Archive for the ‘Culture Wars’ Category

The Vatican’s Space Observatory Wants To See Stars And Faith Align – NPR

A view of the telescope domes on the roof of the Vatican Observatory, at the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo, in 2015. Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A view of the telescope domes on the roof of the Vatican Observatory, at the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo, in 2015.

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy At a time of growing diffidence toward some new scientific discoveries, the one and only Vatican institution that does scientific research recently launched a campaign to promote dialogue between faith and science.

It's the Vatican Observatory, located on the grounds of the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, a medieval town in Alban Hills 15 miles southeast of Rome.

The director, Brother Guy Consolmagno, is giving this reporter a guided tour of the grounds. We drive along a cypress-lined road, admiring majestic gardens and olive groves nestled near the remains of a palace of the Roman Emperor Domitian, before reaching a field with farmworkers and animals.

"This is the end that has the papal farm, so you can see the cows the papal milk comes from," Consolmagno says as he points out the working farm that provides the pope at the Vatican with vegetable and dairy products.

(Pope Francis, known for his frugality and habit of not taking vacations, decided not to use the papal summer villa, which he considers too luxurious. But he ordered the estate become a museum open to the public.)

For most of its history, the Catholic Church rejected scientific findings that conflicted with its doctrine. During the Inquisition, it even persecuted scientists such as Galileo Galilei.

In the Middle Ages, it became apparent that the Julian calendar, named for Julius Caesar and established in 46 B.C., had accumulated numerous errors. But it wasn't until 1582 that the Vatican Observatory was born with the reform of the Gregorian calendar (named for Pope Gregory XIII) that, based on observation of the stars, established fixed dates for religious festivities.

Consolmagno takes pains to rebut the anti-science image of the Catholic Church. He cites the 19th century Italian priest Angelo Secchi as a pioneer in astronomy and the 20th century Belgian priest Georges Lematre, known as "father of the Big Bang theory," which holds that the universe began in a cataclysmic explosion of a small, primeval superatom.

Astronomical text books in Latin are displayed at the Vatican Observatory. Sylvia Poggioli/NPR hide caption

Astronomical text books in Latin are displayed at the Vatican Observatory.

Run by Jesuits, the Observatory moved to this bucolic setting in the 1930s, when light pollution in Rome obstructed celestial observation.

One domed building in the papal gardens houses a huge telescope dating from 1891. It's called Carte du Ciel map of the sky and it stands under a curved ceiling that slides open. Consolmagno says, "It was one of about 18 identical telescopes that were set up around the world to photograph the sky, and every national observatory was given its own piece of sky to photograph." He adds, it was "one of the first international projects of astronomy."

A native of Detroit, Consolmagno studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, volunteered with the Peace Corps in Africa and taught physics before becoming a Jesuit brother in his 40s. He has been at the Observatory for three decades. His passion for astronomy started with a childhood love of science fiction.

"I love the kind of science fiction that gives you that sense of wonder, that reminds you at the end of the day why we dream of being able to go into space," Consolmagno says.

A passionate Star Wars fan, he tells this reporter proudly, "even Obi-Wan Kenobi came to visit" the Observatory, pointing to the signature of actor Alec Guinness, who played the role in the original movie trilogy, in a visitor's book from 1958.

Top scientists teach at the Observatory's summer school. And scientists and space industry leaders have come for a United Nations-sponsored conference on the ethics and peaceful uses of outer space. It cooperates with NASA on several space missions and it operates a modern telescope in partnership with the University of Arizona.

Left: A visitors' book signed by actor Alec Guinness in 1958. Right: A photo of a prelate decades ago reclining to view the telescope. Sylvia Poggioli/NPR hide caption

Left: A visitors' book signed by actor Alec Guinness in 1958. Right: A photo of a prelate decades ago reclining to view the telescope.

"But where we still need to work is with the rest of the world," says the Observatory director, "the people in the pews, especially nowadays. There are too many people in the pews who think you have to choose between science and faith."

