25 February

If it seems that the world has gone mad, Urban Dictionary can help. All of the talk of ‘the Left’ and ‘the Right’ in politics is a sideshow. The real clash we’re all living through is probably much deeper, and nothing to do with politics at all. It’s a clash of worldview, between secular-progressive ways of life, and more traditional conservative ‘religious’ ways of life (although in reality a highly conservative, family values type of religious life). We thought that had all gone away, that science and progress and secularism had triumphed. It never went anywhere, secularism failed to produce traditions of its own, thinking that ideas and fine words are enough. And we keep thinking it’s all about politics. We’re living the same battles humans have for hundreds, or even thousands of years. The next time somebody mentions ‘the Left’, there’s a pretty high chance they’re not of ‘the Right’, but arguing for a return to a more traditional way of life, based in religious values. (Tony Abbott and his followers here in Oz - even a short bit of research on Abbott’s life will tell you this is his main passion, not politics, Santamaria is one of his heroes.) And I don’t take sides in this, I think secularism is a weak way to organise the world, if it doesn’t build institutions to implement secular ideas, just as I think the traditionalists are thoroughly nasty in the way they go about their work in the ‘culture war’.