On visiting San Francisco in 1968, Tom Wolfe stumbled across what he describes as a “curious footnote to the hippie movement.” Doctors at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic were treating diseases, Wolfe claims, that no living doctor had ever encountered before: “diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names, diseases such as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot.”
The diseases returned, says Wolfe, because the hippies living in the communes wanted to sweep away “codes and restraints,” including those rules
that said you shouldn’t use other people’s toothbrushes or sleep on other people’s mattresses without changing the sheets or, as was more likely, without using sheets at all, or that you and five other people shouldn’t drink from the same bottle of Shasta or take tokes from the same cigarette.
By getting the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, and the rot, the hippies were “relearning” the laws of hygiene.
It is often said that for national security conservatives, it is always 1938. A corollary is that for us religiously-oriented conservatives, it’s always 1968. Our society is always having to be retaught the laws of moral hygiene.
Take, for example, a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that argues the “war on drugs” has also contributed to the HIV epidemic around the world. It references “the executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and other prominent scientific leaders,” and claims that
Criminalizing drug abuse drives addicts deeper underground and into the kinds of unsafe practices such as needle-sharing that spread infection. We have seen clearly that countries with the most draconian drug laws also have the highest rates of HIV infection among users.
Somehow the editors and the "prominent scientific leaders" they invoke managed to miss the fact, as Matthew Hanley recently noted in an article for On the Square, that there is no reliable evidence needle exchange programs reduce the incidence of HIV infection.
Why would anyone think it would? Giving clean needles to heroin addicts makes as much sense as giving clean toothbrushes to a Haight-Ashbury hippie: They'll still share it—both the needle and the toothbrush—with the bass player from Jefferson Airplane because they either don’t understand or don’t care about the hygienic consequences of their actions.
In response to this type of foolish disregard for the codes and restraints of nature and society, doctrinaire liberals and libertarians always proffer policy solutions that require . . . further disregard of traditional codes and restraints. How this leads to a better society is unclear. But they harbor no doubts that it would work if only The Man, and his arbitrary rules, weren’t holding everyone down.
Naturally, we religiously-oriented conservatives are skeptical. Unlike these Rousseauian utopians, we can’t even pretend to know how to build a healthy political and social structure. What we do know, however, is how to recognize a sick one.
Just as physicians define bodily health as the absence of sickness, conservatives view the absence of sickness as the best gauge of the health of the body politic. Our primary socio-political objective, therefore, is similar to that of medical doctors: preventing and eliminating moral sickness.
The media critic and educator Neil Postman used this same medical analogy in describing the proper role of teachers. In his essay “The Educationist as Painkiller,” Postman proposes that educators don’t try to make students intelligent (“because we don’t know how to do that”) but instead try to cure stupidity in some of the more obvious forms: “either-or thinking; overgeneralization; inability to distinguish between facts and inferences; and reification, a disturbingly prevalent tendency to confuse words with things.”
The physician knows about sickness and can offer specific advice about how to avoid it. Don’t smoke, don’t consume too much salt or saturated fat, take two aspirin, take penicillin every four hours and so forth. I am proposing that the study of education and practice of education adopt this paradigm precisely. The educationist should become an expert in stupidity and be able to prescribe specific procedures for avoiding it. . . . Stupidity is a form of behavior. It is not something we have; it is something we do.
Acquiring similar expertise should be the goal of all conservatives. Fortunately, the process for gaining such prowess is clear and well-established.
To become an apprentice of stupidity one merely has to pass through the stage of life known as adolescence. The lessons you’ll learn by observing the behavior of yourself and your peers provides the tacit knowledge of what stupidity feels, looks, sounds, and tastes like.
But to become a true expert in stupidity requires becoming a parent. The task of raising a child consists primarily of recognizing and preventing the myriad varieties of behavioral stupidity that children engage in—mental, moral, hygienic, spiritual. Whether it’s keeping a toddler from eating the contents of the cat’s litter box, preventing a teenager from fornicating with a lip-pierced lothario, or simply stopping the kid from sharing their Shasta with a hippie, parenting is a non-stop immersion course in counter-impudence.
This is why the natural family, the preeminent conservative institution and the primary conveyor of Tradition (the mores and habits of stupidity prevention inherited from previous generations), must be continuously protected from the pollution of our libertine culture. It's our first and strongest line of defense against the excesses of unfettered individualism. If we don’t preserve the natural family, we’ll all learn firsthand, as Sergeant Stryker said, that “Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid.”
