![\"War](\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Transgender_War_Language_Life_01_875x430.jpg\")
by Theodore Dalrymple –
\nThere are several wider cultural trends discernible in the current agitation over transsexualism, or whatever name one wishes to give it. (\u201cWords are wise men\u2019s counters,\u201d said Hobbes, \u201cthey do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools.\u201d It is only fair to add that, with inflation, money could soon become the money of fools.) <\/p>\n
1. Accept No Limitations, Satisfy All Desires, Death Acceptable<\/strong> 2. Magical Thinking<\/strong> 3. Worship of Power<\/strong> 4. Transgender Fringe Lunatics in Charge<\/strong> 5. Spinelessness of Intelligentsia<\/strong> The most important question is, What next?\u2014for there will be a next, because transgressive reform is what gives meaning to life in the absence of any other meaning. My money is on incest, against which there is no rational argument these days, given the availability of birth control and abortion and the moral authority of mutual consent.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 by Theodore Dalrymple – There are several wider cultural trends discernible in the current agitation over transsexualism, or whatever name one wishes to give it. (\u201cWords are wise men\u2019s counters,\u201d said Hobbes, \u201cthey do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools.\u201d It is only fair to add that, with inflation, money … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[176,181,183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lgbt-activism","category-lgbt-tyranny","category-lgbtq-war-on-children"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe first cultural trend is an increasing reluctance to accept any limitation whatsoever to the satisfaction of one\u2019s desires that are placed by circumstances beyond one\u2019s control, that is to say an exaggerated or exacerbated Prometheanism: You can be anything you want, without limitation, and therefore you do not have to accept anything you were born with as ineluctable. In such a culture, death itself becomes unacceptable, an insult to our desired omnipotence; it is not any particular kind of death that we reject or fight against, often with success, but death itself.<\/p>\n
\nThe second trend is to magical thinking, despite the supposed rationality of our age and its vaunted defeat of superstition. We believe that we can change reality by means of mere verbal incantations. If we alter our language enough, reality itself will change. Some element of this belief can be found in the philosophy of Wittgenstein, though he was probably more in tune with the future trend than creator of it. Thus, if we go on saying long enough that women who take male hormones are men, and outlaw the opposite proposition, such women will become men.<\/p>\n
\nThe third trend is the worship of power. The object of deliberate language change is not to improve the state of the world, or even anyone\u2019s state of mind, but the exertion and consolidation of power for its own sake. One glaring example of this was Ataturk\u2019s language reform in Turkey: In a matter of a few years, an entire people was cut off from all of its past and history and had therefore no option but to cleave to the new dispensation, which even Erdogan has not been able to change in many respects, notwithstanding a little Busby Berkeley-style choreography and costume-dressing.<\/p>\n
\nThe fourth trend is centralization of the marginal; that is to say, a marginal phenomenon such as transsexualism comes to occupy the center of intellectual attention. To employ a different metaphor, the tail wags the dog.<\/p>\n
\nThe fifth trend is to the increasing spinelessness or cowardice of much of the intelligentsia, who in this case have proved themselves astonishingly easy to intimidate, a pack of intellectual Neville Chamberlains (but Chamberlain had more excuse, for he had lived through the horror of the First World War, which he did not want to repeat). Nothing has proved too absurd for this intelligentsia to swallow; indeed, the swallowing of absurdity is easier for the intelligentsia than others, for rationalization is their m\u00e9tier. There is no point in being an intellectual if you think only what everyone else thinks.<\/p>\n
\nExcerpts from: First Slowly, Then Quickly<\/a>. (Additional headers added by blog editors to improve readability.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"