There is a video of Norm Macdonald expressing distaste for some loudly effeminate comedian who mocked Christians and Christianity. The comedian told a story of an argument he had with a Christian where the Christian quoted the Bible and he, the comedian, quoted Harry Potter. The gist was: the Bible wasn’t his authority, Harry Potter was. The Bible is no better than Harry Potter as an authority on moral matters; it is, indeed, worse.
Norm did three things. First, he said he didn’t find the bit funny. Second, he said that J.K. Rowling respected the Scriptures and that they inspired Harry Potter. Third, he said, “I didn’t like it.” He said this last thing in response to the reaction his fellow judges gave him. They disapproved and he, in essence, said to them “if you don’t like what I just said, it doesn’t matter: I don’t like what he just said.”
Norm suffered here what conservatives often suffer: they’re shocked by the incivility before them, but would be called uncivil when they challenge the incivility. As a result, Macdonald looked somewhat distressed. His jab at the annoying comedian was true, but it didn’t really get to the heart of the comedian’s point. That is, it is true the comedian was in fact ignorant that JK Rowling had evinced a respect for Scripture and claimed to have incorporated several of its themes in her work. So, when the comedian rejects the Bible in favor of Harry Potter, he looks kind of stupid. The comedian’s stupidity doesn’t invalidate his point. He can just change books and the joke will have the same meaning: a Christian quoting an authority to a man who doesn’t accept the authority does not resolve the issue. This annoying comedian could replace Harry Potter with Disney’s Aladdin or something similar and get the same reaction or a similar one.
Instead of what he did say, I wish Norm Macdonald would have said to that annoying comedian that Harry Potter would be a good enough Bible, “for the likes of him.”
That comedian represents a large set of what now passes for “Western” people. They subsist on garbage and by comparison Harry Potter is high art that provides a serious or substantial moral framework through which they view themselves and their “country.” The motivations for “bad men” are caricaturish and absurd; those of the “good men” childish and literally supported by magic. If JK Rowling were providing a meta criticism, “this form of goodness requires magic, a suspension and diminution of nature, etc” then they would of course be profound books. As they stand, they’re plot driven teenager stories based in an imaginative world.
The world of Harry Potter delights those who wished they lived in that world—in that world, a strong delineation can be made such that even the simplest and stupidest can see who the good guys and bad guys are and thereby take part in a quest for good. The reality is that stupidity and simplicity can be redeemed by wisdom but are more often uncomprehending of what is good, and enemies of it. Good politics involves the redemption of the simple by the wise, wherein the wise produce a series of signs by which the simple learn to recognize their good and the good of their polis. The reality is that this delineation is rarely possible for the average man. The average man rarely has a people and without a people there is no cause or quest available to him. The average man rarely has a leader, and without a leader there is no direction. The average man rarely has an enemy—unless “pawns” can have genuine enemies. But do tools have enemies? Without an enemy, there is only the feeling of envy left to the common man. Without a real enemy, the common man is left feeling envy at those above him. What the average man needs is a conduit to higher life for himself and especially for his posterity; this can only be established when higher men have been able to get the average men to see their common plight and form a common cause. The average man can rarely be of use to higher men. It's only through a discipline of the body and spirit that this alliance becomes possible. The Bible is God’s regimen for this alliance. I don’t see something like it in Harry Potter.
Schopenhauer ranked the Koran as the lowest form of religious literature and was disgusted it performed the needed function for so many. The Koran though can succeed in bringing the needed discipline. It at least is aimed, even if it’s “pedagogy” is brutish and uninspiring.
What most people subsist on today is far below religion. They need religion but have nothing but entertainment. Entertainment soothes and pacifies. Entertainment encourages uselessness and hope to produce harmlessness; but what is useless is always harmful in the long run, in the end.
Most of what passes for “Christianity” today is un-religious in this decisive respect. It seems to me Paul and the Disciples set out to establish and form genuine centers of discipline within the leveled masses of the Roman empire. But what predominates today is “rest.” The boomers were so impressed by their sexual urges all they could think about was rest from them. I believe Paul’s injunction was “if you are burning” then “get married.” I don’t believe God’s grace has anything to do with the desire to copulate. Augustine was a boomer in this respect. It’s embarrassing to obsess over chastity so much. Chastity, especially female chastity, is not the discipline most needed or the main intention of religion.
I remember the confusion of my teenage years, before I had had no real exposure to good authors. There is the desperation. Everything you read and see fails to reflect back to you what you need or what you instinctively know; everything seems to go against what you need. Every movie, every song, every book: you can feel that they’re all trying to make you a liar, a self-deceiver. They cannot help you make sense of your experiences. They exist as distortions of genuine experience. They are popular when the populace suffers under a general distortion of the kind they purvey, i.e., when the distortion they peddle resonates with the distortion of the populace.
I digress: most of what passes for Christianity isn’t religious in the proper sense. I cannot say I have the knowledge needed to assess the Christianity the Greatest Generation tried to pass on to the Boomers. All I can say is the Christianity the boomers are passing on is worse than useless in most respects because it isn’t a religion in the decisive sense.
I understand the Nietzscheans and their disdain for religion. “Let’s have done with the people. Stop spending all our time thinking about how to regiment them into something meaningful, into a people with a task. Let’s instead announce atheism outright; tell them their good isn’t what is aimed at, but that the best they can hope for with their miserable lives is to serve the purposes of higher men.” And, since that message obviously won’t persuade the people, the Nietzschean feels the only high culture that can exist is the one built on slavery.
And look, I’m not opposed to slavery in the sense people are today. But I prefer religion, where each man sees his own good in his disposition and service to the greater aims.
Well! this is not the direction I intended this essay to go in, though it is enough for one post.
Originally, I meant to focus more on how simplistic stories and stupid plots make our relationships to ourselves and others more miserable and unjust. When we see ourselves and others in these simple stories, the motivations are all constrained to fit “the narrative” and when, inevitably, neither ours nor others actually do fit the narrative, we become miserable or unjust or both.
Think of young Christians trying to make sense of their world, but who only have access to the defeated men of the last several decades. They’re told all sorts of weird and stupid things about dating and women. When it comes to politics, they’re told they have to hand their communities over to immigrants.
Think of all the annoying people whose moral framework is quite literally taken from Star Wars.
Think of what passes for “American history.”
Remember the massive appreciation our nation showered on the show Mad Men, simply because it wasn’t completely gay. “Oh look, something like an actual man.” Sopranos, ditto.
We are starved for art that resonates with what is real, that holds up an ideal that makes sense. There are many holdouts, but generally what happens is that people accommodate themselves to the slop they are fed and lash out at the idea that it is slop. Watching some of my friends slowly come to realize the new Star Wars movies are trash has been harrowing. They’ve come to my view kicking and screaming, helped along the way by one trash movie after another.
Everyone knows how bad things are. It’s still shocking to me (and depressing) to think about how easily people are satisfied. How they allow themselves to be spat upon by commercials that evidently appeal to idiots and fools. How a show or movie will do everything but scream “the writers hate your race, hate your religion, hate your country, hate your face, would kill your father and sell your sister” and they still nod their heads and say “well there are some redeeming things about the show.” The list of indignities is endless.
How people extricate themselves from it in equally endless ways would make an interesting book: What Radicalized You?