Simply brilliant analysis of the modern problem of getting more than what one wanted, wanting more still, but in the end, not feeling happy/satisfied! the key human ingredient is missing in these mechanical pursuits! (to call them animal pursuits would be an insult to the innocent, natural animals! who do not know any better!).
hope you like reading this.
me just loved it!
for it celebrates love and not just the act of so-called 'love-making'!
jai ho!
ganesh.
Shameless and loveless
ROGER SCRUTON
The condition in which we now find ourselves is novel in many ways. Perhaps the most interesting is the enormous effort that is now devoted to overcoming or abolishing shame.
Venus with a Mirror
Titian (c.1555)
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Sexual intercourse began, according to Philip Larkin's famous poem, in 1963. Four decades have elapsed since then, and these decades have seen a growing recognition that sexual liberation is not the answer to the problems of sex but a new addition to them. Traditional sexual morality reinforced the society-wide commitment to marriage as the sole legitimate avenue to sexual release. It is easy to understand such a morality. It has a clear social function — ensuring stable families and guaranteeing the transfer of social capital from one generation to the next. And it has an intrinsic rational appeal in making sense of love, commitment, jealousy, courtship and the drama of the sexes. The problem is that, by impeding our pleasures, it creates a strong motive to escape from it. And escape from it we did, with a great burst of jubilation that very quickly dwindled to an apprehensive gulp.
The condition in which we now find ourselves is novel in many ways. Perhaps the most interesting is the enormous effort that is now devoted to overcoming or abolishing shame. The Book of Genesis tells the story of man's fall, caused by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Until eating the forbidden fruit, the Bible tells us, 'they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed'. No sooner had they eaten, however, than 'the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons'.
When you do something wrong and are discovered you feel ashamed of yourself. This kind of shame is a moral emotion, founded on the thought that someone else is judging you. But it is not what is referred to in the verses quoted, which are about sexual shame. Sexual shame differs from moral shame in two ways. First, it is not a confession of wrongdoing: on the contrary, it testifies to the reluctance to do or suffer wrong. Secondly, it is not troubled, as moral shame is troubled, by the thought that you are being judged as a self, a free being, a moral subject. On the contrary, it arises from the thought that you are being judged as a body, a mechanism, an object. Hence the German philosopher Max Scheler described sexual shame as a Schutzgefühl — a shield-emotion that protects you from abuse, whether by another or yourself. If we lose the capacity for shame we do not regain the innocence of the animals; we become shameless, and that means that we are no longer protected from the sexual predator.
Shame still existed in 1963. Couples hid their desire from the world, and sometimes from each other — at least until the moment when it could be clearly expressed. Obscenity was frowned upon, and by nobody more than the prophets of liberation, such as Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown. Sex, for them, was something beautiful, sacred even, which must not be sullied by dirty language, lavatorial humour or exhibitionist displays. Shame has since been banished from the culture. This we witness in Reality TV — which ought to be called Fantasy TV since that is its function. All fig leaves, whether of language, thought or behaviour, have now been removed, and the feral children are right there before our eyes, playing their dirty games on the screen. It is not a pretty sight, but nor is it meant to be.
This shamelessness is encouraged by sex education in our schools, which tries both to discount the differences between us and the other animals, and to remove every hint of the forbidden, the dangerous or the sacred. Shame, according to the standard literature now endorsed by the DES, is a lingering disability. Sexual initiation means learning to overcome such 'negative' emotions, to put aside our hesitations, and to enjoy 'good sex'. Questions as to 'who', 'whom' or 'which gender' are matters of personal choice — sex education is not there to make the choice, merely to facilitate it. In this way we encourage children to a premature and depersonalised interest in their own sexuality, and at the same time we become hysterical at the thought of all those paedophiles out there, who are really the paedophiles in here. I see in this the clear proof that shame is not a luxury, still less an inhibition to be discarded, but an integral part of the human condition. It is the emotion without which true sexual desire cannot develop, and if there is such a thing as genuine sex education, it consists in teaching children not to discard shame but to acquire it.
Equally novel is the loss of the concept of normal sexual desire. In 1963 we still saw homosexuality as a perversion, even if an enviably glamorous one. We still believed that sexual desire had a normal course, in which man and woman come together by mutual consent and to their mutual pleasure. We regarded sex with children as abhorrent and sex with animals as unthinkable, except for literary purposes. Thanks in part to massive propaganda from the gay lobby, in part to the mendacious pseudo-science put out by the Kinsey Institute (whose charlatan founder has now been admitted to the ranks of saints and heroes), we have abandoned the concept of perversion, and accepted the official view of 'sexual orientation' as a natural and inescapable fact.
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Max Scheler described sexual shame as a Schutzgefühl — a shield-emotion that protects you from abuse, whether by another or yourself. If we lose the capacity for shame we do not regain the innocence of the animals; we become shameless, and that means that we are no longer protected from the sexual predator.
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Indeed, things have gone further. Around 1963 the philosopher Michael Polanyi presented his theory of 'moral inversion', according to which disapproval once directed at an activity may become directed instead at the people who still disapprove of it. By moral inversion we protect ourselves from our previous beliefs and from the guilt of discarding them. Moral inversion has infected the debate about sexual inversion to the point of silencing it. To suggest that it would be better if children were not exposed to homosexuality or encouraged to think of it as normal, that the gay scene is not the innocent thing that it claims to be but a form of sexual predation — to make those suggestions now, however hesitantly, is to lay yourself open to the charge of 'homophobia'. And this will spell the end of your career in any place, such as a university, which has freedom of opinion as its guiding purpose. In this area, as in so many others, the ruling principle of liberalism applies; namely, all opinions are permitted, so long as they are liberal.
Novel too is the way in which sex and the sexual act are now described. In 1963 it was possible — just — to believe that the language of Lady Chatterley's Lover safeguarded the moral core of sexual emotion, and showed it to be the beautiful and personal thing that it is. Sex, for Lawrence and his liberated followers, was still something holy, which could therefore be defiled. Forty years on we have acquired a habit of describing sex in demeaning and depersonalised terms. Having lost all sense of the human being as 'made in God's image', we take revenge on the body by describing it in what the Lawrentians would regard as sacrilegious language.
A significant contribution has been made, in this respect, by pornography. You can study a picture and see only lines, colours and shapes, while failing to notice the face that shines in and through them. So you can look at a person and see only the body, and not the self that lives in it. It is precisely our sexual interest that presents us with this choice: whether to see the other as subject or as object. And this explains both the charm and the danger of pornography, which represents people as objects, so that the body becomes peculiarly opaque, a prison door behind which the self shifts invisibly, inaudibly and inaccessibly. People are repelled by pornography and also fascinated by it, and now that it is available to everyone on the internet, it seems that just about everyone is logging on.
The growing toleration of pornography, which will soon be regarded as an industry like any other, protected against criticism by the same moral inversion that now protects homosexuality, is rapidly changing the way in which the human body is perceived. One way of understanding this change is by invoking Kenneth Clark's distinction between the naked and the nude. In Titian's nudes you will often find a lapdog, whose eyes and posture express an eager interest in the woman who reclines on the couch. Dogs have no conception of what it is to be naked, and their calm unembarrassability before the sight of human flesh reminds us of how very different the human form is in their eyes and in ours. In this way Titian returns us to the Garden of Eden, instructing us that we are not to see this body as naked, as though the woman were exposing herself to us in the manner of the girl on Page Three. The nude's sexuality is not offered to us, but remains latent and expectant within her — awaiting the lover to whom it can be offered not shamelessly, but nevertheless without shame. The dog reminds us that she, unlike he, is capable of shame, while being neither ashamed nor shameless. This stupendous fact is presented to us not as a thought or a theory, but as a revelation — the kind of revelation that is contained in every human form, but which is of necessity hidden by our daily commerce and retrieved and clarified by art.
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This shamelessness is encouraged by sex education in our schools, which tries both to discount the differences between us and the other animals, and to remove every hint of the forbidden, the dangerous or the sacred. Shame, according to the standard literature now endorsed by the DES, is a lingering disability.
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The people in the pornographic image are not nude like Titian's Venus but naked — even if they are also partly clothed. The focus is on the sexual act and the sexual organs, which are exposed, framed by the camera and detached from any personal emotion. In this way pornography effects a shift in focus — a shift downwards from the human person, the object of love and desire, to the human animal, the object of transferable fantasies. This shift in focus is also a profanation. By focusing on the wrong things we pollute and diminish the right things. In pornography, desire is detached from love, and attached to the mute machinery of sex. This is damaging to adults in just the same way that modern sex education is damaging to children. For it undermines the possibility of real erotic love, which comes only when the sexual act is hedged round with prohibitions, and offered as a gift and an existential commitment.
The growth of internet porn is easily explained, however. Pornography has a function, which is precisely to relieve us of commitments. Life in the actual world is difficult and embarrassing. Most of all is it difficult and embarrassing in our confrontation with other people who, by their very existence, make demands that we may be unwilling to meet. It requires a great force, a desire that fixes upon an individual, and sees that individual as unique and irreplaceable, if people are to make the sacrifices upon which the community depends for its longevity. It is far easier to take refuge in surrogates, which neither embarrass us nor resist our cravings. The habit grows of creating a compliant world of desire, in which the erotic force is dissipated and the needs of love denied.
The effect of pornographic fantasy is therefore to 'commodify' the object of desire, and to replace love and its vestigial sacraments with the law of exchange. When sex becomes a commodity, the most important sanctuary of human ideals becomes a market, and value is reduced to price. That is what has happened in the last few decades, and it is the root fact of post-modern culture, the ultimate explanation of what is observed and commented upon on every side — namely, that our culture has become not just shameless, but loveless. For the human body has been downgraded in our perception from subject to object, from self to tool.
The distinction between body and self is not to be explained as a distinction between the physical body and the ethereal soul. It is a distinction between two ways of seeing our embodiment. Nor is it a distinction that we can really apply to the rest of creation. But it belongs to the truth of our condition. And it is only when we look on people as we should, so that their physical embodiment becomes transparent to the self-conscious viewpoint that is uniquely theirs, that we see the moral reality. That moral reality is what is meant when it is written that we are made in the image of God. Take that phrase as a metaphor if you like; but it still refers to something real, namely the embodiment in the human form of a free being, capable of desire, love and commitment and capable also, therefore, of shame. This reality was vivid to us four decades ago; today it is still perceived, but through a glass darkly.
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In this way pornography effects a shift in focus — a shift downwards from the human person, the object of love and desire, to the human animal, the object of transferable fantasies.
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These radical changes have consequences that nobody would have foreseen in 1963. It was still assumed in that year that men made advances, and that women gave in to them only when consent was complete. What happened thereafter was the responsibility of man and woman alike. This assumption can no longer be made. In the world of 'safe sex' those old habits of courtship seem tedious and redundant. If sex is simply the pleasurable transaction that is on sale over the internet and advertised in schools, then consent is easily obtained and easily signified.
But it seems as though consent, offered so freely and without regard for the preliminaries once assumed to be indispensable, is not really consent and can be withdrawn at any time, even retrospectively. The charges of harassment or even 'date rape' lie always in reserve. The slap in the face which used to curtail importunate advances is now offered after the event, and in a far more deadly form — a form which is no longer private, intimate and remediable, but public, militarised and, in America at least, possessing the absolute objectivity of law. 'Date rape' is now a serious and increasing crime on the American campus. It doesn't matter that the girl said 'yes', since yes means no. In the absence of feminine modesty, ardent courtship and masculine address — behaviour still common in 1963 — you cannot assume that a woman knows what she is doing when she does it with you. You might take this as showing that 'safe sex' is really sex at its most dangerous. Maybe marriage is the only safe sex that we know.
With the crime of 'date rape' has come the lesser crime of sexual harassment, which means (to put it honestly) advances made by an unattractive man. The choreography of seduction was inherited in 1963 from the institution of marriage. But it has since decayed to the point where men are forced to be blunt about what they want, while being no longer trained to disguise their desires behind an offer of protection. In consequence unattractive men, reduced to blurting out their sexual need to its reluctant object, expose themselves to humiliation. And because women, however much they are schooled in feminist ideology, despise men who fail to be men and who appear to treat them as mere commodities, 'sexual harassment' has become a serious and wildly proliferating charge, a way in which women can release their generalised anger against men — an anger which is itself the long-term product of sexual liberation, and among the most distressing of the many legacies of 1963.
For four decades we have been defying human nature, making purely theoretical assumptions which fly in the face of customs and instincts that have existed, in one form or another, from the beginning of recorded history. Sexual liberation is here to stay; but we should try to temper it, to rescue the natural order that it threatens, and to safeguard the two great projects which, since 1963, have been in such serious decline: the project of love and the project of raising children.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Roger Scruton. "Shameless and loveless." The Spectator (April 16, 2005).
This article reprinted with permission from Roger Scruton. See his web site here.
THE AUTHOR
Roger Scruton is a writer, philosopher, publisher, journalist, composer, editor, businessman and broadcaster. He has held visiting posts at Princeton, Stanford, Louvain, Guelph (Ontario), Witwatersrand (S. Africa), Waterloo (Ontario), Oslo, Bordeaux, and Cambridge, England and is currently visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, London. Mr. Scruton has published more than 20 books including, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy, Sexual Desire, The Aesthetics of Music, The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat, Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, A Political Philosphy, and most recently Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life.
See Roger Scruton's web site here.
Copyright © 2005 Roger Scruton
Friday, May 30, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The devil is tired of Dr. Faustus!
Here's an interesting real-life twist to Goethe's famous Dr. Faustus story!
In real life, if one just keeps doing the good work, the DEVIL FINALLY STARTS STUMBLING!
he enjoys in making us miserable!
but if one proactively works towards elevating oneself above the supposed-misery, one gets the strength from the divine power of continuing to do the right thing even under tremendous pressure/unbearable duress!
the oppressor/devil gets tired and blinks! or loosens his nasty grip!
alak niranjan!
LET JUST GOODNESS PREVAIL!
ganesh.
In real life, if one just keeps doing the good work, the DEVIL FINALLY STARTS STUMBLING!
he enjoys in making us miserable!
but if one proactively works towards elevating oneself above the supposed-misery, one gets the strength from the divine power of continuing to do the right thing even under tremendous pressure/unbearable duress!
the oppressor/devil gets tired and blinks! or loosens his nasty grip!
alak niranjan!
LET JUST GOODNESS PREVAIL!
ganesh.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
GI's back! Hoshiyaar bhai sab hoshiyaar!
2230 hrs. - IST. / 14th May, 2008.
Something deeply primeval yet good, ancient yet pure, ignored but yet invaluable, STIRRED IN ME, DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY!
and yes, me not only listening to that INNER VOICE, but doing its bidding!
The gold-medallist shall return!
WATCH THIS SPACE!
the real-life adventure begins now.
and of course, jai hi ho! sab ka bhala mere aur apke ramji karen!
ganesh.
Something deeply primeval yet good, ancient yet pure, ignored but yet invaluable, STIRRED IN ME, DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY!
and yes, me not only listening to that INNER VOICE, but doing its bidding!
The gold-medallist shall return!
WATCH THIS SPACE!
the real-life adventure begins now.
and of course, jai hi ho! sab ka bhala mere aur apke ramji karen!
ganesh.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
WOS # 16 : Divorce hurts the children : By PANKAJ ADHIKARI
From the link :
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2007-06/01/content_884955.htm
------
GI's comment : Globalised misery, too?!! ponder over that, as the world goes about at break-neck speed after the fruits of globalisation/material wealth!
As the saying goes : OPERATION SUCCESSFUL, PATIENT DEAD! similarly : Individually prosperous but there is nobody home waiting for one/to be made happy or to make us happy! as an old tamil ditty would say : tulla de, tulla de, aatu kutti, enn kayil irrukaradu surakatthi! (rough translation : oh, little goat, don't jump too much, for your joy may be short-lived! the butcher is waiting with his big, sharp knife!).
So, what's the solution : Nidanam! Change is inevitable, no doubt, but you master it rather than being its puppet! decide when and what to change, just don't change your world or yourself, just because others are doing it!
Jai ho!
ganesh.
----
Divorce hurts the children
(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-06-01 07:06
Divorce may have been traditionally discouraged in China, but over the past 20 years the rate has increased considerably.
According to a recent report by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, more than 1.9 million couples got divorced in China in 2006, an increase of 128,000 couples or 7 percent over the previous year. Between 1985 and 1995, the separation rate more than doubled; it had tripled by 2006.
Another statistic from the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau published in March this year indicated that the number of intercultural marriages in China had been rising steadily and 2,960 marriages involving Chinese nationals and foreigners had been registered in Shanghai in 2006, up 22.97 percent. The number of intercultural couples getting divorced also increased.
Why are divorce cases rising?
