In Praise of the West’s Silent Ones – Folha de S. Paulo, October 7, 1973
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Do not think that, from the point of view of a friend of tradition, there is nothing worthy of praise in our century. On the contrary, upon careful analysis of reality, there are serious reasons to applaud certain aspects of today’s world. These are primarily aspects of the world today that are not entirely what has come to be called “today’s world.”
Let me explain. I really don’t see anything to praise in “today’s world” if it refers to a group of people whose mentality, mutual relationships, and achievements are influenced by the so-called “modern spirit.” By “modern spirit,” I mean a mentality fundamentally opposed to seriousness and composure, and therefore accustomed to extravagance, disorder, incoherence, and the relaxation of all rules of behavior, from the smallest social conventions to the most august principles of morality. In short, a mentality comprised entirely of nonconformity and rebellion, greed and sensuality, shocking brutality and mawkish sentimentality. Indeed, what is there to praise in this?
But someone might ask, where can I find people who possess all of these flaws at once? Although they are a minority, they certainly exist. However, they are not just any minority. They form a core, a nucleus placed right at the center of an immense periphery of participants. Each of these has only one or a few of the flaws found in the core. Nevertheless, the characteristics of the core are present throughout the immense periphery, albeit in a fragmented and diffuse way. While this description of the core does not apply to each of its components, it applies entirely to the periphery as a whole.
In other words, in some, brutality predominates; in others, laziness; and in still others, sensuality or rebellion, so that all the typical defects of the core are present throughout the periphery.
The modern world does not consist only of this core and this periphery. Around the latter, there is an even wider zone of complacent people who, although participating only tangentially in the periphery’s defects, nevertheless witness their spread with an indulgence that often borders on connivance. How many elderly grandmothers can be seen on the streets, dressed with dignity and bearing themselves properly? If someone offered one of them a skimpy miniskirt to wear, she would feel insulted in her pride as a woman. Note, however, that the granddaughter she is pleased to accompany wears precisely the miniskirt her grandmother would have rejected!
No, I have nothing to praise in this modern world. The few and tenuous qualities it has survive as vestiges of a traditional legacy that each person hides, suffocates, and extinguishes in themselves as quickly as possible.
The only thing flaunted in the modern world is the opposite of this legacy.
And I repeat, I cannot praise this.
* * *
However, to what extent does the world as it is today, the contemporary world, identify with the modern world?
It seems to me that, just as beyond the Iron Curtain there is a vilified, oppressed, and persecuted Church of Silence, so too behind the Iron Curtain there is a vast spiritual family of silent people who, cast aside, ignored, and despised, live in mediocrity and obscurity. The vast majority of these individuals remain silent, inhibited by the self-assurance of modernity and by fear of sarcasm. However, from the depths of their silence, they offer discreet resistance to the impulses of modernity. They do follow its injunctions, but only at a snail’s pace.
The leaders of modernity pretend to ignore this widespread sluggishness. Yet it weighs on them so heavily that they are compelled to slow their pace, lest a quicker stride alienate the very grassroots they claim to represent.
I find something to applaud precisely in these silent ones who disappoint and afflict the “modern world.”
* * *
Let me cite a typical example of the importance of these “silent ones” in the West.
On July 2, the well-known Spanish magazine Sábado Gráfico published a curious revelation. “Most Rev. Helder Câmara, Archbishop of Recife, distributed a document titled ‘Latin America and the Non-Violent Option’ to all Ibero-American prophetic movements, in which he bluntly acknowledges the following facts:
“a) The guerrilla movement has failed. It is highly counterproductive to attempt liberation by armed means today.
“b) The majority of the masses are indifferent to the preaching of revolutionary doctrines.”
In other words, the modern Revolution has stalled.
Why is it stalled when all signs point to it moving forward? Obviously, this is largely due to the feet-dragging of countless silent people, upon whom modernity imposes characteristics from the outside that they reject from the inside out.
Let us look at Chile. According to that country’s newspapers, shortly before the fall of the Popular Unity government, some of its prominent supporters saw the lack of mystique among pro-government workers as a sign of Allende’s impending failure. Enthusiasm was lacking at the grassroots level despite all the ideological efforts by the Marxists.
What was happening in the opposition was far more significant. The military claimed to have overthrown Allende under pressure from the people’s will, and no one doubted it given the huge anti-Allende demonstrations. In those demonstrations, the most daring elements were not the rich but workers from the El Teniente copper mines, rural workers who took up arms in support of their bosses, and truck drivers from all over the country. What were all these people doing before Allende provoked them? They were silent…
In this regard, Mr. Fernando Larrain, a prominent director of the Chilean TFP whose land in Curacavi had been expropriated, showed me a letter he received from a former settler who missed the patriarchal regime of the old bosses. The letter offers insights that would fit well in a letter from a Chouan or a Mexican Cristero in the early 20th century.
These silent people are the major force for mental and moral sanity in the world today.
I applaud this as a positive factor and a precious antithesis to the modern world, which I categorically refuse to applaud.
