The Immoral Majority - Finding sexual ethics in the godless masses

SF Chronicle ^ | 10-19-03 | Don Lattin

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Our nation's self-anointed arbiters of public morality love to point their fingers at San Francisco and "the '60s." And many of us have gotten all too comfortable in this role as the hedonists and heretics of an otherwise God- fearing nation. OK, we're not perfect, and neither were those wild times, but can't the pundits of piety find another decade to bash and a new city to trash?

[Ol' Sox]

Bump for later reading and comment.

I have to go and get ready for church.

[anniegetyourgun]

There is no end to the lies and mischaracterizations of people of faith (not to mention, Christ Himself), that it would take too long to address.

Bottom line about the 'hedonists in SF?' They haven't changed.

[LadyDoc]

this article is about how people follow "spirituality"...nothing in it about God, or the quesiton if there is a God, and does he care what happens to us, or if we have any responsibility outside ourself in relation to GOd or our neighbors...

Spirituality often means adoring oneself, and the underlying idea is that this means we can be "holy" and "feel good" without any struggle. And it denies any connection between this "feeling good" and morality...

Ironically, this article praises spirituality but ignores that their "spirituality" allows them to consider themselves holy, even though they divorce, break their marriage vows, be promiscuous, and abort their inconvenient children...

A good hindu would point out this is "egotism", and even the Delai Lama recently criticized such "easy" spiritual seeking as wrong...(I'll let the Christians smash away from their point of views...there are plenty on FR)

The saints of ALL religions don't talk about "bliss" but about being obedient to serving God...and this means sacrificing our ego for those around us: And those closest to us are our spouses and children...

Ramakrishna once told a lady who told him she no longer could believe or serve God, that for her "her husband is God, her child is GOd"...i.e. that serving and loving those around is is serving or loving God...Similarly, when Mother Teresa visited Philadelphia for a religious congress, she a taxidriver asked her how he could serve God, expecting her to say give money. Instead she replied: smile at your wife...or as that pesky carpenter used to say: just saying Lord Lord doesn't get you to heaven, you gotta do the WORK of obeying God's rules about how to live...

[The Iguana]

...It was easier to preach a narrow and regressive sexual morality than to look at other forces threatening poor and middle-class families in the late 20th century - like the desperate shortage of affordable housing and the grinding necessity for both parents to hold jobs.

Some of us might suggest that rent control and skyrocketing taxes might be at least partially to blame for these developments.

I doubt that's what these people want to hear, however.

[walden]

bump

[sirchtruth]

this article is about how people follow "spirituality"...nothing in it about God, or the quesiton if there is a God, and does he care what happens to us, or if we have any responsibility outside ourself in relation to GOd or our neighbors...

Your analysis with which I agree, is interesting to me. It's all about responsibility. This is the crux of it all, and spiritually doesn't come close to being enlighten, but most likely more highly deceive.

Only having a relationship with God can one begin to understand the selfish nature of us all.

[Graybeard58]

"Some of us might suggest that rent control and skyrocketing taxes might be at least partially to blame for these developments"


...Cause or effect?

[Graybeard58]

"Only having a relationship with God can one begin to understand the selfish nature of us all"

...I believe that "The selfish nature of us all" is the very basis of some newly "Organized" religions and of those people who espouse "Religion of self" Let's just all do what "feels" right.
...It's also the main ingredient of the democratic party.

[IronJack]

Too much oombalah to wade through. But I plucked this nugget from the steaming pile:

personalized approach to finding faith and making moral decisions.

No doubt Charlie Manson approached moral conundra from a "personal" angle. As did Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. But in the end, is there really any such thing as INDIVIDUAL morality, or is it by definition a product of the collective? Isn't this pseudo-theological mumbo-jumbo just typical left-wing feelgoodism, denial by pretense?

The "spiritual" movement of the '60s did not PROMOTE morality; it DESTROYED it, by denying its roots.

[BlackElk]

Likewise. Let us allow this one to percolate for a while before launching the air strikes that must inevitably be launched against advocates of the Bay area "culture" so well represented by Dykes on Bikes.

Is it any wonder that every county with a cow in it voted for Dubya when the Bay area is sooooo reflective of the wishful "thinking" that gave us Algore and Grayout? Is it any wonder that these Bay area dimwits voted something like 85% against recall of Doofus?

