Culture and Natural Law: Our Metaphysical Un-centering

By Greg -

Culture is a shared map of self-evident truths – of metaphysical reality. What's accommodated within the boundaries of the map is what we define as real, as hyper-real, and what lies beyond the boundaries of the map is simply unthinkable. If some influence threatens to perforate the boundary it is quickly extinguished. This is law, and law perpetuates the good and eliminates evil. It holds culture together by nurturing the truth and defending it against threats. Evil gives shape to good, so evil must be invoked and occasionally punished – whether in symbolic ritual or in brutal fact.

Culture sometimes defines criminal acts as unnatural, and natural acts as those within the bounds of civil restraint. Science's "natural" laws, once broken, cease being laws altogether. This is what's meant when we say that science is self-correcting. The “natural” law invoked by culture is altogether different; these laws are enforced only in their breaking, and set aside and forgotten when they're obeyed. This shift of perspective toward "law" may be the metaphysical parallel to our physical un-centering; when law shifted from arbitrary commandments to incorruptible principles, so too did culture move from the choreography of a God who gave us His full attention, to an autonomous agent, entirely our own, and circling the metaphysical certainty of the universe's unbreakable natural laws.

The modern nation state’s technocratic bureaucracies invoke science to justify their methods, often with catastrophic results. The fault is not with science per se, but with the misguided application of its methods to our cultural institutions. When natural law escaped the will of man to become general principle, culture was left only with the authority of its own ethical sensibilities. Our attempt to direct our cultural institutions using scientific methods arises from our fear of that responsibility. Our metaphysical un-centering demands that we redefine culture as a human enterprise serving human interests, rather than a holy enterprise serving holy interests; it demands that we redefine justice as that which serves all men equally, which honors each as individuals, subdues the excesses of the powerful and empowers the weak, rather than that which serves God, honors God, and empowers God; and it demands that we redefine ourselves as creative agents driving evolution, rather than as obsequious subjects of a divine purpose – whether that purpose is authorized by religious leaders invoking God or by statisticians and technocrats invoking Science.

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