Hikage

I wouldn't place the blame of society's downfall soley on the lack of sexual morals. There are other symptoms and causes that contribute. Allow me to explain by following the life of a typical person born during the 50's.

A woman is born in 1950, let's call her Jen. Jen is born to parents who suffered through the depression, experienced the lifestyle of the "roaring" 20's, and fought through a variety of means in the second world war. Jen's parents teach her to be respectful. Her idea of a hot date is "parking" and "necking" with someone, always holding that losing her virginity is not an option. Jen's parents took her to a lutheran church every Sunday where she had the message of celibacy, respect for parents, and love for her neighbor hammered into her brain. Never had Jen considered talking back to her parents, taking what she had for granted, going against the family design for her, etc.

Enter woman suffrage and woman's rights programs. The culture of the woman is redefined and now women are finding themselves in jobs usually reserved for men. More women are leaving the home and taking class at colleges and universities throughout the country.

Jen is one of them. She is accepted at a local college and finds there a freedom which she has not encountered before. She soon realizes that she can have more free time if she skips church, tells Dad that she went, and finds something else to do on her Sunday mornings, losing that message of respect for herself and others that she never really believed in anyway, but tolerated for her family.

One day, she is invited to attend a protest against the war -- eer excuse me -- "police action" in Vietnam. She sees what it is like to stand out against the authority, and that she can do it legally. She begins to understand that there is no legal law demanding her to live as Daddy deems. She stretches her bounds, parties a little more, drinks, and perhaps smokes. Soon, she is not just "necking" with the "boys" but giving herself to the men who remind her nothing of home.

Jen graduates and settles down with one of these men. No longer influenced by the youthful spirit of the campus, Jen mellows into the role of a mother as she concieves children. Not desiring to waste her school years, but not wanting to abandon her children, she takes a part-time job where she can work mornings and be home in time for her children to return from school. She raises them well and teaches them, perhaps indirectly, what she learned through life. That is, to question authority as it can often be wrong.

This in and of itself is not a bad teaching, but when taught nationally can be devasting. Children interpret this message as they don't need to listen to their teachers. If they disagree with a teacher, they can tell them off (and they currently frequently do). Furthermore, the parent is ironically also seen as an authority. The rebellion that waited until college for Jen is now seen in high school for her children because they learned this lesson earlier. It doesn't take long for her children to be experimenting with the opposite sex as she had. Afterall, she found time to be "necking", and her children find similar time to be commencing the begings of long-lived sex-lives.

Running side-long to all this rhetoric is the under-lying message from the culture which permeated all levels from the 70's until present. Especially during the 80-90's, the age where Jen's children were in school, teachers began instructing the principles of tolerance in response to racism and sexism - both of which were being combated and losing miserably in Jen's day. Children are taught to accept others for whatever reason. Star Trek: The Next Generation airs touting it's prime directive not to interfere with other world's (people) but to live in mutual respect. A klingon, an obvious reference to Communism, now serves on the flagship's bridge.

Furthermore, psychologists and therapists begin to increase their numbers as lessons in tolerance and confusion due to gender-role switching ease patient's emotional barriers into bursting. Phrases such as "I just need to be honest to my feelings" emerge from these sessions, returning us to my previous post.

Finally, now that students are practing sexual intercourse at such an early age, we see teenagers become pregnant soon after graduation of high school or sadly, while still in school. These children are merged with the children of suburban mom's who are working full-time positions and whose first priority is no longer to their families, but to their jobs. Responsibility is handed over to crowded daycare centers who promise to teach respect through tolerance. Not having that one-on-one instruction of generations past and having only limited time with their families for quality time and modeling of character development, these daycare children grow up to lack a sense of other people as thinking, feeling, sensient beings, other humans. Instead they are seen as people to manipulate to get what they want and need.

As it stands today, a teacher can no longer rely on a young student's guilt or empathy to correct poor behavior towards other students. As the generation before them engaged in sexual activity in high school, now the middle schools suffer the brunt of this problem. And where is Jen? She is home, wondering why her children don't call her except on birthdays and holidays.

Sexual trangression is not the end-all of societies but it cannot be denied that it contributes to and represents serious problems that do lead to the decay of family and inevitably to country as an all for one's self-culture where the type A personality is heralded, taught, praised, and valued.

-Hikage

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