Dr. Forbush Thinks

I wasn’t surprised by the reaction to the uproar over “Grand Theft Auto.” Here is a game where the object is to steal cars and kill people. Obviously these are values that we shouldn’t be teaching our children, or even adults for that matter. But, with the aid of a download from the Internet the once extremely violent game now becomes an extremely violent game with cartoon sex in it. Suddenly the rating of the game must be raised one level higher, making it virtually unsellable.

What the hell is going on here? American values somehow allow quite disgusting violence that would result in people going to jail if done in real life. However, two people having sex, which is currently legal in at least 48 states raises the level of vulgarity to a level that is unacceptable for decent people. Isn’t this at bit irrational?

Well, as I said I wasn’t surprised by this because I have witnessed this bizarre behaviour in real life as well.

I am on the board of directors for an organization that invites artists to present their work. (I shouldn’t go into to much detail here, even though some of my fellow board members do read this blog I shouldn’t make it to obvious for those involved.) In the process of inviting an artist to perform we generally review some of the previous work of the artist to get an idea of what they could present. Of course we also encourage them to present new work that we haven’t seen as well.

About one week before the exhibition the artist told us that there would be some violence and nudity in his presentation. A couple of folks get upset about the nudity, but never mentioned any opposition to the violence. They argued that the nudity would create an unwanted reputation on our organization. But somehow the violent theme which pertained to Marxist rebels overthrowing a government in the 1960s didn’t really phase the group very much.

My attitude was to warn people before they bought tickets and let it go. People can make decisions based on information, but censoring the artist goes against my belief in freedom of expression.

Well, it turned out that these objectors just didn’t show up for the event, and they missed a very good and tastefully done presentation. But, that is their loss.

So, in order to understand this bizarre behaviour in America we need to understand that the root of this issue is based in Religion. The problem is found in the writings of St. Paul and his stoic ideas that found there way into Christianity. This same tragic infusion from St. Paul is also responsible for the pro-punishment philosophy of conservatives that I wrote about yesterday.

The idea stems from the idea that punishment is good. Now, we should realize from the start that when something is good it doesn’t mean that more of the same is always better. Candy may be good, but eating it for every meal is bound to be a problem. Similarly cutting down on salt may be good for blood pressure, but cutting it out of your diet completely could make you lethargic. Cutting fat from a obese person’s diet could be healthy for them, but cutting fat from a developing child’s diet could prevent their brain from developing properly. Hopefully I have given enough examples to show that moderation in most things leads to success, while extreme reactions often lead to tragedy.

So, St. Paul writes his stoic ideas into the Bible he tells us “But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.” 1 Tim 5:6 The reader gets the idea that pleasure must not be good. Pain on the other hand is viewed as good when Paul tells us, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you,” Galatians 4:19. With enough of this imagery readers are persuaded that pain is good and pleasure is bad.

This is not a new thing, the Franciscans, an order of priests who followed the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi, often used a metal tool to beat their backs until they bled. They became addicted to pain for pain’s sake. The stoic idea however is that hard work is not easy and working hard will pay off in the end even if you suffer along the way. St. Paul was trying to make this point, but his readers tend to take the point to extreme ends. Similarly, the stoic idea is to avoid being lazy, because taking time off from work often results in not having your basic needs later in the year. If you run out of firewood at the end of February and March is still cold you may get sick and die. But, if you push the pain idea to it’s illogical conclusion you should praise God for having the opportunity to suffer through the Cold March without firewood. Or, you could just forget about the wood for the entire winter and suffer right on through.

So, when conservatives get this warped idea of pain and pleasure in their minds they praise the pain and they punish the pleasure. So, once again the illogical conclusion is that violence is good because it is needed to inflect the needed pain on those who will be thankful for it. However, the sex is the forbidden pleasure that no one should know about. Knowing about this pleasure will obviously result in the people opting out of the pain idea in favor of the pleasure. And, maybe you can prevent children from this by using threat of punishment it is much more difficult to prevent adults from knowing about this. So, instead the adults must be shamed into guilt of even thinking about these things.

The strength of these two human drives is derived from the need for these two drives. The sex drive is so powerful because it is the drive that ensures the continuation of the human race. Pain is right up there as well, because pain prevents us from doing stupid things like burning our hands, dropping rocks on our feet and working to hard for to long.

After all this I hope that you will realize that American culture has a warped idea of both sex and violence. Violence is praised and tolerated while sex is shunned. However, most violent acts are illegal at some level and sex between consenting adults is legal in most states.





politics and religion