Monday, April 29, 2019

From Culture to Self-Culture and Narcissism


                        From Culture to Self-Culture and Narcissism

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/28/19

            When the Greek mythological figure Narcissus, thirsty after hunting, comes upon a pool of water and leans down to drink, he falls in love with his own image.  Seeing himself in the bloom of youth, Narcissus assumes that no one could ever love him as they ought or as his image deserves.  Writhing in passion for himself, Narcissus melts away and becomes a beautiful flower.
            Art, they tell us, is the imitation of life.  More and more there are examples of life imitating art: youths committing crimes they saw in movies, or even acts of real life heroism inspired by fictional heroes.
            No doubt imitation still works both ways.  There are at least two areas in contemporary society in which imitation is taking place, dress and music.
              Americans are a nation of copycats.  There was a day when I was required to stand at my classroom door and, among other responsibilities, stop the boys whose shirts were not tucked in and point them to the boys’ restroom for a slight wardrobe do-over.  Today men of all ages are wearing un-tucked shirts.  Why? I suspect because “everybody else is doing it.”
 Don’t be surprised if within five years a sizable number of men are wearing dresses.  If a presidential candidate publicly and passionately hugs and kisses his husband on the occasion of his candidacy announcement, men in dresses shouldn’t be a shock.  Once a month, tucked into the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal is a glossy, thick magazine of style that is already showing males modeling dresses.
            Oh, the lonely life of a toxic male like myself who still believes males are males and females are females, who considers the expression “self-identifies” as hoo-ey, and who has to explain why the Philadelphia 76’ers Coach Brett Brown wasn’t out of line when he told his players, “You’re playing in a man’s gym and you need to act like it.”
            Coach Brown and most other coaches, I suspect, regret that public ritual behavior has succumbed to personal freedom.  Individualism now runs amuck, resulting in a diminished appreciation of the team, the family, the civic club, and indeed the larger culture. We now have an increased elevation of oneself and one’s own ‘druthers.
            In his book titled “Bowling Alone, America’s Declining Social Capital,” Harvard professor Robert Putnam argues that individuals are increasingly disconnecting themselves from other individuals and from society as a whole. Putnam is right.  In regard to dress, Americans have lost all sense of “occasion.”  Ragged is OK, no matter where you’re headed.  Having reached the soul’s basement, more and more people care less and less about dressing up for anything.  What I want to wear is what matters, not the occasion.  That’s narcissism, self-absorption at its worst.
            Today college students rail against conformity, all the while wearing their conforming, copycat uniform, namely, tattered jeans.  Their self-absorption exceeds their sense of community.
            Where I grew up, the poorest of the poor knew what “Sunday best” was and honored it as a social norm.  But today stultifying casualness is our ethic.  “Toxic masculinity” has its good side, and I admire the coaches I’ve worked with who still teach boys to be men, even in dress.
            Music, too, is a compelling art form, and it too provides confirmation of Professor Putnam’s argument.  Nothing is more obvious than the present generation’s addiction to music.  How did Scottish patriot Andrew Fletcher put it?  “Let me write the nation’s songs, and I care not who writes its laws.”  No wonder.  Music is the most primitive expression of man’s rawest passions.  The purpose of civilization (education?) is to tame, inform, and direct our raw passions.  If our passions are barbarous, warlike, or sensual, hard rock can certainly feed them.  Plato wrote that in order to take the spiritual temperature of a society, we must “mark the music.”
            Guess what kinds of music most high schools feed to students during lunch, at pep rallies, or during halftime at basketball games.  Let’s just say it’s music that feeds the passions instead of civilizing or educating them.  But, “we’re here for the kids,” so we give them what they desire (and already have).
            Civic club membership, PTA involvement, and family dinners have waned significantly since 1995.  “Social capital” is losing to disconnectedness.  Solutions do exist: refuse the isolation of the cell phone, eat family meals together, join something, and don’t be a copycat.
            And remember.  The Narcissus tale is a myth.  In real life we don’t become beautiful by withdrawing and admiring ourselves, but by giving thought to those around us.  To our culture, that is.

