Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Moral Instruction
I've read in different Catholic Church bulletins that when a couple want to use the sacrament of marriage they usually have to inform the parish at least one year in advance. Struck me as way too long a wait, what if they want a small affair and not all the hoopla and they want to do it three months from now? What if there's already a bun in the oven? Basically a large part of the wait has to do with the requirement of those Pre-Cana classes, marriage preparation courses designed to strengthen their future conjugal life together. I found myself being alternately annoyed and offended by this, it's my libertarian streak coming through I guess and doesn't the Church already have too many rules and regulations to begin with (be sorry for your sins but don't confess them to a priest and you go to Hell, your basic control issue)? So I came up with the root of my displeasure here and it's this: you either believe in the sanctity of marriage, the seriousness of the marriage covenant or you don't, it's not teachable, it's not trainable. Now moral education makes perfect sense, is even necessary when raising kids. At such an impressionable age they're perfectly amenable to notions of Right and Wrong, well some of them anyway but when dealing with adults...it'd be like if your Dad came over your apartment, you're 37 now and found a porno under your bed and yelled at you about it. Dad might be perfectly right about the bad nature of the stuff but...regarding morality you either have it or you don't, it is what it is. Now to tie together two of my recurring themes here, abortion and drugs - since the fetus is human it should be protected by law, since drugs pose a public-safety issue that's the primary reason they should be illegal. Going over some of my most recent blogs on these two matters it's become obvious moral instruction doesn't work, moral education is a waste of time. I've articulated the old tried-and-true reasons for being against abortion and threw in some new and original points I hope on the matter. Same deal with drugs especially as relates to the psychedelics but it's almost as if people don't read the stuff or read it but don't absorb it. They're passionately for abortion or at least pro-choice as they say and the folks who are for narcotics seem to be really for them, the scare tactics only make them more curious and aggresive in their defense of them. So perhaps the pedagogic (or teaching) aspect of my blogging is coming to an end now, gave it my best shot and the thought occured to me if I feel this way about Pre-Cana why not the rest? In a morally relative universe to say you have all the answers or at least some of them, we prefer to revel in our ambiguity, our ambivalence and we've made the quest of not knowing or not striving to know a gospel. In the olde days Truth was our beacon, today truth is controversial. I still hold the same positions I've always did, I'm simply giving the chalk and the eraser and the pointer a rest for now.
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I am not exactly sure what you are talking about. A parish is a community; individuals who want to marry follow the guidelines set forth. An announcement of the banns of marriage is published. Instruction regarding rights and responsibilities regarding marriage is given. It might take a year but is often less. If you belong to the community and are aware of the guidelines it is not a problem since engagement usually lasts about a year in most instances. If there are unusual circumstances almost always couples are accommodated and counseling and religious instruction can take place after the marriage begins. If the parish refuses to budge it is possible to go somewhere else and be married in the Church. Or if your needs are such that no Catholic Church or individual priest will marry you it is possible you are not a true Catholic and might consider joining another faith community more attuned to your lifestyle and spiritual needs. I am not being an apologist for Catholics but they did not last as an institution for over 2000 years by being unresponsive to their community. Many of your points could lead to further discussion but I am sure you have studied more about American history, English grammar and such then you have about Catholic thought and theology. It is interesting and a very logical subject. Many of today's popular ideas and portrayals are skewered and ofter dead wrong. Catholics themselves ofter misinform and misconstrue tenants of their own faith. Sorry too long Good Luck.
ReplyDeleteThere is no moral compass anymore, Z-man, how can one teach morals when society can't agree on them anymore? Basically it seems to me that people have decided that "if it feels good, it is right", regardless if someone thinks it is wrong. Moral relativism, all part of the reason we are failing as a nation and as a society, in my opinion.
ReplyDelete& I didn't even mention priests who think they're hip and during their homilies go down the aisle into the congregation and rap, the powers that be want the priests to mesh more. Never understood indulgences either, so who decided you get 90 days off your time in Purgatory if you recite this prayer for 9 days? who came up with these exact numbers and exact formulas? The whole point of this blog however is you cannot teach people to respect the institution of marriage, inculcate this in them. If you're thirty years old and don't know what marriage is all about you're not gonna say oh yeah instructor you're right. There is something about grownups being taught this way and prepped for marriage that just strikes me as immature if not silly but this is the silly season we're in. Shouldn't take a whole year to get married just like it shouldn't take several months to get your newborn baptized just so as they can make it into a group thing with some jazzy deacon because the priests are too busy that afternoon to do it themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe one year might not be a rule so much as the fact that many people do plan ahead, and so a nearby date might not be available because other couples booked over a year ago.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Pre-Cana class, which I took, did not teach anything I didn't know, but for some I could see them needing the obvious brought to their attention.
