Asking Questions, Hoping for Answers:
Is Western Culture re-aligned ?
The current cultural moment in the West is that the pendulum of the world clock is swinging lazily away from the 'avant-garde' left. It takes progressiveness to highlight the very few flaws and mistakes of the West. Things that needed to be addressed, were.
But the Far -left or new Left have gone too far.
Being progressive used to mean fighting for women to have equal rights, the same opportunities and ( largely) the same pay. Many women earn much more than men. The imbalance is shrinking and men have encountered perhaps for 1 or 2 decades a narrowing of career and work opportunities similar to that experienced by Western women in earlier centuries. At least in remuneration or earnings, if not wider stripping away of classic male-only roles and careers are being forecast by some futurists.
Suddenly being progressive means fighting for the removal of " woman" as a viable and necessary concept.
Somehow mobilising for equal rights for the tiny minority of transsexuals meant accepting that overall women's rights should be denied and rendered invisible; in favour of trans-women. This is seen by a recent court case in AU with the founder of an exclusive website being sued by a woman for " discrimination and denial of entry." This website is a safe place which is only for females not faux females nor ambitious and predatory males.
What's occurred in the West was a customised ruin, a kind of bespoke replacement meant to transform society but ensured damaged, even irreparable lives, trashed norms and 'unsalvagable' values.
Pressures,clarity and social correction from various insistent and persistent conservative voices has limited the sociopolitical damage to Western society. Other forces are being brought to bear,fissures are being healed. Everyday People are relaying their concern to politicians, corporate leaders and other thinkers. There is a renewed commonsense approach to life in Western climes again
A resurgence of traditional norms,values and expectations have occurred.Fractures are mending with the collective voices being raised in nation after nation.
The clock hadn't struck high noon.
Midnight has been truly averted.
"A time of crisis and disenchantment calls out for a re-thinking of who we are..." " whereby we don't collapse into cynicism and despair"
Alistair McGrath.
The richest and most complex elements of modern society are science and religion. Both are routinely looked to provide answers for the often recurrent problems in new dress and other truly new issues.
Each separate element dazzles us with ( confrontational- at times ) solutions but are dependent on the individual's worldview to accept their offered resolution and ideological concepts.
It would seem, and in fact has, that the influential optimism of the post global -war period has waned dramatically.
We should, according to professor Alister McGrath, reach the inevitable but the most unsettling and avoided question:
what is wrong with us?
A question that many do not wish to contemplate and most don't ask. With repeated geo-failures, troublesome global events and shared, inherent illusions we lose our grand way and so are spiralling into chaos.
Perhaps the solution lies in asking this difficult questions but supposing there are answers.
What is life?
" As far as we know, we're the only species on earth that asks this question, and dares to hope that we might find an answer. It seems that we are born to wonder, not merely to exist. To wonder is to reflect, to turn over in our minds what is known, to expand our imaginative capacity and to ask what greater truth and beauty might lie behind our world or beyond our settled horizons of vision....and whether they point to something deeper."
Alister McGrath.
As always, left- striving academia, causes distrust in the spaces beyond the walls of the intellectual castle, formal philosophy is still one of the most avoided academic topics but is gleefully and argued in other forms in the lives of everyday people.
These talks commence with children who need guidance in handling the difficult and puzzling world they enter. The big picture is taught which helps to make sense to others about the fundamentals of the life- journey.
Happily, parents grasped the aspects of philosophy without needing degrees.
Aristotle earned his crown,many centuries ago and most men and women carry the tradition of reasoning and dialogue into the public and private spaces today.
The quest for meaning:
If you,believe as i do, you are probably aware of the 3 basic assumptions that I've stated in a previous essay entitled: Life: The Big 3.
You could be aware of the basic belief of mine (and of many others ) about the three main assumptions that under -gird reality?
I conclude that the primary element in the life -journey is "meaning",no matter how difficult or how triumphant the events of your life might be. Without meaning our lives drift,achieving haphazard aims ( with the tide of forces ) that may not be in our own best interests.
Overarching the entire whole life- journey is the element of "choice." One cannot not choose. Why? Making a choice or not making a choice is still choosing. One's choice may sometimes be not to choose.
The power of " Purpose" is another supreme driver. The universal quest of purpose which can help refine meaning and solve the issue of drifting as mentioned earlier.
" Where professional philosophers have virtually given up about the subject of meaning, psychologists have moved on this fundamental human concern, helping us to understand meaning of its core facets, and the difference it makes, to life. We apparently feel that we .can make a difference to things, and to take control of our lives: but we need a sense of identity and purpose of When and Where and Who."
"When we.have traumatic experiences in life and when we experience our awareness with mortality .We, basically, as human beings actively seek to invest meanıng and seek for systems of meaning which embrace an understanding of the world,our personal significance and our capacity to transcend our limits and locations as we sense we are a part of something bigger and greater."
Alister McGrath. ( edited)
A theme in this essay is to demonstrate the importance of meaning for human flourishing.
Of necessity, life is remarkably nuanced and complex. After all we are unique ( each and everyone) and deliciously contradictory and blatantly self - absorbed.
Although I've spoken briefly about the overarching purpose and meaning of our life-journey,we intuitively know that facts and reasoning are not enough.
Thus God revealed himself,according to His Book and science discovered a glimpse of God behind the universe.
Facts are the ' raw stuff' of life: data not yet interpreted and wholly refined.
Science is man's invention owned by God. Awesome and dazzling,it is itself is a prima fascie case for the need of wisdom. Though feelings are trumped by facts, facts alone are alone.
Man's search for meaning is sometimes obscured by facts. Even though facts matter.
For example,we are aware that there are two sexes or genders alone. Somehow many individuals are seeking meaning beyond the aegis of biological sex.
Some have endeavored to correct this horrific state of affairs in a teen's mind by altering their biological sex with life- changing surgeries and cross - sex chemicals!
Discovering that "affirming' this 'psychological mindset' invites,even after decades,no true solution. Some groups even seek to prevent de- transitioning of a trans-sexual or preventing a return to their original biological sex. Interference should not occur.
Facts and reasoning can create a loveless world without citizens finding their true souls,joy and fulfillment.
Perhaps this environment establishing a weary world of facts was released from its prison by that genius Ludwig Wittgenstein penning this statement:
"to believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life."
To believe in the God means to see that the facts of the matter are necessary but not the only matter.
by Digital Anvil.
