In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus teaches us,
(NIV) "37 … 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
This has sometimes been called the "Shamah".
From time to time, I like to discuss religion and other related topics with a hard-core atheist beatnik named Michael who likes to prowl Old Town Pasadena. One day we were discussing the Shamah, and Michael said that he thought that the verse concerning loving one's neighbor as oneself allowed for a narcissistic interpretation. He asked about the child molester who interprets the verse as a license to pleasure a child as he pleasures himself.
Michael's critique is ridiculous, but it raises interesting questions about the verse that I want to explore. The passage is based on the premise that we all, on some level, pursue our own self-interest with all of our heart soul mind and strength, and we all know it. Since the passage begins with the command to love God, I want to examine the command to love God from the perspective of our self-interest, which will bring light to what the passage means when it commands us to love ones neighbor as oneself. As I will attempt to explain, there are many facets of what it means to operate with the force of “all our heart, soul, mind and strength”.
We are to operate in an enlightened self-interest with respect to God, pursing God with all of heart, soul, mind and strength. It is casting our full self-interest onto God, giving him final authority, that we succeed in loving God and placing faith in him. We naturally pursue our own self-interest as we perceive it with a forceful investment of heart, soul, mind, cunning and strength. It takes an exceedingly extra application of our resources to consciously redirect those onto God in a relationship with Him, and it is this conscious redirection of our self-interest away from our attempts at Godless self-management that will take all of our heart soul mind and strength. It is when we succeed in connecting to God that we will actually operate in what is truly our self interest in the long run – thereby advancing our enlightened self-interest.
Now, in examining “Love your neighbor as yourself”. There is an aspect of this that is patently obvious – we all pursue our self interest with great force, whether we are doing it in a Godly way or not. The verse is intended to help us call attention to what we all know that we do and is calling us to invest the exceedingly greater investment of our resources to pursue the self-interest of others with the same degree of force that we apply to the advancement of our own self-interest. It is intended to jar us out of our self-evident selfishness.
Now if you only read the second verse and did not place it hierarchically under the first and did properly contextualize it with the rest of Scripture, you could twist it into pursing the ungodly self-interest of others with the same force as you pursue it for yourself. If you were really perverted, you could twist it even further into conflating pleasure with self-interest and therefore should please others as you do yourself. And if you were really, really perverted, you could twist it even further into the idea that you were being called to give other’s pleasure in the same manner that you give yourself pleasure – and on your terms. Needless to say, you would need to twist the verse quite a bit to use it to justify child molestation.
So lets untwist the verse to what it really means, placing it properly in hierarchy under the first – it means to pursue the Godly self-interest of others with the same force that you pursue your own Godly self-interest, employing all of your heart, soul, mind and strength in the endeavor. Now there is another pitfall in understanding the Shamah – far more subtle that the molester ---- one that Christians are more prone to fall into. It is the idea that the particular thread of God’s ministry to oneself is necessarily the exact same thread of ministry that God has intended for another person.
With this fallacy, one interprets the second half of the Shamah that we are to pursue the Godly self-interest of others employing the same ministry strategies, ideas, vocabulary, timing that were successful in our own discipleship. In fact, there is a great gap that we must cross to get from advancing our own Godly self-interest to advancing the Godly self-interest of another person with the same force and effectiveness. We must come out from the poverty in our understanding of another person, understanding that particular person's unique background, experiences and needs – and seeking to unravel the mystery of what God’s doing in that person – and in the culture/cultures that they belong to. It is overcoming this poverty of understanding that the Shamah places an often overlooked claim on our resources --- we are to love our neighbor with all of our heart soul mind and strength. Specifically, we are to employ the full force of our resources to understand and participate in God’s unique thread of ministry to that person and to the environment that person is operating in.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
But it's natural
This past week, I’ve been composing another response to an objection to my call to modesty that I make in A Crisis of Modesty in the Evangelical Church , which is organized around a long series of objections that have come from fellow Christians. Soon, I am going to post an updated version of a Crisis of Modesty in the Evangelical Church with this response added along with a couple of other things added.
“But sexual desire is natural”
The battle for “natural” is a thread that runs through this whole discussion on modesty.
For someone to state that a person’s behavior is “natural” is for that person to offer their moral philosophy without admitting it. In the realm of human behavior, “natural” is a word that people use to assign an idea of good to something but they don’t want to admit their complicity in making a statement of faith or value. Instead, one calls it “natural” in order to give the idea that something else outside of his/her own value judgment, has imbued it with goodness, inevitability and necessary for instantiation. If something is “natural” it is therefore immoral and/or impossible not to have, and not having it violates our innate human design, producing unhappiness and conflict.
Depending on ones metaphysical understanding, “natural” can mean a vast array of things. Depending on how one looks at “natural”, even technology can be natural outworking of humanity. If one is saying, “Sexual desire is natural” as an objection to this criticism of public sexual tease and titillation, the idea of “natural” being defended is that lust is good or at least thoroughly inevitable human reality. Here, A) the desire on the part of men to look is natural and B) the desire of women to show is “natural” and that any outworking of A) and B) in fashion trends is therefore a natural as a good and/or inevitable and unstoppable thing.
As I mentioned earlier in this pamphlet, street postmodernists do not believe that we have an eternal self that is accountable to God’s claims on our sexuality. Rather, they have a Freudian idea that our authentic self is the Id that needs to come out from under the attempts to suppress and repress it. This Freudian idea operates in what can be described as a street postmodernist “reduction sauce” that has reduced many 20th century philosophies – ranging from Freud to Positivism to Deconstruction to Feminism to Marxism and Critical Theory— to a fundamental worship of nature, as nature expresses itself through the id, individually and collectively.
Street postmodernists do not worship the Id/Nature as a traditional deity that provides a path to eternal life of the soul. However, they do elevate the Id/Nature as the path to maximum wisdom and happiness in this short life that we have on earth. The metaphysical idea behind this is that Nature was “impregnated” with the fortuitous accident of circumstances to produce human experience as a reality that operates thoroughly outside of any higher Divine law. Nature—as nature is expressed through the unfolding of human desire via our DNA— is the path to the wisdom of our accidental creation. The role of humans is to sublimate the inclinations of our ego and super-ego that would get in the way of the id’s wisdom.
In all that is mysterious, unknowable and fecund, the Female takes priority as the seat of ultimate wisdom, as the unchanging fulcrum on which all weak and transitory “phallic” ideas of truth perish. This fulcrum is what the deconstructionist philosopher Derrida referred to as the “Hymen” as a metaphor borrowed from female genitalia. This is part of the idea that the Female, as the pulsating motion of mystery and nature, operates beyond the realm of any higher law.
For street postmodernists, the Female is the source of wisdom, and the Id of actual females is understood as having special “priestess” power to channel wisdom of the Id. Maleness, as it is defined philosophically as the quest for truth and the reification of law, is seen as obtrusive to the wisdom of the Female and must be suppressed as a force in the collective consciousness to make way for the Id. Actual men must give up the Male find redemption as the dutiful servant of the Female. Men can organize their aggression not around the Male but around the worship of the Female via a machismo, a male aggression that is relegated to performance and spectacle and is denuded of moral authority.
As a topless pantheistic tribe has a more communal and less private experience of female sexuality to complement its theology of Nature/goddesses, so too does a street postmodernist society have a public, communal experience of female sexuality that compliments the street postmodernist metaphysical understanding of the Female. In street postmodernist society, the awe of the Female must over-ride the Male, so sexuality of females is harnessed subjugate and envelope the Maleness of men in a gauzy haze of disposable sexual thrill and pseudo-validation.
Complementing the visual subjugation of men, Street postmodernism is compelled to silence any assertion of the Male by saying “who’s to say” which means “who are you the lone individual to say?” Though it may seem counterintuitive, this is fruit from the same intellectual tree as women who declare “I’m always right!” as the basis of their relationships with men. Both assertions are appeals to the wisdom of the Id. It is these ideas of the Male as being anything but a source of gentle dominion that have characterized Feminism and have characterized the Politically Correct Street postmodernism that has applied feminism in the realm of social taboos and relationships.
In an effort to not be legalistic, which can be defined as a wooden and inept attempt to apply the Male, many Christians have syncretized Christianity with street postmodernism’s elevation of the Female. The problem with this approach to confronting legalism is that it Christians are actually syncretizing a form of Id-worshipping pantheism to their Christianity. It is this street postmodernist Id-worshipping pantheism that makes claims on what is “natural” that are in direct contradiction to what Scripture defines as natural.
It is “New Testament 101” to say that Paul discusses our old man and our new man, the former being our self that is in bondage to sin and the latter being are true authentic self in Christ (… it is not me but sin within me…). Encapsulated in this passage is Scriptures organization of “natural” into what is “archnatural”/unfallen and what is sinful/fallen.
For a Christian to employ a Street postmodernist idea of “natural” is to flatten the hierarchy of old man and new man, lowering the status of what Scripture says is archnatural and raising the status of what Scripture says is sin.
When Jesus says in John that we are to “worship in Spirit and in Truth” Jesus is recognizing that what we consider to be deeply and fundamentally true will be what we worship. Jesus’ call to “worship and Spirit and in Truth” is a claim that Jesus makes on our efforts to understand what is true, particularly in those realms of understanding that intersect with our feelings. To fulfill Jesus claim on our hearts and minds, we must take all of our feelings captive to see how we are justifying them, and examine those justifications carefully in the light of Scripture.
Dealing with the anatomy of Godly and ungodly sexual desire would take a much longer essay. Suffice to say that there is a form of sexual desire that is consistent with God’s claim on our hearts. It is the nature of the cut-to the core intensity of sexual desire as God has designed it that it is idolatrous if it is not submitted to God. No fleeting feeling of horniness is to escape our scrutiny because every feeling carries a justification with it, and with every justification comes a larger system of belief that the justification appeals to. Every feeling is connected to a larger thought system as mushrooms on the ground are connected to the rhizome underneath.
It is a pastor’s role to judiciously and carefully employ the Male, which in the context of Scripture is the truth of Scripture, as a shepherd uses the staff to guide sheep. It is street postmodernism that seeks to employ the idea of “natural” as it defines “natural” within its metaphysic to elevate the Female and emasculate the Male from the pastor. In regard to modesty, many Christians have allowed themselves to employ street postmodernist ideas to confront modesty legalism. The consequence of Christians defending women from modesty legalism in this manner is that they have also defended street postmodernism. In doing so, many Christians have defended the culture of disposable sexual experience and have introduced a doctrinal gangrene into their Christianity.
“But sexual desire is natural”
The battle for “natural” is a thread that runs through this whole discussion on modesty.
For someone to state that a person’s behavior is “natural” is for that person to offer their moral philosophy without admitting it. In the realm of human behavior, “natural” is a word that people use to assign an idea of good to something but they don’t want to admit their complicity in making a statement of faith or value. Instead, one calls it “natural” in order to give the idea that something else outside of his/her own value judgment, has imbued it with goodness, inevitability and necessary for instantiation. If something is “natural” it is therefore immoral and/or impossible not to have, and not having it violates our innate human design, producing unhappiness and conflict.
Depending on ones metaphysical understanding, “natural” can mean a vast array of things. Depending on how one looks at “natural”, even technology can be natural outworking of humanity. If one is saying, “Sexual desire is natural” as an objection to this criticism of public sexual tease and titillation, the idea of “natural” being defended is that lust is good or at least thoroughly inevitable human reality. Here, A) the desire on the part of men to look is natural and B) the desire of women to show is “natural” and that any outworking of A) and B) in fashion trends is therefore a natural as a good and/or inevitable and unstoppable thing.
As I mentioned earlier in this pamphlet, street postmodernists do not believe that we have an eternal self that is accountable to God’s claims on our sexuality. Rather, they have a Freudian idea that our authentic self is the Id that needs to come out from under the attempts to suppress and repress it. This Freudian idea operates in what can be described as a street postmodernist “reduction sauce” that has reduced many 20th century philosophies – ranging from Freud to Positivism to Deconstruction to Feminism to Marxism and Critical Theory— to a fundamental worship of nature, as nature expresses itself through the id, individually and collectively.
Street postmodernists do not worship the Id/Nature as a traditional deity that provides a path to eternal life of the soul. However, they do elevate the Id/Nature as the path to maximum wisdom and happiness in this short life that we have on earth. The metaphysical idea behind this is that Nature was “impregnated” with the fortuitous accident of circumstances to produce human experience as a reality that operates thoroughly outside of any higher Divine law. Nature—as nature is expressed through the unfolding of human desire via our DNA— is the path to the wisdom of our accidental creation. The role of humans is to sublimate the inclinations of our ego and super-ego that would get in the way of the id’s wisdom.
In all that is mysterious, unknowable and fecund, the Female takes priority as the seat of ultimate wisdom, as the unchanging fulcrum on which all weak and transitory “phallic” ideas of truth perish. This fulcrum is what the deconstructionist philosopher Derrida referred to as the “Hymen” as a metaphor borrowed from female genitalia. This is part of the idea that the Female, as the pulsating motion of mystery and nature, operates beyond the realm of any higher law.
For street postmodernists, the Female is the source of wisdom, and the Id of actual females is understood as having special “priestess” power to channel wisdom of the Id. Maleness, as it is defined philosophically as the quest for truth and the reification of law, is seen as obtrusive to the wisdom of the Female and must be suppressed as a force in the collective consciousness to make way for the Id. Actual men must give up the Male find redemption as the dutiful servant of the Female. Men can organize their aggression not around the Male but around the worship of the Female via a machismo, a male aggression that is relegated to performance and spectacle and is denuded of moral authority.
