What’s Wrong with the World

I remember my response... it was a stupid, pretentious story, nothing I hadn't seen before done better. (Possibly because sci fi and fantasy is well known for borrowing useful bits.)

I understood it was just another hammer that the teacher would use against any tradition she happened to dislike, and that any attempt to bring traditional morality (let alone the nature of right and wrong) into it would just result in, oh joy, yet more mockery from both teacher and class and accusations of being a bigot.

Just because nobody spoke up with the obvious-- that it's wrong-- doesn't mean they didn't believe it, it means that by the time an even marginally intelligent person gets to high school, they've figured out what is just asking for trouble.

We know that if you argue that it's wrong, you'll just be accused of all sorts of things and won't even get a decent conversation out of the deal. God help you if you draw on traditional moral reasoning to support your view, even if it's logically sound.

The thing is, though, Foxfier, it appears that originally students took the story to be _against_ cultural relativism--that is, to be showing in a particularly vivid way that just because something is widely accepted in the culture, that doesn't make it right. That's certainly the way I took it when I read it in high school. It seems that it was only taken to be something where we "couldn't judge" that what the people did was wrong after relativism became popular. I have read that Jackson herself didn't like to talk about what the story meant, and the authorial tone is certainly quite distant. But speaking for myself, it did not seem that the story was treating the stoning as something that could not be judged to be wrong--quite the contrary. The very complacency of the crowd and (if I recall correctly) of the protagonist herself until she is the one chosen to die, are part of the shock value of the story.

In the very book from which you title your post, Lydia, Weaver states that we've become a nation of "moral idiots." He wrote that in the 40's. Wonder what he'd think now?

Part and parcel of the moral degeneracy of today's culture is the inability to be shocked. 40+ years of ultra-violence and hyper-realism in literature and on the screen has pretty much scorched it away. How much worse can it get, when the latest cinematic gorefest or [edited LM] gets nothing more than a bored yawn or a knowing smirk?

We are doomed.

"When all the nonsense about "signifiers" and "text" has been forgotten, what will remain as the legacy of postmodernism will be garden variety cultural relativism."

I have a prediction of my own. After all of the nonsense about "selfish genes" and "eliminative materialism" has been forgotten, what will remain as the legacy of scientism will be garden variety moral nihilism.

You are correct in your reading of the story, Lydia. The fact that the interpretation of it has taken a 180-degree turn, morally speaking, from the time of, say, my first reading of it, which would have been in the early 70's, demonstrates your point.

It's an interesting question, Rob: To what extent is the sheer degradation of popular culture related to ideological moral relativism? One could argue that some of the same liberal and liberal-ish professors who earnestly teach cultural relativism also dislike violence in movies, for example. And causally, I doubt that the people who make gory or explicit movies sit down and say that this is their "culture" so they are allowed to do this. At the same time, I think there is a connection. For one thing, what basis does the solemn professor have for condemning the violent movies?

Untenured, good prediction.

Go into any 8th grade classroom in the country - especially a Parochial School System - and ask the students to list ten popular TV Shown; and then ask them to list the 10 Commandments.

Nine 8th grade students in America could list The Commandments.

To those reading this, can you name them - right now - without googling them?

Lydia-
it doesn't matter what the author's point was, it only matters (for folks' response) what they've come to expect.

The pattern is simple: do something that's offensive to any reasonable person. Wait for them to object. Accuse them of being racist bigot sexist haters; use legal action where possible, until they give up. Repeat until they no longer bother to object.

In the classroom, it's even simpler:
Offer something objectionable to "promote dialog."
Personally attack those who have traditional views, no matter the arguments they offer. Mark down their grade. Praise and encourage those who agree with you, no matter how irrational their argument. Give high scores. Repeat.

We've got at LEAST two generations who know that you have to figure out the teacher's politics to pass most social studies classes.

Sure, VC, though I'm not sure I have 8 and 9 in order:

1. No other Gods before Yahweh.
2. No graven images.
3. No taking the name of the Lord God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
5. Honor thy father and mother.
6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
10. Thou shalt not covet.

