We're living in a terrible time spiritually. It's an age that's been called "a post-truth age" which, according to the dictionary, means, “a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts.”
We see this when we hear people talking about "my truth" and "your truth." This reflects the idea that there is no objective standard by which we can know the truth. Those words the warp and woof of a “post-truth” society as it replaces an “objective truth” with many "truths" based on individual emotions and feelings.
I saw this in full view at the University of Missouri where there was this well-known speaker was to give a lecture open to the public, students, faculty, and anyone. This speaker was to present a lecture on controversial topics like the objective fact that there are two sexes, male and female, subjects like that.
As he started speaking, a group of students stood up and started chanting, "Shame! Shame! Shame!" over and over and over again. They were so loud that the speaker couldn't be heard with the result that he couldn't continue. I would add that some of them were making obscene gestures at him as they chanted. The students were wild-eyed and in the grip of their frenzied emotions run amuck.
As an aside, their actions were not courageous. They knew absolutely nothing was going to happen to them. They weren't going to be expelled or sanctioned in any way for the disruption of an approved meeting on state property. There would be no consequences. The adults on the faculty who were there would not criticize them; they would approve their actions, thinking that they, as their teachers, had taught them well. They were letting the inmates run the asylum.
This is what a post-truth age is like: Instead of emotions being formed by objective truth, those emotions become “my truth.”This was what was on full, raging display at the University Missouri. The hecklers had worked themselves into an emotional display on steroids. Thus, the hecklers' veto carried the day. The frenzied herd can get so frenetic that the campus police have to escort the speaker out of the room for his or her own protection of life and limb. It's happening repeatedly on campuses.
There can be no rational conversation with chanters bellowing the same word or words over and over again. The students had become a mindless herd which can could manipulated through feelings. In actuality what was happening in Missouri was that, by the frenzied chanting of "their truth," they couldn't be confronted by "the truth." It was impossible.
That's what these "safe spaces" on college campuses are all about: they teach the immature to avoid facts that would promote rational thought and conversations leading to objective truth. Those who hold to "my truth"--they are people with whom you cannot reason. You cannot meaningfully communicate with chanters of slogans. Society begins to break down.
It's like a cancer, it brings its corrupting influence on our politics; it's dividing families as incompatible “my truth” worlds come up against each other.
The post-truth age isn't new, read the book of Judges, chapters 1-21 and watch a nation descends into chaos as each person has his own "my truth."
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