We have run several articles in MercatorNet over the past few weeks on same-sex marriage. After moderating hostile comments from critics of natural marriage, I have come to feel that we are speaking, so to speak, homophonically: the words of our articles make sense in English, but some people are reading them in a different language. There's almost no communication going on. I feel at a loss when commenters post comments like: "good and evil? Get over it." Or "what so special about being natural?" Or "the purpose of sex isn't about having babies anymore. What about IVF?" Or "you have your morality and I have mine." To my mind, these suggest not just two different views of the same problem, but two different universes of logic. It's important to deal directly with the issue of same-sex marriage - and a host of other issues which put human dignity at risk - but until we have reached agreement on fundamental issues of logic and meaning, we will be talking homophonically.We begin to debate/argue/communicate with another over some issue around politics/aesthetics/morality and soon discover that we are not only talking over each others heads but we may actually appear to be speaking another language and sometimes the communication is so awry that that language may as well be Klingon.
Our 'experts' have so confused the common mans worldview by relativising truth and trashing historical accuracy that we no longer appear to occupy the same universe as the 'elite'. Few people know what to believe so they say they believe in nothing but in reality they end up believing in every new fashionable fantasy that the philosophical carpetbaggers trot out for consumption. This is why the scaremongers and the ideologues can convince large swathes of ordinarily reasonable people to believe in their Utopian ideals.
We have been indoctrinated to believe that all worldviews carry the same weight, that there is no such thing as an absolute truth or any truth at all, and that everything is mere personal opinion. Actually many don't really believe this but we daren't say so because it is not politically correct to say that we believe in one perspective over another and the consequences of breaking that rule have become quite dramatically painful.
Those who break away from the herd suffer a loss of credibility, exclusion from the 'inner circle', mockery, persecution and often lose their opportunity to advance in career terms or often even to earn a living. Just like what happened to the persecuted in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR, but these things are happening to ordinary, everyday Australian's in a 'democratic' country where such things could never occur, right? Wrong!
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