On Truth, Nature, And Ideology
Can we reconcile personal truth with "the" truth, and nature?
This article will be a little different than what you are accustomed to reading here. It won’t be full of facts, proof or statistics. Instead, it will be about ideas, and thinking about current prevailing ideologies, with a little philosophy mixed in.
Let’s start with something I hope we can all agree on: adults having sexual relations with children is wrong. Now I will add, that we have documented scenes in current school library books that romanticize adult and child romantic relationships, or glorify them, so maybe this statement won’t be met with quite the unanimity one would hope. But for the vast majority and sane amongst us, I think we can agree, adults sexually abusing, grooming, or attempting to have inappropriate relationships with a minor is wrong.
So for the next question. Why? Why is it wrong? We could go the easy route and say, “because it is against the law”. But 30 years ago, homosexual marriage was against the law, so using ever evolving laws as the sole reason is a weak answer. There’s obviously plenty of reasons why it is so abhorrent. Children aren’t mentally capable of handling that type of relationship. It is exploitative for an adult to take advantage of a child. It causes psychological and physical damage to a child. The list goes on. But, save for a very tiny minority of depraved people, why do we all know this to be so wrong? What is it about this act, that similar to murder, we just know it to be wrong without needing to know the statistics or needing to see proof to know that it is so awful? There’s something else there, that causes us all to recoil at the very thought. There’s something there that we all know is wrong. But what is, that? Yes, obviously it is harmful for children. But we are constantly told, “children are resilient”. There is just… something there, that we all know, we all feel, we all understand. That an adult, with all the power and trust they can hold over a child, using that to take advantage of a child, is horribly wrong.
So, what is that? It is somewhat of a truth. A truth we all just “know” is. We all just inherently know, or find this truth to be self evident. And we all know this to be a truth. You could say, we almost universally agree that this is true. If you agree to this point, great! We have now established a “universal truth”, that an adult entering into a sexual relationship with a child, is wrong. If I have lost you already, I fear you are very far gone. If you don’t agree with the premise to this point, the company you are keeping are the likes of the Jeffrey Epsteins of the world. The overwhelming exception that proves the rule.
So, we have now established that a universal truth exists. At this point, once you have accepted that a universal truth exists, you can much more easily accept that more universal truths are out there. Now, on to the next idea.
I decided I want to grow a crop this spring and summer. I have decided to buy a plot of land, full of woods. I am going to plant seeds on the limbs of all the trees and water them daily, and I will grow my crop in the tree limbs. My truth tells me this will work. What does nature say about my plan?
I have also decided I want to buy two cows and breed them and sell the beef. I will buy two cows, but I will not check the gender of the cows, because it is fluid anyway, so it doesn't matter. When the two cows made it onto my farm, their personalities were noticeably different, but I noticed they both had male-assigned organs. My truth tells me this should not matter, as gender is a social construct and it is fluid anyway. I think my new career as a farmer will be quite successful!
Conversely, my truths are misguided and I am doomed to a farm that yields no crop nor any calves. But if I am living my truth, I can’t be wrong, can I? Let’s explore that in another way.
There is a 40 year old man, who wears the latest fashions in clothes. He has never learned to drive and never obtained a driver's license. He goes around saying things like, “no cap, that song slaps”. He listens to The Weekend and Drake. This man self identifies as a 15 year old boy.
This seems harmless enough, right? He lives his life as a 15 year old. His truth is that he is 15. To each his own, right? He is just living his life as his most authentic self, right?
Who do 15 year old boys like to date?
As the 15 year old boy he identifies as, he is attracted to and wants to date a 14 year old girl. Should he be allowed to roam the high school halls, looking for a date? Remember, regardless of his truth, the truth is that he is a 40 year old man. Now we are approaching an impasse with our earlier established universal truth.
Earlier, we ran into issues with our farming adventures when the farmer's personal truth ran into an issue when it didn’t follow the laws of nature and the universal truths of nature. Now we have two issues: personal truths are being superseded by the truth, and natural laws, or the laws of nature, are superseding the beliefs of the human.
Regardless of your truth, my truth, his truth, her truth, our truth, etc, the truth will supersede those personal truths. Regardless of the beliefs of people, there are laws of nature that supersede those beliefs. No matter how much effort is put into changing those laws of nature, even regardless of what horrifying concoctions scientists eventually cook up, there are universal truths and laws of nature. No matter how many surgeries I were to have as a man, I will never give birth or breast feed. I may be able to “chest feed”, as in subject a baby to sucking on a dry nipple for no reason other than the pleasure of the man, (which goes back to our original concerns about inappropriate relationships between an adult and child), but I won’t be able to breast feed. Regardless of the beliefs of our farmer, nature will defeat him. His crops will not grow in the limbs of his trees. The two male cows will not reproduce. He will fail. This is a fact that will apply to any farmer who attempts to follow this farmer's ideas. You could say, it is universally applicable, or true, that any farmer would fail through those actions.
Okay, but age is different than gender. Correct. Gender, or sex, are way more important and non-fungible than age. 30 is the new 20. 40 is the new 30. A few tweaks of surgery to remove wrinkles or lift something, and I’m defying age. To defy gender or sex, it takes removal or addition of entire body parts, not tweaks. And in the end, the man identifying as a different age, can still reproduce. The person going through sex changes, mostly loses that ability. Who you are, what your body's makeup is, is a much larger part of who you are than your age. After all, every year your age changes, your sex does not. And I don’t know about you, but I quite often don’t act my age. Sometimes I act younger, sometimes I act older. But regardless of my age, and regardless of my interests, no matter how masculine or feminine, the sex and gender does not change without radical and drastic reconstruction.
If we accept that the more permanent state of your body's makeup in regards to actual body parts are fluid and at the mercy of how you feel, or “your truth”, then why can't we accept that a more fluid aspect of your life-your age-is also subject to “your truth”?.
Then we are back to the beginning. Do we believe that it is a truth, that it is unacceptable for a 40 year old man who is living his truth as a 15 year old boy, to date a 14 year old girl? If your answer is no, you are on the side of the likes of Jeffrey Epstein. If your answer is yes, we have to accept that our personal truths, no matter how we feel, are still subject to and superseded by the truth, and our personal beliefs are superseded by the laws of nature.