It’s different with kids
We’re all implicated in this. I was listening in the car the other day to one of my favorite rock albums, and the thought occurred to me that if my kids were riding with me, I wouldn’t play it, because the lyrics are pretty dirty. And then I thought: should I be taking pleasure in this? Do I want my children to grow up in a world in which sex is treated in popular song so coarsely? I do not. But I have helped to create that world for them.
I’m not saying that all art must be safe for 10 year olds. Not at all! What I’m saying is that we contemporary Americans are so focused on satisfying our own pleasures, and so passive in our consumption, that we lose sight of our role as stewards of culture. Failure to exercise that role intelligently and discerningly is a choice, and we are responsible for that choice.
Blowback
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The paragraph about Christians not wanting guns in society seems misguided and theologically radical.
Donald Draper on December 30, 2012 at 9:24 PM
Great … one more person who claims to speak for God. Isn’t that supposed to be the greatest sin or something?
Why, if we just lived in a Marxist utopia there’d be no evil anywhere on earth; sometimes I wonder how individuals this delusional survive to adulthood …
I REALLY think an armed society is ipso facto a better society, so now that your lame premise has been blown out of the water, why don’t stop dictating to others how they should live their lives — and you live your life like a true Christian and give away all your belongings to those in greater need? I won’t be holding my breath …
ShainS on December 30, 2012 at 9:25 PM
Which ends the moment we leave our house because that’s the only place we can control it, and even then the statists want to have a role there too.
When our highest elected representatives act like dull-witted pop stars, which they do, then yes we have reached a cultural turning point. So now what?
Bishop on December 30, 2012 at 9:31 PM
Ugh, this is truly sickening. western society has sentimentalized children and childhood to the point of near fetish. This attitude is rarely if ever seen outside the west except for certain parts of East Asia. This blind reverence has turn seemingly intelligent, logical stoic adults into dribbling, navel gazing morons. Of course this is a more recent cultural phenomenon, as it wasn’t long ago that the death of a young child from varying ailments was more common, if even expected. The most frightening aspect of sentimentalized childhood is that it seemingly licenses parents to commit extreme, foolhardy and tremendously wrongheaded acts in the name of protecting their children and preserving the idea of a childhood completely inoculated from the outside world.
JamesSeanMcKeane on December 30, 2012 at 9:39 PM
Remember that Stones album Sticky Fingers? You had to unzip Jagger’s bulging hard-on to get to the music.
John the Libertarian on December 30, 2012 at 10:01 PM
The fact is that all those disgusting lyrics are not needed for the art. Most of the enjoyment from the music is the MUSIC aspect, not the words.
astonerii on December 30, 2012 at 10:47 PM
I don’t stress on it too much. Mainly because now that I have a 5 and an 8 yo, I realized the songs I listened to when I was young were horribly sexualized and I don’t think I even gave it a thought. I pay more attention to the lyrics now than I did then because of the kids. Once I described what “sexy” meant, they stopped saying they were and they know it.
One thing I won’t allow is the N word on at the gym when they are with me. It made for an interesting conversation with the trainer since he is half black. He didn’t see the harm. I said, “Fine, if you don’t mind if my kids call that out then singing along? Or call you that? No worries.” He got the point. It was a fun conversation though.
hazchic on December 30, 2012 at 11:31 PM
Roll me over in the clover and do it again …
OldEnglish on December 31, 2012 at 12:03 AM
Just given the two paragraphs above, I start to nod my head. Then I remember this is Rod Dreher writing, and wonder how far he went…. and ShainS does the service of quoting just enough more to remind me why I find Dreher tiresome.
Yes, our culture has coarsened in ways that make raising decent, civilized ladies and gentlemen from our little ones much harder. But, the idea that we can or should, in any way, use the power of government to move our world toward heaven on earth is ludicrous. We cannot change basic human nature. Yes, it might be an ideal to live in a culture where firearms are unnecessary. But it also a castle in the air – you are not ever going to achieve that on this earth.
It’s not that an armed society is better than heaven on earth. It’s that an armed society (where free, private citizens are armed, that is) is better than all the other earthly alternatives. Sort of like Churchill’s observation that “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.”
GWB on December 31, 2012 at 12:43 AM