Is there a life before death?

Peter Kopa, Prague, 20.7.2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE1jc9toaTU&t=407s

Nobody wants to be unhappy

One of the things I remember very vividly from my eighteen years in Zurich was a graffiti that asked in protest: Is there a life before death? The author was probably a young man, full of hope for the future, but also filled with the atmosphere of the late eighties of the last century. It is a cry for help, for truth, justice and peace. It is also an indictment of his parents’ generation, who have not shown him the way to happiness. It is clear that no man has the freedom not to want to be happy, and not only in this life, but forever. And this in spite of not having a religious faith, because this is deeply engraved in our DNA. Cómo ser feliz

Here are some reflections inspired by a book by Prof. Michael Pakaluk, who received his doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University, where he studied philosophical logic with W.V. Quine, Burton Dreben and Warren Goldfarb, philosophy of science with Hilary Putnam and political philosophy with John Rawls.  Rawls directed his dissertation, “Theory of Friendship in Aristotle,” and Sarah Broadie (then at Yale) also served on the dissertation committee.

Happiness as a dream in history

All the struggles, efforts and tremors in history, both on a personal and social level, have always been about living better, being more, having peace and happiness. In the 18th century this natural tendency was formulated by philosophical reflection. Already before, St. Thomas More deals in his book ‘Utopia’ with this deep and universal yearning: a world in which all are equal and free, a society in which all are good, and therefore always doing good, without any impositions by coercive authorities such as the police, the courts and prisons.

This angelic vision has been taken up by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but he has understood it and spoiled it by his deep rationalist prejudices, making it the foundation of his dogmatic principle that all men are good by nature, wrapped in a vaporous and merely deistic atmosphere. And this principle is in diametrical opposition to the Judeo-Christian teaching, which accepts the intrinsic goodness of man, but without denying that his nature is wounded and deformed by the original sin of Adam and Eve. In the then prevailing philosophical thought, this duality has always been taken for granted, against the background of Christian revelation, offering a sure hope of attaining eternal life.

The French Revolution of 1789 has confronted these two ways of seeing the destiny of man, these two ways of sounding happiness: the atheistic vision against the vision of faith. As is well known, two million people died in the name of the revolution, because it was about liquidating the ancient regime of the nobility and the Catholic Church.

With the perspective of the centuries that have passed, we see today that this revolution did not bring about the advent of paradise on earth, although it did achieve some positive conquests, but at too high a price. And then there have been more revolutions in France, in 1830, in 1848 and in 1870, inspired by the same anti-Christian spirit in Jacobin form that cannot offer a live before death.

The Russian dream

The revolution of 1917 did not arise spontaneously from the Russian masses of the cities and the countryside, but its ideological justification was inoculated by the Marxist virus introduced from outside by Lenin. Certainly there was in the peasantry and in the lower classes an atmosphere of discontent and protest against the Czar, which was probably one of the elements that could have favored the spread of Marxism.

It is well known where Marxism has led the great Russian people, as well as the Chinese people, the people of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba and Nicaragua: it is not possible to sound anything from atheism because it always ends in blood.

The American Dream

In spite of its problems, the USA is one of the countries that has contributed the most to the progress of the Western world in the last two centuries, especially in the economic, social and technological fields. I believe that even now, life in the USA is very good for the majority, who work without making the noise of the socially restless few who once again want to change the world.  And the incredible thing is that their ideology justifying so many demonstrations and protests is totally ridiculous, at least for a European. The WOKE, LGTB etc. type action slogans are so primitive, that they offend the vast majority of Americans. They are nothing more than rehashes of Marxism, where they are meant to dialectically pit white against black, homosexual against normals, woman against man etc.

All these restless spirits are prevalently of low social and professional profile, so they have nothing to lose. As Prof. Pakaluk says, they have as a common denominator the desire to destroy the Church and Christianity, seeing the USA as a hopelessly racist country that does not deserve to exist, advocating absolute sexual freedom and claiming that individual gender is determined by one’s free choice, and that there should be not only equality of opportunity but also equality of outcome!

The Great Battle in the Valley of Armageddon

In apocalyptic proportions, never as today, the atheistic ideologies are attacking worldwide the order established for thousands of years, pretending to create the new world order, in which nobody will have anything,  because everything will have been stolen, and in which everyone would be ‘happy’, locked in the prison of absolute digital control. And everything indicates that we are facing a huge premeditated world action orchestrated from the globalist apex by a secret organization. The war in Ukraine, with all its future consequences, is only a prelude to what is coming. ¿Qué futuro nos espera?