The Exhausted West?
In particular, I find his Harvard Commencement Address speech in 1978 to be one of the most perceptive critiques of Western Society. Many of the questions he poses I think have yet to be resolved, even 30 years later. One of his more probing assertions is that Western Society, which was founded upon the notion of a “pursuit of happiness” has come to define that pursuit, rather narrowly, as the desire for physical objects or “well being”.
Notions of right and wrong, according to Solzhenitsyn, have been trumped by the freedom of the individual and the ascension of the legalistic framework of his society. But does “the law” ipso facto define moral standards or does a suspension of legal precedence exist in a higher ethical realm?
Solzhenitsyn can be heuristic at times, if not downright prophetic in the manner typical of the Russian literary tradition, and his assessment of US foreign policy and the anti-Vietnam movement comes across as outdated. Compelling, however, is his criticism of Western journalism, which is supposed to represent the highest mark of freedom in our society.“An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it.”
In my view, journalists have an unwritten duty to society to provide an in-depth depiction of the truth, yet that obligation has largely been sidestepped by a more pervasive concern surrounding ratings and what I call “news as sports”, less about informing people than about entertaining their every whim with pornographic pop culture pizzaz.“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.”
Solzhenitsyn puts the blame of what he calls “psychological weakness” and “spiritual exhaustion” on a fundamental flaw in the humanistic tenets that our society is founded upon, namely the notion that mankind in a natural and free state is good and rational, and that only a flawed society will corrupt him. He clearly sees the disease as endemically related to the core of our system’s fundamental belief in the freedom of the individual. I would say, instead, that morals and ethics are strongly tied to the notion of collectivity, which in our society at least is often displaced by individualistic priorities such as material possession and status. In other words I don’t necessarily think individual freedom is inherently problematic, but when coupled with a system that more or less ignores the importance of social duty, the higher ethical spirit of man is diluted.“a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era.”
In almost half a century, more than 30 million of Solzhenitsyn’s books have been sold worldwide and translated into some 40 languages. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding... Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”