Letters to the Editor
LeCastor
Published Letters: 1916 Editor's Choice: 86
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Our Social Problems Are Not New
[Read the article: Beyoncé Knowles, freedom fighter]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Regarding causality, yes, I DO see the connection between behavior and social ills. The problems of STDs, unwanted pregnancies, date rape, alcohol and drug abuse, etc., do not just pop up out of nowhere."
I completely agree that the problems don't pop out of nowhere. But it would be wrong to say that these problems are new, and as a result of our freedoms. STDs have existed for hundreds of years, and in the western world, their heyday was in Victorian England. The repressive culture of the time pushed many, men as consumers and women as prostitutes, into a underground brothel culture. if anything, our modern access to contraceptives and medicines has reduced STD proliferation, especially those that used to be deadly and now are curable (chlamydia, gonorreah, and syphilis). AIDS is a comletely different story, I have to add. Unwanted pregnances i think were the predominant kind of pregnancy before contraceptives. Date rape, or rape in general has also existed for a long time, as well as alcohol and drug abuse (opium dens, anyone?). Many 19th-century thinkers were addicted to all sorts of drugs like cocaine and opiates. Spirits of ladlum were very popular among the genteel ladies of the 19th century as well.
"The libertine ethos (‘I want my freedom to do whatever I want!”) undoubtedly creates the propensity for these social ills to manifest themselves. These ills result from humans grasping for happiness at things that will ultimately disappoint and cause suffering."
Again, see above. These "ills" have existed for a very long time, and do not result from newly found sexual freedom.
"Because many people (especially youth) don’t have an internal sense of spiritual purpose or feel lonely and unloved, they look for meaning and love in other areas: sex, intoxicants (which include drugs and alcohol as well as media toxins), consumerism, and other things. People think having the freedom to do whatever you want is the ideal, but they forget that with freedom come responsibility and consequences. Freedom without wisdom is anarchy. Even here in the free U.S.A, we still have laws governing our behavior, and you will go to jail if you break them."
Yes, we have laws, but that is a different and much more clearcut standards of behavior than fleeting concepts like goodness, modesty, etc. Even your concept of wisdom -- wisdom is very subjective, unlike legality.
"As for the values of dignity, humility, and temperance being equal to your wanting to “shake your booty”, are you really serious?? That form of extreme moral relativism leads nowhere. Again, let’s exercise some wisdom about these things. And wisdom allows us to see that dignity can take many forms. It doesn’t mean a rigid code of dress or manners, but an attitude that honors one's self-worth in body, mind, and spirit."
It's very simplistic, but wisdom is very personal and subjective. whatever you want to call, most people define it in different ways. Also, i think it's not only possible, but advisable, to have slef-worth in body, mind and spirit, and still be able to dress how you want and do what you want with your body, including having more than one sexual partner, experiment with intoxicants, and indulge in many other worldly pleasures.
"Materialistic culture posits no value hierarchy, besides the ideals of capitalism and freedom. That sort of myopia directly leads to the social problems we see today."
See above. I think you're completely mistaken on what causes our "social problems." In fact, i think it's very shortsighted to say that our current social problems are new problems caused by new developments.
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Robert Franklin
[Read the article: Shocker: Boys not heartless beasts!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Do you ever come up with anything original?
in any case, yes some feminists don't like men. But also, some very conservative women who are not feminists at all are misandrist, and even some men. The whole attitude that the woman is in charge of the home because men are generally overgrown babies who wouldn't be able to lead any sort of normal life without the watchful and constant vigilance of women is an incredibly misandrist and misogynist idea, yet it is much older than feminism, and completely at odds with it. And it's the non-feminist kind of misandry that prevails on TV, not what you allegde. All those commercials about how men don't know how to cook, clean or take care of children -- that's not feminism at all. All those sitcoms with the shrewish wiser wife whose husband always gets into trouble -- Home Improvement, The Simpsons, etc., that's not feminism either. You have conservative socially ingrained gender roles to blame for that, not Andrea Dworkin.
Your mistake is that you think all misandrist attitudes come from feminism, which is not true at all.