I define Obvious on this domain as something that is obvious to me but that I think should be obvious to everybody. It’s obvious to me that there is too much hate in this country and not enough truth.
Something has broken in our country, our national dialogue, and maybe our species. Everything is being filtered and defined by the sides we pick, the tribes we join, and the bubbles we live in. Perhaps it has always been this way, but it seems to be getting worse. I know both sides of the political spectrum use this line (and stole it from Joe Jackson), but this is not about right and left—it’s about right and wrong. It’s about the rise of relative vs. absolute truths—truths we choose to believe in, even when they defy logic, reason, and the actual truth. When we all start believing our own truths instead of finding common truths, we may as well weapon up and start the civil war already.
I’m sure more than 90% of any readers on this domain (unless you’re a search bot) live in a country whose Declaration of Independence speaks of truths that are self-evident, so we might start by exploring the question of whether there are still self-evident truths here in 2023. I believe there are self-evident truths, but I also believe that self-evident truths are becoming more endangered on a daily basis.
Let’s start with that list in Mr. Jefferson’s declaration:
- “All men are created equal.” I believe there are a whole lotta legit responses at this point:
- They weren’t in your time, Mr. Jefferson.
- You could have said people, Mr. Jefferson, but as women weren’t considered equals in your time, that’s now two mistakes you’ve made.
- You’re not alone, Mr. Jefferson: we still don’t treat each other like we’re equal.
- Yeah, we’re still a work in progress as a nation, but name another nation that can claim as much after almost 250 years. Our flaws are no reason to cancel Jefferson, Lincoln, or much of anyone else, except maybe confederate generals or Coldplay.
- “They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” This works for me if we agree that all definitions of “Creator” are created equal, including but not limited to:
- the big G word
- the little g word
- the universe
- nothingness
- hologram operator
- any other definition that suits you
- Also, how you define “Creator” may guide your sense of fairness or morality, but it doesn’t mean your sense of fairness or morality is better or worse than everyone else’s. I.e., you don’t get to use your faith to tell others how to live their lives. We police each other through laws in this country, not religion.
- “Among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
- Regardless of who we are—as people—we all can lay claim to any of these three basic rights.
- What this doesn’t say is that we should all have equal access to lay claim to these basic rights. If we have unequal access, we are kind of going against the Creator’s original endowment.
- We should recognize that each of us, individually and in huge groups, may look at the pursuit of happiness differently than other individuals and huge groups do.
- People can tell each other peaceably that they disagree about their individual or group pursuits, but as long as their pursuits aren’t hurting anyone, they shouldn’t infringe on other people’s pursuits.
You can see now how even these three bullet points that launched a nation have their complexities and challenges. But we can discuss these points without killing each other…supposedly.
On another front in the endangered species watch for self-evident truths…
You can probably see that institutions of higher learning have waged a bit of a war on truths over the decades. I studied literary theory in the 1980s, at a time when post-structuralism and deconstruction reigned with the insistence that self-evident truths can always be flipped on their heads to mean something else, even the opposite of the author’s intentions, in order to tease out or undermine an argument. I believe this trend is equal parts intellectual curiosity, sophistry, and mental masturbation.
Always beware of someone who tells you the truth is the opposite of the truth. A leading light of deconstruction was Paul de Man, who was later found to have written Nazi propaganda in Belgium during the war. I’m sure he had strong motives for pushing an ideology based on the relativism of truth.
I also believe this trend has trickled down to our broader society with the ability of anyone to express “their truth” online at the expense of others’ truths and self-evident truths in general. When you start saying “my truth” a lot, or when you spread truths that defy all evidence, you lead yourself and others down a path where we weigh our truths against each other instead of finding common ground on shared truths. It’s “your truth” vs. “my truth,” which invariably leads to “your struggle” vs. “my struggle.” That last phrase was the title of the OG Nazi propaganda.
The problem is that politicians find these issues and work tirelessly to position themselves as the representative of half the people at the expense of the other half. If each side has its own truth, then it would seem to me that politicians who do not wish to unite us will always speak in half-truths, not common truths.
I know I’m not alone in being tired of this crap, because when people position themselves to be representative of some truths but not others, they invariably blame whole swaths of society—the other half with their own truths—and for political gain they point their fingers at minorities, the disenfranchised, and those who are more often victims of violent crimes, all the more because politicians point their fingers at these other Americans, these other human beings. So it becomes a self-sustaining cycle of negativity, divisiveness, and hate.
All of us need to call out this type of divisiveness and hate, or we’re just letting it happen.
Someone once described “obvious” as common sense. I think those two words apply to self-evident truths as well. It’s self-evident to me that there are people out there who hate the other half of America, and our politicians are aiding in this nonsense. If you want someone to fight this bullshit, I’m here, and I welcome you to join me.
