Note 4: What is the "Major Fact of Our Time"?

How we live on the surface

Photo by YUCAR FotoGrafik on Unsplash

In my opening article I laid out my case for looking beneath appearances as the mission of this newsletter, but I did not quote the passage from Ellul that inspired this thesis.

Here is what Ellul says in Presence in the Modern World:

In the sphere of intellectual life, the major fact of our time is a kind of unconscious but widely shared refusal to grasp the real situation that the world reveals. People refuse to see what truly constitutes our world. While this is especially true of individuals, it is also true of all people of our day and of our civilization as a whole. It is as though an enormous machine had been designed to keep people from becoming aware, to propel them into unconscious rejection or a flight into unreality. The grave characteristic of this era on this level is that people no longer grasp anything but appearances. They believe in appearances, they live within them, and they die for them. Reality disappears, the reality of people in themselves and the actual things surrounding them. (65)

Perhaps the most important thing in this passage is that Ellul primarily has intellectuals—including academics like myself—in mind. Those engaged in the “intellectual life” aren’t dealing with the “real situation that the world reveals” he says. He calls this “the major fact of our time.” Which raises (not begs) the question, what are we dealing with?