Here's a quick summary of where we are in the series.
There are two types of virtue - Hard and Soft. Conservatives love the Hard Right virtues. Liberals love the Soft Left Virtues. The guiding principle for the Right is Truth. The guiding principle for the Left is Love. All arguments between the two sides tend to boil down to what matters more: Love or Truth?
During the Modern Era, the world primarily pursued the Hard Virtues (represented in blue below).
After the ignorance of the Dark Ages, it was thought that pursuing knowledge of Truth would solve all problems and create Utopia. However, people soon began disagreeing about what the Truth actually was. You see, Truth is exclusive and divisive. As soon as you start making truth claims, you risk marginalising people who believe different things, and conflict soon follows. This is what happened. People started fighting over different truth claims, and this culminated in wars.
In the wake of two world wars and with the conflict in Vietnam, people had decided they'd had enough. No more fighting over divisive Truth claims. No more conflict. In 1967 then, a cultural revolution saw the world switch tracks. It backed away from the pursuit of Truth and started pursuing the the Soft Virtues instead. "Love Is All You Need" became the new mantra. So began the Postmodern Era.
However, discarding the Hard Virtues brings its own set of problems. Once you start diminishing the importance of Truth, you allow lies and absurdity to proliferate. And once you start discarding Righteousness, you allow immorality to proliferate. So this is what the Postmodern Age is becoming known for.
Here are just a few examples of how, in discarding the Truth, our generation now allows lies and absurdity to proliferate:
A man puts on a wig and a dress and insists he's female. In the Modern Era, when Truth was important, we would have rightfully told him he was mentally ill. Today however, where Love is all that matters, we instead affirm the delusion to spare his feelings. We deny the simple truth about the nature of maleness and femaleness and slip towards absurdity.
A 52-year-old man puts on a wig and a dress and insists he is a 6-year-old girl. Again, in the Modern Era, we would have deferred to the Truth and told him to seek psychiatric treatment. Today however, where Love is all that matters, we again affirm him in his delusion to spare his feelings. We deny the truth, not just of his sex, but of his age too. More absurdity.
A woman insists she is a cat. In the modern era, when Truth mattered, we would have told her to grow up. In this Liberal Era however, we know that speaking the Truth can hurt her feelings and must therefore be subdued. Instead, in the name of Love, we again go along with the delusion. Even more absurdity.
So that's what happens when the Truth is discarded. What about when Righteousness is discarded too? Immorality abounds. Therefore, gay marriage is now legalised. Abortion is legalised. Fornication and cohabitation is now a cultural norm. Drug use is less taboo. Drunkenness is celebrated. Sanctity is mocked. Things that would have been shocking to previous generations, we now celebrate. Again, this is simply because in the Postmodern Era, we have decided to turn our backs on the Hard Virtues and pursue only the Soft.
As our culture keeps journeying deeper Left and continues to lose regard for Truth and Righteousness still further, we can expect even greater absurdity and immorality to abound. In fact, there is no absurdity, and no depths of immorality, that our culture won't eventually go along with in the name of love and tolerance. Expressions of Truth are now increasingly called 'hate speech' because of its ability to divide, and Truth speakers are now increasingly branded 'bigots' and 'haters'. This stifling of Truth and Righteousness means that soon we will see types of immorality in our society that even we cannot presently imagine.
The light at the end of the tunnel for Christians is that the Bible prophesies how the end-time world immediately before Jesus' return will be a 'Left Pit' world. It prophesies it will be a time of moral breakdown and hatred for Truth. These are key markers prior to the Second Coming. Therefore, even as we mourn for our culture it's important to remember we are now closer to Jesus' return than ever before. When he returns, he will administer the Hard Virtues personally. Justice. Righteousness and Truth.
To catch up on this series, here's the YouTube playlist.