Not so Silly

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
C.S. Lewis

What are America’s morals?

In the past the people of America were driven to do Good because of their firmly held beliefs of God and religion. Our Constitution (or more accurately the 1st Amendment) gives us the right to practice what religion we want. But let’s face it folks we grew up a Christian nation. Our beliefs, our ideals, our laws, etc. are all due to Christian influence. You can argue against it if you want, but it is true.

Our nation has reached a point in its development which most closely resembles late adolescence/early adulthood. We have suffered an identity crisis. We have rejected the faiths our fathers. We have turned to sex and drugs in hopes of discovering some truths.

You don’t believe me? In the 1960’s & 70’s America shed its ties to tradition and faith. Drug use and sexual freedom grew into popular culture. Artists, actors, musicians, athletes were all shown giving way to such practices and eventually a great faction of the population joined in.

Is there anything wrong with such practices? Inherently? No. Man has been altering his state of consciousness for thousands of years. He has not fallen off the evolutionary track because of it. As for sex, the act of procreation has been going on longer than man has even existed, and it could be argued that it is the single most important task man has.

But when such acts are unregulated and free to the masses trouble ensues. Sexual liberation is leading to the breakdown of society, yet few can see this. No, I am not going to sit here and claim that you are evil and Satan because you have sex. So calm down. Take a deep breath and walk with me. From the time of the sexual revolution sex has evolved in a way that few could have foreseen. Sex in our culture today is a conquest. It is not uncommon to hear of twenty year olds who have had dozens of partners. So, what is wrong with this? Well the problem is the goal of sex has changed. In Christianity the goal of sex was not to achieve an orgasm, it was to create life. The goal of the act was to create a living breathing child. Thus, that child has meaning of existence because the act had meaning. But culture has deemed that the importance of sex is the orgasm. Ephemeral pleasure, if you will. The creation of life is a secondary effect of the act. In fact, it is even considered to be an unwanted effect at time. With the birth control industries being billion dollar industries how can one argue against that? The fact alone that abortions have increased exponentially proves that the outcome of sex isn’t that itty bitty fetus.

So what’s the point Craig? Well folks just like when the act had meaning the child’s existence had meaning, it holds true that if the act is meaningless the outcome is meaningless. When parents to be are forced into relationships they do not want to be in, when they are forced to raise a child they do not want (nor have the qualifications to do so) trouble ensues. The parent deep down inside has a resentment towards that child. They resent that they are being forced out of the ephemeral culture that gave them meaning for so long. They resent that they are bound by tradition that they no longer believe in. Overall they are incapable of truly loving that child. (I am in no way arguing that there is no such thing as a good parent in this circumstance, just that such parents are rare). Children have quite powerful empathic perceptions too. They feed off of love. And when it is not there a small quiet void grows where the love one shares with ones family should be. Later on in life this man will try to fill the void, most likely with drugs and physical pleasures.

In the husband-wife relationship mentioned earlier there are also problems. Because the only love ever known by the two was ephemeral lust, a lasting relationship of understanding, respect, and Love was never formed. The entire basis of their relationship is the accidental outcome of a meaningless act. On top of that the resentment the parent has toward the child is also exchanged between the parents. Each silently blames the other for trapping them in the existence they don’t want to be part of. In the end they will most likely divorce. Explaining why the Divorce rate has increased dramatically since the 1950’s (some statistics say that it is as much as five times as high now. Predicting one in two marriages will end in divorce). It is accepted as fact throughout the branch of psychology that divorce shapes the child adversely. The already present void the child feels grows and the cycle is not just continued, but accelerated.
So now we have a culture of people looking to fill a missing piece of themselves. In the past religion was meant to fill this void, but religion has been discarded by pop-America. So where do we turn? Well some of us turn to drugs. Some go for the caffeine and it helps them. Some go for the booze. Some for Marijuana. Some to the harder stuff. But most of us go for the prescription medicine. Right now in America over 60% (SIXTY PERCENT!) of people are on one form of anti-depressants. That’s not even including pain killers, medications for ADD/ADHD, sleep prescriptions, etc, etc.

As the family breaks down, each generation will lose more and more of what the previous generations had. Each generation will turn to new things to fill the void in their lives. We will lose that which gave us strength and depth. We will no longer pursue what past cultures thought important like art, music, literature, poetry, and philosophy. Instead we will spend our time and effort on thinking of ways to feel good and not die. The healthcare and defense industries are two of the largest in America. We look at doctors as heroes, but for what? They can not make us live forever. They just delay the inevitable. Most other American endeavors are guided towards material/ ephemeral possession by distracting us from ourselves. What use was the Furby to the world? How does the Mall of America compare to Notre Dame? How will future generations look at as when they find out that more people could recite Miley Cyrus lyrics than Shakespeare’s plays?

Maybe the time has come that Christianity is dead in America. Maybe some semblance of it can be resurrected. I do not know. What I do know is that as Americans we have lost that which guided us. We no longer have the value systems that our fore fathers held so dear. Instead we have a void and a mission to fill that. I say to you my reader that the answer does not lay in the material life of popular culture. The void is much too deep to be soothed by an iPhone. No the holes in our hearts can only be filled by something bigger than us, like family or like religion. How we find these again I do not know and alas is the cause of my own unhappiness.