Only this Ghastly Age…
“I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending he was the whole.” - Julia, Brideshead Revisited
Self-love has made of modern man an empty shell, claiming to be self-sufficient, who has superseded God. Man thinks himself to be everything, and any task he undertakes he does so to prove his own power and greatness.
This self-love appears in society as pandering to one another, and always as an attempt to glorify oneself. It stands upon a foundation of the sin of progress, and refuses to partake of the cure of humility, masking false humility with defensiveness of one’s neighbor. True surrender - to a Being above and beyond oneself - is incompatible with the ‘absolutely modern and up-to-date’ man of ‘this ghastly age,’ as Julia says. For modern man has done away with God.
Not because God is non-existent, but because he has seen God, and declared him insufficient. Modern man cannot be taught religion. He meets religion, and discards it as not worth his invaluable time.
Lately, I’ve been struggling with discouragement in my relationship with Christ. My Mom, knowing my struggles, sent me a verse from the Diary of St. Faustina, in which one sentence blazed at me like a neon sign: “Sensitiveness and discouragement are the fruits of self-love.”
Bam! That hit my heart. How foolish I’ve been! cried my soul. Oh Jesus, I have reaped the fruits of the sins of my age. How I have lived in sensitivity, and allowed discouragement to cloud my relationship with you!
For the past two days now, I can’t get that sentence out of my head, and thinking and praying much upon it, I am beginning to connect the dots on self-love. I am beginning to see how this sin permeates to the very core - not only of my heart - but of our entire society.
PART I - THE SUPERIORITY OF THE SELF-LOVING MAN
The Nature of Self-Love
As we all know, anxiety is the largest mental problem in our world, whether its as simple as the fact that some kind of social insecurity exists in each person, or as massive as the uncountable millions of suicides each year. And if anxiety is the fruit of self-love, then how has self-love overrun our modern age?
Only this age can produce such self-centered individuals, who are so completely godless. What at first appears as the mere innocence of a savage waiting to meet God, turns out to be such an exaggerated sense of self-importance that, in the vain man’s mind, he has entirely eclipsed God.
Even were he to land on a desert island, the modern man would believe he was superior to the Divine. He does not consider how he will survive all on his lonesome - he will either survive by his own powers, or end his life, which he considers is the ultimate power he possesses over himself. He does not consider how he will propagate, or how he will contribute to the world, now that he is a permanent outcast, for such pursuits are extraneous to the simple and ultimate fact of his own existence. “I exist, therefore I am All.”
The Folly of the Self-Loving Man
In fact, with this logic, who is to gainsay that the infant does not self-generate? Being All, perhaps he is and was sufficient unto himself for self-generation. And who is to say that nature does not make mistakes, producing a boy when the individual claims he should be a girl? Certainly not nature - for the boy is sufficient unto himself apart from nature. No one can gainsay that when he self-generated into the womb, nature played him a cruel joke. Thus the boy, who decrees in his self-contained wisdom that he is a girl, is sufficient to make such a decision, for he has always been sufficient unto himself.
And it is not only himself which he can create in his own image, and over which he has supreme dominion. Because he has the right to kill himself, create himself, and glorify himself, modern man has the right to prove his greatness by undertaking any task, and fulfilling it according to his own understanding. Thus he has self-granted authority over the mistakes of previous men, over the uncharted limits of the universe, and over the backwards nations of the world.
Through this error, the modern attempt at stewardship of the earth - which should stem from love of creation - manifests now as a fruit of self-love. While previous generations have destroyed the earth by making it in their own image, our modern generation will triumph. We can prove our individual superiority by re-ordering the earth. Man’s perspective of how the world should be - since science is accurate because we undertake science and we are All - is accurate. Therefore, saving the earth further proves that we are All.
In the same way, flight into space gives us more than anyone had before, and more proves that we are sufficient unto ourselves. In the same way, if we influence the backwards nations - which are centuries behind us in progress - to live as we live, then we have proven, through greater numbers, that our era is best, and every individual is sufficient unto himself.
He will and can undertake anything he puts his mind to. He can and will build to himself a monument. And if it fails, if he finds himself lacking, he can and will exert his ultimate power over himself; for who else has the right of life and death over his perfect person, if not his perfect self?
