Gresham's Law

When two academics, at any level, but most often at the university level, write to one another there seems always to be a political framework or twist to the discourse. This phenomena appears often in their blogs. It seems curious that our icons of reasoned thought should so sully themselves when truth would serve them better.

If existentialism has a place, it is in poetic license. There is truth in imagination and in dream. The problem comes when existential thinking conflicts with science or when it leads to political correctness or dogma.

When one seeks identity in a belief system, reality goes out the window. When political affiliation becomes the primary antecedent to one’s sense of belonging, then the mantra of the, currently in vogue, political belief systems surface at every introduction. There seems the necessity to establish one another’s credentials in order that a collegial relationship or even further conversation may ensue. When the need for political identity becomes stronger than the need for cultural or religious identity, then the mantra of political belief is expressed as doctrine without regard to truth.

Two political systems of differing intrinsic truth cannot coexist within a culture, “Gresham’s Law.” The higher order of truth goes out of circulation, sequestered behind closed doors, whispered in the halls while the squalid debasement of political polarization becomes the coin of the realm. Political discourse seeks the lowest level, and neither party will embrace reality or truth. It is as if the fabrications of one political party offset the fabrications of the other political party.

Apparently, the desire for acceptance exceeds the need for truth. Certainly in the dark ages of the Inquisition, one’s expression of acceptable dogma held survival value. Back then, however there was just one dogma. We have advanced. Our political system supports two opposing dogmas. One fears the lack of reality and common sense in both.