But Just Whose Family Values?
I was inspired to write about
my own Philosophy upon hearing about the best seller "Men are from
Mars, Women are from Venus" by John Gray. While it is all well and good
to try to salvage relationships that are foundering by promoting better
communications between the warring parties, I am motivated by the
ancient adage, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." The
above cited work is the "pound of cure," which is applicable only to
those persons who are willing to subject themselves to a treatment
regimen long after their nerves have been worn to a frazzle by their
"significant other." This book is intended to promote development of
the "ounce of prevention" which would not only eliminate the need for
"taking the cure," but would hopefully also prevent a great deal of
unhappiness among those who would never submit themselves for treatment
in the first place.
The basic thesis of this work
is that men and women do not have difficulty with their interpersonal
communications because they are from different planets, but those
problems arise because our culture trains its children from the
beginning of their lives on this planet that persons of the opposite
sex are "enemies." Think about that a bit. We spend ten to twenty years
training boys and girls that they are not supposed to like each other
very much, and then we expect them to get married and get along merely
because their hormones tell them that they should "desire" someone of
the opposite sex. Is it any wonder that homosexuality is on the rise in
our population? While there is still some argument over whether or not
there might be a biological (gene based) predisposition towards
homosexuality,1
most experts believe that homosexual behavior is learned, and
personally, I mostly agree. How it is learned, in an environment which
supposedly vigorously suppresses, and some say even persecutes, any
homosexual tendencies, is a matter into which science has not yet
inquired, although it surely should. However, I do not intend the lack
of a scientific basis for my opinions to be a barrier to my at least
advancing a thesis on this subject. While I personally have a great
deal of empathy and tolerance for those who view themselves as
homosexual or bisexual, it cannot be denied that homosexual
relationships are anti-survival at the racial level because they tend
to not produce offspring, and children are a fundamental requirement
for racial survival and advancement. Furthermore, for whatever reason,
homosexuals tend to engage in greater quantities of undesirable
pairings (shorter term pairings, lesser degrees of commitment to the
pairing, leading to a greater likelihood of a dissolution of the
pairing, and more "cheating" even while supposedly paired to another),
a social phenomena which has contributed mightily to the spread of the
AIDS virus, if not other sexually transmitted diseases. While
criminalizing homosexual conduct is clearly not the answer, especially
since our civilization has (albeit inadvertently) trained these
individuals to be homosexuals, it is clearly proper to consider all
homosexuals to be an unfortunate abnormality in our society. With all
of this in mind, I believe that an increasing quantity of homosexuals
in our society is a clear symptom of sickness in our child-rearing
procedures because it must be those procedures which train our children
to have homosexual tendencies. It seems almost intuitively obvious to
me that, if you train children from birth that they should be best
friends with a person of the same sex, and only tolerate those of the
opposite sex, you should expect opposite sex relationships to be
fragile and same sex relationships to exert an undeniable pull. Thus,
it is the mixed messages we send our children, causing them to both
desire and hate both same and opposite sex partners, that at least
contributes to the increased spread of homosexuality.
There are some other social
ills, against which the pundits rail from time to time, which are also
seemingly caused by similar defects in our child-rearing procedures.
These ills include: a tendency towards battered spouses, particularly
battered women;2
a high divorce rate; the failure of many parents to even marry in the
first place; the formation of a gang culture which permeates the inner
city as an essentially lawless sub-culture; plus any number of other
social ills which are ancillary to any of those mentioned, such as the
impoverishment of women and children due to the lack of a two adult
household for an increasing proportion of the children in our society.
The Christian "Right" has
loudly proposed that we should return to traditional "family values" as
the cure-all for each of the above ills. Insidiously, it is those very
right-wing Christian values which lie at the base of the problem.
