Reality no longer seems to matter to dysfunctional culture in denial

“You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
— Ayn Rand

I rolled my eyes when my friend told me what had happened in her family. About six months ago, a man related to her had moved in with his own brother’s family. It was just for a couple of weeks, until he got back his feet after a divorce. He had promised to find a job and quickly get a place of his own.

Six months later, the man still has no job. He watches television and plays video games while his brother and sister-in-law go to work. Has he applied for any jobs? Who knows? Nobody with sense believes a word he says. My friend said the brother who’s supporting the man called her this week.

“I don’t know why he’s not working,” the brother said. “He promised he would. I don’t know how to get him to leave.”

My friend and I both felt amazed. The deadbeat has always been a deadbeat. He’s never been responsible enough to keep a job. He married a woman who was willing to believe his lies about changing, but she quickly threw him out when he was lazy and then became verbally abusive, especially when he was drinking.

But for some reason, the deadbeat’s brother is surprised at all this. Why? It’s because we keep expecting people to be something different from what they’ve shown us they really are. As a society and as individuals, we all seem to be deeply in denial when it comes to objective reality.

I don’t know whether psychological illness starts in individuals and then slowly takes over the culture or if it starts in groups and then infects individuals. I can make an argument for each path of development.

But I’m absolutely certain that one of the primary dysfunctions in modern culture is that we are collectively in deep denial. In more ways than I can count, we have become committed to pretending that objective reality doesn’t exist.

It’s popular today to talk about “my truth” and “my reality,” but those phrases are sheer idiocy. If you want to say “my point of view” or “my experience” or even “my subjective reality,” that’s reasonable. You can rationally interpret the reality you experience. You can come to an opinion about what “the truth” is.

But if two things are contradictory, they cannot both be true. And if two things are both true, they are not truly contradictory when properly understood.

Objective reality — which we used to proudly call truth — does exist. It might be impossible for anyone to say with complete certain what the truth is, but there is one actual reality which is true. Most of us can agree on the criteria by which we are going to label certain things as true. We’re going to agree that certain things seem certain enough to us that we are willing to accept them as objective truth. That’s useful for people who want to live with one another.

I can’t prove with absolute certainty that exploding a stick of dynamite will kill me (and those around me). I can come up with scenarios in which that belief has been implanted in my belief system by lies or some sort of inaccurate observation on my part.

But I’m certain enough about my belief that dynamite is dangerous that I would run if you tried to light a stick of it. If you say it’s safe because “that’s my truth,” I’m not going to risk my life on your belief.

More and more, we are acting — as individuals and as a culture — like people who don’t believe objective reality exists. We’re acting as though we can ignore evidence. We’re acting as though we can choose to believe whatever we want to believe. And then we can ignore the results when we don’t like them.

People who support Donald Trump can pretend he was unjustly denied a presidential win in 2020 because of massive vote fraud which stole the election. That’s simply not true. There’s no rational evidence that this took place. But a lot of people believe this — because they have been trained to ignore reality.

People who support various forms of socialism and other top-down economic schemes can pretend that their idiotic system will finally work the next time it’s tried. There is no rational evidence that such a system can ever work. Anybody who pays attention to history and economics — and who isn’t in denial — knows this. But because such people want their system to work, they assert that things will be different this time — because they have been trained to ignore reality.

Certain people who are confused about their gender roles believe they can pretend to be something other than the sex they were born. (They can claim they were “assigned” a gender at birth.) They’ve invented a gender ideology which redefines words and completely ignores reality. So a woman might get her breasts cut off and have a fake penis implanted — while taking male hormones to artificially change her body’s looks — and then insist that you pretend she’s a man. And a man can do the same dysfunction in reverse. All of these people have been trained to ignore reality.

You can paint a picture of groups of people in delusion and denial, but it’s just as powerful in our individual lives.

A woman who’s married to a man who’s been mean and verbally abusive for many years can pretend he’s going to change — and be a good husband and father — simply because the truth is inconvenient. She’s ignoring reality.

The man who allowed his deadbeat brother to move in — and then claimed to be surprised when the deadbeat acted as he’s always acted — is also in denial. He’s ignoring reality.

We’ve all done this to one extent or another. I know that I have. I’ve pretended that certain people in my life were going to act completely different from the ways those people had shown me they were going to act. I’ve led myself into serious hurt by pretending that someone was going to act as I chose to believe she was at her best, not as her actions had shown me she really was.

I’ve even been in denial about myself and my own actions. I know who I am and what I’m going to do, but I’ve had times when I’ve lied to myself — saying that I would do things which I knew I wasn’t really going to do. When I do all of those things — about myself or about someone else — I’m ignoring reality.

When we ignore reality — as individuals or as a culture — we are setting ourselves up to suffer serious consequences. We can usually see these consequences coming, but we ignore what’s coming. Why? Because living in denial is easier than accepting the truth we prefer not to face.

I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to get our culture to take reality and truth seriously again. I don’t know how to get individuals to quit pretending about the reality of the people in their lives. I’m not even certain that I can stop myself from living in my own self-sabotaging denial.

But I do know this. Truth does exist. You and I are responsible — to ourselves — for understanding that truth. To do this, we have to be truthful with ourselves. We have to stop the denial. We have to accept painful realities.

Until we can do that — as individuals and as a culture — we’re going to continue heading down a dangerous and self-destructive path. The consequences of ignoring reality are going to catch up with us — every time — whether we accept reality or deny it.

We need to choose to accept the truth of reality — even when it’s painful — because the long-term consequences of denial are far more dangerous for all of us.