Ian Boyne "Nothing is foolproof to prevent a fling here and there, because a man or a woman who desires to do so will do it. It seems like in today's society that we (men and women) are less willing to be loyal to our partners. Temptations seem to be everywhere I turn."
- Letter-writer in the Press.
Western society is yet to come to grips with the full implications of the monumental changes which have taken place in the culture.
In throwing out religion and dethroning God, post-Christian Western society is desperately trying to hold on to remnants of the old way of thinking about morality.
But the genie has already gone out of the bottle and Humpty Dumpty cannot be put back together again.
What is there in our post-modern way of thinking and living which would make a young, virile, handsome man (or even a man without any of those features) stay faithful to his one partner, 'forsaking all others', 'till death do us part'?
If he has the right opportunity - the desire part is taken for granted - why would he not get laid and have a good time?
What would constrain the average secular man, liberated from religious moorings or at least conservative prohibitions on sexual behaviour, from sleeping with an attractive lady who makes herself available?
Why pass up the opportunity when the wife does not have to know and his marriage does not necessarily have to be threatened? Even when men know that they have much at stake and a 'helluva' lot to lose, they still risk it all for that all-consuming affair, let alone when the chance of getting caught is minimal!
What is it in our culture and philosophical orientation which would put a high value on faithfulness - strict faithfulness to one's partner? Absolutely nothing.
Dumb
The admonition to stick to one's partner exclusively for decades is seen as part of that set of quaint rules which say divorce is always wrong, remarriage is forbidden, sex before marriage is always a sin, masturbation is wrong, watching a 'blue movie' is necessarily dirty and abortion is always murder.
How many persons are committed to these rules today? Not even many in the church are!
Sophisticated secularists scoff at religious people who are still are dumb enough (in their perception) to believe in a God who literally created the world in six days; a God who sent a worldwide flood to destroy the earth and put a rainbow in the sky as His covenant not to destroy the world by water again; a God who made Balaam's ass speak and whose sacred Scriptures have a serpent talking and the sun standing still.
Read an atheist like Christopher Hitchens who, in his scorching book, God is Not Great, points to the supposed barbarities in the Bible - "the greatest book of child abuse" - and you come away with the feeling that religion is irredeemably bad for society.
Theistic framework
And I am not the one to say that there cannot be any notion of morality outside of a theistic framework.
I am aware of a whole tradition of humanistic philosophy which has posited an ethics without God and an objective morality without religion.
But my question is more practical rather than philosophical: For the average person, cut loose from conservative religious roots, how does he ground his everyday moral decisions?
When I am faced with the large numbers of attractive, wildly sexy women on the streets of Kingston, how do I resist the urge to fulfil my lusts?
If life is about the maximisation of pleasure, why restrict oneself sexually?
Yet, we have people getting married every day and making vows that each knows are not likely to be fulfilled, and we carry on this charade day after day and moreso in the month of June. Religion is not the only means we use to fool ourselves.
For all these highly intelligent, degreed and pedigreed people who are getting married and who have no use for religion, what is the point of taking vows which you have no intention of keeping? Just a matter of ritual like religion, eh?
Moral authority
In his highly engaging, just-published book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural left and its Responsibility for 9/11, Dinesh D'Souza says, "To American liberals the real social revolution of the past few decades - with its 1.5 million abortions a year, with one in two marriages ending in divorce, with homosexuality coming out of the closet and now seeking full social recognition and approval - is viewed through the prism of an expansion of civil liberties freedom of choice and personal autonomy. This is seen as a moral achievement."
Not every liberal will celebrate homosexuality or see divorce as a great source of liberation. But the average liberal is likely to stoutly condemn sex with underage children or mother-son sex.
But why? Who says that individuals should allow society and its man-made, socially
constructed laws to determine the age of consent for sex and impose that on liberated people? Who says a bright, discerning 16-year-old does not have the right to choose to have sex with a 50-year-old man?
By what clear and distinct moral principle can a mother who is having sex with her 20-year old son be condemned as morally depraved? Says who? A bunch of fallible people constituting society? Who determines that a 25-year-old brother is having sex with his 23-yerar-old sister is disgusting? By whose objective, universalreckoning?
If the final arbiter of morality is how I feel and the urgings of my heart then who can condemn me for incest and who can call my sex with a 14-year-old carnal abuse? Yes, I know even the thought is revolting and repulsive, but if you go beyond your emotions you will realise that you are doing precisely that-depending on your emotions and the psychology of (socially constructed) disgust to determine morality. So we have replaced the Bible with social conventions. But are these social conventions any more objective than the Bible?
The homosexual talks about his natural orientation and his natural impulses and asserts that he has a right to express them. But scientific studies have also determined that pedophiles are also strongly influenced by their orientation. Not all pedophiles choose to be pedophiles in the sense that they willed themselves to find children sexually arousing, just as some homosexuals (perhaps most) did not choose their orientation over heterosexuality. But that people have a certain orientation and proclivity does not absolve them of responsibility for their actions.
Desperate
It has been scientifically determined that some alcoholics and criminals have a biological base for their behaviour but the law would not absolve them of moral responsibility.
The abstinence campaign being run on television here and the desperate pleas to gay people and promiscuous heterosexuals to be careful and not engage in risky sexual behaviour is largely useless, for there is nothing in our secular culture to reinforce self-control, postponement of gratification and the development of a virtuous life. We are a pleasure-oriented, hedonistic society where the only virtue is wealth and pleasure-power maximisation.
So, bosses will pressure subordinates for sex with the threat of demotion or the carrot of promotion; stepfathers will be sleeping with both their lovers and their lover's underage daughters; men will engage in kinky sex with prostitutes and men in their 60s will abandon their marriages of 40 years to live with 25-year-old sex objects, just because of the uncontrollable power of sexual obsession and desire.
"What then is liberal morality?" ask D'Souza in his book. "Its premise is that right and wrong reside not in some invisible external order but within the inner reaches of our own heart. Its operating maxim is the one that Polonius gives to Laertes in Hamlet: "To thine own self be true."
Liberal morality holds that in any given situation —- as when faced with a moral choice —- we should not consult some external set of rules but look within ourselves to our moral rudder."
Continues D'Souza: "Liberal morality casts aside many of the old and restrictive rules that insist in one way or another 'thou shalt not'. There is no longer any external moral authority to constrain people from watching pornography or coveting their neighbour's wife. What used to be considered sexually deviant or perverted under the old order becomes permitted as an expression of autonomy and individuality. Traditional forms of excess become excusable, even commendable, as modes of self-realisation and self-discovery".
So, some even refuse to consider themselves either heterosexual or homosexual. Why be stereotyped, they ask? We are trans-sexual and trans-gender. It is not hard to see why homosexuality is gaining increasing social acceptance and it will take some time but incest will follow and soon the notion that children cannot freely make their own sexual decisions will go through the door. There is a tide that is sweeping post-modernist society and it cannot be stopped.
The problem is many don't understand what is happening - until they are submerged under the torrent of the moral sea - change.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
