Halfway House

Moving from Reality to Irrationality with a small stop at Unreality

Perhaps it is just the kind of podcasts I listen to and articles I read, but an amazing number of ‘liberals mugged by reality’ seem to be whining about our society’s failure to stop at a halfway house, culturally speaking. On a fantastic number of issues, an amazing number of groups seem to be saying, “Why didn’t we stop?”

The idea is that a number of years ago, these groups kind of achieved their objective. Sure, there was still a bunch of work to do along the edges, but the primary battles were (as they saw it) done. They had won. They had arrived at a spot they liked.

But then, to their amazement and annoyance, the battle continued! Or, perhaps, the war. And the positions they had gained were being lost, not to their former enemies (who were still fighting a valiant rear guard action) but to their previous allies! It was not that they were making new gains, but that they were losing old ones!

Now, as one of the valiant enemies, I am tempted to find this rather funny. I am tempted to say ‘a plague on both your houses’. But, being the optimist that I am, I am hoping that we will actually be able to get some of our former and current enemies to realise that they were fighting on the wrong side all the time.

The way this works is that there is some underlying reality. What that reality is depends on the subject we are talking about. Perhaps it is a metaphysical reality, perhaps a biological reality, or perhaps a cultural reality.

Then, a group of people rise up and argue against that reality. They argue that going along with the traditional understanding of that reality is old-fashioned, mean, phobic, etc. They argue for some acceptance of an unreality, and, after a bit of a fight, the culture, in the main, goes along with the new unreality.

Then, having been unmoored from reality, parts of society start pushing for irrationality. They take the previous push and go ‘past’ it, but past it in such a way that the previous unreality is undermined and, eventually, risks being destroyed.

Then the supporters and fellow travellers of the previous unreality are confused and divided. Do they move on to support the new irrationality? Which is, after all, opposed to the previous traditional view of reality. Or do they attempt to hang on to the vision that they had of unreality?

Those that attempt to hang on then start complaining that the new movement is irrational and destroying their space. What they don’t tend to see is that they themselves set this snowball rolling.

Let’s look at a few of the areas where this has happened:

Sodomy

Reality:

The reality of the reproductive system is that there is only one. There isn’t a ‘male reproductive system’ and a ‘female’ reproductive system… There is a ‘human’ reproductive system, which includes male parts and female parts. And the goal of the reproductive system is to… follow me here… reproduce. The point of the penis, testicles, prostate, vagina, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, breast tissue… the goal of sexual attraction, arousal, ejaculation, monthly period, and breast engorgement… is to produce children.

In the past, most cultures put in place rules to make this work. Everyone understood both that children were the goal, and that the means needed to reflect that. They recognised that many of the issues of the reproductive system (such as sexual excitement) could be mis-focused. Thus while they understood that it wasn’t possible, or even desirable, for every sexual act to produce children; the point of a sexual culture must be to focus on that area.

Even rules against adultery were there, everyone understood, to (at the very least) keep the male who was in covenant with the female from believing that the children she produced weren’t his, as that would lessen his desire to care for them.

Unreality:

This dissolved into unreality in dozens of areas, but specifically in this area, we started accepting the idea of sexual activity between men as being in some way equivalent to the actual function of the reproductive system.

Irrationality:

We had no sooner celebrated the idea of ‘gay marriage’ when suddenly the transgender movement leapt out of the bushes to say that a boy who likes other boys is actually a girl. So we went from Sodomy is a sin, to Sodomy is to be celebrated, to Sodomy doesn’t exist. In the space of about ten minutes… or perhaps ten years.

Racism

Reality:

It is biologically evident that ‘race’ does not exist in the same sense that ‘species’ exist… what we call different races is a vast mixture of genetic traits shared by some, but by no means all, of a given ‘race’ and shared in great measure by people falling between the cracks. (Quick parenthetical. If you cross a horse with some other species you get a hinny, a mule, something with zebras which I forget. But these do not then go on to live normal lives and mix up the gene pool until you have something that is 1/16 donkey and 1/32 zebra and 29/32 horse or whatever. Let alone masses of them. These animals simply do not casually interbreed like humans do, and their interbreeding does not usually result in a fertile animal. Again, unlike humans.) However, it is just as clear that genetics has effects. Some of us sunburn more easily, others are prone to sickle cell or haemophilia, etc.

When people tend to live in the same place for a long time, they tend to cross-breed to the extent that they start to look like each other. And when people live in the same place, they tend to form a culture which they (in general) share.

This means that when you see a person that looks like X, you can, on average, best guess, expect X-like behaviours from them.

And if you are allowed to speak honestly, then you will make jokes about these behaviours and criticisms. And even praises!

