Funny thing how science translates into popular belief. Take the multiverse, the holographic universe, the quantum world, or some other idea suggesting or inspiring simulacra. After such notions spread, it isn’t long until we get a Tron, The Matrix, or other popular interpretations, all pointing to a conclusion that reality isn’t quite real. Is that how you feel? (Well, maybe after a few mushrooms)
Did I say “feel”? Should I have said “think”? Call me old fashioned or materialistic, but I regard the notions that the world is “not real” as emotionally charged interpretations of experience that, like a cline in biology, break off from their origin at points of mutations, Plato morphing into Berkeley. As freedom of speech became a belief in the efficacy of every idea, Americans became increasingly more detached from the realities of past and present.
Want to know why we have a culture of victimhood?
Suffice it to say, “Whereas all reality isn’t necessarily what you make it, some reality is.” Counselors, psychologists, and politicians know this. And of course, among interconnected people the reality one makes isn’t necessarily just a personal matter because anyone can impose a manufactured reality on someone else. Thus, we live in a partially make-believe world, where young people are being taught that they can impose their realities, however actually unreal they are, on others. Gender comes to mind. Socialist and climate alarmist wishlists, also. Infinite expenditures without infinite wealth generators. And, also of course, condemnations of people pigeonholed by influencers. So, now Americans live in denial of realities that transcend personal preferences. “Transcendent realities”? Label the transcendent realities “real realities.” They are like car wrecks: Real regardless of attitude, ideology, or thinking. The crash itself might seem “unreal” and dreamlike as it occurs, but the blood and injury are as "real" as "real" gets.
I might be inclined to say, “So what? Where’s the harm?” After all, doesn’t the individual have a right to opinion? But Hitler’s blaming the Jews and Putin’s blaming the Ukrainians speaks to the ugly reality of imposing “unreal realities” on others. That ugliness extends to those who cry out terms like “cultural appropriation,” “racism,” and “whatever-phobia.” The pervasive “wokeness” of the past decade has crept into almost every corner of American and European life and has weakened the tie to “real realities,” such as the actual threat of a becoming “actual victims.” Those who simply ignore the niceties of a super polite society eventually become afraid to state the obvious, to joke, and to participate in productive activities.
It’s an irony, a great irony. The freedom to express one’s take on reality has, in fact, morphed into an idealism that quashes the freedom to express—anything save the sanctioned “realities.” When the “real world” becomes the imagined world, only fashionable ideology thrives. And when whatever is deemed fashionable is so deemed by a few in control or by a mob little different from magnetotactic bacteria moving from pole to pole under the influence of a changing magnetic field, then reality no longer becomes “reality,” and actual individuals no longer become real individuals.
Am I asking people to be insensitive? No—and yes. When organizations begin to think that pronouns are offensive, then they invite ridicule by those who recognize some car-crash reality like biology. When politicians and public employees are afraid to acknowledge that in order for a human male to have a baby where there are no ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, and exit passageway, that the “parts” necessary for the biological process of reproduction must be transplanted at the risk of biological rejection, then reality gets turned on its head and free thinking dies.
But this hypersensitivity to manufactured reality isn’t new. Changing how a society uses pronouns is ultimately an insignificant matter. A rose by any other name…Language changes with each generation, and drivers of its changes are mores, technology, rebellion, and political expediency. That one generation might describe differently from a previous generation is a frivolous matter; that it takes whatever is described as an irrefutable reality is not.
With regard to language, consider Neil Armstrong’s use of man and mankind, for example: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” As I recall, no one at the time complained that Armstrong was excluding women because everyone understood that “a” man meant Armstrong, and mankind meant “all humans.” He saw himself, as so many others at the time saw him, as a representative of our species in what was one of the most momentous achievements of our species—our combined species. Not long after that famous statement on the moon, however, America and then
Europe initiated an effort to ban such inclusive terms, ironically excluding by recognizing that the species had two forms, two slightly different body plans.
Writers eventually had to increase their verbiage because they could no longer write “Every citizen has his duty to the nation,” replacing it with either “Every citizen has their duty to the nation,” which is clearly a violation of grammatical number agreement, or with “Every citizen has his or her duty to the nation,” which replaces the former inclusive his. But adding a few letters to the length of a sentence means little unless one is on Twitter, so “he or she,” “him or her,” “his or hers” is the mode of the day. But writers became neurotic in the process. The editors and proofreader of a science text I wrote with two colleagues were very concerned that all references use both “he and she,” “his or hers,” or “him and her.” In some instances, writers used feminine pronouns to the exclusion of masculine pronouns lest they offend someone. I suppose the new reality had done what the old reality was never intended to do: Exclude.
But if changes in language are relatively frivolous, changes in society are not. Allowing biological males to declare their gender and enter women’s bathrooms has led to at least two sexual assaults in a Virginia school district and to at least two pregnancies in a women’s prison. Were those assaults and pregnancies real or imagined? Was the reality for the women involved somehow different from reality as experienced by a victim of a car crash?
That “what is real” has become a matter of opinion obfuscates car-crash reality. When “real” becomes “imagined,” actual humans are actually affected. And on a national level, many are put in jeopardy of being ostracized On a national level, many are put in jeopardy of being used to fulfill the wishes of those in power. That kind of “unreality” is what has led many in twenty-first century America to favor socialism and inordinate spending. In their reality, unlimited spending is the reality they believe is “real.”