Kudos to my 7th-grade Sunday School teacher who taught us a mnemonic for them, _some_ of which I still remember. (6-sticks works well for "thou shalt not kill.") When you're raised a good little Baptist kid, you'd _better_ be able to remember the 10 commandments when you're all grown up.

And I'm proud to say that I'm sure I could _not_ name ten presently popular TV shows.

A similar occurence happened with a recent revival of A Raison in the Sun.

A critical part of the drama is the wife's agony at deciding whether or not to have an abortion since her husband keeps proving to be a feckless and poor provider.

The idea of abortion is presented as a horrible tragedy, but recent audiences didn't relate to it that way at all. It was merely of quaint significance. An atavistic hangover of a benighted age. It had no dramatic power.

1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
3. Remember thou keep holy the Lord's day.
4. Honor thy father and thy mother.
5. Thou shalt not kill.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
7. Thou shalt not steal.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.

was the way I was learnt them via The Baltimore Catechism.

And I used LSMH KASL Good Wife (Lord, Swear, Mass,Honor, Kill, Adultery, Steal, Lie, Good Wife; I switched the order but memorised it that way for ease)as my mnemonic device.

Lydia, that we know such things, and use those old, proven, devices, marks us as aged :)

The reason I raised the subject is that I had a friend (part of our Trad Catholic Study Group in the late 90s) who was a Notre Dame Grad who taught at Cheverus High School (Male Parochial) in Portland, Maine and I won money from him when he lost the wager that 50% of his students (as I recall they were Sophomores) knew the Ten Commandments.

The sad thing about ArchBishop Chaput is that he is amongst a group of American Bishops who have utterly failed to transmit the Faith even though they have the Duty to Teach, Rule, and Sanctify.

It has gotten so bad that at one of their recent confabs (USCCB Meeting),The Bishops publicly admitted that they had failed in their duty to teach Catechesis - and then they broke for lunch to discuss what they could do to increase the collections for The Campaign for Human Development.

Nine 8th grade students in America could list The Commandments.

To those reading this, can you name them - right now - without googling them?

Actually, I know two different forms (and, no, I did not have to Google them). The first form is used by Catholics, Lutheran's and (maybe) Methodists. The second form is used by Baptists, Presbyterians, and (maybe) Pentecostals. I believe there is a third form. In any case, these are abstracted from Exodus and Deuteronomy, as there is no list, per se. The Ten Commandments are mentioned as a quasi-list in three places in Scripture. Can anyone name them?

The reason I know this is because I went by a home-schooling convention once and a little girl was proselytizing across the street from the convention center. She asked me if I knew the Ten Commandments and when I began to recite them, we quickly found out that we disagreed on the third and ninth commandments.

So, who knows the seven deadly sins, the seven virtues, the ten gifts of the Spirit, and the seven fruits of the Spirit? Show of hands?

Just putting on my tin-foil hat, it seems reasonable that if one wants to make troglodytes for the coming One World Order, they had better be the most malleable, short-sighted people possible.

Could someone tell me who this nameless, faceless cabal of people forcing "tolerance" and relativism on people are? Who gave them special insight? Why should we listen to them? Have they walked on water recently or raised the dead?

I noticed the change, myself, back in the early 1990's while in graduate school. The sins of the parents are visited on the children. The parents during the 1960 -1970's wanted license. That sin has led to a boring tolerance among their children in the 1990 - 2000's. Soon, it will lead to apathy on the one hand and unreasonable anger on the other. Just what we need for the coming slaughter of the aged.

It was a single tyrant of selfishness who caused the slaughter of the Innocents 2000 years ago, but it will be a group of selfish tyrants who cause the slaughter of the Helpless coming soon. I can't help thinking that while the slaughter of the Innocent was an act of cruelty, the slaughter of the Helpless might be an act of justice. You reap what you sow.

My, I'm in a cheery mood, tonight.

The Chicken

In fairness, the comparison shouldn't be "the 10 commandments" vs. "ten popular TV shows" - it should be "the 10 commandments" vs. the *top* ten TV shows.

Vermont C, your Catholic list is, of course, numbered differently from Lydia's Protestant list. Which is exactly what I expected, since I knew both lists.

