Secular Times

Secular times produce their own values. They clear off the vast accumulations of authority. In place of traditional values they focus attention in the readily observable. The readily observable has utility. The inner experience has value. The first produces science; it may be tested by experiment. The second cumulates and becomes authority as individual experiences are interpreted, concentrated, formalized, and passed on; but authority can only be tested by personal experience—because the transcending is not observable.

The key word in the last sentence is interpreted. To illustrate, let’s take the case of “dreaming the future” mentioned in the last post. It’s an astonishing and rare experience. How is it explained? One interpretation is that our long-standing views of time are in some way incomplete. Another is that some invisible, superior agency sent the dream as a message. Yet another is that the dreamer is lying to garner attention—tough on the critic if he soon dreams the future in his turn.

Authority is a cumulation of the preferred interpretation, in such cases. The preference will be a function of prevailing views at that time. That interpretation is then further structured and refined by intellectual reasoning mostly by people who did not have the experience themselves.

The deposit of authority is not destroyed in secular times, to be sure. The old books are still there. Resistant groups still, as it were, live it. The curious person has access, so to speak. What secularism does is to devalue authority, and doing so it clears the decks. It serve to renew. It represents a genuine renewal because authority, like tradition, carries a vast detritus of error as well as truth. Much of it is well worth dumping, the valuables well worth retrieving and polishing again.

I had dug up some buried compost three years old. In that I found an excellent black dustpan used outdoors; I thought that I had accidently dumped it with yard waste in a tall paper sack some time ago. I also found a silver spoon. Now ancient authority carries much more value than my compost, but at least you know how this thought arose. At rare intervals, even this traditionalist will praise Modernity.