, and so valiantly proclaim when we feel another wrongs us. Unfortunately, we fail to see, that this freedom comes with a high price, a price we probably don't mind paying, because in the small picture, it benefits us, but in the larger picture, we lose so much from it.

This is US today: the generation that wants to be free, including free from making a choice. Nothing is absolute, and nothing is fixed. Everything can be questioned and everything can be wrong. Trust nothing but your own self, because all others may be wrong. This are probably slogans chanted every single day, in hopes that one will not be dragged down by the 'rules' of religion or culture.

This is an interesting description of (probably the youth) the generation today by G.K Chesterton:
The new rebel is a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore, he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus, he write some book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book, a novel, in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then he curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then as a philosopher that all life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts. Then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always encouraged in undermining his own mind. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality, and in his book on ethnics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.
~ excerpt from Ravi Zacharias' Deliver Us from Evil

The problem today is many want to live by their own ideas. The ability to challenge everything gives one no responsiblity, not having to answer to anyone about anything. The idea of relativity gives one so much control (or at least the feeling that they are), that no one can challenge their position, because they have the right to ask back, and poke holes at any structure that may 'endanger' them.




2 comments:

lishun said...

haha it's the "why?" "why not?" syndrome

peasantboy said...

haha. u mean, unable to make a decision syndrome? :)