Living in an Age of Lies
In his novel The First Circle, Alexander Solzhenitsyn pictures Stalin ruminating over the concept of “language as an instrument of production.” A new way of speaking would establish the reality of the communist order and the communist man and woman.
The Man of Steel had thought about refuting “the reactionary theory of relativity or wave mechanics;” but was “too busy with affairs of state” to tackle those ideas. Trofim Lysenko, who was in charge of Soviet science, was already conforming the science of biology to communist ideological standards.
Since Stalin already had achieved massive ideological victories over bourgeois science, it seemed easy to change language and the meaning of the human being in order to hasten the progress of the new communist order, which in his mind was such an orderly, clear, and wonderfully comprehensive abstraction.
For Stalin, disruption of the food supply chain in Ukraine and the resultant starvation of millions of peasants were necessary phases of a cultural shakeup. They were required to speed up the inevitable evolutionary process that eventually would eliminate injurious class distinctions.
Empty granaries were to be regarded not as a genuine crisis but as an imaginary “high class” predicament brought on by the greed of those accused of consuming and hoarding far too many goods. Suddenly every citizen who resisted collectivization was categorized as an execrable “kulak.” By means of a linguistic sleight of hand, a class of deplorables was tarred by nomenclature defining them as selfish and disregarding the collective welfare. It followed that such parasitic lowlifes deserved elimination, as they were holding back the realization of the communist eschaton. They were inhibiting the emergence of the ideal “communist man” Leon Trotsky wrote about in 1924 in Literature and Revolution:
“Man will… extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.”
Be it by language, forcible rearrangement of the civil society, or by war, Stalin’s ultimate hope was to permanently extinguish any non-communist way of seeing, hearing, and writing about the world. A new language of truth was to be established in order for pure ideological constructs to become the only real, lived truth. The new reality was to be established and maintained by force.
History has shown the results. Communist ideology put into practice ruined Russia. The disasters brought upon the Russian people and their culture by Stalin still resonate.
But the harsh fact is that any ideological vision based on the language of lies disrupts and ultimately destroys by fostering chaos and destruction.
Currently, the trans movement, which is the ideological spearpoint of transhumanism, denies the reality of the human being as male or female in favor of a vision of a new creature redefined by language and born again via technological advances into an ubermensch. A superior being, neither male nor female, will lead the way into a future formerly conceived only in dystopic science fiction.
But the distinction between man and woman persists in reflecting fundamental reality. That reality in turn remains the irreducible basis of any culture or civilization. The family predates any civilization and remains foundational to any society. Wife, mother, sister; husband, father, brother are universal categorizations of human beings that have been accepted throughout all of human history as true by all religions, nations, tribes, and cultures.
In short, the recognition of the human race as being male and female is intrinsic to the functioning of any society. It has wide-ranging implications resonating throughout all of any culture’s institutions and practices, including the law. In fact, it can be argued the principle of the binary is written into the cosmos and in the heart of every human being: good and evil; chaos and order.
The truth is that the attempt to grant men and women the status of disembodied spirits detached from earthly reality does not liberate them. Instead, radical disassociation from the body renders each and every human to the level of raw material which can then be utilized in whatever way the more powerful choose. Be it the genocide of the inconvenient, the sale of organs taken from hapless prisoners, or the creation of humanized mice from baby body parts; no ethical standard need be applied. Human material is seen as no different than any other material.
Just as importantly, the attempt to divorce the body from its intrinsic nature as male and female eliminates the chief basis of human connectivity, as it eliminates the other. A human reduced to a mere unit, a thing without essential identity is incapable of relating to any other human being. Worse, the human cannot relate to the Creator. Attempts of humans to commune with God and God to commune to humans are rendered pointless. For Christians, the need for redemption via the bridge to God through Christ is rendered mute.
What does the trans movement substitute in place of a transcendent, Redeemer God?
In the place of God is a new self-contained being; a “they.” The use of the preferred royal pronoun “they” is an indicator of the creation of a plural self; a being who assumes the generative powers once attributed to the Trinity, the Three in One. “They” indicates a multiplicity of personages unrestrained by the singularity intrinsic to other humans known as male or female. “They” are raised above this too solid flesh into another realm entirely. “They” are raised beyond individual physicality to the status of the divine. “They” are the new royal “we.”
The new hierarchy of “they” has the power to rule, as “they” are the living embodiment of transhuman ideology, superior messianic figures who lead the way to a new world order.
We have seen such messianic beings representing ideological perfection before. Whether it was the Aryan sports heroes who were to make toast of American track star Jesse Owens; whether it was the ideologically correct communist Boris Spassky who was to bury Bobby Fischer; or whether it is the trans individual who is transformed into a messianic female warrior and given the rank of a four-star admiral -- every ideology that perverts reality in order to utterly remake society creates new stars to shine in the updated cosmic order.
What was once entirely academia’s postmodern messianism has now infiltrated nearly every western institution. Every person is a god entitled to speak truth from what theologian Paul VanderKlay calls a “secret sacred place.” An infallible word arising from this secret scared space, which is discerned by a few elite priests who believe themselves to be in charge of the new reality is not subject to judgment. Their logos infallibly has spoken the new reality into existence. The masses must then conform to the newspeak and the new order discerned by those who see clearly from their sacred place.
Thus, the earth will be recreated by the logos of priestly newspeak; a word that replaces the Christian doctrine of Christ as the eternal Logos; the Word who created the cosmos. “They” may create “their” own world without reference to an Other.
The ancient prophecy of the serpent “Ye shall be as gods” is to be actualized at last.
However, the inevitable result of mere mortals becoming as gods is that those who become gods first are made mad. They become insane because of their denial of reality.
As we watch America and much of the world writhing under the torturous rule of insane leaders, the answer Solzhenitsyn gave decades ago remains critically important. His words in his essay. “Live Not by Lies,” echo the words uttered by Hebrew prophets and summarized by Jesus Christ: “You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.”
“Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies!”
Fay Voshell holds a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, which awarded her the prize for excellence in systematic theology. Her thoughts have appeared in many online magazines. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com
Image: Public Domain
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