To Resist Participating in the Great Lie

“Solzhenitsyn observed through incredible hardship and deep reflection, that, in his country, the lie had ‘become not just a moral category but a pillar of the state.'”

“But again and again there comes a time in history when a man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished by death…And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four.” – Albert Camus, The Plague

Being at the heart of our ability to make sense of and find meaning in the world, truth might well be thought of as the very thing we should be constantly seeking and, indeed, reaffirming with utmost ferocity. But alas, our culture has taken quite a contrary position.

The striking amount of conformity that has taken place in recent years—and especially over the last few months—to a rather revolutionary view of people and society (and I use the word revolutionary rather literally) should be nothing short of terrifying to anyone decently read in history and human nature, as well as those concerned with the stability and prosperity of civilization. One by one, institution after institution has succumbed to the demands of reason-decrying, illiberal, anti-enlightenment contemporary “social justice” activists, with the hallmark model for this ever-pervasive occurrence arguably being the affairs of Evergreen State College in 2017. When it was just confined to an esoteric, pseudo-discipline of those committed to identity studies on university campuses, no one raised an eyebrow. However, then the demands of these activists spread to sociology and literature, psychology and history, even to the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics, both in higher education and in K-12 education. The tide moved from the universities to the corporate world, in the form of new methods of Human Resource management and, now, into popular culture and mainstream consciousness.