The New American has published an interesting article written by Sam Blumenfeld and dealing with the American transistion into our current state of dumbness defined by just enough literacy to read advertisements and to struggle through textbooks written to the purposes of the leadership of the day — Looking Backward 123 Years Later
I knew about John Dewey’s strange views on human beings and human society. I’d also read Bellamy’s Looking Backward about two years ago after being given a copy from the piles of leftovers at a used-book sale. It was well-written in the style of a government pamphlet on how to avoid catching the flu; the story seemed to flow except for the fact that there was really no story and no human characters of the sort which could come into conflict as they did even in the gentlest of stories by O. Henry or Nathaniel Hawthorne.
That points to the perspective I’d add to Mr. Blumenfeld’s essay. Bellamy’s novel, Looking Backward, is a depiction of a world which would be desirable only to those cowards, dominant in much of American culture — using the word loosely, who would improve the world by eliminating all noble virtues. It might be well if we stopped admiring the violent form of those virtues found in the great warriors of history, but we Americans — in our true hearts — also have no admiration for the raw courage found in the Christ-centered St. Francis of Assisi. We’ve turned him into a statue covered with bird droppings. Anyway, in the large ground in between Alexander the Great and St. Francis of Assisi lie the likes of Daniel Boone and Henry Ford, Hermann Melville and Flannery O’Connor, the tortured Nietzsche and the genial Nock. We Americans, and those who’ve followed us into this strange denatured condition, would turn and run from those as well. Of course, in a world dominated by American attitudes, it’s easy enough to safely isolate them to dusty museums and library stacks. We don’t have to put heretics to the rack. We have perfected the art of ignoring what we don’t wish to see.
My strongest impression of Looking Backward is that it depicts a world which would drive me to put a bullet through my head, as strong as my Christian feelings are against such acts. It’s a world for those who think the ultimate in a good life is being sure you’ll have a hearty breakfast at 8AM, a light and healthy lunch at 12:15PM, and a tasty dinner at the civilized hour of 7PM, followed by a couple hours of television which resembles what we had in those golden years of Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver.
I find it hard to consider a world of cowards cutting moral corners in the interest of comfortable furniture to be the goal of human efforts over the centuries. If we ever did settle into such a nightmare, nature would awaken us rather rudely…
I guess you could say that is what’s happening to us in this year of our Lord, 2011.