Roger Hines
4/24/19
           
                

Unborn Beauty and a Chance to Give it Life


            Unborn Beauty and a Chance to Give it Life

                  Published in Marietta (GA) Journal, 3/17/19

State Representative Ed Setzler is a man of science.  An architectural engineer, he also has a degree in physics. Setzler is serving his 15th consecutive year in the Georgia House.  His District 35 covers the northwest corner of Cobb County, including the cities of Kennesaw and Acworth.
            Neither Setzler’s practical, scientific bent nor the precision of his line of work has kept him from appreciating beauty and wonder.   Accordingly, Setzler is not cagey about the subject of abortion.  He introduced and led the fight for House Bill 481, the so called “Heartbeat bill,” which is actually titled “Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act.”  The bill’s acronym (LIFE) is further evidence of Setzler’s belief, and agreement with author Ian McEwan, that an unborn baby reveals “a stately ship of genes dignified by unhurried progress.”
            Setzler’s bill has already passed the House by a vote of 93 to 73 and has been forwarded to the Senate.  105 House Republicans voted for the bill; 75 Democrats voted against it.  Five other Southern states plus Ohio are also considering “Heartbeat” legislation.
            Setzler’s language in HB 481 is neither ambiguous nor squirrelly.  Unlike the weasel word language of Planned Parenthood defenders who object to the words, “partial-birth abortion,” and argue that “intact dilation and evacuation” is more precise, 481 reads, “It shall be the policy of the State of Georgia to recognize the presence of a fetal heartbeat as the point of fetal viability…” The bill goes on to reject the concept of “potential ability to live outside the mother’s womb,” since “not even healthy full-term infants can always do so, without artificial aid.”
            Anyone who has ever attempted to read legislative bills knows that their totally unnecessary ponderous language is daunting.   HB 481 has its share of gobbledygook, but its purpose is clear.  For instance, the bill lucidly declares: “No abortion is authorized or shall be performed if the unborn child has been determined to have a heartbeat,” and “early infants in the womb are a class of living distinct human beings … that have their own distinct blood type, organ system, central nervous system, unique fingerprints … and detectable heartbeat.”
            The bill references the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment: “No state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the protection of the law.”  To Setzler, “the child in the womb … has a right to life that is worthy of legal protection.”  But “Not so,” say the Democrats in the Georgia House.
            One of the “fanatics for choice” (columnist George Will’s phrase), former National Abortion League president Kate Michelman, once declared that in abortion, the baby “merely undergoes demise.”  Will posed the question, “Does Michelman say herbicides cause the crab grass in her lawn to ‘undergo demise’?”
            Thanks to Governor Cuomo of New York and Governor Northam of Virginia, whose public comments on the unborn – and the recently born – have been abhorrent, Rep. Setzler and other legislators are creating momentum, aided by the fact that “fanatics for choice” have gone from “safe, legal, and rare” to “keep the newborns comfortable” while the doctor considers infanticide. 
            Regarding the beauty of the unborn, Swedish photojournalist Linnart Nilsson has deeply affected our thinking about abortion.  In “Life Magazine” in 1965 Nilsson gave us the first photograph of a living fetus in the womb.  Nilsson died in 2017 at age 94, leaving us with pictures of a 15-week old and a 28-week old fetus.  Nilsson was deeply disappointed that, while photographing the 15-week-old, his camera malfunctioned just before he was to snap the baby sucking its thumb.
            Even the Washington Post heralded Nilsson as “a photographer of genius who revealed unborn life.”  Nilsson’s compilation of his work was published in1965 and titled “A Child is Born.”  This little volume plus more modern fetal-imaging technology haven’t made life easy for “abortion rights” advocates.
             Rep. Setzler probably knows that Nilsson’s photos were challenged.  After Nilsson’s death, “Atlantic Magazine” claimed his photos were staged with aborted material.  Both “Life” and “Time” defended Nilsson.
            Photojournalism and modern technology are on Setzler’s side.  So are voters in many states, or why else are more and more state legislatures toughening their laws on abortion?
            At a time when so many have lost their moral compass regarding infant life, we should be grateful for photographers and politicians who engage our moral sense.  That’s exactly what Nilsson, Setzler, and HB 481 have done.