To reach those people, the Observatory recently launched a new website and podcasts exploring issues such as meteorites hitting the Earth or how to live on the moon.

And an online store sells merch hoodies, caps, tote bags and posters of the Milky Way.

In just a few months, says the director, visitors to the website have doubled.

As to how the faith-versus-science culture wars can be resolved, Consolmagno says what's most important is that he wears a collar he is a devoutly religious person who also considers himself an "orthodox scientist." "That fact alone shatters the stereotypes," he says.

Another American at the Observatory shattering stereotypes is Brother Robert Macke, curator of the collection of meteorites rocks formed in the early days of the solar system.

Holding a dark rock a few inches long, he says it was formed 4.5 billion years ago providing clues on how the solar system was formed.

"In order to understand the natural world," he says, "you have to study the natural world. You cannot just simply close your eyes and ignore it or pretend that it is other than it is. You have to study it and you have to come to appreciate it."

Consolmagno asked how the study of the stars interacts with his faith says astronomy doesn't provide answers to theological questions, and scripture doesn't explain science. "But the astronomy is the place where I interact with the Creator of the universe, where God sets up the puzzles and we have a lot of fun solving them together," the director says.

And he believes the recent dark period of the pandemic has weakened the arguments of those who are skeptical of science.

"Because people can see science in action, science doesn't have all the answers," he says. "And yet science is still with all of its mistakes and with all of its stumbling is still better than no science."

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The Vatican's Space Observatory Wants To See Stars And Faith Align - NPR

A year on, the battered and graffitied Colston is finally a potent memorial to our past – The Guardian

Last week, for the first time in months, the burning eye of the outrage industry pivoted westwards and came to rest upon the city of Bristol. On Friday, the statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston, toppled last June during a Black Lives Matter protest, was put on display. To the fury of some, it was not returned triumphantly to its pedestal in the centre of the city, but exhibited in Bristols M Shed museum.

The debate around Colston in the summer of 2020 was largely conducted in a fact-free zone. So it is surely disconcerting for those determined to defend the memorialisation of a mass murderer that in this new setting Colstons bronze effigy is surrounded by displays that give a detailed history of the slave traders grim career and the strange story that explains why, in the 19th century, a cult was created around him and the statue erected.

For most of the 300 years since his death in 1721, Colston was little known outside Bristol. Few would have imagined that his statue would become the totemic image for Britains 21st-century history wars. Still, the professionally outraged have never allowed Colstons relative obscurity to stand in their way as they rushed to his defence, having first looked him up on Wikipedia.

Yet as Colston appeared on display last week, carefully preserved and presented by conscientious curators, it was not obvious what the source of offence would be. The statue has, after all, been retained and with so much actual history included in the exhibit, there was a danger that those sent to report on Colstons second coming might have to write about the suffering of his victims.

Luckily, two petty grievances were found. The first is that the statue is being displayed at an inappropriate angle. Perhaps there is a perfect angle, as yet unknown to museum professionals, for the public display of mass murderers at which their crimes become more acceptable, perhaps even quaint? The second grievance: that the statue still carries the graffiti sprayed on it during the demonstration of last June.

What the Bristol curators appreciated is what curators anywhere would appreciate that the graffiti is now an integral part of its story, like the graffiti carved into Stonehenge and the pyramids or daubed on the walls inside the Reichstag by soldiers of the Red Army in 1945. Would those who argue that Colston should have been cleaned also advocate that we chip away the historic signatures and poetry of Julia Balbilla carved into the monuments of Egypt? Should we sandblast the graffiti off the hundreds of slabs of the Berlin Wall that now stand in museums and parks across the world? The historical significance of the blood-red paint on Colstons bronze hands will become greater with each passing year.

The art critic Alastair Sooke, who last week compared Colston, a man complicit in the deaths of an estimated 19,000 people, to a disgraced celebrity, concluded that not removing the graffiti was a calculated insult. Colston, not the thousands whose lives he helped snuff out, Sooke felt, was the real victim here. Have we stumbled upon a murder scene? he asked. The answer, of course, is yes and Colston was the perpetrator, not the victim.

