I’m tired of the shallow rhetoric that comes after every murderous tragedy, about how we need to stop the hate and start talking to each other. It denies that our culture now consists of people who hold two very different subjective realities, each seeing ‘hate’ as meaning the opposite of the other. THIS is what needs addressing. Nice slogans – no matter how sincere – will not change things.
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The crux of the problem: Half the people believe goodness and happiness are found in conforming to objective truth, whereas the other half believes truth and goodness are created by each individual as he or she sees fit. With the first group, actions, ideas, and movements contrary to justice and the natural law are evil. With the second group, people who challenge others’ personal choices or viewpoints are evil.
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It follows, therefore, that one group sees as an example of evil the ‘act’ of killing of preborn children, whereas the other sees ‘people’ like Charlie Kirk as evil, or anyone who questions personal choices.
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No society that defines basic dimensions of reality so differently such as love and hate, and good and evil, can survive.
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Since the roots of these two opposite conceptions of reality are born of a theistic vs. non-theistic world view, it is THIS level – beneath the surface – on which discourse in talk shows, podcasts, and family dinners should be focused. We must squarely attack the cause not the symptoms; the premises not the conclusions, with open-minded reason and charity. Although 90% of our public discourse remains on the shallow level of rhetoric and politics, where people inevitably talk past each other, nothing will change by remaining there.
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Am I wrong?