We are living through the Age of Unreason

There are times when I wonder – is it just me? Or maybe it’s that the world has lost its way, lost its connection to the essential truths that act as a kind of anchor protecting us from a sea of nonsense.

Almost everywhere we go now, we’re harassed by a sea of fools who peddle gibberish as if it’s Holy Writ, who try to convince us of some crazed blather that someone somewhere they encountered on a bus or a plane convinced them is the answer to the Big Questions of Life – and swallowing it hook, line and sinker they feel dutybound to inflict it on unsuspecting strangers.

There’s the conspiracy theorist who believes that behind every door there are people conspiring to establish some version of a New World Order, a secretly emerging totalitarian world government that will divest humanity of our rights and privileges.

Then there are the vaccine-deniers, pessimists who imagine that every vaccine is an assault on the general public and should be resisted on the obscure basis that a friend of theirs in America knew someone whose neighbour dropped dead after returning from the doctor’s surgery. Statistics on vaccines, they imagine, have been manipulated by the vaccine industry which is only interested in protecting its huge profits. Some have even stopped giving their children the measles vaccine even though they were first in the queue themselves for the Covid vaccine when hundreds were dying. 

And in a Trumpian huff of outrage and bloody-mindedness, the Donald who seems to know very little about anything has placed a vaccine-denier in charge of the health service - and the irony simply escapes him. (At a press conference during Covid, Trump explained to a doctor his own antidote to the coronavirus virus – injecting disinfectant would neutralise the infection. Afterwards, federal laboratories had to issue a statement denying that they were considering disinfectant as an option.) 

And then there are the climate sceptics: those who reject the proposition that climate change is caused by human activity. Farmers who scoff at statistics about the effect of flatulating cows; and those, usually with some axe to grind, who see it as an excuse for busybodies to annoy people who are just trying to make a living for themselves.

And then there are science deniers, innocent souls usually who imagine that there are logical explanations that question the insights that science has revealed and who prefer to take a potion that their Granny swore by as she never had to attend a doctor all her long life.

And then there are astrology enthusiasts; those who believe that the time of our births is related to the formation of our personality and behaviour, exemplified by someone being born on a fair day was an indication of a future life spent mainly in a mart; and those who are convinced that ‘Celtic Tree Astrology’ is developed from the profound knowledge Druids had of earth cycles and trees.

And then there are lovers of homeopathy who believe that natural substances, prepared in a particular way and used in specific amounts, actually restore health – effectively the belief that the body can cure itself.

And then there are believers in personal truth: those who accept that while there are ‘universal truths’ that are consistent across different contexts and cultures, there are also ‘personal truths’ that resonate with individual experiences and emotions. (This can be roughly translated as ‘Whatever you’re having yourself, Jimmy’). Or, for example, a family truth - that a grandfather smoked 60 cigarettes a day, lived into his nineties and never even had a cough and, even more convincingly, believed that a pint of Guinness or a snifter of brandy every night...

And finally there are the ‘fake news addicts’: those who are more likely to fall prey to ‘fake news’, that is, to false or misleading information (also described as ‘disinformation’ or ‘propaganda’ that claims to be true). Those susceptible to believing that ‘fake news’ is not fake are those who inhabit the strange world of social media, those who are constitutionally lazy and conmen, some of whom, are purveyors of fake news (or, let’s face it, lies) and yet people actually believe them even though they know their reputations as pathological liars.

Modern examples of ‘fake news’ are the ‘breaking news reports on YouTube where Pope Leo can be seen – through the use of what we call Artificial Intelligence – in his own image and with his own voice preaching sermons that are the opposite of what he actually says in actual sermons.

Is it any wonder that the world seems upside down? That we now inhabit not an Age of Reason which so many seem to have so casually jettisoned but a new Age of Unreason; not an Age of Enlightenment which we have left behind us but an Age of Gibberish where chancers uttering nonsense pose as prophets; where there is no clear ground between what is right and wrong, between the moral and the immoral, between honesty and truth.

Thus Donald Trump, a man apparently bereft of intelligence, decency and anything that might present as a moral compass, has become the leader of the Free World. His appointments to high office includes a Health Secretary, Robert Kennedy, who is anti-vaccine and his followers include Republican congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene who seems to believe that the Democratic Party controls America’s weather and is why Hurricane Helene caused such devastation to Republican-voting states. And up to recently his cabinet included Elon Musk who bought an appointment as a key ‘influencer’ for an estimated $288 million and is currently disconsolate because his investment has crashed.

In our new Age of Unreason, anything is not just possible but acceptable. We have reached a new low and we’re still sinking. Or is it just me?