Years ago I had to ask myself ‘How do I know what is true or not?’. This began a challenging journey exploring the history of science, philosophy, religions, worldviews and back into the present to see what has been learnt.

One of the interesting things you learn by embarking on such a truth questioning journey is that it gives you a fresh pair of glasses through which the world reveals itself. Furthermore, it also gives you a clearer sense of what’s going on around you.  It makes it easier to see if a policy, strategy, idea or thought will yield anything which will make the world a better place.

Every idea, ideology, faith, belief system or worldview has some sort of starting point, a ‘most important thing’ after which everything flows. Interestingly, some ideologies start with the identification of some sort of ‘enemy’, a thing which if only it could be eradicated would lead to some sort of Utopia. I have yet to discover one of these ‘enemy bashing’ ideologies that actually works. For example, communism started off with the belief that private wealth was the enemy and an even distribution of wealth controlled by the state was the answer. Then there was capitalism, which identified poverty as the enemy, and increasing private wealth was the answer to a fairer distrubution. I am not sure how well this little chestnut works either.

Then there are things like the ‘Equality and Diversity’ movement which uses the lack of either as the enemy, and the answer is to increase equality and diversity to create some sort of utopian position.

“A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens.”

We have public bodies that state their most important thing is to keep people safe. Risk is the enemy. Safety is the answer. When everything is safe and risk free then that utopia will arrive.

What is curious about all these movements, whilst they do deliver benefits to address certain issues, they all lead to a very unhappy dehumanising outcome. It is usually some dystopian outcome rather than the happy utopia people hope for.

For example, if safety is the priority then we all end up with no freedom to take any risk. Or have any fun for that matter, as fun involves risk. We will walk along streets between barriers to keep us safe, cross in prescribed points, observe rather than interact (too dangerous to interact), and have a body that will enforce the rules in the name of safety. Furthermore, add political correctness into the mix and there’s a recipe for not being able to do anything unless it is deemed ‘safe’ and not being able to express an opinion unless it is deemed ‘politically correct’ or unlikely to offend.

Sound familiar? This is the growing culture in the UK. More safety. More political correctness. More rules. More enforcement. It looks as though the UK is sleepwalking into creating a Marxist culture that hasn’t as far as I have discovered, worked anywhere else in the world. I can’t help feel that when people arrive at this cul-de-sac of stupidity, everyone will wonder how on earth we got there.

Belief systems are rarely questioned, or even known to exist in the first place. For example, if you remove the God of the Bible, another god of naturalism replaces it. Naturalism has it’s starting point of human beings are little more than atoms banging together in accordance to some natural law. Over time, those atoms grouped together and eventually you and I arrived.  Whilst few people are aware of the logical conclusion from this belief system, it’s not great. No good, no evil, love is an illusion, no free will, ‘blind pitiless indifference’. Dog eat dog. Survival of the fittest.  Of course, no one wants to live in accordance to this, so a void of longing is created.

In this void ‘isms’ flow in to fill it. In short, something else becomes a god, something else fills the void, something else becomes ‘the most important thing’.  

I would hazard a guess that 95% of people (completely made up statistic, as 92.5% of statistics are) never question this. I would think that few people stop to even think about what they really believe to be true.

History is littered with things that were accepted as true, only to be proven wrong as the evidence unfolded. It is nearly always a rocky ride for anyone who questions the established ‘truths’ but inevitably the truth will come through. One important note is that evidence rarely speaks on its own, it must be interpreted. It is often a person’s belief system that provides the lens through which that evidence is interpreted.

Such an unfolding truth could explain something that has needed an answer for a long time. It could also be accepting that something has not worked. People arrive at a realisation that attempts to fill the void with a utopian idea never work.

 For example, when safety has become the UK’s ‘god’ and political correctness has reached its pinnacle, people will be increasingly depressed, unhappy, mentally and physically unhealthy and want something else to fill the void. Isn’t this where the UK is at the mo?

As I sit at yet another red traffic light at a junction through which very little flows, looking at ugly metal barriers all around me (some dented and twisted by accidents), the air heavy with fumes of cars and buses that aren’t moving, I can’t quite believe this is the outcome that is good for anyone. Yet nearly £200m has been spent in Norwich making things better, heading towards a utopia of safety which is yet another cul-de-sac of stupidity.