Reviews by Hubie Goode: National Dissipation and Soren Kierkegaard

National Dissipation
and Søren Kierkegaard

Part 1

dis·si·pa·tion –noun

a wasting by misuse: the dissipation of a fortune.

mental distraction; amusement; diversion.

dissolute way of living, esp. excessive drinking of liquor;intemperance.

Perhaps the beginner of historical provocateurs from the 1800’s, Kierkegaard lived as he lived in order to, as he put it: “create difficulties everywhere.” Living from 1813-1855, he was a man whom many of those who were to come later largely ignored and yet, his work influenced them with an “underground” thought life. Such other figures as Freud, Marx and Wellhausen could not have largely cared for Soren Kierkegaar or his writings, but little did they understand the ground floor influence he had over their own writings and others whose influence we still feel today in our society, much to our own regret.

His writings were often uninhibited but also cryptic. In fact, it took about a hundred years before his writings were given the light of day in the English language. When they did appear in English, they made quite the bombastic arrival upon the scene, as they were exactly the kind of thoughts that the world was looking for at that time. Known as the “melancholy dane” he was more often than not a sort of “God drunk”, if you will.

Considering the content of his writings and the brisk pace and fanciful nature they contained, it is surprising that he had almost no influence at all and remained unknown in the English speaking world until around one hundred years after his death. One possibility for this anonymity can be found in the makeup of western society during his lifetime.

Leading To Kierkegaard

The 1800’s were perhaps the most colorful and multifaceted of any century known to man in terms of the philosophical and religious influences that still remain with us today. Wellhausen’s arguments against the inspiration of Biblical scripture and the resulting rise of religious liberalism swept across Europe and attempted to conquer the west at the turn of the century. Liberal Christianity was the “cool thing to do” of the day.

In the early 1900’s, the liberal view of Christianity was a dominant thought process among denominations and schools of thought and education. Groundless human optimism was now the idol of the day and replaced the categoric theoloical tenets taught from the Bible. The deity of Christ was rendered irrelevant in the minds of the intellectual elite, and infected the common man also. Jesus became a teacher like any other historical figure, and a good man who taught about love and peace among all mankind. The cross became a metaphor for sacrificial living and less and less of an act of REAL salvation for a fallen mankind.

Personal salvation became an anachronism as education, optimism, positive thinking and noble ideals became the substitute. Darwinian evolution had made salvation more of a deliverance from selfishness and anger rather than any kind of window into everlasting life. Such a thing was now considered “grandpa and grandma’s” ideas.

Hope for the future had become, as it is today, a project of improving the world. Waiting on the blessed hope of a return of Christ was a nice idea, but obviously just a “social convention”. For the church, and I specify the Christian church, the mission was more or less now a matter of improving society. Despite the unflinching position of scripture, and especially the ideas of Revelation, Daniel and other books of the Bible that deal with end time prophecy, the mental attitude of the church shifted from the horrors for mankind that those books promise, to a more rational position of the church itself re-making mankind and society in order to create a perfect world for Christ to return to.

Happy Days are Here Again

The early decades of the 1900’s found the new human millennium a proud focus of the day. The World Council of Churches was formed. The National Counsel of Churches was formed in America. Christianity was now this kind of “thing” without form that moved among the people and made them “giddy” with a hope they had never known before. The future simply HAD to get better and better.

The world was now, after all, beyond the dark ages. There would be no war or famine or pestilence. The level of intelligence among man had reached an all time high. Never again would there be bloody conflict, ......for man had figured it all out.

So long sad times, Go long bad times, We are rid of you at last

Howdy gay times, Cloudy gray times, You are now a thing of the past

Happy days are here again, The skies above are clear again, So let’s sing a song of cheer again, Happy days are here again

Altogether shout it now, There’s no one, Who can doubt it now, So let’s tell the world about it now, Happy days are here again

Your cares and troubles are gone, There’ll be no more from now on, From now on ...

Happy days are here again, The skies above are clear again, So, Let’s sing a song of cheer again

Happy times, Happy nights, Happy days Are here again!

