Light On Dark Water

The Confidence of Fools

A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil; but the fool rageth, and is confident.

—Proverbs 14:16

Writing last week about the persistent sympathy for Communism expressed, by people who ought to know better, for the political program of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” I found myself thinking of a column I wrote some months ago, “Invasion of the Old Fools”. In that piece I discussed the disheartening phenomenon of people my age (mid-fifties) and older who are still pushing the destructive social and political agenda they adopted when they were the youth of the late ‘60s.

My brother John reproved me gently for my use of the word “fool”, citing Matthew 5:22: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. I was in fact very mindful of that warning, having had an almost superstitious regard for it dating back to childhood, a regard which I think my siblings shared. It was of course the word itself that was taboo, not the sentiment. When my brother David (who was closer to my age) and I would fight we might call each other almost anything but that, and if either of us used this f-word the other took deep satisfaction in knowing that the one who spoke it was now in serious danger of being sent to hell, if not already packaged, addressed, and stamped.

And when I wrote “Invasion” I looked for a good synonym for “fool,” but couldn’t come up with one. None of the alternatives (see thesaurus entry) really captures what the word conveys to me, which is not a lack of intelligence (as in “idiot,” “moron,” and the like) but a lack of wisdom—a very substantial and probably culpable lack of wisdom, as when it is used by God himself: Thou fool, this night thy life shall be required of thee. Some of the thesaurus offerings, such as “ninny,” emphasize this lack of good sense over lack of simple intelligence, but without the gravity of “fool.” And gravity, I think, is warranted in this situation. Uncle Billy in It’s A Wonderful Life is something of a ninny; Mr. Potter is, until the last minute, a fool.

The deciding factor that kept the word “fool” in my piece was the proverb There’s no fool like an old fool. This is poetry; there is no other way to say the same thing as effectively in other words. And the proverb came inevitably to mind when I considered the stubborn attachment to Communism of which there is far too much evidence.

Communism is not the only terrible idea whose adherents can’t seem to see or admit that they were wrong. Just as misguided, if not more so, are those people of my age and beyond who were the agents of the sexual revolution and who cannot or will not acknowledge its results and its failure. By “the sexual revolution” I mean all those social developments which have at their root the idea that sexual activity is at or near the summit of human goods and ought not be restricted or inhibited in any way. The false promise of blissful and inconsequential sex seems at the heart of much of our entertainment and even of our supposedly serious art.

The devastation wreaked by the pursuit of this false promise is everywhere: aborted babies; the collapse of families; abused, neglected, or semi-orphaned children; broken hearts and crippled emotions; disease; inescapable pornography that debases women and grotesquely distorts the truth about sexuality. But rare is the person of my generation who will join me in acknowledging that the revolution was fundamentally wrong and ought to be repudiated. I certainly don’t hold myself exempt from blame, having been a part of the whole sad affair, but I am puzzled by those who don’t acknowledge that it has been a disaster, much less accept any responsibility for it, or for seeking change.

There is no “solving” a problem like this in any permanent way, and of course all the ills I just named existed before the great revolution and will never be extirpated entirely. But while there is no perfection in human society there are better and worse; there are such things as improvement and amelioration. No real improvement will happen in these areas until enough people recognize the nature of the problem. In this context I always think of the words of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who said of erroneous implementations of Vatican II (my ellipses hide only the words “of the Church”, in order to apply the Cardinal’s words more generally):

It must be clearly stated that a real reform…presupposes an unequivocal turning away from the erroneous paths whose catastrophic consequences are already incontestable.

I think or at least hope that in fact most people in the United States do recognize the problem and understand that many or most of the doctrines of the revolution are wrong and must be rejected as a first step toward improving the situation. But those who dominate the culture, both formally and informally, believe that the solution lies in a more vigorous commitment to the revolution, with faith in “education” to control its dark side, which is anyway only the work of retrograde elements resistant or not fully converted to the new ways. Like those who preserve a stubborn faith in Communism (and there is a lot of overlap between the two groups), they remain confident in the program, believing that any evils associated with it are the result of impure and incomplete implementation.

Is it not folly to continue on “an erroneous path whose catastrophic consequences are already incontestable”? And is not folly what fools do?

What kind of fool do you think he is?