[JusPasenThru]

Bump for later read.

[GrandMoM]

....the sixty freeks are alive and thriving well in CA, and so are their freeky children!

[esopman]

Good post!

The notion of 'spirituality' leaves the definition of God entirely up to the individual. Unfortunately, the subconscious is a hall of mirrors and the conscious mind is more susceptible to emotion than logic. The mind is part of the 'fallen world' which any biblical christianity explicitly recognizes.

A friend of mine from college at the University of Virginia, Tal Brooke, went to India in search of this 'spirituality' in the 1960's. He tangled with Sai Baba (was a disciple) and tells quite a tale of how he was delivered from that demonic manifestation by Christian missionaries. Apparently, Sai Baba could project an emotional presence which made the listener feel loved and 'blissful.'

Messiah Y'shua is quite explicit in the very beginning of His apocalyptic warnings in Matt 24: 'See that you are not deceived..." and in Matt 7:21 ff. about the true nature of those who merely claim to know him. I find the latter riveting:

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"

Woops! Not even miracles and demon-bashing will get you there. (I am not in any way detracting from the miracles of the Lord and defeats of ha satan I have seen in some congregations and personally).

I concur that we are indeed to sacrifice our ego for those closest to us - We are near them for a reason and ultimately nothing is accidental in His universe. Care must be taken, however, not to compromise His truth or our principles merely to please others (not that you implied that).

The very high calling of God's greatest revelation to man, His own Son, Jesus, imposes on those who acknowledge this truth a set of obligations which the American church sees and declares only dimly...

Emblematic of the sick exaltation of self in this culture is the literature in the supermarket checkout line...there was even an eponymous glossy rag: "Self" Sigh...

Have a blessed Shabbat.

[Savage Beast]

Some of the most sincerely "religious" and/or "spiritual" people I have ever known have been in the "Liberal" enclaves of California, Hawaii, et al.--and also some of the most misguided.

I certainly dabbled in such things as Buddhism, mysticism, shamanism, hedonism and Hinduism. I benefitted immensely from many of these things. I have incorporated much that I learned into my belief system and my daily life, and I feel immensely enriched by my experiences and much that occurred in the 1960's.

The '60's Revolution brought many welcome changes, notably the Civil Rights Revolution, the denunciation of racism, and the liberation of American society from many stiffling and unnecessary conventions.

However, it also lead to fundamentally destructive changes that cannot be tolerated by a stable society or benevolent people, e.g. the embrace of Marxism, which requires totalitarianism for its implementation and inevitably leads to economic disaster, and the acceptance of an enormous and powerful government, which inevitably leads to oppression and the loss of protection--not the protection--of human rights and freedom.

The good things that the '60's Revolution brought are to be retained. The bad things must be rejected and overcome--in a counterrevolution.

[madprof98]

Yet conservative evangelicals look at the signs of the times in San Francisco and tell us all signs point straight to hell. We are the mecca of alternative lifestyles, and as the Bay Area goes, so goes the nation.

This article is just one very minor illustration of the truth of that general principle. Me, myself and I - the ethos of adolescence - has become the civic culture of the Bay Area. This vague "spirituality" is its response to the drive we all have to make something more of our lives than that. No wonder its children become American Talibans.

[narses]

A must read, thanks.

[gaspar]

I think that the someone who claimed that the sixties person believed "it is selfish to have goals" explained nearly everything. Really, the sixties were led by people of good but not daunting intellect. They hated competition because they understood their essential mediocrity. Thus, those who were not up to the task in our very competitive world used the University, and expecially the Social Sciences in our universities, to survive. In those departments the sixties generation and their spawn foster and nurture yet new generations of mediocrities. In the end, such people produce crap like this article (which would have driven both Hegel and Marx nuts) -- however, it is usually shorter.

[Mr Rogers]

The new spirituality is about feeling good instead of being good.

It's rule is simple: "If I want to do it, it is good. If I don't want to do it, it is bad."

This means I'm always good, and any bad results come from intolerant people around me.

Very liberal, and as old as the Garden of Eden.

[OpusatFR]

Why does it all boil down to sex?