Make Culture Great Again - And No, This is not a Political Piece

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In the modern world it is quite obvious that secular society, popular culture, is antithetical to true Catholic living. The Culture of Death, the Culture of Political Correctness, of "Non-discrimination", on and on. Life? To secular snowflake society its good in certain people and worthless in others, when those people are not "useful" or yet born. But isn't that discrimination? "Ohh, discrimination you are discriminating against us," they (those of the culture) say, "you bigot, you phobic..."Again, on and on it goes. And if America is bad, with threats against religious liberty and liberty in general multiplying in an increasingly confusing and confused age, other areas are worse. America is behind Europe and Canada on the free-fall to cultural destruction. At W.C.C. I've met several Canadian students who have personally shared their experience in Canada. Advice they were given: "If you can, either try to get a political office and slow the runaway train to moral and societal ruin, or get out."

It's bad there. Like this: https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2017/06/06/draft-n2337114

In Canada, freedoms of speech, press, religion, and association have suffered greatly due to government pressure. The debate over same-sex marriage that is taking place in the United States could not legally exist in Canada today. Because of legal restrictions on speech, if you say or write anything considered ‘homophobic’ (including, by definition, anything questioning same-sex marriage), you could face discipline, termination of employment, or prosecution by the government.

Free speech, from this above article and what I've learned from talking with some of the Canadian students here, is now non-existent, as Canada travels even faster down the path of moral decline than America. Needless to mention in particulars all that the liberal agenda is pushing both there, in America, and around the world, but if there can no longer be freedom of public debate or of the family is there society, is there culture?

Consider the calls for violence, these comments here, rising wrath among pro-abortion radicals, and so on. America is heating up, some have even spoken of another civil war if violence escalates much farther. In short, society is broken, nearly dead as it is not functioning with any sort of principle which can unify it to any end, and "un-unifed" is just that dis-unified.

But these are the problems of one society, what is commonly thought of by the term, the "country in general" in the powers of the media, business, and entertainment. But is it society though? "Society" comes from the Latin societas, itself a derivative of socius, which means ally or friend. Society is meant to be the general term for the friends, the allies of one, and in perfection would mean that society is unified, has concordant beliefs and lives as friends or allies. Society that we think of by the word is thus not functional at any rate and I argue that it is because of an abandonment of culture. Yes, there is "culture" in the popular sense, cultural norms, art, celebrities, traditions and the such but true culture, the foundation stone of society, the binding chain of one generation to remember whom they are and what they are, and what makes them such, is missing—or more accurately ignored.

Society and culture are quite related but not equivalent. Society as I stated is obviously falling but culture in itself is not falling, culture as the historical backbone, a linkage of society to its past is not changed but only forgotten when a society declines, forgetting its past, forgetting what has made it great. This in summary is what has happened to much of Western Culture". "Culture"is not culture, the term being quite equivocal, but the "culture"of Western Civilization has "declined" as it has abandoned culture. Forgetting their past, many in modernity have abandoned culture through relativism, that while primarily of the moral genera, has become cultural relativism, a thought that nothing makes any society, or for some, Christian Western Civilization special. 

"Cultural "Relativism" Source

There can be no "special" if there are no absolutes, and what we see around us as "pop culture" is a state of attempted mediocrity, slowly moving away from the foundation of history - tradition - to the "wackiness" seen in what is thought culture. When there is no grounding in tradition, anything is possible, and right, to those so un-grounded. What is visible now in much of the world may be called culture but in fact is not so, and cannot be, as it does not, besides the vestiges of true culture, have linkage to the past, to past greatness. America is better than Canada/Europe on this as we still have a sort of national identity, but destruction of sovereignty, freedoms, and the family at a faster pace than in America has reduced their national identities to pointlessness, mainly sets of distractions for people who are aimless and increasingly hopeless and angry from their aimlessness. One of the Canadian students I discussed this with was amazed for example to see our, slightly more held, even though internationally abased, identity. Average Americans such as the first she saw when driving into Montana can walk with pride in a good sense, confident in who they are, with a truer and less aimless sense of identity, a linkage of oneself to the identity of America's past glories, its heroes, and its struggles. We can still lose this advantage over our peers, and in fact are, as day by day, the confidence, mission, and unity of our cultural lineage becomes more and more forgotten in a swamp of anger,mediocrity, and relativism.

But this can be reversed by simply, remembering our past, remembering culture. As a senior this year at W.C.C likes to tell us, "We are defenders of culture." At W.C.C. remembering and moving back to live our cultural identity, our lifeline and foundation to the past is a primary focus, and the question both of this page and in a sense most of this blog.

In first approaching this subject, I thought the primary question to ask would be: Can one rightfully abandon and attempt to destroy one's culture (what I considered as culture, the debasing American and worldwide'pop culture') and nation for what is better, trying to replace it? After talking with upperclassmen, there is one simple conclusion. The question is wrong. Culture cannot be destroyed, and has not been. Christian (and specifically Catholic Western Civilization) has not been destroyed but been forgotten by many. We can give up on the "culture" that has perverted true culture without any qualms, because by doing so we would be restoring the epitome of its greatness. 

This means that in restoring civilization, culture, unity, and so-forth, one can rightly abandon what is considered normal in the wrecked flaws that have been introduced among the vestiges of true culture in the modern world. We can be in-normal rightly and purposefully, and to the present this is fine, even in the view of Jesus'parable of the tax-collector and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14). If we act differently for the benefit of society as a whole, to restore a unified society, and true culture, and not out of pride, which is a less of a concern, when most of your neighbors will NOT praise you for good deeds, and in fact might ridicule you for "craziness", differentiation is a good thing.

Actions must still be balanced by doing them in a way that will actually benefit society, but I believe having pondered this stage of "my argument"", as I will call it, one can move on to consider the possibility of "quasi-independent Catholic communities", which is my intent by the term differentiation. Overall, this has been my primary underlying question and I hope to further develop it into whether such an idea is practical, better defining it, and whether it is right. Until then, restore, the historical, Catholic, and cultural traditions that make true culture great.

Make Culture Great Again - grounded in God, Faith, Family, and a Society on those three principles