As a topless pantheistic tribe has a more communal and less private experience of female sexuality to complement its theology of Nature/goddesses, so too does a street postmodernist society have a public, communal experience of female sexuality that compliments the street postmodernist metaphysical understanding of the Female. In street postmodernist society, the awe of the Female must over-ride the Male, so sexuality of females is harnessed subjugate and envelope the Maleness of men in a gauzy haze of disposable sexual thrill and pseudo-validation.
Complementing the visual subjugation of men, Street postmodernism is compelled to silence any assertion of the Male by saying “who’s to say” which means “who are you the lone individual to say?” Though it may seem counterintuitive, this is fruit from the same intellectual tree as women who declare “I’m always right!” as the basis of their relationships with men. Both assertions are appeals to the wisdom of the Id. It is these ideas of the Male as being anything but a source of gentle dominion that have characterized Feminism and have characterized the Politically Correct Street postmodernism that has applied feminism in the realm of social taboos and relationships.
In an effort to not be legalistic, which can be defined as a wooden and inept attempt to apply the Male, many Christians have syncretized Christianity with street postmodernism’s elevation of the Female. The problem with this approach to confronting legalism is that it Christians are actually syncretizing a form of Id-worshipping pantheism to their Christianity. It is this street postmodernist Id-worshipping pantheism that makes claims on what is “natural” that are in direct contradiction to what Scripture defines as natural.
It is “New Testament 101” to say that Paul discusses our old man and our new man, the former being our self that is in bondage to sin and the latter being are true authentic self in Christ (… it is not me but sin within me…). Encapsulated in this passage is Scriptures organization of “natural” into what is “archnatural”/unfallen and what is sinful/fallen.
For a Christian to employ a Street postmodernist idea of “natural” is to flatten the hierarchy of old man and new man, lowering the status of what Scripture says is archnatural and raising the status of what Scripture says is sin.
When Jesus says in John that we are to “worship in Spirit and in Truth” Jesus is recognizing that what we consider to be deeply and fundamentally true will be what we worship. Jesus’ call to “worship and Spirit and in Truth” is a claim that Jesus makes on our efforts to understand what is true, particularly in those realms of understanding that intersect with our feelings. To fulfill Jesus claim on our hearts and minds, we must take all of our feelings captive to see how we are justifying them, and examine those justifications carefully in the light of Scripture.
Dealing with the anatomy of Godly and ungodly sexual desire would take a much longer essay. Suffice to say that there is a form of sexual desire that is consistent with God’s claim on our hearts. It is the nature of the cut-to the core intensity of sexual desire as God has designed it that it is idolatrous if it is not submitted to God. No fleeting feeling of horniness is to escape our scrutiny because every feeling carries a justification with it, and with every justification comes a larger system of belief that the justification appeals to. Every feeling is connected to a larger thought system as mushrooms on the ground are connected to the rhizome underneath.
It is a pastor’s role to judiciously and carefully employ the Male, which in the context of Scripture is the truth of Scripture, as a shepherd uses the staff to guide sheep. It is street postmodernism that seeks to employ the idea of “natural” as it defines “natural” within its metaphysic to elevate the Female and emasculate the Male from the pastor. In regard to modesty, many Christians have allowed themselves to employ street postmodernist ideas to confront modesty legalism. The consequence of Christians defending women from modesty legalism in this manner is that they have also defended street postmodernism. In doing so, many Christians have defended the culture of disposable sexual experience and have introduced a doctrinal gangrene into their Christianity.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
The Porn Moralists
A porn sight found The Naked Smoke post and tried to mock it with a post-rational porn collage with my name thrown in. If you're the site you know who you are. Hi, it's me Greg.
In my post on Morality and Ethics, I defined a moral system as a belief system of values that flows from a particular metaphysical understanding. With that in mind, for the porn nihilists who want to label me a Christian moralist, it is important to remember that they too are trying to advance a moral system.
The porn nihilist says it's no big deal" to porn the way a drug addict says that his drug is "no big deal". Porn, like drugs to the junkie, is a very big deal and those who traffic in it need their porn fixes. They not only need it, they believe that the craving for it is "natural/primal", defending it as part of their innate design. Porn nihilists will use the language of "liberation" to defend their access to porn, thereby claiming porn as a right of design and a moral freedom.
If you notice what I wrote regarding Larry Flint, I am critical of any defense of porn that is not self-limiting to boundaries where it is out of public right of way. Being criticized for this position by porn nihilists is an indication that they want it to be given public right of way. To advance their metaphysic and the value system that flows out of it, porn nihilists want the right to harness the visual power sex to operate as a sort of "porn evangelism".
So what, exacly, are they evangelizing? As nihilists, they believe that there is no higher meaning to life than to experience "hedons" as they are defined as valueless units of pleasure. From this point of metaphysical understanding, they flatten all metaphysical and moral questions into a "superflat" realm (the term superflat was coined by Japanese philosopher Murakami to describe the flattening of high and low art hierarchies). Pop-culture is the theater of superflat moral, metaphysical spiritual reality, and porn is just one corner of it. In this realm, joy is not possible, since joy by definition is the union of pleasure and meaning. The only pleasure possible is what the French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard described as a nihilistic state of delirium.
The porn nihilist lives in a Beaudrillardian delirium of sex hedons, walking backward into the physical, emotional and spiritual costs of disposable sex, and only reckoning with those costs when forced to by tragic circumstance. Seeking maximum sex hedons is the porn nihilists' only purpose that is left standing after all other ideas of meaning have been rejected and deconstructed.
Enforcing their nihilistic metaphysic, the porn nihilist feeds his latent need for meaning and purpose by finding meaning in the forceful rejection of any claim to higher purpose, something I discussed in my very first post, My lust makes the world go 'round. As the latent need for meeting operates in him like a void, creating the spiritual suction that bonds his murky sense of honor to intellectually defending disposable pleasure. To suggest that there is a moral, intellectual, relational and/or spiritual poverty in this is to threaten the porn nihilist's purposeful purposelessness. It also threatens his jollies.
As I have discussed in other posts, sexual jollies and our need for meaning are intimately connected. That which pleases is us sexually is that which we find our validation in, since the pleasure is the pleasure of being validated, or in the case of porn and other disposable sexual encounters, being psuedo-validated. For this reason, we will bond our selves to the values that are held by those to whom we are sexually attracted, whoever they may be.
I would welcome a porn nihilist to engage in debate. But many a porn nihilists may not bother with words to defend his actions, being as he is a denizen of the super-flat post-rational realm, he'll often rely on post-rational slogans and images.
In my post on Morality and Ethics, I defined a moral system as a belief system of values that flows from a particular metaphysical understanding. With that in mind, for the porn nihilists who want to label me a Christian moralist, it is important to remember that they too are trying to advance a moral system.
The porn nihilist says it's no big deal" to porn the way a drug addict says that his drug is "no big deal". Porn, like drugs to the junkie, is a very big deal and those who traffic in it need their porn fixes. They not only need it, they believe that the craving for it is "natural/primal", defending it as part of their innate design. Porn nihilists will use the language of "liberation" to defend their access to porn, thereby claiming porn as a right of design and a moral freedom.
If you notice what I wrote regarding Larry Flint, I am critical of any defense of porn that is not self-limiting to boundaries where it is out of public right of way. Being criticized for this position by porn nihilists is an indication that they want it to be given public right of way. To advance their metaphysic and the value system that flows out of it, porn nihilists want the right to harness the visual power sex to operate as a sort of "porn evangelism".
So what, exacly, are they evangelizing? As nihilists, they believe that there is no higher meaning to life than to experience "hedons" as they are defined as valueless units of pleasure. From this point of metaphysical understanding, they flatten all metaphysical and moral questions into a "superflat" realm (the term superflat was coined by Japanese philosopher Murakami to describe the flattening of high and low art hierarchies). Pop-culture is the theater of superflat moral, metaphysical spiritual reality, and porn is just one corner of it. In this realm, joy is not possible, since joy by definition is the union of pleasure and meaning. The only pleasure possible is what the French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard described as a nihilistic state of delirium.
The porn nihilist lives in a Beaudrillardian delirium of sex hedons, walking backward into the physical, emotional and spiritual costs of disposable sex, and only reckoning with those costs when forced to by tragic circumstance. Seeking maximum sex hedons is the porn nihilists' only purpose that is left standing after all other ideas of meaning have been rejected and deconstructed.
Enforcing their nihilistic metaphysic, the porn nihilist feeds his latent need for meaning and purpose by finding meaning in the forceful rejection of any claim to higher purpose, something I discussed in my very first post, My lust makes the world go 'round. As the latent need for meeting operates in him like a void, creating the spiritual suction that bonds his murky sense of honor to intellectually defending disposable pleasure. To suggest that there is a moral, intellectual, relational and/or spiritual poverty in this is to threaten the porn nihilist's purposeful purposelessness. It also threatens his jollies.
As I have discussed in other posts, sexual jollies and our need for meaning are intimately connected. That which pleases is us sexually is that which we find our validation in, since the pleasure is the pleasure of being validated, or in the case of porn and other disposable sexual encounters, being psuedo-validated. For this reason, we will bond our selves to the values that are held by those to whom we are sexually attracted, whoever they may be.
I would welcome a porn nihilist to engage in debate. But many a porn nihilists may not bother with words to defend his actions, being as he is a denizen of the super-flat post-rational realm, he'll often rely on post-rational slogans and images.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
The Naked Smoke
I often work out my thoughts having imaginary debates with adversaries, and I have from time to time imagined myself having a debate with Larry Flint, having read his book The Naked Truth. You can read it for yourself. I just want to share some thoughts on it in the context of my discussion of the First Amendment.
For starters, I am not a Dominionist who says that all porn should be outlawed in the Christian nation. I think that people who want porn should have access to it, in like manner that adults should have a negotiated access to certain junky or harmful things like tobacco and alcohol. In porn, the physical and emotional gravity of sex is relegated away from the realm serious living and into the thrill of sexual danger as a disposable, voyeuristic pleasure. Porn also has a "snuff" aspect to it that traffics in the danger that porn actors traffic in with STD risk among other things. It was Susan Sontag who said, "What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death." That said, free people need to have the opportunity to choose sin – even Adam and Eve had the opportunity to choose sin.
The problem in regard to porn is whether all parties agree that porn is actually an unhealthy "junkfood" version of sexuality. If all parties agree that A) porn is unhealthy and junky and B) all those who want the freedom to have porn should have access to porn it, then those who want the freedom from being exposed to porn need to have that too. Porn should have a "soft prohibition" imposed on it as something that is limited to particular places that adults can go to get it and not be given any public "right of way".
If Flint were to agree to all of this, then it would follow that Flint would impose limits on the availability of his own porn. In other words, if all barriers to Flint's realm were removed, and he had full access to all media, he would impose these boundaries on his enterprise. But Larry Flint is not self-limiting. For Flint to be capable of limiting himself would require that he have some idea that sex is precious and exists for more than disposable pleasure.
The hardcore porn that Larry Flint promotes stems from Flint's view of sexuality that sex is merely something that is available for pleasure, and wherein the emotional dangers are to be dismissed and the physical dangers are to be mitigated with STD technology. In his book Flint says that he doesn't feel a "spiritual" dimension to sexuality. By relegating all notions of sexual gravity to those who feel “spiritual”, he defines any idea of the preciousness of sexuality as belonging to mysticism and not to the realm of rationality. In his book, Flint does not lay out a compelling argument for the ontological un-preciousness of sexuality nor does he seriously take on any of those who have argued for the harm that is associated with porn.
What Flint does is cleverly point to certain hypocritical actions from certain members of the religious right in regard to sex and porn and then offer his unfettered porn and sex as the antidote to hypocrisy and inhibitions. It’s a clever “if the thing I attack is bad, the thing I offer must be good” rhetorical strategy. For this reason, Flint is not merely trying to offer a "tree of temptation in the garden" where people who want to can go and choose a temptation. Rather, Flint is offering a worldview that will pave the way for the expansion of his porn wherever it is believed.
Another clever thing Larry Flint does is to make the First Amendment central to the cause of advancing his porn enterprises. In doing so, he is not only doing his porn enterprises a favor, he is also, ostensibly, doing us all a favor as well. Who, after all, would want to hold back the precious freedom that is guaranteed in the First Amendment? By claiming to be a First Amendment advocate, LF has wrapped his struggle in the grandeur that the First Amendment has because of the ideals that are woven into the Constitution that the First Amendment amends and clarifies. So why is this a problem?
As I discussed in my last blog post on First Amendment Responsibilities, the U.S. Constitution is built on the principle that those who are granted rights are also granted responsibilities. Though the statement “with rights come responsibilities” does not exist as a verbatim phrase in the Constitution, the principle is woven into the very first line. The Constitution begins “We the People…” and proceeds to grant the People ultimate control and, also, ultimate responsibility for the government. Having responsibility for the government also, by direct corollary, includes having responsibility for the Common Good in all the ways that that the caring for the Common Good can be performed whether via the government or not.
