Things pressing my mind

A lot of things are pressing my mind.

First of all the book I am writing, which kept me away from blogging. I am at a crucial point, where I am trying to explain to a possible reader, which means essentially to myself by putting myself in the place of a possible reader, the main tenet of Christianity: that funny doctrine which says that the divine ground of all things we call God is at the same time one and three. By a possible reader I don't mean a Christian believer, but any man who, if he just recognizes to be educated, should also recognize to be believer in some authority. Because of this I try to explain to myself through him why to believe in Christ leads us to that funny doctrine of three in one, which is the most translucent account of reality ever given (consonant with the best of science). And therefore that to believe in Christ is the most rational thing any man could do.

This leads me to the other things that press my mind, which on the contrary pull me toward blogging to get rid of the turmoil in which they keep it (I won't say how otherwise this turmoil risks to annoy my wife, forced to listen to me).

Europe, once the land of Christianity, in the last centuries has been progressively turning away from it, a turn which has taken in recent decades a sudden acceleration. The academic, media, and political elites not only act as if indifferent top Christianity, which isn't a novelty, but take a stance toward it that in the best of cases tends simply to erase it from history, in the worst they openly fight it as backward and oppressive.

Does this sound familiar to the American reader of this blog?

Christianity is a belief, a belief is an opinion, and opinions, however they may seems to motivate people's actions, are not fit for a scientific understanding of them. So the point goes. That's why people who think this way hardly will become readers of my book, even though I am writing it for them too. They feel exempt, in fact, from knowing what Christianity is about, and for that matter any other of those beliefs equally called religion. Deemed supernatural, they have no pertinence for those who want to attain themselves to nature. Because, lucky them, they look as if they knew what nature is. (Being so, I'd like to ask them what Einstein's theory of relativity says. As for me, not being a mathematician, I was helped to understand it by the study of the "savage mind", i. e. the thought of archaic or primitive peoples.)

In America, this way of thinking, let's call it "liberal", is also widespread in the "main stream" media, academia, and politics (let's think, alas, of the present administration). Luckily, though, there is in America a more powerful "conservative" resistance to it that in Europe.

Still another thing that presses my mind: the international situation. And to say this means largely the state of the Muslim world. It means Islam, with its home consequences in the Western world.

The peculiar thing that liberals don't seem to realize, is that their way of thinking involves them in an blatant contradiction.

It shows it well their loathing of the foreign policy doctrine of "exporting democracy". Odd thing, if one thinks that they wouldn't let go an inch of their right to do as they like, without an outcry of "oppression", "Nazism", or the like! But when other peoples live under oppressive and nazi-like regimes, they don't seem to be moved.

Perhaps they think that living under political-religious regimes of the Iranian kind is what people there like, and, because what anybody likes has to be granted, we shouldn't interfere. Or they rather think that democracy, while good for us, would be disruptive in other peoples' lives. So, while enjoying the benefits of democracy, they ask who are we to tell others how to live. Too bad that when it concerns us they are quite ready to do it.

We? How can you say that? To us, who are all for tolerance? There you have it. Tolerance. You decide what to tolerate and what not. I actually know that you find the Tea Party quite intolerable. Why don't you find equally intolerable Muslims?

The point worth to notice, with tolerance, is that if you grant a right to somebody, you obligate others. Who might not like it. But have to swallow it.

As for me, I always thought that, either democracy is good also for others, or that it is no good even for us. Of course, this means to find a notion of democracy that could be shared.

Of one thing I am sure: it can't be defined on the basis of tolerance. Should we do it, we would turn democracy into a most oppressive system.

Here I close, because the things that press my mind are so heavy loaded that they would require a book to exhaust them. Ah, I forgot, I am writing it.

HP