Walker Percy's Delta Factor Part 3

Percy, Walker. "The Delta Factor" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.

A big emphasis in Percy's writings is the alienation of man. A theory of man must be able to account for this alienation. The scientific theory that man is an organism in an environment fails to account for the alienation of man.

Percy notes that the Judeo-Christian anthropology does account for the alienation of man. Percy writes: "By the very cogent anthropology of Judeo-Christianity, whether or not one agreed with it, human existence was by no means to be understood as the transaction of a higher organism satisfying this or that need from its environment, by being creative or enjoying 'meaningful relationships,' but as the journey of a wayfarer along life's way. The experience of alienation was thus not a symptom of maladaptation (psychology) nor evidence of the absurdity of life (existentialism) nor an inevitable consequence of capitalism (Marx) nor the necessary dehumanization of technology (Ellul). Though the exacerbating influence of these forces were not denied, it was not to be forgotten that human alienation was first and last the homelessness of a man who is not in fact at home" (24). 

The Judeo-Christian anthropology was "cogent enough and flexible enough, too, to accommodate the several topical alienations of the twentieth century" (24). The problem with accepting this theory one had to accept the idea of an original Fall. To believe this was an obstacle for the scientist and the humanist. 

Instead of accepting a Fall, they accepted that people are basically good. Percy states that the scientists "re-entered Eden, where scientists know like the angels, and laymen prosper in good environments, and ethical democracies progress through education" (24). Percy says be believing this they deny themselves the ability to deal with the particular predicament of man: "deprived themselves of the means of understanding and averting dread catastrophes which were to overtake Eden and of dealing with the perverse and ungrateful beneficiaries of science and ethics who preferred to eat lotus like the Laodiceans or roam the dark violent world like Ishmael and Cain" (24). 

"Then Eden turned into the twentieth century" (24).

Percy thinks that the modern world has ended and we are now in some kind of post-modern, post-Christian world. Possibly, Charles Taylor's Secular Age. In this new age people are unable to understand themselves by the theories of this age.

Percy notes that scientists and humanists were saying something different than the poets and artists of this age. Scientists and humanists were saying that we are progressing in knowledge about people and this world. We just need to apply their theories and we will make a better world. But the poets and artists were saying something different that though man should be happy in this age, they were actually homeless in this world. Percy points out that "something was wrong" (25). Percy thinks the poets and artists are correct. 

Percy thinks the world ended when people could no longer understand themselves by the theories of the age "which was informed by the spirit of abstraction," and they could not speak a single word to the individual, but could speak to him "only as he resembled other selves" (26).