Women in today's China are becoming financially more independent and this perhaps is one of the causes for the increased divorce rate. Besides, as divorce procedures have been simplified and employers do not have to be notified or asked to provide recommendations on the suitability of an employee's marriage plans, Chinese can divorce more easily.
One study found that divorce makes the majority of adults involved happier than they were before and it makes women happier than men. Although distressing, a break-up can be a positive life change, with women better able to cope with all its stages than men, the study found. Another finding: While women are more likely to feel relieved, liberated and happy, men are more likely to feel devastated, and confused.
Whether a divorce can make a woman happier and bring much-needed relief to her is debatable. The end of a marriage is brutally painful to all involved. But for the children, it is not only traumatic but may contribute to a negative outcome in their lives.
Children often get caught up in conflicts between parents. The children are forced to constantly witness angry and abusive fights.
Daughters often follow the example set by their mothers when it comes to relations with men. Young women whose mothers were in a live-in relationship are more likely to opt for cohabitation themselves. Also, these daughters tend to enter into live-in relationships earlier than others. Each relationship transition for the mothers - including divorce, widowhood or new cohabitation - increases the likelihood of cohabitation for their daughters.
Divorce makes parenting more difficult. In the absence of another parent, concerns like going to parent-teacher meetings and school programs and playing with the child are neglected. These issues are serious because they can lead to psychological problems.
Most children of single parents feel lonely. They shy away from extracurricular activities and often do not get required medical attention as the parent is busy.
Parents have responsibilities for their children's psychological and emotional development. A child's development gets seriously affected when one or both parents abandon their responsibilities. By deciding to separate, the parents fail to keep their commitment to marital and family roles.
Following their parents' divorce, children show more anxiety, depression, anger and apathy in their play and in their interactions with both children and adults. At the same time, they may resist adult suggestions and commands. Some children become much more aggressive.
Spare a thought for your children before you decide to break up.
E-mail: pankaj@chinadaily.com.hk
(China Daily 06/01/2007 page10)
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2007-06/01/content_884955.htm
------
GI's comment : Globalised misery, too?!! ponder over that, as the world goes about at break-neck speed after the fruits of globalisation/material wealth!
As the saying goes : OPERATION SUCCESSFUL, PATIENT DEAD! similarly : Individually prosperous but there is nobody home waiting for one/to be made happy or to make us happy! as an old tamil ditty would say : tulla de, tulla de, aatu kutti, enn kayil irrukaradu surakatthi! (rough translation : oh, little goat, don't jump too much, for your joy may be short-lived! the butcher is waiting with his big, sharp knife!).
So, what's the solution : Nidanam! Change is inevitable, no doubt, but you master it rather than being its puppet! decide when and what to change, just don't change your world or yourself, just because others are doing it!
Jai ho!
ganesh.
----
Divorce hurts the children
(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-06-01 07:06
Divorce may have been traditionally discouraged in China, but over the past 20 years the rate has increased considerably.
According to a recent report by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, more than 1.9 million couples got divorced in China in 2006, an increase of 128,000 couples or 7 percent over the previous year. Between 1985 and 1995, the separation rate more than doubled; it had tripled by 2006.
Another statistic from the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau published in March this year indicated that the number of intercultural marriages in China had been rising steadily and 2,960 marriages involving Chinese nationals and foreigners had been registered in Shanghai in 2006, up 22.97 percent. The number of intercultural couples getting divorced also increased.
Why are divorce cases rising?
Women in today's China are becoming financially more independent and this perhaps is one of the causes for the increased divorce rate. Besides, as divorce procedures have been simplified and employers do not have to be notified or asked to provide recommendations on the suitability of an employee's marriage plans, Chinese can divorce more easily.
One study found that divorce makes the majority of adults involved happier than they were before and it makes women happier than men. Although distressing, a break-up can be a positive life change, with women better able to cope with all its stages than men, the study found. Another finding: While women are more likely to feel relieved, liberated and happy, men are more likely to feel devastated, and confused.
Whether a divorce can make a woman happier and bring much-needed relief to her is debatable. The end of a marriage is brutally painful to all involved. But for the children, it is not only traumatic but may contribute to a negative outcome in their lives.
Children often get caught up in conflicts between parents. The children are forced to constantly witness angry and abusive fights.
Daughters often follow the example set by their mothers when it comes to relations with men. Young women whose mothers were in a live-in relationship are more likely to opt for cohabitation themselves. Also, these daughters tend to enter into live-in relationships earlier than others. Each relationship transition for the mothers - including divorce, widowhood or new cohabitation - increases the likelihood of cohabitation for their daughters.
Divorce makes parenting more difficult. In the absence of another parent, concerns like going to parent-teacher meetings and school programs and playing with the child are neglected. These issues are serious because they can lead to psychological problems.
Most children of single parents feel lonely. They shy away from extracurricular activities and often do not get required medical attention as the parent is busy.
Parents have responsibilities for their children's psychological and emotional development. A child's development gets seriously affected when one or both parents abandon their responsibilities. By deciding to separate, the parents fail to keep their commitment to marital and family roles.
Following their parents' divorce, children show more anxiety, depression, anger and apathy in their play and in their interactions with both children and adults. At the same time, they may resist adult suggestions and commands. Some children become much more aggressive.
Spare a thought for your children before you decide to break up.
E-mail: pankaj@chinadaily.com.hk
(China Daily 06/01/2007 page10)
What others say # 15 :The War of the Women : By Yahiya Emerick & Reshma Baig
Interesting counter-point article, from the link :
http://www.jannah.org/sisters/warwomen.html
very well written/argued article.
gi.
-------------------
The War of the Women
By Yahiya Emerick & Reshma Baig
A popular English saying says that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." The meaning being that if a woman feels like something unfair happened to her, her anger will be limitless. I'm not going to say that that is necessarily true or not, but I have seen shades of it in the world-wide war between women who wear the Hijab (head-scarf) and those who want to oppose it.
Why do I describe it as a war? If you have to ask then you haven't been paying much attention to what women talk about in public meetings, articles, lectures, and even among themselves. The battle consists, quite interestingly, of four distinct war-fronts. There are 1) the women who wear Hijab out of conviction that it is the Islamic thing to do. Then there are 2) the women who wear it only because their mothers and grandmothers wore it; unaware of its true Islamic significance. The third group, 3) the non-Muslim feminists, rally against anything that covers up even one inch of the female form, but we already expected this from them. And finally, 4) there are the secular "Muslim" women, who almost never practice Islam anyway, but who have Muslim names and roots, who make it a point to appear at all Muslim gatherings with hair fashionably styled in full public glory.
For the sake of this article, one issue must be clear from the outset (so as not to ruffle the feathers of too many readers): An operative definition of the Hijab-wearing woman must be constructed. Albeit, as described above, not all Hijab wearers are alike. Women wear the Hijab for varying reasons. In reality, there also exists those noble and true Muslim sisters who wear Hijab because it is Islamically correct. They perceive it as intrinsically empowering. In addition, the Hijab is not a facade (the "I'll wear Hijab then do whatever I like" attitude). The operative definition of a true Hijab wearing Muslim woman is one who correctly follows the guidelines of Qur'an and Sunnah and whose only motivation is to please Allah. (Qur'an 33:59) This type of Hijab wearing woman is intelligent, Allah-fearing, overcoming the temporal trappings of the life of this world, and ultimately very happy with her decision. She is not out to please anyone except her Creator.
Now as stated previously, there are the four groups in this Battle of the Scarf. But it's not a fair war. Although it would seem that there are two factions on each side, in fact, the culturally-based Hijab wearing women are no help to their Islamically-oriented sisters. The cultural Hijab-wearers don't look at their Hijab as an Islamic duty, but rather as an affiliation with some old-country culture. And in fact, they wear it only out of habit.
Obviously, then, the daughters of such women, feeling more "American" than Arab, Indian, Nigerian (or any culture transmitted by family origin), never wear the Hijab themselves because it's just "culture" and thus the cultural women are no help in the Islamic struggle. Their own offspring become some other "culture" just as they are only motivated by what they grew up with themselves.
Have you ever seen the women, walking in "full" Hijab, but then their two or three daughters, even if they're teenagers, are dressed completely like non- Muslims? It's incredibly common. I feel like asking those mothers. Why are you even wearing Hijab if it wasn't important enough for you to pass on to your daughters?
So the Islamically-oriented Hijab-wearers are quite alone in the face of the assault by the feminists/secular "Muslimahs". The relationship between those two erstwhile allies is strange. The agenda of the Western feminists has always been puzzling. They cry about equality and respect but then push for things that dehumanize women and put them at the mercy of merciless men. They'll say women should be respected for their minds rather than for their bodies, but then they'll say that women should go around in mini-skirts and g- strings. It's funny how some ultra-Feminists argue with pride that the only professions in which women earn more money than men are prostitution and fashion modeling--then, while complaining against violence towards women, they try to encourage more women to be "empowered" by disrobing (utilizing work- place fashions that place more emphasis on the female figure rather than intelligence and qualifications).
Men are an aggressive lot. If you take away clothes from a woman, the man is not suddenly going to start respecting her. Rather he's going to take it as a green light to chase after her. It's interesting how so many male fashion designers are worshipped by Western, European, and now even "Muslim" women. (Armani, De La Renta, Gucci, Mizrahi, Lauren, etc...)
It doesn't take an analyst from Fashion Avenue to figure out that a man will design clothes for women that fits one main criteria: That the outfit be pleasing and attractive to the eyes of a man. From this arises the catch- phrase: "powerful and sexy". Some cultural "Muslims" with more of an interest in fashion (rather than their love for Allah) heed the call of Vogue, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan rather than the guidelines for dress in the Qur'an and Sunnah.
Unfortunately, both "Muslim" men and women have fallen prey to the paradigms of worldly dressing. (Is it really dress for success or dress for sex?). Some brothers are ashamed of their wives and daughters wearing the Hijab in public (the "you look too dowdy with that thing on your head" syndrome.) Some women discourage their own Muslim sisters from wearing the Hijab saying that they'll "never succeed" or "just look old-fashioned and oppressed", or as I've overheard time and time again, "you only need to wear Hijab on Eid or at Jumu'ah prayer".
It must be added here that Muslim women are not being encouraged to dress dowdy, sloppy, or out of the "mode". It is merely being asserted that what is touted as fashionable is not necessarily empowering--or flattering-- in the real sense of the word. Islam arrived on the scene more than 1400 years ago to fortify a woman's dignity; introducing the concept of "covering the parts that elicit desire". Time and time again it is implored that "Allah is beautiful and loves beauty." Our Creator made us beautiful and the dictates of "modern" fashion morph that beauty into something exploitative and ugly.
The feminists say that women should be free and independent, never relying on any man. So the message men extract from this is that now they can have as many lovers as they want and never have to be tied down to one woman ever again. Consequently, a woman who dates can expect to go from man to man for twenty years or more before she can succeed in tying one down in marriage. And now women have to dress even more alluring to attract men, and have to work harder to keep them around lest the "roving eye" spots another, younger, prettier catch. Women, as polls have shown, are more harried, stressed and suffering from acute eating and other disorders than ever before.
Feminists say that all spiritual traditions are male-oriented and have worked to keep women down. While this may be true in the case of Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism, these feminists have no knowledge of Islam. All they see is the stupid, chauvinistic cultural traditions of backward X,Y or Z Muslim country and they equate that with the teachings of Islam. Then pseudo- scholars from the West quote ayat and Hadith out of context and paint a picture of a barbaric religion which seeks death for all.
On the same level, there are also ethnic "Muslim" women out there who do more to disparage Islam and present apologetic misinformation than their non-Muslim associates. Case in point: In a recent New York Times article about the growing number of Hijab wearing women in America, a "Muslimah" doctor from Chicago is quoted as saying that "Hijab has nothing to do with Islam." Her justification was that she was from Pakistan and it's not important over there. This makes one wonder: Which version of Islam is that? Oh, the abridged version. (Qur'an 33:64-68)
At the same time there is the wave of Muslimahs in America who assert their identities as Muslims and are cognizant that the Hijab is a requirement. These are the sisters on the frontlines who you see in various workplace settings with their Hijabs. The Hijab, as many sisters have commented, changes everything. Peoples are compelled to see you as a Muslim and therefore must assess their own feelings about Islam and Muslims. Ill feelings and sincere understanding of the faith are put through the sieve that is the Hijab.
You can imagine the outrage feminists feel when they hear that women are leaving "liberated" Western-secular culture and accepting Islam. I once overheard one feminist say, "Why are they entering a religion that will oppress them." It is so wired. If a woman walks down the street in a french- style head-wrap, nobody blinks an eye. If an old woman has a scarf or net wrapped around her head, nobody even looks. But the minute a woman walks in public with a scarf worn in typical Muslim style, people, women mostly, absolutely freak out. Otherwise nice women will start muttering insults or even yelling.
Of course, no one says anything bad when they see a statue of Mary wearing a veil- and she always has a veil on. And no one yells at nuns, many of whom dress more Islamically than most Muslim women. So why the anger at the Hijab? You know, there's an interesting experiment you can try, and it may also save you from committing sins. Whenever a pretty girl walks by, almost every man looks at her, right? In Islam this is discouraged, for obvious reasons. But the next time you see a pretty woman walking by a stationary group of people, don't look at the pretty woman, (save yourself from a sin,) instead, look at the faces of the other women as the pretty woman passes by them. You'll be amazed to see that it's the women who are most blatantly and closely watching the young debutante prance by. And the glances of the women will follow long after the men have lost interest.
It's amazing! Women judge each other by their looks and appearances more than you would imagine. Especially non-Muslim women, who see the new female as a potential rival for male attention. When a Muslim woman, dressed according to her conscience, walks by, you see these same women grimace and make ugly faces. Why are they so threatened by a covered woman even more so than a half-naked one?
Because the half-naked woman is only a rival for a man. The covered woman is a direct challenge to any woman's whole being, sense of self and way of life. A modestly dressed, covered woman is a walking, talking challenge to the women (and men) who are sacrificing their Akhira for success on the terms of Dunya. A woman in Hijab who is a functioning member of society is a clarion call to everyone around her. She symbolizes a woman who is empowered by Allah (swt) rather than by the shabby, eclectic, pop-cultural, spiritually bankrupt throngs who pass as the icons of contemporary society.
The average non-Muslim woman sees nothing wrong with unmarried sexual relations, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, dancing with men, walking around half-naked, maybe taking drugs, gossiping, lying, using foul language, etc... (Who are all those immigrant Muslim men who race to marry such women and ignore their noble Muslim sisters?)
While the Muslim woman, in Hijab, radiates the exact opposite! She doesn't engage in those things and rather tries to be humble, self-controlled, full of nobility and goodness and spiritually motivated. Non-Muslim women freak out because they feel so much shame deep down that they are so rotten and unclean! (Culturally-oriented Hijab-wearers don't threaten them much because they usually are rude, loud and without inner-purity, as well. There is a style of Hijab and a look of inner-purity which distinguishes the conscientious Muslimahs from all others. You can see Taqwa in a person's face!)
A Muslim woman, whose inner-purity is reflected in her behavior, is more beautiful than even the most sensually dressed non-Muslim. So many men I know have said this, both Muslim and non-Muslim! Men love to run after the easy women for "conquests" but they want to marry someone who is pure more than anything else in the world! Non-Muslim women are filled with their shame/rage and it makes them attack Islam and things Islamic with a venom more deadly than any Orientalist ever had.
So many Western women, despairing of the lifestyle in which women have been reduced to mere sex-objects for men, are leaving the immoral lifestyle for the Islamic one in huge numbers. It doesn't matter if they find good husbands or not. They're accepting Islam because it's real, because it speaks to them as women.
But still the non-Muslim women twist their hands in rage. Now, because there is a whole class of Muslim immigrants who grew up worshipping America and the West, associating its technological advancements with its values, the non- Muslim feminists have a useful new tool in their fight against the one thing that shows them how wrong they are. These allies are the women with Muslim names who don't practice Islam, or who at the very most consider Islam to be a praying and fasting "religion" and little else.
These "Muslim" women, who may be victims of backward cultural traditions, think that the "Muslim" culture they came from is what Islam is about. Well, if that was true, I wouldn't like Islam either. I'm sure you'll agree that Muslims are sometimes the worst examples of what Islam categorizes as bad. But most of us are intelligent enough to realize that just because I have to pay a bribe to the policeman or if a woman has to abort her daughter in favor of a male child in the future-- it doesn't mean that Islam teaches that.
But there are a whole class of "Muslims" who can't seem to make such distinctions. They can't seem to understand where culture ends and Islam begins; they can't seem to let go of cultural values and adhere to the teachings of the Qur'an; they can't seem to wash away the taint of culture to expose the illumination of Islam. That would require a sacrifice on their part. (Oh my god! If they followed true Islam they might have to allow their daughters to marry people of a different ethnic group. Can't have that now!)
