The Twisted Self

Continued

     Writer Carl Trueman explains how our emotions and inner feelings determine who we think we are. He says, "personal happiness has become a criterion for deciding what is and is not moral, and even what's real."

How we got here

     "Key thinkers have shaped the view of reality, the plaything of educational elites. It trickled down through media and entertainment and into our streets.   

     "Technological developments also shape how we think about and relate to the world. There has been a rise of politics based on identities: gender, race and sexuality. 

    "All the above connect to transform the nature and purpose of the institutions that define our culture. Thinkers may be gone, but their theories live on. 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau   

     "Man is born free, and everywhere is in chains. Rousseau believed we are born empathetic and moral, but that society encourages us to be selfish. 

      "Romanticism. Each individual has feelings and intuitions that need to be expressed, they said. Never mind that the 'heart is deceitful and wicked above all things.' (Jeremiah 17:9)  

     "The 'individual will' becomes sovereign, humans descend into pure subjectivity, and ideas become matters of personal preference." 

  To be continued