Roger Scruton: How Modern Culture is Degenerating

and I think one of the things that that for me is really striking about a lot of modern culture is how incredibly degraded it is and how insensible so many people are to the level of degradation you are talking earlier about you just what sort of things should we be concerned to preserve and what should be our attitude to innovation and progress many people will say take the gay marriage issue for instance many of its defenders will say look this is the progress it's the adaptation of an old institution and all we're doing things -

changes in society which it would be foolish to oppose rather than oppose and create conflict we should accommodate and adapt and that I think is a not necessarily the right argument about this issue but it is something which is tempting that that way of arguing is very tempting and there is a big question for religious people as the as to the extent to which they can adapt you know if you haven't got any faith you might think it's easy to adapt but if you have a faith one of the things that both Gibbons used to

you is certainties and you can't adapt a certainty so so it fits a new circumstance there because then it ceases to be a certainty and I think these are issues which oh no I've wrestled with this all my life and lot of other people have wrestled with it in just what are you prepared to give up in order to live on peaceful terms with neighbors who disagree with you we have this this concept in the Islamic tradition that what are called Abbott and Matata Yeah right the idea that there are fix it ease that cannot

be changed can't be altered one of the things that I see in the United States is happening that's troubling to me is a lot of young Muslims are are abandoning those those so Abbott those things that really once you begin to abandon them your religion unravels like like pulling the thread on on on a woven garment going back to the question of images you know which I did mention we are suffering from a circuit of images there's no doubt about it in our society and the Prophet was absolutely right about this the image of the

human face and the human form captures your attention wherever it is yes and on a billboard or whatever and if it's a sexually attractive one it's a captures your intention in another way but this use of the human image to distract us from from the serious business of living is one of the things that we're having to deal with right and I one one thing to be said in praise of the Western artistic tradition as in its great moments of the Medieval and Renaissance painters is that it didn't just use the image as a distracting

thing it was a foot a way of focusing your attention on divine things yeah and that that saw saves the image as it were lifts it out of this world into the into the place where it belongs and I think we we're now it's again it's something that is so difficult to talk about because our whole culture is based on the proliferation of images meaningless images designed to titillate appetize one of the things that fascinates me about people in the 19th century when photography first was introduced I have not found I've yet to find any

person from the 19th century smiling in a photograph it really and went when I was in Rome and went to where they had all the statues of well none of them were smiling not one of them and and I thought a lot about that because even the Native Americans those incredible pictures by Curtis of these great Native American peoples like Geronimo and some of the great Chiefs of the Lakota they're all all of them have this incredible presence and and and what to me what it was saying a moment is being frozen of my being

yeah and I want it to be a moment of seriousness that that I'm a serious person and this idea of Mark Van Doren wrote a beautiful essay it was actually a commencement speech for a college and he entitled that the joy of being serious it's absolutely right people used to pose for photographs not so as to be just a momentary cheerful thing but to present their whole life if they could and that meant as it were standing to attention as a guard of yourself and Oh 19th century photographs for that reason have this incredible solemnity

we've lost that and of course the selfie is the kind of the ultimate limit of this you know you're just nothing really matters it set this idiot smiling face in front of it right if you go to that was the word of the year a couple years ago often people get a lot of self glamour out of representing themselves to themselves as marginalized you know if you've if you've been a person of old-fashioned conservative views in a modern university as I was you are seriously marginalized but you don't make a fuss about it and say

look I'm a bit Tim help me you just recognize that you've got views which expose you to a certain yeah but belligerents but it's people when people think that they're marginalized in such a way that they themselves can do nothing to remedy situation that's when it's dangerous and but we live in a society which which has institutions through which all that is mediated people can protest people can say look it's all very well for you but what about me and in the past you know people have always taken note of this and said yeah well

let explain to me your problem let's see whether we can help well the things you've written about is architecture and the importance of architecture and sacred space and for me one of the important things and aspects about a space to study in is that it'd be beautiful what one of the most stunning aspects of traditional Islamic civilization was the schools including the children schools are now museums for people to go and literally marvel at at their their beauty and one of the hallmarks and I think Prince Charles talked about this in your country the ugliness

of modern yes architecture and we're living through this something I think it's some Check Writer no no talks about the uglification of the world it's a word comes from Alice in Wonderland actually where it is true that people now build without any consideration for what and how their the building fits into its environment what he does to the street how it looks to the passerby it's purely to satisfy a client you know the client will wants rooms for 150 offices so you build a hideous block in the middle of of things which eliminates the street

it eliminates the public square and and is something that's nobody wants to look at now we can bear to look at you know and actually I was very impressed by the the fact that Mohammed Atta who flew that that TWA flight into the Twin Towers in 2001 he he did a thesis at the University of Hamburg I think it was Hamburg on our own architecture the theme of which is how to restore Aleppo halep - to its original condition as as a proper Islamic town you know without the the mutilation inflicted upon it by these

tower blocks etc so it was as though he was taking revenge on an architectural traditional practice which had been introduced into the Middle East may look Corbusier with his plans for Algiers you know to wipe the whole thing away and put these motorways in the air on concrete blocks and you know because of the Arab inferiority complex there was this huge mood to do this everywhere we're gonna have a modern city with wide streets plowing through these beautiful little alleyways where people lived side by side we have a hadith proselyte said that towards the latter

days you would see the destitute desert Arabs who had been taking care of goats and sheep vie with one another to build increasingly high buildings really yes that's one of the prophecies yeah well there you are so he was right about that - yes he was [Laughter] but this is something my good friend MOA a Cebu knee who is an architect in Homs has written a beautiful book called the battle for home about this issue I'm hoping you will invite her here well which she documents the extent to which this new way of building in

concrete shanties on the edge of the city are knocking down all the old intimate alleyways how that is actually contributed to the antagonism of for the communities towards each other and and fueled the Civil War and of course given people no sense of where they belong because they look around and they see this this ugly set of broken teeth on the horizon you know that's all there is a town and she writes very beautifully about the way in which the Christian and and Muslim communities in that part of Syria built against each other or I

mean next to each other with the same one with one wall being a church on one side and a mosque on the other you know did this way of actually settling the settling the land what a joint possession you know