Modern Society has an ugly knack of Missing the Primary Questions.
1 In the case of abortion, the primary question is not: ”If a thirteen year old girl falls pregnant, as happens, and as she naturally cannot take care of the child, should she be forced to give her child up for adoption after giving birth attaches her to it, or should her parents be forced to take care of a child they did not plan, or should both parties be offered a break by allowing abortion?” The primary question is: ”What reason - if any - is there that she should NOT take care of it herself, along with its father?” Modern society has a very ugly knack of taking the answer ”they are to young” as a matter beyond any possible dispute.
2 In the - somewhat related - subject of same-sexed couples adopting a child, the primary question is not: ”Why are two homosexuals necessarily a bad option for a child who is up for adoption?” The primary question is: ”should the child be up for adoption?” And modern society has a very ugly knack of assuming that that is a question of poverty, unsuitability, youth or immaturity of biological parents rather than simply the fact of both or either parent or some other relative being alive and not absolutely unable to take care even of himself.
3 A third case also concerns same-sexed couples: artificial conception like in vitro or by insemination: ”Should samesexed couples be allowed to use insemination, just as both-sexed couples who are involuntarily infertile?” The primary question usually avoided is: ”should anyone be allowed to use insemination on human women, just as cattle-breeders do on cows?” or in other words: ”should doctors ever be allowed to act on human subjects as formerly only veterinaries acted on beasts?”
4 The fourth secondary question - the last about same-sexed couples - is: ”should same-sexed couples have the right to marry and have children at all?” The obvious primary question avoided is: ”why do these individuals - separately from each other - not want to form an ordinary, i e both-sexed married couple, in which begetting children would usually not be a problem?” And behind that is another question still more primary: ”why dissociate sex from fertility; why does anyone, even in both-sexed married couples, not want to get the number of children their intercourse and God’s providence would land them with?” The sordid answer is: they want to avoid some trouble or other of parenthood and they want each family member to have a greater share in the riches of society than their work would give them if they had more children to share it among. And the still more sordid reason behind both of above are: 1 they absolutely want a second wage by having the mother at work; 2 if the children were living poorer, as would be the case with only one wage (or none), and a mother at home taking care of children, the parents are afraid the social workers would declare them unfit to raise their own children.
This brings us to the really primary questions:
5 Why should there be a class of social workers to decide what young or poor parent is fit or unfit to take care of children?
6 Why should societal economic solidarity with the poor go chiefly by taxes and social workers, who thereby consume some of that money for their own wages and who, at the same time, get a hold on a lot of families? What is wrong with good old begging and good old almsgiving?
7 Why should society draft children and adolescents into school, which makes many of them miserable by schoolyard mobbing; many of them disobedient to their families; many of them out of work by failure in most of the school subjects, nearly all of which come from an intellectual education foreign to most people’s real talents and interests; a school which furthermore becomes an obvious target for terrorist attacks and for drug dealers not to mention even worse scum, as well as angry parents, thereby giving schools an excuse to exclude parents from the place where their offspring is educated or miseducated; attendance to which is deemed more important for a thirteen year old pregnant girl than to give birth and breast-milk to her child and comfort to its father when he comes home from a useful and paid work?
8 Why are so much greater percentages of the people in psychiatric or psychological treatment than one hundred years ago? Has the kind of society we are describing made western man much sicker or have more and more states of mind come to be treated as mental sickness? Or both? Can the new extended powers of psychiatry be one of the humiliations that really bring a man down the sink?
9 Who are gaining livelihoods and status and power over people from all this? Who are loosing freedoms and livelihoods, as well as being placed in actual sub-status positions by all this? Who are saying over and over that it is not a matter of respect, who are over and over complaining about the respect they do not get?
10 Am I looking in the right direction for the answers? It is easy to look at victims of merely economic or even merely financial disabilities or disasters. It may not be so easy to look at sensitive members of your own family. It is easy to weep or curse or blaspheme because of the Tsunami or the hurricane Katrina (unless you live in the region or have family killed there). It may not be so easy to look away from the Third World to the young and poor of the Fourth, Fifth or Sixhundred-sixty-sixth Worlds, asking why your daughter finds Blacks, Arabs, Asiatics and Latinos, or conversely racists, preferrable to All White, but non-Racist, Christians; or why your son listens to Satanic Music like Black Sabbath or why he finds Cradle of Filth less filthy - at least less greasy - than most of the music played at Woodstock. Or why your sister hates her goergeous female body and destroys her beauty by suicide attemps or wrist slashing, anorexia or bulimia. Or why your brother, who is a bright talent, prefers alcohol and hashish and sniffing glue to his studies. Or why your friends prefer playing at vampires to playing at Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. It is easy to look for the culprits in others, to point at Capitalism and Right Wing Christians or Communism and Left Wing Atheists or Illuminati, or Jews or Freemasons, or immigration and its use of national resources or racism or something of the sort as culprit.