As to your point about children needing to learn right from wrong, I would agree with you there, I mean children are born selfish, not because they are evil, they just don't know or understnad empathy. The Golden Rule comes to mind, the simplest notion but also the best one for dealing with any sitution.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with both, the one-year rule and the Pre-Cana. I guess what I'm getting at is I don't like the bureaucratic nature of the modern Church. For those folks who want the big lavish wedding (and then get divorced five years later) it would take longer for all parties involved to plan a date obviously but I'm talking about others who want to do it on a smaller and more modest scale. Surely a priest must have some downtime where he can do a brief ceremony some afternoon with a few people in attendance. So what do they say in Pre-Cana, marriage is serious and is supposed to last a lifetime?* file this under DUH.
ReplyDelete*(unless you want an annulment of course but we can discuss that later).
Hey Beth trying to bump the hippy blog up to the century mark, care to make any closing remarks?
ReplyDeleteIt would seem that the rules are indeed not a guarantee that every marriage will be forever, as you have alluded to, so in that respect I agree, the rules do not seem necessary or helpful.
ReplyDeleteHippy blog is on page 2, who is going to see anything I might add? We scared off Just Me guy and Lista along the way, maybe we got to them though, huh?
ReplyDeleteBuddy mentioned one-year engagements, to each his own but that seems a little long to me. People DO all these things and still wind up getting divorced. Maybe it's not the length of this and of that, the proper procedures to follow that truly matter but what matters is the strength of your original passion, is it TRUE LOVE? Many folks get married because it's the thing to do. It's not so much the red tape but the quality of your emotion and so that's why IMO people do all of the former and then still wind up shipwrecked.
ReplyDeleteWell about the hippy blog Just Me might be away on one of his trips and I don't know where Lista went. Maybe I wore them both out but it's a tinge of the OCD, how can you leave something just hanging there at 91? It's like hitting 298 homers and then retiring.
ReplyDeleteI'll try to add something later to get you to 100, but I gotta run for now.
ReplyDeleteHere's a perfect example of moral instruction being a waste of time. I was hanging out on my porch this morning and a taxi came by and the woman passenger had the window open and threw out a coffee cup onto the road. This has always bothered me, littering, as there's so many garbage receptacles around but anyway all a cop can do if he catches her is to issue a summons but the average citizen can't instruct such people. She'll have to arrive at her own conclusion someday that littering makes the environment look bad, not likely at this point. See what I mean by moral education? It's like with pro-life, when push comes to shove you're either for abortion or you're against it and all the masturblogging in the world might change a couple minds but it won't impact the majority, I used to think so.
ReplyDeleteWe may never know if we ever saved a life in our blogging about pro-life, I know saving even one life makes a difference. But I also see the big picture in that people's pro-choiceness or indifference to the issue I find to be a trend of general disrespect for life, which means the born as well as the unborn, and to that you may say we can't teach an old dog new tricks, but I won't stop trying to educate people about this important topic when the spirit moves me.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't look like you needed me at all to get the number up to 100.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was wondering where everybody went but they're back again.
ReplyDeleteYou might be right about saving a few lives through our blogging but the hardcore choicers, they're unreachable. First off they don't respond to your points but get all ad-hominem, it's a Springerized debate.
ReplyDeleteKind of interesting.."In a morally relative universe to say you have all the answers or at least some of them, we prefer to revel in our ambiguity,.." IMO, the universe runs pretty much black/white..the laws of physics and all that. We
ReplyDeletehumans, a self-important group living on a micro-speck of that universe, attempt to apply our beliefs in right & wrong; since we vary in our beliefs these become
'gray'. The universe is neither kind nor cruel, it perservers according to its strict laws..while we argue our gray areas. I'm thinking I agree with you on this, at least to some extent..we are 'smart' enough to make thermonuclear weapons, lots of 'em...and maybe even smart enough not to use 'em. But are we smart enough to say when life begins? I've heard the scientific
arguments, the religious arguments, the philosophical arguments,....I dunno..they seem
subjective compared to the transcendant objectivity of the
universe. So perhaps, some of us are smart enough to know there is a lot we don't know..and probably never will. (But we'll keep trying, cuz we're human!)
