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Party On, Puritans!

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in Family, Politics

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H L Mencken once famously defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.”

I thought of the Mencken quote because of our propensity to peg our happiness to the political situation. Our cultural Puritanism has two competing and conflicting schools of thought, both attached to conflicting and competing schools of moral progress.

Look at values around artificial contraception as just one example. One idea of moral progress can include a belief in artificial birth control and limitation of family size. Attached to this tenet, is the belief that women have the freedom to decide individually when, if at all, to become mothers. Another school of moral progress can reject artificial birth control with no limit on family size. Emphasis is on “family”, not family size. That no moral progress is attainable if the most basic social structure, the family, is derided or devalued. Concomitant with this value is the value that families consist of two parents, male and female, mother and father.

One Puritan school fears that there are people out there making babies with no thought to the strained resources of our fragile and limited planet. The other school fears that people are out there happily fornicating and copulating, with no thought to any principle besides hedonistic pleasure-seeking.

Our Puritanism has us wed to the goal of progressing toward, if not outright establishing, a political Utopia, with “Liberty and Justice for all”, but with competing ideas of what Liberty and Justice may be. We stumble along our road of Progress, never really happy unless we control the toll gates.

This is what a free society looks like. It carries a tension between competing ideas, both committed to a notion of The Common Good.

More about Perversion

23 Friday May 2014

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Perversion- 1) “The alteration of something from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended.”-
2) “Sexual behavior or desire that is considered abnormal or unacceptable.” Both from Oxforddictionaries.com
Homosexuals used to be considered the archtypical perverts, distorting sexual desire for the opposite sex into desire for persons of the same sex. Until very recently, gays and lesbians lived in a shadow world. Few people admitted to knowing a homosexual, much less admitting to being one. That has all changed in the past few decades. Now, it seems “coming out” has become a staple of popular culture. Admitting to being homosexual, while a profound statement to the person making the admission, is hardly newsworthy any more. “You’re gay? Take a number and wait on line.” is rapidly becoming the response.
Other sexual “perversions” have followed this track. Granted, there are some very serious sexual deviations that are decidedly unacceptable, pedophilia to name one. Admitting to a sadomasochistic desire is now no longer a big deal. This begs the question, how can your sexual proclivity be considered abnormal if nearly everybody accepts it? And, if being kinky or different is what you’re up to, are you willing to establish boundaries or limits to that kink? What if your thrill is in the flirtation with depravity itself? If the act is no longer held to be depraved, by you or anyone else, will it continue to thrill?
Sex as the procreative act is just one of several purposes. To have procreative sex gain more significance and value over sex as recreation and pleasure is rapidly becoming a perversion in its own right. Having more than two or three chldren will definitely raise a few eyebrows. “They have six children?! Don’t they know about birth control? Don’t they know the planet can’t support so many children?” You know the remarks. I dare say many of us believe them.
I’m not saying run out and become straight, give up kink, or have sex only when you want a baby. I am saying that broadening our thinking has, in a perverse way, narrowed our thinking.