A Discouraging Thought


I have been extremely puzzled or shocked or perplexed these last many years and perhaps decades by the loss of confirmation of my ideas about so many things by the rest of the world. Of course baldly stated in this way my feeling is exposed as silly. What could be more obvious than that people do not agree on things? But the disagreements have come at such a profound level that I was finally obliged to give up on the very idea of truth … or else go mad. (Of course giving up on the idea of truth could itself be a sign of madness.)
But just today I have thought of another way to articulate this phenomenon that has seemed so bizarre to me (however silly that may make me), and it is almost somber in its import. Clearly my sense that there is even such a thing as a consensus about certain fundamental or “obvious” truths comes from having grown up in some kind of ideational cocoon, such as a rather closed circle of friends and relatives and neighborhood. Also I grew up in an era when there seemed to be some kind of consensus even on the national news, such as emanated from Uncle Walter (Cronkite).
Today of course the political climate is utterly different. Polarization is the name of the game. And so what occurred to me today is that whereas once my arriving at some kind of revelation about something would (seem to) bring me into the prevailing consensus, now it makes me (or is seen to make me) an instant partisan! How discouraging! What was once a rite of solidarity has now become a rite of dissension.

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