The Decline of Courage and the Rise of Mediocrity
"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life."
Written in 1978 as a commencement address to the student body of Harvard University, Solzhenitsyn's words ring even more true today than they did 25 years ago. After frustrating presidential elections and the overly-dramatized debacle of the 'fiscal cliff,' the above quote delicately incises into the heart of the matter: what is wrong with American society today. This quote is just one of Solzenhitsyn's eerily accurate insights. After reading his speech, I am not sure whether or not American society has remained just as mediocre and endangered as it was in the late seventies, or if it has become even worse. I find either option depressing and scary, and unfortunately, the latter more likely than the former.
Given my own background in Russian affairs and the history of the Soviet Union, I find Solzhenitsyn's thoughts in regards to the problems of East and West more accurately formed than might be recognized by the average person. Moreover, given my close association with Orthodoxy (through my mother and close friends), his non-religious but hyper-spirited analysis of the debilitated state of the American psyche rings brilliantly true. In terms general enough to retain meaning through decades, but with analysis cutting enough to be relevant 25 years after it was generated, Solzhenitsyn speaks to everything from spam and the daily dogmatic ejaculations of Fox News and CNN, to the rapid spread of atheism and vulgarity in American society. He directs his comments to the Western world, but the rapid spread of Western culture around the globe embues his words with new pertinence.
If you have been shaking your head for the past few days...months...years at the terribly deteriorated state of American society; at the pitiful caliber of most American citizens, nay, people; or at the sad and discouraging state of our educational and moral systems -- if you have recently found yourself wearily asking the rhetorical question, "What is wrong with us?" -- well, Solzhenitsyn has some insight for you.
If you haven't the time or energy to read this astonishingly intelligent and open-minded article (pardon me, speech), here are a few highlights:
'A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.'
'Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution.
If one is risen from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.)'
'The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation's defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan "Everyone is entitled to know everything." (But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.)
Hastiness and superficiality — these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas.'
'But should I be asked, instead, whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our own country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just enumerated are extremely saddening.'
'I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.
It has made man the measure of all things on earth — imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. '
'It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.'