Already the feminists have destroyed Christianity and Judaism. Read that sentence over one time. Those two religions are now in the dust-bin of history, despite a cough from them every now and then, because they're effectively marginalized. The feminists, without even understanding that Islam is best for them, have brought secular "Muslim" women into their ranks to show the world that Islam should become as quaint and marginalized in society as Christianity is now.
Just on a side note, you know how Christian missionaries are roving all over the world and making thousands of new converts every day? They brag about it and Muslims complain about it because countries like Indonesia and Nigeria are in danger of becoming "Christian" countries in a few decades. But wait a minute! Who are the Christians converting and who is becoming Muslim?
The Christians are converting ignorant villagers, uneducated natives and people with Muslim names who don't know anything about Islam. While those who are accepting Islam are Jews and Christians- Westerners who are highly educated and have lived the secular way of life all their lives! The dumb become Christian while the educated become Muslim! There's some food for thought!
Back to the war of the women: How have the feminists used these "secular Muslim" women? They have convinced some "Muslim" women that the path to money and power in this country is through bastardizing your own soul. By conforming to the heathen wishes of the majority, you can achieve loads of worldly success. That if you're a working professional (in any field), that success can only be attained by ripping off the "oppressive weight" of your Hijab and donning a "powerful and sexy" power suit.
As many Hijab wearing, practicing Muslim sisters have commented, the Western feminist ideology only hurts those who are ready to sacrifice their Next Life for the success of the world. Our practicing, Hijab wearing sisters have proved time and time again that they can wear their Hijab and become teachers, doctors, nurses, accountants, principals, economists, professors, etc... On the same level, without sacrificing their identity as Muslims; they are accepting the challenge of success while not simultaneously sacrificing their Islam.
But the feminists have their ready slaves: there are "Muslim" women who are brought by the feminists to their seminars and meetings to give the "Muslim" voice (read: token "Muslim" woman who will lash out against Islam and emerge as the Renaissance Woman Who Emerged From Behind The Veil.) Because these women had no real belief anyway, they almost always parrot, quite shamelessly, the views of the feminists. Then these "Muslim" women become filled with the idea of a crusade against "oppression" in their ethnic communities. An Arab secular "Muslimah" will work her agenda in the Arab community; an Indo-Pak in that community, etc...
It's easy for them to do this given that most of the Muslims who immigrated to this country are as of yet, unorganized and unaffiliated with any Masjid or organization. What's more, we shoot ourselves in the foot because some of our centers are run by people who are also secular in their outlook and just want to be important in the eyes of their associates. (Qur'an 9:107-108)
The feminist "Muslimahs" set up clinics with free counseling (toward non- Muslim values), abortion facilities, women's shelters and the like. (They get grants from universities, local governments and feminist organizations.) They say they're helping, but by promoting values in the minds of the women they serve which are unIslamic, they really cause harm in the long run.
They literally make it seem as if all you have to do is remove the Hijab, wear a mini-skirt and give up Islamic teachings then all your problems will be solved. When the root of the problem to begin with is almost always someone in their lives, maybe themselves or their husbands, were not following Islam to begin with! The cure can never be the poison.
The culturally-based Muslim Hijab wearers are the most vulnerable. They are usually, and you know this is true, uneducated village-style women who will listen to anything that sounds "sophisticated". Their Islam is usually a mixture of folklore, cultural traditions, superstitions and the like. They are the majority of women in the Muslim world. They're not bad or evil or anything, they're just completely unaware of real Islam. The feminists and the secular "Muslimahs" want to "liberate" them into the great world of today's used, worn-out, vulgar, "modern" Western woman.
The women who have either accepted Islam or who rediscovered it after living in a Muslim family are often quite alone. Those who love Allah by their own conviction and who seek to follow Islam truly are the enemies of the feminists, and by extension, of the Shaitan. The Shaitan calls people to forget Allah, to forget that they're responsible for their actions and to forget that this life is a short time of testing. He lures people with their animalistic desires and their cravings for the best in life. He whispers that there are no moral standards and that you can do as you please. Those who accept this call, whether with Muslim names or non-Muslim ones, descend to the level of intelligent beasts. (See Qur'an 7:16-17)
I have personally witnessed confrontations between those who wear Hijab by conviction and those secular "Muslimahs" who say it's not required. Every single time, the secular "Muslimahs" have utilized an insulting and nasty tone. Arguing with their worst faces. Of course, one of the signs of a hypocrite is that they'll get nasty in a disagreement, but then again, they don't accept the Hadith usually anyway, unless it seems to agree with their positions. (Qur'an 33:36)
The Muslim women who don't yet wear Hijab, but who desperately want to, sometimes may become afraid of the mean-spirit of the secular "Muslimahs." Nobody wants to be pointed out and nobody wants to be yelled at. I feel bad for these women. Their hearts and minds are tugging them towards true Islam but the nastiness of mean, shame/rage filled people make them afraid to wear Hijab. And sometimes the conscientious Hijab wearers don't always know when to be gentle and don't always encourage their sisters in a thoughtful, sisterly way. This as a result of always having to be on the defensive.
This war will go on for as long as there are women who believe in and love Allah. Many a Muslim man, whose own faith was weak, has fallen to it and pressured his wife or daughters not to wear Hijab. But in the end, the purity is the proof. A Muslimah in Hijab always looks purer than a woman in a mini- skirt. And a Muslimah in Hijab who practices Islam, will always be happier and free of shame, while a "liberated" woman has nothing but the empty standards of fashion magazines, western-style therapy, and empty and temporary "love" affairs to look forward to.
There is one incident that we'll never forget. We were once at a Muslim youth rally on the east coast. There were hundreds of Muslim college students in attendance. As we were moving through the crowd we came upon a group of Hijab wearing sisters. One of the sisters, a young woman of about 18 or 20 was stating, "One thing that scares the heck out of everyone is an articulate, well dressed, intelligent, and professional Muslim sister wearing Hijab". It's true. Because they present the alternative that every woman can attain. That is the real equality and the real standard of respect. (See Qur'an 33:35) The trouble is, so many people are so trapped in the sinful, immoral lifestyle of lies, substance abuse, irresponsibility and chaos, that their shame drives them merely further into rage.
We know of one mother, a Muslim woman, who sent her daughter to an Islamic school in Michigan. The daughter opened her eyes to Islam and wanted to wear her Hijab outside of school, in public, also. But her mother, who was a secular "Muslimah" forbade her to wear Hijab saying, "I won't have my daughter being better than me." May Allah help us and the Muslim women who strive to please their Maker and ultimate judge. Amin.
*** The authors would like to state that this article is not intended to disparage those Muslim sisters who do not take Hijab for whatever personal reason. It is understood that a sister will take Hijab when she is ready since there is no compulsion in Islam. At the same time, according to the Qur'an, Hijab is a fard and this fact cannot be overlooked. (Qur'an 33:59) Allah (swt) is the final judge. May he give us all courage.
Yahiya Emerick's articles are reproduced here electronically with permission from the author. - H.A.
Back to Path to Islam ...
http://www.jannah.org/sisters/warwomen.html
very well written/argued article.
gi.
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The War of the Women
By Yahiya Emerick & Reshma Baig
A popular English saying says that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." The meaning being that if a woman feels like something unfair happened to her, her anger will be limitless. I'm not going to say that that is necessarily true or not, but I have seen shades of it in the world-wide war between women who wear the Hijab (head-scarf) and those who want to oppose it.
Why do I describe it as a war? If you have to ask then you haven't been paying much attention to what women talk about in public meetings, articles, lectures, and even among themselves. The battle consists, quite interestingly, of four distinct war-fronts. There are 1) the women who wear Hijab out of conviction that it is the Islamic thing to do. Then there are 2) the women who wear it only because their mothers and grandmothers wore it; unaware of its true Islamic significance. The third group, 3) the non-Muslim feminists, rally against anything that covers up even one inch of the female form, but we already expected this from them. And finally, 4) there are the secular "Muslim" women, who almost never practice Islam anyway, but who have Muslim names and roots, who make it a point to appear at all Muslim gatherings with hair fashionably styled in full public glory.
For the sake of this article, one issue must be clear from the outset (so as not to ruffle the feathers of too many readers): An operative definition of the Hijab-wearing woman must be constructed. Albeit, as described above, not all Hijab wearers are alike. Women wear the Hijab for varying reasons. In reality, there also exists those noble and true Muslim sisters who wear Hijab because it is Islamically correct. They perceive it as intrinsically empowering. In addition, the Hijab is not a facade (the "I'll wear Hijab then do whatever I like" attitude). The operative definition of a true Hijab wearing Muslim woman is one who correctly follows the guidelines of Qur'an and Sunnah and whose only motivation is to please Allah. (Qur'an 33:59) This type of Hijab wearing woman is intelligent, Allah-fearing, overcoming the temporal trappings of the life of this world, and ultimately very happy with her decision. She is not out to please anyone except her Creator.
Now as stated previously, there are the four groups in this Battle of the Scarf. But it's not a fair war. Although it would seem that there are two factions on each side, in fact, the culturally-based Hijab wearing women are no help to their Islamically-oriented sisters. The cultural Hijab-wearers don't look at their Hijab as an Islamic duty, but rather as an affiliation with some old-country culture. And in fact, they wear it only out of habit.
Obviously, then, the daughters of such women, feeling more "American" than Arab, Indian, Nigerian (or any culture transmitted by family origin), never wear the Hijab themselves because it's just "culture" and thus the cultural women are no help in the Islamic struggle. Their own offspring become some other "culture" just as they are only motivated by what they grew up with themselves.
Have you ever seen the women, walking in "full" Hijab, but then their two or three daughters, even if they're teenagers, are dressed completely like non- Muslims? It's incredibly common. I feel like asking those mothers. Why are you even wearing Hijab if it wasn't important enough for you to pass on to your daughters?
So the Islamically-oriented Hijab-wearers are quite alone in the face of the assault by the feminists/secular "Muslimahs". The relationship between those two erstwhile allies is strange. The agenda of the Western feminists has always been puzzling. They cry about equality and respect but then push for things that dehumanize women and put them at the mercy of merciless men. They'll say women should be respected for their minds rather than for their bodies, but then they'll say that women should go around in mini-skirts and g- strings. It's funny how some ultra-Feminists argue with pride that the only professions in which women earn more money than men are prostitution and fashion modeling--then, while complaining against violence towards women, they try to encourage more women to be "empowered" by disrobing (utilizing work- place fashions that place more emphasis on the female figure rather than intelligence and qualifications).
Men are an aggressive lot. If you take away clothes from a woman, the man is not suddenly going to start respecting her. Rather he's going to take it as a green light to chase after her. It's interesting how so many male fashion designers are worshipped by Western, European, and now even "Muslim" women. (Armani, De La Renta, Gucci, Mizrahi, Lauren, etc...)
It doesn't take an analyst from Fashion Avenue to figure out that a man will design clothes for women that fits one main criteria: That the outfit be pleasing and attractive to the eyes of a man. From this arises the catch- phrase: "powerful and sexy". Some cultural "Muslims" with more of an interest in fashion (rather than their love for Allah) heed the call of Vogue, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan rather than the guidelines for dress in the Qur'an and Sunnah.
Unfortunately, both "Muslim" men and women have fallen prey to the paradigms of worldly dressing. (Is it really dress for success or dress for sex?). Some brothers are ashamed of their wives and daughters wearing the Hijab in public (the "you look too dowdy with that thing on your head" syndrome.) Some women discourage their own Muslim sisters from wearing the Hijab saying that they'll "never succeed" or "just look old-fashioned and oppressed", or as I've overheard time and time again, "you only need to wear Hijab on Eid or at Jumu'ah prayer".
It must be added here that Muslim women are not being encouraged to dress dowdy, sloppy, or out of the "mode". It is merely being asserted that what is touted as fashionable is not necessarily empowering--or flattering-- in the real sense of the word. Islam arrived on the scene more than 1400 years ago to fortify a woman's dignity; introducing the concept of "covering the parts that elicit desire". Time and time again it is implored that "Allah is beautiful and loves beauty." Our Creator made us beautiful and the dictates of "modern" fashion morph that beauty into something exploitative and ugly.
The feminists say that women should be free and independent, never relying on any man. So the message men extract from this is that now they can have as many lovers as they want and never have to be tied down to one woman ever again. Consequently, a woman who dates can expect to go from man to man for twenty years or more before she can succeed in tying one down in marriage. And now women have to dress even more alluring to attract men, and have to work harder to keep them around lest the "roving eye" spots another, younger, prettier catch. Women, as polls have shown, are more harried, stressed and suffering from acute eating and other disorders than ever before.
Feminists say that all spiritual traditions are male-oriented and have worked to keep women down. While this may be true in the case of Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism, these feminists have no knowledge of Islam. All they see is the stupid, chauvinistic cultural traditions of backward X,Y or Z Muslim country and they equate that with the teachings of Islam. Then pseudo- scholars from the West quote ayat and Hadith out of context and paint a picture of a barbaric religion which seeks death for all.
On the same level, there are also ethnic "Muslim" women out there who do more to disparage Islam and present apologetic misinformation than their non-Muslim associates. Case in point: In a recent New York Times article about the growing number of Hijab wearing women in America, a "Muslimah" doctor from Chicago is quoted as saying that "Hijab has nothing to do with Islam." Her justification was that she was from Pakistan and it's not important over there. This makes one wonder: Which version of Islam is that? Oh, the abridged version. (Qur'an 33:64-68)
At the same time there is the wave of Muslimahs in America who assert their identities as Muslims and are cognizant that the Hijab is a requirement. These are the sisters on the frontlines who you see in various workplace settings with their Hijabs. The Hijab, as many sisters have commented, changes everything. Peoples are compelled to see you as a Muslim and therefore must assess their own feelings about Islam and Muslims. Ill feelings and sincere understanding of the faith are put through the sieve that is the Hijab.
You can imagine the outrage feminists feel when they hear that women are leaving "liberated" Western-secular culture and accepting Islam. I once overheard one feminist say, "Why are they entering a religion that will oppress them." It is so wired. If a woman walks down the street in a french- style head-wrap, nobody blinks an eye. If an old woman has a scarf or net wrapped around her head, nobody even looks. But the minute a woman walks in public with a scarf worn in typical Muslim style, people, women mostly, absolutely freak out. Otherwise nice women will start muttering insults or even yelling.
Of course, no one says anything bad when they see a statue of Mary wearing a veil- and she always has a veil on. And no one yells at nuns, many of whom dress more Islamically than most Muslim women. So why the anger at the Hijab? You know, there's an interesting experiment you can try, and it may also save you from committing sins. Whenever a pretty girl walks by, almost every man looks at her, right? In Islam this is discouraged, for obvious reasons. But the next time you see a pretty woman walking by a stationary group of people, don't look at the pretty woman, (save yourself from a sin,) instead, look at the faces of the other women as the pretty woman passes by them. You'll be amazed to see that it's the women who are most blatantly and closely watching the young debutante prance by. And the glances of the women will follow long after the men have lost interest.
It's amazing! Women judge each other by their looks and appearances more than you would imagine. Especially non-Muslim women, who see the new female as a potential rival for male attention. When a Muslim woman, dressed according to her conscience, walks by, you see these same women grimace and make ugly faces. Why are they so threatened by a covered woman even more so than a half-naked one?
Because the half-naked woman is only a rival for a man. The covered woman is a direct challenge to any woman's whole being, sense of self and way of life. A modestly dressed, covered woman is a walking, talking challenge to the women (and men) who are sacrificing their Akhira for success on the terms of Dunya. A woman in Hijab who is a functioning member of society is a clarion call to everyone around her. She symbolizes a woman who is empowered by Allah (swt) rather than by the shabby, eclectic, pop-cultural, spiritually bankrupt throngs who pass as the icons of contemporary society.
The average non-Muslim woman sees nothing wrong with unmarried sexual relations, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, dancing with men, walking around half-naked, maybe taking drugs, gossiping, lying, using foul language, etc... (Who are all those immigrant Muslim men who race to marry such women and ignore their noble Muslim sisters?)
While the Muslim woman, in Hijab, radiates the exact opposite! She doesn't engage in those things and rather tries to be humble, self-controlled, full of nobility and goodness and spiritually motivated. Non-Muslim women freak out because they feel so much shame deep down that they are so rotten and unclean! (Culturally-oriented Hijab-wearers don't threaten them much because they usually are rude, loud and without inner-purity, as well. There is a style of Hijab and a look of inner-purity which distinguishes the conscientious Muslimahs from all others. You can see Taqwa in a person's face!)
A Muslim woman, whose inner-purity is reflected in her behavior, is more beautiful than even the most sensually dressed non-Muslim. So many men I know have said this, both Muslim and non-Muslim! Men love to run after the easy women for "conquests" but they want to marry someone who is pure more than anything else in the world! Non-Muslim women are filled with their shame/rage and it makes them attack Islam and things Islamic with a venom more deadly than any Orientalist ever had.