I think the pro-choicers don't want to know when life begins, it's like there's a bogeyman in the closet so don't open the door. There is a lot we don't know but I think there's lots of folks who prefer it that way. Let's say there were a scientific consensus across the globe TOMORROW that life begins at conception or maybe when the heart begins to beat, Goddammie don't spoil our fun!!
ReplyDeleteGoing over your comment again B I think there's a danger when relativism becomes an end in itself by which I mean we put the question of when life begins on the same level as is there life after death and do ghosts exist? Now I think the second question is far more complicated, tricky and confusing than the first which is not to say the first issue is a piece of cake either but I think we finally have the answer in any case. Dunno, to say that because of relativism we can never have final definite answers is for me at least kind of disappointing. It'd be like if on Jeopardy everybody gave different answers to the final question and Alex Trebek said I dunno. Now when you're new to the abortion issue I'm not against the whole thinking process but I think the goal of the thinking process is to arrive somewhere.
ReplyDeleteWell, here is a slightly grayish area about human life beginnings.
ReplyDeleteHere we learn how embryos are fertilized in petri dishes and placed in liquid nitrogen for storage (a comfy -320F). Presumably these may be from a couple, or a random donor, or a mix and match sort of arrangement.
When the technician penetrates the embryo and introduces a spermatazoa, some of us believe life is formed-some of us don't. But, it is then sort of suspended as a zygote which cannot undergo embryogenesis. It is from a medical standpoint..lifeless, perhaps a lifeform, certainly a potential life. In the referenced article, the couple forgot about their fertilised eggs for 18 years. They decide to use the
frozen cell for implantation and remarkably birth a normal child.
Is the child 19 years old on his first birthday? Yes, if we believe life begins at conception...I think. Or, since
biological molecular motion and processes cease at -320F, did time 'stand still' for these zygotes? Did life start at implantation? What of the other fertilized eggs which were implanted, but failed to take?
Were those 19 year old lives terminated? By who? Medical ethics is a weird area, well out of my range..but to me it seems an example of why 'gray areas' continue to plague our views of sex and its results....
You bring up an interesting point BB but I would say Dr. Bernard Nathanson has the best answer in his The Hand of God. In it he talks about conception, the zygote and embryogenesis but adds the idea of the vector of life. Now to anyone who has ever studied mathematics and physics the vector is a magnitude and a force going in a certain direction symbolized usually by an arrow (I used to be more into math as a yoot until my interests shifted). So under normal circumstances in a normal pregnancy as the result of normal non-Lewinsky intercourse you have your embryogenesis, your magnitude and life force with a definite purpose and direction so in these cases which are the vast majority anyway abortion definitely takes a human life. Medical ethics is weird because science is weird like Ted Williams' head which last I heard is in the freezer.
ReplyDeleteBB, it is the scenario you descibed that makes me all the more certain that we must agree that life begins at conception, because they want to use unused frozen embyos for testing stem cells, and I do think that it is killing a life and is totally wrong. Call me old fashioned but I believe life needs to start naturally and end naturally. Look at Octomom to see right there what is wrong with a method that can allow that situation from even happening.
ReplyDeleteGotta agree, old-fashioned 'naturally' is easier to conceptualize. The vector approach has one wondering velocity and direction, relating that to cell growth, intellectual growth, interpersonal relationships..then the idea of 6 billion of these vectors currently zipping across the earth's surface.
ReplyDeleteUltimately we are a mass of cells, be it the 4th week of pregnancy or graduating from high school. It seems more 'natural' to just be a human being. :)
You see BB the choicers want to ignore the vector approach and shift the focus earlier and earlier in the pregnancy. They'll say things like fertilized egg not a person but in everyday abortion the woman first has to have intercourse, find out she's pregnant, discuss this with a friend and all the while the vector of life is proceeding. The lifers say abortion stops a beating heart and I'd say in most cases that's true. I agree with Beth, life needs to start at conception otherwise you're left with this concept: you began your existence inside your mother as an embryo but you weren't even human. Put another way that is to say at the earliest point in the continuum of your existence you weren't human or belong to homo sapiens. Just seems easier and more logical to say human life starts at conception.
ReplyDeleteLike that program on CBS where the guy solves crimes by NUMBERS I can put what I just said another way. There have been scientific, philosophical and religious discussions on when life begins but what about a mathematical approach? The velocity and direction, the vector of life has to start somewhere so can you go back in time and say at any point along the way you were not YOU? I've heard it said the embryo or fetus is not a potential human life but a human life with great potential. The continuum of life starts at conception, you were once a fertilized egg, you were once a zygote, you were once an embryo, you were once a fetus. You weren't something that became that fertilized egg, that zygote, that embryo, that fetus. This is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of existence. Perhaps the math part has been lacking in the discussion all along and so without precise laws we're left with the gray.
ReplyDeleteI for one like your math analysis on the issue, it is so true that no matter what name you give it, once the egg is fertilized there is nothing else that fertilized egg could become other than a human being.
ReplyDeleteBB mentioned all those scientific, philosophical, religious approaches to when life begins. I've just added a mathematical approach but I would say in all these approaches it all leads back to human life beginning at conception. OK the religious discussion really hinges on ensoulment but I don't think that's relevant, after all if you believe a newborn only gets a soul after 14 days let's say you don't also sanction infanticide. I've something to say about the underlying cause of it all, SEX and our views on it, in just a minute but we all began as that zygote. When you put the math and the philosophy together the zygote wasn't something that became the YOU later on, you were that zygote, that embryo at one point in your journey. The choicers want to add so many new thresholds to define you as human but it's as simple as the dot at the end of this sentence.
ReplyDeleteFor me at least the whole abortion discussion has a certain absurdity to it in this sense - SEX. Now liberals place too much importance on sex whereas you could say conservatives place too little importance on it but in my view sex is nonessential at least in a non-reproductive sense (of course the libs would disagree here). In other words you won't die if you don't have sex, ok it might lead to depression but it's not on a par with food, drink and shelter. Now most people want sex at least some point in their life, there's nothing wrong with this but the whole debate seems to assume that the sex was necessary in the first place. I guess mine would be the fairly typical socially conservative position that periodic abstinence wouldn't hurt. Theoretically if people didn't have sex or had very little sex abortion would disappear overnight. That ain't gonna happen, it ain't realistic so that's why I go with soapie's view of sex as a contract, assume the risks and accept any consequences that may come along. In other words don't act surprised, you don't wake up pregnant, you don't catch it. You might say I'm not anti-sex but anti-promiscuity, for me there's a difference between two single people in love facing an unintended pregnancy and the housewife who gets pregnant from the plumber. The difference between the lifers and the choicers in this regard is that the lifers would regard the first couple much more sympathetically whereas the choicer seems to regard all human sexual behavior as equally good, doesn't look at the root causes just what is she going to do now? Again abortion has that absurd weird quality to it because in so many cases the sex may not have even been worth it. I've known people who have had sex with each other while drunk but would never in a million years when sober. This is why we're social conservatives in the first place, so-cons have opinions on human behavior whereas the fc's say we're poking our nose into other people's business. I wouldn't say that this is so just that we're more into cause-and-effect.
ReplyDeleteJust a quick note to myself. Here is another post that I want to read and respond to when I have time.
ReplyDeleteWell the lib philosophy of instant gratification, sex anytime anywhere anyhow and with anyone NEEDS abortion as a backup which is why Hef gave money to the abortion movement early on. Hef and Gloria Steinem agree on abortion but they're not on the same page, strange bedfellows. Steinem and the late Jerry Falwell agreed for the most part on porn, this bedroom is getting stranger by the minute. All anti-drug? Folks divide the issues differently, hell our own camp ain't even on the same page half the time.
ReplyDeleteOne year! Wow! That's sort of a long time.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm having a lot of different reactions to this post and every time I come back to it, it seems that I'm limited on time. My husband is annoyed with me because I've been on the computer too long today.
Actually, I think that the sanctity of marriage is taught. If I didn't have such a strong Christian upbringing, I may not have held these convictions as strongly as I do, but an entire year!? That's sort of excessive!!