Accordingly, even if we adopted these values, and promoted them
constantly and consistently in our culture, we would still get
increasing quantities of those very ills which those values are
supposed to combat. The reasons for this are complex, and really derive
from the overall collapse of Western Culture, as described by Oswald
Spengler. He foresaw a movement such as the Christian Right as being a
necessary component of the dissolution of Western Civilization, NOT
as its cure. For the prescription proposed by the Christian "Right" to
actually work, we would have to roll the clock back at least a couple
of centuries and convince women that, once again, they are the property
of their men and thus they should do exactly what their men tell them
to do.3
It is again obvious that this "solution" fails because the condition
precedent, that women would relinquish the fruits of centuries of
progress in rights for women, will be unacceptable to most modern woman
who have been raised with full knowledge of that progress and its
implications. You might just as easily convince Blacks to willingly
return to their status as slave agricultural workers! In any case, the
freedom which we now accord to women is a product of forces unleashed
by the so-called Industrial Revolution, and there is no putting that
genie back in its bottle.
So, if a return to traditional
Christian values is not only not feasible, but would actually
contribute to a worsening of the problem, then what is the solution?
Obviously, that is the subject of this book. For the long answer, you
have to read it.
The short answer is that we
are finally intelligent enough to design a new social order which
promotes those values which we all claim to hold dear, but which the
traditional training of our children actually results in our children
becoming the antithesis of what we desire. For example, our culture
claims to hold in high esteem those women who are virgins on their
wedding night. But our culture also trains its men to become sexually
active as early as possible and get as much as possible from as many
different women as possible if they want to be held in high esteem by
their peers. These two goals cannot be met at the same time. They are
all but totally incompatible.4
The latest statistics I have read state that something like eighty-five
percent of eighteen year olds have had sex at least once. It is highly
doubtful that more than a small fraction of these teenagers were
married to their partner at the time of the sex acts in question. The
Christian "Right" has started a virginity movement as its answer to
this dichotomy. It gets both boys and girls to each pledge to be
virgins on their wedding nights. This is at least a comprehensible
solution. However, it is, in essence, asking small children to assume
the burdens of a religious order at an age when their hormones are
screaming the opposite message at the maximum level of intensity.
Without more fundamental changes in our underlying social fabric, it is
unworkable as a solution for more than the few thousand committed
followers who have basically brainwashed themselves into adopting a
totally artificial state of being which denies their very humanity for
more years than any prior generation would ever have been expected to
do.5
I expect that many will reject
the idea there is something fundamentally "wrong" with the way our
children are raised. However, it is clear that, to the extent that
there is any real "design" in the child-rearing process, that design is
centuries old. While the content of our children's education may have
changed significantly, the basic message has not. That message is a
product of the underlying culture of centuries ago, when the needs of
society were so fundamentally different than our needs today that it is
no real surprise to discover that the message no longer "works" to
produce "good citizens" of our modern day global village. And it truly
is a global village. Recent research has concluded that the same social
trends which the Christian "Right" denounces in this country are, in
fact, occurring in many other nations around the world, almost without
regard to the name of the country or the nature of the predominant
religion of its people.
It is to meet that expected
rejection, identified above, that I have included so much underlying
material. For those readers who know the foundations of our cultural
heritage, you can restrict your study of the first part of this book to
a high speed skimming of the introductory Sections. It is fundamental
that if you do not understand the disease, you cannot understand the
cure. So, before I derive the solution to our sick society, I should
first describe not only the ills that cause the sickness, but the
reasons those ills exist. In fact, each of the concepts which I now
identify as ripe for the dustbin of history was at one time a necessary
part of the essential fabric of our society. However, we have changed a
number of the basic rules without altering their corollaries. These are
the flaws I hope to explain in the first part, and solve in the second
part.
I also full well expect to be
attacked by the Christian "Right" and denounced as a godless heathen,
or some such. And in their view, that is probably what I am. (But
remember, they are being led by those who preach the path of the
Anti-Christ!) But that same Christian "Right" feeds on ignorance of the
truth, as do all religious movements, and thus it is the bright white
light of truth which shall be my guardian. Truth proclaims that much
depravity6 which we "should" abhor today is actually caused, at base, by the very ideals which the Christian "Right" so loudly promotes.