London art critics who casually portray mass murderers as victims, like Westminster politicians who fan the flames of cultural conflict, do so from a safe distance and in a consequence-free environment. Since Colstons fall, those of us who call Bristol home have been disturbed by the way that the city has become targeted by those from outside who seek to deepen divisions rather than heal them. At the time, I wrote of the dangers and distractions of the moment. But as a public historian, rather than a public servant, the task of trying to actually defuse those dangers fell to others.

Those fraught weeks of last summer are the subject of a new BBC documentary, Statue Wars: One Summer in Bristol (declaration: I am one of the executive producers). Filmed over the summer of 2020, it is a classic fly-on-the wall documentary, made by the Bristol film-maker Francis Welch. It follows what happened in City Hall as the worlds media, the London artist Marc Quinn and agitators from outside all focused on Bristol.

From the moment BLM went global and statues in the US began to fall, Bristol, a city that has struggled more than many to acknowledge its slave-trading history, was always destined to face difficulties. What made it all the more significant is that it also happens to be the first city in Europe to be run by an elected mayor who is a descendent of enslaved people, Marvin Rees, who has just been re-elected.

The confected battle lines of our confected culture war run through both Bristol and its mayor. Mixed-race, with a working-class, white mother and Jamaican father, Rees was brought up in one of Bristols poorest districts. For him, as for many black people, myself included, the white working class do not belong to a rival group but are family members, friends and members of the same communities.

What comes across in the documentary are the dangers of the road we are currently walking down and the nightmare of division and distraction confronting local leaders.

The culture wars look very different from behind the desk of a city mayor than on the pages of the tabloids or in our social media feed. Not for the mayor the easy gesture: he has to work through solutions, try to balance competing interests, particularly the interplay of class and race.

Anyone thinking of a future in politics might well watch Statue Wars and change their mind. Anyone unconcerned by the dangers of this moment might rethink their complacency.

Statue Wars: One Summer in Bristol will air on BBC Two at 9pm on Thursday, 10 June

David Olusoga is a historian and broadcaster

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A year on, the battered and graffitied Colston is finally a potent memorial to our past - The Guardian

Zaid Jilani: Paul Ryan worried about culture war distracting from issues ‘that really concern him’ | TheHill – The Hill

Journalist Zaid Jilani on Tuesday said that former Speaker Paul RyanPaul Davis RyanZaid Jilani: Paul Ryan worried about culture war distracting from issues 'that really concern him' The Memo: Marjorie Taylor Greene exposes GOP establishment's lack of power The Hill's 12:30 Report - Senators back in session after late-night hold-up MORE (R-Wis.) in telling conservatives last week to not become too focused on culture wars showed his fear ofsuch battles crowding "out the issues that really concern him.

Ryan in a speech last Thursday, delivered at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, cautioned GOP members not to get caught up in every little cultural battle, adding, "our party must be defined by more than a tussle over the latest grievance or perceived slight.

Jilani in an interview on Hill.TVs Rising, said that Ryan, who after leaving office started the policy group the American Idea Foundation, likely sees that Republicans in public office are not mobilizing in large numbers against the welfare state, against social spending, and other issues.

It doesnt mean that theyre not concerned about it, but its not really the hot button issue, Jilani said.I think that would threaten someone like Ryan, because Ryan would prefer that we were talking about Medicare being unsustainable, social security needing some form of private accounts or privatization, the journalist added.

Jilani went on to say, I think in many ways, the reason that he doesnt want there to be culture wars is not necessarily just because the culture war can be very annoying at times to people on both sides, but because it crowds out the issues that really concern him and I think thats part of why he gave this speech.

