Orthodoxy

Content Warning: This section discusses suicide as both a reality and a metaphor and refers to the author’s stigmatizing language regarding suicide.

After the discussion on ethics, the question of loyalty and devotion comes into play regarding the individual’s place in the world. The irony of human existence is that human beings are born into various loyalties even before they have a chance to be personally devoted to these loyalties. Chesterton holds the opinion that one’s attitude should be expressed in a devout, unquestioning fashion: “Our attitude towards life can be better expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism and approval” (99). He doesn’t equate this to blind loyalty but to the kind that exists beyond simple critique. When it comes to the question of loyalty to the world, he describes two kinds of people who make understandable, yet regrettable, mistakes.

First, there is the optimist. The optimist looks at their country with rose-tinted glasses, seeing only the positive. Second, there is the pessimist, who, by contrast, can see nothing good about their place. These two errors exist, however, because the person has misconceptions about the nature of goodness and how it is attained.