The idea of Liberty that is contained in the Declaration of Independence is the classical idea that Liberty is a combination of “license” and responsibility. The Framers knew this precise definition of Liberty even though most people walking the street today probably do not. Most modern people confuse license and liberty together within the word “freedom”, and their idea of “freedom” is usually the same as the classical idea of “license”, which means, simply, the ability to do something without restraint. When Thomas Jefferson said that people were endowed with the right to Liberty in the Declaration of Independence it was understood that they were endowed with a combination of rights and responsibilities for the Common Good in the broadest sense. Liberty in this sense is a choice that is available to citizens as to how they choose to advance the common good not whether to advance the common good.
While the common good has many aspects to it, the essence of Common Good is that it extends beyond one’s immediate self-interest to include the broadest interests of others and the society at large, though it may also include one’s immediate self-interest as a form of “enlightened self interest”. Common Good that includes one’s self-interest is a far cry from stating that ones self-interest and the interest of the common good are inseparably one and the same.
Throughout the past two centuries since the days of the Founders, there have been many attempts to conflate common good and self-interest so that one is rendered indistinguishable from the other (dealing with all of the ideas that have conflated self-interest and common good would require a different essay). It is the conflating of self-interest and common good that has contributed to the modern vocabulary of “freedom” at the expense of the vocabulary of license and liberty. The problem with this is idea of “freedom” at the expense of “license and liberty” that it muddies the very concept of "Common Good".
To truly care about the Common Good in the most magnanimous sense is to examine an issue from the manner in which it may harm or benefit many different sorts of people at different stages of their lives. It requires working making a good-faith effort to have the broadest intellectual lens on an issue. For Larry Flint to take the Common Good seriously in this manner, he would need to examine his actions from the broadest intellectual lens possible, which would be impossible to do without examining the dark side of his enterprise. Flint, however, has made it his goal to “push the envelope” of what our culture and society will tolerate in order to advance his own self-interest.
In order to win a debate over Common Good, a First Amendment advocate like Flint must make Tolerance the highest moral idea for the civic organizing of society, trumping all others. For one seeking a broad vista of common good, caring about Tolerance is a value to be cared for among other considerations. The question of Common Good, however, needs to be a higher question than mere Tolerance, because that act of merely being tolerant cannot sort out all of the moral realities that need to be examined by diligent people to facilitate the Common Good. The Constitution itself is designed for partisans to debate and for one particular view to prevail as law in an an environment of negotiated Tolerance. For those who have A) conflated self-interest and common good and B) have defined Tolerance as the highest common good, Tolerance of their self-interest is therefore the Common Good. They would like you to believe that to question their self interest is to put the American Flag in peril.
Specifically for Flint, vaunting Tolerance of his envelope pushing as the highest common good would define non-criticism his actions or any other similar action as the highest good. In other words, Flint has two choices. He admits that A) he is an advocate for merely the license aspect of the liberty of the First Amendment that is attached to the Constitution for the advancement of his porn enterprise or B) is operating under the pretense that he is an advocate for the whole Common Good, which would mean that he was borrowing from the moral gravity of the Constitution and its First Amendment to lend moral force to the act of with-holding criticism from his porn enterprise. Either way, it is a fish wrapped in the American Flag.
This is connected to the larger problem. Conflating self interest with the Common Good in the name of freedom has come at the expense of many peoples' personal commitment to diligent intellectual honesty in examining the Common good from a magnanimous vantage point. It has degraded the quality of our citizenry.
In regard to the Constitution, I am not a strict “originalist” when it comes to interpreting the Constitution in that I don't believe that we are hidebound to the original meaning of something on a particular issue when that meaning no longer makes any sense for the promotion of our common good. I do, however, think that we need to keep the original purpose of the constitution in mind, and doing so requires an originalist understanding of the meaning of Liberty and common good. In regard to a particular Constitutional issue, we need to see how the original meaning was intended to advance the common good/liberty in its day, and, from there, adjust our modern day interpretation of and application of it in order to arrive at an understanding that is relevant for promoting the common good in this day and age.
As I have said, the First Amendment was originally created with the idea of having freedom of assembly and freedom of the press for a citizenry who had been given the charge to seek to advance the Common Good. A later Supreme Court decision said that expression is a form of speech and is thus protected by the First Amendment. And expression truly is a form of speech. Expressions in whatever venue or context comprise a form of "language" in which ideas and values are encoded and encrypted. Though interpretations will vary, these expressions can be decoded and un-encrypted into linguistic speech. It is for this reason that expression speaks, and it is for this reason that an expression should be scrutinized for what it is "speaking" to see whether that expression is advancing the common good. In regard to porn, I think that it is an expression that speaks a message that the pleasure of sex can be enjoyed as a commodity without conscious regard to its gravity.
The problem, of course, is that expressions are harder to decode than speech and are subject of more and varying interpretation. It is for this reason that those who are merely expressing and not speaking have often not held themselves accountable to whether their expressions are advancing the common good, as opposed to advancing the interests and pleasures of a particular clientelle. For this reason, diligent personal intellectual honesty has been somewhat of a casualty of amplifying the First Amendment's verbiage of "freedom of press" and "freedom of assembly" to include anyone's verbal or non-verbal expression.
Even as expanding the original meaning of "freedom of speech" to mean "freedom of all verbal and non-verbal expression" has caused problems, it is not to say that we should not recognize these expressions as forms of speech. As I said before, I do not believe that we are necessarily hide-bound to originalist meanings on specific Constitutional issues, even as we are bound to its original purpose. Rather, as the range of expression has increased and the intent of expressions farther removed from the original intent to directly facilitate the advancement of the common good, there has arisen a need to negotiate these expressions when they have dubious value with regard to the common good.
Employing a "soft censorship" to such expressions is not necessarily a violation of the First amendment. Rather, it follows reasonably from the manner in which the meaning of the First Amendment has been amplified and altered from its original context. We are not hidebound to the original meaning of idea of "speech" or "freedom of press and freedom of assembly" when it comes to all of the sundry expressions that are not written or verbal speech. In a similar manner, we interpret the "right to bear arms as part of a state militia" for the modern era as the negotiated right for one to have certain fire arms in one's personal possession irrespective of one's membership in a state militia. In the service of the common good, we do not interpret the second amendment to mean that one may personally own cruise missiles if one is a card carrying member of a state militia. In this case as in many others, the modern day restrictions result from honest attempt to extract the elements of the original Constitutional ideas that will best promote the greatest the common good in the modern day and age.
In regard to the "freedom of speech", as the idea of the "speech" has been broadened from the original meaning to include a much broader range of expressions, so too has the idea of what "freedoms" needed to be broader and more nuanced to accommodate all of these sundry expressions. These freedoms/licenses are negotiated within a range that spans from A) where you can say anything anywhere and 2 ) where you can only express things in certain times and places. Some expressions are "self-censoring" in that they are necessarily limited to particular times and places (like seeing play or going to an art gallery). Other expressions are not self-censoring, and if they are harmful to the common good, need a restriction imposed upon them from the outside. It is those expressions that lay serious claim to attempting to advance the common good that should, and do, receive more generous freedom from restriction. It is those expressions of dubious value to the common good that receive less.
It is within this nuanced spectrum of "freedom" that we need to decide where to place "porn". In the case of porn, as I am convinced that porn is junky and unhealthy and that its only claim to exist in our society is that of a "tree of temptation in the garden" and nothing more, and has no tenuous claim to the common good of society beyond that. Therefore, it is no violation of the promotion of the Common Good—nor the of the First Amendment— to delineate boundaries to place around porn as are that are placed on other unhealthy and junky things and on other unhealthy and junky forms of expression.
Larry Flint needs to have his porn enterprise limited to a "tree of temptation in the garden" in our society by forces outside of himself. And any effort that Flint makes to use moral gravity of the American Flag to advance his enterprise beyond that boundary needs to be confronted by those who have a broad enough vista of the Common Good to see the dark side of porn.
For starters, I am not a Dominionist who says that all porn should be outlawed in the Christian nation. I think that people who want porn should have access to it, in like manner that adults should have a negotiated access to certain junky or harmful things like tobacco and alcohol. In porn, the physical and emotional gravity of sex is relegated away from the realm serious living and into the thrill of sexual danger as a disposable, voyeuristic pleasure. Porn also has a "snuff" aspect to it that traffics in the danger that porn actors traffic in with STD risk among other things. It was Susan Sontag who said, "What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death." That said, free people need to have the opportunity to choose sin – even Adam and Eve had the opportunity to choose sin.
The problem in regard to porn is whether all parties agree that porn is actually an unhealthy "junkfood" version of sexuality. If all parties agree that A) porn is unhealthy and junky and B) all those who want the freedom to have porn should have access to porn it, then those who want the freedom from being exposed to porn need to have that too. Porn should have a "soft prohibition" imposed on it as something that is limited to particular places that adults can go to get it and not be given any public "right of way".
If Flint were to agree to all of this, then it would follow that Flint would impose limits on the availability of his own porn. In other words, if all barriers to Flint's realm were removed, and he had full access to all media, he would impose these boundaries on his enterprise. But Larry Flint is not self-limiting. For Flint to be capable of limiting himself would require that he have some idea that sex is precious and exists for more than disposable pleasure.
The hardcore porn that Larry Flint promotes stems from Flint's view of sexuality that sex is merely something that is available for pleasure, and wherein the emotional dangers are to be dismissed and the physical dangers are to be mitigated with STD technology. In his book Flint says that he doesn't feel a "spiritual" dimension to sexuality. By relegating all notions of sexual gravity to those who feel “spiritual”, he defines any idea of the preciousness of sexuality as belonging to mysticism and not to the realm of rationality. In his book, Flint does not lay out a compelling argument for the ontological un-preciousness of sexuality nor does he seriously take on any of those who have argued for the harm that is associated with porn.
What Flint does is cleverly point to certain hypocritical actions from certain members of the religious right in regard to sex and porn and then offer his unfettered porn and sex as the antidote to hypocrisy and inhibitions. It’s a clever “if the thing I attack is bad, the thing I offer must be good” rhetorical strategy. For this reason, Flint is not merely trying to offer a "tree of temptation in the garden" where people who want to can go and choose a temptation. Rather, Flint is offering a worldview that will pave the way for the expansion of his porn wherever it is believed.
Another clever thing Larry Flint does is to make the First Amendment central to the cause of advancing his porn enterprises. In doing so, he is not only doing his porn enterprises a favor, he is also, ostensibly, doing us all a favor as well. Who, after all, would want to hold back the precious freedom that is guaranteed in the First Amendment? By claiming to be a First Amendment advocate, LF has wrapped his struggle in the grandeur that the First Amendment has because of the ideals that are woven into the Constitution that the First Amendment amends and clarifies. So why is this a problem?
As I discussed in my last blog post on First Amendment Responsibilities, the U.S. Constitution is built on the principle that those who are granted rights are also granted responsibilities. Though the statement “with rights come responsibilities” does not exist as a verbatim phrase in the Constitution, the principle is woven into the very first line. The Constitution begins “We the People…” and proceeds to grant the People ultimate control and, also, ultimate responsibility for the government. Having responsibility for the government also, by direct corollary, includes having responsibility for the Common Good in all the ways that that the caring for the Common Good can be performed whether via the government or not.
The idea of Liberty that is contained in the Declaration of Independence is the classical idea that Liberty is a combination of “license” and responsibility. The Framers knew this precise definition of Liberty even though most people walking the street today probably do not. Most modern people confuse license and liberty together within the word “freedom”, and their idea of “freedom” is usually the same as the classical idea of “license”, which means, simply, the ability to do something without restraint. When Thomas Jefferson said that people were endowed with the right to Liberty in the Declaration of Independence it was understood that they were endowed with a combination of rights and responsibilities for the Common Good in the broadest sense. Liberty in this sense is a choice that is available to citizens as to how they choose to advance the common good not whether to advance the common good.
While the common good has many aspects to it, the essence of Common Good is that it extends beyond one’s immediate self-interest to include the broadest interests of others and the society at large, though it may also include one’s immediate self-interest as a form of “enlightened self interest”. Common Good that includes one’s self-interest is a far cry from stating that ones self-interest and the interest of the common good are inseparably one and the same.
Throughout the past two centuries since the days of the Founders, there have been many attempts to conflate common good and self-interest so that one is rendered indistinguishable from the other (dealing with all of the ideas that have conflated self-interest and common good would require a different essay). It is the conflating of self-interest and common good that has contributed to the modern vocabulary of “freedom” at the expense of the vocabulary of license and liberty. The problem with this is idea of “freedom” at the expense of “license and liberty” that it muddies the very concept of "Common Good".
To truly care about the Common Good in the most magnanimous sense is to examine an issue from the manner in which it may harm or benefit many different sorts of people at different stages of their lives. It requires working making a good-faith effort to have the broadest intellectual lens on an issue. For Larry Flint to take the Common Good seriously in this manner, he would need to examine his actions from the broadest intellectual lens possible, which would be impossible to do without examining the dark side of his enterprise. Flint, however, has made it his goal to “push the envelope” of what our culture and society will tolerate in order to advance his own self-interest.
In order to win a debate over Common Good, a First Amendment advocate like Flint must make Tolerance the highest moral idea for the civic organizing of society, trumping all others. For one seeking a broad vista of common good, caring about Tolerance is a value to be cared for among other considerations. The question of Common Good, however, needs to be a higher question than mere Tolerance, because that act of merely being tolerant cannot sort out all of the moral realities that need to be examined by diligent people to facilitate the Common Good. The Constitution itself is designed for partisans to debate and for one particular view to prevail as law in an an environment of negotiated Tolerance. For those who have A) conflated self-interest and common good and B) have defined Tolerance as the highest common good, Tolerance of their self-interest is therefore the Common Good. They would like you to believe that to question their self interest is to put the American Flag in peril.
