We need the occasional war or economic collapse

15 December 2008

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Tom Stacey says that there is a part of man’s collective soul that yearns for tribulations like the financial crisis and the philosophical and spiritual questions they force us to confront

On my chosen spiritual plane, I note the founder of Christianity saying (according to Luke) that recognition of his own ‘truth’ would be accompanied by ‘lightning flashes lighting up the sky from one side to another’, two in a bed, with one taken and the other left, and two women grinding meal together, one taken, the other left. And he went on to remind his listeners of the earlier cyclic meltdowns of Hebraic history and mythology, Noah’s flood and the end of Sodom.

There’s this in man, or man’s righteousness, that chooses to blow the whistle on his own vanity. The most ancient of philosophers, Heraclitus, wrote of the ‘cleansing’ effect of periodic warfare. Even St Augustine wrote of the occasional requirement of the ‘just war’ — that risk, that sacrifice, that catharsis, and beyond catharsis, kenosis, emptying.

It’s the way it goes. There comes the call to battle. The suicide rate plummets. Hearts aglow, men clamour to enlist, and many do not return.

When Louis XV of France, nearly three quarters of the way through the 18th century, remarked, ‘Après moi, le déluge’, I guess he was half invoking what was to happen. Heaven knows he was right. His own son and heir, and all the self-serving panoply of the court and its rituals, were soon to be swept away in the frenzied, cathartic revolution. Louis père was hearkening to his inner ear.

Of course we hope it’s not to be déluge. Yet whether this is to be recession or slump, I’m bound to say my heart already hears a voice it needs to hear at least this once — that of the royal teacher, ‘son of David’, who opened his pivotal book of Ecclesiastes: ‘Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What profit hath Man of all his labour?’

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Sue

January 7th, 2009 3:15am Report this comment

At a personal level it is a bit like saying tht everyone should be brutally mugged and have his/her house and property destroyed every few years or so--to teach them a lesson or show them the brutal "facts" of existence.

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