4 Our birthright
The birthright I speak of is something far more terrible; it is the fact that people have become inured to ugliness, that they accept the ravages of developers without even knowing that anything is wrong. In short, it is their own minds they have lost, the core, that core of them, from which judgement can be made, the inner knowledge of what it is to be a person, the knowledge of right and wrong, of beautiful and ugliness, of life and deadness.
And, often, there are more people who have uneasy feelings of doubt about that development than there are voices of certainty who want to push it though. Yet the voices of doubt are muffled, a little quiet, because they do not quite know how to express their fears. They do not quite know if they are right. They do not quite know if they are morally justified in pushing, when the issues are so cloudy. And those who propose, and push though the horrible developments, with monster parking lots, with steel clad warehouse buildings, with machine-based sales — they go forward blindly, they seem so sure, they seem to know what to do. So, the more timid, perhaps more humane doubters who are not so sure that this is really a good thing, lose the initiative, allow the horrors to go through, to pass — because they are not quite, quite, sure enough of what should be.
Unsure as they are, they vote for it. Sometimes they vote by silence. Sometimes they vote positively, actively, because “who are they to stand in the way of progress”. And all this is caused because the inner certainty, the knowledge of what is living structure has been taken from us, has been diluted, has been rendered nearly ineffective.
That is what I mean by the loss of our birthright.
After all, there really is no way to say it that quite clinches it. No way to be sure. No way to assert it positively, so that you can be sure not to look like a fool.
What has been lost is the inner language which connects you to your own soul, which makes you know, with certainty, which way is likely to be right, and which way is likely to be wrong. To be more clear about it. To feel it, as a real thing. To know, listen to, the voice that is in your own heart.
#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/Conclusion: The world created and transformed#