Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی
Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave a most controversial speech on Western civilization at Harvard University in 1978.
As a survivor of the Soviet Gulags, his hosts expected him to praise the West.
Instead, he made a jarring observation: The West is a dying civilisation. If it doesn't change its ways, it is doomed to collapse
.In fact, he said this has been the case for 500 years, when the West made a crucial mistake: "How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? The mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance. I refer to humanism, the proclaimed autonomy of man from any higher force above him."
Solzhenitsyn said humanism made man autonomous from God, truth, and objective morality.
If all morality is subjective, then a man has nothing to live nor die for. Naturally, he loses his courage, embraces materialism, and grows effeminate.
So, what is the solution?
A return to belief in a transcendental morality under God: "If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual. The fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it."
To save the West, Solzhenitsyn said men must start with beautifying their souls, for that is how men live well, and begin to make civilisation itself beautiful again.
As a survivor of the Soviet Gulags, his hosts expected him to praise the West.
Instead, he made a jarring observation: The West is a dying civilisation. If it doesn't change its ways, it is doomed to collapse
.In fact, he said this has been the case for 500 years, when the West made a crucial mistake: "How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? The mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance. I refer to humanism, the proclaimed autonomy of man from any higher force above him."
Solzhenitsyn said humanism made man autonomous from God, truth, and objective morality.
If all morality is subjective, then a man has nothing to live nor die for. Naturally, he loses his courage, embraces materialism, and grows effeminate.
So, what is the solution?
A return to belief in a transcendental morality under God: "If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual. The fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it."
To save the West, Solzhenitsyn said men must start with beautifying their souls, for that is how men live well, and begin to make civilisation itself beautiful again.
