The Age of Absurdity

Something is broken in the way we talk, think, and feel. It is a subtle fracture, a deep cultural decay that manifests in a series of seemingly unrelated, bizarre phenomena. A satirical headline is flagged as “misinformation” because it sounds too plausible. The President of the United States’ casual profanity barely raises an eyebrow.

This is not just sloppy speech; it reflects a poverty of expression, where speakers compensate for limited vocabulary or nuance by co-opting a term of precision for exaggeration. Dictionaries have actually adapted (surrendered?) to this shift: Merriam-Webster, for instance, includes a secondary definition acknowledging “literally” as an intensifier equivalent to “virtually” or “figuratively,” based on widespread informal usage.

These are not isolated quirks; they are symptoms of a semantic apocalypse, a moment where the symbols and language that structure our reality have become unmoored from anything real.

This decay is pushing us through a destructive cycle of exaggeration, inversion, and desensitization. The once-clear distinctions between absurdity and reality, restraint and excess, have blurred into an unrecognizable mess.

As a result, our communication is losing its power to convey truth, our emotions demand ever-greater and more primitive outlets, and our society is spiraling toward a coarseness and barbarism that feels eerily reminiscent of the historical decline of ancient Rome.

When Reality Kills the Joke

Satire used to be a cultural scalpel, thriving on exaggeration to expose folly, relying on a shared understanding of what constitutes the “absurd” versus the “rational.” However, in contemporary culture—particularly amid extreme ideological expressions on the political left (e.g., “Woke” behaviors)—this line has dissolved. Attempts to parody, say, demands for “safe spaces” from microaggressions or redefinitions of gender norms often fail because real-world examples mirror the parody so closely that audiences mistake satire for sincere advocacy.

This is not mere coincidence; it is a symptom of a society where ideological fervor normalizes the bizarre, rendering irony impotent. Poe’s Law—the internet adage that extreme views cannot be parodied without being mistaken for the real thing—encapsulates this perfectly, as the absurd has become mainstream, leaving no room for rhetorical distance.

Actually, the absurd has not only become mainstream; it has become a protected, and often celebrated, ideology.

The Inflation of Outrage

There was a time when obscenity was a linguistic nuclear option. Its power came from its rarity, its transgression of a clear social contract of restraint. That time is gone. Donald Trump’s casual and frequent deployment of profanity in public fora is a stark example of how this restraint has evaporated, even at the highest levels of authority.

When such language is normalized by leaders, it inevitably cascades downward, permeating all levels of society and cheapening obscenity’s currency. What was once shocking becomes commonplace, and what was once a marker of extreme emphasis becomes mere conversational filler.

This linguistic inflation forces a dangerous escalation. If profane language, once the verbal equivalent of a slap in the face, becomes everyday parlance, individuals seeking to convey genuine intensity must resort to stronger expressions. This often leads to the use of more targeted slurs, dehumanizing language, overt threats, or, ultimately, physical violence.

The result is a coarsening of public life, visible in the vitriol of online comment sections and the increasing frequency of public confrontations, where the guardrails of civil discourse have been completely dismantled.

The Post-Truth Dictionary

A word meant to signify absolute truth—”literally”—is now routinely used to mean its exact opposite. It denotes exact, non-metaphorical truth—a boundary marker for precise communication. Its modern misuse, where it amplifies hyperbole (e.g., “I literally died laughing” to mean intense amusement without actual death), inverts this meaning entirely.

This is not just sloppy speech; it reflects profound poverty of expression, where speakers, unable to convey emotional weight through nuanced vocabulary, co-opt a term of precision for the sole purpose of exaggeration. That major dictionaries now include a secondary definition of “literally” as an intensifier is not a validation of its new meaning, but rather a documentation of its corruption.

This linguistic decay is a symptom of a “post-truth” mindset, where the boundary between objective fact and subjective feeling is intentionally blurred. Like the debasement of obscenity, this corruption erodes the foundational boundaries of language and signals a broader cultural laziness in upholding semantic integrity. When the very word meant to anchor us to reality is used to describe a fiction, we lose a critical tool for distinguishing truth from exaggeration.

The Endless Search for a Thrill

Societies immersed in hedonism, as was the case in late-stage ancient Rome, inevitably experience diminishing returns on pleasure. What once thrilled required constant escalation to maintain its stimulating effect—a spiral that culminated in widespread violence and social decay. Today, the West mirrors this trajectory. The ubiquity of online pornography desensitizes intimacy, pushing consumers toward ever more extreme content. Social media platforms, engineered to deliver dopamine hits from outrage, demand ever-more polarizing and shocking content to keep users engaged.

This feedback loop, where eroded boundaries necessitate greater transgressions to evoke feeling, fosters a form of cultural barbarism as the ultimate outlet. Consumer excess breeds a profound boredom, pushing individuals toward thrill-seeking in political extremism, destructive social trends, or real-world violence. When all lesser boundaries have been crossed, the final frontiers of transgression—violence, cruelty, and self-destruction—become normalized as the only remaining avenues for potent experience.

We Are What We Worship

Unifying these phenomena is a profound cultural inversion: the systematic breakdown and reversal of the distinctions that once anchored human expression in truth and restraint. This is an holistic decay, driven by philosophical currents where objective meaning dissolves into subjective hyperbole, amplified by technology that structurally rewards extremes. The outcome is what one ancient text might call a society of “dead stones”—lifeless, unfeeling, and prone to violence as the final, crude means of assertion.

The Torah offers a timeless and startlingly relevant antidote to this decay. Psalms 115 and 135 both declare, “Those who fashion them [idols], all who trust in them, shall become like them.” This is a profound psychological and spiritual diagnosis: people conform to what they worship.

Idols, described as mute, blind, and lifeless stones, are the ultimate symbol of empty, man-made constructs. When a society idolizes fleeting and empty excesses—ideological absurdities, profane language, hyperbolic expression—it takes on the characteristics of those idols, becoming similarly inert, desensitized, and barbaric.

The prescription, then, is to consciously reject these modern “idols” by recentering on principles of precision, restraint, and vitality. Torah advises sparing one’s words to preserve their value, a direct counter-mandate to the culture of hyperbole. It calls for holiness, which is achieved through separation and distinction—the active, disciplined practice of not blurring lines. It warns against altering foundational truths, symbolizing the need for fidelity to an objective standard of meaning.

Practically, this means cultivating habits that actively build and reinforce boundaries. It means fostering communities grounded in ethical absolutes, not relativism.

By trusting in something vital and living rather than in dead, empty idols, individuals and societies can regain life—restoring satire’s critical bite, obscenity’s prohibitive weight, and language’s foundational precision.

As King David says, transformation begins inwardly. To heal our culture, we must first decide what is worth worshiping.