Why are relationships so difficult in this time?

We live in a culture of separation, and there is also something more insidious, more deliberate.

Charles Eisenstein speaks of the Age of Separation, an excursion of our culture that has lasted thousands of years. We are stretched to the breaking point, an extreme that is so far from all that is wholesome and natural that our world is on the brink of collapse.

In many native and traditional cultures, there is a welcoming place for every person in community. Family relationships are better supported and more robust. Living in connection is easy and natural. Historically, our modern age is one in which the cultures of separation are the most violent and the most successful at subduing other, more cooperative cultures. This is why, as global communications have homogenized world cultures, the values of connection and sharing are being swallowed by the culture of separateness.

It gets worse. Of late, there has been a deliberate assault on all the institutions that connect us. Family, religion, theater, music – all these have been targeted by globalists who want to be the sole object of our fealty. Pandemic rules have closed the churches where we gather and shuttered the theaters and concert halls that bring us together for a collective experience of art. Classrooms with genuine give-and-take have been replaced by Zoom meetings, and consultations with artificial intelligence have substituted for discussions between humans.

Official lies, lies that claim the mantle of “science” are diabolically destructive of our relationships. We have all been trapped in a double bind. The most altruistic, the most communal people have been seduced by the message that isolation is the community-minded thing to do, that poisoning ourselves with new and hastily-tested medicines is a reasonable and necessary safeguard for the health of all. These are the Good People, successful and well-educated, the people who go to work each morning and keep the world going. It is natural for them to trust the institutions they have relied on professionally, institutions that appear to have earned their trust.

The Good People have been targeted, exploited, and duped. They believe in the goodness of humanity and the potential for government to soften the hard edges of capitalism. Theirs is the vision of FDR – that government can act on behalf of the commonweal to care for those who need care. They are not naive, but nor are they cynical. The idea that their government, universities, the liberal press could all be conspiring to tell deadly lies is beyond their conception. Who wants to live in a world where such evil lurks? Not just lurking but reigning in darkness.

Those who see through the propaganda are generally more individualistic in their outlook. Some are renegade intellectuals, but many are not intellectual at all, just working people with a healthy skepticism for authority. It has been easy to brand them as not very smart, or selfish, or even a threat to the common good. Those who propagate and benefit from the lies of the establishment are deliberately sowing conflict, driving wedges into our political culture in order to “divide and conquer”.

Government and media monopolies have maintained the illusion that “the science” supports these cruelly isolating strategies. Many scientists were paid directly to find what their sponsors want them to find; but censorship has also been essential to maintaining the illusion of consensus. Wearing masks and staying at home slowed the spread of the virus, but eventually, everyone was exposed and by now, everyone vulnerable to COVID has been infected. True scientists who understand that the masks and closures had no lasting benefit, who understand that isolation itself is corrosive to our health, are silenced and canceled, de-platformed and shadow-banned.

The Good People who go along with the lies genuinely believe they are supporting public health. Their community is strong. The renegades and dissenters have been excluded from that community, and they have trouble connecting with one another. The lines between these two groups go right through every neighborhood, every congregation, every family. They are ripping us apart. They are destroying our relationships.

Come, bring your truth to our meeting, as I
Shall bring my own. With curiosity
And eagerness to learn, mutually
Willing to allow parts of us to die—

We cannot survive this time without change
We only change by one another’s prompt
As individuals, we’re helpless, swamped
By world events; networks extend our range.

In our surrender, we will find, we trust
Our place in a reality far larger;
Though it cannot be quick or smooth or clean
We know that we are acting as we must
Preparing for our imminent departure,
We spurn convention that we might be seen.

Embedded in the propaganda is the message that all those opposing it are evil or stupid. The educated professionals, people with liberal, communal values have been told that they must not engage with the dissenters. Thus the discussions that might reconcile our differences are not happening.

Husband and wife, parent and child, lover and beloved, neighbor and neighbor – we are being split asunder. Listening and discussing and exchange of perspectives would provide a natural door to reunion, and this door has been bolted shut.

This cannot be a permanent situation. True science will be an antidote to “the science”. Truth will prevail. It always does. Sooner or later, the perspectives must be reconciled; we will welcome our neighbors and our loved ones home in a million tearful reunions.

But in the meantime, we endure the division and we find relationship where we can, tragically confined to these artificial tribes.