The Europe of the early 1970s, the Europe of the mid 1980s and today's strange conglomeration of old and new cities called the Eurozone are so far apart.
I lived in Europe for a decade of my life: 3 years in England when I was a child, followed by 2 years in Paris when my artist father moved there to make his mark in the highly competitive art world. Finally, I spent 5 years in London studying for my pre-university and then attending the prestigious London School of Economics.
Culturally, I was brought up in an environment of European classical music, art and literature. I grew up absorbing the music of Mozart, Spanish guitar of Segovia and later in life, Bach. My appetite for reading fiction started when my Bohemian uncle suggested authors such as Herman Hesse and Albert Camus. From Hesse, I ventured on my own to the Russian Dostoevsky, whose Crime and Punishment was a compelling read into the soul of an intellectual criminal.
But at the same time, I was a great fan of Bob Dylan's folk and love songs. This multi-faceted taste in music from classical European to the free-wheeling expressiveness of contemporary American music reflects the dual pull of two cultures: the old reverential and the new expressiveness.
As a matter of personal inclination, I like the European sense of vast orderly spaces, the juxtaposition of the Baroque, the Imperial against the minimalist structures of modern architecture such as the Pyramid at the Louvre. The Italian surrealist de Chirico's paintings captures the melancholic vastness of the European psyche: introverted but filled with a profound meditation on life.
But when I look at the Europe of today, there is a cry in my innermost being: What have you become, O Europe, from the streets of Paris to Rome?
Apart from the economic crises caused by entangling 19 nations into the Euro currency and the control of an unelected European Parliament, the Europe of today is beset by problems of Islamic inspired terrorism, open border globalism, pretentious cultural inclusiveness, the rise of Islamic issues with the influx of refugees and increasing political power of Islamic friendly governments.
The Shadow of Camus
If there is one writer whose writings encapsulated the angst and future destiny of Europe, it is the French Algerian writer Albert Camus. For him, the destiny of man is a complex, lonely journey, which, after struggling through the maze of deep spiritual longings, ultimately leads to a one way street towards a city called nothingness.
Existentialism is a strange philosophy. It is like the symbol of the serpent biting and eating its own tail. Man, perhaps because of his highly developed intelligence and knowledge, who, having failed to find a meaning of life predicated on his own rational and intellectual terms, has to arrive at a philosophy of meaninglessness, as if to mock the universe.
Camus would have been a more sincere writer if he had been a poet as he was adept at expressing the lost condition of modern rational man. But as a serious novelist and essayist, he claimed defeat in his quest for truth the moment he declared there can be no meaning in life except what man can make of it, which for him, was to be a philosophical rebel.
Camus would have been a more sincere writer if he had been a poet as he was adept at expressing the lost condition of modern rational man. But as a serious novelist and essayist, he claimed defeat in his quest for truth the moment he declared there can be no meaning in life except what man can make of it, which for him, was to be a philosophical rebel.
So in the current crisis that Europeans are facing today (apart from the economic one linked to its common currency system), we have the problem of cultural inclusiveness and tolerance of a non European feudal culture besieging the foundation of post European culture, which was formerly simply a tension between Christianity and rational philosophy.
Once the existentialism of Camus gave way to an expanding European community built on making peace and economic union with its southern neighbors at all costs, even to the extent of risking the security of the nations, we have what we see today: enclaves of largely Muslim immigrants living in the suburbs, hardly integrating with the Europeans and posing tremendous economic costs in terms of social benefit spending not to speak of the security nightmare of containing the upsurge of Islamic jihadist attacks.
The Guilt Ridden Lion
In England, I am baffled by the widespread integration of Islamic representation in politics and social life. It is as if, the British government is burdened with tremendous guilt for invading Iraq after being deceived by the globalist Prime Minister Tony Blair.
A nation burdened by guilt over its past misdeeds should just be honest and repentantly apologise (like the post war Germans) to the nation it nearly destroyed. Instead, Britain decided to make amends by accepting the partial assimilation of Islamic values into British society as if this could wipe away the national guilt of its initiative in co-launching the Iraq war with the Americans on false pretexts.
