Dear America,
At this stage of our journey, as we are about to turn our focus to the American System more directly, I am compelled to explain why I am writing these letters. Why me? After all, who cares about the opinions of a random, unestablished author? I do not have a PhD in anything, am not a renowned expert in anything, etc. In that respect, I recognize there are some folks who will never take anything I say seriously. So, why do this?
Cut the Potato: My Guiding Purpose
Simply, I feel I have a lot to say that is unique to my experiences and viewpoint. I believe no time is ever wasted if the thing you are doing helps you acquire useful information or develop a skill. Also, I am a “habitual generalist” who typically enjoys the broad collection and synthesis of ideas more than gaining mastery in one area—i.e., this type of wide-ranging philosophical exploration is fun for me. Thus, even if very few listen, I’m fine with that.
I enjoy thinking, writing, and talking about diverse topics; so, here we are.
Beyond that, posterity is the main reason I am writing these letters. If my views end up being in ways career limiting or even relationship damaging, I have already accepted that potentiality.
For future Finches: I think it is better to take a reasonable position, hold it firmly, and work to achieve it than to sit in a dark corner (or the digital echo chamber of social media) mumbling lamentations to sympathetic ears as everything falls apart. Even if you are a simple potato, you have an important role to play—so play it well.
Fry in Oil: My Postmodern Journey
Life is unpredictable. Lately, I have often been reminded of my undergraduate years. I guess you could describe that version of me as a lazy student who earned good grades. My strategy was one of sufficiency. That is, to give as little of myself as possible while still producing quality work and “getting the A.” It was a job; and I was cynical.
Even back when I started college in 2005, the Academy stood monolithic as a seminary for the Postmodern paradigm/religion, which has Social, not Classical, Liberalism at its core. The Academy’s goal is to ensure you internalize and accept “the new normal,” not necessarily to teach you to think critically.
My belief about American higher educational institutions was and is: Expressing certain opinions too openly, investing oneself too deeply, and engaging too heartfully is a gateway to emotional verbal battles (not logical debates), biased revisionist dogma (not balanced views), and discouragement or outright ostracization (not inclusivity or tolerance).
Ergo, I withdrew and learned not to speak my mind except in very specific circumstances. This is a skill I have always thought might be higher education’s truest lesson for someone like me. My mindset back then was to “get a piece of paper and a good job” while avoiding drinking the figurative Kool-Aid.
Then, during a British Literature class in my third year, a fellow student gave me a verbal smack. I think she asked, “Why spend all of the money on an education if you’re not going to get anything out of it (except the degree)?” It was a fair point. I don’t remember her name, but I’m grateful to her. From then on, my goal was to understand the Postmodern paradigm (via its underlying thought processes, lexicon, and syntax) so that I could function effectively and efficiently within it. By then, at 20, I had no fear of losing myself. Perhaps a bit of such fear would have been wise, because…
In my fourth year of undergrad, I met my ex-wife, a Chinese national whose spirituality was derived from her national identity and the state. My intention is not to cast blame on anyone, her or me, but we both should have known that our worldviews were too different to coexist in a marriage. Perhaps there is a lesson in my experience that has relevance to America as well: Some worldviews simply do not mix. Tolerance is not acceptance.
But I was young and stupid. Suddenly in need of a steady and substantial income, I Scotch taped a minor in Japanese (and almost a second in Philosophy) onto my English major. I also procured a summa cum laude sticker that I inconspicuously affixed near the bottom.
[Side Note: The reader may dislike my very artful boasting, but how often can one brag about one’s academic career? Not once, even on a resume. Just like I can’t prop up my authoring career by bragging about all the great test cases I wrote / administered / executed to launch new software. A pity.]
Exit bachelor’s degree; enter Financial Crisis of 2008.
I had three figurative irons in the fire when I graduated: [1] a teaching assistantship; [2] an application to the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program; and [3] the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) program. Although enlightening experiences, Option 2 did not work out until 2011 and Option 3 fell flat, so I went with Option 1. More school—yay (not)!
For the reader: Both JET and PMF are governmentally sponsored career programs in Japan and the United States, respectively. My feelings at the time were like this: “At least I did not end up working for the government!”
Now, let’s fast forward to the end of this movie!
By the age of 24, after six years of being steeped in academic culture, I was wary and weary of its strange rules and practices (e.g., “publish or perish,” even if you have nothing new, valuable, or factual to say). Further, while the prestige of obtaining a doctoral degree is enticing, pursuing one is often an impractical and low-income endeavor. And I, already with only debt to my name, decided to take a different road. No PhD for me. But, hey! If professional certifications count, maybe I can add those up to an honorary PhD. What does the reader think? No? Another pity.
In summary, my days in the Academy are over. I took what I needed from it and avoided being altered by it. My advice to anyone with a traditionalist worldview who is entering the university system: Play the game, always remember who you are and where you come from, acquire value, learn how to navigate the Postmodern realities and immunize yourself from their influence, and then leave.
