We cannot escape our human nature. All attempts to break out of its bounds will fail in proportion to the energy exerted or apparent success. We may imagine that we can fly, jump from a cliff, and in fact fly. But only for a bit.
Likewise we may imagine that we have discovered the cure to self-restraint, and thus cured may live without it. But again, only for a bit.
Assuming that our own survival and the survival of those we love are in fact the first two human imperatives, self-restraint and self-sacrifice are sovereign necessities that hardly need justification. Nature requires both and will punish mercilessly those who do not pay up. But on the other hand our best instincts as humans often compel us to pay up. Just imagine a mother’s love and all that she will deny herself for her wee li’l babe.
Human nature cannot be altered any more than nature itself. Whether it be harnessed by discipline or allowed to range freely, the inevitable result of human nature will be an infinite variety of distinct, individual human beings, and a kaleidoscope of human cultures, sub-cultures, or peoples. But they will all be human. All as bound to human nature as the planets are to the Sun. And those that imagine they have escaped its gravitational pull will only have their necks broken by the whiplash when it yanks them back, or if they are able to escape it, they will simply perish in the black empty cold.
This is why at the end of this long, nasty cultural war that the post-agrarian world order has given us, Progressivism will perish. It will fail because it denies our human nature, or rather that part of our human nature that produces strength. It will fail because, like that man who identifies as a bird and leaps from the cliff’s edge with his arms spread like wings, Progressivism imagines that we are or can be something beyond, or better, or different than what we are in fact.
What we are are human beings with an unchanging dual nature. One that inclines us to evil or foolishness, and one that inclines us to good or wisdom. Those individuals or peoples that give way to our dark side doom themselves to destruction. Those that fight the dark side, and struggle to embrace the good, at least have a fighting chance.
M.C. Atkins
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Look Away... 