Permanent things

The permanent things are the things that matter more than the things that change.

Our neophiliac culture is obsessed with novelty. The pundits of 24 hours-a-day news media thrive on over-interpretation of fleeting events. In their excitement over the ephemeral, they are overlooking ‘the permanent things’ and ‘the commanding trends’ - the two, sometimes conflicting powers, that are really deciding the future.

The permanent things

For political, religious and cultural conservatives real value is found in ‘the permanent things’.

‘The permanent things’ include things of intrinsic value, accountability to God, outstanding natural beauty, love of family, the bonds of nationhood and the moral norms that C S Lewis called The Tao. These norms of good character include courage, duty, justice, integrity and charity.

For the conservative thinker Russell Kirk (pictured with Ronald Reagan), “real progress consists in the movement of mankind toward the understanding of norms, and toward conformity to norms. Real decadence consists in the movement of mankind away from the understanding of norms, and away from obedience to norms.”

The commanding trends

Today’s commanding trends include the secularisation of Old Europe, the growth of an angry Islamic fundamentalism, the proliferation of dangerous weapons, and the emergence of human cloning technologies and their potential to redefine the essence of human identity.

Conservatives will welcome some commanding trends. The extension of free trade across the planet is lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty – and is ending the disease and hunger associated with it. New media is breaking the monopoly of ‘red corner media’. Advances in ultrasound technology mean that the humanity of unborn children can no longer be hidden behind the dehumanising and Orwellian language of foetuses and ‘conceptual material’.

Other commanding trends scare conservatives. An increasingly materialist and secular Europe is no longer reproducing its populations and faces a worrying demographic timebomb - a timebomb that might only be defused by the horror of euthanasia or problematical levels of immigration. The combination of dangerous weaponry and Islamic fundamentalism is creating huge numbers of young men (and women) ready to end their lives in dramatic and deadly ways.

Many scientists and thinkers welcome all commanding trends and resist conservative attempts to frustrate them, or to make them subject to institutional regulation. But as Martin Luther King Jnr warned – when faced by nuclear proliferation – “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men”. How the permanent truths should guide our response to commanding trends is an awesome question. Much more important than the trivial politics (of process and biography) that dominates today's conversations.