It has been said that Hell is a place where logic has no meaning. Unfortunately, we do not have to descend that far to experience life without logic. All it takes is a tour of the reality we live in today in most of the Western world. The concept of truth, which is the focal point of logical reasoning, has been put through the grind of relativism, with the seeds thrown to the winds of whimsical identity politics.
The self-identification of gender is presently the most pervasive form of identity politics. As such, it is also the most forceful vehicle for the relativization of truth. It has demonstrated with chilling clarity what happens when the pursuit of truth is no longer left to the domain of free speech and logic but removed from the object itself and handed over to the beholder. When everyone can define his or her own gender, our society no longer has one truth. We have as many truths as there are persons with a self-identified gender.
In this myriad of ‘truths’ lies the premonition of the next victim of relativism: liberty itself. When the truth is individualized, no truth can prevail in a dispute between two individuals. In order for one truth to win, its proponents have no other choice but to resort to brute force.
In short: where truth exits the free-speech market and the domain of logic and reasoning, a vacuum appears which can only be filled with the dark waters of totalitarianism.
It may seem pretentious to plant the seeds of tyranny in what seems to be merely a fad: the present habit primarily among younglings to identify as some other gender than they are. But the step from the latter to the former is just that—it is not a leap.
To see why, let us assume that Jack says he is a woman, and Jill says he is a man. So long as their disagreement is confined to their isolated conversation, it is of no consequence to the outside world. In fact, the mere concept of this disagreement is appealing to a lot of people, primarily libertarians: the freedom to define one’s own gender can be said to expand individual liberty.
This is indeed the case, but—again—only so long as Jack and Jill are having their eclectic argument with no other ambition than to have a conversation. However, suppose that there is a prescriptive ambition behind the conversation, at least from one side. Suppose that Jack demands the right to use women’s restrooms based on his ‘truth’ that he is a woman. Jill, whose ‘truth’ says that Jack is a man, refuses to accept Jack’s claim because having men in the women’s bathroom would invade her privacy.
At this point, Jack is trapped in the concept of individualized truth. Since Jill rejects his truth, and he rejects hers, they are stuck in a moral impasse. By default, the status quo wins, and since Jill defends the status quo, she is morally victorious.
If the status quo were set up the other way, so that Jill was claiming the right to privacy for biological women, then the individual-truth impasse would by default leave Jack as the victor. Either way, the concept of individual truths has no other practical meaning than to cement society and human relations as they are at the moment when truth becomes individualized.
For Jack, who wants to change the rights structure regarding access to bathrooms, his individualized truth—once so appealing for the purposes of identity—has been rendered pointless. He needs a tool to elevate his truth above Jill’s truth. However, to do this he needs a tool that can separate ‘change’ from ‘status quo’—which ironically means separating ‘right’ from ‘wrong,’ i.e., ‘true’ from ‘false.’
The problem is that any such tool is at odds with individualized truth. The concept of truth must again be separated from the individual. Logically, this cannot be done without depriving all individuals in a society of their ‘own truth.’ But that would require a return to the free market of debate, where logic and analytical reasoning prevail—it was to move away from this market that we individualized the concept of truth in the first place.
The only way that the individualization, or relativization, of truth can become a tool for political change, is by abandoning a core principle of civilization, namely that truth is superior to man. When truth is individualized, man is superior to truth.
At this point, there is no rationale for one truth to rise above another. Only the use of force can do that.
This is why the individualization of truth is so dangerous. It is sold to us as liberating the individual from institutional oppression; in reality, it locks the individual into the most tightly confining cage imaginable, short of violence. That cage is one where the individual is deprived of any intellectual instruments for pursuing truth.
The concept of individualized truth is not a random anomaly. It rests upon a carefully crafted philosophical foundation, well represented by Martin Heidegger. In his essay “On the Essence of Truth” from 1943 (conveniently accessible in Basic Writings, Harper, 2008), Heidegger makes an elaborate case for the separation of truths from observable facts.