It may be less soothing to look at oneself, to look into the mirror and say:
- I am teaching in a compulsory school, I sent a young man (who is frustrated because he should never have been forced to attend it) to the psychologist because he called me a faggot - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I am a school nurse, the last five years I’ve sent three girls to abortion, I was mostly irritated because they did not protect themselves - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I am a social worker, the last three years I have taken three sets of children away from their parents - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I am a police officer, the last year I have taken three harmless but slightly confused people into psychiatric hospital and I have disturbed sleeping beggars twelve times to send them to homeless shelters where the showers start at five and the official wake up is at six thirty - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I am an employee (bakery, restaurant, hotel) and the last month I have sent twelve beggars away hungry because I was afraid to lose my job by giving them a loaf of bread, even if I payed it from my own wages, since my employer wants to discourage mendicity - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I work at a homeless shelter the last week I have given three married couples separate beds in common with other men and with other women, and I have given them condoms so they do not procreate - and it is paying my bills.
Is all this at least paying the bills of myself and my family, or am I kidding myself into spending ten years just paying my strictly personal bills, hoping to get a family later on if I keep paying my bills? Am I paying my bills so as to keep my self respect? Am I despising the people who have no bills to pay, because they do not have as hard a time working as I? Am I raising my family to respect or despise the homeless? Have I at least spared God and His Holy Bible, Creation and Providence, Genesis and Apocalypse, the blasphemy of excusing every modern malpractise I and the people I respect commit, because otherwise ”we would revert to apes/stone age” or ”cut ourselves off from our future”? Have I at least spared His creation the Universe the affront to excuse such malpractise with a ”necessary balance between good and evil” as if it depended on some stupid Taoist Yin and Yang scheme? Have I at least spared His Creation Mankind the gross insult to excuse the necessity or desirability of all these false issues, the impossibility of answering the right questions the right way, by keeping aloof from peoples in Africa and Latin America, as being ”underdeveloped” or automatically suppressive to women where they differ from the feminist schemes?
H G Lundahl
(undated, but last or one of last essays before Chrismation, hence like nov/dec 2006, Marseille)
1 In the case of abortion, the primary question is not: ”If a thirteen year old girl falls pregnant, as happens, and as she naturally cannot take care of the child, should she be forced to give her child up for adoption after giving birth attaches her to it, or should her parents be forced to take care of a child they did not plan, or should both parties be offered a break by allowing abortion?” The primary question is: ”What reason - if any - is there that she should NOT take care of it herself, along with its father?” Modern society has a very ugly knack of taking the answer ”they are to young” as a matter beyond any possible dispute.
2 In the - somewhat related - subject of same-sexed couples adopting a child, the primary question is not: ”Why are two homosexuals necessarily a bad option for a child who is up for adoption?” The primary question is: ”should the child be up for adoption?” And modern society has a very ugly knack of assuming that that is a question of poverty, unsuitability, youth or immaturity of biological parents rather than simply the fact of both or either parent or some other relative being alive and not absolutely unable to take care even of himself.
3 A third case also concerns same-sexed couples: artificial conception like in vitro or by insemination: ”Should samesexed couples be allowed to use insemination, just as both-sexed couples who are involuntarily infertile?” The primary question usually avoided is: ”should anyone be allowed to use insemination on human women, just as cattle-breeders do on cows?” or in other words: ”should doctors ever be allowed to act on human subjects as formerly only veterinaries acted on beasts?”
4 The fourth secondary question - the last about same-sexed couples - is: ”should same-sexed couples have the right to marry and have children at all?” The obvious primary question avoided is: ”why do these individuals - separately from each other - not want to form an ordinary, i e both-sexed married couple, in which begetting children would usually not be a problem?” And behind that is another question still more primary: ”why dissociate sex from fertility; why does anyone, even in both-sexed married couples, not want to get the number of children their intercourse and God’s providence would land them with?” The sordid answer is: they want to avoid some trouble or other of parenthood and they want each family member to have a greater share in the riches of society than their work would give them if they had more children to share it among. And the still more sordid reason behind both of above are: 1 they absolutely want a second wage by having the mother at work; 2 if the children were living poorer, as would be the case with only one wage (or none), and a mother at home taking care of children, the parents are afraid the social workers would declare them unfit to raise their own children.
This brings us to the really primary questions:
5 Why should there be a class of social workers to decide what young or poor parent is fit or unfit to take care of children?
6 Why should societal economic solidarity with the poor go chiefly by taxes and social workers, who thereby consume some of that money for their own wages and who, at the same time, get a hold on a lot of families? What is wrong with good old begging and good old almsgiving?
7 Why should society draft children and adolescents into school, which makes many of them miserable by schoolyard mobbing; many of them disobedient to their families; many of them out of work by failure in most of the school subjects, nearly all of which come from an intellectual education foreign to most people’s real talents and interests; a school which furthermore becomes an obvious target for terrorist attacks and for drug dealers not to mention even worse scum, as well as angry parents, thereby giving schools an excuse to exclude parents from the place where their offspring is educated or miseducated; attendance to which is deemed more important for a thirteen year old pregnant girl than to give birth and breast-milk to her child and comfort to its father when he comes home from a useful and paid work?
