The argument I am making about modernity’s intimate
connection to nihilism and irrationality is in many respects a classic
conservative argument.  Yet
conservatism is as infected with the virus of nihilism as the strains of
modernity it perceptively criticizes. 
(This is part of a project of mine investigating how a Pagan view of reality changes how we
view the world – I will post another essay on liberalism soon.  I am an equal opportunity offender. )

The finest conservative thinkers are men such as Edmund
Burke  and, far more recently, Russell
Kirk,  and Michael Oakeshott.  They shared a kind of ecological
sensibility towards society.  We
are immersed in society, and within its networks of customs, ways of life, and
traditions, which taken together make us who we are and provide the foundation
for our way of life.  From a
conservative perspective a society is more than the present generation, more
than a simple arrangement for living together.  It includes its past and its future and we have obligations
in both directions.  We are part of
something bigger than ourselves.

Immersed as we are within society, we can never stand
completely outside to judge or re-order it.  Because we do not fully understand our society and never
will, we should approach change cautiously, piece meal and only when it will
pretty obviously lead to an improvement in people’s conditions.

This attitude is EXACTLY what a knowledgeable
environmentalist would say with respect to our approach to manipulating a complex ecosystem.  At one time conservatives were often
more environmentally friendly than their liberal and left wing opponents.  That they are no longer so is a
fascinating issue but carries us off topic.

Genuine conservatives have always been skeptical of
liberal optimism about improving humanity’s lot.  They doubt the belief that with enough knowledge and
expertise we can transform our society, and in trying we might do it serious
harm.  This does not mean doing
nothing, but basic problems can never be solved, only ameliorated for a
time.

I have a great deal of sympathy for this position.  I was a conservative once, some decades
ago, and my own liberalism remains deeply influenced by it.  But despite its genuine strengths,
conservatism has fatal weaknesses that when taken together have generated an
interesting connection between Western conservatism and the nihilism it attacks
in modernity  I will argue that in
the long run it is as guilty as secular modernity in its inability to provide
an ethical foundation to society and is incapable of solving the problem it
sees in others, as well as providing legitimation for the excesses of religions
of will and commitment.

There are two such weaknesses.  The first is in the kind of society they want preserved, the
second is the reasoning they use to preserve it.  The story is complex and this overview leaves out lots of
fascinating details.  But I do not
think distorts the picture.  Because the argument is long for a blog, I will deal with the
first weakness in thi post, the second in one to follow

Conservatism’s First Tragic Flaw

Speaking broadly, traditional conservatives have often
looked backwards to the Medieval world as having many virtues absent in today’s
materialistic world.  In particular
its religious base and sense of place within a hierarchy gave people a
rootedness and  sense of living in
a meaningful world that today is often lacking. Here is where conservatives
take some very insightful observations, and began to miss their point.

I want to return to the conservative insight that
societies are like ecosystems, held together by networks of relationships far
beyond the ken of any person immersed within them.  I agree.  But
ecosystems are not static, they do not usually reach some stable climax until
acted upon from without.  Most
importantly, many ecosystems gradually undermine the conditions they need to
survive, and shift into another such system.  Think of a lake gradually transforming into a swamp, and
then into a meadow.

The same is true for societies.  Let’s look at many conservatives’ Medieval ideal, built on a
religious foundation of monopolistic transcendental masculine monotheism.  This kind of social ecosystem depended
on almost everyone being powerless, fragmented, and ignorant about any but the
most local affairs.  In ecological
terms these conditions were like a region’s rainfall, seasons, and
temperatures. If one of these conditions was significantly changed, it would
set in motion currents that transform the entire system.

If I had to pick one thing that undermined the Medieval
social ecosystem, it was the invention of the printing press.  Suddenly the scriptures that provided
the moral foundation for society no longer became a monopoly of one
institution, but became widely available. 
Any literate person could read and interpret or misinterpret scripture
for themselves.

When the printing press made the Bible available to many
readers, multiple interpretations emerged, all claiming to speak for this same
monopolistic ideal.  Unable  to find a way to reconcile their
different readings, in time many ruinous religious wars resulted.  The Medieval world was shattered never
to return.

I think what I have written so far is not very
controversial, although it is cast into a broader conservative/ecological
framework.

But the advent of printing caused an even deeper
subversion, one that bears more straightforwardly on Western
irrationalism.  Catholics, Lutherans,
Calvinists, and others tended to use their own claims to Biblical literalism to
criticize their opponents for not adhering to scriptural meaning.  Literalism had always been a theme in
Christian religious disputes, and where the line between myth and history,
allegory and factual claim, could be drawn had never been clear.  Disputes on these matters had
traditionally been settled by one side suppressing the other.  But now there were too many sides with
too many of their own sources of support.

Since these disputes could not be resolved by one side
suppressing the other, it seems the role of literalism grew.  Having a ‘literal’ meaning to back you
up strengthens your case. 
Religious reasoning became less symbolic and mythical, and more
literal.  As an unintended result,
Western religion became increasingly hostage to factual claims that reason and
evidence could either support or rebut. 
Religion, which addressed the meaning in life, became more and more
dependent on methods of argument that explicitly set aside questions of
meaning.

This increasing literalism also meant the text itself
became vulnerable to being rebutted by evidence that negated literal
claims.  If the Bible is wrong
about some fact or other, some historical event or other, how can it be the
literal word of God?  Since God
does not error, if it is wrong somewhere, how can we be sure it is right
anywhere?  Only if other evidence
backs it up.

For many the result ultimately was the displacement of
God by science and history, and the problems I described in my first post on
modernity and irrationalism: that with the world meaningless and no higher
power, ws not the result nihilism?

This is conservatism’s first weakness.  By holding the earlier integral
Medieval society as their ideal, and by insisting that the religion appropriate
to the West was Christianity, conservatism imported into their philosophy just
those factors that had led to the collapse of the old integral world it
praised.  Scripturally based
transcendental masculine monotheism depends on widespread ignorance and
fragmentation if it is to be a stable foundation for a society because its
monopoly depends on very few having access to scripture, and those few that do
being integrated into a single religious hierarchy that can squelch divergent
trends.

From a Pagan perspective this is a fragmentary image of
the Sacred.  Because it is
fragmentary, it was inadequate to cover people’s religious intuitions and
experiences, and had no way to respect the diversity that necessarily arose
when people were able to search and think on their own.  So long as people remained weak,
ignorant, and fragmented, an overarching authority could enforce orthodoxy, but
if any of these enabling conditions changed, it would fall apart.  The invention of the printing press did
the job.

Conservatives recognized that reason and empirical
evidence alone was insufficient to maintain a strong social moral structure,
and argued with considerable logic that religion was a necessary element if any
society was to maintain its moral integrity over the long haul.  But they chose to meld these arguments
with a focus only on a fragmentary dimension of humanity’s religious heritage
and experience, one that had never been able to maintain itself as the only
game in town except through suppression of other views, and that could not
handle peaceably a diversity of interpretations within its own ranks.  The internal strains that arose when
its institutions could not handle diversity ultimately led to the rise of the
secular West, and the problems conservatives worried about.

When they worried about these problems, they shot
themselves in the foot, or higher, in the head. 
I will examine this Second Tragic Flaw in a following mini-essay.