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Zaid Jilani: Paul Ryan worried about culture war distracting from issues 'that really concern him' | TheHill - The Hill

The culture wars are a symptom, not the cause, of Britains malaise – The Guardian

Its often said that Conservatives and the rightwing press are good at stoking divisions. Whats perhaps less acknowledged is that they do so mostly by inventing them: those who campaign for more inclusive policies become the woke mob and the loony left; those who want students to learn about the darker parts of Britains history become people who hate Britain; judges and politicians who want to follow basic parliamentary procedures become enemies of the people, saboteurs, and traitors, and so on.

In every case, were told that the future of the nation is at stake. The relentlessness of this culture war narrative leaves us with the image of an irreconcilable rift at the heart of British society: between liberals obsessed with identity politics who live, literally or spiritually, in north London, and sidelined social conservatives who live or rather, are left behind everywhere else (most emotively in the red wall). These fantasy constructions are now the twin pillars of Conservative rhetoric.

But this image of an irreconcilably divided nation is just that: an image. A spate of polls have shown that we are not as divided as many would have us think. Views in the so-called red wall are largely consistent with the rest of the country and, nationwide, few people know what either the culture war or wokeness even mean. Yet the right still pushes this narrative relentlessly, railing against a lefty elite that somehow manages to both wield a hegemonic control over Britains culture and be hopelessly out of touch with it. The new rightwing television channel, GB News one of many new ventures to pitch itself as an urgent corrective will host a segment called Wokewatch, to illuminate and amplify examples of the loony lefts looniness.

As the sociologist William Davies has written, this is the logic of the culture war: Identify the most absurd or unreasonable example of your opponents worldview; exploit your own media platform to amplify it; articulate an alternative in terms that appear calm and reasonable; and then invite people to choose. Exaggeration is therefore intrinsic to culture wars: it is a battle waged mostly by straw men.

Its no surprise that Boris Johnson thrives in this environment: a journalist by trade, a liar by nature, he is all too familiar with the energising power of some well-placed hyperbole. As the Daily Telegraphs Europe correspondent in the 1990s, Johnson wrote all kinds of wild and made-up provocations about the EUs regulatory overreach: before Wokewatch there was Brusselswatch. The aim of Johnsons exaggerations wasnt any particular political agenda, but rather to stoke animosity. Everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party, Johnson recalled in his Desert Island Discs interview for Radio 4 in 2005, and it really gave me this rather weird sense of power. As prime minister Johnson pursues the same approach, but his plaything is now the nation at large.

The cynicism and bad faith that underlies so much of the culture war should warn us against one of the dominant tendencies within the vast and burgeoning literature on our polarised times: to blame evolutionary biology and an inherent tribalist instinct we share. The mechanism is evolutionary, New York Times writer Ezra Klein writes in his recent bestseller, Why Were Polarised, because our brains know we need our groups to survive. But by conjuring up a primordial past as the source of our divisions, we lose sight of all the contemporary forces and strategies that are deliberately designed to inflame and exaggerate our differences. The climate crisis wasnt destined to be such a divisive issue, for instance it required, in the words of climatologist Michael Mann, the most well-funded, well-organised PR campaign in the history of human civilisation. The Flintstones might not have agreed on everything either, but at least they didnt have Fox News.

The culture war is in this sense the ultimate fiction: what seems like a battle for the soul of our country is a pantomime where we are conscripted to play both gladiator and spectator and obliged to pick a side. The hope seems to be that, amid all the sparring and theatre, we lose sight of what truly frustrates us: in Britain, that is an increasingly harsh economy, imposed by a callous government, which has left us with the worst wage growth in 200 years, public services that are chronically underfunded and a third of children living in poverty a misery offset by one of the stingiest welfare systems in the developed world. If society now feels coarser, its because it is but the reason is not a sudden decline in civility.

Yet while the Conservatives, in power for over a decade, are the main architects of this dreary, resentful state of the nation, they are also its main beneficiaries. The Conservatives have always excelled at stoking resentment and redirecting it elsewhere; now is no different: they are clear favourites to win the next election, a record fifth in a row.

