I can only imagine how lonely it is being a materialist.
There is no plan to the universe. There is no god above you, only sky. There is no one who really knows you, all the way down. There is just you. Every day this “you” goes out into a world where most things are trying to hurt, exploit, and manipulate all the other things; worse, they’re supposed to be that way, as Darwin so helpfully informed us. And if you want to make any progress through this war zone toward your goals, no one is really going to help get you there—except, again, you.
The resulting pressure of being a consciously self-conscious
materialist must be unbearable. How can someone as limited as the “you” knows
itself to be deal with an infinite number of outcomes and an infinite number of
possible obstacles (most of them the people closest to you)? No wonder Nietzsche
went insane. But there are workarounds. That pressure can be dulled by routines;
smothered by the anodyne embrace of sex, drugs, and alcohol; ignored by the
mass of flesh-colored emoticons that pass for people in our logic-free society.
But I believe most often it is channeled into the Cause.
The Cause can be anything. Better schools for the kids. A
new car. The top of the career ladder. Conservative politics. Progressive politics.
A famous Instagram account. Freedom. Safety. A Hollywood career. Global
warming. The perfect body. One more dollar. One more cat.
All that really matters in the long run is that the Cause
inevitably becomes part of the Self. It has to, really—the Self is the only
cause-er we know from the inside out, and therefore the only force in the world
that is personal. Nobody knows what is really making that other Joe do
anything, the same way nobody knows what makes gravity do anything. Some folks
with funny Greek names (psychiatrists and physicists, respectively) have pretty
good guesses, but they still don’t know. All they know is what the stuff
is made of and some of what it’s doing. But we know the Cause—no matter
who you are, for you it is the obvious, normal thing to do. Often it is also
the thing most noticeable about you, betrayed by social media posts, bumper
stickers, clothing, attitude. You give it life, and in return it becomes part
of what you are. How many people have you met that one of the first things they
uttered was “I am (whatever Cause they are currently chasing)”? The Cause, no
matter how trivial, becomes part and parcel of the person. When it succeeds,
they do, and when it doesn’t…
Well, that is not to be contemplated, for no man ever hated
his own Cause. It must be the fault of all those other Causes out there, competing
for the same limited resources, time, applause, and support. In this world
there are only those who support the Cause, and those who hinder it. And since
the Cause is part of the Self, there are only those who help you, and those who
hurt. Failure is personal: it is other people. And the vast majority of them
are out to get you.
Materialism wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Instead of
turning the universe against you, it was supposed to bring freedom from the
Great Enslaver, Religion. After all, hadn’t it given us the Industrial
Revolution? Was not Utopia in sight at the turn of the last century? Finally,
we could feed and clothe the world, travel around it at lightning speeds, and explain
virtually every natural phenomenon (not to mention the supernatural) we saw
along the way. Man’s labor could accomplish anything. We bored through
mountains, bridged oceans, harnessed the lightning bolt, caught and rode the
very winds. There was a price, of course—work became mostly boring, stifling,
repetitive, and soul-killing. But we didn’t believe in souls anymore, and until
we figured out how to fix that (and of course we would) there were escape hatches.
Sex has always been a popular choice, but now there was “reaching the top of
the ladder” and “vacation” and “recreation” and most importantly “progress” to
help it out. Every machine needs a little oiling now and then, and materialism’s
two major oils were sex and science. Each could save you from the perils of the
other—sex made the Self feel real in a sterile scientific world, and science made
the ugly biproducts of a sexual liberty less and less of a problem.
Enter Roe v. Wade.
Now Roe v. Wade is dead, and the response is showing just
how much of a Cause it is for so many people out there. When those judges
struck it down, they struck down all those Selves, too. No wonder the
Christians are being exhorted to “be sensitive” or “watch our tones”—they are strolling
through the middle of a mass grave, and a cheery whistle just seems like the
final unwitting insult to the Apocalypse. “Horsemen charging, flashing sword
and glittering spear, hosts of selves, heaps of Causes, dead bodies without end—they
stumble over the bodies!”
Long ago, a reluctant African academic also lived through an
Apocalypse. He was exhorted to be sensitive, to watch his tone, to cautiously mourn
with those who mourn, to love these Selves as they loved themSelves and their own threatened bodies. Instead he
glanced at the shattered Cause around him, and he gave the following
exhortation to those around him:
“There is no need to be instructed to love oneself and one’s body; we always love what we are and what is inferior to us but belongs to us, according to an immovable unvarying natural law, one which was also made for animals, because even animals love themselves and their bodies. It therefore remains for us to receive instruction about what is above us, and what is close to us. Scripture says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. The aim of the commandment is love, a twofold love of God and of one’s neighbor. No class of things to be loved is missing from these two commandments…The person who lives a just and holy life is one who is a sound judge of these things. He is also a person who has ordered his love, so that he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less (or love too little what should be loved more), or love two things equally if one of them should be loved either less or more than the other, or love things either more or less if they should be loved equally. No sinner, qua sinner, should be loved; every human self, qua human self, should be loved on God’s account; but God should be loved for Himself.”—Augustine of Hippo, De Doctrina Christina Bk. I
Love God, love His Cause, and love all those selves out there like they were your Self, in that order. That includes the million-plus helpless kids who now have a better chance to see the light of day.
Be thankful, and rejoice,
for Material and Cause is not all there is. We know it, because Roe is dead,
and the fight is just starting.