This is how the sin of self-love glorifies itself, and has the nerve to invest itself with creating and destroying in its own image.
The Root of Progress
What I realize, as I write, is that self-love is not the only factor here - our modern era is, of course, riddled with many lies, and another great one is that of the progress of man. Of course, this is a pre-requisite for the existence of self-love, but it stands on its own in some senses, as well. Because man, according to the modern mind, has not always been All. He has been moving toward that end on account of the “virtue” of progress. Each generation is better than the last, until one day perfection shall be achieved. And thus the foundation is laid for each generation, full of vanity and pride, to see itself as the fully-progressed, self-contained man.
The sin of progress has been wed to the sin of self-love, and bolsters it as a platform supports a speaker. Self-love cannot stand without the belief in progress, or else man would be forced to look back upon his past and declare, through over-whelming evidence, that man is not sufficient unto himself, and can only be miserable in such a belief.
But because of the saving grace of progress, self-love has permission to do away with the past, and become all-consuming within man as he looks upon himself. It elevates him not only above God, nature, understanding, and his neighbor, it can even elevate him above his ancestors, and promise that future generations are superfluous to such current and modern perfection.
PART II - THE SELF-SUFFICIENCY OF THE SELF-LOVING MAN
There are two subjects I just mentioned, which I would like to dive into further:
how self-love causes one to behave as though he adores his neighbor more than himself, even though the opposite is true; and
how self-love leads to sterility.
Pandering to the Neighbor
So first, the neighbor.
Self-love elevates a man, in his own mind, above his neighbor, while simultaneously prompting him to acknowledge that all men are equally sufficient unto themselves, with self-governing power, no matter their age, race, gender, or education.
Thus the question arises: are these two ideas - man is equal, and the individual man is higher than his neighbor - not incompatible within the self-loving man?
Only contradictory at face value, for vanity is exceptional at showing dandified deference to others. And this is what we see nowadays, in our culture: a dandified deference, which is, underneath it all, an ultimate dismissal of the other’s autonomy, but disguises itself under a mask of flattery and self-righteous approval.
Aside from Cancel Culture (who’s relationship to self-love is, I think, self-evident), the Pride Culture has taken over. It is called pride, and while it is not fully misnamed, it’s true cardinal sin is vanity. For pride is the refusal to admit one is in the wrong, while vanity is the belief that one’s perfection is beyond question, and anyone who worships not at the sacred alter of themself is an unforgivable heathen.
But vanity also knows it must put on a fake bow to others, in order to receive the accolade that it loves. The vain man does not seek love - accolade is enough. He does not seek true understanding, for only he can truly know himself. He seeks only acceptance, and the external applause that he is great. Each man must constantly compliment and affirm each other, in order to receive his own desired compliments and affirmations, yearning for the accolade that is his due by merely existing.
Therefore, the pride culture - while appearing to be a culture of defense and dignity - is actually a dismissive culture, which panders to others in order to receive external acclaim, and worship at its own altar. This is how each individual rises above his neighbor when, to all appearances toward the neighbor, he is constantly defending and complimenting him.
Destroying the Neighbor
Conversely, when the man of self-love does not receive the affirmation and accolade that he desires, from his neighbors, his own personal worship ceases to be sufficient. He grows full of internal doubt, self-distrust, and blame. This is when he lashes out at his neighbor - whom he previously complimented - pulling the neighbor down from his pedestal, in order to assert his individual right to stand higher than the other.
Thus self-love does not vanish in the light of day. It destroys one panderer, who was bad at his job, and then seeks another panderer to whom it can pander, and achieve the same results of affirmation and accolade.
And when it finds no sufficient panderer - and the older it gets, the more likely this becomes - the vanity of the self-loving man undertakes to destroy anyone it can, striving to place itself back on the platform of progress. But while it can do damage, ultimately, it cannot destroy the young.
It is eventually defeated by the same power that defeated its parents. The younger generation comes into its own and - by its mere existence - unwittingly dissolves the foundation upon which the vain man’s self-glorification was based. He becomes obsolete - merely another example of how progress makes previous generations obsolete.
Sterility
This leads us right into the subject of the sterility of the vain man.