Specifically for Flint, vaunting Tolerance of his envelope pushing as the highest common good would define non-criticism his actions or any other similar action as the highest good. In other words, Flint has two choices. He admits that A) he is an advocate for merely the license aspect of the liberty of the First Amendment that is attached to the Constitution for the advancement of his porn enterprise or B) is operating under the pretense that he is an advocate for the whole Common Good, which would mean that he was borrowing from the moral gravity of the Constitution and its First Amendment to lend moral force to the act of with-holding criticism from his porn enterprise. Either way, it is a fish wrapped in the American Flag.
This is connected to the larger problem. Conflating self interest with the Common Good in the name of freedom has come at the expense of many peoples' personal commitment to diligent intellectual honesty in examining the Common good from a magnanimous vantage point. It has degraded the quality of our citizenry.
In regard to the Constitution, I am not a strict “originalist” when it comes to interpreting the Constitution in that I don't believe that we are hidebound to the original meaning of something on a particular issue when that meaning no longer makes any sense for the promotion of our common good. I do, however, think that we need to keep the original purpose of the constitution in mind, and doing so requires an originalist understanding of the meaning of Liberty and common good. In regard to a particular Constitutional issue, we need to see how the original meaning was intended to advance the common good/liberty in its day, and, from there, adjust our modern day interpretation of and application of it in order to arrive at an understanding that is relevant for promoting the common good in this day and age.
As I have said, the First Amendment was originally created with the idea of having freedom of assembly and freedom of the press for a citizenry who had been given the charge to seek to advance the Common Good. A later Supreme Court decision said that expression is a form of speech and is thus protected by the First Amendment. And expression truly is a form of speech. Expressions in whatever venue or context comprise a form of "language" in which ideas and values are encoded and encrypted. Though interpretations will vary, these expressions can be decoded and un-encrypted into linguistic speech. It is for this reason that expression speaks, and it is for this reason that an expression should be scrutinized for what it is "speaking" to see whether that expression is advancing the common good. In regard to porn, I think that it is an expression that speaks a message that the pleasure of sex can be enjoyed as a commodity without conscious regard to its gravity.
The problem, of course, is that expressions are harder to decode than speech and are subject of more and varying interpretation. It is for this reason that those who are merely expressing and not speaking have often not held themselves accountable to whether their expressions are advancing the common good, as opposed to advancing the interests and pleasures of a particular clientelle. For this reason, diligent personal intellectual honesty has been somewhat of a casualty of amplifying the First Amendment's verbiage of "freedom of press" and "freedom of assembly" to include anyone's verbal or non-verbal expression.
Even as expanding the original meaning of "freedom of speech" to mean "freedom of all verbal and non-verbal expression" has caused problems, it is not to say that we should not recognize these expressions as forms of speech. As I said before, I do not believe that we are necessarily hide-bound to originalist meanings on specific Constitutional issues, even as we are bound to its original purpose. Rather, as the range of expression has increased and the intent of expressions farther removed from the original intent to directly facilitate the advancement of the common good, there has arisen a need to negotiate these expressions when they have dubious value with regard to the common good.
Employing a "soft censorship" to such expressions is not necessarily a violation of the First amendment. Rather, it follows reasonably from the manner in which the meaning of the First Amendment has been amplified and altered from its original context. We are not hidebound to the original meaning of idea of "speech" or "freedom of press and freedom of assembly" when it comes to all of the sundry expressions that are not written or verbal speech. In a similar manner, we interpret the "right to bear arms as part of a state militia" for the modern era as the negotiated right for one to have certain fire arms in one's personal possession irrespective of one's membership in a state militia. In the service of the common good, we do not interpret the second amendment to mean that one may personally own cruise missiles if one is a card carrying member of a state militia. In this case as in many others, the modern day restrictions result from honest attempt to extract the elements of the original Constitutional ideas that will best promote the greatest the common good in the modern day and age.
In regard to the "freedom of speech", as the idea of the "speech" has been broadened from the original meaning to include a much broader range of expressions, so too has the idea of what "freedoms" needed to be broader and more nuanced to accommodate all of these sundry expressions. These freedoms/licenses are negotiated within a range that spans from A) where you can say anything anywhere and 2 ) where you can only express things in certain times and places. Some expressions are "self-censoring" in that they are necessarily limited to particular times and places (like seeing play or going to an art gallery). Other expressions are not self-censoring, and if they are harmful to the common good, need a restriction imposed upon them from the outside. It is those expressions that lay serious claim to attempting to advance the common good that should, and do, receive more generous freedom from restriction. It is those expressions of dubious value to the common good that receive less.
It is within this nuanced spectrum of "freedom" that we need to decide where to place "porn". In the case of porn, as I am convinced that porn is junky and unhealthy and that its only claim to exist in our society is that of a "tree of temptation in the garden" and nothing more, and has no tenuous claim to the common good of society beyond that. Therefore, it is no violation of the promotion of the Common Good—nor the of the First Amendment— to delineate boundaries to place around porn as are that are placed on other unhealthy and junky things and on other unhealthy and junky forms of expression.
Larry Flint needs to have his porn enterprise limited to a "tree of temptation in the garden" in our society by forces outside of himself. And any effort that Flint makes to use moral gravity of the American Flag to advance his enterprise beyond that boundary needs to be confronted by those who have a broad enough vista of the Common Good to see the dark side of porn.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
First Amendment Responsibilities
Sex sells. I saw another smutty “Bebe” fashion billboard in the bus stop shelters in Pasadena. I thought to myself that I could complain again to the Viacom PR representative, who I was eventually referred to a couple of years ago after having made numerous calls to the Los Angeles County MTA. Of course the MTA, which is under the auspices of LA County whom I pay taxes to support, will say that they don’t actually own the bus shelters. But that’s just a technicality, since the MTA has control over the bus stops and profits from those whom the MTA decides can own the shelters that cover the bus stops. Responsibility is so densely layered in the County/City/MTA/Viacom bureaucratic labyrinth that, finding the ultimate source of responsibility is like finding the source of a mysterious river.
It is always good for people who make the decisions to place those ads to feel at least a little heat. However, in the absence of any torrent of criticism from the public, the Viacom representative, who is only the public mouthpiece of the Viacom chiefs, would merely refer to Viacom’s corporate First Amendment trump card -- Sex that sells is a protected form of expression granted by the First Amendment for a business to make a buck.
This got me thinking about a larger problem with the First Amendment as it is applied by the “sex sells” crowd of professional corporate defenders. I have cycled through many attempts to crisply explain the moral problem with their First Amendment mentality. Then it occurred to me, if rights and responsibilities go together, which is a simple moral arithmetic for any reasonable person, our First Amendment rights must come with First Amendment responsibilities.
It also occurred to me that “First Amendment responsibilities” sounds odd. I haven’t actually heard that phrase before. I daresay that far more people in our country are far quicker on the draw in defending their First Amendment rights than in explaining their First amendment responsibilities. So what are our first amendment responsibilities? Our First Amendment responsibilities emanate from something that is implicit in both the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of the Constitution.
The Declaration of Independence affirms our existence as beings that have been granted “moral patent” by a Creator. In the same manner that a landlord has been granted a “deed” that give him A) the privilege to do with his land what he wishes (within reason) and B) the responsibility to the law and government and inhabitors of his land, so too do we as moral “patent” holders have both freedom and responsibility as human beings that comes with our “moral title”. As “moral patent” holders, we are acknowledged to have a moral right to pursue Liberty, as that moral freedom wherein freedom and responsibility are inseparably wedded together.
It is the Preamble of the Constitution which is established by “We the People” for the advancement of the “Common Good”. Built on the moral foundation of the Declaration which recognizes our “moral patent”, the Pre-Amble defines our collective and individual moral responsibility as American citizens to bear the “Common Good” on our shoulders. An American citizen might read the Preamble superficially and think that his responsibility for the Common Good begins and ends with voting, and that the Bill of Rights exists merely to protect our rights from the schemes of government.
However, the Preamble is operating in a more complete and more demanding moral picture. The representative government outlined in the Constitution outlines one medium by which We exercise our responsibility to the Common Good, by voting for our representatives. Our subsequent rights to speech, bearing arms, etc… amend and elaborate on the Constitution and its Preamble in this way: the Bill of Rights outline yet more mediums of action for us to shoulder our burden to advance Common Good, mediums of action which were intended to compliment voting.
Contained in the Declaration and the Preamble is an implied “American Great Commission”, which can be summed up as, “Go forth, citizen, to exercise your rights so as to make the most good faith effort you can to shoulder your responsibility for the Common Good via every means available to you.” Our First Amendment responsibilities are therefore to advance this “American Great Commission” through the medium of the spoken word, and were are to be protected from the government infringing on this exercise of our moral freedom.
The Framers wrote the Bill Of Rights because they were acknowledging the existence of “moral patent” and the “American Great Commission” as pre-existent moral realities. The Framers did not see themselves as granting us the rights, but as acknowledging rights that were endowed to us at the beginning of our existence/creation. For the Framers, history at then end of the 18th century was merely catching up to what had always been a moral truth.
This is important for this reason. If Person A is exercising his First Amendment right as merely a legal right, he is appealing primarily to the parchment of the First Amendment and to his good fortune that a Framer’s pen touched the paper in a certain way. In response to criticism, Person A, like any corporate “Sex sells” defender, will hold up the First Amendment parchment as a shield, and when his critics walk away he’ll say to himself, “Whew…dodged a bullet!”
Meanwhile, if Person B is making an earnest, good faith effort to advance the common good of our country, he is exercising his First Amendment right as part of the two faceted moral reality recognized by the Founders, with freedom/discretion as one facet and responsibility as the other facet. Meanwhile, Person A is merely exploiting the benefit to himself and his corporation that was bequeathed to him by the Framers’ attempt to reify a moral reality in law.
The moral dimension of the law is the foundation of our nation. The technicalities of the law only supplement the moral dimension of the law, when the parties involved are acting in good faith to advance the deeper moral idea. A mentality that merely looks to the legal words on paper to justify actions at the expense of looking to the deeper moral reality is a mentality that will eventually weaken the law, severing it from its moral foundation.
Sex sells. It’s good for profits of Viacom and the MTA for the time being that the Framers made smut a technically legal use of the First Amendment in our licentious, morally somnambulant society of 2007. While it is a legal use of the First Amendment, it is not a moral use of it. The mentality that defends “Sex sells” as a First Amendment right is a mentality that does not rise to the moral calling the American Great Commission, and the spread of that mentality signals a decline in our nation.
It is always good for people who make the decisions to place those ads to feel at least a little heat. However, in the absence of any torrent of criticism from the public, the Viacom representative, who is only the public mouthpiece of the Viacom chiefs, would merely refer to Viacom’s corporate First Amendment trump card -- Sex that sells is a protected form of expression granted by the First Amendment for a business to make a buck.
This got me thinking about a larger problem with the First Amendment as it is applied by the “sex sells” crowd of professional corporate defenders. I have cycled through many attempts to crisply explain the moral problem with their First Amendment mentality. Then it occurred to me, if rights and responsibilities go together, which is a simple moral arithmetic for any reasonable person, our First Amendment rights must come with First Amendment responsibilities.
It also occurred to me that “First Amendment responsibilities” sounds odd. I haven’t actually heard that phrase before. I daresay that far more people in our country are far quicker on the draw in defending their First Amendment rights than in explaining their First amendment responsibilities. So what are our first amendment responsibilities? Our First Amendment responsibilities emanate from something that is implicit in both the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of the Constitution.
The Declaration of Independence affirms our existence as beings that have been granted “moral patent” by a Creator. In the same manner that a landlord has been granted a “deed” that give him A) the privilege to do with his land what he wishes (within reason) and B) the responsibility to the law and government and inhabitors of his land, so too do we as moral “patent” holders have both freedom and responsibility as human beings that comes with our “moral title”. As “moral patent” holders, we are acknowledged to have a moral right to pursue Liberty, as that moral freedom wherein freedom and responsibility are inseparably wedded together.
It is the Preamble of the Constitution which is established by “We the People” for the advancement of the “Common Good”. Built on the moral foundation of the Declaration which recognizes our “moral patent”, the Pre-Amble defines our collective and individual moral responsibility as American citizens to bear the “Common Good” on our shoulders. An American citizen might read the Preamble superficially and think that his responsibility for the Common Good begins and ends with voting, and that the Bill of Rights exists merely to protect our rights from the schemes of government.
However, the Preamble is operating in a more complete and more demanding moral picture. The representative government outlined in the Constitution outlines one medium by which We exercise our responsibility to the Common Good, by voting for our representatives. Our subsequent rights to speech, bearing arms, etc… amend and elaborate on the Constitution and its Preamble in this way: the Bill of Rights outline yet more mediums of action for us to shoulder our burden to advance Common Good, mediums of action which were intended to compliment voting.
Contained in the Declaration and the Preamble is an implied “American Great Commission”, which can be summed up as, “Go forth, citizen, to exercise your rights so as to make the most good faith effort you can to shoulder your responsibility for the Common Good via every means available to you.” Our First Amendment responsibilities are therefore to advance this “American Great Commission” through the medium of the spoken word, and were are to be protected from the government infringing on this exercise of our moral freedom.
