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to the several you've laid before us. I'm pretty sure that neither Bronze Age nor 1950's American Christian authoritarian ideals, offer us a path to a viable future. At least, not in my conception of a tolerable future. Which is not to say that neither offers any deployable wisdom at all for such a path. For one thing, I have the distinct impression that my version of boy-love would not feel very much at home in ancient Greece, given my apparently, altogether too vicarious inclinations towards the boys' pleasure. Oddly, that would be viewed as shameful, from what I understand. Also, with me, my ardor would not be a passing phase prior to "growing up" to perform my heterosexual, procreative duties. Somehow, I think that I'd be nearly as alienated in that society as the one I did emerge from in the late 1950's. More suffocatingly than the magical world of antiquity would be the one of mid-century America that my parents generation administered and which failed so miserably as I came of age, and not at all surprisingly. Yes, it wasn't replaced with much that was desirable and lots that was not foreseeable to those who tore it down, but neither does it represent an ideal that many of us could tolerate, either. Another thing, science is going to have to be recognized as the final word on any definition of reality if a culture is going to be sustainable into the future. Anything less will be a deal-killer and can only lead to disaster. This is a major reason why Christian America is crumbling: it's adherence to faith-based, reason-free truth claims that crumble underneath empirical scrutiny. That, and their children will no longer tolerate wearing the strait jacket that angry gods and paternal authority demand. |