The Refiner's Fire
Do America's Myriad Problems Have a Solution?
In another forum there has been a discussion about homelessness in America, how it ought to be understood and what can be done about it. My personal view is that a great deal of this is virtue-signaling, springing from a need many have to feel good about themselves, but failing to get to the root of the problem - as the Bard said, “… all sound and fury, signifying nothing”.
Blowing away all the smoke, in my view what it boils down to - for those with the spine to confront it - is widespread intellectual, moral and spiritual rot in the bones of America. As a people we have turned like dogs to their vomit. We have rejected the good and embraced what is evil. This is a distasteful reality many, not up for such a nasty dose of self-revelation, will choose to turn away from.
The right question is not how shall we help the homeless - only one facet of a multifaceted societal decadence - but how does a society address the kind of deeply rooted intellectual, moral and spiritual decay from which this and many other evils spring? - a festering putrefaction eating away the very bones of our society.
While history is replete with examples of how societies have degenerated from light into darkness, how does a people turn that around? How does a society go from being depraved and debauched to being intellectually, morally and spiritually enlightened? Such enlightenment - or re-enlightenment - of course is the only real and true answer to the societal problems that plague us.
Exactly what would be the process whereby such a regeneration could happen?
Intellectually, morally and spiritually corrupt people will never ask let alone answer such questions.
The answer, of course, is a national repentance - an individual and collective acknowledgement of the intellectual, moral and spiritual decadence we have allowed to permeate our society and government, and, donning sackcloth and ashes, a turning away from the evils we have heretofore embraced, high and low.
Of course, this will never happen. This people will never freely choose such a course. The rot is too deep, too pervasive. Does history provide even one example of such a voluntary turn-around?
Nothing jumps to mind.
We’re in the middle of a rollercoaster ride into hell, and, sadly, I fear there’s no getting off until the end. We're going to have to ride it out.
Accordingly, in my jeremiad view, the only way out, the only path forward, as I have said in the past, is inexorably through the refiner's fire - a searing passage through the fiery furnace of affliction that will burn away the human dross among us and purify such precious metal as might remain after the conflagration.
What stuff are we made of? I think we’re about to find out…
Get ready. It's coming...
Hmmm... Come to think of it, this sounds a lot like the end-of-days scenario predicted for us in Judeo/Christian scripture.
Naw! That couldn't be what's happening, could it?
COULD IT?
Drill down to bedrock and, individually and collectively, it all comes to just this:
Right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, reality vs. fantasy, knowledge vs. ignorance, law vs. lawlessness, justice vs. injustice, order vs. chaos, liberty vs. tyranny, light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, life vs. death, God vs. the Godless...
Take your pick. You will, one way or another...
If you can be fooled, you will be…
These are the times that try men’s souls…
Torquemada