One of the main problems facing America and the West today is our loss of reality. Most of our leftist elites actually believe that a biological man who “identifies” as a woman actually is a woman. Despite the fact that every one of his cells has an XY male sex chromosome pair and despite the fact that he differs in over 6,500 ways from a woman. Likewise, our elites firmly believe that the government must recognize the “marriage” of two same-sex people. Despite the fact all major religions and almost all societies since the beginning of recorded history have recognized marriage as a union solely of two people of the opposite sex. Despite the fact that the nature of male and female anatomy clearly shows how the two sexes must come together in a union to continue the species. Indeed, the institution of marriage as an exclusive and lifelong relationship was created precisely because children can result from the union and their upbringing is of crucial concern for society.
Father Gerald Murray in his new book Calming the Storm takes note of this loss of reality. In the chapter entitled “Age of Confusion,” Murray writes:
“The essential problem we face in the Western world is the loss of reality. We have entered into a nihilistic view of the world in which nothing is what it is, where there is no such thing as ‘what something is.’ According to this view, something only becomes what it is when we determine it. It is called the ‘plasticity of reality.’ Everything is subject to man’s reshaping it.”
We have left reality because we have given up on metaphysical realism, the basis of Western Civilization. What is metaphysical realism? Murray writes that it is the belief that:
“God created the world and gave man natural intelligence and the ability to understand the world. The world is intelligible, and it exists apart from man’s mind…Aristotle [founder of metaphysical realism] taught that the material world that we see can be understood through observation and analysis, and that categories of being are inherently present in creation. So in discovering what things are, we can find out what their purpose is, i.e., why they exist. Aristotle taught that we can understand reality based on the study of how things function.”
In essence, metaphysical realism means that reality exists apart from our minds and that in order to understand anything we must understand a thing’s inherent end goal or purpose (or telos).
Why is metaphysical realism important? Because it leads to our acting according to the truth of reality. Murray states:
“For example, when we examine the human body and the way the human mind works, we see that we’re meant to act in certain ways and not in others and that, if we act in accordance with our nature, it will produce well-being.”
When did man in the West begin to move away from metaphysical realism? Murray writes:
“The Enlightenment largely rejected the God-centered understanding of creation and redemption and replaced it with a man-centered perspective in which human genius would no longer seek to know the truth of creation but would rather redefine reality.”
And what has this rejection led to?
“This arrogant usurpation of the Creator’s sole prerogative predictably led to skepticism and relativism. It led to the basic proposition that modern thinking in so many ways reflects, i.e., that the world is whatever I want it to be, and I can and will use force to make it so, because the only reason it isn’t the way I want it to be is because some evil opponents are stopping me and my friends from accomplishing it. And that’s basically what we have today in the ‘woke’ cancel-culture revolution.”
Murray writes that this rejection of objective reality can be best seen in today’s gender ideology craze:
“[T]he perfect example [of this] is gender ideology. The idea that I’m going to treat something in a certain way because that’s the way I think it should be. I’m going to determine that something is this way, and if you disagree with me, then you are a hateful person who has to be coerced or somehow constrained or even ‘cancelled. This is gender-ideology fascism that we’re going through today….”
He then notes that the leftist positions on abortion and same-sex marriage are also based on self-will rather than reality. He states:
“The same can be seen in the case of abortion. It’s not a baby because I don’t want it to be. The same is true for so-called same-sex ‘marriage.’ It’s marriage because I want it to be a marriage. No, it isn’t… It’s all a denial of reality and a failure to make proper use of the intellect to conform one’s thinking to what is true.”
It is this belief in self-will that is denying reality and tearing Western Civilization apart. When truth is not viewed as existing objectively, there are no limits to the insanity of man.
So there you have it. Because elites in the West, beginning in the Enlightenment and continuing today, reject metaphysical realism (or the belief that reality exists outside of our minds), we end up with unreal ideas based on self-will such as a man who thinks he is a woman is in fact woman, a baby is not a baby if I think so, and same-sex “marriage” exists if I want it to. Let’s hope that sanity will soon return to the West so we can return to living in accord with the truth.