The following excerpt was written by Mark Meckler and Jakob Fay and first published on The Epoch Times. Click here to read the entire article there!Picture today’s quintessential TikTok star with her (or is it “zer”?) unheard-of gender identity, unpronounceable pronouns, and glorified mental illness.Picture those “woke” college professors who rail against “anti-messiness,” “pro-niceness,” and organized pantries.Listen to modern relationship “experts” who basically just say ignore all traditional mores, be as promiscuous as possible, never get married, and never have kids.What do all of these people have in common? What binds them all with one unifying worldview?In a word, transgression, the doctrine of transgression.In 2023 left-wing America, transgression is all the rage. Personal autonomy has been unmoored from reality, and now we’re free to pursue authenticity at the expense of tradition and order. Anything that stands in the way of that pursuit must be cast down. Anything that dares impede on the deified self is called repressive and evil, and therefore, to transgress it—whether it be a social or religious standard, norm, or expectation—is seen as inherently virtuous. SEE ALSO: Elon Musk recommends ‘What is a Woman?’ after Twitter controversy So influential is this transgressive school of thought that social critics have coined the term “transgressivism” as the up-and-coming substitute for progressivism.As defined by commentator Ben Shapiro, transgressivism is the “philosophy of identity [that] revolves around … destroying the boundaries and roles and rules of social acceptability, all in the name of ‘liberating’ the passions.”It’s an ideology that involves the rejection of all norms (societal, cultural, religious, moral, and artistic). It explains moral decay, pervasive libertinism, radical gender ideology, the rise of religious “nones,” declining birth rates, decadence, and so much more about modernity.Transgressivism’s only standard is authenticity. Its only regulatory principle is consent. As long as no one is harmed (this is where consent comes into play) and the self is appeased, nothing can possibly be wrong.Except, of course, for anything that implicates the individual of wrongdoing, anything that suggests that man should suppress and control his appetitive soul. The virtue isn’t in transgressing for the sake of transgressing, although it often appears that way. The virtue is in being true to one’s own self.Transgressing societal norms, standards, expectations, and traditions are merely seen as steps in the noble pursuit of being true to one’s own self. They’re obstacles that must be overcome.In other words, when authenticity is god, transgression is a necessary sacrament.Click here to read the rest of the article!Mark Meckler is president of Convention of States. Jakob Fay is a staff writer for the Convention of States.