Copyrighted in 1929 by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen

Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

It was also thought that the 1929 crash was actually a great spiritual lesson. Man should not speculate on his hard earned cash for future monies and also keep money stored away that could have assisted the poor. The depression made everyone nicer and more considerate as the whole nation shared in a group hug of sympathy while experiencing the same afflictions. Very familiar isn’t it? When you consider that the polls of our present day show that people are now considering relationships and family more important than material wealth buildup during our current financial crisis. Sure, this is a good thing, but one hopes it isn’t just a result of the price for such thinking being within reach of everyone’s pocketbook.

Advances in science and technology also had the world thinking with Pollyannaish aplomb. Surely the world was coming together under the umbrella of progress promised by all the new inventions of the last 150 years. This would surely promote a shared vision among the whole world. In their foggy utopian dream world, the nations of the world then watched with bemusement as a power seeker in Germany made promises to the German people that it was they who were destined to rule this new world of mankind.

Germany was an amazing place to be at the time. It lead the world in philosophy, theology, medicine, and many forms of theology, and also including early work on a little something called “splitting the atom”. Hitler, with his thousands of brown shirted social control followers, and millions of troops, moved into the deadly business of war. This was no utopian peaceful takeover. This was the ugly, sinful side of man once again raising its “hydra” like head.

Cut Off One Head, Another Grows

Stalin, too, was a part of this dragon headed menace that rose up in the early 1900’s. Kulaks and Ukrainians were virtually exterminated. Christians and Jews alike were brutally persecuted in this dangerously communist land. The world ignored the Bolsheviks too, just like the Nazis, and the promise to bring communism to the whole world. Communist organizations were allowed inside of America’s own political structures, much to their own future dismay.

In today’s world we have the radical Islamic Muslim threat which has already made itself know with the attack on the World Trade Center and the ongoing terrorist threat. Recently thousands showed up to protest the proposed erection of a Muslim mosque on the site of the World Trade Center, and the national news gave it barely a passing thought. Jailed and outraged movie stars were more important to the news of the day. Few realize that America is full of mole cells all across the nation. These are people who are working and living the American way of life just like you and me, yet they are waiting for the mass call to arms, and when that day comes millions of neighborhoods will be under siege. Try and remember that I told you that when you find nothing wrong with President Obama claiming America is NOT a Christian nation. Our Muslim President.

How to Take Over A Country

Connecting back to the early 1900’s, there was in Italy a new thing called Fascism that was taking hold. It’s leader was Benito Mussolini. No matter what you call it, Fascism, Nazism, or Communism, they are all basically the same things, a political excuse for a dictator to grab a country. They kill all those who disagree with them and beat the country into submission by forcing their will upon the people, much like signing bills into law that the majority did not vote for. It is amazing to me how western intellectuals concern themselves with epistemological niceties and social conventions when in fact there are cruel brutalities behind all of these so called social reforms.

All of these “social reforms” lead to World War II. How could this be? Wasn’t mankind beyond all this? Had not we all figured it out? We had relegated the Bible and God’s Word to a quaint thing of the past that had been a figment of the uneducated, we were better than that now. We had evolved. And yet, here we were again. Surely that couldn’t be. Surely we could now provide our own salvation.

World War I was a piker compared to the carnage of WWII. Man’s invention, fueled by his quest for power, now marched millions of troops into the hell of mass murder under the guise of wartime. Planes flew high and into the night, entombed like the sacrificial right. Rockets few over great distances and blew human bodies into multiple pieces like so much shark chum. The massive explosion of cordite and hatred that was World War II was brought to a halt by atomic clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Forty or fifty million people had died in the war, and the bulk of the world’s substance had disappeared in the conflagration, trillions of dollars of it.

Umm....Oops?

The world was now stunned at it’s own lack of control over events. How could all this have happened? Weren’t we now evolved beyond such things? The world turned to the church at this time for the answers to the grander scale. But the true church had been removed. The liberal church now had it’s place, and had been caught with its pants down, so to speak. The majority of society now felt betrayed by the church. They had surely been hoodwinked. Millions of grave sites filled with young men who had been full of promise now presented a cold slap of reality to those who had believed the church when it said that mankind had outgrown the old teachings of the Bible.

Classic religious liberalism rolled over and died. The liberal establishment now needed a new clarion call. The educational world now joined them in this quest for something else to hang their hat on in the search for answers. Liberalism was a myth that had been blackjacked and crated by the stubborn facts of reality.

And that’s where Kierkegaard comes in.

More on this next time.