I’ve written
about David Brooks before. He is a toffee-nosed
middle-of-the-road sort-of-conservative social commentator for the New York
Times. He is priggish and frequently clucks his tongue over our decadent
society. His
preferred society would, I think, be a cartoonish Eisenhower-era America, with
everyone living in a little white house and going to church every Sunday, in a
rocket car (because David Brooks is a great
believer in progress).
Seriously,
people like this kill me. They long for the days of Big Religion, when everyone
went to church except the really bad
people. People like Brooks often whine about how society has suffered
without Religion as a Unifying Force.
O yes indeedy,
it’s a unifying force, all right. Go ask all the Lutherans and Catholics who
died in the Thirty Years War, back in the seventeenth century, about how
powerfully they felt about their religion as a unifying force.
But religion
is also a civilizing force! the David Brookses cry. Music! Poetry! Art!
(They
overlook all the music and poetry and art that’s been created without benefit
of religion.)
This gives me a splitting headache. First of all: “pockets of spiritual
rigor”? Does Christian fundamentalism, or Muslim fundamentalism for that
matter, constitute a “pocket of spiritual rigor”? If so, in what way do they
add to the value of their respective cultures?
And why
would a “secular” future be “propelled” by “religious motivation”? This baffles
me completely. I’m a non-believer myself. Can I somehow “propel” myself with
“religious motivation” that doesn’t involve believing in a particular religion?
Or do I just sideline myself, and allow my culture to be “propelled”?
I don’t know
why people read Brooks seriously. I only read him to reassure myself what a
completely fatuous bore he is.
Now excuse
me while I propel myself into the secular future.
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