When attractive female pop singers sing songs about exploring lesbianism, they get to pretend that they're fighting for social justice for gays, but they're actually just tapping into the market for porn involving two chicks that a lot of straight guys like. Somehow, I don't foresee the Indigo Girls or K.D. Lang successfully getting in on this trend.
(And, if they're influencing impressionable girls to experiment in this way, they're just opening them up to the same kind of exploitation.)
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
The totalitarian logic of capitalism
Liberal totalitarianism is not limited to left-liberalism. Capitalism works by a similar logic, supplanting custom and culture by creating "needs" that can be exploited for profit.
In both cases, it works because there actually is a real perceived benefit (at least for someone) and the good that's lost is usually lest tangible. The benefit is usually individual; the loss is usually communal. I am freed from dependance on or judgment by others so that I can do more of what I want, but without any need binding us together and without shared expectations of behavior, there's less to bring us together.
In both cases, it works because there actually is a real perceived benefit (at least for someone) and the good that's lost is usually lest tangible. The benefit is usually individual; the loss is usually communal. I am freed from dependance on or judgment by others so that I can do more of what I want, but without any need binding us together and without shared expectations of behavior, there's less to bring us together.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
The clown
In a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they become still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose that the world will be destroyed--amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is a joke. (Kierkegaard, Either/Or I 15)I recently saw some street-corner preachers, holding signs warning people about hell. A few people engaged with them, others just took pictures or laughed. They were clowns.
But really the position of those of us with a more sophisticated Christianity trying to warn the world that Soylent Green is people isn't that different. We're like the clown not only because we appear absurd--warning of doom in the richest society in history--but because, like the clown, our role in the story has been assigned to us and it precludes our warnings being taken seriously. The story is that we're progressing out of the oppression of Christianity. When the Christian warns people where this is going, he may actually be lucky to be brushed off as a clown. The story doesn't have him wearing clown suit, but a Hitler costume. When we tries to speak out, he just ends up reinforcing the story of victimhood that necessitates the further advancement of the cultural left. Is Hitler saying that Planned Parenthood is bad? That just proves that we need to redouble our efforts against Hitler.
I'm not really sure how we get out of the clown suit, much less the Hitler costume.
Friday, August 7, 2015
All speech is hate speech
Words invoke concepts or things, which, to be meaningful, indicate this and not that. So, by they're nature, they exclude.
Somewhere, somehow, your exclusion is oppressing someone.
Stop the hate.
Stop speech.
In silence, there is equality.
(Also, no gestures, writing, thinking, moving, being more or less beautiful or ugly, short or tall, skinny or fat.)
Somewhere, somehow, your exclusion is oppressing someone.
Stop the hate.
Stop speech.
In silence, there is equality.
(Also, no gestures, writing, thinking, moving, being more or less beautiful or ugly, short or tall, skinny or fat.)
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
More sci-fi analogies
Soylent Green is an imperfect analogy--at least as long as our human-flesh-powered prosperity machine keeps humming. What we've got is a sort of combination of A Brave New World and Soylent Green. Life is pleasant in every respect to the point that moral argument against it is difficult--do you not like happiness? There is something deeply unhuman about it, but it is nearly impossible to see or articulate from within that life.
Of course, introducing a secret dark side makes the book less interesting as a moral puzzle, but (at least if you believe in Original Sin) makes it more realistic. These things always have a dark side.
H.G. Wells' Time Machine is another suggestive analogy. We Eloi have a pleasant life. Nothing to complain about. Oh, but we're basically cattle being fattened for slaughter. The difference is that the human race isn't divided (yet?) into Eloi and Morlocks. With apologies to Solzhenitsyn, the line separating Eloi and Morlock cuts through our own hearts.
There are probably more analogies. Cannibalism was once a go to symbol for horror and barbarism--possibility in our future due to the degeneration of Christian society (Soylent Green, Time Machine, Heart of Darkness). Now, it's less and less of a symbol and closer to reality.
All we need now are some sexual degenerates (like Armin "Der Metzgermeister" Meiwes) claiming cannibalism (consensual, of course) is a human right. Then we can frame opposition to cannibalism as anti-science and anti-gay.
Of course, introducing a secret dark side makes the book less interesting as a moral puzzle, but (at least if you believe in Original Sin) makes it more realistic. These things always have a dark side.
H.G. Wells' Time Machine is another suggestive analogy. We Eloi have a pleasant life. Nothing to complain about. Oh, but we're basically cattle being fattened for slaughter. The difference is that the human race isn't divided (yet?) into Eloi and Morlocks. With apologies to Solzhenitsyn, the line separating Eloi and Morlock cuts through our own hearts.
