Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER 10, 1982
PAGE 7
Professor Bloom is an expert on the philosophers of the ancient world. Here
are some of his comments:
I begin with my conclusion: students in our best universities do
not believe in anything, and those universiti�re doing nothing
about it, nor can they. An easy-going American kind of nihilism
has descended upon us, a nihilism without terror of the abyss.
[ Nihilism, according to WEBSTER'S SEVENTH NEW COLLEGIATE DICTION
ARY, is "a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and
especially of moral truths." It is a "viewpoint that traditional
values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless
and useless." ]
The great questions--God, freedom, and immortality, according to
Kant--hardly touch the young. And the universities, which should
encourage the quest for the clarification of such questions, are
the very source of the doctrine which makes that quest appear
futile.
The heads of the young are stuffed with a jargon derived from the
despair of European thinkers, gaily repackaged for American con
sumption and presented as the foundation for a pluralistic
society.•••One suspects that modern thought has produced an arti
ficial soul••••The new soul's language consists of terms like
value, ideology, self, commitment, identity--every word derived
from recent German philosophy, and each carrying a heavy baggage
of dubious theoretical interpretation of which its users are
blissfully unaware.
The new language subtly injects into our system the perspective
of "do your� thing"� the only plausible way of life. I know
that sounds vaguely passe, a remnant leftover from the Sixties.
But it is precisely the routinization of the passions of the
Sixties that is the core of what is going on now, just as the
Sixties were merely a radicalization of earlier tendencies•.••
The insatiable appetite for freedom to live as one pleases
thrives on this aspect of modern democratic thought••••There are
no absolutes: freedom}:;. absolute. A doctrine that gives equal
rights to any way of life whatsoever has the double advantage of
licensing one's own way of life and of giving�� democratic
good conscience. The very lack of morality is a morality and
permits what Saul Bellow has called "easy virtue," a mixture of
egotism and high-mindedness.
Now, in feeling as well as in
speech, a large segment of our young are open, open to every
"lifestyle."
This licentious approach to life (Gal. 5:19), notes author Bloom, "masquer
ades as the essential democratic theory." A corollary of this way of think
ing is constant vigilance against any person or group who "discriminates"
against anyone else's way of life. Every lifestyle (such as homosexuality)
is as acceptable as any other.
No one lifestyle, religion, political
philosophy or economic system is any better than any other. "Judging by the
fruits" is irrelevant and is indeed "prejudicial" or "discriminatory."
Continues author Bloom: