Recently, when I told a friend that I wanted three or four children, I was brought up short by her immediate question: "Why?"
No one had ever directly asked me that before. I suppose many feel it's too personal a topic, meddling in another person's familial choices. Also, I suspect that to my family and in the church I attend, three children sounds like a reasonable or even modest number. After all, it's half the number my parents had.
But my friend with the question was expressing concern for the environmental destruction and lack of resources around the world. Her solution, in part, was lessening the children because she sees a direct causal link between human numbers and the horrors of ecological havoc and third-world poverty.
So, is overpopulation destroying our world? From an ecological perspective, absolutely not. From an anthropocentric perspective? Maybe, but indirectly and it doesn't have to. Lemme explain.
Today, humankind simply does not have the power to do irrevocable harm to the natural world. Even if we wanted to. Even if we doubled the output of car and factory pollution spewing into the air, dumped twice the amount of toxins into lakes and oceans, and poisoned the soils and watersheds far more than we presently do, nature would survive. In fact, even if we detonated our combined nuclear arsenals all at once, nature would trundle along oblivious (as all non-sentient forces do). Don't believe me? Visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and see for yourself. Or look at another example, the Korean Demilitarized Zone. This one-time no man's land, pitted and scarred by war, now having been left alone for decades due to a frosty standoff is a 160-miles-long accidental nature preserve. Nature is resilient, far more than we give "her" credit for. We can bloody her nose, but if we were to all die tomorrow, she would reclaim our cities, dismantle them, fill them with flora and fauna, and feed our bodily nutrients to her spawn.
What people mean when they say we hurt mother nature is that we damage small parts of her. Through deliberate overhunting and habitat destruction or thoughtless use of poisons and pollution, we can outright annihilate some species. And that should be of concern to anthropocentric people. In other words, to all of us. While it's true that extinction is natural, Professor Will Steffen estimates that current extinction levels are at 100 to 1000 times the normal level. Make no mistake, I deplore species extinction. I believe it to be literally evil. We are not waging war against nature so much as we are committing genocide. But nature will weather even this. It's not the first extinction event natural life has overcome. It's the sixth.
Others worry about climate change. And we should. The science is in; the earth is heating up. Most likely cause? Human activity. But this too isn't much of a problem to nature. The world is actually much cooler today than it normally is. Presently, we're in a short interglacial phase of an Ice Age. (Or, we were until very recently). That means that even if the earth really heats up, it's nothing our world hasn't experienced before.
So, if nature will recover just fine no matter what we do, why should we be concerned? Because it's our own hide at stake. We're just one species on this planet, a species adapted to live in specific conditions. If we're responsible for climate change, all we're really doing is making life more difficult for ourselves. Modern humans, whether you believe in evolution, creationism, intelligent design, or panspermia, were designed to live on a colder planet. Today's average surface temperature is 59 degrees. How would we fare in a world where it's ten degrees warmer than it is now? The earth's most extreme climate change in prehistory, the PETM, gives us clues, possibly a worst case scenario: Coastal flooding. Jet stream reversal. Ocean acidification and anoxia (oxygen-depleted seas). Mass extinction of 35-50 percent of species. That's a bleak future, one we'd be hard pressed to live in. Even if we could survive such conditions, we'd probably not possess the same creatures comforts. Welcome to the post-Apocalypse.
So even if we're not all tree-hugging hippies, most would admit that humanity's survival and well-being are fairly important.
And if I thought that having more than two children contributed to a bleaker future, I'd cease and desist all baby-making activities immediately. But, for me, the following equation does not compute: Fewer Humans = Future Utopia.
One day in class, my students and I were analyzing an essay called "Lifeboat Ethics." In it, Garrett Hardin argues that the earth is not a vast spaceship with limited resources we must share, as some had argued, but a stretch of ocean with a single lifeboat atop. The raft represents the world's privileged nations. There are also a number of people treading water, each one a less developed country. Hardin's idea is that it is impossible, and detrimental, to welcome all into the lifeboat. It's swamped. Everyone drowns. The horror, the horror.
Neither can we invite only a select few of the world's poor in the lifeboat. Which few do we select? And where does that leave the other 90% of the poor countries? In other words, Hardin imagined a world that had already maxed out its ability to sustain the current population. And he wrote his essay in 1974, when the world had three billion fewer people.
Hardin's argument has several subtle flaws. For starters, it is profoundly nationalistic, even xenophobic. He endorses closed borders and a cessation of international aid of any type. That should naturally keep the poorer populations in check, he claims. For some reason unbeknownst to me, an American's life is more valuable than a Mexican's life because of an imaginary line some dead guys drew on a map long before any of us were born. Given that logic, it beats me why he's concerned about even other Americans.
And his lifeboat metaphor is full of holes as well. He assumes, for some reason, that the privileged nations hold all the resources quite naturally. Apparently he forgot that our gold is from Africa, our oil from the Middle East, our silk from Asia, and 15 percent of our food imported from abroad. In one way or another, many of the resources in our raft actually belong to the people in the water. Either we traded or stole them away. If countries actually kept what the land gave them, Peru, South Africa, and Russia would have the most silver, gold, and diamonds respectively. Brazil would have the most drinkable water. China the most cotton T-shirts. And the U.S. would only win in wheat and corn. (However, China and the U.S. win in every category, if we look at resources consumed.) Slimmer pickins' at the grocery store, but at least we wouldn't starve.
Furthermore, he completely ignores renewable resources. These are those that cannot be saved up, but wash over us with every wave and beat down at us from dawn till dusk. As long as the sun shines, the earth has energy. Let's focus on the cruse of oil which is everlastingly available, instead of the oil and coal that is fleeting.
Instead, Hardin suggests we have fewer kids. That's our problem, he says. Smaller families, the number of people treading water drops, and then everyone can climb aboard the lifeboat and share the bounty. If a smaller population were the answer, we would just have to look back in time, before 1974 even, to get a glimpse of this utopia. It's estimated that the global population reached one billion in 1805. Any poverty then? Yup. Millions of destitutes. 200 million on the planet in 1 AD. Poverty then? "Ye have the poor always with you." Ancient Greece. Babylon. It seems that in every age, poverty haunts our steps. All along the way, we rationalize our self-centeredness by convincing ourselves there is not enough for everyone to have a fair share. It is my belief that our ecological and socioeconomic problems are not causally linked to overpopulation, but to our own inhumanity.
Greed, ignorance, mismanagement, shortsightedness. These are the environmental killers, the misanthropic characteristics of humankind that threaten us all.
What's my solution? In part, I'm going to go raise some kids who live sustainable, simple, charitable lives.
Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
30-Year-Old Virgin
(Not to worry, nothing too personal or explicit here.)
I was married just three months shy of my thirtieth birthday. Up until that time, I was a virgin. Intentionally, I might add.
By modern standards, I’m odd. Those who would call me “old-fashioned,” however, are dead wrong. I, and others like me, am abnormal by any generation’s standards.
According to one study conducted by researcher Lawrence Finer, ninety-five percent of all Americans (male and female) have had sexual relations before marriage. And the rate is the same today as it was in the 1940s. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades,” says Finer.
So why did I go against the grain, accepting this most unusual mission to stay celibate before marriage? Religion is a likely answer. True, I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of our mantras is “complete chastity before marriage, complete fidelity afterwards.” And it turns out that with nearly all Americans having sex before marriage, we really are a peculiar people.
Sometimes we don’t know how bizarre we seem. I know a friend who sat down to eat lunch with his colleagues at law school one day when the topic turned to religion. They knew he wasn’t married, so when he iterated the church’s sexual standard, their jaws gaped.
“Wait. Are you telling me you’re a virgin?” My friend had never been called a virgin before, so, though guilty as charged, he felt equally surprised. Not missing a beat, he declared in his most help-me-I’m-so-backwards voice, “Yup, I’m a virgin!”
Methinks you're being too self-congratulatory, some might say. Hardly, just lucky. Lucky enough to be raised in a religion where I learned abstinence before I knew all the additional non-doctrinal reasons. See, the doctrine handed down to me from my church is just one facet of my decision. What makes up the rest I will attempt to explain.
It has to do with a word which men pretend they don’t know the definition of: vulnerability. Sexual intimacy lays bare more than our skins. Dr. Gray of Mars and Venus fame explains that “during lovemaking men receive a unique opportunity to feel and connect with their emotions. […] It is not that men need sex just for physiological reasons, but also to restore their emotional wholeness” (Brotherson, 93-94). While, for a guy, I’m fairly attuned to my emotions, even I have found there’s a smidgen of truth to what Gray claims. Lovemaking makes men feel love(d).
At least it should.
But if lovemaking fosters this emotional connectivity, what’s bad about premarital sex? Others are asking this very question. Says anthropologist George Murdock, “the sexual laxity current among our youth is admittedly an unlovely phenomenon from an esthetic point of view, I see no grounds, however, for regarding it as socially dangerous. It is probably here to stay, since the principal props of the older morality have disappeared with the advent of contraception and the scientific mastery of venereal infection.” Unlovely phenomenon? Most think not. But the rest of his statement seems to match popular opinion.
As reported by Time magazine, Murdoch gives five benefits of young folks having sex: “1) less guilt, hence less psychoneurosis; 2) an approved outlet for sexual vigor when it is at its height; 3) establishment of normal heterosexual habits; 4) understanding of the role of sex—‘Relief from sexual frustration is a very inadequate motive for marriage’; 5) prevention of marriage between sexual incompatibles.” With all these advantages, why would anyone go through all the hassle (and “psychoneurosis”) of waiting?
Well, my initial response is that we shouldn’t wait any longer than necessary. As soon as one finds a guy or girl who makes said person happy, stop dreaming and get married. Don’t worry about the money; nobody has enough. Yes, Mr. Darcy is fictional, and so are all those supermodels. Alas, I know it’s more complicated than that. Nearly thirty years old, I was a walking “menace to society” by Mormon standards. It’s a literal miracle every time two people find each, both fall in love at the same time, and to the same profundity. I had a list. A long one. Of qualities I was looking for in a woman. I know, I know. (Lucky for me, my wife is that list incarnate.)
But why wait at all? In fact, why not try different people on for size? Sleep around to learn preferences? Cohabitate before marriage to preempt divorce?
Because it doesn’t work. Despite what modern media tells us, sex is not all steam and passion; it’s not a fireworks show. Unless they mean it’s your heart and gut and soul bursting up there.
Imagine if one of our vital organs were external: the heart—not the cutesy valentine, the actual human heart; ten beating ounces of delicate muscle tissue. Imagine it could be given to a partner for safekeeping. This external heart is what keeps our emotions healthy and alive. Symbiotic, it thrives only in another person’s hands. (I’m not saying that all sexual relationships are like this, just that they should be.) A person wouldn’t want to give his heart to a negligent or careless partner. Someone with rough or dirty hands would be an unlikely candidate. Anybody with a history of dropping it whenever something else more interesting chances by he would also scratch off the list. As a married man, I can only imagine how terrifying it would be to have sex in a non-committal relationship or with a complete stranger, especially after reading that researchers MJ Stebleton and JH Rothenberger found that over half of American college students, male and female, felt that a partner had lied to them in order to have sex. Kind of like playing "hot potato" until somebody drops it and I’m left to wonder why love hurts so much. Surely, it’s no game.
Then again, some are no doubt thinking I’m taking sex much too seriously. Sex is fun, they say. Romantic. It’s a blast. It’s liberating. Nirvana. Ecstasy. I’ve heard this before; we all have. But if it’s like ecstasy, I fear we’re buying it over- and under-the-counter, off the streets and even stealing it. We’re a sex-saturated but still sex-starved society; look at the red herring ads, the sex scandals and it’s obvious.
And like addicts, we ignore the crushing biological realities. Medical researcher James Trussell claims almost half of pregnancies in the U.S. are unwanted, running up to $5 billion in medical costs a year. And no matter a person’s stance, the annual 42 million abortions seems wasteful on some level, economically or morally (Speidel, par. 1). CCASA reports that one in six American women have been raped or narrowly escaped it. AVERT estimates that forty percent of American teenage girls who have had sex have a sexually-transmitted infection. Three billion people worldwide suffer from a curable STD. My wife works for the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where one of their advertising campaigns asks viewers to imagine when they sleep with a partner that they also sleep with all that partner’s previous partners. A sobering thought, and true when it comes to transitive disease. These are the multitudinous side-effects to our sexual buzzes.
Okay, a young person says, so I’ll practice safe sex and make sure it’s consensual. Still, premarital sex is not without disadvantages.
What if I said that if we wait, it will be even better? I know, patience runs counter our society, our culture, our biological makeup, one could argue.
Like the kids in the above video hilariously depict, some of us want to dally with sex, trying to fudge the line between waiting and sneaking a bite or two. But if a person can really hold off until marriage, it actually will be better. Better than receiving another marshmallow even. Not only have researchers reached the oft-cited conclusion that couples who live together before marriage are more likely to get divorced, but a new study shows that couples who wait to have sex until their wedding night are happier and have more satisfying sex. That’s right. Unpracticed and awkward, they’re experiencing better sex.
According to USA Today, over two-thirds of married couples polled in 2005 cohabitated beforehand. (Again, I find myself in the minority.) Remember, the prelude to cohabitation is premarital sex. In fact, it seems to be the only criterion in some cases. I was shocked to find that sharing a bedroom sorta just happens sometimes. The article explains that many couples “end up spending more and more time together until finally all the stuff gets moved into one person’s place.” First comes sex, then come on over, then comes marriage (usually to appease one of the partners or his or her parents), then comes the baby carriage. With such poor family planning, no wonder the divorce rate is over fifty percent.
What’s especially devastating is when one partner sees cohabitation as meaningful while the other sees it as merely convenient. The USA Today article continues, “In focus groups, women perceive cohabitation as a step before marriage to that partner, whereas men are tending to see cohabitation as something to do before you make a commitment.” The other emotional repercussions are far more serious. Married? According to sociologist Linda Waite, the chance of physical abuse is five percent. Living together? It increases threefold. Cohabitating couples also tend to sleep around more, make less money, and abandon children more frequently. These all are among the most stressful and emotionally-debilitating events in domesticity. Talk about taking one’s heart in one’s hands.
Inversely, according to a 2010 study published in the Journal of Family Psychology, couples who wait to have sex until the wedding night “rated sexual quality 15 percent higher than people who had premarital sex, relationship stability as 22 percent higher, and satisfaction with their relationships 20 percent higher.” Furthermore, they also reported happier relationships overall, beating out even those who “became sexually active later in their relationships but before marriage.” I know what some must be thinking. It’s because, like my wife and I, these couples were religious, right? Actually, the study found the same results regardless of religious activity or affiliation.
Perhaps this just proves the old maxim: Good things come to those who wait, whatever their reasons. Now who'd like an extra marshmallow?
But if the statistics prove anything, many who read this have already had premarital sex. So it may sound to them like the benefits of waiting to have sex until marriage are unattainable. While some good has slipped away, I'm a firm believer that people who profoundly change their behavior gain most of those advantages back. C. S. Lewis agrees: “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on." In psychology, behavior change therapy is real. Together counselors and patients identify the destructive or risky behaviors in their life, then reorient their worldview, making small, specific, attainable goals to retrain the patient. The field of public health does the same on the community level. Either way, it's a self-motivated reengineering of the heart, mind, and guts of a person, and has definite results.
There are some common pitfalls of changing behavior. Trying to simply stop isn't effective. It needs to be replaced by positive actions. For example, "I'm not going to sleep with my exes anymore" is a hopeless resolution unless the man or woman takes up something to fill those lonely or dull hours. Also, people making goals get mired in vagueness. "I'm going to be more committed to my partner" isn't as effective as "On Thursday night this week, I'm going to ask my partner whether marriage is in our future." And in an abusive relationship, the only thing a person can do is get out. People shouldn't rely on their own ability to control the situation. If he's throwing punches or she's throwing vases, if insults are being hurled every night, the relationship is already out of control. And finally, if someone won't commit and the other person wants to, is that couple really compatible? Will the other person come around, eventually? Sometimes change can only occur in changing the context of one's life. If a woman keeps finding lowlife boyfriends in bars, she could stop going to bars and try some other way of meeting people. A person can change, once they stop trying to micro-manage their lives, making sex into a coping mechanism.
There's another pernicious myth that people cannot control themselves at all, that sex is such a basic need that it will express itself in one way or another. Today, people most commonly cite the Catholic priest molestation scandal as evidence. While I'm not sure lifelong celibacy is healthy, celibacy while deciding on a marriage partner is not psychologically self-damaging. In fact, most researchers agree that between the emotionally insecure and the emotionally healthy, the former are more likely to have premarital and extramarital sex. The can't-control-ourselves argument puts the cart before the horse. Furthermore, some argue (though the jury is still out) that pre- and extramarital sex actually lead to emotional instability, especially when the relationship falls apart or the dull pace of living sets in. As a result, some go from one bad sexual partner to another without stopping for breath.
In any case, those who have not waited until marriage can begin now with small reasonable goals. Those who are already married can pledge complete fidelity to their spouse. Both groups can succeed, if they can stand standing out.
I was married just three months shy of my thirtieth birthday. Up until that time, I was a virgin. Intentionally, I might add.
By modern standards, I’m odd. Those who would call me “old-fashioned,” however, are dead wrong. I, and others like me, am abnormal by any generation’s standards.
According to one study conducted by researcher Lawrence Finer, ninety-five percent of all Americans (male and female) have had sexual relations before marriage. And the rate is the same today as it was in the 1940s. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades,” says Finer.
So why did I go against the grain, accepting this most unusual mission to stay celibate before marriage? Religion is a likely answer. True, I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of our mantras is “complete chastity before marriage, complete fidelity afterwards.” And it turns out that with nearly all Americans having sex before marriage, we really are a peculiar people.
Sometimes we don’t know how bizarre we seem. I know a friend who sat down to eat lunch with his colleagues at law school one day when the topic turned to religion. They knew he wasn’t married, so when he iterated the church’s sexual standard, their jaws gaped.
“Wait. Are you telling me you’re a virgin?” My friend had never been called a virgin before, so, though guilty as charged, he felt equally surprised. Not missing a beat, he declared in his most help-me-I’m-so-backwards voice, “Yup, I’m a virgin!”
Methinks you're being too self-congratulatory, some might say. Hardly, just lucky. Lucky enough to be raised in a religion where I learned abstinence before I knew all the additional non-doctrinal reasons. See, the doctrine handed down to me from my church is just one facet of my decision. What makes up the rest I will attempt to explain.
It has to do with a word which men pretend they don’t know the definition of: vulnerability. Sexual intimacy lays bare more than our skins. Dr. Gray of Mars and Venus fame explains that “during lovemaking men receive a unique opportunity to feel and connect with their emotions. […] It is not that men need sex just for physiological reasons, but also to restore their emotional wholeness” (Brotherson, 93-94). While, for a guy, I’m fairly attuned to my emotions, even I have found there’s a smidgen of truth to what Gray claims. Lovemaking makes men feel love(d).
At least it should.
But if lovemaking fosters this emotional connectivity, what’s bad about premarital sex? Others are asking this very question. Says anthropologist George Murdock, “the sexual laxity current among our youth is admittedly an unlovely phenomenon from an esthetic point of view, I see no grounds, however, for regarding it as socially dangerous. It is probably here to stay, since the principal props of the older morality have disappeared with the advent of contraception and the scientific mastery of venereal infection.” Unlovely phenomenon? Most think not. But the rest of his statement seems to match popular opinion.
As reported by Time magazine, Murdoch gives five benefits of young folks having sex: “1) less guilt, hence less psychoneurosis; 2) an approved outlet for sexual vigor when it is at its height; 3) establishment of normal heterosexual habits; 4) understanding of the role of sex—‘Relief from sexual frustration is a very inadequate motive for marriage’; 5) prevention of marriage between sexual incompatibles.” With all these advantages, why would anyone go through all the hassle (and “psychoneurosis”) of waiting?
Well, my initial response is that we shouldn’t wait any longer than necessary. As soon as one finds a guy or girl who makes said person happy, stop dreaming and get married. Don’t worry about the money; nobody has enough. Yes, Mr. Darcy is fictional, and so are all those supermodels. Alas, I know it’s more complicated than that. Nearly thirty years old, I was a walking “menace to society” by Mormon standards. It’s a literal miracle every time two people find each, both fall in love at the same time, and to the same profundity. I had a list. A long one. Of qualities I was looking for in a woman. I know, I know. (Lucky for me, my wife is that list incarnate.)
But why wait at all? In fact, why not try different people on for size? Sleep around to learn preferences? Cohabitate before marriage to preempt divorce?
Because it doesn’t work. Despite what modern media tells us, sex is not all steam and passion; it’s not a fireworks show. Unless they mean it’s your heart and gut and soul bursting up there.
Imagine if one of our vital organs were external: the heart—not the cutesy valentine, the actual human heart; ten beating ounces of delicate muscle tissue. Imagine it could be given to a partner for safekeeping. This external heart is what keeps our emotions healthy and alive. Symbiotic, it thrives only in another person’s hands. (I’m not saying that all sexual relationships are like this, just that they should be.) A person wouldn’t want to give his heart to a negligent or careless partner. Someone with rough or dirty hands would be an unlikely candidate. Anybody with a history of dropping it whenever something else more interesting chances by he would also scratch off the list. As a married man, I can only imagine how terrifying it would be to have sex in a non-committal relationship or with a complete stranger, especially after reading that researchers MJ Stebleton and JH Rothenberger found that over half of American college students, male and female, felt that a partner had lied to them in order to have sex. Kind of like playing "hot potato" until somebody drops it and I’m left to wonder why love hurts so much. Surely, it’s no game.
Then again, some are no doubt thinking I’m taking sex much too seriously. Sex is fun, they say. Romantic. It’s a blast. It’s liberating. Nirvana. Ecstasy. I’ve heard this before; we all have. But if it’s like ecstasy, I fear we’re buying it over- and under-the-counter, off the streets and even stealing it. We’re a sex-saturated but still sex-starved society; look at the red herring ads, the sex scandals and it’s obvious.
And like addicts, we ignore the crushing biological realities. Medical researcher James Trussell claims almost half of pregnancies in the U.S. are unwanted, running up to $5 billion in medical costs a year. And no matter a person’s stance, the annual 42 million abortions seems wasteful on some level, economically or morally (Speidel, par. 1). CCASA reports that one in six American women have been raped or narrowly escaped it. AVERT estimates that forty percent of American teenage girls who have had sex have a sexually-transmitted infection. Three billion people worldwide suffer from a curable STD. My wife works for the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where one of their advertising campaigns asks viewers to imagine when they sleep with a partner that they also sleep with all that partner’s previous partners. A sobering thought, and true when it comes to transitive disease. These are the multitudinous side-effects to our sexual buzzes.
Okay, a young person says, so I’ll practice safe sex and make sure it’s consensual. Still, premarital sex is not without disadvantages.
What if I said that if we wait, it will be even better? I know, patience runs counter our society, our culture, our biological makeup, one could argue.
Like the kids in the above video hilariously depict, some of us want to dally with sex, trying to fudge the line between waiting and sneaking a bite or two. But if a person can really hold off until marriage, it actually will be better. Better than receiving another marshmallow even. Not only have researchers reached the oft-cited conclusion that couples who live together before marriage are more likely to get divorced, but a new study shows that couples who wait to have sex until their wedding night are happier and have more satisfying sex. That’s right. Unpracticed and awkward, they’re experiencing better sex.
According to USA Today, over two-thirds of married couples polled in 2005 cohabitated beforehand. (Again, I find myself in the minority.) Remember, the prelude to cohabitation is premarital sex. In fact, it seems to be the only criterion in some cases. I was shocked to find that sharing a bedroom sorta just happens sometimes. The article explains that many couples “end up spending more and more time together until finally all the stuff gets moved into one person’s place.” First comes sex, then come on over, then comes marriage (usually to appease one of the partners or his or her parents), then comes the baby carriage. With such poor family planning, no wonder the divorce rate is over fifty percent.
What’s especially devastating is when one partner sees cohabitation as meaningful while the other sees it as merely convenient. The USA Today article continues, “In focus groups, women perceive cohabitation as a step before marriage to that partner, whereas men are tending to see cohabitation as something to do before you make a commitment.” The other emotional repercussions are far more serious. Married? According to sociologist Linda Waite, the chance of physical abuse is five percent. Living together? It increases threefold. Cohabitating couples also tend to sleep around more, make less money, and abandon children more frequently. These all are among the most stressful and emotionally-debilitating events in domesticity. Talk about taking one’s heart in one’s hands.
Inversely, according to a 2010 study published in the Journal of Family Psychology, couples who wait to have sex until the wedding night “rated sexual quality 15 percent higher than people who had premarital sex, relationship stability as 22 percent higher, and satisfaction with their relationships 20 percent higher.” Furthermore, they also reported happier relationships overall, beating out even those who “became sexually active later in their relationships but before marriage.” I know what some must be thinking. It’s because, like my wife and I, these couples were religious, right? Actually, the study found the same results regardless of religious activity or affiliation.
