Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Western civilization's "dangerous trend of worshiping man" ...

"My children of the world, you stand now upon a hill, a hill that you have built upon humanistic values and materialistic manners, as you sought to build a world of your own, cutting off the light, and building a utopia, built with humanism and socialism, and communism—all under the heading of love and brotherhood, but covered with a blanket of darkness of the spirit. For this, the Eternal Father has allowed you to pursue your own course. The awakening shall come in shock to many." - Jesus, November 20, 1979 

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn is a Russian novelist awarded the 1970 Nobel prize for literature for his novels, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, The Gulag Archipelago, etc. The following is an excerpt from Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard Graduation speech, "A World Split Apart”:

How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.

However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.

As humanism in its development became more and more materialistic, it made itself increasingly accessible to speculation and manipulation at first by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say in 1844 that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement turned out not to be entirely senseless. One does see the same stones in the foundations of a despiritualized humanism and of any type of socialism: endless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility, which under communist regimes reach the stage of anti-religious dictatorship; concentration on social structures with a seemingly scientific approach. (This is typical of the Enlightenment in the Eighteenth Century and of Marxism). Not by coincidence all of communism's meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic. Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism and socialism could never resist communism. The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

"You shall not win souls and neither shall you enter Heaven when you use humanism and modernism and change as your approach. Heaven gave you a full plan for the redemption of souls. You will not change this plan to suit the basic carnal nature of man." - Our Lady of the Roses, July 25, 1979

Directives from Heaven... https://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

D10 - Consecrate Russia  PDF
D103 - Communism   PDF
D143 - Humanism  PDF
D221 - Idolatry   PDF
D224 - Restore America to One Nation Under God   PDF

Articles…

Communism's 45 goals to destroy the United States
https://www.tldm.org/news7/CommunismInAmerica.htm

Kerry dismissed the threat of global communism as "bogus" before a Senate hearing in 1971
https://www.tldm.org/News7/KerryCommunism2.htm

Kerry's campaign slogan taken from a communist poem
https://www.tldm.org/news7/KerryCommunism1.htm

 

Clinton's White House

https://www.tldm.org/news2/sellout.htm

 

Nancy Pelosi: WND reports that Democrats’ likely top House official part of powerful, socialist-linked bloc
https://www.tldm.org/news5/pelosi.htm

 

Russian espionage and penetration of the U.S. government

https://www.tldm.org/news6/espionage.htm

 

Global communism, part 1
https://www.tldm.org/news2/global-1.htm

 

Global communism: Africa, part 2
https://www.tldm.org/news2/africa.htm

 

Henry Kissinger: traitor to America
https://www.tldm.org/news2/kissinger.htm

 

Russia's master plan

https://www.tldm.org/news/master_plan.htm

 

U.S. invasion through Mexico
https://www.tldm.org/news3/Nicaragua.htm

Links…
John Kerry:

Pat Buchanan credits socialists with sinking Kerry, WorldNetDaily, November 8, 2004
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41343

 

SwiftVets and POWs for Truth (veterans who fight alongside Kerry in Vietnam witness to his lies, cowardice and complicity with the communist enemy)
http://www.swiftvetsandpows.com/

 

Socialists urge support of Kerry, WorldNetDaily, July 25, 2004
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39627

 

Kerry's October Surprise, The Mississippi Press, October 29, 2004

http://www.gulflive.com/opinion/mississippipress/index.ssf?/base/opinion/109904493874180.xml

 

Kerry's non-honorable discharge, WorldNetDaily, November 1, 2004

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41200

 

Communist museum removes Kerry photo, WorldNetDaily, October 25, 2004

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41062

 

Kerry honored at communist museum, WorldNetDaily, June 1, 2004
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38738

 

'Hanoi John' gets unwelcome reception from Veterans, Newsmax, July 29, 2004

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/29/85747.shtml

 

Communism morphed to socialism and still targets America, Jan Ireland, July 15, 2004
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/ireland/040715

 

Marxism and Kerry: the Fifth Column at home, Richard Roberts, June 15, 2004
http://www.jrnyquist.com/roberts_2004_.htm

 

Kerry's Meeting With Communists Violated US Law, Says Author, CNSNews.com, May 20, 2004
http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=\SpecialReports\archive\200405\SPE20040520a.html

 

Bush's plan to end communism in Cuba angers Kerry, Newsmax, May 7, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/5/7/155730.shtml

 

Kerry in 1971: "Our democracy is a farce", Newsmax, April 22, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/22/90429.shtml

 

John Kerry 2004 = John Kerry 1971, Newsmax, April 2, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/2/94237.shtml

 

FBI verifies Kerry at 'assassination summit', WorldNetDaily, March 23, 2004
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37706

 

Cuban Waffles: Kerry's changing positions on Castro, March 18, 2004
http://nationalreview.com/comment/kirsanow200403180824.asp

 

Kerry's Nicaragua vision, WorldNetDaily, February 17, 2004
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37156

 

What you don't know about John Kerry, Newsmax, January 20, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/1/20/131219.shtml

Kerry Photo Shocker: Candidate Teamed Up With 'Hanoi' Jane Fonda, Newsmax, February 9, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/2/9/134218.shtml

Nancy Pelosi:

Totally liberal Nancy Pelosi
http://www.gop.com/RNCResearch/Read.aspx?ID=4217

 

Pelosi leader of 'Progressive Caucus': Dems' likely top House official part of powerful, socialist-linked bloc 
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29612

Tom Daschle:

Daschle Beware: Democrat 'Communism' Converts Indian Activists to GOP, Newsmax, April 6, 2004
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/6/150420.shtml

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