I believe that a system of
philosophy (including religious, social, and economic beliefs) which
makes sense to the common man will attract those people who truly
desire change. We all know that something is fundamentally wrong with
things as they are. Our social fabric is clearly disintegrating as we
watch. However, people will not willingly submit themselves to the
tyrannical answers of the past. Either some group will impose a change
by force of arms, or else we will have a peaceful revolution of values
which will result in a return of "domestic tranquillity." Obviously, it
is the latter which I hope to encourage with this book!
I do not claim to have the total answer. But, as every journey begins with the first step,7
so too does every solution begin with the first proposal. I hope that
you will take to heart my constructive criticism herein, and become a
part of the solution, as opposed to being a part of the problem. Only
if a mass of readers begins to agitate for changes like what I propose
herein will we, as the inheritors of Western Civilization, have some
hope to salvage our children's and grandchildren's future from the
problems which our own ancestors have imposed on them.
RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA; JUNE 5, 1995.
1 Some research has been performed which seemingly indicates that homosexuals tend to have a different brain chemistry than do heterosexuals and that homosexuality can be induced in fruit flies with a certain gene. This research has not yet been verified. Even if it is verified, that begs the question of just how that difference in brain chemistry arises and just what the particular gene in question really controls. Since learning clearly can cause significant changes in the brains of the students, it would not be beyond possibility that the differences in chemistry would be a result of the learned homosexual behaviors, as opposed to a cause of them. The fruit flies seemingly concur.
2 The majority of battered women are victims only, not significantly contributing to the level of violence in their relationships; a lesser number are coequal batterers, hitting their partners as part and parcel of any argument; and a very small quantity batter their otherwise passive husbands. Regardless of which category a given relationship falls into, I assert that all participants are mentally ill, to some degree, for them to foster, or even tolerate, that kind of relationship violence, which must in turn be based on a deep seated hatred of one's partner. This conclusion is bolstered by the known fact that untreated battered women are quite likely to find themselves in a second violent relationship after removing themselves from a prior violent relationship. Finally, this bolsters another conclusion that these women are somehow trained to seek violent and/or sick relationships.
3 Some fundamentalist sects have adopted this principle, requiring women to be obedient to their husbands. Thus, in any disagreement between spouses, the woman is expected to be subservient to the wishes of the man.
4 About the only possible solution would be public brothels. However, earlier this century, they were done away with in most parts of the United States. The only exception is in certain rural counties in Nevada.
5 Let us not forget that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet were all of fourteen years old, and that in his time, kids were not as healthy, and thus did not mature physically at anything near as early an age as kids do now. The Jewish tradition of the Bar Mitzvah at age thirteen really was the beginning of actual manhood. On the one hand, we now ask our kids to wait until after college graduation before assuming their role as adults, about a decade later than what was "normal" only a century or two ago. On the other hand, modern public health has caused kids to mature physically much earlier than they used to. As the classic comedy routine goes: "If Booth Tarkington were to write his novel, Seventeen, today, he would have to call it Twelve." The net result is that, while classically kids matured physically at about the same time as they were recognized as being adults, modern kids mature physically as much as a decade and a half before we are ready for them to fully experience adulthood. This is the key factor which our society only slightly recognizes, and totally fails to address.
6 Throughout this book, I will use the word "depravity" as a catch-all for whatever moral failure is at issue at any given point in time. It can stand equally well for mindless criminal violence, gang culture, loveless/mindless sex, or any horrific mutilation of the human condition. Whenever you read this word, associate it with your own favorite moral failure.
7 "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." From The Way of Lao-tzu, translated by Wing-tsit Chan, as cited in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations., 15th Ed., Page 65, Item 1.