[20] For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable. [21] Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. [22] For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. [23] And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things. [24] Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. [25] Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. [26] For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. [27] And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error. [28] And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; [29] Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, [30] Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, [31] Foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. [32] Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them. Romans 1:20-32

Decades ago I attended a school with a large deaf population. One of the interesting things about the deaf community is that there actually is such a thing as the deaf community.

By ‘deaf community’ I do not mean a community of people united by common challenges and the common purpose to overcome those challenges. That kind of community would involve communal acknowledgment that there is an objective disorder to be overcome, or simply endured (and those enduring it supported) when it cannot be overcome. That kind of community would acknowledge human dignity to be an objective matter of reality independent of what anyone (or everyone) thinks.

What I mean, rather, is a community of people who (qua community[*]) celebrate the objective defect as if it were a positive good and insist upon that defect as a principle of their identity. I mean a community of people many of whom are insulted by the very idea that the defect actually is objectively a privation, a defect: people who feel simultaneously entitled to special compassion because of their predicament and insulted by the idea that there is anything wrong in the first place.

Modern cafeteria realists, because they are cafeteria realists, cannot tell (or selectively project incapacity to tell) the difference between being and privation; between creation and destruction; between authority and tyranny; between good and evil. They are under the delusion that because, like gravity, it cannot be directly seen, value is a matter of mere opinion or of aggregate opinion. They are under the delusion that productivity is just a matter of perspective, that perversity is love, that their rule is justified by the principle that nobody has a right to rule, that their favored policies and procedures are justified by the goods at which they are directed but that what is good in the first place is a matter of obscure subjective opinion hidden behind an impenetrable is-ought gap which relegates the good to the land of inscrutable subjective cartesian ghosts or optimized material machinery.

When you find yourself wondering why modernity is pervaded by degenerates and defectives, understand that this is by choice. Modern man has decided that, as the measure of all things, he only believes in the realities in which he wants to believe. As a result he has chosen defectiveness as the principle of his own being.

[*] As always, individual persons may be more or less committed to the community, may or may not fully grasp the object of their loyalty, etc. It is a basic mistake to equate persons with the objects of their loyalty. An individual American is not America, and America cannot be reduced to nothing but the aggregation of actual Americans. Same for Islam, feminism, liberalism, etc. Just as personal defects are not the essence of a person, objects of personal loyalty are not themselves the person.