The Framers wrote the Bill Of Rights because they were acknowledging the existence of “moral patent” and the “American Great Commission” as pre-existent moral realities. The Framers did not see themselves as granting us the rights, but as acknowledging rights that were endowed to us at the beginning of our existence/creation. For the Framers, history at then end of the 18th century was merely catching up to what had always been a moral truth.
This is important for this reason. If Person A is exercising his First Amendment right as merely a legal right, he is appealing primarily to the parchment of the First Amendment and to his good fortune that a Framer’s pen touched the paper in a certain way. In response to criticism, Person A, like any corporate “Sex sells” defender, will hold up the First Amendment parchment as a shield, and when his critics walk away he’ll say to himself, “Whew…dodged a bullet!”
Meanwhile, if Person B is making an earnest, good faith effort to advance the common good of our country, he is exercising his First Amendment right as part of the two faceted moral reality recognized by the Founders, with freedom/discretion as one facet and responsibility as the other facet. Meanwhile, Person A is merely exploiting the benefit to himself and his corporation that was bequeathed to him by the Framers’ attempt to reify a moral reality in law.
The moral dimension of the law is the foundation of our nation. The technicalities of the law only supplement the moral dimension of the law, when the parties involved are acting in good faith to advance the deeper moral idea. A mentality that merely looks to the legal words on paper to justify actions at the expense of looking to the deeper moral reality is a mentality that will eventually weaken the law, severing it from its moral foundation.
Sex sells. It’s good for profits of Viacom and the MTA for the time being that the Framers made smut a technically legal use of the First Amendment in our licentious, morally somnambulant society of 2007. While it is a legal use of the First Amendment, it is not a moral use of it. The mentality that defends “Sex sells” as a First Amendment right is a mentality that does not rise to the moral calling the American Great Commission, and the spread of that mentality signals a decline in our nation.
Friday, November 09, 2007
An open challenge to Christians in 2007 regarding Christian Modesty
I want to share some new thoughts and summarize old thoughts on one of my oft discussed topics – Christian Modesty, based on some discussions I’ve had of late. First, I want to re-iterate some facts: 1) Men are visually oriented to be sexually attracted to exposed women’s body parts. 2) There are generally recognized body parts that have special intimate energy, as A) recognized by the law and B) harnessed by those whose express desire is to titillate. 3) Exposed and partially exposed intimate parts are harnessed by the marketplace to the tune of uncountable amounts of money in a vast “distraction industry” that traffics in men’s sexual nature. 4) Any serious attempt to take a culture captive to the Gospel cannot be evaluated merely on what people say. A culture must be evaluated based on what people both say and do – simply examining a culture by what people say is to examine it superficially.
There is an idea that has taken root in our world that either ignores and/or exploits the above mentioned facts. It is this idea that women find their liberation in the exposure of intimate body parts and that men’s capacity to be distracted by it is a thing to either be ignored or harnessed for money and pleasure. This is an idea so powerful and so pervasive that it has acquired all the Orwellian power that political correctness can endow it with. It is the very intensity with which people believe this that they simultaneously act upon it and silence the critique of it from discourse.
The narrative of feminism and sexual liberation behind this idea is so powerfully believed that it has entered, un-challenged and un-examined into vast swaths of the church and has become syncretized with ideas of Christian virtue in the minds of many Christians. Many Christians have embraced and/or accepted this idea and have advanced the unquestioned tolerance this idea as even being a form of Christian maturity.
As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, this aforementioned idea emanates from a view of liberation that is not based on any calculus of being freed from the bondage of sin. It is not based on any serious effort at discerning God’s voice or His will as per Scripture. It is not based on any serious understanding of moral freedom as it exists within the claims that God makes on mens’ and women’s sexuality, including all heart behavior. It is not based on an idea that a fashion choice to expose an intimate body part is a sexual act, and it therefore not “just fashion”. Rather, this fashion is falsely believed to be a “value-neutral” aspect of the culture that people are to accept in order to participate in the culture in order to relate to it as Christians. It is upon embracing this latter fallacy that many in the church have considered the fashion trend of partially exposing intimate body parts as being beyond the scope of culture that the Gospel is called to challenge in people’s lives.
I have observed that there is a spectrum in the manner that Christians are accepting and appropriating partially exposed intimate body parts into the realm of Christian behavior. On one end of the spectrum, I have met Christians who accept the feminist/sexual revolution narrative as wholesale truth, who will say that when a man is distracted by a woman’s partially exposing intimate parts, he is the one who is objectifying her and is threatening her moral freedom to wear whatever she wants. In this idea, there is no responsibility whatsoever that women have for the social environment wherein men must negotiate their call to sexual holiness and purity.
As I have reflected on this idea, it has occurred to me that hookers on the street do not express any regard for my inner life with God with their fashion. Then, again, I don’t have any expectations of Christian community from hookers. For a Christian woman at church to say that she has absolutely no responsibility to my inner life in regard to her clothing as an obligation of Christian community and fellowship, I take this to mean that she wants to me to have no more expectation of her than a hooker in regard to what I can expect my eyes to have to confront at church.
For those Christians who do not go quite so far as to fully and out-and-out embrace the feminist/sexual revolution narrative of fashion as being thoroughly compatible with Christian virtue, many of them will say that it is a virtue of manly Christian maturity for a man to not distracted/bothered by what a woman wears, even in church. In this idea, men must give a woman the room to arrive on her own idea of modesty based exclusively on her own intellectual journey with God and not by ever being confronted by men. In other words, it is beyond the purvue of pastoral guidance to ever suggest openly that God is making claims on our clothing as an arena of sexual holiness. Of course, it is for the very reason that men may be distracted that a woman may realize the value of proper dress. With this notion of immodestly tolerance though, a woman must arrive at this knowledge without ever be informed of it directly by men.
And then there are Christians who do recognize that there is some sort of problem out there in the world and in Christendom, but that the church is many years, or even decades, away from being ready to be confronted on its modesty problem as a topic of sexual holiness. Now I have some sympathy this notion, in the limited sense that, generally speaking, there is some latitude that Jesus provides as to how and when to deal with the topic of clothing and sexual holiness with a group of people. I recognize the value of having a vocabulary for dealing with culture and with complexity as a pre-requisite for this topic, and I do not necessarily support the Victorian missionaries of old who made it first priority to clothe the savages. However, I am convinced that the church in the modern cosmopolitan world of 2007 is in a crisis in regard to modesty and to all of the beliefs and justifications that undergird the unmitigated acceptance of worldly dress standards, and that the church requires an urgent addressing of the topic.
As I’ve said before, when the line regarding clothing is not defined as what is intimate and not intimate, the line will be defined as “what can I get away with where no one will say anything to me”. In the current mechanics of PC in our culture, PC has powerful taboos that keep people from questioning the feminist/sexual revolution narrative. In our current culture, for a Christian to make clothing decisions that is bound only by that which people will risk make an issue out of is for that Christian to allow PC to filter important considerations from his/her decision making. As I’ve said before and I’ll say again and again, one cannot look merely at “what people are willing to make a stink about” as a means to take a culture captive to Christ.
I have asked myself, why the church has been so willing to accept PC and so unable to challenge it in regard to this topic of modesty. I have written an extensive analysis of this in my Crisis of Modesty in the Evangelical Church. At the core of it all, though, is a profound desire on the part of many Christians to fit in with their fellow Christians and to fit in peaceably with the world. It is a desire that is so deep and pervasive that Christians will give PC ideas a gloss of Christianoid wisdom and maturity. To challenge the feminist/sexual revolution/PC notions of modesty is to risk entering into a “social
One interesting bit of Christianoid wisdom I’ve encountered regarding this topic Christians who regard the seriousness with which I take modestly and the lengths that I am willing to go to confront it in the church as being “my choice”. Well, in a sense, they’re right, but not for the reason that they’re thinking. For me, facing the topic is a matter of doing something that is essential to my inner life and to the calling that God has placed with force on my conscience. For me, my choice is to either act or to allow my heart to be cozy with the cognitive dissonance of our sexual culture. Those Christians who present to me as “my choice” are doing so with idea that I can choose my conscience, and that I can choose to have a conscience that is less confrontation and demanding of my fellow Christians. Upon this fallacious idea, these Christians believe that I can thus choose to have a conscience that is happier and more socially adaptive to the current norms around me. Encountering such Christians, I must simply dust off my feet and seek those Christians who crossed a certain threshold of intellectual seriousness.
I recognize that dealing with modesty properly is very hard. Modesty is a very easy thing for one to present merely as a rule, as a “that is just what we do and we don’t question it, and what you should do too” form of legalism. It is very difficult to deal with modesty in the more multi-dimensional context of cause and effect, and textured cultural analysis. That said, I am convinced that underneath the various intellectual deficiencies in the church in these times is a fundamental laziness that must be addressed, lest immodestly -- and the justifications for it-- be allowed to grow and become an ever bigger “elephant in the room”.
Modesty needs to be presented to Christians as an invitation to pick up their cross and be willing to be “baptized” into entering the “social Siberia” that will inevitably enter when they begin questioning something that our culture holds as a sacred cow. As for pastors, it can be very hard to tell the difference between A) pastoral leadership that is not now dealing with the topic of modesty and the feminist/sexual revolution/PC narrative as a genuine God-lead strategy of ministry timing and B) pastoral leadership that is not dealing with the topic for reasons of the fear that they would simply annoy too many Christians, and therefore lose their careers as pastors. It is my concern that in 2007 in regard to Christian modesty there is more far more social fear, laziness, incompetence and cognitive dissonance on both sides of the pulpit than there is any genuine interest in facing the difficult topic.
Monday, October 29, 2007
The Image of God and the purpose of having a body
We are made in the image of God, and we have been given the Image of God for the purpose of being able to experience God as we experience ourselves. As we are able to translate our experience of ourselves into correct knowledge of God, we are better see the reflection of God in our Image. As this happens we are better relate with God as friend and Father and are better able to relate with our fellow Image-bearers. To put it succinctly, we are made in the Image of God so that we can be conscious of how we reflect His image for the benefit of our journey into His wisdom and into His joy.
It is with this basic understanding that every component of each person’s Image can be understood has having been given to that person as a teacher that instructs the “I” within that person. These the “teaching components” and “teaching whole” of the Image do their “teaching” as we live and experience life with the God-made selves that we have and that we are. The knowledge that is gained from these ‘teaching components” and “teaching whole” of the Image we possess are gained as marks that are written by the pen of intimate experience onto the page of our hearts, thoughts, memories and emotions.
God is inviting us to journey of learning from the “teaching components” and “teaching whole” of our respective Images so that each of us gains an accrual of relationship-with-God-worthy-wisdom throughout our lives. It is for the goal of enjoying and knowing God better that we are called to take our “teaching components” captive to a journey of learning His wisdom from the Image he has given us.
Having wisdom involves having an understanding that unites word knowledge and real-world, emotional and tangible experience. In regard to our Image of God, the “teaching components” of our personal selves speak to us in a non-linguistic language of emotional, visceral experiences. As such, there is an inherent vagueness whereby the “teaching components” of our Image teach, as they do not teach with words. As such, it is possible for a “teaching component” of our Image to be misinterpreted and even harnessed to craft a message that is anti-God.
So why doesn’t God make it easier and more obvious for us to receive wisdom from the Image that we have been endowed with? It is necessary requirement for our free will that God endowed us with an Image of God that contains “teaching components” that are not didactic, that require one to have a willing relationship with God Himself for one to fully understand. God has created a world where beings are free to rebel against Him, and he has created the resources of that world, including those aspects of it that directly reflect His Image, to be available for the purpose of rebellion, should willful beings choose to be rebellious.
I believe that God reserves his wisdom for his friends, and that he wants the joy of revealing his wisdom to us as a Friend for the same reason that we find in our own character as humans-- it more satisfying to give a personal gift to a personal friend than to give an impersonal gift to an acquaintance. Part of journey to grow in the “wisdom of our Image”, involves us finding the Godly words that reify the non-linguistic messages that these “teaching components” of our Image speak to our character. It is when we find the words for the “lessons of our Image” that we are re-introduced to what we’ve always known, and we are able to fully relate with God as Friend and Father with our lips and thoughts.
It is as a general rule that we experience God and knowledge of God as we experience ourselves in the motion of life. Of course, a fool learns only from himself, and it is not necessary for a person to experience every sort of heart-ache first hand to gain wisdom. It is not possible for every person to learn all the wisdom that there is to know from scratch, to re-invent the wheel. In God’s infinite wisdom, he has allowed many people to fall into various forms of peril and destruction so that those who seek wisdom can learn from their mistakes. Even so, there will always be a large element of personal discovery and experience that will characterize anyone’s journey.
God Himself has a character and so do we, so that our character can interact in relationship with God’s character. We have a character that is designed to find joy peace and fulfillment in the things that enhance our relationship with God and we are designed to find emptiness and heartache in the things that don’t. In this way, those aspects of our selves and psyches that lead to heartache and emptiness are “teaching components” of our image.