Joe Carter is web editor of First Things.
Resources
Matthew Hanley’s “Reducing Risk, Increasing AIDS” can be found here.
Tom Wolfe's "The Great Relearning" can be found at the website of The American Spectator.
Comments:
Why is that? The fact is that Our Lord himself condemns sins of greed much more frequently and vociferously than he condemns sins of lust and gluttony.
We see quite a few posts in the First Things daily blog denouncing sins of lust and gluttony. How about a few posts denouncing sins of greed, just to balance things out?
If Mr. Carter's diagnosis is inaccurate, his treatment is worse. Stupidity is hardly a disease confined to the young. Adulthood has its own forms of the virus. Certainly, most adults have obtained some wisdom that they lacked as teenagers, but that hardly makes them worthy moral guides. Without putting too fine a point on it, I think the myriad spiritual, moral, and intellectual crises of our day thoroughly eviscerate Mr. Carter's thesis.
To sum up, then, Tradition is not just the "mores and habits of stupidity prevention inherited from previous generations." It is also the institutionalized and unquestioned stupidities inherited from previous generations. How many generations were told, with extreme moral enthusiasm, of the intrinsic superiority of whites? How many are still taught to be unthinking consumers in an economy dominated by the love of money and power? If this is the "conservative" position, then I must respectfully disagree. Tradition is no savior from stupidity; that role belongs to Christ alone, the Power and Wisdom of God.
Eager to regulate and controls sins... a sanctimonious way of framing it, to say the least. How about simply "discourage." And I don't know anyone who has had a loved one die from heroin who would really link it to "gluttony." As for greed, I cannot think of one religious-oriented "liberal" group who has given more to poverty relief than has Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing, for one outrageous example to dispute the tired stereotype. Not to mention World Vision. Believers can collectively raise money and organize relief, but they cannot collectively help me pursue moral purity or lose weight. Maybe that is part of the story.
I believe strongly that Mr. Carter hits the nail he's aiming at: that stupidity needs to be fought, that parents must do their best even with their own limitations, and finally, that Traditions (especially the Magisterial truths) are the prime mallet with which one should bop them on the head.
The "myriad spiritual, moral, and intellectual crises of our day" in fact, support this notion of ending stupidity by obeying tradition, for how many of these crises would exist with better parenting? Root causes of evil facing the world today come from the underlying vices present in all people. In opposition to the seven sins, there are seven virtues to fight them with. Where do we learn the virtues from if not our parents?
When Joe Carter and others use the word tradition with a capital "T," I don't think they are referring to the many foolish things that various people have maintained through the years, e.g., racial superiroity. Rather, they are talking about the thought, literature, and folk wisdom that has been considered worthy of preservation. Hence, the word "tradition," that which has been handed down.
I'm far from denying that there are "institutionalized and unquestioned stupidities inherited from previous generations." I just don't think this is what anyone means by Tradition. No one, for instance, speakes reverently of the Tradition of racial supremacy or the Tradition of consumerism. Indeed, we have to rely on Tradition in order to condemn these false "traditions."
Such critics equate profit with "greed." But as economists point out, the production of profit is virtue--it is what business is supposed to do, to the benefit of all. These critics would be much happier if all businesses produced losses, until the critics began to feel the effects.
As for the complacency about sexual morality, a good example is the latest Freakonomics book, “Super Freakonomics." It starts with a long disquisition on prostitution, which ends with a virtual apotheosis of a “smart” up-scale hooker who found a way to make a fortune by working 15 hours a week. She's presented as a super-smart super-entrepreneur. Not one hint that anything about her life was objectionable. How sophisticate!
Next, you'll say that condoms spread AIDS. Valid points about abstinence get lost when you paint with too broad a brush, as you have here.
Yes, and Gregory of Nyssa categorically condemned slavery centuries before. We both know, however, that slavery continued to exist in ostensibly Christian societies for centuries after both proclamations. The Church has taught the spiritual equality of slaves with free people, but until recently the consensus was that this did NOT require their physical and economic emancipation from their masters. I would add that neither does it imply the intellectual equality of master and slave, something that most societies have not taken for granted. After all, Paul tells masters to treat their slaves fairly in Colossians 4 and Ephesians 6--implying that it was all right to have slaves as long as they treat them kindly.
