Cultural Survival Skills

Guns, Faith and Culture.

It should come as no surprise that traditional morality has declined to pitifully low levels in America. By this, I mean the traditional moral and ethical codes of conduct that are based upon the Judeo/Christian faiths and their derivations.

I have documented the decline of traditional American culture and social conduct in here my blogs since 2009, now approaching 1700 publications. I did the same as a university professor, when I changed my area of research to these matters in the 1980’s. 

There are many corrective laws and encouragements that can be promulgated by our various levels of government. Also, there are those of us who are dedicated to showcasing America’s cultural and social decline. We hope to embolden everyone to fight the forces of our undoing in all available peaceful ways. 

Yet, I struggle with one great fear. This fear is that, no matter what a secular government and an increasingly secular culture and society may do to reverse its own steady decline…nothing will work. 

My grave concern is that nothing will work because there is no compelling reason to forsake the immediate pleasures that a population’s increasingly self-centered (“selfish”) behavior most quickly and most reliably secures.

Without God, and his sacred rules of conduct, there is no compelling reason to abandon our own selfish pleasures in order to only have a chance at securing the long-term benefits to ourselves and perhaps for society at large. What is it that will motivate us all to forestall or give-up immediate rewards in order to benefit others who will succeed us in the distant future?

As a doctoral student, I was trained that there is no such thing as human nature. I now know this is false.

Humans prone to pursue their own short-term rewards. They prefer that these rewards come faster not slower and larger not smaller. They also prefer that they come on a thicker schedule of occurrence,  that they come with greater convenience and less pain.

Humans also love to control the odds that their rewards will become bigger and faster, etc., and that means that they will strive to control their physical, social, political and geopolitical environs. Humans are prone to use their powers to reward, hurt or kill others to achieve these ends.

Unless there is some powerful counter-controlling force, they will use whatever methods most immediately provide these things that  human animals tend naturally covet.

Within any society, it takes a mighty powerful generally accepted  belief system to motivate its inhabitants to conduct themselves accordingly and to acculturate their children to do likewise.

Historically, mighty powerful belief systems have come in the form of a society’s chosen God, who must be obeyed in order that individuals and their society can gain favor and avoid a myriad of  terrifying cataclysmic events.

Often this Godly influence has been augmented by political leaders, kings, or dictators who use their God’s rules to control their population through the threat of slavery, banishment, imprisonment or execution. Many kings and dictators have even commandeered the status of a God in order further enhance their mighty powerful control of their subject’s beliefs and behavior patterns.

Since the Founding of America, a particularly pro-social and peaceful God has shaped the development of the United States. The attendant belief system is composed of Judeo/Christian precepts and rules for personal conduct defined good and evil behaviors for the worshiping majority of Americans.

Secular forces and political leftists  have relentlessly attacked this undeniable truth and have increasingly lied and propagandized to impose their own religion upon America. This failed religion is secular humanism and its “god” is humanity itself.

Though it has lost much of its power, the Judeo/Christian God-Based belief system has been so interwoven into the fabric of American culture, that it was also woven into the fabric of its Constitutionally based Representative Republic Government.

This assertion is incontrovertible. I hope you will read one, or both of the following two books to understand the undeniable true font of America’s Greatness.

1. Rediscovering God in America, by Newt Gingrich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rediscovering_God_in_America

2. One Nation Under God, by  David Gibbs with Jerry Newcombe

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/350512.One_Nation_Under_God

America’s Founding religious beliefs guaranteed HUGE fairly immediate and also deferred spiritual CONSEQUENCES for engaging in good or evil (bad) behaviors during one’s lifetime. Believers were promised the love and favor of God during their life-times. Also, huge delayed consequences were promised, heaven if one will believe and follow the Ten Commandments; hell if one did not. A strong belief in the personal and social advantages of God exerts, both then and now, strong peaceful and pro-social influences over human behavior.

Even if a strong belief in God begins to fade for the reasons stated above, the behavior patterns learned under this Godly belief system can persist for a time with some strength. 

But for the generations that follow, without the sustaining religious belief system that sustains good behaviors and reduces bad population acts…the rate of selfish, short-sighted, hedonistic and corrupt behavior will increase with each successive generation.

This, I believe, is what we are witnessing in America and all around the developing world. The common denominator of these trends appears to be the growth of science-based beliefs and technologies that bolster human’s confidence in the their own ability to increasingly control their environments and other important events in their daily lives.

The majority of us appear to love science-based modern technologies and the amazing advantages and conveniences that we enjoy.

Sadly, these technological “gifts”  appear to be powerfully undermining the moral/ethical behavior of America.

The the thing I fear the most is that it is the proliferation of science-based technologies that have led to the growth of secular humanism and socialism leading to destructive forms of narcissism for leaders and extreme dependency and helplessness for followers. All of this correlating with increasing sociopathic/antisocial behavior for all.

I suspect that this self-destructive cycle has, along with other killing influences,  spelled the downfall of developing societies (a relative concept), for all time. 

All living things are born, they live for a while, and then they die. So it also has been with cultures. 

In the past I have fantasized that cultures, particularly America, can teach themselves how to live with increasing health for longer and longer intervals of time.

Now, and I hope I am wrong, my happy fantasy seems to be logically flawed. If it is ever to occur, even temporarily, it may take another of our great national tragedies to bring America again to its vital roots…roots that can only be found on our knees in prayer. 

I endorse the importance of the following article and hope you will give it your close attention.

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA18B48&f=WU18B16

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D., 2/25/18

Tags: American Decline, Billy Graham, cultural decline, culture, faith, God, Greatest Fear, guns, Guns Faith and Culture, Infrastructural Determinism, Judeo/Christian Precepts, science, Secular Humanism, Socialism, Technological Determinism, Technology, Ten Commandments, Unfixable America?

This entry was posted on February 25, 2018 at 3:58 PM and is filed under Boiling the American Frog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.