This morning in my link roundup I noted Jason Kuznicki’s remarks on some police (drug enforcement) brutality. In my short reflection on that case, I asked:
The question we might be better asking about drug laws (and those on sex, pornography, and drinking (to excess)) seems to be not so much if those laws are right, needed, or helpful but why the heck do we need them in the first place? These things are all “bad/wrong/poisonous to mind, body and soul” should have a natural response of … Duh! Keep away! But it doesn’t. Why!? This error may be root of the essential sickness in Western culture and dealing with it via jail and courts is a poor band-aid at best.
The answer may be in the fact that as a society we’ve lost touch with our mortality.
Death. The end of days shuffling about this mortal coil, at the very least on “this pass” (wherin I pass over the Asian reincarnation and Christian Resurrection … for now). It touches us in our daily life very little at all. Medical science is so skillful at keeping it at bay, that few and fewer children die in childhood. As adults we live longer and stay more active, and the dread diseases that shorten our lifespans significantly are very much set in the background. Cancer survivors are no longer the oddity. No longer does every family have a need for Kindertotenleider
Does this connect with the drug war and pornography? It may. Our children take longer and longer to mature, in fact viewing our popular culture, immaturity is celebrated. Why rush? Youth lasts forever … right? Being disconnected from our mortality has a lot of consequences.
- We are (it seems overly?) shocked when mortal consequences sneak into view, 2000+ US dead in Iraq, woe are we. Such great numbers, … for the immortal young innumerate perhaps.
- Death is a serious matter, belief in the life after or no. Denial of death removes a certain gravity or maturity from one’s outlook. Tolkein pens his immortal elves as often a flighty unserious people, perhaps for that reason. For untroubled by death, so much of life becomes less serious.
- Death is a consequence, which none escape. Drugs and Pornography, devolving into other pursuits seeking salvation via bodily pleasures is a route with consequences as well. The example linked, thanks to Ms Yoest, may be fraught as well with the unseriousness of the entertainment industry and the consequences of extreme wealth. But the baroque lives lived by those people is done partially as a result of their career and extreme wealth. But perhaps it might to also be made possible by their success in denying their mortality and … those consequences of actions.
- We don’t need to make laws against jumping out of cars traveling at highway speeds. Nor against a large variety of obviously fatal things.
Drugs, pornography, et al, are all what was once part of the panopoly of the eight offenses (Evagrius) or seven deadly sins (the West). Lust, Gluttony, Sloth, Avarice, Envy, etc? Ring any bells? If the cause of the rise of these character flaws in our society might be traced to our loss of our sense of mortality … then what might be done. Well, the (somewhat stupid) and non-productive answer would be to turn aside from those wonderful medical advances. Yet, it cannot be denied that these advances have given us very much which is good, but … it seems it might not have been an unalloyed good. Are there ways to teach ourselves and our children that we are not as the Deathless Gods in Olympus but that we should take our allotted span on this good green Earth with a little gravity. If the secular State needs to keep its cherished separation from Church for fear of getting tainted … the thoughts of those who have gone before in dealing with these matters might be of use.
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