While there is a one-to-one correlation between those elements of our character and God’s character, there is not a one-to-one correlation between God’s body and our body, since God does not have a body. Nevertheless, our bodies are too made in the Image of God, and, as such, the body is a “teaching component” of our Image, since our body is so thoroughly connected to our selves and to the development of our characters. Precise manner in which our body is made by God to reflect His Image for our journey into His wisdom is found in the manner in which our body affects our character.
As a “teaching component” of our Image, our body is part of an inseparable feedback loop between the other “teaching components” of our being, which include our character, body, will, thoughts, emotions. As with the other “teaching components” the body provides input into the feedback loop with trans-rational, non-linguistic communication.
One’s behavior can communicate to one’s own deepest being as well as to others. There are certain behaviors that communicate positive, relationship-with-God-worthy and loving messages to our deepest being and other behaviors that communicate degradation and hatred to our deepest being. Everyone knows that a caress can speak affection without words, though the affection can also be communicated with words. It is also part of the nature of our body that certain behaviors that communicate degradation and hatred can have certain pleasing elements to them in the moment.
The body and its behaviors can be said to communicate God’s truth via a symbolic language of consequences of cause and effect. The human body is made in the Image of God to affect character in a certain way, and there are certain universal rules of cause and effect in regard to the way that the body affects people’s character for better or worse. Positive bodily induced consequences will result in built-in positive messages being communicated about God and about other people. Negative bodily induced consequences will negate the body’s built-in potential for positive messages and invert it into negative messages about God and about other people.
So what does it mean to take the body’s God-messages captive to words across the consequences of character? What combination of personal experience, cautionary tales, Scriptural truth and wisdom will harness the power of one’s body so that it is an instrument of one’s joyful relationship with God and an instrument of his/her accruing wisdom? What aspects of any person’s body are unique to that individual person and what aspects are of a universal nature, subject to universal rules of cause and effect? What does it mean to be “introduced to what you’ve always known” in regard to the encoded wisdom of the Image in the human body that God has provided for our benefit? It is with these questions in mind that I want to later begin to unravel the question of the body as it relates to human sexuality.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Civil Rights and Meta-Civil Rights
From time to time I have mulled over the white-hot, hot-potato question of gay marriage. In trying to organize my thoughts on the issue of gay marriage, my thoughts have meandered down several paths. I've decided that I want to begin to explore the topic and other related topics by carefully examining the idea of civil rights, to engage in the dangerous task of stepping outside of the phenomena of civil rights to examine it, even as I live in the world of civil rights and as I profoundly value many civil rights.
Since the legal issues and the culture issues are two wings of the same animal, those advance a "civil right" will not only prosecute direct legal action, they will prosecute via a form of cultural "law" expressed in the advancement of cultural taboo and social pressure. For a civil rights movement, the "person is political" and the "cultural is legal". This is made all the more important by those areas of law that are set up to be determined by the culture. Aspects of discrimination law, sexual harassment law, and obscenity law come to mind.
As such, civil rights movements have imposed a particular moral idea on how, if at all, the idea of a difference is allowed to be broached in the realm of intellectual debate, art and conversation. For this reason, it has become more and more of a delicate matter to openly discuss the idea that there are differences between people, their ideas, their character and their choices that matter. To broach an idea incorrectly is to be vulnerable to the charge of being called a "bigot" or some related term.
As this has happened, "civil rights", has been incorporated into a broad moral, social, legal and practical realm of thought. The collective power of all of these civil rights ideas have lead to the advancement of a certain "meta-civil rights" moral philosophies, which are cultural and moral philosophies that are designed for the maximum assimilation and re-organization of ever more and ever civil rights ideas in law and culture. Political correctism is the primary term to describe A) the sum total of all of the cultural "civil rights" that have been added to the mix of mainstream thought by the various civil rights movements and B) the renegotiations of these civil right ideas within prevailing meta-civil rights philosophies.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Books I've been reading
Nation of Rebels: Why Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. This is an interesting book on how capitalism thrives on the so called "rebels" who try to "culture jam" the capitalist system. While capitalism has remained resilient in the face of culture jamming, other aspects of our culture--- for better or worse-- haven't.
Can't Stop Won't Stop about the history of hip-hop by Jeff Chang. Hip-hop, as with early rock n' roll before it, has the moral authority it has because it has been a force for a certain amount of cultural integration across the races.
from the other side of the pond:
Herd: How To Change Mass Behaviour By Harnessing Our True Nature by Mark Earls. I'm always interested in the brand marketing crowd's ever more sophisticated ways of trying to influence us.
Willing Slaves: How The Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives by Madeleine Bunting.
Can't Stop Won't Stop about the history of hip-hop by Jeff Chang. Hip-hop, as with early rock n' roll before it, has the moral authority it has because it has been a force for a certain amount of cultural integration across the races.
from the other side of the pond:
Herd: How To Change Mass Behaviour By Harnessing Our True Nature by Mark Earls. I'm always interested in the brand marketing crowd's ever more sophisticated ways of trying to influence us.
Willing Slaves: How The Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives by Madeleine Bunting.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
The faith of atheists -- examining the Dennis Prager/Sam Harris debate
Here is my analysis of a debate between Sam Harris, an evangelical atheist, and Dennis Prager, a Jewish theist, that took place back in November, 2006.
Here is Sam Harris' day 1 opening salvo to Dennis:
In the beginning of this debate, Harris declares all religion to be jihadist, loony, and/or prejudicial. Only later in the debate does Harris, hypothetically, consider the value of some sort of religion (which he will later call "Scientismo" in day 4 of the debate). This colors how one is to interpret Harris' statement, "there is no good reason to believe in a personal God", since it can mean two different things: A) there is no good evidence for believing in God and B) there is no good usefulness for one believing in God. In the beginning of the debate, Harris is clearly stating both A) and B). In the course of this ensuing debate, Harris will relinquish assertion B) in favor of assertion A).
Here is Dennis' day 1 reply to Harris:
Here is Harris' day 2 reply to Dennis:
(Harris) Atheism does not assert that “it is all made by chance.” No one knows why the universe came into being. Most scientists readily admit their ignorance on this point. Religious believers do not.
"No one knows why the universe came into being" – that is the statement that needs to be unpacked. It can mean one of two different things A) that no one can have absolute scientific certainly as to why the universe came into being – or B) that it is not possible for anyone to have the slightest clue why the universe came into being. The former assertion leaves room for religious faith, the second assertion doesn't.
If a scientist is operating with intellectual honesty within the limitations of science, he would offer assertion A). However, an atheist is not merely scientific, but is rather scientismist, believing that science is the key to any and all metaphysical questions. As such, an atheist will either firmly believe that 1) the universe was not created -- on account of science or 2) firmly believe that it is not possible for anyone to have the slightest clue as to why the universe came into being -- on account of science.
The first statement is plainly a statement of faith regarding the origins of the universe that asserts a certainty over an uncertainty. The second statement is also a faith statement, albeit more subtle, in that it places faith in the idea that science is the key to all metaphysical understanding and that all knowledge is to be made real/unreal, relevant/irrelevant within limitations of science.
It is also important to note that statement 1) and 2) are tantamount to being the same thing. The first statement plainly says that God does not exist, thereby denying the existence of any sort of God. The second statement says that God knowledge is completely unknowable, and therefore completely irrelevant to questions of truth and knowledge. The second statement thereby denies the existence of a "personal God" who, by definition, has made himself knowable to people. It is on the matter of a "personal God" not existing that Harris asserts total certainty.
And it is not a far leap from the certainly of statement 2) – that no personal God exists-- to certainty of statement 1) – that no God exists at all. At this point in the discussion, Harris is claiming statement 2) in order to downplay his claims of certainty in the face of Prager's charge that Harris is claiming too much certainty. Harris will indicate that he does in fact believe statement 1).
(Harris) Why can’t I say that the cosmos is uncreated?
Of course, Harris can say that the cosmos is uncreated. That is, in fact, what Harris believes, which is why he states it in the first person. Harris is now admitting to having the certainty regarding statement 1) that he did not admit to having earlier. This is part of the reason why Prager will later, in day 4, redirect the blame on Harris for "making maneuvers" in the course of the debate and not owning up to the true extent of his certainty, and therefore, his faith.
Here is Prager's day 2 reply:
Here is Harris' day 3 reply:
(Harris) But it is clear from our debate that you and I differ on the location of the problem. In your view, the problem must be that Europe has lost the moral backbone that only religion can provide (and Islam just happens to be the wrong religion.) In my view, our world has been shattered, quite unnecessarily, by religion itself. As I said, even if you were right, and the only people who could summon the moral courage to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world were the religious lunatics of the West, this would suggest nothing at all about the existence of the biblical God. It would only show that a belief in Him might be politically necessary, in a given time and place, to motivate people to fight (as our inimitable President says) “the evildoers.” I am reasonably sure you are wrong about this. But again, this is quite irrelevant to the question before us.
The question whether religion is useful is relevant to Harris' original salvo "there is no good reason to believe in a personal God".
Here is Prager's day 3 reply:
Here is Harris' day 4 reply:
(Harris) While the usefulness of religion might be worth debating in another context, it is completely irrelevant to the question of whether God exists.
Again. The question whether religion is useful is relevant to Harris' original salvo " there is no good reason to believe in a personal God". If A) one cannot prove whether or not God exists with scientific certainty, as both Prager and Harris have admitted, and B) believing in God is potentially useful, as Harris has admitted, then there is a good reason, under certain circumstances, for one to believe God as a matter of faith. That is why Prager, in day 1, made a distinction between bad God-belief and good God-belief.
If I believe that there is an afterlife, and believing in that afterlife gives meaning to my struggle to be moral, then there is a good reason to believe in the afterlife. In a similar vein, if I am moved by listening to Beethoven, there is a good reason for me to believe that it is beautiful.
By "good reason", I do not mean "a good scientifically verifiable reason", since I recognize that the question of "good" lies outside the realm of science to answer, whether in the realm of faith, morality or art.
If I believe that there is a moral order to the world, and I believe that an idea of God is the key to that moral order, then there is a good reason for me to believe in God. If someone else does not see that belief in God is important to moral order, then for that person, he/she may not possess a good reason to believe in God in regard to the issue of morality. As someone who believes that believing in God is important to having morality, it is my perogative to state my case and leave it alone for each to decide on his/her own.
Here is Prager's day 4 final reply:
I have more to say on the matter of "moral intuition" which Harris raises in day 3.
Here is Sam Harris' day 1 opening salvo to Dennis:
In the beginning of this debate, Harris declares all religion to be jihadist, loony, and/or prejudicial. Only later in the debate does Harris, hypothetically, consider the value of some sort of religion (which he will later call "Scientismo" in day 4 of the debate). This colors how one is to interpret Harris' statement, "there is no good reason to believe in a personal God", since it can mean two different things: A) there is no good evidence for believing in God and B) there is no good usefulness for one believing in God. In the beginning of the debate, Harris is clearly stating both A) and B). In the course of this ensuing debate, Harris will relinquish assertion B) in favor of assertion A).
Here is Dennis' day 1 reply to Harris:
Here is Harris' day 2 reply to Dennis:
(Harris) Atheism does not assert that “it is all made by chance.” No one knows why the universe came into being. Most scientists readily admit their ignorance on this point. Religious believers do not.
"No one knows why the universe came into being" – that is the statement that needs to be unpacked. It can mean one of two different things A) that no one can have absolute scientific certainly as to why the universe came into being – or B) that it is not possible for anyone to have the slightest clue why the universe came into being. The former assertion leaves room for religious faith, the second assertion doesn't.
If a scientist is operating with intellectual honesty within the limitations of science, he would offer assertion A). However, an atheist is not merely scientific, but is rather scientismist, believing that science is the key to any and all metaphysical questions. As such, an atheist will either firmly believe that 1) the universe was not created -- on account of science or 2) firmly believe that it is not possible for anyone to have the slightest clue as to why the universe came into being -- on account of science.
The first statement is plainly a statement of faith regarding the origins of the universe that asserts a certainty over an uncertainty. The second statement is also a faith statement, albeit more subtle, in that it places faith in the idea that science is the key to all metaphysical understanding and that all knowledge is to be made real/unreal, relevant/irrelevant within limitations of science.
It is also important to note that statement 1) and 2) are tantamount to being the same thing. The first statement plainly says that God does not exist, thereby denying the existence of any sort of God. The second statement says that God knowledge is completely unknowable, and therefore completely irrelevant to questions of truth and knowledge. The second statement thereby denies the existence of a "personal God" who, by definition, has made himself knowable to people. It is on the matter of a "personal God" not existing that Harris asserts total certainty.
And it is not a far leap from the certainly of statement 2) – that no personal God exists-- to certainty of statement 1) – that no God exists at all. At this point in the discussion, Harris is claiming statement 2) in order to downplay his claims of certainty in the face of Prager's charge that Harris is claiming too much certainty. Harris will indicate that he does in fact believe statement 1).
(Harris) Why can’t I say that the cosmos is uncreated?
Of course, Harris can say that the cosmos is uncreated. That is, in fact, what Harris believes, which is why he states it in the first person. Harris is now admitting to having the certainty regarding statement 1) that he did not admit to having earlier. This is part of the reason why Prager will later, in day 4, redirect the blame on Harris for "making maneuvers" in the course of the debate and not owning up to the true extent of his certainty, and therefore, his faith.