I said before that the man on the island does not consider how he will propagate, and that future generations are practically superfluous to the current perfection of the modern man.
Hopefully, this is already starting to make sense to you. After all, why would a man who is perfect, as the culmination of progress, seek to endanger the proof of that perfection by producing another generation? What if he himself is proven as obsolete as his parents, grand-parents, or - God-forbid - his great-great grandparents?
No, rather than creating new life, he must produce something so incredible with his current life, something so esteemed by the future off-spring of his neighbors, that he will forever be hailed as a man ‘ahead of his time’. In this way, he will not be proven obsolete, but will find a home even among the progressive elites of the future.
By such striving, he hopes to never lose his accolades, his panderers, or his interior confidence in his own greatness, and by such means, he will outwit the fools of his generation, and prove himself as perfect a specimen as he thinks he is.
Charles and Julia - The Solution
Among the elites of the self-involved British and American societies of the 1920’s and 30’s - portrayed so expertly by Evelyn Waugh in his many novels - Charles Ryder and Julia Bertram of Brideshead Revisited stand apart.
Halfway through the novel, as they reflect together upon the failed happiness of their pasts, Julia says of her husband, Rex Mottram, ““I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending he was the whole.” As she acknowledges the emptiness of vanity, reflecting on the desert that is her husband’s mind and heart, she admits that she is looking for the whole. She wanted a savage who had yet to meet God, who might be striving to discover real truth; and what she married was a man who had met God, and decided God didn’t measure up to his own perfection.
As Charles and Julia struggle to find happiness within the societal bounds of vanity, they are eventually forced to acknowledge their own failures and stand aside, bearing witness to the empty pandering and self-glorification that surrounds them. In the end, they reject everything about vanity, and individually, each embrace older and nobler ideals, ideals of a loving Heavenly Father and of an authoritarian church established by Christ. These ideals satisfy and redeem the ultimate in-sufficiency which they have found within themselves.
When man thinks, during his vanity, that he has made of himself a God, he finds, through humility, that he was only ever an empty shell of a man. The pride of progress and the blindness of vanity must give way to humility and true sight. Without such an internal change, no man can find God, for even if He finds God, he will think Him insufficient, before the blinding brilliancy of his own progressive divinity.
Yet man struggles to gain that sight and humility, for even when he knows the truth, the fruits of self-love remain. With an exaggerated sense of his own importance and the unique greatness of his sins, he struggles to come before God with a meek and aquiecent heart. Still struggling out of the mire of his blindness, he can now see that his actions were sins, but the false lens of his leftover vanity still declares that those sins were monumental. His sins are insurmountable. They climbed higher than any other man’s ever has. Oh, the degradation of his soul! Can any man compare to his worthlessness? Even after pride admits of fault, and vanity admits of a God greater than oneself, the effects of pride and self-love remain in the mind, filling the soul with the anxiety that the sin is far too massive for true redemption.
In the full quote my mother sent me, Christ says to Faustina,
“My child, know that the greatest obstacles to holiness are discouragement and an exaggerated anxiety. These will deprive you of the ability to practice virtue. All temptations united together ought not disturb your interior peace, not even momentarily. Sensitiveness and discouragement are the fruits of self-love. Have confidence, My child. Do not lose heart in coming for pardon, for I am always ready to forgive you. As often as you beg for it, you glorify My mercy.” (Diary, 1488)
In these words are contained the solution to our self-love: have confidence; surrender; ask for forgiveness. Do not hold back from fear or an exaggerated anxiety, but trust, like a little child, that the mess you made is not too big for Daddy to clean up.
In Conclusion
No matter the extent of his pride and vanity, no man’s sins are too great for God. No man is mighty enough to destroy his own soul. The worst he can do is deny it, glorify his mind, body, and heart, and out of these, build an imaginary eternity. But it is all illusion. Each man must come to terms, either in this life or the next, with the ultimate futility of everything he has done.
“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” says the poet, and so it is. The works of man are nothing to the mightiness of God, and all can be destroyed in a moment. So have faith not in your own work, nor the tests of the future, nor the magnitude of your sins, but have confidence in the forgiveness of a Being far above your own existence and understanding.
Glorify His mercy with your confidence, and be not afraid.