But as in all manufactured realities, there’s a wall of real reality up ahead. Unfortunately, those who ignore “real” reality won’t realize it until after the car crashes.
Did I say “feel”? Should I have said “think”? Call me old fashioned or materialistic, but I regard the notions that the world is “not real” as emotionally charged interpretations of experience that, like a cline in biology, break off from their origin at points of mutations, Plato morphing into Berkeley. As freedom of speech became a belief in the efficacy of every idea, Americans became increasingly more detached from the realities of past and present.
Want to know why we have a culture of victimhood?
Suffice it to say, “Whereas all reality isn’t necessarily what you make it, some reality is.” Counselors, psychologists, and politicians know this. And of course, among interconnected people the reality one makes isn’t necessarily just a personal matter because anyone can impose a manufactured reality on someone else. Thus, we live in a partially make-believe world, where young people are being taught that they can impose their realities, however actually unreal they are, on others. Gender comes to mind. Socialist and climate alarmist wishlists, also. Infinite expenditures without infinite wealth generators. And, also of course, condemnations of people pigeonholed by influencers. So, now Americans live in denial of realities that transcend personal preferences. “Transcendent realities”? Label the transcendent realities “real realities.” They are like car wrecks: Real regardless of attitude, ideology, or thinking. The crash itself might seem “unreal” and dreamlike as it occurs, but the blood and injury are as "real" as "real" gets.
I might be inclined to say, “So what? Where’s the harm?” After all, doesn’t the individual have a right to opinion? But Hitler’s blaming the Jews and Putin’s blaming the Ukrainians speaks to the ugly reality of imposing “unreal realities” on others. That ugliness extends to those who cry out terms like “cultural appropriation,” “racism,” and “whatever-phobia.” The pervasive “wokeness” of the past decade has crept into almost every corner of American and European life and has weakened the tie to “real realities,” such as the actual threat of a becoming “actual victims.” Those who simply ignore the niceties of a super polite society eventually become afraid to state the obvious, to joke, and to participate in productive activities.
It’s an irony, a great irony. The freedom to express one’s take on reality has, in fact, morphed into an idealism that quashes the freedom to express—anything save the sanctioned “realities.” When the “real world” becomes the imagined world, only fashionable ideology thrives. And when whatever is deemed fashionable is so deemed by a few in control or by a mob little different from magnetotactic bacteria moving from pole to pole under the influence of a changing magnetic field, then reality no longer becomes “reality,” and actual individuals no longer become real individuals.
Am I asking people to be insensitive? No—and yes. When organizations begin to think that pronouns are offensive, then they invite ridicule by those who recognize some car-crash reality like biology. When politicians and public employees are afraid to acknowledge that in order for a human male to have a baby where there are no ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, and exit passageway, that the “parts” necessary for the biological process of reproduction must be transplanted at the risk of biological rejection, then reality gets turned on its head and free thinking dies.
But this hypersensitivity to manufactured reality isn’t new. Changing how a society uses pronouns is ultimately an insignificant matter. A rose by any other name…Language changes with each generation, and drivers of its changes are mores, technology, rebellion, and political expediency. That one generation might describe differently from a previous generation is a frivolous matter; that it takes whatever is described as an irrefutable reality is not.
With regard to language, consider Neil Armstrong’s use of man and mankind, for example: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” As I recall, no one at the time complained that Armstrong was excluding women because everyone understood that “a” man meant Armstrong, and mankind meant “all humans.” He saw himself, as so many others at the time saw him, as a representative of our species in what was one of the most momentous achievements of our species—our combined species. Not long after that famous statement on the moon, however, America and then
Europe initiated an effort to ban such inclusive terms, ironically excluding by recognizing that the species had two forms, two slightly different body plans.
Writers eventually had to increase their verbiage because they could no longer write “Every citizen has his duty to the nation,” replacing it with either “Every citizen has their duty to the nation,” which is clearly a violation of grammatical number agreement, or with “Every citizen has his or her duty to the nation,” which replaces the former inclusive his. But adding a few letters to the length of a sentence means little unless one is on Twitter, so “he or she,” “him or her,” “his or hers” is the mode of the day. But writers became neurotic in the process. The editors and proofreader of a science text I wrote with two colleagues were very concerned that all references use both “he and she,” “his or hers,” or “him and her.” In some instances, writers used feminine pronouns to the exclusion of masculine pronouns lest they offend someone. I suppose the new reality had done what the old reality was never intended to do: Exclude.
But if changes in language are relatively frivolous, changes in society are not. Allowing biological males to declare their gender and enter women’s bathrooms has led to at least two sexual assaults in a Virginia school district and to at least two pregnancies in a women’s prison. Were those assaults and pregnancies real or imagined? Was the reality for the women involved somehow different from reality as experienced by a victim of a car crash?
That “what is real” has become a matter of opinion obfuscates car-crash reality. When “real” becomes “imagined,” actual humans are actually affected. And on a national level, many are put in jeopardy of being ostracized On a national level, many are put in jeopardy of being used to fulfill the wishes of those in power. That kind of “unreality” is what has led many in twenty-first century America to favor socialism and inordinate spending. In their reality, unlimited spending is the reality they believe is “real.”
But as in all manufactured realities, there’s a wall of real reality up ahead. Unfortunately, those who ignore “real” reality won’t realize it until after the car crashes.
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