8 Why are so much greater percentages of the people in psychiatric or psychological treatment than one hundred years ago? Has the kind of society we are describing made western man much sicker or have more and more states of mind come to be treated as mental sickness? Or both? Can the new extended powers of psychiatry be one of the humiliations that really bring a man down the sink?
9 Who are gaining livelihoods and status and power over people from all this? Who are loosing freedoms and livelihoods, as well as being placed in actual sub-status positions by all this? Who are saying over and over that it is not a matter of respect, who are over and over complaining about the respect they do not get?
10 Am I looking in the right direction for the answers? It is easy to look at victims of merely economic or even merely financial disabilities or disasters. It may not be so easy to look at sensitive members of your own family. It is easy to weep or curse or blaspheme because of the Tsunami or the hurricane Katrina (unless you live in the region or have family killed there). It may not be so easy to look away from the Third World to the young and poor of the Fourth, Fifth or Sixhundred-sixty-sixth Worlds, asking why your daughter finds Blacks, Arabs, Asiatics and Latinos, or conversely racists, preferrable to All White, but non-Racist, Christians; or why your son listens to Satanic Music like Black Sabbath or why he finds Cradle of Filth less filthy - at least less greasy - than most of the music played at Woodstock. Or why your sister hates her goergeous female body and destroys her beauty by suicide attemps or wrist slashing, anorexia or bulimia. Or why your brother, who is a bright talent, prefers alcohol and hashish and sniffing glue to his studies. Or why your friends prefer playing at vampires to playing at Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. It is easy to look for the culprits in others, to point at Capitalism and Right Wing Christians or Communism and Left Wing Atheists or Illuminati, or Jews or Freemasons, or immigration and its use of national resources or racism or something of the sort as culprit.
It may be less soothing to look at oneself, to look into the mirror and say:
- I am teaching in a compulsory school, I sent a young man (who is frustrated because he should never have been forced to attend it) to the psychologist because he called me a faggot - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I am a school nurse, the last five years I’ve sent three girls to abortion, I was mostly irritated because they did not protect themselves - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I am a social worker, the last three years I have taken three sets of children away from their parents - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I am a police officer, the last year I have taken three harmless but slightly confused people into psychiatric hospital and I have disturbed sleeping beggars twelve times to send them to homeless shelters where the showers start at five and the official wake up is at six thirty - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I am an employee (bakery, restaurant, hotel) and the last month I have sent twelve beggars away hungry because I was afraid to lose my job by giving them a loaf of bread, even if I payed it from my own wages, since my employer wants to discourage mendicity - and it is paying my bills;
- Or: I work at a homeless shelter the last week I have given three married couples separate beds in common with other men and with other women, and I have given them condoms so they do not procreate - and it is paying my bills.
Is all this at least paying the bills of myself and my family, or am I kidding myself into spending ten years just paying my strictly personal bills, hoping to get a family later on if I keep paying my bills? Am I paying my bills so as to keep my self respect? Am I despising the people who have no bills to pay, because they do not have as hard a time working as I? Am I raising my family to respect or despise the homeless? Have I at least spared God and His Holy Bible, Creation and Providence, Genesis and Apocalypse, the blasphemy of excusing every modern malpractise I and the people I respect commit, because otherwise ”we would revert to apes/stone age” or ”cut ourselves off from our future”? Have I at least spared His creation the Universe the affront to excuse such malpractise with a ”necessary balance between good and evil” as if it depended on some stupid Taoist Yin and Yang scheme? Have I at least spared His Creation Mankind the gross insult to excuse the necessity or desirability of all these false issues, the impossibility of answering the right questions the right way, by keeping aloof from peoples in Africa and Latin America, as being ”underdeveloped” or automatically suppressive to women where they differ from the feminist schemes?
H G Lundahl
(undated, but last or one of last essays before Chrismation, hence like nov/dec 2006, Marseille)
5 commentaires:
Hallo, und danke für den Kommentar : Nein ich kenn Atelier 10;05 nicht, habe gegoogelt aber nichts weiter gefunden als die Aussage, das es hier um ARchitektur und Szenographie geht...
Ich werde Deinen Eintrag hier in Ruhe lesen, der ist so lang da erschreckt man erstmal wenn man hier hereinguckt. Heutzutage ist alles so schnell-lebig, da muss man sich zusammenreissen um gründlich zu sein:)
Liebe Grüsse aus Paris
Andrea
Läste inte hela. Men njao. Jag tycker en del av frågorna du ställer är högst relevanta. Samtidigt så tror jag att man måste ha en förståelse för att allas liv inte ser likadana ut. Undrar om du är gift själv. Att göra "offspring" kan ju knappast vara äktenskapets högsta mål. Men visst, det är inte världens enklaste frågor.
afkomma är icke äktenskapets enda ändamål, men i RK theologie (har ej kollat orthodoxa katekeser) det första
nej, jag är ännu ogift
att allas lif intet ser likadant ut är en sak, poängen är att vissas ser onödigt dåligt ut ang. ingående af äktenskap, behållande af egna barn, behållande af egen frihet - och att det på ena hållet drifver till aborter och andra förtviflade åtgerder, på andra hållet ger barn till somliga ytterst frivilligt barnlösa angående deras eget kött
andras barn, altså
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