Westernity Matters

Our long-time reader and commenter “Lu” sends this brief essay about why we fight.

Westernity Matters

by Lu

Hey, all you new and promising votaries of this old religion! Converts wanted. This is why it is so: if you convert and start fighting for it, what happens —

Your grandchildren will be able to hear the bells of old and new churches our countries are full of; they will recall old wedding photographs in family albums and that divine smell of a mass in the local church.

Your grandchildren will be able to see Florence and Athens and Rome and Paris and admire the places where Dante, Petrarch, Rousseau and Da Vinci once wandered, loved and helped to build; they will feel a part of the culture so indelibly entrenched in our memes.

Your grandchildren will enjoy opening the best books of all times and imbibe what we as humanity created on our journey from difficult times towards the enlightened future.

Not converting to this oft-forgotten religion would mean that the same barbarians knocking on the door of ancient world of Athens and Rome are going to break our flabby defense and win.

Remember the dark ages between the end of Rome and the first glimmers of Renaissance? That’s when we lost Westernity for a while and what ensued: savage tribes fighting with each other, arts and letters dead, Charles at Tours trying to save what he could…

I call on you to convert to Westernity.

Westernity is a 35-century-old story of our march from the palaces of Knossos to Athens to Rome to Jerusalem to the Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor; from Homer to Socrates to Aristotle to Jesus to Paracelsus to Newton to Einstein to Sagan…

It’s a breathtaking epic of our ascent: every step bringing us higher and higher, as if some divinity were lifting us all each time we accomplish something transcending our petty lives.

We cannot afford to lose Westernity. If she is lost, all is lost.

18 thoughts on “Westernity Matters

  1. We collectively need something, in times past the Church would rally the masses. Now the Church rallies against us.
    Can you create a religion around science without science fiction?

  2. Although I don’t personally remember the Dark Ages (which I think ended a bit earlier than the beginning of the Renaissance – maybe around the start of the 10th century) arts and letters were not dead round here during the period referred to after things settled down – Bede and his monastery were corresponding with Rome and Constantinople, the Normans introduced their (superior IMHO) culture, our identity was forged under the Normans and their successors, and though we missed out on the start of the Renaissance the Tudor period is generally fondly remembered.

    I’m not sure if I would call the various British (Britons) tribes savages – they were Christians – and the Scandinavian, Germanic and Irish invading/settling tribes eventually converted and became part of the wider world under the Roman church.

  3. Like Churchill saying about Dunkirk, “we must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.”, yet it led to the the Battle of Britain, Britain’s finest hour, and then the continuous ongoing “Blood Sweat and Tears” for another 5 years.

    The US in the many battles in Europe, and the Pacific, exemplified at hoisting the flag at Iwo Jima, before having to weigh up a difficult decision in leading to the end of the war.

    Holding true to western philosophy, to aid in rebuilding Germany/Europe and Japan.
    No we are not perfect, but we look to where we can make things better.

    Sometimes we may in that testing exploration go down some stupid rabbit holes. The thing is to recognize this, from history, (the Bible is also a history book, of temptations and failure, striving, opportunities, power and glory etc.), and which in this world now, is at our finger tips, though that has to be well sifted, and note what holds true.

    Thanks B&D for their many posts that draw forth much deeper thinking, and to Lu, for us to hear the call of the West.

  4. The writer means well, but is a bit confused. Some of those he mentions as torch-bearers of Western civilization should actually be listed among its destroyers. I’m thinking in particular of Rousseau and Sagan. Also, there was no “Dark Age”; there was a slightly dim age, beginning in the third century AD, when Roman infanticide combined with a devastating plague to cause a major demographic crash. The situation was reversed however in the sixth century, when Christianity became dominant and the birth rate improved. The three centuries between the mid-seventh and mid-tenth never existed at all, and by then (mid-tenth century – ie mid-seventh) Europe was in full recovery mode. This was the real “renaissance”. Europe began erecting the great cathedrals and great castles. The continent, from the Atlantic to the Urals, was filled with towns and trade routes. Universities were established everywhere. By the 12th century (ie the 9th), Europe arguably led the world in terms of science and learning – a lead that was never again relinquished.

    • I do not consider Sagan as destroyer – can you detail on why you think he is? – I would somewhat agree with you on the time frame of the “Dark Age(s)”, even though measuring the centuries after the fall of Rome by the acme of Athens, those ages were not just dim, but absolutely pitch-dark …

    • The point I was trying to make but better argued bar the missing threecenturies bit which I don’ buy.

    • The concept of Dark Age, i.e. the 3 ‘invented’ medieval centuries (Illig, 614-911 AD), is too big and too difficult to comprehend for most people.
      .
      Charlemagne was a magnificent invention of the Romanesque Renaissance – which, by the way, started already in the tenth (=7th) and was directly preceded and influenced by the Byzantine golden 6th century of Justinian the Great – a Renaissance that among other things functioned as a Christian European Unity Symbol against the islamic invasive hordes. Effectively in the end.
      But…
      Christian scientific curiosity and search for truth (John 8:32) was so successful that it produced its own theological and liturgical demise (at least in the West, in China there seems to be an explosion of Christian belief). To counteract we need Western Unity, again, for we all are still cultural and moral Christians to at least a certain extent. However, the left is undermining this in every possible way, religiously, educationally, politically, judicially, psychologically, philosophically.
      We have to educate our youth truthfully lest everything fades into oblivion. A conservative march through the institutions may be a saving solution. Jordan B. Peterson is about to start one

      Yes, indeed, mr Emmet, Rousseau surely doesn’t belong on the list. And I’m inclined to say the girlfriend of the French communist Sartre too.

  5. When you say “Sagan” I presume you are referring to the late polymath ‘Carl’, not some fictional or legendary character?

    SIII

    P.S. Damn good tightly written short monograph, Lu. Thanks

    • Yup – Carl Sagan, whose inspiration and encouragement to further us a civilization I found truly amazing.

      Speaking of Carl – watching this has been for me like Paz’s “dormir con los ojos abiertos”:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq3d7F_pvqU

      Breathtaking vision we all should be rallying around, DanielK. Nothing less than what’s shown in those 4 minutes of vertigo …

  6. “It’s a breathtaking epic of our ascent…..”

    Perhaps the last illusion to go is the illusion that the creatures walking past you and toward you on the sidewalk, your fellow human beings, are in any way moved by or invested in the civilization you prize so highly. The overwhelming majority are not.

    I think it is the last illusion to go because….well, because who needs such bleakness?

  7. “Your grandchildren will be able to see Florence and Athens and Rome and Paris and admire the places where Dante, Petrarch, Rousseau and Da Vinci once wandered…”

    Good article, but I’m not so sure (Saussure?) about Rousseau. His Noble Savage malarkey contributed to the multicultural lefty twaddle that bedevils Westerb society.

  8. Rousseau, like Karl Marx, wrote and published ideas outside the mainstream thinking of the time–and lived on, afterwards.

    Try that within Islam and Sharia.

  9. I would say that Westernity as you describe it is here rather in spite of despotic hold of the church on people’s lives than thanks to it. But obviously this progress would not be achievable under islamic rule, that is for sure.

    • I share in many ways your (atheistic) point of view – Westernity is a Hellenic thing for me, first and foremost. Christianity somehow allowed (tolerate?) the progress from Athens to the modern West, better say, was around when the progress took place. I just refrain from criticizing the Church, because, as you quipped, “this progress would not be achievable under islamic rule”.

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