- Washington Post
Joycelyn Jackson was already sitting in church when she found herself needing God most. She hadn’t yet learned that her little brother Montrell Jackson was among the three officer killed in Baton Rouge when her pastor asked the congregation to send prayers to her family.
“I didn’t want to break down in church but it was just something I couldn’t hold,” Jackson, 49, of Lake Charles, Louisiana, said. “He was a wonderful person. A wonderful person.”
[Read remainder of article here]
In a pluralistic society (in a moral relativistic sense) where no one is allowed to be wrong there is no special consideration for any one particular group. All ideologies are therefore considered valid. All ideologies are considered true. They’re all viewed as true, they all demand equal footing, equal force and equal authority. This cannot be, logic prevents this. It violates the Law of Non-contradiction. Someone has to be wrong, but no one will own it. So our entire society proceeds along propped up, supported if you will by precarious lie destined to logical failure. It is an untenable idea doomed to failure.
This woman’s observation therefore becomes absolutely true in a reverse sense. Pluralism in the end doesn’t work. Everyone’s individual opinions are only of importance to them, they believe themselves to be correct (which many are not) and other people’s opinions are not ‘true’ or at least not important. We cannot meet in-between and function in a communal manner. We have no grounds for viable shared social behavior. This of course is then further exacerbated by the dissonance caused by things like IPhones, IPads and other technological distractions.
We become so myopic, isolated, self-serving, coddled and entitled we become expectant of people bending to us and when they do not we become intolerant. We become selfish children. Therefore no one’s life matters except their own. It becomes every man for himself. We all do what is right in our own eyes. It gets to the point where no one’s life matters because pluralism demands equality when not most are unable/unwilling to treat others equally.
Diversity is a good thing in a communal setting but it is also a cause for reflection on the social makeup of our country. Contrary to what some seem to think, diversity is not just a source of enriching and broadening of our horizons, but is also a big source of conflict in societies down through history. The tensions that come out of a pluralist society aren’t just tensions within the framework of that society (racial or class struggles) but tensions with the hearts of the people of that society. It’s fine for socially separate groups to have their own ideas about every topic, but in order to have a unified social system, there must be something (or things) that bind groups together:
The rule of law, shared cultural values, shared religious practices, or simply a shared commitment to engage with the other despite differences. Without some shared basis, things fall apart, and there is no center to hold groups together. Anarchy and conflict are unleashed upon the world. This is now the world we live in. A societal Frankenstein created and characterized primarily by division, money grubbing media corporations and power hungry politicians tossing about incendiary rhetoric.
It takes shared values and morals (like a church, like a biker, like a weightlifter, etc). Problem is this…we live in an age where there are few values/morality and little encouragement to desire any. Without shared values/morality upon which to build ideological, religious, political or economic systems, the masses’ force/power/authority is unregulated and the exchange of goods (both tangible and intangible) is not possible. People end up killing each other, fighting each other and starve for lack of food. This therefore sets the stage for the arrival of Nietzsche’s "Ubermensch". The one who can unify the rebellious and jaded rabble.
This is the most pressing issue of our times if only because of the terror, uncertainty and disorder it causes in a society. The larger danger lies in the one who will seek to seize power in this type of environment. History has been damning when it comes to those who would step into this vacuum and onto the world stage in these situations. They have been dictators, tyrants and generally all-around megalomaniacal freaks. When we have a nation like we do today with such poor grasp of history and short memories...I fear for the future of my children.
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