We’re in danger of entering a new Dark Age
4th April 2009
There are many factors contributing to this trend. Diminishing social mobility, the cult of celebrity, the decline in serious learning, the increasing disregard for empiricism and social attitudes verging on “valuephobia” all threaten to cast a shadow on the enlightened western Liberalism which has taken us so far.
Distracted by celebrity, softened up by the education system, we have also succumbed to what you could call intellectual relativism. We have reached a state of affairs whereby people believe that the validity of their views is determined by the strength with which they hold them, not by any reference to empiricism. And so we hear phrases such as “Well that is your truth – it’s not mine”, or, increasingly, the word which is doing untold damage to the concept of objectivity: “whatever”. When confronted with evidence which undermines the current fashion or your own prejudices, simply lift your hand and say “whatever”, and you can avoid all the discomforts of the value of truth, or objectivity, or of being plain wrong.