I appreciate your comments here of course, Z-man, it goes along with this blog stuck in my head that I never really actually take the time to write and post, but the instant gratification aspect, I think BB mentioned at my blog the "me" generation which is also part of it. It's like our personal enjoyment is more important than our personal responsibility for our actions or our inactions. Maybe we cannot legislate morality, but I don't think that means we cannot expect it of one another, or that we shouldn't be able to come to an agreement even on what is moral and what is immoral.
ReplyDeleteEh, maybe I don't need to write that posting stuck in my head, I think what I just wrote is it in a nutshell.
I don't know what it is about this particular post that makes me feel tired. Maybe I won't ever get around to reading all the comments. It's funny because on an earlier post, "The Hippy Lobby Never Seems to Die", February's Archive, there are now 133 Comments and yet I sometimes have trouble reading only 30.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about this "Moral Instruction" Post, though, in relation to that Baby and Bath Water analogy that I've mentioned before. While feeling over whelmed, Z, by the requirement of waiting an entire year (the Dirty Bath Water), it is easy to overlook the importance of the Baby (Counseling and Classes designed to strengthen marriage).
We should really try to never throw out the Baby with the Bath Water, just because the Dirty Bath Water is presented in a way that makes us feel annoyed. Put another way, too often in our annoyance about the way something is presented and/or the high expectations that are included, we reject the entire message that's being presented.
There are actually two messages here whether then only one. For those who receive the message, don't throw out the Baby with the Bath Water and for those sending the message. Don't include so much Filthy Bath Water, for when there is too much there, the Baby may not be received.
Come to think of it, maybe this also relates to the less is more idea.
I must admit that even I have trouble with the "less is more" idea. Though, being a slow reader myself, I need the Less is More approach from others and yet when I try to apply it, I can at times be long winded and wordy. It seems that I just can't help it.
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking of other sides to the issue that you've presented. For example, it is really not such a bad idea to know someone for a year before marrying them, for marriage is not really something that should be rushed into.
I also do not think that the "Sanctity of Marriage" and the "Seriousness of Marriage" is automatic. I think it is taught. Usually this is done by the parents, but if not, than it is good for it to be stressed by the church. There are plenty of anti-family, anti-marriage and anti-moral influences out there. Somebody has to be present something more positive. If not the church than who?
I've been told so many times that the only way to really have an affect on people is through love, not just preaching. Prayer helps as well, for it is God who changes hearts not people.
Oh, BTW, in relation to the Hippy Blog that you say is not on page 2, on your blog, page 2 is not easy to get to. I scrolled down and looked for the link and could not find it. Fortunately, it is still in February's Archive.
Odd. Back in January, I commented on divorce, noting the rate was highest among Evangelicals
ReplyDelete..odder yet it is lowest among
athiests and agnostics ..wonder if the 'me generation' Beth mentioned is foundering against the ethics of Christianity Lista mentioned?
Curiouser yet, what's with the
A & A folks staying married?
Hmmmmm.
More to read. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteLista: "Counseling and classes designed to strengthen marriage."
ReplyDeleteThat's the whole point of this thread, I don't think such things can be taught. You either have it or you don't, you either believe in marriage or you don't. I don't know what it is that bugs me about this but if I go into one of these classes with the love of my life who I will love forever...put it this way, it'd be like Mario Batali being forced to go to some chef class and the instructor going over the basics...why he probably would call him a d**kwad and a mofo, grab his butt and make crude humping gestures (you have to be a regular reader of PageSix to get this).
"It is really not such a bad idea to know someone for a year before marrying them."
Call me old-fashioned by I believe in love at first sight, that's redtape stuff. If it takes a whole year before you decide you actually love someone then maybe you shouldn't go through with it (being a professional blog agitator I love to invert conventional wisdom from time to time).
Well, I guess I disagree with you, Z. Morals are not automatic, they need to be taught and than reinforced over and over again. It is good when this process is started within the family, but this isn't always the case, so this also becomes a very important function of the Church.
ReplyDeleteSo you think that you're an expert on love? That's interesting. I don't believe in love at first sight. There are lots of divorces among those who started out feeling madly in love.
I don't think the idea of love at first sight is old fashioned, Z. I whether thought that the idea of dating for an entire year before becoming engaged was the more old fashioned idea.
