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Saturday, February 25, 2006
Ritual Denigrations
Your Curmudgeon may seem easily irritated these days, but in truth it's just that the world has been buzzing more loudly and more insistently than usual. Regrettably, some of the buzzing has come from sources that really ought to know better.
As a foundation for this diatribe, the following Ann Coulter quote will serve nicely:
The New York Times has transformed into a caricature of the old reactionary WASP establishment, swatting down the social-climbing middle class with their polo mallets. They are annoyed at the thought of new money emerging from the perpetual dynamism of capitalist economy. Really vicious liberals are constantly bragging that they love paying taxes. They want their taxes to be raised even higher! The ostensible point of these boasts is to induce admiration for their deep patriotism or their unbounded generosity toward the poor. But the real point is to announce that they do not share the working class's petty concern with taxes.Thus, for example, during the battle over George Bush's proposed tax cut, billionaire music mogul David Geffen loudly bragged, "Speaking for myself, I don't need a tax cut." He loved paying taxes, he said, because "it's a privilege to be an American citizen." This is pure braggadocio, intended to convey the information that Geffen has more money than God. "I want to pay more taxes" is a way of saying that, no matter how much the government takes, they will still have enough money to keep drinking Dom Perignon and making out in the hot tub. [From Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right]
Politically, this is a well established pattern. As Coulter notes, it was once associated with British Tory aristocrats, who sought to use the law to maintain a gulf of opulence and privilege between themselves and the hoi polloi. But politics is not the sole arena in which this sort of gambit appears.
Another pattern of some significance frequently appears in partnership with the above: the denigration of worldly goods and pleasures. Such a denigration will dismiss the things of this world as meaningless, doomed to crumble, incapable of sparking lasting happiness, and in some cases as a buffer against deep-set fears. They often sound typeset, as if the speaker were reading them from a Teleprompter. What they convey most clearly is the speaker's contempt for those to whom worldly goods are in some measures desirable or important.
This is merely ludicrous when it issues from the mouth of a secularist like David Geffen. When it comes from a source to which others look for counsel or guidance in deeper matters, for example matters of the spirit, it can be unthinkably destructive.
Every sort of worldly good, from the most fundamental to the most frivolous, exists because some group of persons desires it. Why they desire it might vary among them. For some it might be a necessity; for others, an entertainment or a diversion. The sole guaranteed commonality is the desire, expressed by the effort to which they go to afford and acquire the good.
Desire is a personal affair. Its sources are buried so deeply within the human mind that even he who feels a desire frequently can't be certain whence it comes. Much psychiatry and psychotherapy are devoted to ferreting out the reasons we want things. Needless to say, the success rate of such inquiries is variable. But of this we may be sure: Smith, who dismisses Jones's desires as somehow unworthy, would bridle and trumpet were Jones to level the same criticism at him.
To denigrate the desires of others is to proclaim them juvenile, shallow, immature; it's a method of elevating oneself above them.
Everyone has done it at one time or another. But then, we're an imperfect race, aren't we?
With regard to religious and spiritual concerns, the Gospel has often been cited in support of temporal austerity:
And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. [The Gospel According To Matthew, 6:28]
...but that was Christ speaking directly to His first followers, the Apostles. Those men, whom He had called away from their livelihoods as fishermen, had reasonable fears of destitution were they to become itinerant preachers in His footsteps. Christ had to reassure them that all would be well with them, and with their families, even without their boats and nets. Beyond that, these famous words from the Sermon on the Mount were a general counsel to the avoidance of anxiety, for no man of Galilee could take seriously the notion that concern with worldly goods was entirely dismissible.
Your Curmudgeon will now borrow a page from that Fran person and speak specifically as a Christian. Christians believe in an afterlife, with the possibility of drawing near to God if one has lived worthily in his temporal life. Because we believe the afterlife to be unending, and that we'd greatly regret missing out on the grand prize, we consider our duties as Christians to precede our desires as private persons. But that does not dismiss those latter desires entirely; it merely sets our moral obligations -- basically, to give thanks to God for the gifts of life and faith, to refrain from evil, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves -- above them. Once those requirements have been met, we are free to please ourselves in whatever way may strike our fancy.
One of the Church's historical errors, from which it has not yet fully recovered, was its clerics' frequent reflexive condemnation of worldly pleasures as they emerged among the faithful. Such condemnations were applied to cards, to chess, to dice, to dance, to the singing of non-liturgical music, even to orgasm. The underlying rationale was that worldly pleasures compete with devotion to the Church; therefore, to attain the most complete devotion and obedience from his congregants, the cleric must turn their faces away from all that might distract them. By corollary, they encouraged pain cults, flagellants being the best-remembered manifestation, as a way to get people to disdain the body as a mere vehicle by which the soul would eventually reach God.
It's all of a piece. If this life were not important, we would not be born into it. Indeed, living decently on Earth would not be a precondition for admission to the eternal reward.
Your Curmudgeon bids you dismiss the contempt expressed by others for your particular desires in this life. Respond with equal disdain:
That is all.
Comments
So I must assume you believe I should stop harrassing my sister for reading People magazine?
Posted by Lana on 02/25/2006 at 07:06 PMI’ll believe geffen is serious when he sends treasury a check equal to half his portfolio.
Posted by on 02/26/2006 at 09:51 AM
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