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To: RLK; Harrison Bergeron; Nick Danger
The problem, I think, is that as one reads the material, one infers or understands the following, which is fully articulated later:

"Part of the limits area brings up an underlying issue of emotional depth, depth of values and personal development. There is a funneling of other values and feelings into sex. To put it another way, sex becomes an expression of a person's value systems and an expression of a highly-developed complex relationship between people. The more highly developed and complex the person is, and the more highly developed a system of values a person has, the less dominant sex becomes, even as sex, because it is outweighed in significance by the other parts of that person's personality system and the other values in the complexity of the relationship. These values and complications, and their expression, become prerequisite to a relationship and become prerequisites to sex, placing inherent limits upon sexual activity in developed people. Sexual activity not integrated with the total personality and integrated with values produces feelings of intensified isolation. Consequently, people of emotional depth do not focus on sexual freedom as it is of little interest and has little utility in producing personal satisfaction. Not only is sexual license irrelevant, but it is psychologically isolating and repugnant to them. "

Since this flies in the face of what most people have believed and practiced since puberty, reactions to the series tend to be extreme.

153 posted on 04/21/2002 7:12:05 AM PDT by Mortimer Snavely
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To: Mortimer Snavely
Thank you.
156 posted on 04/21/2002 9:01:44 AM PDT by RLK
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To: Mortimer Snavely
The problem, I think, is that as one reads the material, one infers or understands the following, which is fully articulated later:...

That I agree with 100%. I've posted on that subject myself, and I agree that it has a lot to do with why things seem to be going to Hell.

I tend to view the cause of that problem as a failure by theologians to transmit basic religious truth in a way that people with running water and electricity will universally accept. Religion is the vessel that carries and transmits the ideas that cause "emotional depth, depth of values and personal development." There is an element of faith in all of those things, and faith is the province of religion. It is a critical function in the maintenance of civilized order, and our current lack of it is absolutely at the bottom of what's wrong.

We see too often that people with substantial intelligence and wit, but zero values -- Clinton, to pick one -- rise to great heights in our society and are wildly cheered by millions even as they flout what used to be society's strongest taboos. Here's a middle-aged married man getting blow jobs in the White House from a 20-something intern, and people are cheering about this. "What a delightful rogue he is," chortles the press. "What a thong-flashing seductress she is," say the TV producers. We can only shake our heads in sorrow that it's come to this.

It's easy to condemn the occasional miscreant, but I have trouble condemning tens of millions at a stroke. That to me indicates process failure, and in this case the process that failed was the one that is supposed to transmit the society's values. We had trusted our theologians to build and maintain this process, but they failed us. Too many people see religion as snake oil for an illiterate peasantry of a bygone age, something they can safely ignore now that we scientifically understand thunder and lightning.

Now we're finding out that people can't safely ignore it, it's essential to the maintenance of a civilized order that these values be inculcated in human beings from the ground up. Otherwise the place fills up with people like Clinton, and people who admire Clinton.

I think people are becoming dimly aware of this, but I still don't see the theologians preparing anything for them. To me, this is a serious problem that needs fixing.


157 posted on 04/21/2002 12:51:46 PM PDT by Nick Danger
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