So many Western women, despairing of the lifestyle in which women have been reduced to mere sex-objects for men, are leaving the immoral lifestyle for the Islamic one in huge numbers. It doesn't matter if they find good husbands or not. They're accepting Islam because it's real, because it speaks to them as women.
But still the non-Muslim women twist their hands in rage. Now, because there is a whole class of Muslim immigrants who grew up worshipping America and the West, associating its technological advancements with its values, the non- Muslim feminists have a useful new tool in their fight against the one thing that shows them how wrong they are. These allies are the women with Muslim names who don't practice Islam, or who at the very most consider Islam to be a praying and fasting "religion" and little else.
These "Muslim" women, who may be victims of backward cultural traditions, think that the "Muslim" culture they came from is what Islam is about. Well, if that was true, I wouldn't like Islam either. I'm sure you'll agree that Muslims are sometimes the worst examples of what Islam categorizes as bad. But most of us are intelligent enough to realize that just because I have to pay a bribe to the policeman or if a woman has to abort her daughter in favor of a male child in the future-- it doesn't mean that Islam teaches that.
But there are a whole class of "Muslims" who can't seem to make such distinctions. They can't seem to understand where culture ends and Islam begins; they can't seem to let go of cultural values and adhere to the teachings of the Qur'an; they can't seem to wash away the taint of culture to expose the illumination of Islam. That would require a sacrifice on their part. (Oh my god! If they followed true Islam they might have to allow their daughters to marry people of a different ethnic group. Can't have that now!)
Already the feminists have destroyed Christianity and Judaism. Read that sentence over one time. Those two religions are now in the dust-bin of history, despite a cough from them every now and then, because they're effectively marginalized. The feminists, without even understanding that Islam is best for them, have brought secular "Muslim" women into their ranks to show the world that Islam should become as quaint and marginalized in society as Christianity is now.
Just on a side note, you know how Christian missionaries are roving all over the world and making thousands of new converts every day? They brag about it and Muslims complain about it because countries like Indonesia and Nigeria are in danger of becoming "Christian" countries in a few decades. But wait a minute! Who are the Christians converting and who is becoming Muslim?
The Christians are converting ignorant villagers, uneducated natives and people with Muslim names who don't know anything about Islam. While those who are accepting Islam are Jews and Christians- Westerners who are highly educated and have lived the secular way of life all their lives! The dumb become Christian while the educated become Muslim! There's some food for thought!
Back to the war of the women: How have the feminists used these "secular Muslim" women? They have convinced some "Muslim" women that the path to money and power in this country is through bastardizing your own soul. By conforming to the heathen wishes of the majority, you can achieve loads of worldly success. That if you're a working professional (in any field), that success can only be attained by ripping off the "oppressive weight" of your Hijab and donning a "powerful and sexy" power suit.
As many Hijab wearing, practicing Muslim sisters have commented, the Western feminist ideology only hurts those who are ready to sacrifice their Next Life for the success of the world. Our practicing, Hijab wearing sisters have proved time and time again that they can wear their Hijab and become teachers, doctors, nurses, accountants, principals, economists, professors, etc... On the same level, without sacrificing their identity as Muslims; they are accepting the challenge of success while not simultaneously sacrificing their Islam.
But the feminists have their ready slaves: there are "Muslim" women who are brought by the feminists to their seminars and meetings to give the "Muslim" voice (read: token "Muslim" woman who will lash out against Islam and emerge as the Renaissance Woman Who Emerged From Behind The Veil.) Because these women had no real belief anyway, they almost always parrot, quite shamelessly, the views of the feminists. Then these "Muslim" women become filled with the idea of a crusade against "oppression" in their ethnic communities. An Arab secular "Muslimah" will work her agenda in the Arab community; an Indo-Pak in that community, etc...
It's easy for them to do this given that most of the Muslims who immigrated to this country are as of yet, unorganized and unaffiliated with any Masjid or organization. What's more, we shoot ourselves in the foot because some of our centers are run by people who are also secular in their outlook and just want to be important in the eyes of their associates. (Qur'an 9:107-108)
The feminist "Muslimahs" set up clinics with free counseling (toward non- Muslim values), abortion facilities, women's shelters and the like. (They get grants from universities, local governments and feminist organizations.) They say they're helping, but by promoting values in the minds of the women they serve which are unIslamic, they really cause harm in the long run.
They literally make it seem as if all you have to do is remove the Hijab, wear a mini-skirt and give up Islamic teachings then all your problems will be solved. When the root of the problem to begin with is almost always someone in their lives, maybe themselves or their husbands, were not following Islam to begin with! The cure can never be the poison.
The culturally-based Muslim Hijab wearers are the most vulnerable. They are usually, and you know this is true, uneducated village-style women who will listen to anything that sounds "sophisticated". Their Islam is usually a mixture of folklore, cultural traditions, superstitions and the like. They are the majority of women in the Muslim world. They're not bad or evil or anything, they're just completely unaware of real Islam. The feminists and the secular "Muslimahs" want to "liberate" them into the great world of today's used, worn-out, vulgar, "modern" Western woman.
The women who have either accepted Islam or who rediscovered it after living in a Muslim family are often quite alone. Those who love Allah by their own conviction and who seek to follow Islam truly are the enemies of the feminists, and by extension, of the Shaitan. The Shaitan calls people to forget Allah, to forget that they're responsible for their actions and to forget that this life is a short time of testing. He lures people with their animalistic desires and their cravings for the best in life. He whispers that there are no moral standards and that you can do as you please. Those who accept this call, whether with Muslim names or non-Muslim ones, descend to the level of intelligent beasts. (See Qur'an 7:16-17)
I have personally witnessed confrontations between those who wear Hijab by conviction and those secular "Muslimahs" who say it's not required. Every single time, the secular "Muslimahs" have utilized an insulting and nasty tone. Arguing with their worst faces. Of course, one of the signs of a hypocrite is that they'll get nasty in a disagreement, but then again, they don't accept the Hadith usually anyway, unless it seems to agree with their positions. (Qur'an 33:36)
The Muslim women who don't yet wear Hijab, but who desperately want to, sometimes may become afraid of the mean-spirit of the secular "Muslimahs." Nobody wants to be pointed out and nobody wants to be yelled at. I feel bad for these women. Their hearts and minds are tugging them towards true Islam but the nastiness of mean, shame/rage filled people make them afraid to wear Hijab. And sometimes the conscientious Hijab wearers don't always know when to be gentle and don't always encourage their sisters in a thoughtful, sisterly way. This as a result of always having to be on the defensive.
This war will go on for as long as there are women who believe in and love Allah. Many a Muslim man, whose own faith was weak, has fallen to it and pressured his wife or daughters not to wear Hijab. But in the end, the purity is the proof. A Muslimah in Hijab always looks purer than a woman in a mini- skirt. And a Muslimah in Hijab who practices Islam, will always be happier and free of shame, while a "liberated" woman has nothing but the empty standards of fashion magazines, western-style therapy, and empty and temporary "love" affairs to look forward to.
There is one incident that we'll never forget. We were once at a Muslim youth rally on the east coast. There were hundreds of Muslim college students in attendance. As we were moving through the crowd we came upon a group of Hijab wearing sisters. One of the sisters, a young woman of about 18 or 20 was stating, "One thing that scares the heck out of everyone is an articulate, well dressed, intelligent, and professional Muslim sister wearing Hijab". It's true. Because they present the alternative that every woman can attain. That is the real equality and the real standard of respect. (See Qur'an 33:35) The trouble is, so many people are so trapped in the sinful, immoral lifestyle of lies, substance abuse, irresponsibility and chaos, that their shame drives them merely further into rage.
We know of one mother, a Muslim woman, who sent her daughter to an Islamic school in Michigan. The daughter opened her eyes to Islam and wanted to wear her Hijab outside of school, in public, also. But her mother, who was a secular "Muslimah" forbade her to wear Hijab saying, "I won't have my daughter being better than me." May Allah help us and the Muslim women who strive to please their Maker and ultimate judge. Amin.
*** The authors would like to state that this article is not intended to disparage those Muslim sisters who do not take Hijab for whatever personal reason. It is understood that a sister will take Hijab when she is ready since there is no compulsion in Islam. At the same time, according to the Qur'an, Hijab is a fard and this fact cannot be overlooked. (Qur'an 33:59) Allah (swt) is the final judge. May he give us all courage.
Yahiya Emerick's articles are reproduced here electronically with permission from the author. - H.A.
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WOS # 14 : Eccentrics: they live longer, happier and are odd! : David Weeks
Eccentrics: they live longer, happier and are odd! (interview with author David Weeks)(Interview)
From: Nutrition Health Review | Date: 1/1/1996
Q: What prompted you to make a scientific study of eccentricity??
A: Psychologists have undertaken exhaustive studies of every personality type and mental disorder under the sun, yet somehow we have completely overlooked eccentrics. And psychiatry, on the other hand, tends only to take an interest in those who seek treatment, and since eccentrics rarely do so, they have been overlooked. Eccentrics were to psychology what black holes once were to astronomy. I thought it might contribute something important to our understanding of the mind if we had a better understanding of the thought processes of those who regard themselves and who are regarded by others as eccentric.
Q: Can you give us a thumbnail description of the eccentric?
A: The eccentric is very creative and curious and has vivid visual imagination in the daytime and vivid dreams at night. Eccentrics are intelligent, opinionated, and frequently have a mischievous sense of humor. Many of them are loners, and they often have unorthodox living arrangements.
Q: For example?
A: We have several men who lived in caves. Women eccentrics tend to he obsessive collectors and renovators. One woman in our study has 7,500 garden gnomes on her lawn. Sarah Winchester, the widow of the man who made the rifle, kept adding to her house in San Jose until it had eight stories, 158 rooms (not counting the secret chambers), 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, and 48 fireplaces.
Q: You found in your study that eccentrics are happier and healthier than the rest of us. Why do you think that is so?
A: I believe that's true. We did meet a few gloomy eccentrics, but most of the subjects in our study had a refreshingly sunny outlook on life. There is also pretty solid proof that eccentrics are healthier than the norm. In Great Britain, where health care is free, the average person goes to the doctor twice a year, while eccentrics will typically go for eight or nine years without seeking medical help. It's not that they're avoiding doctors or don't believe in conventional medicine. They just don't need it much.
Q: How do you explain shot?
A: It's a combination of an optimistic outlook and low stress, due to the fact that eccentrics don't feel the need to conform. Eccentrics don't give a hoot what the rest of the world thinks of them; if someone makes-fun of them, instead of getting angry or embarrassed, they regard the other person as the one with a problem. In fact, eccentrics revel in the fact that they make people laugh. Another nice benefit is that they may have slightly higher levels of growth hormone, which can postpone some of the ailments associated with old age, such as osteoporosis and muscle atrophy.
Q: What makes a person an eccentric? After all, everyone has some unusual habits or traits.
A: Eccentricity is a choice. It's quite true that everyone has eccentric traits, but as we grow older, most of us learn to conform, to blend in -- the process we call socialization. But the eccentric says, "No, thank you," and chooses not to conform. Often it is triggered by an event in childhood, when the budding eccentric consciously makes -- the choice to be different from the other kids. It can even be something as simple as a name: a woman named Salome told us that when she was seven years old, "I made the decision that, having an unusual name, I was damn well going to be different."
Q: Under your definition, how many people qualify as true eccentrics?
A: Based upon our study, we found that approximately one person in 10,000 is a classic, full-time-eccentric. However, because this was the first scientific study of the subject, we put a 50 per cent margin of error on the figure. In ether words, it might be as common as one in 5,000, or as rare as one in 15,000.
Q: Are men or women more likely to be eccentric?
A: The incidence of eccentricity is about the same, but it manifests itself in different ways. Society has always been more tolerant of aberrant behavior in men than in women; if a man gets into a fight with a co-worker or goes off on a drinking spree, we might overlook it, but if a woman does the same thing it's considered scandalous. One female subject told us, "My moods were not permitted. First they were called premenstrual histrionics. Then they were called pre-menopausal histrionics." A woman sometimes becomes eccentric later in life, a phenomenon we call "flowering" or "blossoming." She conforms in her youth, marries and has children, but once the kids have left home, she leaves her husband and lets her eccentric, creative side take over. Today higher proportions of women, especially liberated women in the United States, are deciding to be eccentric -- and self-fulfilled.
Q: Dr. Weeks, are you eccentric?
A: I've been trying to get inside the minds and hearts of these extraordinary people for the past eleven years, to emphathize with them, to see the world from their unique perspective. If you do that seriously, some of their traits are bound to rub off on you. Emulating their unorthodox way of thinking can have terrific results. I have recently filed a patent application, a new one, which has actually been granted. Yet, I would say that I may have always been slightly eccentric, perhaps a little rebellious. However, I do admire the authentic, life-long eccentrics. I think we can all learn a lot from them about holding onto the dreams and curiosity we had as children.
From: Nutrition Health Review | Date: 1/1/1996
Q: What prompted you to make a scientific study of eccentricity??
A: Psychologists have undertaken exhaustive studies of every personality type and mental disorder under the sun, yet somehow we have completely overlooked eccentrics. And psychiatry, on the other hand, tends only to take an interest in those who seek treatment, and since eccentrics rarely do so, they have been overlooked. Eccentrics were to psychology what black holes once were to astronomy. I thought it might contribute something important to our understanding of the mind if we had a better understanding of the thought processes of those who regard themselves and who are regarded by others as eccentric.
Q: Can you give us a thumbnail description of the eccentric?
A: The eccentric is very creative and curious and has vivid visual imagination in the daytime and vivid dreams at night. Eccentrics are intelligent, opinionated, and frequently have a mischievous sense of humor. Many of them are loners, and they often have unorthodox living arrangements.
Q: For example?
A: We have several men who lived in caves. Women eccentrics tend to he obsessive collectors and renovators. One woman in our study has 7,500 garden gnomes on her lawn. Sarah Winchester, the widow of the man who made the rifle, kept adding to her house in San Jose until it had eight stories, 158 rooms (not counting the secret chambers), 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, and 48 fireplaces.
Q: You found in your study that eccentrics are happier and healthier than the rest of us. Why do you think that is so?
A: I believe that's true. We did meet a few gloomy eccentrics, but most of the subjects in our study had a refreshingly sunny outlook on life. There is also pretty solid proof that eccentrics are healthier than the norm. In Great Britain, where health care is free, the average person goes to the doctor twice a year, while eccentrics will typically go for eight or nine years without seeking medical help. It's not that they're avoiding doctors or don't believe in conventional medicine. They just don't need it much.
Q: How do you explain shot?
A: It's a combination of an optimistic outlook and low stress, due to the fact that eccentrics don't feel the need to conform. Eccentrics don't give a hoot what the rest of the world thinks of them; if someone makes-fun of them, instead of getting angry or embarrassed, they regard the other person as the one with a problem. In fact, eccentrics revel in the fact that they make people laugh. Another nice benefit is that they may have slightly higher levels of growth hormone, which can postpone some of the ailments associated with old age, such as osteoporosis and muscle atrophy.
Q: What makes a person an eccentric? After all, everyone has some unusual habits or traits.
A: Eccentricity is a choice. It's quite true that everyone has eccentric traits, but as we grow older, most of us learn to conform, to blend in -- the process we call socialization. But the eccentric says, "No, thank you," and chooses not to conform. Often it is triggered by an event in childhood, when the budding eccentric consciously makes -- the choice to be different from the other kids. It can even be something as simple as a name: a woman named Salome told us that when she was seven years old, "I made the decision that, having an unusual name, I was damn well going to be different."
Q: Under your definition, how many people qualify as true eccentrics?
A: Based upon our study, we found that approximately one person in 10,000 is a classic, full-time-eccentric. However, because this was the first scientific study of the subject, we put a 50 per cent margin of error on the figure. In ether words, it might be as common as one in 5,000, or as rare as one in 15,000.
Q: Are men or women more likely to be eccentric?
A: The incidence of eccentricity is about the same, but it manifests itself in different ways. Society has always been more tolerant of aberrant behavior in men than in women; if a man gets into a fight with a co-worker or goes off on a drinking spree, we might overlook it, but if a woman does the same thing it's considered scandalous. One female subject told us, "My moods were not permitted. First they were called premenstrual histrionics. Then they were called pre-menopausal histrionics." A woman sometimes becomes eccentric later in life, a phenomenon we call "flowering" or "blossoming." She conforms in her youth, marries and has children, but once the kids have left home, she leaves her husband and lets her eccentric, creative side take over. Today higher proportions of women, especially liberated women in the United States, are deciding to be eccentric -- and self-fulfilled.
Q: Dr. Weeks, are you eccentric?
A: I've been trying to get inside the minds and hearts of these extraordinary people for the past eleven years, to emphathize with them, to see the world from their unique perspective. If you do that seriously, some of their traits are bound to rub off on you. Emulating their unorthodox way of thinking can have terrific results. I have recently filed a patent application, a new one, which has actually been granted. Yet, I would say that I may have always been slightly eccentric, perhaps a little rebellious. However, I do admire the authentic, life-long eccentrics. I think we can all learn a lot from them about holding onto the dreams and curiosity we had as children.