Perhaps this just proves the old maxim: Good things come to those who wait, whatever their reasons. Now who'd like an extra marshmallow?
But if the statistics prove anything, many who read this have already had premarital sex. So it may sound to them like the benefits of waiting to have sex until marriage are unattainable. While some good has slipped away, I'm a firm believer that people who profoundly change their behavior gain most of those advantages back. C. S. Lewis agrees: “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on." In psychology, behavior change therapy is real. Together counselors and patients identify the destructive or risky behaviors in their life, then reorient their worldview, making small, specific, attainable goals to retrain the patient. The field of public health does the same on the community level. Either way, it's a self-motivated reengineering of the heart, mind, and guts of a person, and has definite results.
There are some common pitfalls of changing behavior. Trying to simply stop isn't effective. It needs to be replaced by positive actions. For example, "I'm not going to sleep with my exes anymore" is a hopeless resolution unless the man or woman takes up something to fill those lonely or dull hours. Also, people making goals get mired in vagueness. "I'm going to be more committed to my partner" isn't as effective as "On Thursday night this week, I'm going to ask my partner whether marriage is in our future." And in an abusive relationship, the only thing a person can do is get out. People shouldn't rely on their own ability to control the situation. If he's throwing punches or she's throwing vases, if insults are being hurled every night, the relationship is already out of control. And finally, if someone won't commit and the other person wants to, is that couple really compatible? Will the other person come around, eventually? Sometimes change can only occur in changing the context of one's life. If a woman keeps finding lowlife boyfriends in bars, she could stop going to bars and try some other way of meeting people. A person can change, once they stop trying to micro-manage their lives, making sex into a coping mechanism.
There's another pernicious myth that people cannot control themselves at all, that sex is such a basic need that it will express itself in one way or another. Today, people most commonly cite the Catholic priest molestation scandal as evidence. While I'm not sure lifelong celibacy is healthy, celibacy while deciding on a marriage partner is not psychologically self-damaging. In fact, most researchers agree that between the emotionally insecure and the emotionally healthy, the former are more likely to have premarital and extramarital sex. The can't-control-ourselves argument puts the cart before the horse. Furthermore, some argue (though the jury is still out) that pre- and extramarital sex actually lead to emotional instability, especially when the relationship falls apart or the dull pace of living sets in. As a result, some go from one bad sexual partner to another without stopping for breath.
In any case, those who have not waited until marriage can begin now with small reasonable goals. Those who are already married can pledge complete fidelity to their spouse. Both groups can succeed, if they can stand standing out.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Younger All the Time
This article on the reason why Mormons delay marriage was interesting and certainly hits a nerve with a whole lot of people. The vitriol it generated is prolific. But I think it misses the mark yet again. The whole American population is changing, not just Mormons. And it's more about economy than it is about society.
Once American companies learned that Filipinos, Cambodians, and others will do the work for a pittance versus what they have to pay Americans at least minimum wage to do, jobs were exported. So, the 65% of the population working in factories had to find work in services or management. As soon as factories closed, people needed to reinvent themselves and went to college. College enrollment is higher than ever before. Then things became competitive because all the erstwhile manufacturers went into services and management, or at least their kids did. Today even lawyers compete for work, when they used to be guaranteed a good job after law school. It's because now we have 15% of the population in factories and the rest in all those jobs that require higher education. So, young adults have to strive for even higher education before we can bring in any real income at all. Even those who intensly dislike school consider a master's degree to get an edge on the competition.
So, combine that national trend with Mormonism. In a religion that teaches self-reliance, it's no wonder men and women are trying to gain a financial foothold before committing to an eternal relationship where they need to provide more than money, but also time, talents, and everything. While women are taught to get a degree in a world where divorce is a real possibility, men are still taught that they are to win the bread even when the rest of the world has a two-year head start on them.
But, when it comes down to it, that isn't really the issue either. It's that the American economy has real effects on American culture. It is delaying maturity. Thirty is the new twenty. Because they don't have economic resources, young adults are living with their parents well into their twenties. For some, it's mostly summers and vacations, anytime colleges close. Or, more commonly, Mormon young adults use their parents as an economic crutch when times are bad. Many move home or accept money from parents just until they can find real work. (I have.) This postpones maturity. Twenty-one-year-olds don't feel like adults. Society and economic reality have taught them they aren't. It used to be people were adults and on their own as soon as they graduated high school. Now people don't even decide what they want to do with their lives until the third or fourth year of college, if then. And then it'll take at least a few more years before they're earning enough income to pay rent and food for two mouths. I don't think a person is totally psychologically matured until he or she has direction, focus, and reinforcement, despite any urging to grow up. Sometimes, that's only from a real job where a person feels he or she contributes.
Once American companies learned that Filipinos, Cambodians, and others will do the work for a pittance versus what they have to pay Americans at least minimum wage to do, jobs were exported. So, the 65% of the population working in factories had to find work in services or management. As soon as factories closed, people needed to reinvent themselves and went to college. College enrollment is higher than ever before. Then things became competitive because all the erstwhile manufacturers went into services and management, or at least their kids did. Today even lawyers compete for work, when they used to be guaranteed a good job after law school. It's because now we have 15% of the population in factories and the rest in all those jobs that require higher education. So, young adults have to strive for even higher education before we can bring in any real income at all. Even those who intensly dislike school consider a master's degree to get an edge on the competition.
So, combine that national trend with Mormonism. In a religion that teaches self-reliance, it's no wonder men and women are trying to gain a financial foothold before committing to an eternal relationship where they need to provide more than money, but also time, talents, and everything. While women are taught to get a degree in a world where divorce is a real possibility, men are still taught that they are to win the bread even when the rest of the world has a two-year head start on them.
But, when it comes down to it, that isn't really the issue either. It's that the American economy has real effects on American culture. It is delaying maturity. Thirty is the new twenty. Because they don't have economic resources, young adults are living with their parents well into their twenties. For some, it's mostly summers and vacations, anytime colleges close. Or, more commonly, Mormon young adults use their parents as an economic crutch when times are bad. Many move home or accept money from parents just until they can find real work. (I have.) This postpones maturity. Twenty-one-year-olds don't feel like adults. Society and economic reality have taught them they aren't. It used to be people were adults and on their own as soon as they graduated high school. Now people don't even decide what they want to do with their lives until the third or fourth year of college, if then. And then it'll take at least a few more years before they're earning enough income to pay rent and food for two mouths. I don't think a person is totally psychologically matured until he or she has direction, focus, and reinforcement, despite any urging to grow up. Sometimes, that's only from a real job where a person feels he or she contributes.
