Order, the First Need of All

Russell Kirk opens chapter one with his purpose in writing, "to renew our understanding of the beliefs and laws that gave form to American society."

Order is defined as, the pattern by which we live with purpose and meaning. He states that the human condition requires a harmony in existence. "It is our first need," says Simone Weil, an author Kirk quotes. This Simone Weil sounds very interesting. She is described as "a woman who suffered much." Apparently, in a quest to find spiritual order she studied Greek and Indian philosophy, Sanskrit, the Christian mystics, and quantum theory. In order to understand first hand the life of hard toil, she worked in fields and factories. While exiled from France during World War II (she was of Jewish descent), she was commissioned by the French to write a study of how the French might find the roots of their order and live together in peace and justice, should they survive after Nazi domination. This work was titled, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties toward Mankind. She went on to do other perilous things which required her life at the young age of 33. But before her death, she wrote this about the twentieth century, comparing it to the disorder of Greece in the fifth century B.C.:

 "It is as though we had returned to the age of Protagoras and the Sophists, the age when the art of persuasion - whose modern equivalent is advertising slogans, publicity, propaganda meetings, the press, the cinema, and the radio - took the place of thought and controlled the fate of cities and accomplished coups d'etat. So the ninth book of Plato's Republic reads like a description of contemporary events."

In an age of 5-second sound bites and a negligent press, these words couldn't be truer. But there is something about man's absolute necessity of order that reminds me of something in my own life. Kirk writes that the human condition is insufferable unless we perceive a harmony, an order, in existence. That without it, we dwell in darkness, where light is as darkness, as Job puts it.

When my children were young, our family decided to join a mission in East Africa to go about doing the work of the Lord. We moved to a city that had a population of nearly one million people, of which 90% were unemployed. The need and desperation were everywhere; it was difficult to find a place to rest your eyes where it wasn't. The mix of cultures was potent with a truly palpable tension. The heat and humidity were more suffocating than I dreamed possible. Food fit to eat was difficult to acquire and keep. There was a sense of danger everywhere, including our small apartment. The instance for malaria and other disease was genuine. And just as striking as all that, every building and street corner looked identical. Every single structure had been painted white at some time, but was then a dingy off-white. It was impossible for me to get my bearings when there were literally no landmarks.

I had never experienced an all-enveloping darkness like I did there, nor have I again. I agree wholeheartedly with Russell Kirk and Simone Weil's declaration of our first need, and I think I would've agreed with them had I not experienced a lack of it, but I wouldn't have understood it so well.

The Roots of American Order

I've started reading a book by Russell Kirk, following an ISI conference, called The Roots of American Order. I'm excited to read and ingest the material. I think it will be one of those books that gives words to thoughts, feelings, ideas I have in my head but have trouble getting out coherently and meaningfully.

The Forward is written by Forrest McDonald, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Alabama. He begins by saying that Russell Kirk wrote about "the permanent things" ~ the perduring conditions and needs that must be met for a human society to function well.

Some of these conditions are:

a transcendent moral order based on religious faith: this is what brings order to the soul, which is vital to a society.

social continuity: I'm thinking this is important because, as humans, we need to feel secure and at harmony in our environment. When there is social continuity, we can count on certain things happening regularly, aiding that process.

the principal of prescription or things established by immemorial usage: traditions, those things worth preserving from one generation to the next.

prudential and natural change as opposed to change based on abstract theories: I take this to mean things that rise up organically through the populace, and things that disappear on their own.

variety and therefore inequality except in the Last Judgment and before a court of law: here we see a truth that flies in the face of many politicians who would seek to create equality for every member of society. Even Christ said, "The poor will always be with you." The innate feature of inequality in human society cannot be removed by man, nor should it.

the acceptance of the imperfectability of man: here, too, is a big divider among those in positions of power. Those of us who are of the Judeo-Christian heritage understand the sinful condition of man, but others who dismiss those heritages believe they can perfect man if only by removing those things that make him stumble.

McDonald goes on to write that even though Kirk was self-confident in his intellect, he was too modest to believe his own work would one day become a "permanent thing." Yet, here it is.

He further states that Kirk's work is peculiarly simultaneous in its timeless and timely qualities; both transcendent and relevant at the same time.

A bit about the publishing history of this book; first published in 1974, a year when President Nixon resigned in disgrace, the disastrous Vietnam War was ending, and U.S. colleges and universities were a hotbed of degeneration. In Kirk's words this book was written "to assist in renewing an appreciation of America's moral and social order among the general public and among university and college students."

The first paperback edition was published in 1978 during President Carter's directionless presidency. I remember those days well as a high school student. People always bring up the long gas lines; I remember that and the discussion about whether it was more judicious to leave your car running while in line, or turn the engine off and restart it to move forward.  But mostly I remember the day in and day out gloom of those years. Watching my mother try to make the weekly budget stretch far enough to put food on the table each day, interest rates in the high teens for home loans, an overall sense of 'just getting by' and wondering when it would end. When would we return to the normalcy that was America at its essence; a few extra dollars in your pocket for the movies, a dinner out at a restaurant, a vacation.

There was another printing in the early 1980's before it was known what kind of president Ronald Reagan would be. And we would come to learn that he himself had read Kirk's, The Roots of American Order, and many other works of his.

The edition I am reading was printed in September 2012, just one year following 9/11, after which a renewed sense of patriotism swept across the country and a small band of critics, mainly college and university professors, insisted we received our due.

President G. W. Bush's response was to declare war on terrorism, terrorists, and regimes that shelter them. With that a new question arose, once a dictator was deposed, was it possible to establish a peaceable order among a people who do not have the cultural fixtures that are required to do so? After all, the American order arose after a 2,500 year evolution. Our experience in Japan after World War II seems to suggest it is possible.

However, Kirk informs us this cannot be done on the basis of ideology. It is accomplished incrementally with organic mores rising to the surface and threading themselves throughout the order.

McDonald assures the attentive reader that not only will he be impressed and edified by Kirk's gifted erudition, but also rewarded and entertained by his thinly-veiled subtleties.