You would not believe how many times in my life I was absolutely positive I was in love and than changed my mind after only one month. I eventually started telling the guys that I dated to wait one month and than I would tell them how I felt about them.
I guess I'm still thinking about this post. Believe it or not, Z, there have been times in which people who thought they were madly in love, but were taking the marriage decision too lightly, have changed their mind during pre-marital counseling and broke off their engagements. This is a tremendous positive, because such couples should not be getting married.
ReplyDeleteBelieving in romantic love and believing in the permanent commitment of marriage is not the same thing. Sometimes the permanent commitment involves staying in the marriage and continuing to work on it when all those sweet love feelings aren't there anymore.
You would probably like the movie "Fools Rush in". It's one of my favorites. They get married in a hurry, have all sorts of problems and yet decide in the end to remain married any way. Naturally, they eventually live happily ever after. It's a very cute and entertaining movie. Of course, just as we've already discussed, Hollywood is the supreme authority on these things, right?
It's not as if it takes an entire year to decide these things, Z. It's more like insurance.
The main point I was thinking about, though, is that I really do hope that you have more than one subjective experience to back up your opinion on this. Though such a subjective experience is likely very dear to your heart, it is still just an isolated subjective experience and that is not a good way to evaluate what's true.
I have to say I pretty much disagree with all you've just posted. I posted my theory recently that true love is rare and that's why so many folks get divorced, has nothing to do with waiting periods and such. I think it's up to the individuals to decide how long to wait, I don't think you can broadbrush this. One thing that really irks me though is if you fall in love with a very attractive woman people will question it. Most often they'll term it an infatuation which means I guess if you fall in love with Janet Reno it's the Real Deal no? Re moral instruction realistically speaking it's most relevant to youth. Once a person is grown and well into adulthood they pretty much have their moral views set. I was at a Mass a few months ago and the pastor was talking about sin and used the example of a man who meets a woman and they go to bed. He said "it'll drag you down" and I can imagine someone of a liberal persuasion just laughing at that one. I think we social conservatives really don't want to admit the limitations of moral instruction for adults, we act like we're changing minds when we ain't.
ReplyDeleteYou're still hung up on those subjective experiences. I've had other people tell me what my subjective experiences mean, it's a mean peeve of mine. Woody Allen once famously said "the heart wants what the heart wants" and conservatives jumped on his case. I think of love in more poetic terms, yours is more the analytical approach.
ReplyDeleteBB makes the point that divorce is highest among the evangelical crowd and lowest apparently among atheists and agnostics. This needs to be examined as it seems to be saying at least to me that people who follow the book on marriage wind up getting divorced whereas the Godless crowd stick together more. I had to laugh at one forum though. Some atheist posted a thread saying us atheists are supposed to be immoral and hedonistic but he hasn't been to any orgies lately, where's all the debauchery coming my way once I decided to not believe in God? I got a few lols out of that one. It's like you might decide to become a hey baby I'm a libertine now and yet very few women will want to go to bed with you. Ah the Godless, how much fun they're having!!
I wish I had more time, but we have company coming soon and may be tied up for a few days, so I'll see what I can do to respond to your last two comments and then there may be silence for awhile.
ReplyDeleteBoy! I guess I disagree with pretty much everything that you have said in the above post.
If "true love is rare" than I guess it would be difficult to study, wouldn't it? To say that if the marriage lasts, it must be true love and if the marriage does not last, it must not be would be over simplifying the problem.
Though moral instruction is indeed more "relevant to youth", it is not as if older folks do not at times change their mind on things. It may be less common, but it still happens.
The problem with the whole blogasphere is that people who blog tend to be even more set in there opinions than the average. When you think about it, people blog hoping to sway people to their point of view and yet most bloggers are not willing to be swayed themselves, so when you view it in that light, it seems sort of fruitless, doesn't it?
What this makes me think is that maybe the blogasphere is not where we should be focusing so much of our efforts.
I believe my theory of true love has some merit, I really don't think two soulmates who have found each other are going to be splitting up. Re moral instruction I just think you can't change everybody. For most people they'll have to have some kind of moral epiphany or personal revelation, come to their own conclusions. They say you get more conservative as you age. If this is so then the person whom you're trying to instruct over the pitfalls of casual sex let's say, well in twenty years time he might agree with you. That's kind of my main point here. I still believe in the sheer poetry of love, without it Life becomes boring and you have a more pragmatic approach so that's where I think our differences come in.