Friday, August 27, 2010
In My Opinion, No. 6: The Universe
My good roommate CC bought me a Borders gift card for my birthday a couple of months ago. I have a weak spot for large, fully-illustrated Smithsonian Institute coffee table books. I've already read Animal cover-to-cover and plan on buying Earth some time in the future.
This time around I redeemed my gift card for a book entitled Universe. I think this all stems from my fascination with creation. Whether it's the complexity of life, the distant galaxies, or the earth around us, if it has to do with the whats and how-tos, I'm hooked.
So, I sit in my living room with a book about a quarter of my height in size draped over my lap and have repeatedly mind-blowing experiences reading it. Not only do I attempt to grapple with the idea that there is an elastic space-time continuum that bends and attracts not only light and matter but time as well, but also that there may be ten dimensions or more:
Also, there is so much stuff in the universe that we have no way of even detecting some of it: the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that sound like something out of science fiction.
I aver that the whole of creation says something about the Creator. Take one example: God prefers symmetry. Whether one looks at the spinning galaxies, spherical stars and planets, bilateral animals and plants, single-celled organisms, and even individual atoms, there is usually a reflection in shape around one or more axes. Asymmetrical matter and beings do exist and actually thrive, but they are the exception, not the norm.
The universe is also extremely good at recycling, turning seemingly bad events into the seeds of positive change. Often cataclysmic destruction is the catalyst for the next generation of stars, the next form of life, the next stage of the universe's evolution. There's an object lesson in there, methinks.
It's also becoming increasingly apparent that what makes the universe work is not a series of laws and forces, but matter itself. Scientists used to believe that light was simply a phenomenon, trackless, massless, almost nonexistent. Now we know that photons are light embodied, zipping about the universe at a (possibly) constant, unthinkable speed. Some scientists also believe that even the force of gravity is actually made up of bodies called gravitons, and there may be other trickier types of matter called bosons and gluons that control weird but inherent forces in the universe.What does all this tell me? God uses physical "stuff" to make the universe operate. It makes me wonder of what exactly is the "light of Christ" and "spirit matter" composed. Gluons?
Archaeologists are certain that even prehistoric humans looked up and studied the heavens to understand their place on earth. I like that even with all we know now, we still do the same. Glory.
This time around I redeemed my gift card for a book entitled Universe. I think this all stems from my fascination with creation. Whether it's the complexity of life, the distant galaxies, or the earth around us, if it has to do with the whats and how-tos, I'm hooked.
So, I sit in my living room with a book about a quarter of my height in size draped over my lap and have repeatedly mind-blowing experiences reading it. Not only do I attempt to grapple with the idea that there is an elastic space-time continuum that bends and attracts not only light and matter but time as well, but also that there may be ten dimensions or more:
Also, there is so much stuff in the universe that we have no way of even detecting some of it: the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that sound like something out of science fiction.
I aver that the whole of creation says something about the Creator. Take one example: God prefers symmetry. Whether one looks at the spinning galaxies, spherical stars and planets, bilateral animals and plants, single-celled organisms, and even individual atoms, there is usually a reflection in shape around one or more axes. Asymmetrical matter and beings do exist and actually thrive, but they are the exception, not the norm.
The universe is also extremely good at recycling, turning seemingly bad events into the seeds of positive change. Often cataclysmic destruction is the catalyst for the next generation of stars, the next form of life, the next stage of the universe's evolution. There's an object lesson in there, methinks.
It's also becoming increasingly apparent that what makes the universe work is not a series of laws and forces, but matter itself. Scientists used to believe that light was simply a phenomenon, trackless, massless, almost nonexistent. Now we know that photons are light embodied, zipping about the universe at a (possibly) constant, unthinkable speed. Some scientists also believe that even the force of gravity is actually made up of bodies called gravitons, and there may be other trickier types of matter called bosons and gluons that control weird but inherent forces in the universe.What does all this tell me? God uses physical "stuff" to make the universe operate. It makes me wonder of what exactly is the "light of Christ" and "spirit matter" composed. Gluons?
Archaeologists are certain that even prehistoric humans looked up and studied the heavens to understand their place on earth. I like that even with all we know now, we still do the same. Glory.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
A Greater Follower
A couple of posts ago, I wrote about my wrestle with selflessness. Specifically, I went through a phase of asking for blessings for others and not asking for anything for myself. I learned quickly (well, quickly for me) that God doesn't want it that way.
And then my roommate lent me a collection of addresses by an old Cambridge professor named C.S. Lewis who had already written down the lesson I was trying to learn, in "The Weight of Glory," words both eloquent and insightful:
Lewis goes on to claim that instead of trying to be unselfish, we should endeavor to love better, others and ourselves. And it makes sense: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
God has promised us blessings in heaven we can't now imagine. This is no mere bribe, says Lewis. This contributes to two things--first, if we love ourselves then we will desire the best for ourselves, which is exactly what God wants to give us. Wanting good things for ourselves is a way of actually attuning our own will with God's. Second, if we love others, then we will want to help each and every one of them to achieve the blessings of exaltation too:
So, the problem is not wanting too much, it's wanting too feebly. Lewis says,
And then my roommate lent me a collection of addresses by an old Cambridge professor named C.S. Lewis who had already written down the lesson I was trying to learn, in "The Weight of Glory," words both eloquent and insightful:
If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love.
Lewis goes on to claim that instead of trying to be unselfish, we should endeavor to love better, others and ourselves. And it makes sense: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
God has promised us blessings in heaven we can't now imagine. This is no mere bribe, says Lewis. This contributes to two things--first, if we love ourselves then we will desire the best for ourselves, which is exactly what God wants to give us. Wanting good things for ourselves is a way of actually attuning our own will with God's. Second, if we love others, then we will want to help each and every one of them to achieve the blessings of exaltation too:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. [...] There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
So, the problem is not wanting too much, it's wanting too feebly. Lewis says,
we are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us [...]. We are far too easily pleased.