The Future: An Empty Horizon?
Looking ahead, the growing tension between populist nationalism versus the European Union's pan globalism is going to get worse if there is no intelligent political awakening to the underlying decadence of Europe's foundation, which was once based on sovereign freedom of thought and governance.(Just look at the violent, anarchist Antifa movement in European cities).
But as I said earlier, the intellectual awakening that Camus called for is not a genuine awakening from the half light of dawn to broad daylight. In fact, it is a step into a prolonged twilight where the streets ahead, like Giogio de Chirico's street landscapes, lead to an unknown, empty horizon.
Camus himself, said "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." The potential tragedy of Europe is that the act of rebellion is not against the old established order of post Renaissance enlightenment. No, what he really meant, at heart, is that the rebellion is against an unknown, unresponsive, silent God.
The truth of the matter is that the Creator Himself, so generous and gracious in His dedication to the European peoples, was never silent. The Europeans, as they grew weary and disheartened by two devastating World Wars and finding limited leeway in their intellectual tools of analysis, closed their minds and hearts to the quiet voice of God.
The rebellion against civilization always starts innocently with an intellectual game of rebellion in the form of well-written novels. Gradually, that rebellion will morph into a rebellion against every civilized value of freedom and independent right of life.
It is my hope that European citizens (unlike the governing elite) do not allow themselves to misconstrue the populist, anti globalist movement as a kind of racist, bigoted, nationalism but as a genuine step in reassessing their intellectual identity and heritage.
(Had Camus been alive today, he would be shocked to see how existentialism prepared the ground for Fascism, socialist anarchism and eventually the bureaucratic fiefdom of the EU. Bon apetit, Monsieur Camus!).
The Guilt Ridden Lion
In England, I am baffled by the widespread integration of Islamic representation in politics and social life. It is as if, the British government is burdened with tremendous guilt for invading Iraq after being deceived by the globalist Prime Minister Tony Blair.
A nation burdened by guilt over its past misdeeds should just be honest and repentantly apologise (like the post war Germans) to the nation it nearly destroyed. Instead, Britain decided to make amends by accepting the partial assimilation of Islamic values into British society as if this could wipe away the national guilt of its initiative in co-launching the Iraq war with the Americans on false pretexts.
The Future: An Empty Horizon?
Looking ahead, the growing tension between populist nationalism versus the European Union's pan globalism is going to get worse if there is no intelligent political awakening to the underlying decadence of Europe's foundation, which was once based on sovereign freedom of thought and governance.(Just look at the violent, anarchist Antifa movement in European cities).
But as I said earlier, the intellectual awakening that Camus called for is not a genuine awakening from the half light of dawn to broad daylight. In fact, it is a step into a prolonged twilight where the streets ahead, like Giogio de Chirico's street landscapes, lead to an unknown, empty horizon.
Camus himself, said "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." The potential tragedy of Europe is that the act of rebellion is not against the old established order of post Renaissance enlightenment. No, what he really meant, at heart, is that the rebellion is against an unknown, unresponsive, silent God.
The truth of the matter is that the Creator Himself, so generous and gracious in His dedication to the European peoples, was never silent. The Europeans, as they grew weary and disheartened by two devastating World Wars and finding limited leeway in their intellectual tools of analysis, closed their minds and hearts to the quiet voice of God.
The rebellion against civilization always starts innocently with an intellectual game of rebellion in the form of well-written novels. Gradually, that rebellion will morph into a rebellion against every civilized value of freedom and independent right of life.
It is my hope that European citizens (unlike the governing elite) do not allow themselves to misconstrue the populist, anti globalist movement as a kind of racist, bigoted, nationalism but as a genuine step in reassessing their intellectual identity and heritage.
(Had Camus been alive today, he would be shocked to see how existentialism prepared the ground for Fascism, socialist anarchism and eventually the bureaucratic fiefdom of the EU. Bon apetit, Monsieur Camus!).
