From Polarization to Paradox: Entering the Field of Value: Value Is Prior to Values, Meaning Is Prior to Meanings

We live in a world of outrageous pain. Postmodernity-with its correct critique of pre-modernity's often fundamentalist and dogmatic stories about value-has deconstructed value and said value is not real. At the same time, regressive religious fundamentalism is on the rise all through the world. Fundamentalism, like post-modernism, says there is no universal Field of Value. Instead, it claims that value is mediated only through its particular prism of revelation. Outrageous pain is caused when we fail to recognize that we are all in a shared Field of Value.

In the absence of a shared Field of Value, individual values are decontextualized from the Field of Value. Any value or goal, taken by itself and transformed into an absolute becomes first extremist, then absurd, then grotesque and then potentially evil. The chosen value becomes not only an idolatrous commitment but the core of our identity, thus, no relationship with any other value is truly possible. And that identity of value becomes narcissistic and therefore incapable of authentic relationship with other value identities.

In this book, we look at multiple contexts of this dynamic of value-idolatry and polarization which generate outrageous pain. Some of these contexts include the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade case on abortion, as well as conversations around immigration, federal elections, name defamation on Twitter feeds and more.

The only response to outrageous pain is Outrageous Love. In response to outrageous pain the moral imperative of today is to tell the Outrageous Love story of Reality.

Reality is an Outrageous Love Story, rooted in First Principles and First Values. When we locate ourselves within a shared Field of Value and a shared grammar of value, we understand that what unites us is so much greater than what divides us.