The Daily Hatch

We have reached the final session in Francis Schaeffer’s video series “How Should We Then Live?”  We will add two more sessions related to this film series to tie up some loose ends.  As you will note, unlike most fairy tales we read, this series does not end with “and they lived happily ever after.”  Schaeffer, as he has done throughout “How Should We Then Live?”, challenges us to decide amid desperate times that will certainly change the course of our lives, if not the course of our nation and finally mankind.

With the loss of the biblical foundations and Christian principles of society, there is a need to fill that loss with something and that something will come as an elite authoritarian state. When we toss around the word authoritarian, names like Hitler, Stalin, Mao immediately comes to mind.  While it is certainly possible for a figure like them to appear it is more likely that today we will see the rise “of a manipulative authoritarian government.”  Manipulation has been with us since Adam and Eve, but the tools to manipulate people, masses of people, both in a single moment as well as over an extended period has never been greater than it is right now. With science and technology as handmaidens, governments have never been better positioned to manipulate their people than they are today. The consequences of such manipulation would make the novel 1984 a history book.

When we look at Humanism, authoritarianism is the only “social” choice.  It is either one man or an elite group of persons giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. If there are no absolutes in society, then society is the only absolute.  But society needs to be led and the leader will be an individual or a group of individuals, who believe that they are the only ones qualified to lead.  Men, such as John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Theobald, and Daniel Bell, believe that society has to be led by an elite.  Bell, one of the leading sociologists of our day, writing in his book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, speaks of a coming technocracy which will be the determining influence in society.  Schaeffer, speaking of the technocracy, states that: “They are the only ones who know how to run the complicated machinery of society and they will then, in collusion with government elite, have the power necessary to manage it.”  Bell knew the ethical implications stating: “A post-industrial society cannot provide a transcendent ethic (no absolutes) . . . The lack of a rooted moral belief system is the cultural contradiction of the society, the deepest challenge to its survival.”

One of the greatest threats of manipulation comes with genetic engineering. 1962 Nobel Prize’s recipient in Physiology and Medicine, Francis Crick, calls for “full genetic engineering.” Crick advocated there should be a group of people deciding who would be the parents of the next generation and who should be born.  In answer to the question “What kind of people do we want?”, Crick recommended that a group of people should determine what types of people they want in the future and then set out genetically to make them.  Once man is no longer seen as created in God’s image, there is no reason not to “tinker” with man genetically.

Francis Crick, in his article “Why I Study Biology?”, states:

We all know, I think, or are beginning to realize, that the future is in our own hands, that we can, to some extent, do what we want.

Now what is happening at the moment?  What is happening is that we know that with technology we can make life easier for human beings; we can make changes.  What we are really doing is learning to tinker with the system.  But there is very little thinking at the fundamental level as to what sort of people we would like to have.  In the long term that is the question you are bound to come up with.

Crick continues:

It’s going to be the people now between fifteen and twenty-five who are going to have to face it, so they may as well start thinking about it now. . .
We’ve just seen that the discussion as to how many people there should be in the world has now, as it were, become quite acceptable.  It is not acceptable, at the moment, to discuss who should be the parents of the next generation, who should be born, and who should have children.  There’s a general feeling that if we are all nice to each other and if everybody has 2.3 children, everything will pan out.  I don’t think that is true.  For good genetic reasons, even though you have more medical care, transplantation of organs, and all these things, it would be an unhealthy biological situation.  Some group of people should decide that some people should have more children and some should have fewer. You have to decide who is to be born.

Without absolutes, knowledge, wisdom, the ability to do things that might even be good in themselves, only moves us closer to losing our humanness.  “Modern man has no real boundary condition for what he should do; he is left only with what he can do.  Moral ‘oughts’ are only what is sociologically acceptable at the moment.”

One of the high costs of living in a modern society is that the government under which you live has an “almost endless means of manipulation.” Schaeffer uses the example of a subliminal message.  Television can flash a message on a television so fast that  the watcher is unaware of it, yet the message carries a subliminal impact. There is ample evidence this type of manipulation does work.  In fact, subliminal messaging’s success has caused it to be “banned by law in Western countries.”  What about in totalitarian states? Can it, should it, has it been used?  Those who live in the West should recognize that it could be used on them–it is only a change of law away.  And that change of law could be coming soon.   “We must not forget the drift in law toward that which is considered the sociological good at that moment.”

