The foundation of all human struggles, heroism versus villainy, can also be seen as the struggle of light versus darkness. It’s reflected in religious writings, literature, and music. Walsh believes, surprisingly, that the struggle is not equal though: For evil to triumph, it must be complete, brooking no opposition. This is why all totalitarian evil regimes eventually die: no one can hold down all of humanity for very long. Light, on the other hand, love or goodness, can start as a mere spark, and can move mountains, and societies. And that drives drama in Western civilization.
So why are despair and nihilism so popular? Writers like H. P. Lovecraft embraced nihilism; all those who sought the light were defeated, and monsters reigned. Nihilism attracts the young. We can see that romance with darkness in the classic movie Chinatown, where the naïve detective J. J. Gittes doesn’t stand a chance against the evil of Noah Cross, who corrupted his family and Los Angeles alike, for his personal pleasure. And as a critical theory student I wrote in so many papers on American films in the past 30 years, as the anti-hero, the anti-life, stores really became so obvious. In 1970 it might have been edgy; now it is a cliché. This fascination resulted in stories that were nothing more than repetitive and shallow. Even the goriest death or the kinkiest sex merely shocks; it does not add drama.
In fact, this nihilism in a way sets off the heroic quest. It just isn’t true that all of life is meaningless. It’s human nature and the nature of the world to fight for good. I believe that’s one reason superhero movies are popular; the classic themes of the hero used in these stories move the audiences.
Walsh reflects on the puzzling fact that today’s leftists only condemn their own country, given that people in the US are the most free and prosperous peoples in history. Their defense of less free ideologies, for instance, radical Islam, which condemns homosexuality and which treats women as subordinate, seems incongruous given their liberation ideology. And I would add that in California, the environmentalists ignore the incalculable damage done to the wetlands and ocean and the safety of neighborhoods by camps of vagrants. He explains the paradox by the fact that the left really doesn’t have goals (like a reformer would) but simply has a will to power. If our enemies or our victims (like the vagrants) aid them in their quest, leftists approve of them. And every institution has been tainted by this self-doubt, self-loathing, and uncertainty. Witness the unprecedented leak of the Roe decision, the riots of 2020, the equity rules put into place due to Covid.
We can trace the ideology back to of course the Frankfurt School and especially A. Gramsci, who proposed the incremental approach to socialism. (As a side note, Pete Buttigieg’s father was a leading Gramsci scholar in the US). They seem to have succeeded wildly to destroy our cultural confidence from within. The anti-Western beliefs were picked up by the 60s radicals in Europe and the US, and many of the old radicals went on to teach new generations in Ivy League and other colleges. So it’s no wonder.
Light and darkness, good and evil, God and Satan. The quest for good, the desire for good, cannot be squelched by nihilism. We can see the beginnings of resistance to the darkness these days in all our cultural conflict.
P 108
REALITY IS NEGOTIABLE