WOS # 13 : The Frivolity of Evil : Theodore Dalrymple
The Frivolity of Evil
Theodore Dalrymple
When prisoners are released from prison, they often say that they have paid their debt to society. This is absurd, of course: crime is not a matter of double-entry bookkeeping. You cannot pay a debt by having caused even greater expense, nor can you pay in advance for a bank robbery by offering to serve a prison sentence before you commit it. Perhaps, metaphorically speaking, the slate is wiped clean once a prisoner is released from prison, but the debt is not paid off.
It would be just as absurd for me to say, on my imminent retirement after 14 years of my hospital and prison work, that I have paid my debt to society. I had the choice to do something more pleasing if I had wished, and I was paid, if not munificently, at least adequately. I chose the disagreeable neighborhood in which I practiced because, medically speaking, the poor are more interesting, at least to me, than the rich: their pathology is more florid, their need for attention greater. Their dilemmas, if cruder, seem to me more compelling, nearer to the fundamentals of human existence. No doubt I also felt my services would be more valuable there: in other words, that I had some kind of duty to perform. Perhaps for that reason, like the prisoner on his release, I feel I have paid my debt to society. Certainly, the work has taken a toll on me, and it is time to do something else. Someone else can do battle with the metastasizing social pathology of Great Britain, while I lead a life aesthetically more pleasing to me.
My work has caused me to become perhaps unhealthily preoccupied with the problem of evil. Why do people commit evil? What conditions allow it to flourish? How is it best prevented and, when necessary, suppressed? Each time I listen to a patient recounting the cruelty to which he or she has been subjected, or has committed (and I have listened to several such patients every day for 14 years), these questions revolve endlessly in my mind.
No doubt my previous experiences fostered my preoccupation with this problem. My mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany, and though she spoke very little of her life before she came to Britain, the mere fact that there was much of which she did not speak gave evil a ghostly presence in our household.
Later, I spent several years touring the world, often in places where atrocity had recently been, or still was being, committed. In Central America, I witnessed civil war fought between guerrilla groups intent on imposing totalitarian tyranny on their societies, opposed by armies that didn't scruple to resort to massacre. In Equatorial Guinea, the current dictator was the nephew and henchman of the last dictator, who had killed or driven into exile a third of the population, executing every last person who wore glasses or possessed a page of printed matter for being a disaffected or potentially disaffected intellectual. In Liberia, I visited a church in which more than 600 people had taken refuge and been slaughtered, possibly by the president himself (soon to be videotaped being tortured to death). The outlines of the bodies were still visible on the dried blood on the floor, and the long mound of the mass grave began only a few yards from the entrance. In North Korea I saw the acme of tyranny, millions of people in terrorized, abject obeisance to a personality cult whose object, the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, made the Sun King look like the personification of modesty.
Still, all these were political evils, which my own country had entirely escaped. I optimistically supposed that, in the absence of the worst political deformations, widespread evil was impossible. I soon discovered my error. Of course, nothing that I was to see in a British slum approached the scale or depth of what I had witnessed elsewhere. Beating a woman from motives of jealousy, locking her in a closet, breaking her arms deliberately, terrible though it may be, is not the same, by a long way, as mass murder. More than enough of the constitutional, traditional, institutional, and social restraints on large-scale political evil still existed in Britain to prevent anything like what I had witnessed elsewhere.
Yet the scale of a man's evil is not entirely to be measured by its practical consequences. Men commit evil within the scope available to them. Some evil geniuses, of course, devote their lives to increasing that scope as widely as possible, but no such character has yet arisen in Britain, and most evildoers merely make the most of their opportunities. They do what they can get away with.
In any case, the extent of the evil that I found, though far more modest than the disasters of modern history, is nonetheless impressive. From the vantage point of one six-bedded hospital ward, I have met at least 5,000 perpetrators of the kind of violence I have just described and 5,000 victims of it: nearly 1 percent of the population of my city—or a higher percentage, if one considers the age-specificity of the behavior. And when you take the life histories of these people, as I have, you soon realize that their existence is as saturated with arbitrary violence as that of the inhabitants of many a dictatorship. Instead of one dictator, though, there are thousands, each the absolute ruler of his own little sphere, his power circumscribed by the proximity of another such as he.
Violent conflict, not confined to the home and hearth, spills out onto the streets. Moreover, I discovered that British cities such as my own even had torture chambers: run not by the government, as in dictatorships, but by those representatives of slum enterprise, the drug dealers. Young men and women in debt to drug dealers are kidnapped, taken to the torture chambers, tied to beds, and beaten or whipped. Of compunction there is none—only a residual fear of the consequences of going too far.
Perhaps the most alarming feature of this low-level but endemic evil, the one that brings it close to the conception of original sin, is that it is unforced and spontaneous. No one requires people to commit it. In the worst dictatorships, some of the evil ordinary men and women do they do out of fear of not committing it. There, goodness requires heroism. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, for example, a man who failed to report a political joke to the authorities was himself guilty of an offense that could lead to deportation or death. But in modern Britain, no such conditions exist: the government does not require citizens to behave as I have described and punish them if they do not. The evil is freely chosen.
Not that the government is blameless in the matter—far from it. Intellectuals propounded the idea that man should be freed from the shackles of social convention and self-control, and the government, without any demand from below, enacted laws that promoted unrestrained behavior and created a welfare system that protected people from some of its economic consequences. When the barriers to evil are brought down, it flourishes; and never again will I be tempted to believe in the fundamental goodness of man, or that evil is something exceptional or alien to human nature.
Of course, my personal experience is just that—personal experience. Admittedly, I have looked out at the social world of my city and my country from a peculiar and possibly unrepresentative vantage point, from a prison and from a hospital ward where practically all the patients have tried to kill themselves, or at least made suicidal gestures. But it is not small or slight personal experience, and each of my thousands, even scores of thousands, of cases has given me a window into the world in which that person lives.
And when my mother asks me whether I am not in danger of letting my personal experience embitter me or cause me to look at the world through bile-colored spectacles, I ask her why she thinks that she, in common with all old people in Britain today, feels the need to be indoors by sundown or face the consequences, and why this should be the case in a country that within living memory was law-abiding and safe? Did she not herself tell me that, as a young woman during the blackouts in the Blitz, she felt perfectly safe, at least from the depredations of her fellow citizens, walking home in the pitch dark, and that it never occurred to her that she might be the victim of a crime, whereas nowadays she has only to put her nose out of her door at dusk for her to think of nothing else? Is it not true that her purse has been stolen twice in the last two years, in broad daylight, and is it not true that statistics—however manipulated by governments to put the best possible gloss upon them—bear out the accuracy of the conclusions that I have drawn from my personal experience? In 1921, the year of my mother's birth, there was one crime recorded for every 370 inhabitants of England and Wales; 80 years later, it was one for every ten inhabitants. There has been a 12-fold increase since 1941 and an even greater increase in crimes of violence. So while personal experience is hardly a complete guide to social reality, the historical data certainly back up my impressions.
A single case can be illuminating, especially when it is statistically banal—in other words, not at all exceptional. Yesterday, for example, a 21-year-old woman consulted me, claiming to be depressed. She had swallowed an overdose of her antidepressants and then called an ambulance.
There is something to be said here about the word "depression," which has almost entirely eliminated the word and even the concept of unhappiness from modern life. Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed. This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means. Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed). This idea in turn implies that one's state of mind, or one's mood, is or should be independent of the way that one lives one's life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct.
A ridiculous pas de deux between doctor and patient ensues: the patient pretends to be ill, and the doctor pretends to cure him. In the process, the patient is willfully blinded to the conduct that inevitably causes his misery in the first place. I have therefore come to see that one of the most important tasks of the doctor today is the disavowal of his own power and responsibility. The patient's notion that he is ill stands in the way of his understanding of the situation, without which moral change cannot take place. The doctor who pretends to treat is an obstacle to this change, blinding rather than enlightening.
My patient already had had three children by three different men, by no means unusual among my patients, or indeed in the country as a whole. The father of her first child had been violent, and she had left him; the second died in an accident while driving a stolen car; the third, with whom she had been living, had demanded that she should leave his apartment because, a week after their child was born, he decided that he no longer wished to live with her. (The discovery of incompatibility a week after the birth of a child is now so common as to be statistically normal.) She had nowhere to go, no one to fall back on, and the hospital was a temporary sanctuary from her woes. She hoped that we would fix her up with some accommodation.
She could not return to her mother, because of conflict with her "stepfather," or her mother's latest boyfriend, who, in fact, was only nine years older than she and seven years younger than her mother. This compression of the generations is also now a common pattern and is seldom a recipe for happiness. (It goes without saying that her own father had disappeared at her birth, and she had never seen him since.) The latest boyfriend in this kind of ménage either wants the daughter around to abuse her sexually or else wants her out of the house as being a nuisance and an unnecessary expense. This boyfriend wanted her out of the house, and set about creating an atmosphere certain to make her leave as soon as possible.
The father of her first child had, of course, recognized her vulnerability. A girl of 16 living on her own is easy prey. He beat her from the first, being drunken, possessive, and jealous, as well as flagrantly unfaithful. She thought that a child would make him more responsible—sober him up and calm him down. It had the reverse effect. She left him.
The father of her second child was a career criminal, already imprisoned several times. A drug addict who took whatever drugs he could get, he died under the influence. She had known all about his past before she had his child.
The father of her third child was much older than she. It was he who suggested that they have a child—in fact he demanded it as a condition of staying with her. He had five children already by three different women, none of whom he supported in any way whatever.
The conditions for the perpetuation of evil were now complete. She was a young woman who would not want to remain alone, without a man, for very long; but with three children already, she would attract precisely the kind of man, like the father of her first child—of whom there are now many—looking for vulnerable, exploitable women. More than likely, at least one of them (for there would undoubtedly be a succession of them) would abuse her children sexually, physically, or both.
She was, of course, a victim of her mother's behavior at a time when she had little control over her destiny. Her mother had thought that her own sexual liaison was more important than the welfare of her child, a common way of thinking in today's welfare Britain. That same day, for example, I was consulted by a young woman whose mother's consort had raped her many times between the ages of eight and 15, with her mother's full knowledge. Her mother had allowed this solely so that her relationship with her consort might continue. It could happen that my patient will one day do the same thing.
My patient was not just a victim of her mother, however: she had knowingly borne children of men of whom no good could be expected. She knew perfectly well the consequences and the meaning of what she was doing, as her reaction to something that I said to her—and say to hundreds of women patients in a similar situation—proved: next time you are thinking of going out with a man, bring him to me for my inspection, and I'll tell you if you can go out with him.
This never fails to make the most wretched, the most "depressed" of women smile broadly or laugh heartily. They know exactly what I mean, and I need not spell it out further. They know that I mean that most of the men they have chosen have their evil written all over them, sometimes quite literally in the form of tattoos, saying "FUCK OFF" or "MAD DOG." And they understand that if I can spot the evil instantly, because they know what I would look for, so can they—and therefore they are in large part responsible for their own downfall at the hands of evil men.
Moreover, they are aware that I believe that it is both foolish and wicked to have children by men without having considered even for a second or a fraction of a second whether the men have any qualities that might make them good fathers. Mistakes are possible, of course: a man may turn out not to be as expected. But not even to consider the question is to act as irresponsibly as it is possible for a human being to act. It is knowingly to increase the sum of evil in the world, and sooner or later the summation of small evils leads to the triumph of evil itself.
My patient did not start out with the intention of abetting, much less of committing, evil. And yet her refusal to take seriously and act upon the signs that she saw and the knowledge that she had was not the consequence of blindness and ignorance. It was utterly willful. She knew from her own experience, and that of many people around her, that her choices, based on the pleasure or the desire of the moment, would lead to the misery and suffering not only of herself, but—especially—of her own children.
This truly is not so much the banality as the frivolity of evil: the elevation of passing pleasure for oneself over the long-term misery of others to whom one owes a duty. What better phrase than the frivolity of evil describes the conduct of a mother who turns her own 14-year-old child out of doors because her latest boyfriend does not want him or her in the house? And what better phrase describes the attitude of those intellectuals who see in this conduct nothing but an extension of human freedom and choice, another thread in life's rich tapestry?
The men in these situations also know perfectly well the meaning and consequences of what they are doing. The same day that I saw the patient I have just described, a man aged 25 came into our ward, in need of an operation to remove foil-wrapped packets of cocaine that he had swallowed in order to evade being caught by the police in possession of them. (Had a packet burst, he would have died immediately.) As it happened, he had just left his latest girlfriend—one week after she had given birth to their child. They weren't getting along, he said; he needed his space. Of the child, he thought not for an instant.
I asked him whether he had any other children.
"Four," he replied.
"How many mothers?"
"Three."
"Do you see any of your children?"
He shook his head. It is supposedly the duty of the doctor not to pass judgment on how his patients have elected to live, but I think I may have raised my eyebrows slightly. At any rate, the patient caught a whiff of my disapproval.
"I know," he said. "I know. Don't tell me."
These words were a complete confession of guilt. I have had hundreds of conversations with men who have abandoned their children in this fashion, and they all know perfectly well what the consequences are for the mother and, more important, for the children. They all know that they are condemning their children to lives of brutality, poverty, abuse, and hopelessness. They tell me so themselves. And yet they do it over and over again, to such an extent that I should guess that nearly a quarter of British children are now brought up this way.
The result is a rising tide of neglect, cruelty, sadism, and joyous malignity that staggers and appalls me. I am more horrified after 14 years than the day I started.
Where does this evil come from? There is obviously something flawed in the heart of man that he should wish to behave in this depraved fashion—the legacy of original sin, to speak metaphorically. But if, not so long ago, such conduct was much less widespread than it is now (in a time of much lesser prosperity, be it remembered by those who think that poverty explains everything), then something more is needed to explain it.
A necessary, though not sufficient, condition is the welfare state, which makes it possible, and sometimes advantageous, to behave like this. Just as the IMF is the bank of last resort, encouraging commercial banks to make unwise loans to countries that they know the IMF will bail out, so the state is the parent of last resort—or, more often than not, of first resort. The state, guided by the apparently generous and humane philosophy that no child, whatever its origins, should suffer deprivation, gives assistance to any child, or rather the mother of any child, once it has come into being. In matters of public housing, it is actually advantageous for a mother to put herself at a disadvantage, to be a single mother, without support from the fathers of the children and dependent on the state for income. She is then a priority; she won't pay local taxes, rent, or utility bills.
As for the men, the state absolves them of all responsibility for their children. The state is now father to the child. The biological father is therefore free to use whatever income he has as pocket money, for entertainment and little treats. He is thereby reduced to the status of a child, though a spoiled child with the physical capabilities of a man: petulant, demanding, querulous, self-centered, and violent if he doesn't get his own way. The violence escalates and becomes a habit. A spoiled brat becomes an evil tyrant.
But if the welfare state is a necessary condition for the spread of evil, it is not sufficient. After all, the British welfare state is neither the most extensive nor the most generous in the world, and yet our rates of social pathology—public drunkenness, drug-taking, teenage pregnancy, venereal disease, hooliganism, criminality—are the highest in the world. Something more was necessary to produce this result.
Here we enter the realm of culture and ideas. For it is necessary not only to believe that it is economically feasible to behave in the irresponsible and egotistical fashion that I have described, but also to believe that it is morally permissible to do so. And this idea has been peddled by the intellectual elite in Britain for many years, more assiduously than anywhere else, to the extent that it is now taken for granted. There has been a long march not only through the institutions but through the minds of the young. When young people want to praise themselves, they describe themselves as "nonjudgmental." For them, the highest form of morality is amorality.
There has been an unholy alliance between those on the Left, who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties, and libertarians on the Right, who believe that consumer choice is the answer to all social questions, an idea eagerly adopted by the Left in precisely those areas where it does not apply. Thus people have a right to bring forth children any way they like, and the children, of course, have the right not to be deprived of anything, at least anything material. How men and women associate and have children is merely a matter of consumer choice, of no more moral consequence than the choice between dark and milk chocolate, and the state must not discriminate among different forms of association and child rearing, even if such non-discrimination has the same effect as British and French neutrality during the Spanish Civil War.
The consequences to the children and to society do not enter into the matter: for in any case it is the function of the state to ameliorate by redistributive taxation the material effects of individual irresponsibility, and to ameliorate the emotional, educational, and spiritual effects by an army of social workers, psychologists, educators, counselors, and the like, who have themselves come to form a powerful vested interest of dependence on the government.