Monday, July 5, 2010
In My Opinion, No. 5: Masculinity
“You must treasure and protect the masculine part of your nature.” ~President Boyd Packer
The above quote comes from a priesthood session address in the April 2009 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which I am a member. Since hearing that talk I’ve thought again and again, how exactly do we define this masculinity President Packer wants us to treasure and protect? In a society where we have terms like “metrosexual” and “hypermasculine” and everything in between, how should I, personally, put this counsel into practice in my own life? Just how much does righteous masculinity differ from the world’s definition?
We often hear, and rightly so, about the unrealistic expectations placed on women. With the evils of pornography, the plague of eating disorders, the glass ceiling of the corporate world, cruel and sexist jokes, and the stereotypes and limitations society is responsible for or seeks to promote, women all over the world are often forced to fight for the rights of respect, appreciation, and equality.
But in my experience, society also has unrealistic and damaging roles for men to play too. These harmful expectations are more subtle. I believe even many Latter-day Saint men have false beliefs about what it means to be a man.
So, what manner of men ought we to be?
The answer is, even as Christ is.
If Christ is the perfect man, then he must also possess the perfect masculinity. So what kind of a man was He?
1. Jesus was emotional, even in front of other people. Even more amazingly, an instance of his crying preceded a miracle wherein He immediately alleviated the cause of His own pain. When His friend Lazarus died, the scripture reads that Jesus wept. Why did He cry, seeing as how He had power to raise His friend from the dead? The Jews ascribed it to an outpouring of love for His deceased friend. I think they were right. I also believe that this story teaches that crying is natural and healthy for men and women alike. I wonder at our society that tries to tell men that crying is a sign of weakness or effeminacy. If the most powerful being on earth and greatest man to ever walk it weeps, how can it indicate weakness? Additionally, the scriptures tell us that there are those who are “past feeling,” including the Nephites at the height of their debauchery and the brink of their extinction. Certainly then, emotions, even stereotypically non-masculine ones, are good.
2. Jesus loved children and deliberately took time to listen and talk with them. One might say, How very domestic. But it’s true. The New Testament records that He suffered the little children to come to Him and blessed them. The Book of Mormon has an even more detailed, and touching account of Jesus blessing the American children. The world teaches that it is women who interact with children, but Christ took time out for kids. How very different today when men abandon their own children, or simply neglect to teach and bless their lives.
3. Jesus, who could do all things, felt weak sometimes, probably just so He could experience what it was like to be a man, with all the weaknesses appertaining. He suffered fatigue, thirst, hunger, disappointment, betrayal, and the agonies of sin and pain, literally everything. Additionally, it doesn’t seem like He tried to hide it. In fact, some of the most wonderful things about Jesus were those very expressions of weakness. Who doesn’t feel deeply for Him when He asks the Father to remove from Him the crushing responsibility of taking the sins of the world? The Doctrine and Covenants records that “He knows the weakness of man and how to succor them who are tempted.” Too often men feel like society expects them to be completely in control, supremely confident, and almost superhuman. Jesus was a man who wasn’t afraid to show vulnerability. Isaiah described the Messiah-to-come as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Even a perfect man can ask for help, can show weakness, can need and call on the powers of heavens and friends to assist him.
4. Jesus showed men how to treat women. He forgave them their sins, He comforted them in their distress, He looked after them, He taught them. At no time do I get the sense that He coddled or spoke down to women. And what an interesting role-reversal occurs when Jesus reproved Martha for fretting in the kitchen and praised Mary for educating herself! Society today teaches that men are sex machines and generally treat women like objects. Christ was the exact opposite. I find it telling that the last disciple Jesus spoke to before dying on the cross was His mother and the first person Jesus visited after resurrection was also a woman. He reproved and instructed equally, and out of love.
In all honesty, this blog post is a little self-serving. There are many ways that I fall comfortably into the world’s definition of masculinity, but with some notable exceptions. I have no great love of any organized sport (except maybe hockey, the perfect marriage of grace and violence). I occasionally enjoy a “chick flick." I am on a vegetarian diet. I cry when I feel like it. I worked as a nanny. I like 19th-century literature. And sometimes I feel vulnerable. I am not what the world would call a “manly man.” But, in weighing the above comparison, I feel that the world’s definition has little value for me.
I don’t know exactly what President Packer’s definition of masculinity is, but I feel comfortable trying to emulate the type that Christ exemplified.
The above quote comes from a priesthood session address in the April 2009 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which I am a member. Since hearing that talk I’ve thought again and again, how exactly do we define this masculinity President Packer wants us to treasure and protect? In a society where we have terms like “metrosexual” and “hypermasculine” and everything in between, how should I, personally, put this counsel into practice in my own life? Just how much does righteous masculinity differ from the world’s definition?
We often hear, and rightly so, about the unrealistic expectations placed on women. With the evils of pornography, the plague of eating disorders, the glass ceiling of the corporate world, cruel and sexist jokes, and the stereotypes and limitations society is responsible for or seeks to promote, women all over the world are often forced to fight for the rights of respect, appreciation, and equality.
But in my experience, society also has unrealistic and damaging roles for men to play too. These harmful expectations are more subtle. I believe even many Latter-day Saint men have false beliefs about what it means to be a man.
So, what manner of men ought we to be?
The answer is, even as Christ is.
If Christ is the perfect man, then he must also possess the perfect masculinity. So what kind of a man was He?
1. Jesus was emotional, even in front of other people. Even more amazingly, an instance of his crying preceded a miracle wherein He immediately alleviated the cause of His own pain. When His friend Lazarus died, the scripture reads that Jesus wept. Why did He cry, seeing as how He had power to raise His friend from the dead? The Jews ascribed it to an outpouring of love for His deceased friend. I think they were right. I also believe that this story teaches that crying is natural and healthy for men and women alike. I wonder at our society that tries to tell men that crying is a sign of weakness or effeminacy. If the most powerful being on earth and greatest man to ever walk it weeps, how can it indicate weakness? Additionally, the scriptures tell us that there are those who are “past feeling,” including the Nephites at the height of their debauchery and the brink of their extinction. Certainly then, emotions, even stereotypically non-masculine ones, are good.
2. Jesus loved children and deliberately took time to listen and talk with them. One might say, How very domestic. But it’s true. The New Testament records that He suffered the little children to come to Him and blessed them. The Book of Mormon has an even more detailed, and touching account of Jesus blessing the American children. The world teaches that it is women who interact with children, but Christ took time out for kids. How very different today when men abandon their own children, or simply neglect to teach and bless their lives.
