By: Rosemary Dewar
Whatever pleases the eyes, burns the ears, and itches the palms seems to be a recurring theme for popular consumption. The classic gothic literary style has not ventured too far from its usual components of over-dramatization, hyper-sexuality, and relentless tragedy. When the market says, “Sex sells,” it only means that a particular type of sex sells. The usually depicted Americana classic stereotype of the white picket fence family doesn’t fetch a reaction that compels contemporary culture to embrace it. Although we are experiencing a call to get back to classic Western cultural norms such as the nuclear family, we are also living with a pervasive entertainment high which highlights competing levels of deviance. The 90th annual Oscars proved yet again that those in Hollywood have dubbed themselves as the givers of culture. The more outlandish or imaginary the victimhood, the more the Left demands the public embrace it.
The eye is naturally drawn to what is out of order. This is not to be confused with what is referred to in mathematics as a “standard of deviation” similar to the Golden Ratio, which demands a high level of order even to manifest. Another example of the importance of order would be the reproduction of butterflies. Should a female identify a variant in the male’s wing-pattern that is only a minute fraction off, it will not be selected. Similarly, humans scientifically find symmetry more appealing. When it comes to the standards of human nature and social interaction, a person could be the most demonstrably symmetrical, attractive person, but if their moral standards deviate too far from responsible freedom, that person would be considered ugly.
Our culture seems to be embracing two insidiously ugly notions: beauty is not to be strived for, and standards for morality are subject to each individual’s personal definition. It is impossible to find a common goal and create a way of life with one’s neighbors without sharing mutually agreed-upon standards.
When standards like the nuclear family, biological gender, personal responsibility, and individual freedom are done away with, we can find ourselves in a highly constrictive environment. As depicted in the movie The Giver, children are birthed by artificially inseminated surrogates. The children are assigned to people who are assigned to be couples. Individuals are drugged every day to manage their emotional state. The protagonist, Jonas, is selected to learn from the Giver in order to become one himself. Jonas then learns of all that comes with humanity and how even the most inconvenient truths expose beautiful realities. Jonas’s female friend is assigned to be a surrogate, has twins, and then one of the twins is to be eliminated because they share too much DNA in order to fit in the environment. Jonas’s newly found knowledge finds it wrong to kill an innocent baby.
Why is it wrong to kill the baby, and why is Jonas right to preserve the baby’s life?
Humanity has endless amounts of history and science to reference in order to deduce standards that preserve a moral society. When a culture aims to tear away at the foundation it is built on, society will cease to function. One doesn’t get to pick and choose which rules they get to defy without there being consequences that have uncontrollably detrimental results.
Abandoning logic in order to satisfy any passion that sways one in the moment is a critical mistake. Eros is not solely a salacious love; it is also uninhibited passion. Romans determined that Eros was a source of unprofitable diversion. In a morally lacking society, death is the only counter-balance to passion. The saying, “You can have too much of a good thing,” holds true.
Author Malcolm Muggeridge summed this up perfectly when he stated, “It has become abundantly clear in the second half of the twentieth century that Western Man has decided to abolish himself. Having wearied of the struggle to be himself, he has created his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, his own vulnerability out of his own strength; himself blowing the trumpet that brings the walls of his own city tumbling down, and, in a process of auto-genocide, convincing himself that he is too numerous, and labouring accordingly with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer in order to be an easier prey for his enemies; until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary, battered old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.”
By: Rosemary Dewar