So while my patients know in their hearts that what they are doing is wrong, and worse than wrong, they are encouraged nevertheless to do it by the strong belief that they have the right to do it, because everything is merely a matter of choice. Almost no one in Britain ever publicly challenges this belief. Nor has any politician the courage to demand a withdrawal of the public subsidy that allows the intensifying evil I have seen over the past 14 years—violence, rape, intimidation, cruelty, drug addiction, neglect—to flourish so exuberantly. With 40 percent of children in Britain born out of wedlock, and the proportion still rising, and with divorce the norm rather than the exception, there soon will be no electoral constituency for reversal. It is already deemed to be electoral suicide to advocate it by those who, in their hearts, know that such a reversal is necessary.
I am not sure they are right. They lack courage. My only cause for optimism during the past 14 years has been the fact that my patients, with a few exceptions, can be brought to see the truth of what I say: that they are not depressed; they are unhappy—and they are unhappy because they have chosen to live in a way that they ought not to live, and in which it is impossible to be happy. Without exception, they say that they would not want their children to live as they have lived. But the social, economic, and ideological pressures—and, above all, the parental example—make it likely that their children's choices will be as bad as theirs.
Ultimately, the moral cowardice of the intellectual and political elites is responsible for the continuing social disaster that has overtaken Britain, a disaster whose full social and economic consequences have yet to be seen. A sharp economic downturn would expose how far the policies of successive governments, all in the direction of libertinism, have atomized British society, so that all social solidarity within families and communities, so protective in times of hardship, has been destroyed. The elites cannot even acknowledge what has happened, however obvious it is, for to do so would be to admit their past responsibility for it, and that would make them feel bad. Better that millions should live in wretchedness and squalor than that they should feel bad about themselves—another aspect of the frivolity of evil. Moreover, if members of the elite acknowledged the social disaster brought about by their ideological libertinism, they might feel called upon to place restraints upon their own behavior, for you cannot long demand of others what you balk at doing yourself.
There are pleasures, no doubt, to be had in crying in the wilderness, in being a man who thinks he has seen further and more keenly than others, but they grow fewer with time. The wilderness has lost its charms for me.
I'm leaving—I hope for good.
Theodore Dalrymple
When prisoners are released from prison, they often say that they have paid their debt to society. This is absurd, of course: crime is not a matter of double-entry bookkeeping. You cannot pay a debt by having caused even greater expense, nor can you pay in advance for a bank robbery by offering to serve a prison sentence before you commit it. Perhaps, metaphorically speaking, the slate is wiped clean once a prisoner is released from prison, but the debt is not paid off.
It would be just as absurd for me to say, on my imminent retirement after 14 years of my hospital and prison work, that I have paid my debt to society. I had the choice to do something more pleasing if I had wished, and I was paid, if not munificently, at least adequately. I chose the disagreeable neighborhood in which I practiced because, medically speaking, the poor are more interesting, at least to me, than the rich: their pathology is more florid, their need for attention greater. Their dilemmas, if cruder, seem to me more compelling, nearer to the fundamentals of human existence. No doubt I also felt my services would be more valuable there: in other words, that I had some kind of duty to perform. Perhaps for that reason, like the prisoner on his release, I feel I have paid my debt to society. Certainly, the work has taken a toll on me, and it is time to do something else. Someone else can do battle with the metastasizing social pathology of Great Britain, while I lead a life aesthetically more pleasing to me.
My work has caused me to become perhaps unhealthily preoccupied with the problem of evil. Why do people commit evil? What conditions allow it to flourish? How is it best prevented and, when necessary, suppressed? Each time I listen to a patient recounting the cruelty to which he or she has been subjected, or has committed (and I have listened to several such patients every day for 14 years), these questions revolve endlessly in my mind.
No doubt my previous experiences fostered my preoccupation with this problem. My mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany, and though she spoke very little of her life before she came to Britain, the mere fact that there was much of which she did not speak gave evil a ghostly presence in our household.
Later, I spent several years touring the world, often in places where atrocity had recently been, or still was being, committed. In Central America, I witnessed civil war fought between guerrilla groups intent on imposing totalitarian tyranny on their societies, opposed by armies that didn't scruple to resort to massacre. In Equatorial Guinea, the current dictator was the nephew and henchman of the last dictator, who had killed or driven into exile a third of the population, executing every last person who wore glasses or possessed a page of printed matter for being a disaffected or potentially disaffected intellectual. In Liberia, I visited a church in which more than 600 people had taken refuge and been slaughtered, possibly by the president himself (soon to be videotaped being tortured to death). The outlines of the bodies were still visible on the dried blood on the floor, and the long mound of the mass grave began only a few yards from the entrance. In North Korea I saw the acme of tyranny, millions of people in terrorized, abject obeisance to a personality cult whose object, the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, made the Sun King look like the personification of modesty.
Still, all these were political evils, which my own country had entirely escaped. I optimistically supposed that, in the absence of the worst political deformations, widespread evil was impossible. I soon discovered my error. Of course, nothing that I was to see in a British slum approached the scale or depth of what I had witnessed elsewhere. Beating a woman from motives of jealousy, locking her in a closet, breaking her arms deliberately, terrible though it may be, is not the same, by a long way, as mass murder. More than enough of the constitutional, traditional, institutional, and social restraints on large-scale political evil still existed in Britain to prevent anything like what I had witnessed elsewhere.
Yet the scale of a man's evil is not entirely to be measured by its practical consequences. Men commit evil within the scope available to them. Some evil geniuses, of course, devote their lives to increasing that scope as widely as possible, but no such character has yet arisen in Britain, and most evildoers merely make the most of their opportunities. They do what they can get away with.
In any case, the extent of the evil that I found, though far more modest than the disasters of modern history, is nonetheless impressive. From the vantage point of one six-bedded hospital ward, I have met at least 5,000 perpetrators of the kind of violence I have just described and 5,000 victims of it: nearly 1 percent of the population of my city—or a higher percentage, if one considers the age-specificity of the behavior. And when you take the life histories of these people, as I have, you soon realize that their existence is as saturated with arbitrary violence as that of the inhabitants of many a dictatorship. Instead of one dictator, though, there are thousands, each the absolute ruler of his own little sphere, his power circumscribed by the proximity of another such as he.
Violent conflict, not confined to the home and hearth, spills out onto the streets. Moreover, I discovered that British cities such as my own even had torture chambers: run not by the government, as in dictatorships, but by those representatives of slum enterprise, the drug dealers. Young men and women in debt to drug dealers are kidnapped, taken to the torture chambers, tied to beds, and beaten or whipped. Of compunction there is none—only a residual fear of the consequences of going too far.
Perhaps the most alarming feature of this low-level but endemic evil, the one that brings it close to the conception of original sin, is that it is unforced and spontaneous. No one requires people to commit it. In the worst dictatorships, some of the evil ordinary men and women do they do out of fear of not committing it. There, goodness requires heroism. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, for example, a man who failed to report a political joke to the authorities was himself guilty of an offense that could lead to deportation or death. But in modern Britain, no such conditions exist: the government does not require citizens to behave as I have described and punish them if they do not. The evil is freely chosen.
Not that the government is blameless in the matter—far from it. Intellectuals propounded the idea that man should be freed from the shackles of social convention and self-control, and the government, without any demand from below, enacted laws that promoted unrestrained behavior and created a welfare system that protected people from some of its economic consequences. When the barriers to evil are brought down, it flourishes; and never again will I be tempted to believe in the fundamental goodness of man, or that evil is something exceptional or alien to human nature.
Of course, my personal experience is just that—personal experience. Admittedly, I have looked out at the social world of my city and my country from a peculiar and possibly unrepresentative vantage point, from a prison and from a hospital ward where practically all the patients have tried to kill themselves, or at least made suicidal gestures. But it is not small or slight personal experience, and each of my thousands, even scores of thousands, of cases has given me a window into the world in which that person lives.
And when my mother asks me whether I am not in danger of letting my personal experience embitter me or cause me to look at the world through bile-colored spectacles, I ask her why she thinks that she, in common with all old people in Britain today, feels the need to be indoors by sundown or face the consequences, and why this should be the case in a country that within living memory was law-abiding and safe? Did she not herself tell me that, as a young woman during the blackouts in the Blitz, she felt perfectly safe, at least from the depredations of her fellow citizens, walking home in the pitch dark, and that it never occurred to her that she might be the victim of a crime, whereas nowadays she has only to put her nose out of her door at dusk for her to think of nothing else? Is it not true that her purse has been stolen twice in the last two years, in broad daylight, and is it not true that statistics—however manipulated by governments to put the best possible gloss upon them—bear out the accuracy of the conclusions that I have drawn from my personal experience? In 1921, the year of my mother's birth, there was one crime recorded for every 370 inhabitants of England and Wales; 80 years later, it was one for every ten inhabitants. There has been a 12-fold increase since 1941 and an even greater increase in crimes of violence. So while personal experience is hardly a complete guide to social reality, the historical data certainly back up my impressions.
A single case can be illuminating, especially when it is statistically banal—in other words, not at all exceptional. Yesterday, for example, a 21-year-old woman consulted me, claiming to be depressed. She had swallowed an overdose of her antidepressants and then called an ambulance.
There is something to be said here about the word "depression," which has almost entirely eliminated the word and even the concept of unhappiness from modern life. Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed. This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means. Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed). This idea in turn implies that one's state of mind, or one's mood, is or should be independent of the way that one lives one's life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct.
A ridiculous pas de deux between doctor and patient ensues: the patient pretends to be ill, and the doctor pretends to cure him. In the process, the patient is willfully blinded to the conduct that inevitably causes his misery in the first place. I have therefore come to see that one of the most important tasks of the doctor today is the disavowal of his own power and responsibility. The patient's notion that he is ill stands in the way of his understanding of the situation, without which moral change cannot take place. The doctor who pretends to treat is an obstacle to this change, blinding rather than enlightening.
My patient already had had three children by three different men, by no means unusual among my patients, or indeed in the country as a whole. The father of her first child had been violent, and she had left him; the second died in an accident while driving a stolen car; the third, with whom she had been living, had demanded that she should leave his apartment because, a week after their child was born, he decided that he no longer wished to live with her. (The discovery of incompatibility a week after the birth of a child is now so common as to be statistically normal.) She had nowhere to go, no one to fall back on, and the hospital was a temporary sanctuary from her woes. She hoped that we would fix her up with some accommodation.
She could not return to her mother, because of conflict with her "stepfather," or her mother's latest boyfriend, who, in fact, was only nine years older than she and seven years younger than her mother. This compression of the generations is also now a common pattern and is seldom a recipe for happiness. (It goes without saying that her own father had disappeared at her birth, and she had never seen him since.) The latest boyfriend in this kind of ménage either wants the daughter around to abuse her sexually or else wants her out of the house as being a nuisance and an unnecessary expense. This boyfriend wanted her out of the house, and set about creating an atmosphere certain to make her leave as soon as possible.
The father of her first child had, of course, recognized her vulnerability. A girl of 16 living on her own is easy prey. He beat her from the first, being drunken, possessive, and jealous, as well as flagrantly unfaithful. She thought that a child would make him more responsible—sober him up and calm him down. It had the reverse effect. She left him.
The father of her second child was a career criminal, already imprisoned several times. A drug addict who took whatever drugs he could get, he died under the influence. She had known all about his past before she had his child.
The father of her third child was much older than she. It was he who suggested that they have a child—in fact he demanded it as a condition of staying with her. He had five children already by three different women, none of whom he supported in any way whatever.
The conditions for the perpetuation of evil were now complete. She was a young woman who would not want to remain alone, without a man, for very long; but with three children already, she would attract precisely the kind of man, like the father of her first child—of whom there are now many—looking for vulnerable, exploitable women. More than likely, at least one of them (for there would undoubtedly be a succession of them) would abuse her children sexually, physically, or both.
She was, of course, a victim of her mother's behavior at a time when she had little control over her destiny. Her mother had thought that her own sexual liaison was more important than the welfare of her child, a common way of thinking in today's welfare Britain. That same day, for example, I was consulted by a young woman whose mother's consort had raped her many times between the ages of eight and 15, with her mother's full knowledge. Her mother had allowed this solely so that her relationship with her consort might continue. It could happen that my patient will one day do the same thing.
My patient was not just a victim of her mother, however: she had knowingly borne children of men of whom no good could be expected. She knew perfectly well the consequences and the meaning of what she was doing, as her reaction to something that I said to her—and say to hundreds of women patients in a similar situation—proved: next time you are thinking of going out with a man, bring him to me for my inspection, and I'll tell you if you can go out with him.
This never fails to make the most wretched, the most "depressed" of women smile broadly or laugh heartily. They know exactly what I mean, and I need not spell it out further. They know that I mean that most of the men they have chosen have their evil written all over them, sometimes quite literally in the form of tattoos, saying "FUCK OFF" or "MAD DOG." And they understand that if I can spot the evil instantly, because they know what I would look for, so can they—and therefore they are in large part responsible for their own downfall at the hands of evil men.
Moreover, they are aware that I believe that it is both foolish and wicked to have children by men without having considered even for a second or a fraction of a second whether the men have any qualities that might make them good fathers. Mistakes are possible, of course: a man may turn out not to be as expected. But not even to consider the question is to act as irresponsibly as it is possible for a human being to act. It is knowingly to increase the sum of evil in the world, and sooner or later the summation of small evils leads to the triumph of evil itself.
My patient did not start out with the intention of abetting, much less of committing, evil. And yet her refusal to take seriously and act upon the signs that she saw and the knowledge that she had was not the consequence of blindness and ignorance. It was utterly willful. She knew from her own experience, and that of many people around her, that her choices, based on the pleasure or the desire of the moment, would lead to the misery and suffering not only of herself, but—especially—of her own children.
This truly is not so much the banality as the frivolity of evil: the elevation of passing pleasure for oneself over the long-term misery of others to whom one owes a duty. What better phrase than the frivolity of evil describes the conduct of a mother who turns her own 14-year-old child out of doors because her latest boyfriend does not want him or her in the house? And what better phrase describes the attitude of those intellectuals who see in this conduct nothing but an extension of human freedom and choice, another thread in life's rich tapestry?
The men in these situations also know perfectly well the meaning and consequences of what they are doing. The same day that I saw the patient I have just described, a man aged 25 came into our ward, in need of an operation to remove foil-wrapped packets of cocaine that he had swallowed in order to evade being caught by the police in possession of them. (Had a packet burst, he would have died immediately.) As it happened, he had just left his latest girlfriend—one week after she had given birth to their child. They weren't getting along, he said; he needed his space. Of the child, he thought not for an instant.
I asked him whether he had any other children.
"Four," he replied.
"How many mothers?"
"Three."
"Do you see any of your children?"
He shook his head. It is supposedly the duty of the doctor not to pass judgment on how his patients have elected to live, but I think I may have raised my eyebrows slightly. At any rate, the patient caught a whiff of my disapproval.
"I know," he said. "I know. Don't tell me."
These words were a complete confession of guilt. I have had hundreds of conversations with men who have abandoned their children in this fashion, and they all know perfectly well what the consequences are for the mother and, more important, for the children. They all know that they are condemning their children to lives of brutality, poverty, abuse, and hopelessness. They tell me so themselves. And yet they do it over and over again, to such an extent that I should guess that nearly a quarter of British children are now brought up this way.
The result is a rising tide of neglect, cruelty, sadism, and joyous malignity that staggers and appalls me. I am more horrified after 14 years than the day I started.
Where does this evil come from? There is obviously something flawed in the heart of man that he should wish to behave in this depraved fashion—the legacy of original sin, to speak metaphorically. But if, not so long ago, such conduct was much less widespread than it is now (in a time of much lesser prosperity, be it remembered by those who think that poverty explains everything), then something more is needed to explain it.
A necessary, though not sufficient, condition is the welfare state, which makes it possible, and sometimes advantageous, to behave like this. Just as the IMF is the bank of last resort, encouraging commercial banks to make unwise loans to countries that they know the IMF will bail out, so the state is the parent of last resort—or, more often than not, of first resort. The state, guided by the apparently generous and humane philosophy that no child, whatever its origins, should suffer deprivation, gives assistance to any child, or rather the mother of any child, once it has come into being. In matters of public housing, it is actually advantageous for a mother to put herself at a disadvantage, to be a single mother, without support from the fathers of the children and dependent on the state for income. She is then a priority; she won't pay local taxes, rent, or utility bills.
As for the men, the state absolves them of all responsibility for their children. The state is now father to the child. The biological father is therefore free to use whatever income he has as pocket money, for entertainment and little treats. He is thereby reduced to the status of a child, though a spoiled child with the physical capabilities of a man: petulant, demanding, querulous, self-centered, and violent if he doesn't get his own way. The violence escalates and becomes a habit. A spoiled brat becomes an evil tyrant.
But if the welfare state is a necessary condition for the spread of evil, it is not sufficient. After all, the British welfare state is neither the most extensive nor the most generous in the world, and yet our rates of social pathology—public drunkenness, drug-taking, teenage pregnancy, venereal disease, hooliganism, criminality—are the highest in the world. Something more was necessary to produce this result.
