... would be impossible because you couldn't get the stuff to stick together sufficiently to support the structure. In a theoretical sense, you need fine-grain* structure to create a large-scale structure.
If you're going to build a society, you need an agreed-upon set of first principles as your foundation. Any set of first principles will of necessity preclude others. If you choose to organize around the Ashanti's first principles, you'll end up with agriculture, organized government, an aggressive empire and slavery. If you choose to organize around the East German model, you'll get the Stasi. And so on.
Dig these two examples of modern thought.
Forced-birth zealotry at the Supreme Court and in state legislatures exemplifies the Christian nationalist view that the government should impose its religious views regardless of precedent and of modern America’s moral, social and political values.https://t.co/7pA0qHnN1Z
— Jennifer "Pro-privacy" Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) July 10, 2022
Chris Hayes: "The Supreme Court is, I fear, an acute threat to American representative governance and democracy" https://t.co/Iye92gX2Fx pic.twitter.com/gwQtZ6jNGQ
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 9, 2022
Here are the essences of the two points made:
- Christianity should not be the basis for society.
- The Supreme Court must be reformed or abolished.
Nowhere in these kinds of screeds is there a suggestion of how to replace whatever it is the radicals want abolished. It's Seattle's CHOP/CHAZ writ large.
 |
| There were lots of slogans and bullhorns and speeches, but nothing constructive happened because the participants hadn't committed to any foundational first principles before they started. It was all destruction all the time. |
Destroying your foundational principles is how you end up here:
A 73-year-old James Lambert died the day after 3 girls and 4 boys beat him with a traffic cone in a caught-on-camera attack last month. Philadelphia Police hope the video of the attack and a $20,000 reward lead them to those responsible. #blackonblackcrime pic.twitter.com/zIWEHwUoCz
— Ultra Dante 🇺🇸 (@RealDante12) July 8, 2022
That video was chosen at random. There are tons and tons of them these days. You can't tear down the bases of your culture, replace them with nothing and expect anything but chaos and destruction. Bill Barr put it very succinctly in a recent interview.
“We are going through a fateful crisis in western civilization. This is the deepest crisis we’ve faced in my mind since Christ,” Barr said. “That’s because our whole civilization is based on the Judeo-Christian tradition and that tradition is under sustained attack by increasingly militant secular forces.”
In a reprise of a 2019 speech at Notre Dame University that met massive corporate media backlash, Barr told the audience U.S. public schools have become hostile to traditional religion while wresting control of American children’s upbringing from their parents. This is a threat to the entire Western order, Barr said, because the unique American system of self-government cannot exist without a citizenry that is committed to traditional religion.
That’s because there are only two ways to restrain people from following disordered passions, Barr said: internal restraints, which are largely provided by one’s beliefs; and external restraints, which are typically provided by government. So in order to have a limited government, Barr noted in an explicit echo of the American Founders, citizens must practice self-restraint.
It is the job of Christians in general and the Catholic Church in particular, to defend the first principles upon which Western civilization are based. After all, they're our first principles.
* - Fine-grain? Get it? Sand? Fine-grain? Hahahaha ... haha ... ha ... sorry about that.
This doesn't have much to do with the rest of your posting, but you lead with something that really ticks me off: you are using "sand" as an example of a bad, unstable building material.
ReplyDeleteThis is a massive slur on the sand, gravel, and aggregates industry[1]. In 2021 alone, the US consumed 1.0 Billion tons of sand and gravel for construction, as compared to a paltry 87 million tons of iron and steel (less than one-tenth as much). Contrary to the popular conception, sand and gravel make an excellent foundation, as it packs well, does not continue to settle over time, has a high load-bearing capacity, provides excellent anchoring of the building when you backfill around the foundations with it, and water drains readily out of it, eliminating all sorts of problems that you have if you try to build on either clay soils or solid bedrock[2].
And as far as making things out of sand and gravel, that is mostly what concrete is - about 80% sand/gravel, and 20% Portland cement powder. And concrete excels as a building material, with a combination of durability, adaptability to different applications, and reasonable cost that is hard to beat.
If you are looking for a metaphor for social instability, find another one. Sand is the exact opposite of what you want as an example.
[1] My father was a building contractor who specialized in concrete foundations, and I have worked quite a bit professionally with the sand, gravel, and aggregates industry. I am familiar with the details of the business, and I dislike seeing their product dismissed like that.
[2] The parable in Matthew 7:24-27 is a crock. It is hard to anchor a building to rock, and a flood or high wind is very likely to wipe the structure right off of it. A building with a proper foundation in sand is much more likely to stay put, because the sand ballasts the foundation in place, and it is only in certain specific circumstances that flood waters will remove sand. More likely, the sand was there in the first place because that is where the floods tend to deposit sand, not remove it.
But you have to mix the sand with something to make it useful, right? As a veteran of the ocean vs. sand castle wars, the san inevitably lost badly.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I will go hide my head in shame. I shall not denigrate sand in this way ever again. I am sorry to have triggered you.
There is no such thing as a government which doesn't "impose [*someone's*] religious views" on the society it rules.
ReplyDelete==[2] The parable in Matthew 7:24-27 is a crock. It is hard to anchor a building to rock, and a flood or high wind is very likely to wipe the structure right off of it. A building with a proper foundation in sand is much more likely to stay put, because the sand ballasts the foundation in place, and it is only in certain specific circumstances that flood waters will remove sand. More likely, the sand was there in the first place because that is where the floods tend to deposit sand, not remove it.==
ReplyDeleteAh! So, a mud-brick house built on sand (and built where water flows and deposits sand), being built without a deep foundation, is just as stable as the same foundationless mud-brick house built on a rock out of the general/common flow of the water, or is even as stable as a steel-and-concrete skyscraper built with deep foundations?
Perhaps you should check your crocks.