A Culture From Tyranny to Freedom: A Cultural Compass (Part 2)

People enjoy the beach during low tide as the city skyline looms in the background, in Vancouver, on July 7, 2024. The Canadian Press/Ethan Cairns

Commentary

Part 1 can be read here. 

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” — Aristotle

As a physician, I rarely discuss politics with my patients. After all, my patients are unique fellow human beings and I want to care for them all just the same, regardless of personal political views. Ironically, my closest colleagues in medicine still have known that I am more philosophically conservative—not by what I have said, but by what I do not say. The trouble with academia—not just in Canada—is that it has been demonstrably taken over by the left wing authoritarian ideology of identity politics (DEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) which has been steadily encroaching on academic freedom.

So I resolved to determine why so many people are captured by this totalitarian ideology. After all, it is anathema to the spirit of free intellectual enquiry required to be a medical research scientist. In fact, such totalitarian ideology, particularly seen during the pandemic, is anathema to the free will and autonomy of the patient and citizen. I tried to identify where on the well-known “political compass” people have landed. It turns out that I was asking the wrong question. Totalitarianism originates as a cultural problem, not a political problem. It’s just that politics is downstream of culture.

Thus, I submit that citizens actually need to orient to a cultural compass in order to navigate where we are and where we want to go to attain a healthy civilization. (Refer to the figure.)

To put it simply, our cultural compass consists of a secular space within the parameters of man (x), nature (y), and God or not (z). Anyone can plot oneself on the cultural compass to determine their cultural preferences. And I will contend that we can attain a better world if we are able to shift up and to the right in this regard. Eastern philosophers might call this the Dao—where we exist to find balance, code of behaviour, and harmony with nature. For western philosophers, having reference to a cultural compass allows one to orient one’s soul, consciousness, conscience—and even citizenship too.

Based upon my background as a biologist, it is fascinating to see how an avowed atheist such as Richard Dawkins is now saying that he is at least a cultural Christian. It is worth noting that it is just as much a matter of faith that there is no God than there is—readers may look up Pascal’s wager. But I would reason that the main trouble with being an atheist is the materialism and vacuousness of such a stance in the face of such a cold existence. Such nihilism cannot replace a deeper motivation to transcend our current circumstances. At least a faith in a creator encourages the virtues that counteract fear, anxiety, and depression. That sure has been running rampant through my younger patients these days.

But developing a cultural compass is not the same as a “safe” space. It is no favour to our children to condone being scared and offended by everything. In fact, existence cannot be safe; we are all mortal and all we can decide is what we do with the time given to us. However, the tyrant does not want to relinquish that fear over us. He would rather we behave like yellow minions—and I do mean yellow in the sense of cowardice. Thus, if the green clerics are like watermelons—green on the outside and red on the inside—there are too many of us minions who are more like grapefruit—yellow on the outside, but captured by pinko red on the inside.

There must be some remedies for the dual tyrannies of DEI or die. Here is an alternate acronym to try to serve as an antidote: FREEDOMS.

Faith: This means to have freedom of religion to inform our secular space—not religious institutions to control it.

Reason: This means freedom within the basic limitations of empirical and biological reality—the natural fabric of this existence.

Ethics: Free will is what determines choices of right and wrong—from analects to commandments to categorical imperatives, and so on. These traditions inform secular space. But it is not a “safe” space. In my view, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” would be a good start. Courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom have been cardinal virtues since the ancient Greeks, Stoics, and Christians. Furthermore, faith, hope, and love are essential for improving the human condition.

Enquiry: Freedom of speech and enquiry includes freedom from compelled speech. True diversity is that of ideas and not divisions of identity politics.

Duty: With freedom comes responsibility. This is where we find meaning and not nihilism. For example, love, marriage, and children make for the strongest friends and families, which make for the strongest society.

Opportunity: Opportunities are from freedom. However, equality of opportunity does not mean equality of outcome. To force equal outcomes is to force equality of misery. That is, social(ist) justice is not true justice.

Merit: This means excellence of character, competence, and hard work achieved through our free will. It does not matter what race, religion, ethnicity, or sex you are.

Self-Reliance: True adults and citizens do not sacrifice their freedoms, including freedom of property, for the sake of having some nanny state look after them from cradle to grave. The idea is to get one’s own act together before one can help others—to be a fully developed adult and not someone else’s minion. That goes for our country too when it comes to resisting global tyranny.

Feel free to make your own suggestions on the above. The point is to find a better way than DEI or die. Really, DEI stands for Division, Exclusion, and Ignorance. It is not only the Canadian ship of state that needs a cultural course correction. Many of our fellow nation states are suffering from the same. It is my hope that fellow citizens equip themselves with a cultural compass to navigate our nation states to a better civilization. We are not supposed to be yellow minions to be cowed and dictated to by tyrants.

Why did the watermelon and grapefruit go out together? Because they both lost their rinds.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.