Musings Of An Indie WriterSunday, August 29, 2010
The Prices Of Vision: A Screed-Rumination “Twofer”
Yes, yes, I know I said I wouldn't be posting much this weekend, but you have to "go with the flow," no?
Man's widest-bandwidth sense is the sense of vision. It conveys more information per unit time, in absolute terms, than any of the other five. (Yes, there are five others; look it up.) Indeed, the consensus among anthropologists is that the brain expanded from its simian dimension of approximately 800 cubic centimeters to its sapient 1300 cc largely in response to our descent from the treetops to the plains -- to where sharp, focusable, reliable vision is the paramount survival necessity.
That tells you at once about one of the prices of vision: it requires massive processing power to make sense of the images. However, there are other prices, quite hefty ones, that we neglect at our peril.
Strictly speaking, vision is not a sense, but rather the consequence of the use of a sense. The eye reports to us continuously; whether we make use of its data stream is another matter. To see, you must look. You must be willing to look, and you must know how to look, and you must be ready to accept and interpret what you see.
There's another price of vision: you must choose to employ it and trust what it says to you. No sense whose reports are discarded with prejudice can reasonably be called an asset.
We guard our eyes rather carefully. We buttress their abilities with all manner of sophisticated devices. We speak of being struck blind as a terrible tragedy, one of the worst that can afflict a whole and healthy man. But many among us choose not to see what's before our eyes, for any of a number of reasons.
When you look at America, what do you see?
Do you see a nation in which men prosper best by coercion? Or do you see our abundance, generosity, and happiness as the fruits of cooperation and voluntary exchange? Do you see a nation whose commitment to individual liberty and responsibility has made it into the greatest force for good since Christ? Or do you see a nation filled with "bitter clingers" who have to be mastered and controlled for their own good? Do you see a nation in which ordinary men cannot be trusted with the means of self-defense? Or do you see a nation in which the ethic of personal responsibility burns so strongly that to deny a law abiding man the right to own weapons is an intolerable affront?
Do you see a people whose devotion to the Christian faith has been its principal strength through two and a half centuries, sixteen wars, and innumerable turmoils of every sort? Or do you see millions upon millions of superstitious ignoramuses who really ought to buy, read, and accept unquestioningly the antitheistic tracts of Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens, and forget all this "Son of God" and "Savior of Mankind" nonsense?
And whatever you see, what are you willing to bet on the soundness of your vision?
The next price of vision is the willingness to defend it. For there are few perceptions, however plain and unimpeachable they might seem, that have no adversaries.
If you have seen the system of voluntary cooperation and exchange we call capitalism as the fountainhead of our prosperity, and have pronounced your blessing upon it and its issue, in what fora and to what extent are you willing to stand by your vision? For he who refuses to defend the conclusions he's drawn from his vision will inevitably be led to disbelieve the vision itself. One cannot long sustain one's confidence in a mass of evidence if he recoils from defending its clear implications. He will find reasons to believe he's been misled, deceived, subjected to a mirage or a hallucination. If the vision persists despite his desire to wish it away, he will close his eyes, literally refusing to see.
Similarly, if you have seen, in whatever fashion, the truth and beauty of the Christian Covenant, proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth and attested to by His Passion and Resurrection, but give way before the sneers of pseudo-sophisticates, for how long can you expect your Christianity to endure? Christ Himself told His Apostles, "If any man among you hath no sword, let him sell his cloak and buy one." He expected the assaults on His people, and knew they would be both severe and unceasing. He knew that a man unwilling to fight, and possibly die, in defense of his faith had no true claim to faith at all -- that in time, such a coward would deny Him and His dispensation as the price of an easier life among the scoffers.
This is one of the greatest of all prices of vision, for a sense deliberately stifled is a sense that will soon cease to operate at all.
Vision, though not interchangeable with visions, nevertheless is related to such phenomena. Many have been the visionaries of Western Civilization. Many have been the visionaries of Christendom. More often than not, the two were the same people.
Adam Smith was a cleric. John Locke was a devout Christian, who believed that the laws of nature, dictated by God at Creation, would infallibly punish a ruler who thought he could disregard them. Many of the Founders of this nation were deeply religious, even though they accepted the necessity of keeping men's consciences free of State intrusion.
Throughout American history, our greatest leaders have been devout Christians, who leaned visibly upon the Cross during their times of severest test. Measure the current president against that standard, if you dare.
Yesterday, there was a huge rally at the National Mall, organized and hosted by commentator Glenn Beck. Beck startled the huge crowd, now estimated to have been around 300,000 persons, by making an explicitly religious pitch to them. Without any hesitation or ambiguity, his speech to the throng was a call back to God.
There are those who disdain Glenn Beck for his emotionalism, which is unusual for a public figure in our time. Say what you will, the man lacks neither vision, nor strength of conviction, nor courage in the face of opposition. He proved it yesterday, and moved many thousands of Americans in the process.
Glenn Beck has paid the price of vision. He has looked, has seen, and has found within himself the fortitude to speak unflinchingly of what he's seen, despite the derision and condemnation of an adverse media and an implacable cultural foe. Of those who oppose his Constitutionalism and his exhortations to restoring its full meaning, it's unnecessary to speak. Yet even many who agree with his political positions have cringed before his unabashed Christianity and his willingness to proclaim it. But before a man with the courage of his convictions, no opposition, however large, is of any moment.
I am proud to stand with Glenn Beck, despite our stylistic divergences. I, too, have looked, and have seen. I have reached the same conclusions as he. And I will pay the price: I will put my back to his, for what it's worth, though all the rest of the world rage against us.
If we who love freedom really mean to take this country back from those busily sawing through its sinews, then to the sneering statists who strive for our subjugation, the cultural pseudosophisticates who seek to submerge us in the "little deaths," and the antitheists eager to strip us of the bastion of Christian faith, we can make no other response. There can be no other candid, sincere response.
May God bless and keep you all.
