October 13, 2010
The inherent atheism of globalism
posted by Archbishop Cranmer
His Grace was fortunate enough to meet the former Czech President Vaclav Havel in 1990. We talked of much, but the enduring impression has been of the man’s politico-philosophical conviction.
There is an excellent article in The Catholic Herald on Mr Havel’s address to a conference in Prague entitled ‘The world we want to live in’. It deals with ‘different spheres from politics, economics, sociology and political philosophy to aesthetics and religion’:
At the opening of the conference. Mr Havel, an acclaimed playwright and essayist, gave a speech in which he deplored the global society, describing it as the “first atheistic civilisation”. This society, he said, preferred short term profit over long term profit, but its most dangerous aspect was its pride.
He described the pride as: “The pride of someone who is driven by the very logic of his wealth to stop respecting the contribution of nature and our forebears, to stop respecting it on principle and respect it only as a further potential source of profit.”
Mr Havel continued:
“I sense behind all of this not only a globally spreading short-sightedness, but also the swollen self-consciousness of this civilisation, whose basic attributes include the supercilious idea that we know everything and what we don’t yet know we’ll soon find out, because we know how to go about it. We are convinced that this supposed omniscience of ours which proclaims the staggering progress of science and technology and rational knowledge in general, permits us to serve anything that is demonstrably useful, or that is simply a source of measurable profit, anything that induces growth and more growth and still more growth, including the growth of agglomerations.
“But with the cult of measurable profit, proven progress and visible usefulness there disappears respect for mystery and along with it humble reverence for everything we shall never measure and know, not to mention the vexed question of the infinite and eternal, which were until recently the most important horizons of our actions.
“We have totally forgotten what all previous civilisations knew: that nothing is self-evident.”
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