So even amid this total and unsettling ascendancy, the Tories will still insist that the blame for Britains woes lies elsewhere: with Londoners hoarding all the nations wealth, with university professors teaching cultural Marxism in their classes, or asylum seekers trying to cross the Channel, or any other phantom threat they can think of. This strategy goes beyond the usual divide and conquer. It was said of the Romans and their imperial dominance that they make a desert and call it peace. The Tories are trying a different tactic: make a desert and call it war.

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The culture wars are a symptom, not the cause, of Britains malaise - The Guardian

Identity politics and the culture war, according to this professor – Deseret News

Theres a famous scene from Lewis Carrolls classic Alice in Wonderland in which Alice is staring silently at a hookah-smoking caterpillar. The larva finally breaks the standoff with a question: Who are you? Alice hems and haws until the caterpillar asks again, this time more pointedly: You! Who are you?

This question is the most pressing of our time. And its answer holds the power to shape society. Indeed, the source of todays deepest and most worrying political conflicts ultimately is grappling with differing definitions of what it means to be human to be a person.

Carrolls childrens book prefigured our modern problem. And so, too, did the 20th century philosopher Sydney Shoemaker when he imagined a fictional scenario where a surgeon operated on the brains of two men, Brown and Robinson. At the end of the operation, his assistant replaced the brains in the wrong bodies. Unfortunately, one of the men dies.

The survivor, however, now has the body of Robinson and the brain of Brown. He does not recognize himself in the mirror but he thinks of himself as Brown, has Browns memories, is still in love with Browns wife. And as he slowly recovers from the operation, he slowly but surely starts to act exactly as Brown used to act.

The immediate question, of course, is: Who is he? Is he Brown, trapped in the body of Robinson? Is he Robinson but just with the wrong brain? Is he some hybrid of the two? Or is the human body simply a tool for expressing inner identity and of no significance for who we are beyond that? The answer to these questions rests upon a prior understanding of what it is that gives us our identities. What is the real us: Is it our psychological states, our feelings, our bodies or something else?

In the years since Shoemakers thought experiment, the political culture of the United States has tilted strongly toward a psychological construction of human identity. In short, public policy is increasingly driven by the assumption that private psychological states or feelings are the basic foundation for personal identity for who we think we are. The idea that bodies can contain the wrong mind and that bodies ought to be fashioned to our inner will and feelings is now widespread.

The political significance of this might not be obvious at first glance but becomes very clear when we reflect upon how our culture is changing as a result. Take, for example, the idea of freedom as traditionally understood in America. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech are or were basic to the American experiment. They are enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, a placement which surely points to the priority they held in the minds of the founders.

These ideas, though, were also rooted in a certain understanding of humans: that they were made in the image of God and that they were deserving of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet these truths once thought self-evident are under increasing scrutiny as new, and even revolutionary, ideas of the human person are sweeping Western culture.

And the alarming news for many is that, as much as religious conservatives might want to view this current trend as a simple battle of good versus evil or us versus them, Americans from across the ideological spectrum are all deeply implicated in the modern revolution of human selfhood. The way out will demand that we capture an older and more truthful understanding of who we are.

This new debate over the self has emerged as a central battleground in the ongoing culture war. Its sometimes called expressive individualism, a bit of jargon used by modern philosophers to explain how we think of ourselves these days. Expressive individualism, the American sociologist Robert Bellah explains, holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that must be expressed to be realized. In other words, our inner space, our thoughts and feelings, our emotions, are what constitute the real us. And that to be the true us we must give expression to those inner feelings. As well see, this idea carries profound implications.

Certainly, human beings have always had an inner space. This is obvious. The Psalms contain emotion and introspection. The dramatics of Greek tragedy depend on the agonies of soul. Shakespeares masterpiece Hamlet is an extended glimpse into the inner mind of a melancholy prince. But the rise of expressive individualism is not simply about humans having an inner life. No, expressive individualism is concerned with the authority and the importance we ascribe to our inner life. Today, the power of our inner life is nearly absolute. Psychological feelings more than even biology often play the decisive role in determining personal identity.