Here we enter the realm of culture and ideas. For it is necessary not only to believe that it is economically feasible to behave in the irresponsible and egotistical fashion that I have described, but also to believe that it is morally permissible to do so. And this idea has been peddled by the intellectual elite in Britain for many years, more assiduously than anywhere else, to the extent that it is now taken for granted. There has been a long march not only through the institutions but through the minds of the young. When young people want to praise themselves, they describe themselves as "nonjudgmental." For them, the highest form of morality is amorality.
There has been an unholy alliance between those on the Left, who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties, and libertarians on the Right, who believe that consumer choice is the answer to all social questions, an idea eagerly adopted by the Left in precisely those areas where it does not apply. Thus people have a right to bring forth children any way they like, and the children, of course, have the right not to be deprived of anything, at least anything material. How men and women associate and have children is merely a matter of consumer choice, of no more moral consequence than the choice between dark and milk chocolate, and the state must not discriminate among different forms of association and child rearing, even if such non-discrimination has the same effect as British and French neutrality during the Spanish Civil War.
The consequences to the children and to society do not enter into the matter: for in any case it is the function of the state to ameliorate by redistributive taxation the material effects of individual irresponsibility, and to ameliorate the emotional, educational, and spiritual effects by an army of social workers, psychologists, educators, counselors, and the like, who have themselves come to form a powerful vested interest of dependence on the government.
So while my patients know in their hearts that what they are doing is wrong, and worse than wrong, they are encouraged nevertheless to do it by the strong belief that they have the right to do it, because everything is merely a matter of choice. Almost no one in Britain ever publicly challenges this belief. Nor has any politician the courage to demand a withdrawal of the public subsidy that allows the intensifying evil I have seen over the past 14 years—violence, rape, intimidation, cruelty, drug addiction, neglect—to flourish so exuberantly. With 40 percent of children in Britain born out of wedlock, and the proportion still rising, and with divorce the norm rather than the exception, there soon will be no electoral constituency for reversal. It is already deemed to be electoral suicide to advocate it by those who, in their hearts, know that such a reversal is necessary.
I am not sure they are right. They lack courage. My only cause for optimism during the past 14 years has been the fact that my patients, with a few exceptions, can be brought to see the truth of what I say: that they are not depressed; they are unhappy—and they are unhappy because they have chosen to live in a way that they ought not to live, and in which it is impossible to be happy. Without exception, they say that they would not want their children to live as they have lived. But the social, economic, and ideological pressures—and, above all, the parental example—make it likely that their children's choices will be as bad as theirs.
Ultimately, the moral cowardice of the intellectual and political elites is responsible for the continuing social disaster that has overtaken Britain, a disaster whose full social and economic consequences have yet to be seen. A sharp economic downturn would expose how far the policies of successive governments, all in the direction of libertinism, have atomized British society, so that all social solidarity within families and communities, so protective in times of hardship, has been destroyed. The elites cannot even acknowledge what has happened, however obvious it is, for to do so would be to admit their past responsibility for it, and that would make them feel bad. Better that millions should live in wretchedness and squalor than that they should feel bad about themselves—another aspect of the frivolity of evil. Moreover, if members of the elite acknowledged the social disaster brought about by their ideological libertinism, they might feel called upon to place restraints upon their own behavior, for you cannot long demand of others what you balk at doing yourself.
There are pleasures, no doubt, to be had in crying in the wilderness, in being a man who thinks he has seen further and more keenly than others, but they grow fewer with time. The wilderness has lost its charms for me.
I'm leaving—I hope for good.
WOS # 12 : How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men : Morgan Knull
How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men
Morgan Knull
About a decade ago, Christina Hoff Sommers began doing a very unladylike thing. She had the temerity to track down the elusive sources of oft-cited statistics that purported to demonstrate that American women suffer pervasive discrimination and abuse at the hands of their fathers and husbands. As she later recalled in Who Stole Feminism? (1994), her research met with frustration in many cases, although it wasn’t her fault. Again and again, she exposed the controversial statistics as based on bogus studies or misinterpreted data. The sisterhood was not pleased with her efforts. But Sommers, a philosopher by training, was propelled into public life.
The War Against Boys continues Sommers’ mission of debunking what she playfully terms the feminist establishment’s "Ms/information." Often lavishly subsidized by government grants, women’s advocacy groups disseminate "research" and statistics that make a mockery of the scientific method in the service of ideology.
One illustrative case that Sommers cites involves the Women’s Educational Equity Act Publishing Center, a clearinghouse that distributes research to 200 educational conferences each year and that has received $75 million in federal funds since 1980. When Katherine Hanson, the Center’s director, triumphantly announced that her organization had received another government grant, she insisted that "every year nearly four million women are beaten to death" and that "the leading cause of injury among women is being beaten by a man at home."
Sommers suspected that Hanson’s numbers might be flawed because only about one million women die each year in America from all causes combined. Even then, the leading causes of death are heart disease and cancer. In 1996, 3,631 women were murdered, a significant number but one nevertheless dwarfed by the number of women who committed suicide that year. In short, Hanson had nearly everything wrong. When Sommers interviewed her, she was unable to substantiate her claims, beyond making vague references to research.
Hanson’s indifference to reality is not exceptional. Sommers describes how she and a friend attended a women’s conference that was rife with false statistics. When her companion pointed out factual errors in one presentation, the audience grew indignant. "This is not a discussion about statistics!" one woman shrieked. At other conferences, Sommers was asked to leave or had her presence in the audience announced over the public address system. But she did not return empty-handed.
Feminist activists and government agencies are savvy marketers of their program. Sommers tells of attending workshops where elementary school teachers were instructed about "gender-neutralizing" co-ed classrooms. But what if parents object? The teachers were advised to respond to criticism by referencing the findings of unspecified "research," since the public usually is deferential to science. And those adults who persist in their skepticism about feminism should be smeared as resembling Holocaust deniers. This is how feminism responds to its critics.
The War Against Boys’ second section offers a crash course on the social scientific method, in which Sommers assails "gender" researchers Carol Gilligan and William Pollack for ignoring. Gilligan’s 1982 book In a Different Voice launched a renaissance of "difference feminism," which acknowledges variation between the sexes. Gilligan, however, contends that such differences do not arise from the distinct biological and psychological endowments of boys and girls (a position that is known as "essentialism"). Instead, she maintains that children are "socially constructed" by environmental conditioning into false sexual identities and roles.
Whatever their ideological appeal, Gilligan’s findings are not textbook examples of the scientific method at work. Twenty years later, Gilligan still refuses to release her In a Different Voice data sets to other researchers who wish to replicate her analysis, even though such data disclosure is common among scholars. Moreover, Sommers doubts that Gilligan sampled a sufficient number of children to permit generalized conclusions. At best, the research is anecdotal; at worst, Sommers cautions, it may be "reckless and removed from reality."
None of these objections has tarnished Gilligan’s fame as an authority on children’s sexual identities. Like feminist psychiatrist William Pollack, whose unscientific study Real Boys climbed the bestseller lists after the Columbine High School shootings, Gilligan has responded to critics by claiming that conventional scientific and statistical standards should not apply to her work. After all, isn’t science biased against women? Doesn’t it serve the interests of the patriarchy? Sommers is trenchant in her rebuke of such irrationalism. It does not do to just explain away inconvenient scientific methods, she writes; the serious researcher is obligated to propose a superior research design to replace them. But Gilligan is a propagandist rather than a scholar.
Surveying the trajectory of feminism in recent decades, Sommers notes that the initial alarmism about girls being academically disadvantaged has not withstood empirical challenge. Girls consistently outperform boys in reading scores, have greater artistic and musical ability, and take more Advanced Placement courses. While boys surpass their female classmates in other areas, they do not clearly dominate. But rather than conceding Sommers’ point—"there remains no reason to believe that girls or boys are in crisis"—activists and educators have responded by declaring that boys, too, are endangered. They have declared war on "masculine" virtues such as competition and daring by instituting anti-sexual harassment brainwashing and banning school playgrounds. Atlanta’s elementary schools even have abolished recess. The purpose of this sexual reeducation regimen is to compel boys to abandon their masculine identity in favor social passivity and sexual androgyny.
The final and most significant part of The War Against Boys is devoted to urging that boys be appreciated for their own strengths rather than re-programmed to live in Hillary Clinton’s village. Sommers writes that "the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the world," and should not be treated as a deviant pathology requiring treatment.
Mediating between the stark "nature vs. nurture" dichotomy that seeks to explain the origins of sexual identity, Sommers recognizes that innate differences exist between boys and girls. This is increasingly demonstrated through research into fetal development and male-female differences in brain structure and process. "Boys will always be less interested than girls in dollhouses," she notes. "This does not mean that our sex rigidly determines our future." A minority of boys may prefer to play with dolls, but that fact cannot invalidate the natural predisposition most boys have toward playing competitive games.
Sommers is careful not to endorse every natural impulse. She cites, for example, the higher rates of sexual promiscuity among teenage boys. "Given the biological changes boys are undergoing, their eagerness is natural and not unhealthy," Sommers writes. "On the other hand, society correctly demands that they suppress what is natural in favor of what is moral." It is the role of parents, particularly fathers, to teach their sons self-restraint and self-control.
As a classical liberal, Sommers does not possess the modern liberal penchant for leveling. She argues that natural differences between men and women should be allowed to thrive within a framework of political and social equality.
Central to Sommers’ philosophic position is a belief that freedom has an essential role in human relations. Such freedom operates on several levels. There is the social freedom that boys and girls should be given to develop identities consistent with their respective sex. But there is another kind of freedom, one which philosophers call agency, that allows individuals to transcend part of their natural endowment. That is what happens when teenagers choose chastity over sexual promiscuity; conversely, it occurs also when individuals rebel against traditional sexual roles that they find inhibiting. Sommers’ account of sexual identity thus encompasses both nature and agency.
One of the ironies of contemporary life, Sommers remarks, is that a 30-year social experiment in Rousseauian liberation has paved the way for authoritarianism. "What happens when educators celebrate children’s creativity and innate goodness and abandon the ancestral responsibility to discipline, train, and civilize them?" she asks. Schools have become "value-free zones" filled with "incivility, profanity, and bullying." But that is not the fault of unruly boys. The answer to naughty kids is not drugging them with Ritalin or trying to reengineer their sexual identities—prescriptions that Sommers rightly terms "deeply authoritarian." Nor are metal detectors at every school entrance a solution.
Instead, The War Against Boys calls on parents to cease "defecting from the crucial duties of moral education" by entrusting their children’s education to political activists and government bureaucrats. Education reform, including making single-sex classes more available in public schools, can be a first step. But to really return decency to schools and public life, adults must renounce the disastrous experiment of rampant individualism at the expense of community; a healthy society strives to balance the two principles. Ultimately, the relationship between an individual and his community can be mutually-enriching, as Sommers recognizes: "To educate, humanize, and civilize a boy is to allow him to make the most of himself."
Morgan Knull
About a decade ago, Christina Hoff Sommers began doing a very unladylike thing. She had the temerity to track down the elusive sources of oft-cited statistics that purported to demonstrate that American women suffer pervasive discrimination and abuse at the hands of their fathers and husbands. As she later recalled in Who Stole Feminism? (1994), her research met with frustration in many cases, although it wasn’t her fault. Again and again, she exposed the controversial statistics as based on bogus studies or misinterpreted data. The sisterhood was not pleased with her efforts. But Sommers, a philosopher by training, was propelled into public life.
The War Against Boys continues Sommers’ mission of debunking what she playfully terms the feminist establishment’s "Ms/information." Often lavishly subsidized by government grants, women’s advocacy groups disseminate "research" and statistics that make a mockery of the scientific method in the service of ideology.
One illustrative case that Sommers cites involves the Women’s Educational Equity Act Publishing Center, a clearinghouse that distributes research to 200 educational conferences each year and that has received $75 million in federal funds since 1980. When Katherine Hanson, the Center’s director, triumphantly announced that her organization had received another government grant, she insisted that "every year nearly four million women are beaten to death" and that "the leading cause of injury among women is being beaten by a man at home."
Sommers suspected that Hanson’s numbers might be flawed because only about one million women die each year in America from all causes combined. Even then, the leading causes of death are heart disease and cancer. In 1996, 3,631 women were murdered, a significant number but one nevertheless dwarfed by the number of women who committed suicide that year. In short, Hanson had nearly everything wrong. When Sommers interviewed her, she was unable to substantiate her claims, beyond making vague references to research.
Hanson’s indifference to reality is not exceptional. Sommers describes how she and a friend attended a women’s conference that was rife with false statistics. When her companion pointed out factual errors in one presentation, the audience grew indignant. "This is not a discussion about statistics!" one woman shrieked. At other conferences, Sommers was asked to leave or had her presence in the audience announced over the public address system. But she did not return empty-handed.
Feminist activists and government agencies are savvy marketers of their program. Sommers tells of attending workshops where elementary school teachers were instructed about "gender-neutralizing" co-ed classrooms. But what if parents object? The teachers were advised to respond to criticism by referencing the findings of unspecified "research," since the public usually is deferential to science. And those adults who persist in their skepticism about feminism should be smeared as resembling Holocaust deniers. This is how feminism responds to its critics.
The War Against Boys’ second section offers a crash course on the social scientific method, in which Sommers assails "gender" researchers Carol Gilligan and William Pollack for ignoring. Gilligan’s 1982 book In a Different Voice launched a renaissance of "difference feminism," which acknowledges variation between the sexes. Gilligan, however, contends that such differences do not arise from the distinct biological and psychological endowments of boys and girls (a position that is known as "essentialism"). Instead, she maintains that children are "socially constructed" by environmental conditioning into false sexual identities and roles.
Whatever their ideological appeal, Gilligan’s findings are not textbook examples of the scientific method at work. Twenty years later, Gilligan still refuses to release her In a Different Voice data sets to other researchers who wish to replicate her analysis, even though such data disclosure is common among scholars. Moreover, Sommers doubts that Gilligan sampled a sufficient number of children to permit generalized conclusions. At best, the research is anecdotal; at worst, Sommers cautions, it may be "reckless and removed from reality."
None of these objections has tarnished Gilligan’s fame as an authority on children’s sexual identities. Like feminist psychiatrist William Pollack, whose unscientific study Real Boys climbed the bestseller lists after the Columbine High School shootings, Gilligan has responded to critics by claiming that conventional scientific and statistical standards should not apply to her work. After all, isn’t science biased against women? Doesn’t it serve the interests of the patriarchy? Sommers is trenchant in her rebuke of such irrationalism. It does not do to just explain away inconvenient scientific methods, she writes; the serious researcher is obligated to propose a superior research design to replace them. But Gilligan is a propagandist rather than a scholar.
Surveying the trajectory of feminism in recent decades, Sommers notes that the initial alarmism about girls being academically disadvantaged has not withstood empirical challenge. Girls consistently outperform boys in reading scores, have greater artistic and musical ability, and take more Advanced Placement courses. While boys surpass their female classmates in other areas, they do not clearly dominate. But rather than conceding Sommers’ point—"there remains no reason to believe that girls or boys are in crisis"—activists and educators have responded by declaring that boys, too, are endangered. They have declared war on "masculine" virtues such as competition and daring by instituting anti-sexual harassment brainwashing and banning school playgrounds. Atlanta’s elementary schools even have abolished recess. The purpose of this sexual reeducation regimen is to compel boys to abandon their masculine identity in favor social passivity and sexual androgyny.
The final and most significant part of The War Against Boys is devoted to urging that boys be appreciated for their own strengths rather than re-programmed to live in Hillary Clinton’s village. Sommers writes that "the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the world," and should not be treated as a deviant pathology requiring treatment.
Mediating between the stark "nature vs. nurture" dichotomy that seeks to explain the origins of sexual identity, Sommers recognizes that innate differences exist between boys and girls. This is increasingly demonstrated through research into fetal development and male-female differences in brain structure and process. "Boys will always be less interested than girls in dollhouses," she notes. "This does not mean that our sex rigidly determines our future." A minority of boys may prefer to play with dolls, but that fact cannot invalidate the natural predisposition most boys have toward playing competitive games.
Sommers is careful not to endorse every natural impulse. She cites, for example, the higher rates of sexual promiscuity among teenage boys. "Given the biological changes boys are undergoing, their eagerness is natural and not unhealthy," Sommers writes. "On the other hand, society correctly demands that they suppress what is natural in favor of what is moral." It is the role of parents, particularly fathers, to teach their sons self-restraint and self-control.
As a classical liberal, Sommers does not possess the modern liberal penchant for leveling. She argues that natural differences between men and women should be allowed to thrive within a framework of political and social equality.
