WALKING
FORWARD WITH GUIDES AT THE BACK
(The
Romance of the Non-existing Future)
Our era is marked by a special
attraction for the romance of a non-existing future. It is a psychological
fallacy wherewith man refuses to understand what is happening in the present
and seeks relief in the much-easier thoughts of the future. . .since the
future is non-existent. Man, sort of, forgets his father and grandfather in
his concern to map out the life of his grandson. We refuse to remember the
dead; we worry of the unborn. The novels and films about the future excite
us more than those of the past.
Well, there is a charm in the sight of
inter-galactic battles that have not happened; only horror for battles
that had been fought in the soils of Europe and Asia. We look up rather to
the man ahead of his time and never to a man behind his time.
Yet this cult of the future is a perversity
that shows the weakness and cowardice of our age. Psychologists call it
flight into fantasy. The ugliness of modern armaments is that they had been
made for a war to be fought in the future. A realist looks and learns from
the past; a dreamer looks at the future. Inventors solve problems of the
past; politicians promise bridges to the future or something like the year
2004.
The future does not exist. And man rushes
towards the future because of his fear of the past, both past evils and past
good. He fears the evils of the past and the good that could solve those
evils. So, man, as from the beginning, has not learned from his past
mistakes, i.e. from history. He rejects the evils of the past. But he also
rejects the good of the past because it demands too much from him; the
virtues are unbearable, the faiths are untenable, the heroisms are
inimitable.
The future, as in all psychosis, is a
refuge for one's inability to imitate the heroes or even the common men of
the past. The future is Erehwon, nowhere, unreality. Man keeps on inventing
new ideas because he is afraid to try the old ones; the old ones are too
demanding. Modern man is too weak for those.
All men who contributed to the future were
those with their eyes in the past. The Renaissance that modernized Europe
was a return to the past. And the True Great Catholic Reformation looked
back to Patristic writings. Looking towards the future is an imbecility
called Nirvana.
Europe is today aiming at a United Europe.
But everything they are doing is leading to a divided Europe. They refuse to
look back and see that, once upon a time, Europe was indeed united. .
..under the Catholic Church. but nobody wants to try that again; it is too
demanding to be a good Catholic. Too much self-denial is involved. So, they
look to the future. And in their futuristic drive, they will never try the
past, the only time it really worked.
What is wrong with man's thinking? He
thinks whatever is past is impossible. Man today lives by slogans like,
"You cannot put the clock back." The truth is that you can. Try
it. Anything constructed by man, like a clock or society, can be
reconstructed on past plans. And, for the Catholic Church, the only way
forward is to look back. . .at the golden age of Catholicism, the Patristic
age.
(11-17-02)
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