Here is Prager's day 2 reply:
Here is Harris' day 3 reply:
(Harris) But it is clear from our debate that you and I differ on the location of the problem. In your view, the problem must be that Europe has lost the moral backbone that only religion can provide (and Islam just happens to be the wrong religion.) In my view, our world has been shattered, quite unnecessarily, by religion itself. As I said, even if you were right, and the only people who could summon the moral courage to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world were the religious lunatics of the West, this would suggest nothing at all about the existence of the biblical God. It would only show that a belief in Him might be politically necessary, in a given time and place, to motivate people to fight (as our inimitable President says) “the evildoers.” I am reasonably sure you are wrong about this. But again, this is quite irrelevant to the question before us.
The question whether religion is useful is relevant to Harris' original salvo "there is no good reason to believe in a personal God".
Here is Prager's day 3 reply:
Here is Harris' day 4 reply:
(Harris) While the usefulness of religion might be worth debating in another context, it is completely irrelevant to the question of whether God exists.
Again. The question whether religion is useful is relevant to Harris' original salvo " there is no good reason to believe in a personal God". If A) one cannot prove whether or not God exists with scientific certainty, as both Prager and Harris have admitted, and B) believing in God is potentially useful, as Harris has admitted, then there is a good reason, under certain circumstances, for one to believe God as a matter of faith. That is why Prager, in day 1, made a distinction between bad God-belief and good God-belief.
If I believe that there is an afterlife, and believing in that afterlife gives meaning to my struggle to be moral, then there is a good reason to believe in the afterlife. In a similar vein, if I am moved by listening to Beethoven, there is a good reason for me to believe that it is beautiful.
By "good reason", I do not mean "a good scientifically verifiable reason", since I recognize that the question of "good" lies outside the realm of science to answer, whether in the realm of faith, morality or art.
If I believe that there is a moral order to the world, and I believe that an idea of God is the key to that moral order, then there is a good reason for me to believe in God. If someone else does not see that belief in God is important to moral order, then for that person, he/she may not possess a good reason to believe in God in regard to the issue of morality. As someone who believes that believing in God is important to having morality, it is my perogative to state my case and leave it alone for each to decide on his/her own.
Here is Prager's day 4 final reply:
I have more to say on the matter of "moral intuition" which Harris raises in day 3.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Morality and Ethics
This past week I was exploring a classic dorm room philosophical question: what, if any, is the difference between "morality" and "ethics".
As I've been reflecting on various moral and ethical issues, I've realized that it's actually an important question. It matters in terms of how to properly classify, compare and contrast morals and ethics across the boundaries of belief and skepticism. It matters, as a Christian, in regard to many of these inter-related questions in terms of how to discuss morality and ethics with the world at large:
-- Is what is moral also ethical?
-- How much does any one else's moral system fit in with "ethics"?
-- What do these terms mean to those who are hailing from a different ideology or different belief system?
-- What is it to have a moral debate or an ethical debate?
-- How much is a question of Christian morality "exportable" into the realm of ethical inquiry beyond Christianity?
-- Do I have a Christian ethical system or a Christian moral system, or both?
-- Where, if at all, do moral considerations and ethical blend in?
As with any important philosophical inquiry, I went to the internet. In freedictionary.com, it offers these definitions:
eth•ic ( th k)
n.
1. a. A set of principles of right conduct. b. A theory or a system of moral values: "An ethic of service is at war with a craving for gain" Gregg Easterbrook.
2. ethics (used with a sing. verb) The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.
3. ethics (used with a sing. or pl. verb) The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession: medical ethics.
mo•ral•i•ty (m -r l -t , mô-)
n. pl. mo•ral•i•ties
1. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
2. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.
3. Virtuous conduct.
4. A rule or lesson in moral conduct.
So to what extent are these terms interchangeable? Here, a gentleman named Lawrence M. Hinman gives his effort at making contrast:
"Ethics. The explicit, philosophical reflection on moral beliefs and practices. The difference between ethics and morality is similar to the difference between musicology and music. Ethics is a conscious stepping back and reflecting on morality, just as musicology is a conscious reflection on music.
Morality. "Morality" refers to the first-order beliefs and practices about good and evil by means of which we guide our behavior. Contrast with Ethics, which is the second-order, reflective consideration of our moral beliefs and practices. "
Here is wikipedia contrasting morals and ethics:
"Morality (from Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behaviour") refers to the concept of human action which pertains to matters of right and wrong—also referred to as "good and evil"—used within three contexts: individual distinction; systems of valued principles—sometimes called conduct morality—shared within a cultural, religious, secular or philosophical community. Personal morals define and distinguish among right and wrong intentions, motivations or actions, as these have been learned, engendered, or otherwise developed within individuals. Bycontrast, ethics are more correctly applied as the study of broader social systems within whose context morality exists. Morals define whether I should kill my neighbour Joe when he steals my tractor; ethics define whether it is right or wrong for one person to kill another in a dispute over property. "
Notice that the two sites listed above distinguish ethics from morality by defining ethics as the disciplined, conscious study applying the broadest examination of society. Morality is portrayed as being more instinctual, reflexive and provincial. Here, below, is a professional trade publication weighing in on the topic. The distinction made here is similar to that made by Wikipedia that morals are personal, and that ethics are global.
"Morals and the expression, “moral values” are generally associated with a personal view of values. Personal morals tend to reflect beliefs relating to sex, drinking, gambling, etc. They can reflect the influence of religion, culture, family and friends.
Ethics is concerned with how a moral person should behave. Ethical values are beliefs concerning what is morally right and proper as opposed to what is simply correct or effective.
i.e.
An individual may personally believe that drinking is immoral. However, drinking is not, in and of itself, unethical. Further, it is unethical to impose your personal moral values on another.
Ethical values transcend cultural, religious, or ethnic differences.
Ethical values embrace a more universal worldview. The Josephson Institute of Ethics recommends six, core ethical values to abide by: Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship. "
Here is a link to an atheist at atheism.about.com who gives a good breakdown of the different ethical disciplines, defining "ethics" in broad enough terms that it could be used to describe any feature of "morality". He does not explicitly define "morality", though in his writing he uses the term "ethics" more in regard to the disciplines of study and "morality" more in regard to their application.
Here are his categories of ethical inquiry listed as links:
• Descriptive Ethics
• Normative Ethics
• Deontology and Ethics
• Teleology and Ethics
• Virtue Ethics
• Analytic Ethics (Metaethics)
Here is a link to a philosopher who draws no distinction, but who is open to others attempting to make a distinction.
"I draw no distinction between ethics and morality. For me, the difference between the two terms is simply the difference between Greek (ethos) and Latin (mores). That is to say: in my lexicon they are stylistic variants of each other. If someone uses these terms in such a way as to suggest a difference, I have no objection as long as the person explains what difference he has in mind. But one should not assume a difference without explaining it."
So with this peek into the web, allow me to take a crack at this question of morality vs. ethics. I recognize that there is a certain value to all of the above attempts at comparing and contrasting ethics and morality, however, all of the above distinctions between ethics and morality, or lack thereof, leave something to be desired. I want to build on the categories of ethical inquiry listed at atheism.about.com to define "ethics" and "morality" in a way that encompasses the way that these words are commonly used, but that allows for a more disciplined understanding of how these terms blend together. So I define
Ethics as the realm of inquiry into questions of right conduct and virtue wherein a common metaphysical understanding among the debating parties is not a pre-requisite.
Morality as a particular value system that is oriented around a particular metaphysical understanding. It is the value system of a morality that will inform matters of right behavior and virtue.
By my definition, ethics is not the only province of conscious examination, nor is it the only idea that is non-provincial. Rather, an ethical discussion/debate occurs when the parties involved do not necessarily have an agreement on a metaphysical principle that serves as an ultimate truth. A moral discussion/debate is an inquiry in which the debating parties agree upon a metaphysical principle and are debating the correct application that flows from that principle.
My definition allows a superficial similarity to some of the definitions offered above, since a system of morality as I've defined it will be more idiosyncratic to individuals, since individuals can have a differing view of what is ultimately true. A system of morality will also be more likely to be connected to religion, since religious beliefs provide people with answers concerning ultimate truth.
It is a tendency among philosophical cognicenti to define morality as the "petri dish" that is examined by the objective "microscope" of ethics. The hierarchical relationship that places ethics above morality that is created for the inquiry elides into the conclusion -- that "ethics" is the meta-morality above morality. The trade publication's definitions of these terms are representative of this tendency.
Based on how I've defined "morality" and "ethics", no one can claim to be a member of a cognicenti that has risen above questions of mere morality. Saying that there is no ultimate truth is, in itself an ultimate truth which functions as the basis of organizing a moral value system. Even those who claim that they have no settled metaphysical understanding, in fact, have one by default. It is also possible for people to have un-examined beliefs and therefore have deeply held moral systems that are in conflict with their overtly stated moral/ethical positions.
A moral system may encompass ideas of right conduct and virtue that are amenable to many others who have differing moral systems. It is these common denominator questions of right conduct and virtue that exist in the realm of "moral overlap" and are considered to be the realm of what is "ethical" by many. Ideas of Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship would fall into this category.
In regard to the blend of morality, morals, ethics and an "ethic", "morals" are generally referred to those principles of behavior and value which are not subject to any debate within a moral system. A "(fill in the blank) ethic" is a term that may be used by moralists to describe conclusions that certain members of a moral system have made in regard to particular chosen code/patterns of mind and behavior. For example, it may be moral in my moral system for me pray, and I may have a "prayer ethic" of praying in a certain way. Based on my definitions, if I am having a discussion on ethics that is informed by moral view in a way that can be commonly understood among those with different moral outlooks, I can be said to be discussing ethics.
It is this breakdown of ethics and morality that I will be using when I refer to "ethics" and "morality" in later blog posts. If I am echoing anyone else who has opined on this topic, please let me know.
As I've been reflecting on various moral and ethical issues, I've realized that it's actually an important question. It matters in terms of how to properly classify, compare and contrast morals and ethics across the boundaries of belief and skepticism. It matters, as a Christian, in regard to many of these inter-related questions in terms of how to discuss morality and ethics with the world at large:
-- Is what is moral also ethical?
-- How much does any one else's moral system fit in with "ethics"?
-- What do these terms mean to those who are hailing from a different ideology or different belief system?
-- What is it to have a moral debate or an ethical debate?
-- How much is a question of Christian morality "exportable" into the realm of ethical inquiry beyond Christianity?
-- Do I have a Christian ethical system or a Christian moral system, or both?
-- Where, if at all, do moral considerations and ethical blend in?
As with any important philosophical inquiry, I went to the internet. In freedictionary.com, it offers these definitions:
eth•ic ( th k)
n.
1. a. A set of principles of right conduct. b. A theory or a system of moral values: "An ethic of service is at war with a craving for gain" Gregg Easterbrook.
2. ethics (used with a sing. verb) The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.
3. ethics (used with a sing. or pl. verb) The rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession: medical ethics.
mo•ral•i•ty (m -r l -t , mô-)
n. pl. mo•ral•i•ties
1. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
2. A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.
3. Virtuous conduct.
4. A rule or lesson in moral conduct.
So to what extent are these terms interchangeable? Here, a gentleman named Lawrence M. Hinman gives his effort at making contrast:
"Ethics. The explicit, philosophical reflection on moral beliefs and practices. The difference between ethics and morality is similar to the difference between musicology and music. Ethics is a conscious stepping back and reflecting on morality, just as musicology is a conscious reflection on music.
Morality. "Morality" refers to the first-order beliefs and practices about good and evil by means of which we guide our behavior. Contrast with Ethics, which is the second-order, reflective consideration of our moral beliefs and practices. "
Here is wikipedia contrasting morals and ethics:
"Morality (from Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behaviour") refers to the concept of human action which pertains to matters of right and wrong—also referred to as "good and evil"—used within three contexts: individual distinction; systems of valued principles—sometimes called conduct morality—shared within a cultural, religious, secular or philosophical community. Personal morals define and distinguish among right and wrong intentions, motivations or actions, as these have been learned, engendered, or otherwise developed within individuals. Bycontrast, ethics are more correctly applied as the study of broader social systems within whose context morality exists. Morals define whether I should kill my neighbour Joe when he steals my tractor; ethics define whether it is right or wrong for one person to kill another in a dispute over property. "
Notice that the two sites listed above distinguish ethics from morality by defining ethics as the disciplined, conscious study applying the broadest examination of society. Morality is portrayed as being more instinctual, reflexive and provincial. Here, below, is a professional trade publication weighing in on the topic. The distinction made here is similar to that made by Wikipedia that morals are personal, and that ethics are global.
"Morals and the expression, “moral values” are generally associated with a personal view of values. Personal morals tend to reflect beliefs relating to sex, drinking, gambling, etc. They can reflect the influence of religion, culture, family and friends.
Ethics is concerned with how a moral person should behave. Ethical values are beliefs concerning what is morally right and proper as opposed to what is simply correct or effective.
i.e.
An individual may personally believe that drinking is immoral. However, drinking is not, in and of itself, unethical. Further, it is unethical to impose your personal moral values on another.
Ethical values transcend cultural, religious, or ethnic differences.
Ethical values embrace a more universal worldview. The Josephson Institute of Ethics recommends six, core ethical values to abide by: Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship. "
Here is a link to an atheist at atheism.about.com who gives a good breakdown of the different ethical disciplines, defining "ethics" in broad enough terms that it could be used to describe any feature of "morality". He does not explicitly define "morality", though in his writing he uses the term "ethics" more in regard to the disciplines of study and "morality" more in regard to their application.