Roger Hines
3/13/19

Are Babies Precious or Not?


                             Are Babies Precious or Not?
               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/7/19
            Georgia’s House Bill 481 has hit a nerve nationwide.  Over 100 Hollywood actors have vowed not to work in Georgia again if Governor Kemp signs the so-called “heart beat” bill.  No doubt the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and others who don’t like “social issues” are getting nervous.  Movie production in any state means big money.  Will the Chamber and the Governor stand with those who deem abortion barbaric or will they put dollars above babies?
            The Governor says he will sign the bill.  Since when has Hollywood been the arbiter of Georgia’s politics or laws?  Let Hollywood boycott and make their R-rated movies elsewhere.
            I believe abortion is evil.  Stacy Abrams believes a law to restrict it is evil.  A “political stunt” she also calls it, suggesting it will probably lead to her challenging Governor Brian Kemp for the governorship in 2022.
             In 2006 Abrams stood in my English classroom at Chattahoochee Technical College and  spoke eloquently of effective communication, respect for “the marvel of language,” and how to put one’s best foot forward in job interviews.  She stuck to her topic and never approached politics.  I was as spellbound as the class was by her knowledge and verbal ability.  I appreciated her giving her time and gas money to drive up to Marietta.  She taught us well.
            When Abrams and I were simultaneously serving in the Georgia House of Representatives, there was no talk of abortion bills.  Already the state and the nation were moving toward the Great Recession of ’07 and ’08.  Budgetary matters were our chief concern.  While we were not close friends, we spoke several times about our Mississippi background and her work as a writer.  Right away I learned that she was smart and most personable.
            Though I’ve never read any of her novels, written under the pen name Selena Montgomery, I have read reviews of them.  Her steamy erotica, had it been brought up during the Abrams-Kemp race, would have been a considerable bump in the road for her campaign.
            According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Abrams said the following at a rally in Dalton, Georgia: “The ‘heartbeat bill’ is dangerous.  It‘s scientifically unsupportable.  It will cause harm to women.  We will lose doctors and jobs.”
            A sweeping and erroneous charge there.  Dangerous?  The law would end almost all abortions in Georgia, saving the lives of countless babies.  Scientifically unsupportable?  Perhaps we need the full context of Abrams’ speech to discern this claim.  How does “unsupportable science” touch the issue?  Harm to women?  Abrams is pushing abortion by scaring people with images of teenage girls and coat hangers.  Let’s let a doctor do the same act “safely.”  But coat hanger or forceps, the baby is still “terminated.”  “Terminated” is the most abominable and euphemistic weasel word in the history of the English language.  It means killed. 
            I will never understand how Democrats and moderate Republicans can hold abortion so close to their hearts and defend it so strongly.  Has it not always been a core issue for Democrats?  Nor can I understand how any woman can abide it either.
            Abrams and her cohorts wouldn’t like my mother.  Ocasio-Cortez would have pulled her before the magistrates.  Planned Parenthood would have “counseled” her to abort long before I was born.  Let us just say I’m glad, actually ecstatic, that I wasn’t aborted.  Is Abrams glad she wasn’t?   I firmly believe my loving mother would have warmed the hearts of every abortion supporter on the planet, melting them away from their horrendous support of murderous abortion and shifting them to a belief in the sanctity of all life.  (“sanctity of life”: the expression most Dems simply dismiss). 
I believe my ten sisters, because of their love for life, their faith in God, and their appreciation of beauty, would convert many an abortion supporter as well.  Not with words, but with the example of their joyous lives and their love of life.  My younger brother and me?  I don’t know.  But we do know that poverty doesn’t always kill one’s spirit and can be overcome, even by unwed mothers who spare their babies from abortionists.  He knows that a newborn with severe problems can be a blessing, and our five brothers know that life is a gift to be cherished, not rejected and killed off under the guise of “freedom of choice.”
Are babies precious or not?  If so, at what point do they become precious?  These are terrible questions.  I can’t believe that anyone must ask them.

Roger Hines
4/3/19