In the course of an email conversation about all that's happened in our nation in recent months a friend mentioned to me that he's in a quandary as to how we "can ever bring unity to our exceedingly divided land." I wish that by way of response I could've offered a more hopeful way forward, but I fear that the fissures which separate us are going to be with us for a long time. They took generations to develop and will not be reversed by the election of any one man or party.
The way I see it the left has for over a century sought to undermine every institution, cherished belief and custom they could - the family, education, religion, the free market system, our history and the first two amendments in the Bill of Rights to name just a few of the most important. The result has been a rent in our social fabric that appears irreparable.
In the past, our political and social disagreements were conducted within the bounds of a shared set of assumptions, a shared worldview, but for millions of Americans today that common ground no longer exists. Rather than standing on opposite sides of a room across which we could walk toward each other, we find ourselves standing on disparate islands separated by a sea of philosophical differences so deep as to be impassable.
When we try to communicate at all we're like radio operators transmitting and receiving on different frequencies and just talking past each other. Too often our only communication is one side simply shouting slogans and insults at the other. Not sharing any common philosophical ground we find ourselves speaking different socio-cultural languages and have often given up even trying to understand the other.
What I mean by shared philosophical ground can be illustrated by an example that I've discussed many times on Viewpoint. In order to be able to communicate with others at any but a superficial level we have to have a shared view of truth, but we don't. Some of us believe that there is objective truth which we can discover through the use of our reason. Others believe there's no such thing. Truth for them is simply whatever one feels strongly about, it's constructed by the individual or the group to which the individual belongs based on subjective desires, experiences and prejudices.
One way this plays out in our culture can be seen in the transgender phenomenon. Some people believe that an individual's biological sex is an objective determinant of their gender whereas others hold that the individual's gender is whatever they strongly feel themselves to be. For the former group, there's an objective truth about gender fixed in their biology and independent of the psychological inclinations the individual may possess. For the latter group one's gender is subjectively determined. It could be said that for them their psychology trumps their biology.
Differences in one's view of truth actually derive from an even more foundational belief, a belief from which all other worldview conflicts derive. This is the belief about God. Those who believe that truth is objective generally hold to a theistic worldview. They believe that truth exists independently of what we feel or perceive because a transcendent God has established it.
Those who reject the notion of objective truth generally hold to a naturalistic worldview. There is no God, they maintain, therefore there's no telos for mankind, no essence, no fixed human nature, no purpose, no meaning, no free will, no such thing as human dignity or an objective standard of right and wrong. Man is whatever he or his environment make him to be.
Everything ultimately rests, then, on the question of the existence and nature of God. It's the most important, most basic question in life. If there is no God then there's no objective moral truth, there can be no agreement on what justice is or upon what makes any act right or wrong to do, and if there's no objective standard of truth, then every disagreement can only be settled by means of a power struggle, each group striving to impose their will on others through the exercise of raw judicial or political coercion.
The gulf between the two worldviews, between theism and naturalism and the ramifications and implications of each, is as wide as an ocean, and that, in my opinion, is why coming together won't happen any time soon.