He outlines a chain of elements, from the object about which truth is debated—via a statement about the object—to the individual making the statement. The truth about the object, Heidegger explains, does not belong with the object, nor does it belong with the statement about the object. The truth about the object is discovered only by the individual making the statement.
Plainly speaking: if I have a 5-mark coin in my hand (Heidegger’s example) and I am ‘free’ in the sense that I am not subject to prejudice or conventional wisdom, then I can make statements about the true nature of the coin. Truth belongs to me, not to the object about which I am making the statement.
The coin example is inconsequential from a political viewpoint (unless, of course, someone were to claim that a 5-mark coin is really worth 10 marks). The bathroom example is not. When truth has been atomized, the vacuum it leaves behind is inevitably filled by power. Once power has filled one truth vacuum, it will sooner or later spill over to other truth vacuums; when the gender identity issue has been settled by force, those who have their hands on the levers of government power will aspire for more power.
It is not difficult to see where those vacuums are—they are already being filled up. The Western world is rife with examples of speech restrictions and related controls of the exercise of free expression. Some of them are forced by government, while, in other cases, private citizens tear into established institutions for the purpose of relativizing truth. A new truth about gender can be forged in the quiet by means of a dictionary. Given its status, the dictionary elevates one man’s truth above its competitors.
Other examples are more openly totalitarian, such as the transformation of quiet dissent on abortion into an arrestable offense, or granting a government jurisdiction over traditions—and truths—older than the government itself.
As the elevation of man above truth gains mainstream recognition, the might-makes-right practice becomes more openly ideological. If people in general disagree with where the truth-by-force policies are going, it is always possible to subjugate democracy itself to ideological will.
When truth is inferior to man, it is also inferior to government power. Once there,we are only a matter of time away from when dissent with government becomes a punishable offense. Recently, two Christian women, one defending the Bible in Finland and one quietly praying outside an English abortion clinic demonstrated how eerily close to that point we already are.
Totalitarianism expands rapidly, at the cost of freedom and democracy.
Soon enough, the very questioning of government truths will become an offense. There is already a term for this: sedition.
Let us listen to a conversation in a classroom somewhere, as an instructor explains the term:
‘Sedition’ means to oppose and try to overthrow a legitimate government.
You can try to overthrow it in different ways. You can do it violently, which of course we respond to, vigorously. You can also passively resist government by not cooperating with government agencies that want information of some kind. That is, of course, also sedition. Or you can run as an opponent in an election. Or you can express a dissenting view in some public forum, or you can share your dissent, your criticism of government, with coworkers, friends, or family members. It all falls under the legal realm of sedition.
For clarity, the student in this exercise might ask,
So, definitions of sedition include violent action against government, passive resistance by means of non-cooperation, and being a candidate in an election. Did I get that right?
To which the teacher would reply, “Yes, almost. Being a candidate in an election is not enough for sedition. If the incumbent approves of your candidacy, you are not a seditionist.”
In other words, government’s power over the concept of truth has been stretched so far that a person running for public office without government permission is a seditionist. The very candidacy itself is an expression of disagreement with government, and disagreement with government means disagreeing with the truth that government has established—whatever that truth is.
Anyone identified as a seditionist in the country where this conversation took place, is sent to secret camps for the re-education of seditionists.
What country is this? China? North Korea? Cuba? The old Soviet Union?
None of the above. Fortunately, this conversation is not real. It is from my political science-fiction novel about a country on some other planet, where a progressive, democratic government has ushered in a new era. Their definition of democracy says that people are still free to think, say, and do whatever they want—so long as their thoughts, words, and actions are approved by government.
At one point in the book, an elderly woman is arrested by State Security and charged with sedition for having expressed, in a public forum, her dissatisfaction with government health care.
In the tradition of Animal Farm, Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and others, this book explains how government control over the concept of truth gains its own momentum. A democratically elected leader gradually expands the domain of government truth; the enforcement of that domain inevitably drops all pretenses of moral justification.
Toward the end of the book, all that the government has left is raw power, the exercise of which becomes increasingly brutal.
