When did people start placing Emotional responses above the Truth?

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Is it just me, or does it seem like more and more people are “thinking” and voicing their gut reactions or emotional responses, rather than with logic, Truth, and Justice? What happened to common sense?
 
That kind of reminds me of the Pharisees so I guess its been happening for more than 2000 years.
 
kmuestwin said:
That kind of reminds me of the Pharisees so I guess its been happening for more than 2000 years.
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Older than that, by about 600 years: in Isaiah or Jeremiah, maybe both, the people are reproved for seeking prophets who “tickle their ear” rather than voice the Godly truth. I’ll need to find that scripture again. ICXC NIKA
 
And let’s not forget the 60s - “If it feels good, do it.”

Nor the more ancient philosophy of Hedonism.
 
Most people do not seek Truth anymore. They just want to do what feels good, because that’s what the culture/media tell them to do, and that’s how more money is made. But people get hurt from every bad decision that is made. People slowly become unable to trust each other. Marriages fall apart. Families break up. Eventually this period in history will be studied and people will wonder what the heck everyone was thinking. But it’s hard to see what’s wrong while you’re doing it; you need to be able to take a step back and see yourself.
 
stephe1987 said:
Most people do not seek Truth anymore. They just want to do what feels good, because that’s what the culture/media tell them to do, and that’s how more money is made. But people get hurt from every bad decision that is made. People slowly become unable to trust each other. Marriages fall apart. Families break up. Eventually this period in history will be studied and people will wonder what the heck everyone was thinking. But it’s hard to see what’s wrong while you’re doing it; you need to be able to take a step back and see yourself.
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When was your idea of a golden age?
 
ManOnFire said:
Is it just me, or does it seem like more and more people are “thinking” and voicing their gut reactions or emotional responses, rather than with logic, Truth, and Justice? What happened to common sense?
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It happened when the feminists took control of our society.
 
Carl Rogers…non-directive, unconditional positive regard. His therapy ideas went into educational theories. Schools had values clarification rap sessions where each kid shared what their truth was…and no one even the teacher could correct them with objective truth.

Utter disaster.

Also wreaked devastation on religious life.

I had or have a tape set about this.

Now it’s fundamental truth, that there is no truth, but each person has their own private truth.

No objective truth = no possibility of God, btw.
 
I would say the problem goes back to before the Renaissance with the philosophy of Nominalism. This is the foundational difference between the Catholic and Protestant view of what is real. Catholic philosophy is more rational when it is rooted in St. Thomas Aquinas.
Here is an article about nominalism.
newadvent.org/cathen/11090c.htm

The problem of universals means that humans have an intellect, and so are able to have concepts based on sense data. For example, we can generalize from seeing a house to the concept of shelter that has many shapes and sizes; ie, tent, shed, ranch style, two story houses, or caves.
Nominalism denies this ability to form universal concepts; that is, we only use words like “house” so that we can talk about them, but each person’s idea of “house” can be different, so we cannot form a concept such as “shelter.”
Decarte and Kant added to the confusion with their philosophies. As you can see, the view of what is real goes crazy if you deny the ability of humans to have an intellect. It reduces us to the level of animals who can only know what their senses tell them and behave by their instincts and with the results they have “associated” through training. This idea makes everybody’s opinion of reality equally valid even when they are not rooted in our idea of reality.
 
Mmmmm, delicious looking forbidden fruit. (Insert Homer Simpson drooling noise here) … 😛

We’ve always had that tendency. To a certain extent, the very concept of civilization rests on the elevation of reason above emotion/instinct. So while I’m not sure we ever quite hit a ‘golden age’ I’m not at all sure that we aren’t headed back to the Bronze Age in our current civilizational trajectory.
 
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