RE: Delerium + Merlot = Quill's Delerious Delights
Don't you think there is enough cacophony? Like, we need more shouting! Please, lend your voices to the useless chorus of angry, howling, glass-shattering clamorous intonations of self-flattering flatulence spilling over the lips of the coffee cup of the multimedia pea soup masquerading as our shared life together.
In a word, no.
I'm happy to "Live ... and Let Live" ... let everyone choose their own path.
The problems arise when one group or another tries to force their beliefs upon others. And, ideologues trying to pass laws that enshrine their ideology, does precisely that. Governments ... possess the power to compel.
Yes, we need laws ... but the lesson of history is that laws can quickly become immoral instruments of coercion. And so, during the Enlightenment, we decided that we would only pass laws based upon empiricism. We would subject our beliefs to the rigors of scientific investigation. We'd test and measure and observe with our eyes. And then, we'd publish our findings and conclusions. Such conclusions would then be subjected to withering peer review. If such conclusion survived the crucible of confirmation, then, and only then, would we consider using it as the basis for drafting laws that would govern the Affairs of Man.
All this goes out the window once ideology, of any kind, is introduced.
The ideologues take over because they are the most vocal ... and because the Silent Majority remains true to their moniker, Silent.
It's fine to quote the Bible, but the Bible won't pay all those women's legal bills, will it? They are now fighting not just a civil lawsuit, but the government itself, that, because of it's power of taxation, has a limitless budget. Their lives are about to be destroyed.
It's fine to wax and wane about peace and love, but I remind you that even Heaven had angels who carried swords.
Quill
Yes, but I don't see this silliness as any different than the silliness that has been perpetrated against common sense and good reason since there have been courts. I'm sure Hammurabi had his own spate of litigious somnambulism. "Okay, Uruk, so Parshak stomped your pet squirrel and killed it because he was helping you move your stone sofa from the living room to your new enhanced man cave. He should have been more careful. I agree. But a squirrel's accidental death is hardly murder. Move along!"
Everyone is an ideologue. Our politics is consumed by it. In a way, it's the Enlightenment that is at fault. It gave us an unlimited spate of freedoms - tos and froms - that often get cited even when they're not relevant. All you have to do is utter a fact and it proves your intelligence.
There's an old lady in my church who frequently makes ridiculous assertions. Whenever I ask, as I am often impelled to do, "What is that based on?" the only response I've ever received, without hyperbole, is "I don't know." It seems this lady--eighty+ years old, a lifelong denominational adherent, secretary to the denomination's missions board, and wife of an elder in multiple churches--believes everyone else should just take her word for it that something is right because she says it is. No evidence necessary. And she doesn't even flinch at the idea that she could possibly be wrong or that her assertions may be 30 years out of date. She doesn't need to know what they're based on. They're right by virtue of being hers.
And yet, like you, she will rail endlessly over all the things wrong with gay marriage, abortion, liberal theology, Charismatics, or whatever pops into her head never thinking that she has her own dark hole of soul.
Welcome to the 21st century. Have a Kit Kat bar.
@blockurator,
Great comment.
The Old Lady in your church is the dictionary definition of an ideologue. However, she does not possess the power to compel. Governments do, and so when laws are created that give governments the authority to begin compelling ideological beliefs and behaviors, the stakes change. Dramatically.
While we have erected a wall separating Church (God-based) and State, we have not erected a wall separating Secular Religion and State.
Postmodernism is a Secular Religion. Belief in it requires the same faith that is required of traditional religions ... which is hugely ironic as so many postmodernists are vocal atheists who take every opportunity to ridicule religionists ... for believing in something that cannot be proven. This is classic "Projection" and is being played out on a cultural-scale.
I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be allowed to have opinions ... even bat-shit crazy ones. There are a raft of people here on Steemit that believe the Earth is flat. That's batshit crazy. To be honest, I'm simply too old to care anymore. But the moment you try to force me, or others, to believe and behave as if such nonsense were True, then you're going to hear Quill squeal like a pig.
And BTW, in a month's time, I'm going to be wishing you and everyone else, Merry Christmas ... not Joyous Post-Winter Solstice Seasonal Greetings. Everybody knows why there's a vacation and why everybody's buying presents. Wishing someone Merry Christmas is not an attempt to convert them or save their souls. It's a cultural tradition, derived from a religious one ... which itself is derived from an earlier one still. Santa Claus and flying reindeer do not figure prominently in the Bible. If you can't handle it, tough shit. The Majority rules and you, as the Minority, will just have to go cry in a corner.
Quill
I think you give postmodernism too much credit. It has about run its course. I think the next generation is going to change course. Probably not to Christianity. But its become an American tradition to rebel against your parents (for some reason). For the pokes older people take against millennials, I see the group as highly creative and entrepreneurial. That's a good thing. Yeah, there is a huge number of them who have bought into the socialist-Marxist paradigm, but what happened to Boomers when they got jobs? Their Woodstock pipe dreams went up in smoke and they traded their roach clips and leg warmers for SUVs and mutual funds. I think we'll see a certain number of couch-surfing millennials do the same. And the next generation, who knows? Maybe they'll become Randian fanatics and usher in a new wave of capitalist entrepreneurism.
Postmodernism is dying. Just like nihilism, absurdism, existentialism, and every other ism, because ... as a philosophy, it has nothing to latch onto. That's why you get so-called artists that make bird calls (and bad ones at that) into microphones for three minutes and take themselves seriously while doing it.
As for ideologues, I've learned that if you just do your thing and act like their talk doesn't mean anything (which it doesn't), they quit trying to talk to you. And their whitewash usually disappears like Cheech and Chong's extracurricular activities.