In J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece The Lord of the Rings, he describes a critical moment of transition from desperation to hope in the attack on the city of Gondor with the phrase “the wind is changing.” Previously, Tolkien had suggested that the “bad guy” of the story, Sauron, had even been able to control the weather sending bleak and ominous clouds over the land. Thus, we find the last shred of hope for the city, and perhaps for all of the the good in the world, resting with the advancing army of the allies of Gondor, the horse calvary of the people of Rohan.
As that army comes closer to the city, there is no easy way to bring rescue. So, the riders of Rohan are led through silent trails in the wilderness by the leader of a wild people. One of the things the chieftain wants is for the army to “drive away bad air and darkness with bright iron.” Then suddenly, close to the city, Tolkien writes that the leader “suddenly stood looking up like some startled woodland animal snuffling a strange air.” He then exclaims “Wind is changing” and scoots away, leaving the army alone.
Meanwhile in the besieged city of Gondor, the change is noticed there. Even as the city’s main gate is broken, Tolkien writes of how the city animals like a rooster sense the change of the wind and lifts up its voice. One of the famous Hobbits, Merry who is riding with the Rohan army, finds himself also dealing with doubt and a loss of heart. But then “suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in his face! Light was glimmering.” On the battlefield itself, as the struggle grew, the enemy forces were perplexed as to this change. Worse, the wind was from the South bringing up a new army. To their shock, this new army was not their friends, as they had supposed, but instead “Thus came [the hero] Aragorn…borne upon a wind from the sea to the kingdom of Gondor…and the joy and wonder of the City was a music of trumpets and a ringing of bells.”
I think we seeing a change in the wind blowing away one of the worst philosophical concepts ever invented, that of postmodernism and its ruinous ideas that nothing is true, nothing can be known. I think this is a vital, critical place for our culture to get to especially in the realm of education. Robert Spaemann writes about this in his essay “Education as an Introduction to Reality.” For Spaemann, education at its best presents the real to the student.
That introduction is opposed to the somewhat normal concession made by educators over the past 30-40 years that there is no reality, only perspectives….thus only aimless relativism. If such was really true, then education no longer introduces the world as God created it, but rather just an offer a plethora of options for understanding the world….none of which the teacher defends or makes an argument for. The student then faces these hypotheses alone, unguided, invited only to entertain the possibilities on their own. This is of course coming from the thought of modern society that not only can you not know the truth, but a fake sense of moral superiority that suggests “who has the right to make such a proclamation. When that has happened, then education has only robbed the child of any way to actually determine the truth or validity of the hypothesis.
If nothing is true, then of course there cannot be any true or right answer. The child, and the culture, then ends up floating helplessly in a weightless state from which you can never get reattached to anything grounded. But we DO know what is true. Most of these truths are self-evidently true. This is the central idea of Scottish Enlightenment figure Thomas Reid and his School of Common Sense (yes, this is where Thomas Paine got the term from).
Thomas Reid was the leading voice of the Scottish Enlightenment’s third great city, Aberdeen. He was an opponent of David Hume, countering Hume’s ideas that men are generally stupid and in need of great guidance (usually from smart, elite men like himself). For Hume, the world is not as it appears, especially in the realm of right and wrong. Reid stated instead that “Settled truth can be attained by observation.” For Reid, anyone could understand the world: “The evidence of sense. . .of memory. . .and of necessary relations of things. . .are first principles, and as such fall not within the province of reason, but of common sense.”
Reality does present itself in its truth.
Of course in Hume, and later 20th century thinkers, we can see why this matters so much to them. These self-declared experts wanted to distance themselves from the Christian view that Jesus is Truth, and that He alone provides the foundation for life, for virtue, for a moral culture where we value each human.
In doing so, though, we have undermined our very existence. Spaemann, in another essay, speaks to this when he writes “Modern civilization poses a threat to human dignity unlike any that has ever existed.” Spaemann’s point is that even though human dignity is often put into law, our loss of connection to reality, to common sense, then life gets turned upside. What ends up dominating the world is not even human.
Today, as many worry about a USA led by President Trump, they cannot believe that such views could be in the majority in the country. What they are wishing for is a settled truth about good and bad, moral and immoral. After decades of teaching students and thus our civilization that there is no right and wrong, they face a society moving in a direction that these Liberals think is wrong.
The wind is changing. Let’s have this discussion about truth and reality. It is the only discussion to have. C.S. Lewis knew this. He wrote “One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing is cannot be is moderately important.” It also can’t be just a possibly good hypothesis. It is either true or false….and all the evidence shows it as true.
Let’s recapture this truth and then move forward to have the discussion about what values and mores we should hold as a civilization. I would offer that Nature shows us all around, things that are very self-evident.
Let me give Spaemann the last word: “Educating a child is a process of formation that introduces him to the world, that cultivates capacities to understand what the world is.”