Central to Sommers’ philosophic position is a belief that freedom has an essential role in human relations. Such freedom operates on several levels. There is the social freedom that boys and girls should be given to develop identities consistent with their respective sex. But there is another kind of freedom, one which philosophers call agency, that allows individuals to transcend part of their natural endowment. That is what happens when teenagers choose chastity over sexual promiscuity; conversely, it occurs also when individuals rebel against traditional sexual roles that they find inhibiting. Sommers’ account of sexual identity thus encompasses both nature and agency.
One of the ironies of contemporary life, Sommers remarks, is that a 30-year social experiment in Rousseauian liberation has paved the way for authoritarianism. "What happens when educators celebrate children’s creativity and innate goodness and abandon the ancestral responsibility to discipline, train, and civilize them?" she asks. Schools have become "value-free zones" filled with "incivility, profanity, and bullying." But that is not the fault of unruly boys. The answer to naughty kids is not drugging them with Ritalin or trying to reengineer their sexual identities—prescriptions that Sommers rightly terms "deeply authoritarian." Nor are metal detectors at every school entrance a solution.
Instead, The War Against Boys calls on parents to cease "defecting from the crucial duties of moral education" by entrusting their children’s education to political activists and government bureaucrats. Education reform, including making single-sex classes more available in public schools, can be a first step. But to really return decency to schools and public life, adults must renounce the disastrous experiment of rampant individualism at the expense of community; a healthy society strives to balance the two principles. Ultimately, the relationship between an individual and his community can be mutually-enriching, as Sommers recognizes: "To educate, humanize, and civilize a boy is to allow him to make the most of himself."
WOS # 11 : What are True Family Values? By Clifford W. Yank
What are True Family Values?
By Clifford W. Yank
Eurasia President-International Educational Foundation
In our seminars we present character education within the context of "True Family Values". The reason for this will be presented briefly in this article. Through future editions of our journal True Family Values will expounded upon for clarity and better comprehensibility.
What exactly are "family values"? According to Webster's Dictionary, a value is "something, as a principle or quality, intrinsically valuable or desirable." The common expression, family values, then, would mean those principles or qualities associated with the family that are intrinsically valuable or desirable.
The obvious family value, then, would be love. Others might include care, acceptance, intimacy, commitment, shared responsibility, and so forth. To call these family values would be to say that all people find love, care, acceptance, etc., "Intrinsically valuable or desirable." Of course, all people do desire these things; this is what makes us human. Everyone seems to affirm that something called family values will help our society. Thus everyone from Catholic bishops to homosexual activists endorses something called family values.
However, the term "True family Values" is used in our character education seminars. This term is used because there is something missing from the consideration of values alone. What is missing is a sense of good and evil, of what is healthy and what is unhealthy, or of what leads to prosperity and what leads to misery. By itself the term is so general that it is meaningless.
For instance, we can be sure that both saints and murderers desire care and acceptance. Both virgins and adulterers surely desire love and commitment. Espousing family values alone has no relationship with what people actually do. The cry for family values does nothing to improve the safety of the streets or the sanctity of society. It does not even answer the question, "What is a family?" This is why we must examine the question of true family values.
To accomplish this, we are developing the notion of values beyond simple reverence of love, care and acceptance. It is the view of the author, as well as IEF's view, that in order to have meaning, our values must define both norms and goals. Our values should enlighten us as to the behaviors or actions that lead to the accomplishment of those norms and goals. Therefore, we need more than "values"; we need principles for the growth of love, through which we can achieve our shared goals, such as freedom, peace, unification and happiness.
Listed are eight principles, which cause the growth of love and lead to the creation of a true family.
1. Live for the greater whole.
2. Learn true love in the school of the family.
3. Make a commitment to your family and hometown
4. Dedicate your own family to the global family of mankind.
5. Strive daily for the mind to guide the body and their unity.
6. Mobilize good fortune by centering on true love and share it with your community.
7. Be sexually pure to create the true culture.
8. Absolute attendance to true love.
These eight principles are based on Dr. Sun Myung Moon's guidance for the family. Even these eight principles can be summed into one all embracing principle which is living for the greater good.
These principles clarify the essence of family values. Their study reveals why the family is a subject of universal interest, is so controversial, and is of crucial importance to the future of our world. More than that, these principles are stepping stones for our families and communities to achieve that which we most value: the growth of love.
All social problems begin with family problems Family life is breaking down in most nations of the world. Civilizations fall as a result of family breakdown. Rome fell as a result of this problem. One well-known American educator noted, "The family is the basic unit of our society, and it has a cancer. And yet the components of the cancer -- illegitimacy, promiscuity, adultery, increased divorce, homosexuality -- are accepted as 'lifestyles' and even exalted" (Cited in William F. Buckley, "Family breakdown is a crime," Washington Times Weekly Edition, Feb. 19-25, 1996).
The Consequences of Family Breakdown
Why does family breakdown have such devastating consequences? It is because the family is the foundation of civilization.
1. The family is the most important school for our lives.
a. The family is the school of love (Reverend Moon) and school of peace (Pope John Paul II).
2. The first school of ethics and morality.
3. The basic structure of human existence.
4. The family is the model and microcosm of society.
5. The family is intended to operate in accordance with natural law.
Therefore, we can solve social problems when we establish true family life.
Family Restoration: Necessary
Let us examine a few examples of how rebuilding the home brings the natural solution to larger problems.
1. Solution to crime: Research shows that criminals are bred by broken homes, in particular where grandparents are not present. 75% of juveniles in youth correction facilities are from single-parent families. Happy families breed law-abiding citizens. (1)
2. Solution to mental illness: Similarly, mental illness is bred by broken homes, in particular where grandparents are not present. Genetic and biological predisposition to mental illness determines only 30% of whether it will occur. The actual expression of mental illness depends mainly upon human factors. Happy families breed sane, balanced people. Divorces breed children likely to divorce. (2)
3. Solution to drug abuse, alcoholism: 75% of adolescents from single-parent families are in drug rehabilitation centers. Drug abuse and alcoholism are used as love substitutes when our desire for love is not adequately satisfied. As in the case of mental illness, healthy family life ends drug and alcohol abuse.(3)
4. Solution to the economy: Two-parent families do better economically than one-parent families and divorced people. The extended family is the best environment for small-scale entrepreneurship. Small-scale entrepreneurship leads to large scale creation of wealth. (4)
5. Solution to cultural decay: Good families create their own culture of family love. True parents do not enjoy decadent cultural products, nor do their children.(5)
6. Solution to bloated and conflict-ridden government: Strong families do not require welfare. A society without welfare requires less government. A society without criminals and adulterers requires less government. Strong families create healthy communities that voluntarily care for the less fortunate, reducing the need for state intervention.(6)
7. Solution to foreign affairs: As the family lives for the community, and community for the nation, the national leaders will guide the nation to live for the world, bringing world peace.(7)
8. Solution to religious and racial strife: Good families live for the sake of other families, regardless of race or religion. This is because true family values transcend race and religion and culture. We have long known that children everywhere are the same. We should realize that spouses, parents and grandparents are the same everywhere in the world.(8)
9. Solution to environmental destruction: Good families consume wisely products that are good for children. Good families value the environment above financial profit. Good families create good homes and gardens, creating a park-like environment in their community. Good families do not litter; they respect cleanliness as next to godliness.(9)
10. Solution to AIDS: Good families practice sexual purity. The practice of sexual purity naturally solves the problem of AIDS and other STDs. Abortion and illegitimacy are also solved.(10)
Unfortunately, today, many young people view the wreckage of the family and reject marriage and family as desirable goals. "'Our culture has become skeptical about marriage. One of the unintended side effects of our high divorce rate is that many of our young people are avoiding marriage.'" Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts (Houghton Mifflin, cited in Trudy Bush, "Happily Married With Children," The Christian Century, Jan. 21, 1996, p. 109)
Sociologists can identify the external conditions that have caused family breakdown, but cannot explain the internal cause. From various views we can observe a modern day dilemma between the family and modern society:
1. Economically, traditional society rewarded strong families, but modern urban society discourages them through various laws which increase financial burden on complete families.
2. Systematic governmental attempts to restore traditional, agrarian culture have led to horrors of social engineering, both Marxist (Cambodia, Stalinist Soviet Union, North Korea) and religious (Iran, Bosnia).
3. Problems have worsened by disastrous proportions even during government attempts to create a "Great Society" in the United States.
Yet, few want to abandon the comforts and possibilities which modern industrial society provides.
A Model for Family Restoration
A. Lacking is a family model that meets the challenge of modernity, a universal theory and practice revealing how the healthy family should function.
- To approach this problem, we first must understand the purpose of the family.
- Second, we must understand the root cause of family problems. That is, what we did, and continue to do, in violation of the purpose of the family.
Briefly listed are main points of concern. Future articles will inquire into these concerns further.
1. The purpose of the family is to learn to love, truly. True love is the life for the sake of the other.
2. Self-centeredness destroys the purpose of love and cripples the family, creating contradictions (problems) in society as well as in the individual.
3. As the result of this inability to create true families, all attempts to create a good society have fallen short.
4. This repeats in history because of the incompleteness of the man-woman love, which prevents the family from realizing its purpose.
5. The restoration of the true family means to establish true love between husband and wife.
B. In conclusion, true families live by true family values.
1. The basic standpoint of true family values is that of living for the whole.
2. The goal of true family values is the perfection of love.
3. True family values are our character building checklist.
By Clifford W. Yank
Eurasia President-International Educational Foundation
In our seminars we present character education within the context of "True Family Values". The reason for this will be presented briefly in this article. Through future editions of our journal True Family Values will expounded upon for clarity and better comprehensibility.
What exactly are "family values"? According to Webster's Dictionary, a value is "something, as a principle or quality, intrinsically valuable or desirable." The common expression, family values, then, would mean those principles or qualities associated with the family that are intrinsically valuable or desirable.
The obvious family value, then, would be love. Others might include care, acceptance, intimacy, commitment, shared responsibility, and so forth. To call these family values would be to say that all people find love, care, acceptance, etc., "Intrinsically valuable or desirable." Of course, all people do desire these things; this is what makes us human. Everyone seems to affirm that something called family values will help our society. Thus everyone from Catholic bishops to homosexual activists endorses something called family values.
However, the term "True family Values" is used in our character education seminars. This term is used because there is something missing from the consideration of values alone. What is missing is a sense of good and evil, of what is healthy and what is unhealthy, or of what leads to prosperity and what leads to misery. By itself the term is so general that it is meaningless.
For instance, we can be sure that both saints and murderers desire care and acceptance. Both virgins and adulterers surely desire love and commitment. Espousing family values alone has no relationship with what people actually do. The cry for family values does nothing to improve the safety of the streets or the sanctity of society. It does not even answer the question, "What is a family?" This is why we must examine the question of true family values.
To accomplish this, we are developing the notion of values beyond simple reverence of love, care and acceptance. It is the view of the author, as well as IEF's view, that in order to have meaning, our values must define both norms and goals. Our values should enlighten us as to the behaviors or actions that lead to the accomplishment of those norms and goals. Therefore, we need more than "values"; we need principles for the growth of love, through which we can achieve our shared goals, such as freedom, peace, unification and happiness.
Listed are eight principles, which cause the growth of love and lead to the creation of a true family.
1. Live for the greater whole.
2. Learn true love in the school of the family.
3. Make a commitment to your family and hometown
4. Dedicate your own family to the global family of mankind.
5. Strive daily for the mind to guide the body and their unity.
6. Mobilize good fortune by centering on true love and share it with your community.
7. Be sexually pure to create the true culture.
8. Absolute attendance to true love.
These eight principles are based on Dr. Sun Myung Moon's guidance for the family. Even these eight principles can be summed into one all embracing principle which is living for the greater good.
These principles clarify the essence of family values. Their study reveals why the family is a subject of universal interest, is so controversial, and is of crucial importance to the future of our world. More than that, these principles are stepping stones for our families and communities to achieve that which we most value: the growth of love.
All social problems begin with family problems Family life is breaking down in most nations of the world. Civilizations fall as a result of family breakdown. Rome fell as a result of this problem. One well-known American educator noted, "The family is the basic unit of our society, and it has a cancer. And yet the components of the cancer -- illegitimacy, promiscuity, adultery, increased divorce, homosexuality -- are accepted as 'lifestyles' and even exalted" (Cited in William F. Buckley, "Family breakdown is a crime," Washington Times Weekly Edition, Feb. 19-25, 1996).
The Consequences of Family Breakdown
Why does family breakdown have such devastating consequences? It is because the family is the foundation of civilization.
1. The family is the most important school for our lives.
a. The family is the school of love (Reverend Moon) and school of peace (Pope John Paul II).
2. The first school of ethics and morality.
3. The basic structure of human existence.
4. The family is the model and microcosm of society.
5. The family is intended to operate in accordance with natural law.
Therefore, we can solve social problems when we establish true family life.
Family Restoration: Necessary
Let us examine a few examples of how rebuilding the home brings the natural solution to larger problems.
1. Solution to crime: Research shows that criminals are bred by broken homes, in particular where grandparents are not present. 75% of juveniles in youth correction facilities are from single-parent families. Happy families breed law-abiding citizens. (1)
2. Solution to mental illness: Similarly, mental illness is bred by broken homes, in particular where grandparents are not present. Genetic and biological predisposition to mental illness determines only 30% of whether it will occur. The actual expression of mental illness depends mainly upon human factors. Happy families breed sane, balanced people. Divorces breed children likely to divorce. (2)
3. Solution to drug abuse, alcoholism: 75% of adolescents from single-parent families are in drug rehabilitation centers. Drug abuse and alcoholism are used as love substitutes when our desire for love is not adequately satisfied. As in the case of mental illness, healthy family life ends drug and alcohol abuse.(3)
4. Solution to the economy: Two-parent families do better economically than one-parent families and divorced people. The extended family is the best environment for small-scale entrepreneurship. Small-scale entrepreneurship leads to large scale creation of wealth. (4)
5. Solution to cultural decay: Good families create their own culture of family love. True parents do not enjoy decadent cultural products, nor do their children.(5)
6. Solution to bloated and conflict-ridden government: Strong families do not require welfare. A society without welfare requires less government. A society without criminals and adulterers requires less government. Strong families create healthy communities that voluntarily care for the less fortunate, reducing the need for state intervention.(6)
7. Solution to foreign affairs: As the family lives for the community, and community for the nation, the national leaders will guide the nation to live for the world, bringing world peace.(7)
8. Solution to religious and racial strife: Good families live for the sake of other families, regardless of race or religion. This is because true family values transcend race and religion and culture. We have long known that children everywhere are the same. We should realize that spouses, parents and grandparents are the same everywhere in the world.(8)
9. Solution to environmental destruction: Good families consume wisely products that are good for children. Good families value the environment above financial profit. Good families create good homes and gardens, creating a park-like environment in their community. Good families do not litter; they respect cleanliness as next to godliness.(9)
10. Solution to AIDS: Good families practice sexual purity. The practice of sexual purity naturally solves the problem of AIDS and other STDs. Abortion and illegitimacy are also solved.(10)
Unfortunately, today, many young people view the wreckage of the family and reject marriage and family as desirable goals. "'Our culture has become skeptical about marriage. One of the unintended side effects of our high divorce rate is that many of our young people are avoiding marriage.'" Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts (Houghton Mifflin, cited in Trudy Bush, "Happily Married With Children," The Christian Century, Jan. 21, 1996, p. 109)
Sociologists can identify the external conditions that have caused family breakdown, but cannot explain the internal cause. From various views we can observe a modern day dilemma between the family and modern society:
1. Economically, traditional society rewarded strong families, but modern urban society discourages them through various laws which increase financial burden on complete families.
2. Systematic governmental attempts to restore traditional, agrarian culture have led to horrors of social engineering, both Marxist (Cambodia, Stalinist Soviet Union, North Korea) and religious (Iran, Bosnia).
3. Problems have worsened by disastrous proportions even during government attempts to create a "Great Society" in the United States.
Yet, few want to abandon the comforts and possibilities which modern industrial society provides.
A Model for Family Restoration
A. Lacking is a family model that meets the challenge of modernity, a universal theory and practice revealing how the healthy family should function.
- To approach this problem, we first must understand the purpose of the family.
- Second, we must understand the root cause of family problems. That is, what we did, and continue to do, in violation of the purpose of the family.
Briefly listed are main points of concern. Future articles will inquire into these concerns further.
1. The purpose of the family is to learn to love, truly. True love is the life for the sake of the other.
2. Self-centeredness destroys the purpose of love and cripples the family, creating contradictions (problems) in society as well as in the individual.
3. As the result of this inability to create true families, all attempts to create a good society have fallen short.
4. This repeats in history because of the incompleteness of the man-woman love, which prevents the family from realizing its purpose.
5. The restoration of the true family means to establish true love between husband and wife.
B. In conclusion, true families live by true family values.
1. The basic standpoint of true family values is that of living for the whole.
2. The goal of true family values is the perfection of love.
3. True family values are our character building checklist.
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