I was listening to the radio again where I heard the now familiar phrase “culture war”. I wondered, as always, if this really is anything new. Ever since there were human societies and communities there were struggles over ideas. Struggles because even in the most extreme circumstances humans are still individuals. They may not, in some societies, be individualistic, but they remain individuals. They are human. The degree to which an individual’s own ideas are shaped and determined is and has been hotly debated. The fact remains however that even in a society dominated by a large group of like-minded individuals, there are at least as many who do not align with the dominate group’s ideals.

To say that we are in a culture war, then is a bit superfluous. Or is it? The really incredible news would be that we were not in a culture war. I don’t intend, with a wave of my hand, to make the issues that surround us seem meaningless or without dire consequences. Here comes the irony. What I intend to bring to everyone’s attention is that this is now news. In the West and particularly where I live in North America, we have grown so busy with our busy-ness that we’ve lost sight of our responsibilities as citizens. Like many out there who feel that it is the government’s responsibility to raise the world’s children, we have implicitly made similar statements with regards to the direction of culture and value where we live. We put those decisions into the hands of “people that know better”. But, who are these people? We don’t really know. It is only a hopeful expectation that “everything will be okay”. Maybe it will be okay. Of course, that is dependent upon where you stand when the dust settles on certain issues. Now, the challenge is that if we decide to engage in these issues, do we have the equipment to think carefully about them?