Thursday, February 23, 2006 | by nathan

That Fox is on Fire!

     My dear and beloved friend Jon Warren wrote an upsetting, yet absolutely necessary and intrepid, blog post today over at Speculations and Such, which he and his wife, Tish, write. It is all about things I struggle with, yet about which Jon is much, much more articulate. What does cultural conscience look like? What would it mean for artists, and more importantly, the people selling culture to us, to do what they do with an eye to heightening cultural dialogue?

     I absolutely do not believe in censorship, because I do not believe that it is a power that can ever be weilded responsibly by the people in power. It never has been, and I see no reason to believe it ever would be. Think about what our country would be like if Bush had the ability to censor people like me, and Jon, and Maureen Dowd, and Frank Rich. Not that he hasn’t tried (Valerie Plame, anyone?) When you grant this power to people, no matter their worldview or ideology, they will use it to their selfish advantage. A world with free speech will not be perfect, but a world without it would be much, much worse.

     On the other hand, I have to say that more than ever, our culture discourages me. On some level it always has, because I think that you cannot believe in God and accept almost any of the underlying assumptions that our culture makes, for example, that you are fundamentally defined by things like success, beauty, and what you own, and that your entire identity rests in these parameters. [Incidentally, have you heard the song "Stupid Girls?" It’s stuck in my head as I write this, and the video cracks me up].

     So I find myself wondering what it would look like for our culture’s underlying assumptions to change. I am honestly, honestly not sure. I tend to think that dogmatism is a universal human problem, so that if we were able to name the assumptions and priorities to which we want to migrate culturally, they, too would become warped, because that seems to be human nature. Rather than walking with the Spirit to learn what love and truth and wisdom are, we like to make one specific picture of what we should all be. I am in no way advocating moral relativism here; quite the contrary, I believe that there are things which are absolutely wrong. I see no reason why our culture needs, as Jon discusses, rap artists advocating violence against women (Eminem?). I do not know why having Paris Hilton is a good thing. At all. I am convinced that she is a sign of the End Times, if I believed in that sort of an eschatology. Which I don’t, exactly.

     Anyway. What I am saying is that we tend to reduce wonderful things - love, beauty, truth, wisdom - down to a set of parameters. A beautiful girl is blonde, blue-eyed, and has meausrements equalling 36-24-36 (only if she’s 5′3"). Loving someone means flowers and candy and googly eyes. Truth is only what you can prove scientifically. You see the trouble with that? Every one of these things leaves out a whole, whole bunch. This is why we need artists; to expand our definitions. I’m just not sure how the things I mentioned above (Eminem and Paris Hilton) figure into that. I am not sure how the people selling Eminem and Paris Hilton to us can sleep at night or look themselves in the mirror, much less how these two people do it.

     So I find myself wondering how our culture can be better without dogmatism. I am lost as to how, as well, Jonathan. Seriously, you guys should read his post. It is much, much more articulate than this.

     In other news, I finally downloaded Firefox, because Brian said it was the moral equivalent of giving Da Man a big, swift kick in his tiny little testes. Take that, Da Man.