Mass media has triggered a Civil War in the West. The war is between what I refer to as Cosmopolitans and Essentialists. Each represents a view of the world that can not be reconciled with the other.

These views existed before the Civil War, so mass media isn't exactly the culprit. It's just increased the flow of information so drastically, that all the issues that can be resolved will be resolved. The issues that can't be resolved will escalate.

These escalated issues are beginning to draw a pretty clear picture. If you look closely, you will see one single disagreement at the root of them all.

Cosmopolitans view human beings as lacking an essence. The human must be properly shaped to create the ideal world. The Essentialists view human beings as having an essence. The ideal World should be shaped around this essence.

These two perspectives can not be reconciled, and their consequences account for nearly all the fronts of this Civil War.

What I mean by essence, is some unalterable, inherent aspect of a person. Hunger, for instance, is part of the essence. You can't really shape it, you can't avoid it, you can't teach it away. Most importantly, you can't get rid of it.

The world has to be shaped around the fact of hunger. Food must be created, distributed, and consumed. If you propose any change to the world that violates that fact, you are talking nonsense.

Now let's go beyond hunger to something more abstract: the value of human life. Cosmopolitans and Essentialists hold what seem to be contradictory beliefs on the subject.

Cosmopolitans generally believe that abortion is okay, but the death penalty is not. Essentialists, the opposite. If you look at this from how views on the human essence manifest, it makes sense.

If you believe that the human essence exists and is generally unalterable, you would view a fetus as a life worth preserving. The essence is unalterable, merely being in the womb doesn't change that. So killing that fetus is equivalent to murder.

As for the death penalty, a person sentenced to death has proven that they are bad. Their essence is bad, and it won't change to be good. So killing them is justified.

From the Cosmopolitan's perspective, the fetus hasn't yet been shaped into anything. So it lacks any essence, and thus lacks any value. It's "just a clump of cells".

But for the man on death row, he was merely shaped incorrectly. The forces that shaped him were at fault, and he could be reshaped into something better. So it's not justified to kill him.