ReplyDeleteYou say that I am "Hung Up on Subjective Experiences", what you should have said is that I am "Hung Up on requiring Scientific Evidence". You are the one hung up on "Subjective Experiences". To say that we have a different focus, though, would be much more polite, than to call the focus some kind of a "Hang Up".
ReplyDeleteI don't have much faith in Romantic Love. For me, it usually fades and Marriage is a lot of work to maintain. Perhaps there are others who have had experiences different than this, yet even if this thing known as "True Love", "Sole Mate" or whatever, does exist, if it is rare, than it's probably not the best idea to keep getting divorces in order to keep looking for something that is most likely an illusion anyway.
For the most part, the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.
I'd like to take the time to look at the research that BB posted a link to, but unfortunately, I don't have time right now.
Getting back to the Subjective verses the Objective. You think that you are so old fashioned, Z, yet the focus on the Subjective, whether than the Objective is mainly a result of a recent trend known as Post-Modernism. The current generation doesn't have much faith in Science any more, so your focus is actually more in line with the current generation than it is with the "Old Fashioned" crowd.
What's new is not always right, though. In the long run, the wise keep returning to the knowledge of our past.
I think, Z, that this idea about "Soul Mates" probably contributes to a lot of divorces, because if it feels as if the person one married is not their "Soul Mate", than it would make sense to get a divorce and try again, yet if by chance, you happen to be wrong and the "Soul Mate" idea is just an illusion, than these divorces should never have happened.
ReplyDeleteThere are times too, in which people who were considering a divorce will find a way to rekindle their romance if they really try. It takes effort, though. This is not just automatic.
Perhaps people get more conservative as they age because the conservative view is the right one and it is just as I said in my previous comment, "What's new is not always right." and "In the long run, the wise keep returning to the knowledge of our past..
The unfortunate reality about casual sex is that some of the STDs that are picked up from it are not curable and in some cases they can even kill you, so sometimes realizing later that one agrees that casual sex is not such a good idea comes too late.
Lista said:
ReplyDeleteWhat this makes me think is that maybe the blogasphere is not where we should be focusing so much of our efforts.
This may not be true, there may be some people who read our blogs that could give them pause or even change someone's mind, they just don't tell you that. It is those of us who RESPOND in the comments who are probably set in our ways and won't budge.
Beth,
ReplyDeleteIf people are affected by my blog, I think that it is probably the ones who are not commenting, just as you have suggested. Also, possibly the ones who find my blog through a Google search are more opened minded than my fellow bloggers.
Z,
I have so much that I could say about Romantic Love. If I wasn't so busy preparing for our company, I would probably really be on a roll, yet I'm afraid some of my responses are going to be delayed. Please stay tuned.
Lista: "The current generation doesn't have much faith in Science anymore."
ReplyDeleteWell who can blame them? We always hear about this and that thing causing cancer, now it's alcohol even in moderation that poses a risk to women, ho-hum, well how 'bout Science coming up with a cure? Besides cancer there's a whole host of diseases that Science has as yet to find cures for. I'm kind of stuck on this theme of late, the modern inability apparently to cure any major disease anymore. Much more on subjective experiences in my next comment.
You see the trouble with psychiatry is the shaky premise that they can get inside your head, that they know you better than you. Of course shrinks can have some valuable insights but again I question the premise. You're the one with the subjective experience, who can really say that your love for a man or a woman is simply an infatuation or something more? So how can the study of emotions and the mind be in any sense objective anyway? People who tell others what their subjective experiences mean, they know better. The realists who describe what the married state is all about and why romantic love is an illusion, it's one of the reasons I don't want to get married. It's like two comrades who go to department stores together and occasionally have sex and argue, I'd rather be single.
ReplyDeleteI have discussed the topic of true love with Z-man before and have come to the conclusion that his ideas are completely on a different level (a higher level indeed) than most of us, which is why I think any woman he found to be his soulmate would be one lucky lady.
ReplyDeleteI don't like at all the pragmatic approach here, it's like filling out a job application.
ReplyDeleteZ-Man,
ReplyDeleteThe fact that our knowledge is limited is no secret, yet I'd like to see you come up with a cure for cancer based on some subjective experience. It really isn't right to criticize something, when no better approach can be offered.