Unreality:

Next came an epoch of ‘tolerance’. Or, perhaps, ‘niceness’. And the trick in that epoch was you were allowed to notice racial differences, and you were even allowed to laugh at them if it was a member of the race themselves that had made the joke, but you had to be ‘nice’. You couldn’t ‘victim shame’ and thus blame a given race for cultural traits that resulted in, well, results. You had to pretend that all cultures produced equal results.

Irrationality:

But that lasted a nano-second. Almost immediately, the rules changed, and you had to somehow believe there were no differences. I remember reading a book on teaching that, in one chapter, talked about how we weren’t allowed to believe that there were differences between the races, and in the very next chapter, talked about how to handle Asian students, whose parents often pressured them into doing reams of homework and stressing them out.

This led up to today, where Harvard literally acts against Asian students in an effort to prove that black students are equal.

And at the very least, it is illegal to be honest. If you found out tomorrow that fifty per cent of Pacific Islanders are colourblind… You better not publish it.

Feminism

Reality:

There are differences between men and women. Biological and psychological differences. And previous epochs not only recognised those differences and allowed for them in culture, but they celebrated them. Vive la difference, and all that. They recognised that men and women were different, and culture needed to arrange itself around those differences, primarily to support the breeding of and caring for children… a vital cultural imperative.

 Unreality:

Then along came feminism, and tried to hold simultaneously the ideas that men and women were ‘equal’ and that women needed special spaces and accommodations. Thus, you had the bizarre idea that colleges had to spend ‘equally’ on men's and women’s sports… though men's and women’s sports were profoundly unequal.

Irrationality:

Then along comes Will Thomas, who destroys feminism single-handedly. OK, not singlehandedly, but what he represented simultaneously highlighted the contradictions of feminism and destroyed the spaces they had carved out.

Rational feminists understand that if a male can enter a female space merely by declaring himself a female, then there are no female spaces. If they carved out for themselves that one-half of all members of a political committee must be female, then that committee can end up all male. Again.

And if a biological male can come in and win all of the awards on the female side of the curtain, then the illusion of equality is shattered.

And on the moral front of the ‘spaces’ idea, you have the bizarre situation where regular men cannot enter the women’s restroom, but a pervert can. At least if everyone were in the same space, one would have a degree of protection by the more patriarchal (read protective) males. 

Christianity

Reality:

The metaphysic (nature of the universe) and culture (how should we then live) of Christianity is the foundation of Western civilisation. There is a significant difference between the various kinds of Christianity that have affected various parts of Western Civ, with  Catholicism being the foundation of Spain, Italy, and much of France. Protestantism covering Northern Germany, the Netherlands, and Britain, etc.. But underlying all of Western Civ, from the US to New Zealand, is Christianity.

The result was… well… there were hundreds of results, far too many for an article like this. You have the protestant work ethic, a basic culture against corruption, a pro-natal patriarchy… the list goes on. And it produced strong, rich countries that reproduced themselves and their values across the world.

Unreality:

The second step in our journey, which took decades in some areas and happened seemingly overnight in others, was a drift away from actual belief. So while the society still honoured Christian values, Christian cultural values, it wished to divorce them from actual belief.

Irrationality:

The final step is to get rid of the underlying Christian culture upon which our society stands. Again, this involves hundreds of issues, too many to go into here. The issue of divorce would be one of the fundamental ones, however. Our culture started with the reality of the covenant doctrine of marriage, moved to ‘no-fault divorce’, and now has the incel movement and millions of out-of-wedlock births.

Economy

Reality:

Hardly anyone recognises this, but Adam Smith did not actually present a political theory. He presented an economic one. His theory, which was mostly common sense, said that if the government stayed out of the economy, the economy would flourish. Indeed, the more it stayed out, the more it would flourish.

Unreality:

But as Tocqueville pointed out, in a democracy (or anything close to it) the people will soon find out that they can vote themselves largesse from the public purse. Thus, the welfare state.

Irrationality:

Then the economies started shutting down, and I’m afraid even the disaffected liberals started blaming the solution for the problem. They blamed ‘capitalism’ while pointing at monopolies; they blamed ‘austerity’ and never noticed that taxes were never under the axe.

Conclusion

So… what’s my point? My point is that you cannot divorce yourself from reality and end up in a halfway house. You let go of the string, and you fall all the way down, eventually. Your society crashes and burns and your territory is taken over by the barbarians.

Or the barbarians in your own society rise up and rule the roost. It has been said, I forget by whom, that women can only rule because men let them. That men are the physically stronger sex and better at team play. That if they ever wanted to take over, it would be over overnight.

Each of the categories above, and dozens more, are rooted in reality. Reality TV shows aside, cultures can’t work when the ‘unreality’ quotient gets too high, and the ‘irrational’ quotient has an even lower threshold.

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Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!

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Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books include:

The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid

The Bobtails and the Cousins

The Bobtails go to France

and

No Ordinary School

Arthur also has a substack, and a website.

Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von