Author/educator/podcaster Joshua Gibbs appeared on episode 128 of the Why are We Talking about Rabbits podcast. Right around the 18-minute mark, Gibbs provides a provocative answer to the question, “What is conservatism?” Gibbs’ answer: “Conservatism is not about the restoration of a golden age, it’s about the preservation of golden things.” I think this is profoundly on target and deserves considerable exploring.
What are “golden things”? Here is my attempt at a succinct definition: “‘Golden things’ are human creations that will still be cherished, curated, and preserved centuries (or even millennia) after their moment of origination.” In other words, they are things that will “stand the test of time.”
Of course, C. S. Lewis gets at this very thing in his opposition to “chronological snobbery” in his essay, “On the Reading of Old Books.”1 Writing about old books versus new books, Lewis writes, “A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to life.”2 Time will only expose more and more the resplendency of “golden things” while things that are merely “shiny” in a gaudy or gauche manner will hold people’s attention for a season and then fade. Not all that glitters is gold.
Imagine you are conducting a “man on the street” interview inside the quad of an average American college. You have three questions to ask the students. The first question is this:
Do you consider yourself to be a fan of popular music?
If the answer to your first question is “yes,” you proceed to your second question:
Are you a fan of the band/artist ___________?
It doesn’t really matter the name of the band or artist that you put in that blank. It could be Taylor Swift, Radiohead, Nickelback, Nirvana, U2, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, or Perry Como. Just find an artist about which the student is passionate.
After finding an artist that your college student enjoys, ask your third question:
Do you believe the music of ____________ will be widely remembered 200 years from now?
Everyone believes their favorite bands or artists from high school or college days will be vital and memorable 200 years from now. But will they be? Technological advances of the past 125 years have given us the possibility of retrieving the totality of recorded music in perpetuity. But will there be anyone that wants to hear the Black Eyed Peas, Soundgarden, Run D.M.C., or Queen in the year 2223? Furthermore, will anyone remember that there once was such a thing as the Black Eyed Peas, Soundgarden, Run D.M.C., or Queen?
If history teaches us anything, it teaches that the “golden things” of a bygone era tend to persevere while the lesser things fade into oblivion. Another way of saying this is “the cream always rises to the top.” This begs two questions:
What will be ‘the cream that rises to the top’ from our current age?
Will anything from “the recording age” utterly and completely fade into oblivion?
I have a hunch that only a select batch of musically resplendent “golden things” will still outlast all else, but I am not completely convinced of that hunch. One could also assume that the ability to digitize, store, and recall almost everything is a game changer that dwarfs the printing press. Having said that, I admit that I am a thoroughly modern man who cannot boost himself up high enough to see beyond the ubiquity of vast amounts of data storage, web browsers, smartphones, 5G networks, and streaming everything. It is impossible to imagine a technological regress where everything that was previously digitized and stored is just…gone.
There is no pristine “golden age” to which we can return. However, there are all sorts of “golden things” from previous ages that have persevered because others deemed them golden and passed them down. In my next post, I will consider some musical “golden things” that have come down to us and (hopefully) demonstrate why it is so difficult to discern from one’s own moment those things that will last and those that will fade from memory.
Found in Lewis’ book God in the Dock.
C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publ. Co, 1970), 201.