The transformation of a free country into a totalitarian machine is not mere fiction, however. It is painfully common in human history. Even more painful is the fact that it still happens in our time: Venezuela is a primary example. There are other examples, with Chile teetering on the edge of the totalitarian chasm.
Both of these countries teach us that tyranny can grow in the soil of freedom—all it takes is planting the wrong seeds.
Putting Man Above Truth
It has been said that Hell is a place where logic has no meaning. Unfortunately, we do not have to descend that far to experience life without logic. All it takes is a tour of the reality we live in today in most of the Western world. The concept of truth, which is the focal point of logical reasoning, has been put through the grind of relativism, with the seeds thrown to the winds of whimsical identity politics.
The self-identification of gender is presently the most pervasive form of identity politics. As such, it is also the most forceful vehicle for the relativization of truth. It has demonstrated with chilling clarity what happens when the pursuit of truth is no longer left to the domain of free speech and logic but removed from the object itself and handed over to the beholder. When everyone can define his or her own gender, our society no longer has one truth. We have as many truths as there are persons with a self-identified gender.
In this myriad of ‘truths’ lies the premonition of the next victim of relativism: liberty itself. When the truth is individualized, no truth can prevail in a dispute between two individuals. In order for one truth to win, its proponents have no other choice but to resort to brute force.
In short: where truth exits the free-speech market and the domain of logic and reasoning, a vacuum appears which can only be filled with the dark waters of totalitarianism.
It may seem pretentious to plant the seeds of tyranny in what seems to be merely a fad: the present habit primarily among younglings to identify as some other gender than they are. But the step from the latter to the former is just that—it is not a leap.
To see why, let us assume that Jack says he is a woman, and Jill says he is a man. So long as their disagreement is confined to their isolated conversation, it is of no consequence to the outside world. In fact, the mere concept of this disagreement is appealing to a lot of people, primarily libertarians: the freedom to define one’s own gender can be said to expand individual liberty.
This is indeed the case, but—again—only so long as Jack and Jill are having their eclectic argument with no other ambition than to have a conversation. However, suppose that there is a prescriptive ambition behind the conversation, at least from one side. Suppose that Jack demands the right to use women’s restrooms based on his ‘truth’ that he is a woman. Jill, whose ‘truth’ says that Jack is a man, refuses to accept Jack’s claim because having men in the women’s bathroom would invade her privacy.
At this point, Jack is trapped in the concept of individualized truth. Since Jill rejects his truth, and he rejects hers, they are stuck in a moral impasse. By default, the status quo wins, and since Jill defends the status quo, she is morally victorious.
If the status quo were set up the other way, so that Jill was claiming the right to privacy for biological women, then the individual-truth impasse would by default leave Jack as the victor. Either way, the concept of individual truths has no other practical meaning than to cement society and human relations as they are at the moment when truth becomes individualized.
For Jack, who wants to change the rights structure regarding access to bathrooms, his individualized truth—once so appealing for the purposes of identity—has been rendered pointless. He needs a tool to elevate his truth above Jill’s truth. However, to do this he needs a tool that can separate ‘change’ from ‘status quo’—which ironically means separating ‘right’ from ‘wrong,’ i.e., ‘true’ from ‘false.’
The problem is that any such tool is at odds with individualized truth. The concept of truth must again be separated from the individual. Logically, this cannot be done without depriving all individuals in a society of their ‘own truth.’ But that would require a return to the free market of debate, where logic and analytical reasoning prevail—it was to move away from this market that we individualized the concept of truth in the first place.
The only way that the individualization, or relativization, of truth can become a tool for political change, is by abandoning a core principle of civilization, namely that truth is superior to man. When truth is individualized, man is superior to truth.
At this point, there is no rationale for one truth to rise above another. Only the use of force can do that.
This is why the individualization of truth is so dangerous. It is sold to us as liberating the individual from institutional oppression; in reality, it locks the individual into the most tightly confining cage imaginable, short of violence. That cage is one where the individual is deprived of any intellectual instruments for pursuing truth.