One of the most important sources in influencing societys move to prioritizing inner feelings is the 18th century Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseaus most famous saying was Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains. This memorable statement is a neat summary of his philosophy that individuals left alone in a state of nature are the most authentic humans. By state of nature, Rousseau means free of social conventions. In short, Rousseaus thought is emblematic of the tradition of thinking that sees society and collective norms as the source of human ills.

Rousseau articulated this philosophy in numerous works, including his autobiography, The Confessions, which focused on his own inner life and demonstrated how the various wicked acts he had committed over the years from stealing a neighbors vegetables to framing a co-worker for another theft he committed were really the result of the environment in which he was raised. And in Emile, or On Education, he wrote what was to become a foundational text in modern child-centered approaches to education: The purpose of education, he argued, was not to press the child into being that which society demanded but to allow the child to develop according to the voice of nature, undamaged by society.

The artists, poets and composers of what is now called the Romantic movement built on Rousseaus ideas. When William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published their poetry collection, Lyrical Ballads, in 1800, they included a preface that explained why their poems largely focused on ordinary, rural characters and scenes: It was because they were unspoiled by social artificiality. Their poetry was not simply entertainment; it was designed to help readers become truly authentic, appealing directly to natural emotions.

At the heart of this project is an assumption that humans are best when untainted by their community.

But what if that assumption is wrong?

Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud identified the inner space of the human psyche not as the home to universal human empathy but rather as an often dark and potentially destructive space. For Nietzsche, the desire for power and control, and the exhilaration of humanitys creative and destructive urges, were central to the inner life of humans. With no God, in his view, there was nobody to whom humans were accountable except this potentially dark inner self. As for Freud, the inner voice was more often consumed with and defined by extravagant sexual desires. Happiness in this view was found in embracing and giving full expression to such desires.

After Freud, then, sex was not something we did, but something we were.

These three ways of thinking Rousseau, Nietzsche, Freud have come to influence todays brand of expressive individualism. Its why we are slightly more individualistic, hedonistic and impatient about external authority. We are self-creating in profound ways, but we are also troublingly self-orienting toward psychological states of our choosing from curated social media bubbles to ideologically affirming news feeds.

Modern technology and modern consumerism both make us feel like masters of the universe. Ever more impressive technology allows us to construct identities of our choosing, whether online or in person. Consumerism permits us to pick (and perhaps even design) what we buy and what we wear and, therefore, in a certain sense, who and what we claim to be.

Ubiquitous pornography encourages us to view others as instruments to our own pleasure. Elective abortion allows us to think of babies in the womb as intruders into our bodies and lives. All of these things, and more, are predicated on the notion that what we feel or desire is fundamentally who we are, and is of the highest importance.

Thomas Jeffersons pursuit of happiness clause has slowly, and ironically, become a foundation for social disintegration rather than cohesion. Its read today as an invitation to do as you please, rather than a uniting mantra aimed at shared ideals and the common good. Even our own bodies are now negotiable in the context of a notion of selfhood in which inner feelings have supreme authority in shaping our sense of purpose and happiness. Does your inner self feel uncomfortable in your body? Then the body should be significantly altered to fit the real you.

Some of these trends might seem innocuous or even benevolent. After all, shouldnt we foster freedom for people to make meaningful choices, to govern their own lives and to help different people feel a sense of self-determination and self-ownership? These do seem like beneficial goals. But, as conservative writer Rod Dreher has observed in reference to Dantes Divine Comedy: In Dante, sinners and we are all sinners are those who love the wrong things, or who love the right things in the wrong way. Modern societys impulse on matters of personhood is, at its best, a well-intentioned effort at inclusivity that becomes strangely tyrannical when not properly harmonized with other worthy concerns.

Indeed, while these trends would suggest that society is tilting in a fully individualistic and libertarian direction, the paradoxical truth is that it is actually driving us toward a new and worrying ideological authoritarianism. The emerging consensus in many influential circles is not that all identities are made equal, but that some identities are actually incompatible with a healthy society (i.e., those whose identities may offend anothers identity.)

