Cessation of any activity, I have learned recently, is required in moments of profundity. Moments die into the next, the past loses its certitude, its definition, its depth to the haziness of thought, a damning fog. Such is the nature of time. Lest I bore you with my entirely cliche realization (or perhaps re-realization) of the nature of temporality, I should explain why I have ceased my current activity to digitally promulgate such platitudes–I read a line from a book and thought it sounded nice. The One and Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics, to be precise. In it, W. Norris Clarke frames his book-length discussion on metaphysics with the experience of wonder.

Wonder, of course, is a terribly vague term and is, undeniably, applicable to almost anything–I wonder what I will do tomorrow, I wonder what ostrich eggs taste like, I wonder how my brother is doing. The vagueness concerning this term seems to be the result of a mass intellectual laziness, that is, a stubborn unwillingness (or perhaps an unknown ignorance) to voyage beyond the mere shadows, the world of immediacy, the ever-flowing stream of flux we call sense-experience, into the profound, but arguably intuitively natural, ontological mysteries that occur to us in our waking and dying moments, in the odd instances of seized haste, or the quiet, venerable, and perhaps holy hours of unbridled contemplation–the moments when wonder sheds its conventional garb and is baptized into the fires of utter conscious excellency, a feat both spiritual and intellectual, a journey towards truth.

We are all, as W. Norris Clarke puts it, gravitating towards the “horizon of inquiry […] the totality of being, of what truly is” (15). The un-quenched flames of pure thought exercise themselves with devastating power upon reality, seeking to know all being–not, of course, in the form of knowing many facts, or knowing how to perform such-and-such a task. Rather, we wonder about reality, if we are so inclined to imagine, like a highly sentient goldfish may wonder how it is he came to be in a specific bowl situated inside a specific house which is itself situated inside a specific neighborhood. That is, all material or finite being seems to demand an explanation beyond itself for why it is that it is. We are goldfish, our bowl is the cosmos. This is wonder, to be a goldfish.

I am trying to put emphasis, however, on the notion of truth used by Clarke. That is, truth initiates that very drive to know being as it is. Truth raises reflective consciousness from its infancy of blurred thoughts and chaotic flourishes, to its adulthood of forged contours, definite goals, intellectual aspirations. However, truth is, at least from what I have observed, the very thing at risk in Western culture. It stands on a precipice, teetering to the weights of agreeableness, egalitarianism, and political correctness. In short, truth is sacrificed for hugs, smiles, and kisses–to put it cutely. If this makes no sense, good, you might have somehow wrenched yourself from the residual muck of an increasingly relativistic culture. Yes, relativism is the culprit. As humdrum as it sounds, I will be commenting on relativism. Forgive me if it seems far too cliche (if you have not caught on already, I operate under the assumption that cliches waste words and they do so relentlessly), but I am a Catholic blogger criticizing relativism. Relativism–the half-beaten, somewhat dead, yet still breathing (or perhaps wheezing) horse that does not, despite the protests of some, give way to decay and dust. It is a philosophical fad, nearly a joke by now, that has produced, among its greatest achievements, shallow Facebook axioms, sickly tolerant individuals, and a gender spectrum with the unexciting limit of infinity.

Quite seriously, though, relativism is the very thing that destroys truth and, by consequence, the voyage for it. The one who treks across the shadowlands, past the murky waters of doubt and uncertainty, towards the summer-lit horizon of an undying star, into the profundity of reality itself, finds himself happening upon a gender non-conforming teen and a septum-pierced feminist regurgitating an all too common mantra that, in its boldest form, finds and accuses an ever-elusive patriarchy. Sparing the aggressive polemics, however, relativism defeats truth by, quite ironically grasping at truth. By this I mean relativism individuates truth–truth is relative to the individual. And the journey towards truth, the drive towards being in its fullest, the desire to extend one’s mind beyond the strictures of immediate thought, is reduced to aimlessness. Equations no longer require a fraction of mental activity when any marking of graphite, be it a picture of an elephant or the word “green” suffices as an answer. That is, 2+2 may as well equal what you want it to equal. Of course I am not suggesting that relativism will, in some way, undermine the realm of mathematics. I am merely showing, in an analogical sense, how relativism threatens to forego truth and our drive towards it.

If you pay attention closely, however, you can still hear the sweet echoes of objectivity–being as it is, not being as we so contrive it. Perhaps, however, the echoes are not so much the reverb of a once-ringing bell that sounded truth in its purest form. Perhaps, these echoes are really an innate human longing for truth. This longing has manifested itself in, as I see it, an over-sensitivity towards criticism of one’s personal philosophy or lifestyle. That is, individuals seem to adopt creeds prefaced by a large amber stamp-mark of relativism, yet any criticism of such a creed is attacked–attacked ferociously. If I were, for instance, to insist that a young boy really isn’t gender-fluid I will, most likely, be met with hostility. It is as if one’s individual self-determination, his wholly relativistic lifestyle, is held as dearly to him as the belief that the sun rises each morning, or that 2+2=4, or that the external world is real. There is a longing to hold onto one’s beliefs, though individually-contrived, in the same venerable fashion that the scholastic holds onto the belief that a series of movers ordered essentially cannot regress to infinity. Relativism is doctrinaire, and it has redirected a once-sweet and endearing veneration towards truth in on itself–man has become the pioneer of his own ship, ignoring the natural current, steering the helm towards uncharted waters that, among the tumultuous waves, only bear the rippling reflection of a sun that grows increasingly smaller. The heavens no longer chart his course, the stars have truly become silent.

It is in the Christian mystery that the stars bear light–that the ship re-enters the ever-flowing current, the pull, the lively waters. Though one may see it as purely myth, there is an attractiveness, a splendid freshness about Truth made flesh. He who is Being has become a being–Logos has taken on flesh, has ate and prayed with the merely finite creatures. It is dangerous, it is world-breaking. We have found Truth and we killed it. We have nailed the flesh to the cross, we have torn heavenly fibers, we have cast-off that which we voyage towards. We have taken the sun, the stars, the under-girding arms of reality and have broken them. Have we not banished ourselves into darkness? Is there no longer a course to chart? Have we truly crushed and smoldered the scrawled constellations, the heavenly silver to direct our ships? No, He has risen. Truth crucified is resurrected. Man cannot dispel Truth, he cannot destroy what he was made for. We are goldfish trying to surmount the heavens, to pin it under our flimsy fins.