Modern Culture’s Obsession: Pleasure, Pain, Risk and Reward

It isn’t just the classroom, either.  We could talk about light bulbs, soda cups, salt content, safety equipment, arbitrary laws for the environment, anti-smoking campaigns and on and on.  We are continually having our freedoms nibbled away at.

But we are blind — often willfully so — to certain other risks.  Real risks.  I suggest this is because they are linked to perceived pleasures.  To speak about the risks, is to attack the associated pleasure.

For example, in this self-esteem obsessed environment, we are obligated to say all cultures are equal, even though we know they are not.  For example, cultures that divide people into castes are objectively flawed.  Sex-selective abortion, immolation of widows and female genital mutilation are always wicked.  And we should be able to discuss such things without being labeled “bigot”.

As a pleasure-obsessed culture, we’re naturally obsessed with sex.  It is our culture’s sacred cow.  As a consequent of our current sexual mores, we are willfully blind to certain dangers.  For example: one school hung a poster (in a grade 7/8 classroom) whose graphics and message were intended for use in a homosexual bath house.  It’s an official endorsement of meaningless sex … by our “educators”, no less.

Another examplehttp://www.lifesitenews.com/pro-choice-reporter-covering-gosnell-trial-changes-mind-on-abortion.html: the fact that nail salons faced tougher regulations than Gosnell’s house of horrors.  Why? Because sex has become political.  Fifteen year old girls can’t drink a beer, but can give informed consent to the risks of an abortifacient drug?  We’re starting Sex Ed in kindergarten but still have 20 million new infections per year. (Don’t forget the drug resistant ones!)  Why does our success look so much like failure?

In Roman times, “Bread and Circuses” (entertainment and government largesse) were used to numb people, and deflect public attention away from society’s real problems.  These, rather than religion, are the true opiate of the masses.  Don’t fall for it.

Image; courtesy of Dezidor; Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license