Mission Critical: James Kalb - "We need to offer, as the old slogan goes, a choice and not an echo."

Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament - Our Lady of Walsingham Cathedral, Houston, TX

A thought provoking piece by James Kalb at Crisis Magazine, which reads in part:

A world made up of neutral technologically rational institutions may seem a bad place to look for such things (as ideals of life), but they are always present.

The quickest way to understand ideals of life is to look at people’s points of pride. Pride can be burned away by love of God and neighbor, or of the Good, Beautiful, and True. However, its role in human life is not altogether negative. Not everyone is a saint or sage, and for those who aren’t proper pride is part of self-respect and an essential motive for good behavior.

[...]

People want to distinguish themselves because they want to be something definite, and they want the self-respect that comes from living up to a legitimate ideal. But in a world ordered by technocratic institutions the only way to do that is to distinguish ourselves professionally, though the perceptiveness of our consumption choices, and through our devotion to “equality”—that is, to diminishing the importance of other goals and connections and confronting people who think they matter.

All this is absurdly inhuman and unfulfilling as an ideal of life. This is one reason there’s so much ill humor today: people try hard to do and be what they think right, but when they succeed they find they don’t much like it. And therein lies a lesson. For the past half-century and more the Church has tried to evangelize modern man through sympathy with his projects and aspirations. This no longer makes sense if it ever did. We need to offer, as the old slogan goes, a choice and not an echo.