Here are his categories of ethical inquiry listed as links:
• Descriptive Ethics
• Normative Ethics
• Deontology and Ethics
• Teleology and Ethics
• Virtue Ethics
• Analytic Ethics (Metaethics)
Here is a link to a philosopher who draws no distinction, but who is open to others attempting to make a distinction.
"I draw no distinction between ethics and morality. For me, the difference between the two terms is simply the difference between Greek (ethos) and Latin (mores). That is to say: in my lexicon they are stylistic variants of each other. If someone uses these terms in such a way as to suggest a difference, I have no objection as long as the person explains what difference he has in mind. But one should not assume a difference without explaining it."
So with this peek into the web, allow me to take a crack at this question of morality vs. ethics. I recognize that there is a certain value to all of the above attempts at comparing and contrasting ethics and morality, however, all of the above distinctions between ethics and morality, or lack thereof, leave something to be desired. I want to build on the categories of ethical inquiry listed at atheism.about.com to define "ethics" and "morality" in a way that encompasses the way that these words are commonly used, but that allows for a more disciplined understanding of how these terms blend together. So I define
Ethics as the realm of inquiry into questions of right conduct and virtue wherein a common metaphysical understanding among the debating parties is not a pre-requisite.
Morality as a particular value system that is oriented around a particular metaphysical understanding. It is the value system of a morality that will inform matters of right behavior and virtue.
By my definition, ethics is not the only province of conscious examination, nor is it the only idea that is non-provincial. Rather, an ethical discussion/debate occurs when the parties involved do not necessarily have an agreement on a metaphysical principle that serves as an ultimate truth. A moral discussion/debate is an inquiry in which the debating parties agree upon a metaphysical principle and are debating the correct application that flows from that principle.
My definition allows a superficial similarity to some of the definitions offered above, since a system of morality as I've defined it will be more idiosyncratic to individuals, since individuals can have a differing view of what is ultimately true. A system of morality will also be more likely to be connected to religion, since religious beliefs provide people with answers concerning ultimate truth.
It is a tendency among philosophical cognicenti to define morality as the "petri dish" that is examined by the objective "microscope" of ethics. The hierarchical relationship that places ethics above morality that is created for the inquiry elides into the conclusion -- that "ethics" is the meta-morality above morality. The trade publication's definitions of these terms are representative of this tendency.
Based on how I've defined "morality" and "ethics", no one can claim to be a member of a cognicenti that has risen above questions of mere morality. Saying that there is no ultimate truth is, in itself an ultimate truth which functions as the basis of organizing a moral value system. Even those who claim that they have no settled metaphysical understanding, in fact, have one by default. It is also possible for people to have un-examined beliefs and therefore have deeply held moral systems that are in conflict with their overtly stated moral/ethical positions.
A moral system may encompass ideas of right conduct and virtue that are amenable to many others who have differing moral systems. It is these common denominator questions of right conduct and virtue that exist in the realm of "moral overlap" and are considered to be the realm of what is "ethical" by many. Ideas of Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship would fall into this category.
In regard to the blend of morality, morals, ethics and an "ethic", "morals" are generally referred to those principles of behavior and value which are not subject to any debate within a moral system. A "(fill in the blank) ethic" is a term that may be used by moralists to describe conclusions that certain members of a moral system have made in regard to particular chosen code/patterns of mind and behavior. For example, it may be moral in my moral system for me pray, and I may have a "prayer ethic" of praying in a certain way. Based on my definitions, if I am having a discussion on ethics that is informed by moral view in a way that can be commonly understood among those with different moral outlooks, I can be said to be discussing ethics.
It is this breakdown of ethics and morality that I will be using when I refer to "ethics" and "morality" in later blog posts. If I am echoing anyone else who has opined on this topic, please let me know.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
My Comment at ChristianPost.com
Here is a comment that I made at ChristianPost.com on the topic of modesty using the moniker GW. I respond directly to a person's comments. This person does care about modesty and that's good. However, based on her comments, if she is ever in charge of a ministry, I will be sure not to send men to her church who are struggling with lust, since she expects men of God not to have those struggles.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Female Chauvenist Pigs and their defenders
This post is also my 3rd post as a "review of a review", criticizing the book reviewers opinions. Book reviews are an important part of the opinion media, and are an important place where secular apologists of ennui let their opinions hang out.
Ariel Levy's Female Chauvenist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture is a book that I refer to in my Crisis of Modesty in the Evangelical Church. Despite Levy's faults and naivete in certain areas of her analysis, Levy was one of a couple secular authors who began seriously questioning and confronting the raunch culture at large. I am particularly interested in writers like Levy, since secular writers arguing for social sexual boundaries cannot look to Scriptures to back up their arguments. They are often forced to construct better arguments from available evidence in society at large, often doing a better job than many Christians who care about the same topic.
While researching for my Modesty writing, I found that Levy coined the term, "Female Chauvenist Pigs", while it was Christine Smallwood who actually coined the term "raunch feminism" in her 2005 review of Levy's book entitled "Girls gone wild". There are many aspects of Smallwood's review that have vexed me, and I wanted to examine Smallwood's review in greater depth as part of my ongoing look at raunch culture and its apologists.
Here is the book review by Smallwood that was featured in Salon.com in 2005
Girls Gone Wild
The second half of Smallwood's review has been copied to my post and is featured in blue. My comments are interspersed throughout it in black. Notice that Smallwood acknowledges certain aspects of Levy's analysis while disparaging/questioning others aspects of it. It is my critique of Smallwood that most of her criticisms of Levy are contradictory and are "red herrings" for a central viewpoint of Smallwood that is not contradictory to any other of Smallwoods remarks.
…Levy extrapolates from her research subjects to all women, relying on a "we" without clearly defining who she's speaking about, or for. We revel in the porn aesthetic. We fetishize strippers. We do cardio striptease workouts. We have no real erotic role models. We are female chauvinist pigs.
But are we? It's clear that "we" live in a culture permeated by raunch and pornography -- at least white women do. Levy doesn't take account of black, Asian or Latino culture. She doesn't look at booty shakers pouring champagne on themselves, dripping with gold on the music videos on BET, or thumb through Confessions of a Video Vixen, the bestselling book about a hip-hop video dancer. She doesn't think about Japanese anime and manga, with their double-D heroines.
After second-wave feminism was accused of being a white movement, women of color assumed an important position in academic and activist debate. "We" could have a lot to teach each other about the ways that we are uniquely, and commonly, misused across media. Female Chauvinist Pigs ignores that possibility.
Again, Smallwood is not criticizing Levy’s fundamental analysis that women are misused across the media, she is criticizing the fact that Levy has not done more to weave non-white women into the discussion. While this is not a bad suggestion, to conduct this cross-cultural comparative analysis Levy would have had to have written a longer book, maybe a much longer book. Levy is giving herself permission to be a bit polemic. Perhaps Levy should have described her current as an analysis of white culture and then write a second follow-up book that includes all of the other bits of analysis that Smallwood wants.
It also neglects any mention of class. Male-identified FCPs are financially successful. Even if they're not at the top of the ladder, if they're bartenders or registered nurses, they're not struggling to get by. They would never be forced to strip for money, for instance, which is one reason it's easy for them to dissociate themselves from women who do.
Who are these indentifying males and these dissociating financially successful Female Chauvinist Pigs? It's Smallwood's red herring and a meaningless pronoun minefield that has no bearing on Levy's analysis. If Levy wanted to deal with class nuances—a tangentially important area to her analysis-- she would need to have written a bigger book.
Aside from the question of "white-ness" and class, Levy is writing to and about those women who have the means to consume, who are knowingly or un-knowingly driving raunch into the mainstream by their consumption choices. As it relates to women who have the means to consume, Levy's "we" covers most of the bell curve of consumerist Western culture, and only excludes, perhaps, the utterly destitute poor, who might feel that they were "forced" to strip.
So you have to wonder why Levy doesn't take the time to interview strippers or sex workers. She quotes Jenna Jameson, but she doesn't get an analysis of raunch from the perspective of an actual sex worker. Presumably such a thing falls outside the scope of her subject matter, but you'd think that a G-string diva would have an idea or two of her own on her new role as cultural heroine.
Again, Levy could have written a massive tome to include every angle of cultural analysis that Smallwood criticizes her for not including. We can read Jenna Jameson’s book, How To Make Love Like a Porn Star to learn about Jameson’s own personal cocktail of pride, bravado, denial, ambivalence and cognitive dissonance.
Levy's book is about the motivations of the "moths", and so it is actually far more important for Levy’s over-all analysis of mainstream culture to interview “normal” girls like Erin and Shaina than to further probe into what Jenna actually thinks of herself.
Raunch, whether or not we like it, is tangled and complicated, fraught with pleasure, voyeurism, mimicry, excitement, revulsion, exploitation -- a whole host of contradictory impulses.
Smallwood’s description of raunch also sounds like an addiction. At certain points in the midst of an addiction to drugs and alcohol, an addiction includes all of the impulses that Smallwood mentions – pleasure, mimicry, excitement, revulsion and exploitation. To admit that something is an addiction, though, requires that one be capable of super-imposing a higher and better and more wholesome image of health over and above the pleasure, mimicry, excitement, revulsion and exploitation.
While raunch is indeed a tangle of contradictory impulses, the question is whether it can be untangled. Is there is an image of health and wholeness that one can superimpose over and above the pleasure, mimcry, excitement, revulsion and exploitation of raunch or are the contradictory impulses are necessarily and inevitable linked in a sort of yin and yang, held together with an umbreakable centripetal force?
(There's a reason this stuff tore the women's movement apart.) But all is not a matter of false consciousness. Many women are savvy enough to recognize those contradictions and see through the charade that is broadcast into their lives 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The essential drive toward raunch behavior in our culture is a destructive drive, and Smallwood has not denied its destructiveness. There is an element to this drive into raunch that Levy has correctly identified – that women, on some level, view it as an avenue to having power equity with men, or even power over men. As a mutated post-feminism that can bear little resemblance to earlier forms of feminism, raunch feminism is feminist in its essential belief in that women demand power equity with men. Raunch feminists seek this power even at the expense of doing destructive things with their sexuality, often aping and even one-upping various forms of male sexual conquest.
This tacit affirmation of power in raunch culture is “false”, in the sense that it is not a true and constructive measure of a woman’s value.
The ways that they consume and digest endless streams of newspaper stories, television shows, magazine covers, books, advertising campaigns, billboards and Internet pop-up ads would have been worth investigating.
Again Levy could have written a book the size of War and Peace, or could write a follow up book.
After all, being a woman faced with infinite images of other women taking their clothes off, gyrating, tittering, moaning and pushing product can be exhausting and demoralizing. (Shockingly, there are those rare mornings that the
Who’s "simply wishing" it will go away? Is it Levy? Surely Levy desires that it will go away, and which decent person wouldn’t desire that it went away? Smallwood seems to be implying that Levy has not done something constructive in trying to usher the end of raunch. In fact, Levy has done something in her effort to raise consciousness, and raised consciousness is always penultimate to action.
Raunch is a fungus that grows of a critical mass of popular ennui and blasé. If that ennui and blasé were to end, then raunch would diminish. If we believe that it is out of our control then it is. As Andrew Carnegie said, "Whatever you think, you're right", and any reform movement seems like an impossible dream to those who first dare to conceive of it.
Levy's book diagnoses, but it doesn't prescribe. After carefully documenting the sale of female sexuality, Levy closes with the call for readers to believe they are "sexy and funny and competent and smart." Apparently the solution to a system of objectification in which women themselves are complicit, in which feminism has been co-opted by and for profit, is for us to be ourselves. It's a little hard to swallow.
Smallwood seems to be saying that self objectification is in the very nature of womanhood. That for women to "be themselves" is to necessarily live out this impulse to self-objectification, and that to tell women to "be themselves" at the expense of self-objectifying is nigh impossible.
Unless there is a political dimension to our personhood that extends to other women, we will never be more than marketing niches.
"A political dimension to our personhood that extends to other women" that Smallwood suggests would require that women as a group presented a clear objective to the world that could be advanced through the peculiar medium of politics. Feminism was just such an attempt to define a political dimension to the personhood of women that extended to other women and, so says Smallwood, it was torn apart by the contradictions of raunch. So the raunch sexuality that split the political unity of feminism will be fixed by the political unity of feminism? Generally speaking, if this is the "smarter strategy for living with it" that Smallwood suggests, then it's not a very good one.
Raunch is about individual choices. It is a juggernaut that is created by what individual people wear when they get up in the morning, what they do with each other in relationships, what they consume and what they excuse. It is in the intimate realms of life that raunch must primarily be contronted.
Levy has done the good work of documenting raunch culture. What next?
Having offered no hint a substantive solution, and after hinted spuriously at fatal flaws in Levy's analysis, Smallwood is basically saying that self-objectification is an intractible part of modern womanhood.
If Smallwood were to consider this suggestion an intrusion of “conservatism” that would erode feminism “hard won gains”, then, for Smallwood, nothing is “next”, and people will continue to be titillated and excited and then demoralized and exhausted by an addiction to raunch that is, and always will be, out of control.
To her credit, Smallwood is at least willing to admit that there is a destructive aspect to raunch feminism. Read some the passionate letters in response to her "Girls gone wild" review, and you'll see the full-throated denial of any dark side to the raunch culture.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
