I have been in the trenches of fighting against assisted suicide, health care rationing, radical animal rights, anti-human environmentalism, etc. ad nauseam, for more than 20 years.
About five years ago it hit me like a punch: We can no longer debate these issues. Why? True debate requires a common frame of reference. But we have none.
Not only do we no longer agree on ends, but differ markedly–almost diametrically–on values and basic morality. How can one “debate” in such a milieu?
A study published in the American Political Science Review validates my anecdotal observations. According to a Michigan State political scientist, the USA is in a “culture war” because we have become so morally heterogeneous. From,
“Is There a Culture War?” by William G. Jacoby:
The empirical results create a picture of extreme heterogeneity that contradicts any notion of widespread agreement on a set of fundamental principles. The situation does not merely represent differences of degree; instead, the variability in the value rankings is great enough to represent differences in kind. There are widely-distributed, almost diametrically opposing views about which values are important and which are not.
It does not seem unreasonable to characterize such sharp differences in feelings about fundamental values as the existence of a culture war.
That explains why I often feel as if I am speaking Swahili to an English speaking country.
So, these days, I tend not to “debate,” but but try to hold up an honest mirror on what I see happening around us in the hope that the reflection causes enough people to pause before we disappear into the abyss.
Of course, my abyss is someone else’s Shangri La.