Photo by William Wesen Appraiser
What is at stake here is not insignificant. Ultimately we are dealing with an issue of aesthetics, of a love of simplicity and diversity, of a love of equality and inequality. Besides this, at a deeper level, it is a religious and moral issue as well. It is an aesthetic-moral-religious issue whose perfection is a reflection of God on earth. Herein lays the true religious battle of [our day].
This religious battle is not waged, properly speaking, with dogmas or definitions of certain truths. In other words, it is not a battle waged explicitly about Revelation. Nor is it waged between Protestants and Catholics, Left and Right, etc. These battles continue to exist, but they are secondary.
Gladiators
In the Roman Circus there was a primary spectacle of the great gladiators on one side locked in battle and, for variety’s sake, with pygmies on the other side. Similarly one could say that our world presents much the same scenario. There is a fight of titans being waged—the one between Equality and Inequality; and then there is the other one where the dwarfs (so to speak) continue to fight about Catholicism and Protestantism, schism, dogmas, politics, etc.
I am not saying that it is not worthwhile to crush these little monsters. However, the great monster of our days is this adoration of an aesthetic-moral-religious dogma which is precisely that of inequality and variety as opposed to uniformity and equality.
“They hate inequality because it is inequality. They love equality because it is equality. They hate diversity for diversity’s sake, and love uniformity for uniformity’s sake.”
Those who fight for equality do so for an aesthetic-moral-religious reason. They hate inequality because it is inequality. They love equality because it is equality. They hate diversity for diversity’s sake, and love uniformity for uniformity’s sake. This is a religious and moral position.
This explains the underlying cause of the religious crisis of the world today. People have adopted ways of thinking, states of spirit, and ways of living that are egalitarian. This is the religious issue of our days. Today the two opposing standards are those of Equality and Inequality.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, quoted in Egalitarianism: The Metaphysical Value and Religion of Our Days; Social Leveling . . . Total Leveling, edited by Tradition, Family Property Association (Glasgow: Tradition, Family, Property Association, 2011), xxiii-xxiv.