3. Jesus, who could do all things, felt weak sometimes, probably just so He could experience what it was like to be a man, with all the weaknesses appertaining. He suffered fatigue, thirst, hunger, disappointment, betrayal, and the agonies of sin and pain, literally everything. Additionally, it doesn’t seem like He tried to hide it. In fact, some of the most wonderful things about Jesus were those very expressions of weakness. Who doesn’t feel deeply for Him when He asks the Father to remove from Him the crushing responsibility of taking the sins of the world? The Doctrine and Covenants records that “He knows the weakness of man and how to succor them who are tempted.” Too often men feel like society expects them to be completely in control, supremely confident, and almost superhuman. Jesus was a man who wasn’t afraid to show vulnerability. Isaiah described the Messiah-to-come as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Even a perfect man can ask for help, can show weakness, can need and call on the powers of heavens and friends to assist him.
4. Jesus showed men how to treat women. He forgave them their sins, He comforted them in their distress, He looked after them, He taught them. At no time do I get the sense that He coddled or spoke down to women. And what an interesting role-reversal occurs when Jesus reproved Martha for fretting in the kitchen and praised Mary for educating herself! Society today teaches that men are sex machines and generally treat women like objects. Christ was the exact opposite. I find it telling that the last disciple Jesus spoke to before dying on the cross was His mother and the first person Jesus visited after resurrection was also a woman. He reproved and instructed equally, and out of love.
In all honesty, this blog post is a little self-serving. There are many ways that I fall comfortably into the world’s definition of masculinity, but with some notable exceptions. I have no great love of any organized sport (except maybe hockey, the perfect marriage of grace and violence). I occasionally enjoy a “chick flick." I am on a vegetarian diet. I cry when I feel like it. I worked as a nanny. I like 19th-century literature. And sometimes I feel vulnerable. I am not what the world would call a “manly man.” But, in weighing the above comparison, I feel that the world’s definition has little value for me.
I don’t know exactly what President Packer’s definition of masculinity is, but I feel comfortable trying to emulate the type that Christ exemplified.
I Sought for the Blessings
For some time now I have been trying to be more selfless than my norm. In this effort, one of the things I changed was instead of asking God for personal blessings, I began to only ask for blessings for others.
Still, I suppose I continued to ask for things for myself, but in a deliberately round-about way that would emphasize my role as friend, son, and priesthood holder instead of a blessings sponge. For example, instead of praying for a good day, I would pray for a good day so that I might be cheerful with others and brighten their day as well. Praying this way made me realize how much I'd gotten into the habit of petitioning for blessings I wanted, rather than seeing how I might positively influence others' lives. This new attitude felt like a very healthy way to live.
Imagine my surprise then in a very recent communique with Heavenly Father that He expressed to me how much He wanted me to be happy. I guess I'd missed out on some valuable insight somewhere. Acting on that valuable bit of information, I gathered the guts to try to find a bit of happiness that same day. (No regrets, by the way.)
But as I go on, my question is this: How do we go about both being selfless, and also seeking happiness in our own lives as well? Where's the balance, or is there a synergy between the two I haven't put my finger on yet? Some things seem self-serving on the face of them, but still absolutely the right thing to do or strive for.
Still, I suppose I continued to ask for things for myself, but in a deliberately round-about way that would emphasize my role as friend, son, and priesthood holder instead of a blessings sponge. For example, instead of praying for a good day, I would pray for a good day so that I might be cheerful with others and brighten their day as well. Praying this way made me realize how much I'd gotten into the habit of petitioning for blessings I wanted, rather than seeing how I might positively influence others' lives. This new attitude felt like a very healthy way to live.
Imagine my surprise then in a very recent communique with Heavenly Father that He expressed to me how much He wanted me to be happy. I guess I'd missed out on some valuable insight somewhere. Acting on that valuable bit of information, I gathered the guts to try to find a bit of happiness that same day. (No regrets, by the way.)
But as I go on, my question is this: How do we go about both being selfless, and also seeking happiness in our own lives as well? Where's the balance, or is there a synergy between the two I haven't put my finger on yet? Some things seem self-serving on the face of them, but still absolutely the right thing to do or strive for.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Avatar Review
A friend's recent blog post got me thinking about a recent decision--
Avatar has made more money than any other film ever. But that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is a fan. Initially, I had very mixed feelings about it. In fact, I had to wait a full 36 hours after seeing the movie before I could tell whether I liked Avatar or not.
I finally decided that I did. I know it's endlessly formulaic. Fern Gully, Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, The Last Samurai. This latest incarnation is doing the same dance over again that we've seen countless times.
And that's why I find it so fascinating. No matter how much we deny it today we still believe that there are superior and inferior nations ("developed" and "developing" ring a bell?). And when you realize that nation is just the modern and repackaged concept of culture, that's not a comforting thought.
I think we're trying to deal with an unsettling theme we haven't been able to collectively process yet. I've often wondered what I would be like if I stepped into the life and circumstances of a Darfur native, a North Korean, an Israeli or Palestinian. Perhaps we could all use an avatar. Walk in another person's "shoes" for a while.
Avatar has made more money than any other film ever. But that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is a fan. Initially, I had very mixed feelings about it. In fact, I had to wait a full 36 hours after seeing the movie before I could tell whether I liked Avatar or not.
I finally decided that I did. I know it's endlessly formulaic. Fern Gully, Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas, The Last Samurai. This latest incarnation is doing the same dance over again that we've seen countless times.
And that's why I find it so fascinating. No matter how much we deny it today we still believe that there are superior and inferior nations ("developed" and "developing" ring a bell?). And when you realize that nation is just the modern and repackaged concept of culture, that's not a comforting thought.
I think we're trying to deal with an unsettling theme we haven't been able to collectively process yet. I've often wondered what I would be like if I stepped into the life and circumstances of a Darfur native, a North Korean, an Israeli or Palestinian. Perhaps we could all use an avatar. Walk in another person's "shoes" for a while.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Seasonal Affective Disorder
I am so glad the days are getting longer. I think I have had a touch of what some might call Seasonal Affective Disorder this winter. All those rainy days, darkness, and absolutely no snow in the District. So, I've been turning on every light in my house at dusk, basking in the sunshine when I have it and eating healthy. But, phew, so happy the light is coming back!
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