What we have at present in our country is a ‘dialog of the deaf’. A group of eight to ten friends recently considered the failure of communication between Americans. I mean between those who believe a bygone way-of-life, paternalist, authority based, moral principles as reasonable, the only option for creating a future – and those who oppose them. It is as if we live in separate realities, worlds apart…

Words written in 1881 by Nietzsche accurately sketch the profiles of two communities, highlighting the disparity between their sense of ‘reality.’ Of particular note, the writer is resistant to taking a side, intends only to show the root and essence of the separate worlds…

THE CONSERVATIVES

That old form of thinking,
however, was thought within
the bounds of morality,
and for it nothing existed
but fixed judgments and established facts,
and it had no reasons
but those of authority.

Thinking, therefore,
was simply a matter of repetition,
and all the enjoyment of speech and dialogue
could only lie
in their form.

THE WOKE

…ardent and presumptuous people.

Such people are pleased
by whatever stands out boldly
from the normal:

their more subtle ambition
leads them to believe
only too readily
that
they are exceptional souls,

…let us say, “intuitive” beings
gifted
with an “inner sense,”
or with a certain “intellectual perception.”

Above all, however,
They wish to be “artistic natures”
with a genius in their heads,
and a demon in their bodies,

and consequently
with special rights in this world
and in the world to come
—especially the divine privilege
of being incomprehensible.

I fear they will discover one day
that they have made a mistake
—what they are looking for is religion!

The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by J. M. Kennedy, aphorism 544

What am I to conclude given the circumstances of irreconcilable attitudes and ideas, without a courtyard of shared space?

I think that silence, the mute confession that I do not know what ought to be thought, or ought to be done – is the case I must make.

But – given the acceleration, and the devastating throw-weight of climate warming we must reconcile ourselves, if life on earth is to have a future at all.