Read Chapter 1

Carl Trueman

Lesson Progress

0% Complete

Read chapter 1. Welcome to This Strange New World in Strange New World. (If you’ve not purchased it yet, you can do so here.)

Here are some quotes to consider:

“Welcome to this strange new world. You may not like it. But it is where you live, and therefore it is important that you try to understand it.” (20)

Here’s a scene from The Matrix, to which Dr. Trueman refers in chapter 1. What similarities can you find between what the character Morpheus is telling Neo and what Trueman is writing about in his book?

“The modern self assumes the authority of inner feelings and sees authenticity as defined by the ability to give social expression to the same. The modern self also assumes that society at large will recognize and affirm this behavior. Such a self is defined by what is called expressive individualism.” (22)

“…the sexual revolution does not simply represent a growth in the routine transgression of traditional sexual codes or even a modest expansion of the boundaries of what is and is not acceptable sexual behavior. Not at all. Rather, it is the repudiation of the very idea of such codes in their entirety.” (25)

This clip shows some of the impact of the 1960s sexual revolution in terms of music and fashion. This newfound “sexual freedom” became widely reflected in culture as people began to experiment with sex and drugs in order to push against societal norms.

“[Charles Taylor points out] that human beings do not typically think about themselves and the world they inhabit in consistently self-conscious terms. Rather, we imagine it to be in certain ways—physically and indeed morally.” (27)

“…a complex set of factors, from philosophy to technology to pop culture, shape the way we intuitively think about sex. Indeed, they shape the way we think about the world in general and our place within it. And that is why thinking about our situation in terms of the social imaginary is so helpful. In short, it deals with us as we are and not simply as beings constituted by a set of disembodied ideas. We do not so much think about the world as we intuitively relate to it.” (29)

Take the quiz below to mark this step complete.

Quizzes

Quiz on Welcome to This Strange New World