In some ways we intuitively get this: The inner life and identity of, say, a serial killer, is rightly deemed illegitimate, and we attach drastic legal sanctions for any person who gives expression to this inner life. Other identities, however, we privilege and protect in more subtle ways. For example, any action that seems to not affirm someones identity say, by refusing to bake a cake for a gay couples wedding can become a matter of public concern that merits punishment.

For Jefferson, if something neither picked his pocket nor broke his leg, he did not think it something that the government should take an interest in regulating. But once the self becomes defined not by property or by a physical body but by an inner psychological space, the words and actions that hurt start to become rather more alarming.

That is why wars over words pronouns, epithets now dominate the public square, and why a careless tweet can ruin a career or reading the wrong Dr. Seuss book might get you canceled. And it is why society is becoming more authoritarian in the name of protecting the vulnerable. To protect the pursuit of happiness in a time when each decides what that means, some individuals and groups need to be suppressed so that others may flourish, especially if one group chooses to not privilege anothers chosen inner identity.

This is particularly difficult for religious conservatives. When traditional attitudes toward sexual behavior collide with modern notions of identity, religious conservatives may be labeled as anti-social or harmful to the sexual identity of others. When the belief that bodies are fundamental to who we are, and therefore no one can be born in the wrong body, crashes up against the notion of inner identities, those who hold such views are considered bigoted.

The causes for this are not entirely the election results over the last two decades or the consequences of a few liberal appointments to the Supreme Court. They are much more long-standing and deep-rooted. What we are witnessing today in the new culture wars is the latest stage in that inward, psychological turn of the human self. Only by recognizing this intellectual error can we find a way forward.

The new way forward, however, is in many regards an old way. Its restoring the common understanding of personhood that once united disparate colonies at the nations founding. As Bari Weiss recently wrote in Deseret, this consensus view relied on a few foundational truths that seemed as obvious as the blue of the sky: the belief that everyone is created in the image of God and everyone is equal because of it.

This doesnt mean abandoning our inner life, which is fundamental to who we are, but it means placing it within the balance of the outer life that hopefully reaches toward family, community, country and God. The Jewish and Christian understanding of creation and hope of the resurrection point to this: We are created as bodies; and our salvation is the salvation of the whole, body and soul. This identity is divine and calls upon us to be better and rise above our dark desires and ambitions.

Flowing from an acknowledgment of our bodily identity, we must confront our necessary dependence upon others. As bioethicist Carter Snead has argued, we humans are always characterized by dependence. As babies and children we are utterly dependent upon others. As we grow, we become less dependent to a degree, but then as we reach old age, we become more dependent once again. At no point are we ever the free-standing autonomous creatures of Rousseaus thought experiment. And it is our bodies that are the source of this dependence, our physical constitutions that connect to others and define the nature of those connections. Acknowledging this reality should transform how we think both of ourselves and of others.

Others do not exist for our satisfaction or self-actualization. Rather we all exist for the sake of one another. And that, of course, has implications for sexual morality and behavior. To those who acknowledge their bodies as who they are, not simply the raw material of self-creation, and who understand the rational, dependent nature of our life, sex can never be simply a means of personal pleasure whereby others are reduced to being mere instruments of our own satisfaction. Nor can it come to occupy a central place in how identity is understood. It is not sexual desire that defines us but the relationships of which sexual activity is a meaningful part.

None of this may make a great bumper sticker, but it has this in its favor: It is the full account of what it means to be human. Expressive individualism is a distortion, because we are not born free but rather interdependent and embodied. This may not be the modern self we want, but its this true self that we must ultimately confront to answer the caterpillars penetrating question to Alice the question we all must confront as we look into the mirror.

Carl R. Trueman is a professor of religious studies. He is the author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.

This story appears in the June issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.

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Identity politics and the culture war, according to this professor - Deseret News