ROMANO GUARDINI – NINTHE LETTER
“The ugent question was this: In all that is taking place, is a life supported by human nature and fully human work possible? The old world is perishing – ‘world’ in the broadest sense of the term, the epitome of works and institutions and orders and living attitudes. The middle of the nineteenth century was the historical turning point. … To that world belonged a certain view of humanity that was common despite all the many and great differences. That world was sustained by human beings and in turn sustained them. Human beings created it and gave it life. They kept it alive in their hands. It was their work, expression, object, and instrument, all at the same time. That was culture, and what we still have in the way of culture today derives from it.
But then came new events of a different type, proportion, and staring point and with a different goal. The forces on which they rested were different, and so was their relation to nature. With these new events, the old order collapsed, and Those who supported it, whose blood to some extent we all carry, were homeless. Indeed, they dissolved inwardly, for the older world as through them and they through it. The new events did not just beak into the objective order as a matter of objective culture. They also and above all broke into our living humanity. The development of technology if primarily an inner human process. Hence, we are homeless in the midst of barbarism. This is true when we look at things from the point of view of the past, for that is to feel our environment collapsing, and ourselves with it. It is also true when we look at things from the standpoint of what is new both without and within, for then all is still chaos.
Insofar, then, as the question consciously or unconsciously derives the idea of that is humanly valuable from the older picture of humanity, the answer must be no. The new events deprive the people of the older culture of any possibility of being. Furthermore, the process may be made gentler, but it cannot be arrested. Still, we must press the thought more deeply. Into the ancient picture of humanity and the world has burst a new and very different gype of being and event . This new thing is destructive because it affects those who do not belong to it. More precisely, it is chaotic and destructive because those who do belong it are not yet on the scene. It is destructive because it is not under human control. It is a surging ahead of unleashed forces that have not yet been mastered, raw material that has not yet been put together, iven a living and spiritual form, and related o humanity. Matgearing such raw materials and forces – collectin, shaping, and relati ngthem, and thur creating a world, culture – is something t hat those who are oriented to the old world cannot do. They do not have the norms or concept s of power for the task. ON the oldert place the battle for livng culture has b een lose, and we veel the profound helplessness of those wwho are old. The battle must noew be joined ona new place. Toally technical events and unleashed forces can be mastered only by a new human attitude that is a match for them. We must put mind, spirit, and freedom to work afresh. But wemust relate this to the new events, the new manner and s tyle and innder orientation. It must have its living starting point, its fulcr um,, where the process itself begins (the Person of Christ) Blogger insert).
Are the processes only variations on a common theme, or is something historically new irrupting in them? If it is – and I am convinced this is so – then we must say yes to it. I know what this yes costs. Those who are already naively saying it, and those who are able to make rapid switches, will see in the deliberations of these letters only a romantic looking back, a tie to what is past. This may give them a feeling of complacency. Yet there is a yes to what is happening historically that is decision because it springs form a knowing heart. Such a yes has weight. Our place is in what is evolving. We must take our place, each at the right point. We must not oppose what is new and try to preserve a beautiful world that is inevitable perishing. Nor should we try to build a new world of a creative imagination that will show none of the damage of what is actually evolving. Rather, we must transform what is some to be. But we can do this only if we honestly say yes to it and yet with incorruptible hears remain aware of all that is destructive and non-human in it. Our age has been given to us as the soil on which to stand and task to master.
At bottom we would not wish it otherwise. Our age is not just an external path that we tread; it is ourselves. Our age is our own blood, our own soul. We relate to is as to ourselves. We love it and hate it at one and the same time. As we are, so we relate to it. If we are thoughtless, we relate to it thoughtlessly. If we say yes to the form of decision, then it is because we have had to come to a decision vis-a vis ourselves.
We love the tremendous power of the age and its readiness of responsibility. We love the resoluteness with which it hazards itself and pushes things to extremes. Our soul is touched by some thing great that might well emerge. We love it, and our sou is touched, even though we see clearly its questionability relative to the value of the past age. We must be able to see very plainly what is at issue if with a fixed heart we are ready to sacrifice the inexpressible nobility of the past.
Nor is it true that what is taking place is not Christian. It is Christianity that has made possible science and technology and all that results from them. Only those who had been influenced by the immediatiacy if the redeemed soul to God and the dignity of the regenerate, so that they were aware of being different from the world around them, could have broken free from the tie to nature in the way that it has been done in the age of technology The people of antiquity would have been afraid of hubris here. Only those to whom the relationship with God gave a sense of the unconditional, only those to whom the parable of the treasure hid in the field, the parable of the pearl of great price, and the saying about having to lose one’s life showed that there is something for which everything must be given up, were capable of the kind of decision for something ultimate that is dominant in science today and in its search for truth even should this make life impossible, or in technology today in its pressing ahead even should this call all human being into question with its transformation of the world. Only those to whom Christian faith had given profound assurance about eternal life had the confidence that such an undertaking requires. But the forces, of course, have broken free from the hands of living personalities. Or should we say that the latter could not hold them and let them go free? These forces have hus fallen victim to the demonism of number, machine, and the will for domination. (my bold).
In appropriatee activity we now have to penetrate the new thing so as to gain mastery over it. We have to become lords of the unleashed forces and shape them into a new order that relates to humanity. In the last resort only living and not tackling of technological problem themselves can do this. There are, of course, technological and scientific tasks, but people hafve ot perform them. A nww humanity must emerge of more profound intelligence, new freedom, new inwardness, new form, new ability to give form. It must be of such a kind that it already ths new apprehension. The new science may be monstrous, the economic and political organization gigantic, te technology powerful when measure by the stands of living science, economy, politics, and technology but more.Or, more accurately, se need stonger, more considered human technology. We need more science, but it must be more mature and responsible, able t o see the details in the whole con text to which it belongs. All iof that is possible, however, only if living people first make their influence fwlr in the sphere of objective nat ure, if they relate this nature themselves and in this way created a ‘world’ again.
We have to create a world again out of the most monstrous raw materials and forces of all kinds. We originally confronted the task of having to assert ourselves vis-a vis nature, which then threatened us on all sides because it had not been mastered by us and was thus a chaos for us. ‘Fill the earth and subdue it ;’ that chaos – chaos from our standpoint -was shaped into a human world. To the extent that we did this, taking possession of the world and achieving security over against it and in it , by this creativity we have released new forces that had not yet been released by our own attitude and the form of the world we had created. These forces have increased, and now they have unleashed a new chaos. In the prial live of history we are now over the point where the first task confront ed t he race, that to creating a ‘world.’ We are again t hreat ened on all sides, th is time by a chaos that result s fom our own creating
We must first say yes to our age. We cannot solve the problem by retreating or simply seeking to alter of improve. Only a new initiative can bring a solution. It has to be possible to tread the path of developing awareness until we achieve an inner standard, not one imposed by external limitations. It has to be possible at the same time to attain a new inner security independent of what is burning in that awareness, an attitude of respect that supports the knowledge, a new naivete of consciousness, an ability to believe in the midst of skepticism. It has to be possible also to dispel illusion, to see the limits of existence sharply drawn, and yet to attain to a new infinitude that proceeds from mind and spirit.” [“The infinite Velue of the Person” Francis 3/25/24] …. Order Guardini, “Letter From Lake Como”
The minds at work in it may often be non-Christian, but the events as such are not.
The Truth Will Make You Free 