The following quotations (with my emphases in bold) are about the effects of “phenomenalism” on our souls, the belief that individual events or details are all that compose reality.  Phenomenalism (as used by this author) means that there are no unifying principles of being, no “substances” indicated by the disconnected bits of data we observe.

In a world that has become “phenomenally obsessed”, we believe …

… what can be done should be done.  As a consequence, we must observe the transplantation and destruction of whole populations, the machine-gunning of fleeing civilians, terror-bombing and pulverization of towns, and the horrors of extermination camps.  The tools cease to be simple instruments of execution in the service of substantial purposes and gain a momentum of their own that bends the purposes to the technical possibilities.

In other words, if we don’t perceive an end or a structure that rises above mere abilities or desires, we become monsters.  The disconnected things we do become our masters.

There is the most intimate connection between the comic strip and the concentration camp.  The man who runs away from an invasion from Mars [as in The War of the Worlds broadcast panic] because the comic strip and the broadcast have decomposed his personality and the SS man who garrotes a prisoner without compunction because he [the SS man] is dead to the meaning of his action in the order of spiritual reality are really brothers under the skin.

And close kin to “gay marriage” advocates, I would add.

“Gay marriage” is simply phenomenalism applied to the family.  There always have been and always will be “gay” people.  There always have been and always will be various “paraphilias”, or what used to be called perversions.  There is no “substance” to love or sex or marriage.  They are all mere phenomena, things people do.

But the irony is that if that’s all there is, mere phenomena, then we inevitably are slaves to these disconnected acts of ours.  “What can be done must be done”.  If two men are willing to engage in anal sex and call that an act of love and marriage, then we must concede, in the same way that if we can equip drones with nuclear warheads, we eventually “must” do so.

We are forced to swallow the lie of “gay marriage” in the same way that we are forced to swallow the “global economy” or tanks in Ferguson or concentration camps or Donald Trump or Hilary Clinton or college students offended by professors and demanding that they be fired.  We just do what we do.  There is no unifying principle.  It is all phenomena, no substance.

Every thing you do with your genitals is OK.  Only mutual consent restrains you legally, and that’s only by a kind of social contract, not by any true underlying principle.

“It’s all good”.  Because there is no good.

And …

Phenomenalism has gone further toward transforming our society into the combination of a slaughter house with a booby hatch than many contemporaries are still sane enough to realize.

… these are all from Eric Voegelin, The History of Political Ideas, Volume VII.  This is a textbookhe wrote!  Imagine if all textbooks were this much fun!