A Dearth of Character

M:

How right you are about men and their dysfunction! The men in this chapter, as you point out, have carried into a dysfunctional extreme in the other direction their own response mechanisms (and how twisted and emotionally and relationally disastrous they are!). This is a matter of some great concern, for if we keep having more and more movement away from the roughly balanced middle, the latent savagery, brutality, and compassionless views demonstrated will tear at the seam of this civilization—and that civilization is already stressed to the near-limit.

Trust and balance? Less and less seen. The love of money in this spectacle culture has found fertile root in hordes of people who have little or no character, ethical, or moral basis to resist (and often, don’t want to and see no reason TO resist). That some of these individuals profess to be devout followers—or even leaders—of some faith only adds bitter gall to the sour wine.

I will share more of Bly’s talk at another date, but much of it was him reading his poetry, and it would take us a bit far off topic. And you and I already have major difficulty staying on topic! :)

The poor football coach is another victim claimed by this emasculating phenomenon that is sapping at our society. Women always trumpeted that men had so screwed things up that a woman-run society would be different if they were in control. Is this the result? Once again, as you have pointed out, the ruinous effect of lack of balance. And that numerous men—numerous KOW-TOWED men—obviously had to go along with it to force the resignation of the coach, only shows how far out of balance things have become. And what has already been sapped out of this society.

The coach’s fate is also a sad tale about trying to stand in the way of this out-of-control individualistic ethos, and nuclear families who feel largely disconnected from others. We will either correct all this, or it will be one of the things that corrects itself in some wrenching cultural agony (perhaps a violent one) as it all comes together to force a new reality.

As for the quote about “many men—maybe even a majority…”, I can only surmise he is referring to regular watchers of porn, not men in the whole general population. Men who watch excessive amounts of porn (10 hours a week? 20?) have already at least begun the process of de-socializing themselves. Greater and greater skewing, greater and greater disconnection with reality, greater and greater willingness to dehumanize women; all are the near-inevitable results. What seeps into their consciousness about the deleterious effects is probably brief, when it does happen at all. I would think it would take someone else—an intervention almost—to point out, to shake them out of their lotus vapors. Would have to look up the research to find out if what I suspect is correct…

Certainly, Hedges’ description (85) of men’s feelings about the silicone dolls is more illustration of the disconnection. The DANGEROUS disconnection.

Something I found interesting, and illustrative of our dualistic dysfunction, is Hedges’ describing (86) the government using the Patriot Act to prosecute both adult entertainment companies and CUSTOMERS. Did they do it because they objected to the violence, the exploitation? No, they did it to serve up a bone to “fighting for values,” when of course it was nothing but political theater and political maneuvering. Prosecuted for the nebulous classification of “obscenity.” Merely to show rabid political supporters what moral crusaders they are, and to advance their legal and political careers in the process. And to think that a government made so weak by underfunding—especially to judicial prosecution, and this in a country teeming with lawyers—made an effort to invest resources into this “moral obscenity” game is near criminal in itself. For that same country will turn its pockets inside out and say “there’s nothing that can be done,” or “there’s too much,” or “we don’t have remotely enough investigators,” etc. when asked why isn’t Wall Street, or Big Oil, or Big Pharma, or Big Insurance, prosecuted for their crimes, and why the money literally stolen/defrauded/abused is not recovered.

Hedges’ last page of this chapter is interlaced with lots of marginal or questionable judgments and insinuations of his. He tosses out words like incest and pedophilia which look to this observer to be unwarranted. Whatever one may think of Bret Michaels and Hugh Hefner, or their judgment in women, I think it is unfair to associate incest or pedophilia with them, and here I think Hedges has trapped himself a bit in the female-dominated rhetoric of our society. Because those two invectives, pedophilia in particular, are thrown around far too loosely in this culture. And Hedges is off-the-mark, in my view, in attempting to link porn to the casual sex taking place on many college campuses. Sometimes links are tenuous at best.

But in the last half of his last paragraph of this chapter, Hedges returns to his exacting critique. He decries “the belief that ‘because I have the ability to use force and control to make others do as I please, I have a right to use this force and control.’ It is the disease of corporate and imperial power. It extinguishes the sacred and the human to worship power, control, force, and pain. It replaces empathy, eros, and compassion with the illusion that we are gods.” (87) Like the Romans, who came to replace one-time realities of strength and character with facades of fantasy and illusion, and yet arrogantly chose to oppress and even crush individuals and cultures both internally and externally, we too go on in our intrusive belligerence and unexamined arrogance, even as we hollow ourselves out.