The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” I would add to that, “while making chains to bind himself more.”
With the social media glut of information from every diverse perception, facts have become indiscernible and logic has become the enemy of the masses. When someone on social media claims to have “done their research” this really means copious amounts of surfing to support an already decided upon conclusion.
Facts don’t matter. Logic is extinct. Decision-making is emotions driven.
Purchasing has often been preceded with fact finding. When purchasing vegetables, one tests the firmness and ripeness before choosing the one that is just right. On the path to buying an automobile consumer reports, statistics, and customer reviews are carefully scanned-fact informed logic drove decision-making. Today most purchases, even large tickets items, are impulse oriented and emotionally driven.
In November (2015) the Harvard Business Review published The New Science of Customer Emotions with the claim that if companies could connect with their customers emotionally, they would increase their profits exponentially. A major bank introduced a credit card for Millennials that was designed to inspire emotional connection and not only did use of the card increase 70%, new accounts rose by 40%. Don’t speak about the product, speak to the emotions of the person, that’s how you sale people.
This is now common rhetoric in every category of discussion and has become an ever-increasing trend since Bill Clinton started talking in a loud whisper while biting his lower lip and clinching his fist with an upturned thumb. “Who cares about the facts, what is it you feel in your heart?”
The idea that a knife is good if it cuts or a flower that doesn’t blossom is bad just doesn’t hold water anymore. What really matters is how you “feel” about the knife or the flower. And how you feel has been co-opted and weaponized by an illogical immoral society. If your belief (or the facts supporting your belief) don’t align with the feelings of the dominant culture, then you are, wrong, ignorant, irrelevant, or even worse, the enemy.
Feelings based morality (or emotivism) is often used to discard the moral values of the past and in contrast endorse certain behaviors preferred by those in power. Unlike logic, the reasoning of emotivism resists coherence and quickly falls apart when applied.
I believe the science ... except when it relates to gender identity.
I care about human life ... unless you are talking about abortion on demand.
Emotivism cannot establish itself unless it outlaws logic and intimidates the logical. The reason for this is because logic and emotivism as decision making tools are irreconcilable ideas and the conflict between the two is often volatile. As humans created in the image of God, we have all the faculties and tools for reason and logic, but as sinners we have a nature that will readily defy that logic to satisfy the desires of sin. Some of what we see in American politics is Paul’s internal conflict of Romans 7 being acted out on the national stage.
To prove my point allow me the example of one current enigma. Why is someone championed when they appropriate a different gender from their biology and birth, but scorned when they appropriate a different culture? Is it because sex has a higher value than ethnicity, or is it the other way around? And, if gender appropriation has nothing to do with sex, then I’m left with a loss for any explanation for this institutionalized contradiction.
The title of this article is obviously “tongue in cheek” but you can see my point. A civilization resistant to logic and committed to emotivism can only sustain itself but so long. Our continued existence is threatened by the irreconcilable nature of these opposing world views. The age of “we can agree to disagree” where Christians could live peacefully and be “in the world but not of it” is passing away. The dominant culture will no longer allow it.
Today, unless something is altered dramatically, societal unity will only be achieved by the church abandoning logic, surrendering biblical morality, and joining with the culture to fight for the eradication of both. Shockingly, this is happening in some places. Rather than live in the liberty from sin that is found in Christ and offering the same liberty to those still in bondage; some in Christianity have have bound themselves again and become chain makers making even more chains with which to be bound.
And Jesus answered and said to them, "See to it that no one misleads you. "For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will mislead many. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs. Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name. At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved." (Matt. 24:4-13)