Our culture has largely rejected the concept of Absolute Truth. Many, if not most, of the people we rub shoulders with adhere to a value system that excludes a belief in any divine standard of right and wrong. The Ten Commandments are considered outmoded at best, or else openly ridiculed as ancient naivete.
There is a value system that does prevail in our culture, however. Without a consensus of absolute standards, which characterized our society up to the 1960s, say, the system that took hold of the minds of people was largely Hedonistic. What mattered to people wasn’t so much right vs. wrong, or the question of doing one’s duty, as it was achieving personal pleasure and avoiding personal pain.
This shift away from God’s word, the Bible, as our life’s blueprint, produced incredibly rapid changes in our society. Changes in areas of sexual conduct, protection of the unborn, respect for parents and the elderly, traditional work ethics, politics and statesmanship, honesty and fair dealing, simple patriotic love, parental responsibility, etc.: all these areas morphed into mere shadows of what they were formerly. Hedonistic ME-ism insisted that each person had the liberty to self-determine each and every facet of life.
Life used to be considered a Gift from a benevolent, all-wise Creator, a gift that brought with it both privileges and responsibilities. Each person has a conscience, for example. A still, small voice that regulates our desires and our choices, telling us what is right and what is wrong. The Gift of Life is telling us to be responsible and do the right, not the wrong. But the hedonist has learned to ignore his or her conscience if it promises pleasure or avoids discomfort in the short term.
People with power over others have learned how to use this Hedonistic bent to manipulate us. Media owners and producers can subtly control us by the ads they broadcast, the narratives they spin, the stories they tell and those they ignore. They’ve learned that people no longer engage in deep thinking but, instead, let their feelings of the moment determine their course. Sound bites and 3-second images are imprinted on our minds with no time to truly engage our brains before it’s on to the next surface impression. This technique can convince millions of people that a narrative is true when it’s not.
Instant technologies such as smart phones have intensified this problem, placing the power of endless images and data-bits in our hands, convincing us that we are informed enough about our world to be “experts” about what’s happening. We forget that true expert knowledge requires long, arduous thinking about a wide range of subject matter. True experts have learned to say “no” to gratification long and often enough to become aware of all the various viewpoints involved, and how they interact.
It’s unfortunate that manipulated populations are mostly unaware of being pawns in the hands of someone’s political grab for power, or the algorithm of a distant, wealthy tech wizard, or even some billionaire in another country who finances protests and riots in our own land; and that those who are aware of it are happy to be so used, or at least apathetic about it.
The only way to stop the ungodly fallout of this state of affairs, in my opinion, is Spiritual Renewal. In short, a penitential U-turn back to Absolute Truth, the wisdom and order given in God’s revealed Word. His is an eternal truth that not only governs the physical universe, but sees human life as the Gift it truly is, with all its privileges and responsibilities. Letting this eternal truth govern our desires and our choices can guide our culture back onto the path of deeper thought, truer devotion to Him, and taking our duty to each other in society more seriously.
MNA
1/29/26
