It may not seem like it, but I think the message of our secular popular culture is a message more about death than life.
After all, is it not praiseworthy in our popular culture for a woman to choose to end her baby's life?
Is it not noble to end one's life if one sees fit to do so for almost any reason whatsoever?
What does popular culture think about the elderly? Is their wisdom valued? Why are the elderly more likely to be portrayed as out of touch more if not ready to be put out to pasture than they are to be portrayed as sagacious or at least worth giving a fair hearing to? (By contrast, why does popular culture all but worship youth?)
What does popular culture say about the environment and overpopulation? Isn't the fear that climage change is going to cause coastal cities to be flooded? Isn't the fear that overpopulation will mean scarce resources will be even more scarce (e.g. food)?
What about pets? Why does popular culture seem to care more about pets than children? Why are children often portrayed to be annoying? Why are pets often portrayed as acceptable in lieu of children? Why was there so much more of an outcry for Harambe than for "the boy" whom Harambe was dragging around like a ragdoll? Do most people even know the name of the 3 year old boy without having to search for it?
I could go on. But popular culture's message seems to me to be a message more conducive to death than to life.
By contrast, Christians have a message of life. We are pro-life. We value life. We are for life in all its glorious manifestations. We possess a life-giving and life-changing message. We love life. And we can hold forth life to a dying world.
With all this in mind, see this recent post: "The Other Pandemic Sweeping Across Our Globe" (Akos Balogh).
Worldviews matter. It's like the "stark" (pun intended) differences between Ironman and Thanos. Ironman and Thanos saw the same basic problem: extremely limited resources and over demand.
ReplyDeleteThanos's solution was to snap half of all life out of existence. Tony Stark's solution was to devise and deploy clean, abundant, cheap energy in the form of highly efficient and small arc reactors for the masses.
Thanos sought to reduce demand through the application of raw force, Stark sought to increase supply by creative engineering and self-sacricing effort.
It seems like the totalitarian, socialist/communist left is Thanos and the libeetarian, capitalist right is Ironman.
I can't not like Tony Stark/Ironman. :)
DeleteSpeaking of pets vs children, people calling their pets their children. They're both admitting, it seems, that the pet is a replacement for a child, and that it can stand in a child's place. I think it was someone on here a few years ago who pointed out a story that celebrated an old, lonely woman getting a pet from an animal shelter. She was lonely, and people were celebrating her getting a dog or a cat. No one involved reached out to be her friend (based on what was reported).
ReplyDeleteOn discounting the elderly, I had a co-worker last year literally say "ok boomer" in response to something his dad had said. Only the new/young is worth celebrating. Which is funny when a lot of new ideas are, in fact, old. Like Critical Race Theory, which is reheated Marxism.
Thanks, TFC. Interesting anecdotes to say the least! I think the whole "ok boomer" thing is so disrespectful, to put it mildly, but I've also heard it a few times now. I suppose this reflects (for lack of a better term) a generational war between old and young. I wonder if this in turn reflects the "lawlessness" we see in our society, with corruption at the very highest levels, and thus "the love of many will grow cold" (Mt 24:12).
DeleteGood ideas.
ReplyDeleteAuthenticity, as the article alludes to, is so valued that I have noticed that stunts people's growth. This not only regards homosexuals not willing to stop but, so many adults I have seen refuse to grow up morally. They don't try to cultivate virtue or any sort of good habits aside from recycling or other inconsequential tree hugger displays of virtue.
To tie to childlessness, people ptobably don't want kids because they view themselves as dumb kids.
*probably
DeleteToo bad you can't edit this...especially since autocorrect hardly works.
Thanks, Trent! Good points. Lol, Blogger is deficient in not allowing comments to be edited (among many other things)! Even the admins can't edit the comments. There are better platforms than Blogger. But I guess that's where Triablogue started. Maybe we can try to migrate to another platform someday. Especially in light of the threat from big tech. If this ever happens, I hope we find a platform that allows people to edit their own comments! :)
DeleteLike my comment below, one would probably think I am not a native English speaker, since I often forget to proofread.
DeleteLol, I often do the same, to be honest! Autocorrect is often the bane of my existence.
DeleteI also forgot to mention how I have seen many students believe that they aren't capable of improving. Many even state they are just 'lazy' and take pride it. Similar is how I have come across many women claim the term B---- for themselves with no sense or wanting to improve. Its becomes a term of endearment.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I think we've long been a youth-oriented culture.
DeleteWorse, I think this youth-oriented or perhaps even youth-obsessed mentality has even seeped into the highest levels of politics. For instance, I think it's problematic when fellow Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer fear AOC and kowtow to her agenda.
In fact, I sometimes wonder if the leftist movement might be accurately characterized as a movement of the youth wanting to destroy our very foundations and rebuild society into its own image.
There's more respect for the aged and learned among conservatives, as well as for our institutions of course, but I fear that may be eroding as well.
I'm not at all old, and in fact I'm much closer in generation to AOC than I am to Pelosi or Schumer, but I've always thought any healthy society needs to have a good balance between the youth and the elderly, yet right now it seems so much of our society and culture are moving rapidly to whatever the youth want. Hence impractical or unrealistic or at least very costly to implement ideas are now on the table: free health care, free education, student loans simply forgiven by the government, a $15 minimum wage, be whoever you want to be vis-a-vis transgendered persons, abortion as birth control in a sexually promiscuous culture, pets as kids in a culture that fears overpopulation, America as incorrigibly and systematically racist such that we need to uproot our very foundations and start all over again (cf. the 1619 project), ending the electoral college in favor of a national popular vote, etc.
I guess we've fallen under pray to the (faux) Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times!
I think the youth can be good patsies. Their energy and naivete are inversely proportional to their knowledge and wisdom. My most embarrassing example (from, er, a friend, not myself), is I had a friend who sent an email years ago to a militantly secular organization thinking it was just out of ignorance of Christianity that they were headed down the path they were on and they just needed someone to give them a heads up. Such cringe. It hurts. Stupid friend. *Chuckles nervously*
DeleteAnd to expand on the naivete/ignorance part, when you don't understand how things work, it seems so simple. Oh, I can make a society exactly the way I want it if I just change these three things I don't like. But there is an interconnected web of cause and effect. One foolish idea is that profit is theft and we should abolish profit and go to socialism. But in order to turn a profit, companies need to drive down the cost of production while maintaining a sufficient quality to entice customers to buy, and fend off competitors. The Soviet Union is a veritable gold mine of wonderful sounding ideas failing miserably (and, of course, a lot of ideas that didn't even superficially appear wonderful). Or how about the disaster of the federal government providing student loans? Make it easier for people with no money to get money to pay for college, and colleges rise to the challenge by finding reasons to cost so much more money, leaving inflation in the dust.