I think it's quite a stretch to say that most of the world's problems could have been avoided by following tradition. A significant number of our political problems--environmental devastation, rampant consumerism, the looming collapse of U.S. entitlement programs--have come about BECAUSE we have uncritically accepted our parents' economic traditions. More importantly, though, I think you miss the bigger picture. Yes, some of these problems could have been avoided by better parenting. But if almost all adults are complicit in our current crises, then how can they help their children grow out of the same vices they are mired in? The family alone isn't sufficient--that's why I think the church is needed. So in answer to your last question, we learn virtue from the church as well as our parents. The most important moral lessons come not from the past (in the form of family and tradition), nor from the future (in the form of liberal fantasies of "progress'), but from "elsewhere"--from the God who inhabits eternity. Don't get me wrong, family is important in moral education, but it can't instill moral excellence alone, nor is it strictly necessary to attain sanctity. That's the church's function first.
Paul:
I understand that's a common meaning of Tradition. However, it seemed to me that Mr. Carter meant something broader than that. He talks about "mental, moral, hygenic, [and] spiritual" traditions that adults pass on to children. Certainly, moral and spiritual traditions may constitute a part of Tradition, but it seems to me that the place of mental, and certainly hygenic, traditions is not nearly so certain. Furthermore, if we selectively define Tradition to be the inherited wisdom of past generations, then it's questionable whether families are particularly good transmitters of Tradition. At the very least, it seems difficult to assert that the traditional family must be protected because it is the transmitter of wisdom par excellence--it seems to me that the church is a more natural choice for such a role.
The accumulated stupidity of people which we are glad to see dead, is called EXAMPLE. Traditionally, example serves as a teaching aide, the purpose which is the avoiding of stupidity.......
I recall back in 1964 at age 16 when I was using heroin and hepatitis among users was epidemic, we started boiling/steam-cleaning our needles, but this precaution, far easier than going to a needle exchange, wore off quickly. You see, being addicted to anything involves a dynamic that goes far deeper than any notion of being safe. That's why I've always laughed at the notion of "safe sex", for the very clinical nature of safe sex negates its excitement, danger and mystery. Even the married man and woman in sexual union will destroy their lives of narcissistic self absorption - they will die - and enter a new identity of being one. And it is no surprise to me that gays have of late been disconcertingly abandoning the precautions of “safe sex”, even those thoroughly educated in safe sex ideology. There is much gained interiorly with dancing at death's door that goes much deeper than even nihilistic excitement. At the heart of a rebellious life, which includes a gay lifestyle and a heroin addict lifestyle, is the commitment to death, not life, for a commitment to life is a commitment to a participation in the life of God. In other words, a commitment to the glorification of Self is always a rebellion against life itself which cannot be separated from the common good, and why an ideology of “what’s good for me and damn the common good” is a negation of life itself, and why gay advocates work so hard at normalizing the gay lifestyle, to create the illusion that somehow the gay lifestyle is the common good, which involves going after the young and indoctrinating them into this delusion. This is why safe sex ideology will always be doomed, for sex itself as life lived is one aspect of the unification of man and woman and a direct participation in the 8th day of Creation. You're in or you are out, life or death. And the committed heroin addict, who might try to tell you his addiction is genetic, in fact has found a way to make total love with himself, the height of a rebellion against God. Whereas the gay man simply makes love to himself with a reflection of himself, another man.
We’ve done a good job of blinding ourselves to the medically dangerous activities involved in a gay lifestyle, and how even those who use condoms often end in violating the methodology of proper condom use and end up with AIDS anyway. And now we will flash images and rhetoric about needle exchanges and how we can reach a place where the libertine pursuit of happiness can be actualized, when in fact its inevitability is always a torture program, for those involved in the lifestyles of death and their family members who, in their fear, are trying real hard to adopt to the delusions of safe drug and sex ideologies.
I mean the knowledge of how to treat the cut, the disinfectant, the internet or book where you read what to do..that's all just "a bunch of stupid old people who we're glad are dead"?
I think our best proof of the brokenness of our society is the tone of some of our comments. Lord knows I've been that banal and bitter on the internet before. I think we would treat each other with more respect if we shared a cultural tradition more intimately, like those stupid old dead people who had happier families and much lesser rates of depression, murder, sexual abuse, sexual diseases, etc. Just as sure as they weren't perfect they did better than we're doing now.