Inherent with television is the capability of manipulating its viewers.  Audiences “seem to assume that when they have seen something on TV, they have seen it with their own eyes.” Many will ignore the reality of the world and substitute it for the reality of television. If it is on TV, it must be true. The reality is we see on TV what someone wishes us to see.  This means that the content of TV has been edited for our viewing.  Schaeffer explains: “The physical limitations of the camera dictate that only one aspect of the total situation is given.  If the camera were aimed ten feet to the left or ten feet to the right, an entirely different ‘objective story’ might come across.”  Combining the physical limits of the camera with the viewpoint of the person or persons doing the editing of the scene, we might ask a basic question–Is what we see on TV actual or is it what someone would like us to see?

What would happen if “an elite providing the arbitrary absolutes” had the same worldview as the worldview of the mass media outlet?  Then, TV and “the general apparatus of the mass media can be a vehicle for manipulation.  There is no need for collusion or a plot.  All that is needed is that the worldview of the elite and the worldview of the central news media coincide.”  If those who are in the most prominent centers of influence and those who decide what news we hear and see, have the same modern, humanist worldview, the point of view presented is going to have a distinctly humanist slant or bias. It is their worldview that determines what we see and hear, it “determines their presentation.” No collusion is necessary if the views of the elite and the newspapers coincide.

While the media may not be monolithic, total control is not needed to achieve the manipulation of society.  In fact not all the media would need to be involved to “for manipulation to be effective.”  As in many groups, organizations, businesses, and governments, there are centers of influence, people or groups of people wielding the ability to affect the course of events.  These centers of influence, these news makers, are “news organizations, newspapers, news magazines, wire services, and TV broadcasts which have the ability to generate news.”  Their views, their stories, make news.  “This ability to generate news rests upon a kind of syndrome or psychology or mind-set, not only in the journalistic fraternity but also in influential circles comprising congressmen, other government officials, and professors.”  Their influence is based on their reputation with the right people.

News makers make news.  When a news maker publishes a story, or says something on TV or radio, it doesn’t get “lost in the shuffle.”  News makers often “slant” the stories they produce based on their worldview. This slant is done “by starting off with what is called a ‘hard lead,’ the first sentence of a news article which is supposed to sum up the story in an eye-catching (or ear-catching) way.”  The slant sets the tone for the entire story and “it becomes the stained-glass window through which that story and perhaps even related stories are comprehended.”

Slanted news is not objective.  As we saw with sociological science and sociological law and now with sociological news, people are more concerned with their agendas than they are with accuracy of the science, the rightness of law, or the objectiveness of the story. Many newspapers, TV and radio stations may proclaim that they are objective in their reporting of the news, it has become almost impossible to tell the difference between a news story and an editorial–that is news with an agenda.  When the worldview of the elite or authoritarian/totalitarian leader coincides with the worldview of the media, then the media are easily used for manipulative authoritarianism.

What form would authoritarianism take in the United States?  Schaeffer points out a manipulating authoritarian form of government could come from any of the three branches of government that we have.  It certainly could come from the Executive or administrative branch yet it is difficult to see that happening with the “balance of powers” given to the legislative and judiciary branches.  Perhaps it could come from the Legislative branch but it would be a major job getting them to all to agree.  If we have a manipulating authoritarian government, it would likely come from the Judicial branch.  With the Supreme Court apparently granted the right to make law, and having the final say in “regard to administrative and legislative actions, and with the concept of variable law the judicial side could become more and more the center of power.”  Much of the government structure and certainly our legal system was established on a Christian foundation.  If we remove the foundation and leave the freedoms that the foundation engendered, we will be left with chaos.  The court would become “the imperial judiciary.”  If the court is “cut away from its true foundation, the power of the Court is nothing more than the instrument of unlimited power.”

If we have an authoritarian government, it will make no difference, if it is left or right–it will be just two roads leading to the same end.  With the loss of Christian Consensus, there is no reason for the young or old committed to apathy not to give in to the authoritarian government, if they are promised personal peace and affluence.  In fact if there are large spread fears of an economic breakdown, large scale acts of random violence or terrorism, a threat of war, food shortages, or a dramatic change in the distribution of wealth or resources in the world, then, as in the time of Caesar Augustus, people would willingly accept an authoritarian government even if it meant the loss of their freedoms.  “As the memory of the Christian consensus, which gave us freedom within the biblical form, increasingly is forgotten, manipulating authoritarianism will tend to fill the vacuum.”

The message of the Bible is that all peoples may approach God through the work of Christ. It was also the Bible which created the unusual and wide freedoms which  Christianity “gave to countries where it supplied the consensus.  When these freedoms are separated from the Christian base, however, they become a force of destruction leading to chaos.”  Eric Hoffer is prophetic when he says: “When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.”  Today, in the United States and in other Reformation countries there are only two choices: 1) An imposed order; 2) Affirm the principles of a biblical foundation.  Which will we choose?