Guardini senses that what was going on was not merely a change in cultural order; the change “seems to consist chiefly in an alteration of the entire concept of ‘culture.’ (p. 74). He describes how deeply embedded the implicit meanings were embedded in a notion of progress: “modern faith in progress was the doctrine which manifested these aspirations, and man’s faith in progress grew confidently, based in a logic of human nature and its accomplishments” (p. 76). Guardini boldly states, “We do not hold this doctrine any more. On the contrary, we recognize with increasingly clarity that the modern world deceived itself” (p. 76). Perhaps we understand this right now in the middle of environmental devastation, basic commodity shortage, oil prices and peak oil, economic uncertainty and recession, and war – some of the same characteristics that Guardini saw in Europe after WW II. Yet the modern idea of progress still remains resilient within wider public discourse. Still there is a cynicism about culture and progress that Guardini saw developing decades ago. He writes, “the doubts and criticisms of culture today come from within culture itself, for we no longer trust it. . . . No one today can trust the work of man as the modern world trusted it. No one today can trust the work of man any more than he can trust nature (pp. 77). He recognizes the dangers inherent in a world without trust: “And these dangers menace culture even as they menace the men who bear within themselves the cultural order” (p. 82). As a belief in “progress” falls to the side, what is left instead is just the modern sense of power – power over nature, over humans, over culture. Almost predicting the analysis of Michel Foucault, “the development of power has created the impression that power objectifies itself; that is, power cannot really be possessed or even used by man; rather, it unfolds independently from the continuous logic of scientific investigations, from technical problems, from political tensions. The conviction grows that power simply demands its own actualization” (p. 83).

This is a remarkable analysis of the coming “postmodern”, seen in its underlying nihilism before its theoretical advocates in the 60s and beyond. Guardini even notes, “We may express this psychologically by saying that being is then governed by the unconscious. The unconscious, however, is a chaotic disorder in which the possibilities for destruction are at least as strong as those for healing or consolation” (p. 84) – again, one hears premonitions of Lacan. He descriptively writes, “Many men now suspect that ‘culture’ is not at a realm of beautiful security but a game of dice. Its stakes are life and death, but nobody knows how the last die will be case” (p. 87).

He the turns prognosticator: “The coming order by which man will be related to his own works differs radically from the older one. . . . The new culture will be incomparably more harsh and more intense. It will lack the organic both in its sense of growth and of proportions; for the new culture will have been willed into being by the spirit of man, built up abstractly by his own hands. The new culture does not promise that breath necessary for a secure life and free growth; on the contrary it presents a vision of factories and barracks to the eyes of the mind” (pp. 88-89).

Guardini’s historical perspective allows him to peer into our current social background.: “A single fact, we must emphasize, will stamp the new culture: danger. Previously the simplest need for, and meaning of culture has always been that culture created security . . . . the danger confronting man today arises from within culture itself. From the efforts he expanded and from the fortresses he built to conquer that ancient danger, man has created new dangers. . . . The new danger arises from the factor of power” (p. 89-90).

Would we have to worry today about those who have tried to undercut the rationales and propaganda that have led to the decimation of Iraq without the technological power of surveillance that “progress” has devised? We still live in a fallen world, governed by human beings distorted by sin, a distortion that is not eliminated through democracy or socialism, but only in Christ. Guardini saw this past the dropping of the atomic bombs by the United States and the decimation of Germany and the technical efficiency of the Holocaust, and the millions of dead on the eastern front. Power has been unleashed without understanding how power relates to a true understanding of freedom. Ironically, human freedom undercuts human freedom: “so it is that the dangers facing human freedom mount ominously day by day. Science and technology have so mastered the forces of nature that destruction, either chronic or acute and incalculable in extent, is now a possibility. Without exaggeration one can say that a new era of history has been born. Now and forever man will live at the brink of an ever-growing danger which shall leave its mark upon his entire existence” (pp. 90-1).

Guardini does not surrender to the nihilism, but instead calls for the responsible freedom of the person. The new cultural order demands three virtues to achieve the possibilities of good in this culture: (1) earnestness; (2) gravity; and (3) asceticism. He writes, “earnestness must will to know what is really at stake; it must brush aside empty rhetoric extolling progress or the conquest of nature; it must face heroically the duties forced upon man by his new situation.” Gravity “will be spiritual, a personal courage devoid of the pathetic, a courage opposed to the looming chaos. This gravity or courage must be purer and stronger even than the courage man needs to face either atom bombs or bacteriological warfare, because it must restrain the chaos rising out of the very works of man. Finally it will find itself . . .opposed by an enemy, the mass, ranged against it in public organizations clotted with catchwords” (p. 93). The first two require a third to keep them from romantic illusions and self-righteousness: asceticism. “May must learn again to become a true master by conquering and by humbling himself. In no other way will he achieve the lordship of his own power” (p. 95). No victimhood; no demonization of the other on the Left or the Right; asceticism by humbling and conquering one’s self.

Guardini wants to return to the dignity and responsibility of the human person, not found in one’s autonomy or rights, but in the image of God in which the person is created, as seen in Jesus Christ. This takes one far beyond the sloganism of the right and the left, because both presuppose humans are their own masters, that they rule to bring about the cultural order that they project as good. They produce in the process an anti-person humanism, the ability to sacrifice the person in the name of an abstraction called “humanity”. Guardini saw this. He also saw Revelation. But that’s another post. I need to get up in the morning for the food distribution at church.