The concept of individualized truth is not a random anomaly. It rests upon a carefully crafted philosophical foundation, well represented by Martin Heidegger. In his essay “On the Essence of Truth” from 1943 (conveniently accessible in Basic Writings, Harper, 2008), Heidegger makes an elaborate case for the separation of truths from observable facts.
He outlines a chain of elements, from the object about which truth is debated—via a statement about the object—to the individual making the statement. The truth about the object, Heidegger explains, does not belong with the object, nor does it belong with the statement about the object. The truth about the object is discovered only by the individual making the statement.
Plainly speaking: if I have a 5-mark coin in my hand (Heidegger’s example) and I am ‘free’ in the sense that I am not subject to prejudice or conventional wisdom, then I can make statements about the true nature of the coin. Truth belongs to me, not to the object about which I am making the statement.
The coin example is inconsequential from a political viewpoint (unless, of course, someone were to claim that a 5-mark coin is really worth 10 marks). The bathroom example is not. When truth has been atomized, the vacuum it leaves behind is inevitably filled by power. Once power has filled one truth vacuum, it will sooner or later spill over to other truth vacuums; when the gender identity issue has been settled by force, those who have their hands on the levers of government power will aspire for more power.
It is not difficult to see where those vacuums are—they are already being filled up. The Western world is rife with examples of speech restrictions and related controls of the exercise of free expression. Some of them are forced by government, while, in other cases, private citizens tear into established institutions for the purpose of relativizing truth. A new truth about gender can be forged in the quiet by means of a dictionary. Given its status, the dictionary elevates one man’s truth above its competitors.
Other examples are more openly totalitarian, such as the transformation of quiet dissent on abortion into an arrestable offense, or granting a government jurisdiction over traditions—and truths—older than the government itself.
As the elevation of man above truth gains mainstream recognition, the might-makes-right practice becomes more openly ideological. If people in general disagree with where the truth-by-force policies are going, it is always possible to subjugate democracy itself to ideological will.
When truth is inferior to man, it is also inferior to government power. Once there,we are only a matter of time away from when dissent with government becomes a punishable offense. Recently, two Christian women, one defending the Bible in Finland and one quietly praying outside an English abortion clinic demonstrated how eerily close to that point we already are.
Totalitarianism expands rapidly, at the cost of freedom and democracy.
Soon enough, the very questioning of government truths will become an offense. There is already a term for this: sedition.
Let us listen to a conversation in a classroom somewhere, as an instructor explains the term:
For clarity, the student in this exercise might ask,
To which the teacher would reply, “Yes, almost. Being a candidate in an election is not enough for sedition. If the incumbent approves of your candidacy, you are not a seditionist.”
In other words, government’s power over the concept of truth has been stretched so far that a person running for public office without government permission is a seditionist. The very candidacy itself is an expression of disagreement with government, and disagreement with government means disagreeing with the truth that government has established—whatever that truth is.
Anyone identified as a seditionist in the country where this conversation took place, is sent to secret camps for the re-education of seditionists.
What country is this? China? North Korea? Cuba? The old Soviet Union?
None of the above. Fortunately, this conversation is not real. It is from my political science-fiction novel about a country on some other planet, where a progressive, democratic government has ushered in a new era. Their definition of democracy says that people are still free to think, say, and do whatever they want—so long as their thoughts, words, and actions are approved by government.
At one point in the book, an elderly woman is arrested by State Security and charged with sedition for having expressed, in a public forum, her dissatisfaction with government health care.
In the tradition of Animal Farm, Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and others, this book explains how government control over the concept of truth gains its own momentum. A democratically elected leader gradually expands the domain of government truth; the enforcement of that domain inevitably drops all pretenses of moral justification.
Toward the end of the book, all that the government has left is raw power, the exercise of which becomes increasingly brutal.
The transformation of a free country into a totalitarian machine is not mere fiction, however. It is painfully common in human history. Even more painful is the fact that it still happens in our time: Venezuela is a primary example. There are other examples, with Chile teetering on the edge of the totalitarian chasm.
Both of these countries teach us that tyranny can grow in the soil of freedom—all it takes is planting the wrong seeds.
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