David McElroy

Our culture is intellectually broken. This might not seem important to most people. It might not even seem interesting. But if you can tell that we are somehow off course — in ways that are both large and small — you need to understand that we’re off course because terrible ideas dominate the culture.

You and I weren’t adequately educated about ideas when we were young. I assume your education was similar to my own. I thought I was pretty bright simply because I was always ahead of my peer group in discovering information that schools rarely taught. But when I became an adult, I discovered that there were fundamental holes in my intellectual foundation. This is almost certainly true of you, too, unless you have gone back and educated yourself.

It’s time for us to stop accepting the idiocy that we are handed by a shallow culture. But until we understand why ideas matter, it’s impossible to know where to start in understanding what’s really happening in a broken and dysfunctional modern culture.

(Some of you might notice that this is an updated version of something I shared last year before I started this podcast.)

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A young lesbian who I casually know paid me a high compliment today.

“If I were to ever go straight again,“ she said, “it would be for a man like you.”

Liz is married — to a woman — and I have no expectation that she’s looking to start a relationship with me. I laughed at the unexpected comment and asked her why.

“You listen when I talk,“ she said. “And when you listen to me, you ‘get’ what I’m saying. You don’t look at me like you’re not even listening or you didn’t understand. You don’t even know me that well, but you ‘get’ me better than any man I ever dated. And that’s what I always wanted from a man. I wanted to be heard and understood.”

I think Liz is perfectly normal in her craving to be understood. The fact that she’s felt so little understanding from the men in her life is an indictment of our culture. We’re surrounded by more people than ever. We have technology that allegedly connects us more than ever.

But many of us have ever felt as alone as we do today.

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I’m afraid of dying.

It’s not that I fear the process of dying or what happens after death. It’s not that I fear there’s nothing that lies beyond this world after my body is still and cold.

My fears aren’t about the next world. My fears are about this life — a life that I haven’t yet lived. A life that I’ve half-lived, like a man sleepwalking through an experience that should be filled with love and joy and the ecstasy of mortal existence.

I’m afraid of dying before I ever really live.

I hate what my life has become. Every choice I’ve made seemed to make sense in the moment, but the choices have brought me to a place of unhappiness. Depression. Emptiness. Regret. Hurt.

I hate the experience of living the life I have created, but I don’t want to die. I love this world too much. I love what I know my life could be. And I hunger for the life that would allow me to die in peace one day — knowing I had loved and created joy for those I love.

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