Truth always has to be temporal, does it not? Either it is (ineveitably contingent) truth about temporal existence or it is a truth that exists in the breath of a person for as long as that being is drawing a breath. We know all too well how absolute the latter can be.

Truth can have a social existence. It can be passed from one person to another. In that way it can become eternal. Postmodernists illuminated an eternal truth in explicitly recognizing that individual human beings have the power to decide for themselves what to count as truth or knowledge.

The thing is, we humans are social beings. We therefore have no choice but to act on the basis of some shared understanding, especially when it comes to material reality (which includes the structure and functioning of any given society).

The combination of egoistic individualism as an organizing principle for society and the recognition by individuals of that eternal truth is proving to be disastrous: agreement on any ethic for governing society has become an impossibility, making rule by the most ruthless is the only possible outcome.