There are probably more analogies. Cannibalism was once a go to symbol for horror and barbarism--possibility in our future due to the degeneration of Christian society (Soylent Green, Time Machine, Heart of Darkness). Now, it's less and less of a symbol and closer to reality.
All we need now are some sexual degenerates (like Armin "Der Metzgermeister" Meiwes) claiming cannibalism (consensual, of course) is a human right. Then we can frame opposition to cannibalism as anti-science and anti-gay.
Monday, August 3, 2015
Soylent Green is people
So, Planned Parenthood, a respectable organization in our society, funded by governments, beloved by everyone with the right opinions, harvests flesh from the unborn children it kills for scientific research so we can have medical advances that will give us a better life.
In short, we're living the plot of Soylent Green.
But Soylent Green isn't the shocking secret ingredient in the cure for our starvation in a post-apocalyptic wasteland; it's a ho-hum part of the economic and technological machine extending our comfort in the most prosperous society in history.
The resulting situation for us would-be Charlton Hestons is eloquently described by Brandon McGinley at First Things. It seems like madness to say that our culture is morally rotten when our life is so pleasant. Rod Dreher expands on this. It's not just the barbarism of Planned Parenthood itself but the lack of reaction to that barbarism from our popular culture that exemplifies the moral insanity of our culture. We no longer have the means to condemn cannibalism. Cannibalism is "gross", but so is surgery. Our disgust instinct has no rational basis. It is simply an obstacle to be overcome so that we're free to manipulate the meat world for the satisfaction of our desired.
(Heck, even in the moral theology class I took in a Catholic college, the professor--an exponent of the standard "liberal" Catholic consequentialism--couldn't condemn anthropophagy, at least in cultures where it was a sign of respect for the dead rather than humiliation of an enemy. Maybe some day the Church will be enlightened enough to embrace ritualized cannibalism as part of an inculturated liturgy!)
When we can't agree on cannibalism--when we can't agree on the harvesting the bodies of our young for medical research--where do we start?
As MacIntyre has accurately described it, the Enlightenment project to base morality on a universal, rational basis is a failure--and, worse than that, it has destroyed what it tried to replace: the shared moral life based in practice of the virtues that is a necessary precondition for any kind of meaningful moral discourse. At this point, it is nothing more than a kind of zombie virus which only serves to infest and consume what remains of meaningful moral communities by providing arguments that allow individuals to opportunistically reject particular traditional moral strictures as oppressive.
When meaningful dialogue is impossible, the only possible response (aside from violence) is a kind of prophetic rebuke.
But if that witness is to be carried on, if a meaningful moral life is to be carried on, then what is most imperative is building of communities that are resistant to the virus.
In short, we're living the plot of Soylent Green.
But Soylent Green isn't the shocking secret ingredient in the cure for our starvation in a post-apocalyptic wasteland; it's a ho-hum part of the economic and technological machine extending our comfort in the most prosperous society in history.
The resulting situation for us would-be Charlton Hestons is eloquently described by Brandon McGinley at First Things. It seems like madness to say that our culture is morally rotten when our life is so pleasant. Rod Dreher expands on this. It's not just the barbarism of Planned Parenthood itself but the lack of reaction to that barbarism from our popular culture that exemplifies the moral insanity of our culture. We no longer have the means to condemn cannibalism. Cannibalism is "gross", but so is surgery. Our disgust instinct has no rational basis. It is simply an obstacle to be overcome so that we're free to manipulate the meat world for the satisfaction of our desired.
(Heck, even in the moral theology class I took in a Catholic college, the professor--an exponent of the standard "liberal" Catholic consequentialism--couldn't condemn anthropophagy, at least in cultures where it was a sign of respect for the dead rather than humiliation of an enemy. Maybe some day the Church will be enlightened enough to embrace ritualized cannibalism as part of an inculturated liturgy!)
When we can't agree on cannibalism--when we can't agree on the harvesting the bodies of our young for medical research--where do we start?
As MacIntyre has accurately described it, the Enlightenment project to base morality on a universal, rational basis is a failure--and, worse than that, it has destroyed what it tried to replace: the shared moral life based in practice of the virtues that is a necessary precondition for any kind of meaningful moral discourse. At this point, it is nothing more than a kind of zombie virus which only serves to infest and consume what remains of meaningful moral communities by providing arguments that allow individuals to opportunistically reject particular traditional moral strictures as oppressive.
When meaningful dialogue is impossible, the only possible response (aside from violence) is a kind of prophetic rebuke.
But if that witness is to be carried on, if a meaningful moral life is to be carried on, then what is most imperative is building of communities that are resistant to the virus.
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