Pass it on
The tragedy of our situation today is that men and women are being fundamentally affected by the new way of looking at truth, and yet they have never even analyzed the drift which has taken place.
The Drift
Young people from Christian homes are brought up in the old framework of truth. They are taught that truth is objective, transcendent, and accessible to reason. That words mean things. That a claim can be evaluated against reality, not merely against feeling. That coherence is not a privilege but a standard. Then they leave those homes, and without announcement or warning, they are subjected to the modern framework.
The modern framework does not argue with the old one. It simply replaces it. In the classroom, the teacher stops asking "what is true?" and starts asking "what do you think?" as though the two questions were interchangeable. In the newsroom, every claim is balanced by its opposite regardless of the evidence, and the imbalance is called fairness. In ordinary conversation, the phrase "true for you" is deployed as a form of intellectual hospitality when it is actually a quiet demolition of the very concept of truth. The old framework is not defeated in open debate. It is moved out of while its occupants are still asleep.
Why No One Saw It Coming
The drift was never announced. It did not arrive with a manifesto or a revolution or a clearly demarcated change of regime. It arrived in the subtle redefinition of words that once meant something fixed into words that now mean whatever the speaker needs them to mean. It arrived in the shift from "is this true?" to "does this feel true to you?" A shift of five words, but a shift between two entirely different worlds.
Because no one named the transition as a transition, those raised in the old framework never knew they were being relocated. They still speak the language of objective truth while everyone around them has switched to the grammar of personal narrative. They are trying to play chess on a board that has become something else entirely, and nobody told them the rules changed. And because they do not know the rules changed, they cannot articulate why they keep losing.
Confusion becomes bewilderment, and before long they are overwhelmed.
What Bewilderment Looks Like
The bewildered person cannot say what is wrong. They only know that something is. They sense that the world has become slippery beneath their feet, but they lack the vocabulary to describe the slip. They have been taught to trust reason, but reason is now called "your truth" and treated as a bias. They have been taught to seek coherence, but coherence is now called "privilege" and dismissed as oppression. They have been taught that words mean things, but words are now coins that change value depending on who spends them.
And because they never learned to name the drift, they cannot name the injury. They only know they are overwhelmed. They sit in classrooms and coffee shops and workplaces feeling that something foundational has been removed, but unable to identify what it was or when it left. The bewilderment is not a failure of intelligence. It is a failure of vocabulary. The framework they were given did not include words for the framework they were moved into.
The Two Frameworks
The old framework held that truth was discovered, not created. That it existed prior to human preference and made claims on everyone equally. That a statement could be true regardless of who believed it, and false regardless of how many people affirmed it. The modern framework holds that truth is constructed, negotiated, and personal. That it emerges from culture, power, and individual experience. That what is true for one person may not be true for another, and that this is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be celebrated.
These are not minor differences of emphasis. They are incompatible accounts of what the word "true" even means. In the old framework, "true" is an attribute of a proposition; it describes the relationship between a statement and reality. In the modern framework, "true" is an attribute of a person; it describes the authenticity of their experience. The same word now does two entirely different jobs, and the confusion this creates is not accidental. It is structural.
The Cost of Not Naming It
To analyze the drift is not to stop it. But it is to see it. And seeing it is the first condition for any meaningful response. The person who knows they have crossed from one framework to another can at least choose whether to stay in the new one or fight their way back. The person who does not know they have crossed is simply carried along by currents they mistake for solid ground.
They are not rejecting the old framework. They are losing it without knowing they had it. And that is the true tragedy: not that the old way of looking at truth was defeated in open argument, but that it was abandoned without a fight because no one even realized the battle had started. The soldiers were still standing at their posts, but the territory had already changed hands.
The drift continues. The bewilderment deepens. And those of us who can name it have an obligation not merely to observe, but to build the vocabulary that lets others see what was taken from them while they were not looking. The first step toward recovery is not argument. It is recognition. The second step is not persuasion. It is the patient work of rebuilding a framework that was dismantled while its inheritors were told nothing had changed.