Reality, R.I.P.

On what basis are we going to have a civilization?

Lately, the moment-by-moment developments in what is commonly called the culture war hold little interest for me. Their main characteristic is their predictability.

Of course, some yay-hoos were going to knock over Target merchandise displays and threaten employees. Of course, the NAACP was going to issue a travel advisory about Florida. Of course, the debt-ceiling negotiators from the House and the White House are dancing around the plain fact regarding government’s unfunded liabilities, thereby rendering any compromise they come up with meaningless.

And then the other side in each such instance gets to play the outraged-because-aggrieved party. The Target CEO gets to double down and reconfirm the organization’s commitment to the fantasy that a man can be a woman and vice versa simply by declaring himself or herself to be so. Trumpist media outlets get several days worth of content handed to them by the issuance of the travel advisory. Democratic debt negotiators get to paint Republicans as indifferent to the sick and aging.

What is desperately needed is for a critical mass of citizens to step back and get the most expanded possible view of what’s happening .

The bottom line: in our post modern society, we have no agreed-upon objective experience of the world we live in. Parameters of the space-time realm we’d always assumed as givens are being obliterated. In an increasing number of fields, one can get in professional trouble for upholding them.

A short-sighted “we’re making headway” argument can be made. Yes, Bud Light sales are still slumping. Target has made some adjustments to its Pride Month initiatives. Several state legislatures are passing bills addressing a number of cultural concerns.

But consider what’s been happening from the viewpoint of, say, a twelve-year-old. Someone young enough to grant some deference to the acquired wisdom of adults, but old enough to start to digest what, increasingly, not-so-wise adults are telling them about norms and institutions. They either absorb what they’re told into their developing worldviews, or experience cognitive dissonance due to the chasm between what they hear at home and what every other authority figure they encounter is saying. They might well wander into a Target store on a Saturday afternoon when out with friends, thereby having a certain take on reality reinforced.

We’ve mainstreamed a plethora of new terms into our lexicon in a breathtakingly brief span: “cisheteronormative,” “non-binary,” “tuck friendly.” We speak of communities, the defining bonds of which are based on feelings. Even a word like “queer,” which homosexuals found pejorative until recently, is the term of choice for a philanthropy circle at a major university. (Other philanthropy circles of the school include one for blacks and one for women.)

We’re not in denial of this or that specific aspect of human life. We’re in denial of basic reality. To the point at which to say so invites responses along the lines of “and who are you to define my reality?”

It is impossible to have a civilization under such circumstances. We have no basis for understanding each other when we say something.

It’s impossible to promote the higher things of human existence - beauty, nobility, loyalty, humility, wisdom, transcendence, immutability - without a language the words of which mean the same things for all of us.

I give the last word to Blaise Pascal:

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

We’re knuckleheads who have squandered our birthright.