This article was published at Crisis Magazine.
One of our common values was once our desire to protect the innocence of children. We wanted to protect them against exposure to evil, shield them from harmful and self-destructive behaviors, and guard them against those who would abuse them. It’s the most minimal function of a society that calls itself civilized. Of course, we don’t use that term anymore. To call ourselves civilized is to imply that some cultures are not. It is to exercise a judgment, perhaps the greatest sin of this relativist age.
As early as 2014, the modern singer Lady Gaga performed on stage before thousands of adoring fans, many of them young. As they watched, another woman shoved her fingers to the back of her throat to trigger vomiting, which she then did on the chest of Lady Gaga, repeatedly. This was then broadcast to hundreds of thousands who would later revere the performance. The woman doing the vomiting advertises herself as a “professional vomit artist.”
Keep reading this article at Crisis Magazine.
Today our young lack identity, based on what it is to be a human being, as opposed to inert pieces on a chess board. Unmoored from traditional literature and culture, children are adrift upon a sea of 'choice', without the knowledge or the skills of self-management, to navigate such treacherous terrain.
This last winter, I saw adults wearing pajamas, in public, in two different states. Not just any pajamas, but the one piece kind, with the integral slippers.