Add the Salt: My Reasons for Writing
Anyway, America, let’s now return to the question: Why am I writing these letters after spending almost 20 years being so quiet and cautious? Well, there is a red elephant in the room ridden by a man in a blue suit who has orange skin and interesting hair, but they are not why. More on the Man in the Blue Suit later…
-
My silent retreat touched the cliff’s edge. For a long time, I felt stifled, muted, and obsolete. America was trending away from my worldview at an accelerating pace, and I accepted being left behind. Bye!
Cowardly and shameful? Maybe. But a man must eat. That is, live to fight another day that matters more.
As a person who will go to great pains to be polite and avoid conflict—because fighting back is very much in my nature and only ever earned me pain throughout my first 20 years—I cannot understand how the American Progressive movement can be so relentless and overbearing but not see it. The Academy and Media in the United States are machines whose function promotes only one worldview.
See, the difficulty with Postmodernism is that it cannot remain relativistic forever. One paradigm—one worldview—must predominate.
A society with competing prevailing cultures is one tantamount to having none. If the only thing determining “right” is “we said so,” then the Progressive movement can never succeed or achieve enough to satisfy its proponents. All other views must vanish. So, ironically, those people who set out on a mission to free everyone from intolerance will only succeed in imposing new, arbitrary rules for what must be tolerated in which circumstances and by whom. In short, they have and will continue to trade one set of intolerances for another. And this is a design feature of Postmodernism! For, how can rules be anything but arbitrary if they are simply based on power and who currently holds it?
Every source text, every lecture, every paper, every headline, every debate, every news panel, every film, every show, every book—the very existence of any little thing or opinion that displays non-conformance to the current thought patterns, gesticulations, lexicon, and syntax is not only shunned but its very existence erased from the world.
The current Paradigm, which has taken over both the American Left and Right to varying degrees, is essentially this: “If you do not behave in a tolerable way (defined by us), you are intolerant and intolerable.” How can this be named anything but evil, no matter who perpetrates it?
So, I feel I cannot stay quiet anymore. To my friends on the left, have you not thought for a second that the Man in the Blue Suit is “nature’s response” to decades of domination and derision by the Collective You? Since 1912, a sequence of Progressive Postmodern paradigms has predominated in America with only brief pauses, and each has been more aggressive than the last in its assault on our Founding. I empathize with the Collective You to an extent, because the Progressive movement has not been without positive outcomes, but the Collective You has pushed too far and too hard in a direction that means the literal death of America as it was and is.
A segment of our society has become Jacobin, and I fear we may find our own Reign of Terror yet.
Ergo, I am praying that the Left and Right are eventually able to take a step back and think. Because the Man in the Blue Suit is not the dictator the media wishes he was. But continuing this cultural spiral downward is absolutely going to produce someone evil—the question is whether that person will arise on the left or the right.
-
My escape plan disintegrated. When you have no children, it is much easier to watch the world burn. Before my son was born, the tragedy of our country failing meant less to me.
Selfish and cowardly? Sure. But a dead man feels no pain and has no worldview.
Perhaps that is overly dramatic, but the truth is: The defeat and destruction of the American Idea seems inevitable. Whether we succeed in preserving the American System for a century or a millennium, eventually this culture and government will die. All things must.
Live well. Trust God. Be at peace with whatever comes. That was what I told myself. These words sound right, but I think they’re being applied today in a very wrong way by very many people. I was guilty as well.
What does “live well” mean? Christians are not called to be pacifist any more than they are teetotal (/nods to C.S. Lewis). And while I am certainly not calling for violence, there is occasionally the need to “fight” (and sometimes to fight, just not now in my opinion) to preserve the future. If God works through our Vocations in the Family, Church, and State, then I would argue that self-defense in all three spheres is an aspect of Providence. Fight the good fight and trust that God will see it (and Us) through.
I am not, though, claiming the moral high ground for myself or my worldview. If the price of America letting its culture rot must be paid with self-sacrifice, then We the People must offer up all we can (or must) for the sake of those that follow. Even if it costs us everything.
I have received much from America, and I hope these words count in some way towards giving back. Perhaps there are others like me who—having remained quiet for legitimate reasons—are willing to use their voices and strive for a brighter future together. That is the hope of CuRe.
It strikes me just how many brilliant people on both sides make a living inundating everyone with facts (or “facts”) they have accumulated over long careers, who are also of course offering interpretations of those facts for everyone. Yet, I wonder how many facts it takes to see the truth, or to be blinded from seeing it.
To my simple mind, the truth is plain: We the People, over the course of a century or more, have put our culture at great risk and its future in peril. We must labor to correct our mistakes, even if we were not the ones “wearing the mask” of We the People when those mistakes were made. Ultimately, that is why I am writing these letters.
United we stand, America,
Finch Fries
P.S. Thank you to Professors Rudebusch, Okubo, Rothfork, Rosendale(s), and especially Larkin, who helped me transition to industry while I was still in graduate school. Your guidance back then helped immensely, and I appreciate it.