Actually, Z, I wouldn't recommend going to a psychiatrist for counseling on love. They specialize more in emotional problems than in the more day to day questions that are asked by people who are basically functioning on a normal healthy level.
I just think that a person should use both their mind and their heart when deciding who to marry. I agree that Pure Pragmatism is not the way to go, but neither is Pure Romance without any involvement of the human brain.
What I want to eventually do, Z, is share a subjective experience of someone who has the same philosophy that you do, Z, but who has interpreted her experience way differently than I would have and the end result is that she is still not married to the person who she claims to be her soul mate.
I've been so busy and in order to share this story, I have to be able to find the time to think.
I think Z should go on the Bachelor and date 25 women at once and maybe THAT would cure him!
ReplyDelete(oh, God, yes I am kidding!!)
I never said list that people who decide to divorce are doing so for the explicit reason that they haven't found their soulmates yet. What I am saying is I think this is their subconscious reason and as with everything subconscious they don't know it yet. I just find the whole premise of the shrink class to be shaky at best, that they know you better than you and as for cancer it's just my opinion that after three long decades after Nixon declared a war on this dread disease that people shouldn't still be dying from it en masse or at least let's get a final report card on this and say it's too baffling to cure instead of holding out false hope.
ReplyDeleteEgads Beth I never watch that show!! I steer clear of it and would rather watch them sell a vacuum cleaner on HSN. So this woman got hurt by our Bachelor who changed his mind at the last minute and women's groups are angry with him and the program. Well ya wanna know something, go out with an average Joe once in a while lady.
ReplyDelete"I never said, Lista, that people who decide to divorce are doing so for the explicit reason that they haven't found their soulmates yet."
ReplyDeleteYes Z,
And I never said that you said it. I only said that it happens and whether or not it is subconscious or not is irrelevant. When you reinforce the idea consciously, you give conscious permission for these divorces.
I don't know why you keep calling it a "Shrink Class", Z. If it takes place at a church, than I would hope that it was based on Christianity and not Psychology.
I don't think we should give up on finding a cure for cancer, Z. That's not a good idea at all.
NO, we should not give up finding a cure for cancer I just want to know why we haven't found one yet. As for divorce as a conservative I don't condone it but am simply stating that IMO we often marry because we feel social pressure to do so and so we hurry up the stages when we really haven't found our soulmate yet so how could it end otherwise? I think soapie might agree with me that there's too much social pressure to do the right or expected thing and then when we've done the right thing we're not happy in the long run.
ReplyDeleteYou ask an impossible question, Z, that can not be answered, but it's still important that we do not give up.
ReplyDeleteI basically agree with your comment and perhaps too much stress on the idea that "Love is not really that important" can be a considerable negative that results in unhappiness in marriage. There was something more that I wanted to share, but feel like putting it off again because, as is so often true, I am out of time again.
I've heard so many theories on why we haven't found a cure for cancer yet from it's too baffling to solve to the downright sinister as they don't really want to find a cure and then they kill you with the chemo. I don't subscribe to that of course but they say they're about two years away from finding the God particle aka the Higgs boson so if they can find out how the universe was born you'd think there would be more progress on the cancer front. Wanna go for 100?
ReplyDeleteI know how to get you to 100 comments, Z. All I have to do is refer your page to one of my fans, such as BB-Idaho, and than just keep talking. In the long run, though, this will reduce the possibility that these comments will be read in the future.
ReplyDeleteNo I'm kidding this time but this brings up an interesting point. I believe it was Patrick M who suggested to you how to get more hits, it's all in the wording of the title you choose but I disagree to this extent. That hippy blog that garnered the most posts I've ever had, 133, now I'm sure if I simply titled it "Psychedelic drugs" it'd be up there on most search engines but I didn't and you know why? It's because the title I did choose, "The hippy lobby never seems to die" best summed up my overall theme and I always prefer the colorful title. I just gotta be me!
ReplyDeleteI do know what you mean, Z, especially when you consider the fact that a lot of Google Search Hits don't even registrar more than 0:00 Seconds of visiting time, yet I was discouraged when I tried to find this page, "Moral Instruction", by doing a Google Search and couldn't find it.
ReplyDelete