[This is Chapter Fifteen of Murphey’s book Emergent Man.]

Chapter Fifteen

TOWARD A NEW RELIGION AND A NEW INTELLECTUALISM

“Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.”

Benjamin Franklin

As much as our contemporary “liberals” may deny it, and as fond as they may be of calling themselves “unorthodox,” it remains true as one of the primary facts of our times that we in the United States have within the past several decades been swallowed up by a vast “liberal” orthodoxy.

In many ways, the beliefs of this orthodoxy have found their way down through the ranks of the people and have come to be accepted as truisms. With the passage of time, the orthodoxy of the intellectuals has become more and more the orthodoxy for the entire society.

As with virtually all orthodoxies, this present-day version is smug in its unsoundness. In its myopic preoccupation with government, its amoral relativism, its obscurantist dilution of an otherwise worthy spirit of science, its fervent repudiation and ridicule of the tradition of historic liberalism which upheld liberty, and in its somewhat contradictory desire not even to admit consciously that such an opposing tradition ever existed, this orthodoxy is so smugly confident that it can hardly foresee that its time is limited and that intelligent people are beginning to see through the haze of the Depression Era which gave it so much impetus. [Note in 2005: It is interesting that as I did my research for my later book on the history of modern liberal thought I found that the intellectual culture at almost all times felt despondent over its inability to commandeer American life on behalf of its beliefs. To outsiders, it gave the impression of smug confidence; but within its own precincts the mood was just the opposite.]

What America needs more than anything else is a new intellectualism. We need to start seeing things clearly again. There has never been a time when we, or any other people, could afford nonsense. Because we have been living in nonsense, intellectual reform is one of the great needs of our time.

This reform, by way of the growth of a new intellectual force with its feet on the ground, cannot depend on changing the perspective of the orthodox “liberal.” Anyone who has ever talked seriously with such a person knows that the chances of doing this are very slim. Once in a while, and maybe with an increasing tempo as the new intellectualism develops, we can expect that one of the “die-hard humanists” will come to realize what true realistic humanism is and will begin to generate in his own mind a little imagination and clarity so that his narrow political conception of life will be shattered. But I don’t have much faith that we can count on this. I’ve known too many orthodox “liberals” to be very hopeful along those lines.

Instead, I count more on the many young men of intelligence in the professions and in business whom I meet every day and who are accustomed to dealing with the practical problems of the world and who seem to be developing an emerging sense of aliveness to intellectual questions. I don’t count on the rising generation as a whole; for the most part, it enjoys even less perception and a greater apathy and naivete than its parent generation. But intellectual leadership doesn’t come from the many. It comes from the few unusually inquisitive minds that spring up here or there.

An intellectualism of liberty and emergence must of necessity be led by men who are practical in their temperament. The new intellectual will in one way or another have to have gained a real appreciation for the deep human values that are contained in the multiplicity of things that people undertake to do. He will have to have come to share the perspective of Robert Louis Stevenson and William James of which I have written earlier here, so that the natural humility stemming from his scientific orientation will take the form not of obscurantism, self-effacement and sacrifice and an over-simplified dependence on the state, but an appreciation for the richness of human diversity, a desire not to superimpose his values on it by “playing God,” and the determination that the delimiting lacerations of coercivism shall be replaced by an ethic of liberty and by a development of the many preconditions to voluntary, emergent life.

The task of the new intellectual is hardly less than revolutionary. His religion of emergence must act upon and transform not merely the orthodoxy of the present. It must breathe its spirit into all that remains with us from any era of the past. It must apply its own initiative to life and come upon new conceptions. It has existing institutions to perfect, new ones to create, old institutions to wreck, a life-affirming, capitalistic ethic to state in all of its ramifications, an emergent religious perspective to pronounce, an age of science to pursue. Ultimately, as with all true revolutions, it must replace its new values for the old down to the very marrow of civilization.

But while there is much wrecking to do, the preoccupation of the new intellectualism, of the religion of emergence and the philosophy of liberty, should be with its own perspective, and not with the stale problems posed to it by the “liberal” orthodoxy or by religions that contain much that is not intellectually sound and that is life-denying.

I have often noticed how “liberal religion” in the United States today – as found, for example, in the Unitarian-Universalist church – is absorbed by theological questions posed by Christianity and other religions. Its ministers talk about God, the soul, after-life, and such questions. The religion has not yet matured enough so that it has left the issues posed by other religions as dead issues and has undertaken an imaginative statement of its own secular-religious perspective. This preoccupation with other points of view has also been true of conservatives in America in recent years. They have been preoccupied with opposing the Welfare State.

Such opposition is necessary, but it cannot be a satisfactory substitute for the affirmative cultivation of ones own values. Such a cultivation is essential. What is needed is for the new religion and the new intellectualism to infuse its own spirit into our civilization and move it in a new direction toward its own ethic and its own set of values.

This is to say, the preoccupation of Emergent Man should be with his own religion of emergence and his own philosophy of liberty. He should begin to provide the intellectual motive power, and no longer let himself be led long by forces that one way or another stress impotence as a way of life. It is time that we heard from such men themselves. To accomplish this, however, the Emergent Man must no longer permit his most meaningful values to be considered obscene by the extroversive outer reality that blankets his real existence; he must take it upon himself to insist that governments and societies serve his liberty, and not vice-versa; he must cultivate his own mind, pride, integrity and sensual contact with life, and then, integrating these into a philosophic whole, state this intellectually.

America will not escape the Welfare State, grow in its own greatness, and survive the threat of domination by a spreading Communist slavery, unless it affirms positive religious values of its own. If we do not go as fundamentally deep into the solution as the embracing of a religion and intellectualism of emergence, we will find the forces in the other direction too strong. The problem is only secondarily political, as to the growth of coercivism in domestic affairs; and military as to the spread of Communism in other countries. We cannot realistically hope for lasting success along either of these lines until we have overcome our own modulation and effeteness of spirit. Benjamin Franklin was not repeating empty rhetoric in the quotation set out at the beginning of this chapter. Unless we ourselves are worthy of liberty, it is nonsense to think that we can continue to enjoy it for very long.

It is characteristic of both Marxism and our contemporary orthodoxy to proclaim that the success of their political program is inevitable. I have always thought of this as pompous asininity. No one can say with certainty what is going to happen historically in long-range human affairs. Anyone who claims to be able to do so is speaking with real intellectual irresponsibility, and is more than likely making the statement for its propaganda value.

We cannot say that a new intellectualism will in fact develop, or that it is bound to be the predominant influence of the future. But we can say that everything is ripe for it, and that there are rumblings that would seem to indicate its approach. And so far as it is within our power, we may encourage it. We may even go so far as to say that it will come about if the more serious readers of this book consciously undertake the cultivation of this intellectualism through their own minds and efforts. Once emergence is significantly started as a conscious, explicit philosophy it should have no difficulty attracting the adherence of those who are now so starved for it. The greatest spiritual and intellectual resources of our civilization are now covert, and they exist as an enormous reservoir of potential energy. I cannot myself visualize our present muddled orthodoxy standing up successfully before such an intellectualism once it has begun in earnest. And with the growth of the Emergent intellectualism, the way will be open for the political success of a program seeking to extend the value of free institutions and to reduce the movement into coercivism.

It is to all Emergent Men, and to the intellectualism they must create, that I now dedicate this book. I have written this is the hope that they will become more conscious of their own philosophy and of their own right to exist. It is for them, and for you if you are one of them, to extend further the principles stated here.