An unparalleled disaster for Western Civilization
In any earlier post, I called the Sexual Revolution an unparalleled disaster for the West.
Well, I have to back down from that statement, because there is a parallel. When the Roman Republic conquered all the lands surrounding the Middle Sea, building roads and imposing laws and letters on tribes and cities, the nations were subsumed into Latin.
The local languages fell into the margins of life, the local customs, the folk ways, and even the gods were carted off to Rome, renamed, absorbed. Imagine if “globalization” was taking place, not by free and peaceful trade, but under the iron-shod heel of the Legions marching under the gold eagle. The republic was overthrown and replaced by Imperium: we think of empires as run by emperors, but it is closer to say that is was run by Praetorians, run by the military for the benefit of the military, with the Imperator serving at their pleasure: the emperor was merely the highest-ranked military officer.
I have heard the argument made– I leave it to historians to settle the question — that the disruption of tribal and civic life and the imposition of a universal Roman Imperium, left the individual in society atomized, cut off from their normal social institutions, rudderless. The Greeks abd gentiles looked with admiration at the Jews in the empire, who had a system of social rules in place that helped the poor and the orphan, and this international community maintained its mores and morals.
The universalism of the Jewish religion was also distinct from the more local and parochial gods of other tribes. Christianity emerged as the universal Church of the universal empire, the Ecclessia of the Imperium, in part because it was a Hellenized version (or heresy, take your pick) of Judaism, stripped of its specific Jewish elements the Greeks could not or would not follow. My point here is not to praise Christianity, but merely to observe the immense moral confusion caused by the breakdown of the local tribal societies. Everything was lost.
With the Sexual Revolution, everything has been lost again.
As for the degree of the disaster to the West brought on by the Sexual Revolution, it is my theory that human society, whether we wish it or not, carries out the logical conclusions of the axioms of our morals. One axiom of the Sexual Revolution is that sex is casual; another is that self-control is a sign of psychological repression or societal oppression; another is that the sex drive is so important in the human scale of things that no social barriers should be allowed to stand in the way of its expression; another is that all rules for human behavior are merely “taboos”, arbitrary or sinister in origin, and deserving no loyalty. Originally, perhaps, the revolutionaries meant these arguments to be used to permit no-fault divorce; but it leads to the normalization of any deviance.
You see, if you argue that homosexuality should be tolerated because the homosexuals are genetically predisposed toward the practice, this is an argument that needs not go any further. On the other hand, if you argue that homosexuality should be tolerated because all morals rules are arbitrary taboos no one need respect nor obey, this argument lends itself with equal logic to the tolerations of all other sexual misconduct.
The first argument can draw a line at genetics: no one seriously makes the claim that there is a “Solomon” gene which should permit a man to have a thousand wives and concubines, or even a “Tom Jefferson” gene which should permit a man to buy and own a cute Sally Hemmings. The second argument cannot draw a line. If the rules against sodomy are mere bias, what are the rules against incest? What about Pasiphae’s love for the bull that fathered the Minotaur on her?
This inability to draw a line, if we were all Vulcans or Houyhnhmns, would leave us in a neutral and open-minded posture. Having no basis for rational decision, a purely rational creature does not incline to one side or the other. But we are humans.
Our nature is innately inclined toward our own ruthless egotistical appetites, what we more accurately might call “fallen nature.” The main appetite of the ego is self-justification and self-love. Consequently, when humans are unable to draw a line between good and evil, tasteful and tasteless, fair and foul, our ego tells us it is braver to take the stand on the part of what is evil and foul.
It is certainly more satisfying (in an arbitrary world) to defend the evil and ulgy, and drive what is good and fair away: take a look at any modern art museum to see the visible evidence of this process in the world of aesthetic judgments. Once philosophy declared all aesthetic judgments to be arbitrary, we did not get a random mix of fair and foul, craftsmanlike and childish, we got modern art that is uniformly foul and childish, and seeks ever to become more so. Likewise in the realm of public debates about morals.
Once philosophy declared all aesthetic judgments to be arbitrary, we did not get a random mix of wholesome and perverted. We got a society whose laws and customs incline strongly to one party. Pornography is protected by the First Amendment, but saying homosexuality is unbiblical is hate-speach.
Moral relativism is never actually relativistic: no moral relativist actually says or actually believes that traditional notions of decency are true and good in the eyes of the beholder. The traditional notions are always the oppressor, no matter who believes what. According to the standard of so-called moral relativism, the perverts are always right, absolutely, from every point of view, in every frame of reference, no matter what.
It was with these thoughts in mind, that my eye fell upon this entry in Wikipedia. I am not familiar with the author, and make no claims about the accuracy of Wikipedia. But I offer it for what it is worth as a sign of the degree of the corruption of a morally relativistic society.
March Laumer’s Oz
March Laumer was one of the first authors to continue the Oz series after the Famous Forty. His books were written with the permission of Contemporary Books, who owned Reilly & Lee, the original publisher. His canon includes everything he knew of that was set in the land of Oz, including Volkov’s Russian Oz, the MGM movie, the Disney sequel, and many of Baum’s own books that most fans do not consider canonical.
Laumer also made several controversial changes to Oz. He married off several of the major characters, often to unlikely prospects. For example, the intelligent and mature sorceress Glinda was married to Button Bright, who had been a small and dim-witted child throughout Baum’s books. He also aged Dorothy to a teenager to make her a romantic prospect for several characters, made Ozma a lesbian based on her upbringing as a boy, and made the Shaggy Man an ephebophile based on his frequent travels with young girls.[63]
Ephebolphilia is a polite term for sexual attraction to teenagers. I was reading ROAD TO OZ to my children last night. This is the book that introduced Button Bright and Shaggy Man. These characters are purely innocent, and purely delightful. They are fun. There is nothing in an Oz book that would offend the conscience of a child: Dorothy, for example, is never cruel or petty, or even rude.
I do not think I need to trace the psychological steps whereby a culture that scorns virginity comes to scorn childhood and especially to hate childhood innocence with the hatred of Moloch. The steps are obvious. One cannot excuse guilty self-indulgence without coming inevitably to loath innocence, and then to hate it.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
