Relativism on the Couch with Dr Pat (I)

In these pages I've often expressed bewilderment over what's gotten into some people - since roughly - the turn of the millennium. On really bad days you start to distrust even your own sanity, if you know what I mean.

Radicalized Muslims stand out as one such group, if only by the amount of decibels they produce over matters, other people don't even come out of their chairs over. Adherents to post-modern pseudo-philosophies like relativism (including its derivatives, such as multi-culturalism, deconstructionism, reductionism, nihilism, subjectivism, etc.) are another such group, taking dizzying heights in the distortion of reality and the denial of truth.

This group is mostly concentrated on the Leftist side of the political spectrum - more's the pity if they happen to be ruling your country, or even your continent! But it is primarily the Leftist Elite (a.k.a. The Intelligentsia) that actively promote these pernicious ideas out of a habitual wish to destroy the West. After communism and so many varieties of socialism - all of them failing, ask Hugo Chavez, who's going to give it just one more go), they thought up this creepy piece of fuzzy sophistry to undermine sane civilization, as tradition prescribes it: a curse disguised as humanity's Mister Nice Guy.

The lucky convergence with others on the scene that harbour the same wish, albeit with opposite ultimate objectives (theocracy) and coming from the opposite ideological angle (religion), gives way to particularly revolting displays of cooperation. But since the end justifies the means, principles as well as consistency need to be set aside sometimes, but this is done merrily and abundantly, all in a good cause.

Relativism and its derivatives meanwhile permeate almost the entire capillary system of society, in such a creepy way that by now it is the subconscious practice and thought process of just about anyone under a certain age, left, right and centre. The only way to rid ourselves of it, is to make it conscious and deal with it, if at all possible, nuclearly.

Last week - that is, after we stopped wondering if the law of nature perhaps allows spontaneous time-travel after all - we could feast our eyes on real live hippy grannies and granddads, complete with grizzly beards, placards, peace signs and other bric-a-brac of the period, filling America's streets in protest of The War - this time happily for those of us that are musically gifted - in a country the name of which they can actually pronounce, given they suppress the inclination to substitute the ee for an aï.

At such times you just wish you had taken that abbreviated course in psychology after all, or had put more time, effort and/or money into the subject. But now there's help at hand, from Dr Sanity.

To be continued.