But if I were a good little Christianity-hater produced by the schools, I probably would have said: "ha, you claim that your OWN stinking 10 commandments are so important, but you can't even agree on what they are!"

It hardly is surprising that students in a Catholic school don't know the 10 Commandments: there are tons of graduating seniors in ANY school who, for example, don't know half the stuff that anybody 50 years ago would have known: who is the vice pres., how many amendments are in the Bill of Rights, etc. Part of a culture-wide meld-down of what constitutes education. While the elite gabbled up the 1960's and 70's mantra that education isn't just "knowing a bunch of facts, it requires the ability to think even more", they missed the fact that the ability to think can only be gained by practicing on FACTS that you know beforehand.

Now, it turns out, the media/elites don't have any intention of teaching kids to think after all, (in addition to not teaching facts) because thinking people are not mindless consumers, and the mindless consumer is, quintessentially, the desired end-product of the schools. This has been the net effect of the revolution in education of treating the student as a cog in a mass-production machine called public education, run by executives who run the state education bureaucracy, instead of disciplined reception of the Truth, overseen by parents under God.

"To what extent is the sheer degradation of popular culture related to ideological moral relativism?"

I'd say that it's related more to the "naive" type of moral relativism dominant in mass culture than to any ideology (although its root ultimately is ideological). The most damning observation is that, generally speaking, truth is no longer viewed as something that exerts a claim which must be accepted. I read an article a few years back written by a college professor who, upon showing that a certain politically incorrect sentiment was nevertheless demonstrably true, received a response from a student who said, "Who cares? Just because it's true doesn't mean I have to believe it."

Now most similarly PoMo-infected naive moral relativists would not put the thing as starkly as that student did, but that is the underlying sentiment of mass culture re: truth, make no mistake. A truth is no longer seen as an established fact that exerts a claim on one, but instead as a sort of glorified opinion which one can take or leave.

"some of the same liberal and liberal-ish professors who earnestly teach cultural relativism also dislike violence in movies, for example"

True, but as one who reads a fair amount of film criticism, I'd say that this dislike is largely aesthetic and does not carry much moral freight except as regarding children's viewing is concerned. For the adult viewer excessive violence isn't wrong, it's just (possibly) distasteful.

Dear Masked Chicken. Deadly Sins? PEAS GGL

Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Lust.

Mnemonics never seem to disappear :)

Here is one, from long ago, So My Very Earthy Mother Jane Sat Under Neptune's Pump.

Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto

Mr. Burton. Yep, you're right. Thanks for the correction

Dear Lydia. For some reason my Firefox program is on the fritz. Please email me so I could send you an occasional link/idea.

Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto

Pluto is no longer a planet :-(

How about:

Scientists Make Very Egregious Mistake Jettsoning Said Nugget

The Chicken

"Who cares? Just because it's true doesn't mean I have to believe it."

Just be glad that structural engineers are not relativists.

The Chicken

I hope you will pardon the intrusion, but my experience has been the idea that older generations were more thoughtful, better looking, or empathetic to be more typical of basic demagoguery than good analysis. Now it is always possible that the current generation is simply less empathetic to someone's thirty year-old hobby horse than prior generations. I do not believe it is likely. Likewise, the idea that prior generations were better educated Catholics is more wishful thinking to drive agendas than reality. This is different than claiming that Catholics in prior generations were a part of a reinforcing subculture with Catholicism as an explicit marker whereas today's Catholics are thoroughly Americanized.

Not sure to whom that's addressed, MZ. I said nothing about Catholics, nor, as far as I know, was Haugaard's experience with Catholic students. But her experience was what it was: In certain decades, students understood that human sacrifice is wrong. Starting in the mid-1990's, they by and large did not but substituted cultural relativism for that obvious judgment of right and wrong. If it's "basic demagoguery" to notice that young people in the past twenty years have been systematically taught, and have imbibed, this sort of sweeping cultural relativism, then you will just have to say that noticing what is actually happening is "basic demagoguery." I blame the teachers more than the students. And I saw, even if you did not, the systematic attack on "logocentricism" and "dichotomies" and "hierarchies" and all the rest of it together with the exalting of anything "transgressive"--aka shocking and disgusting--that was _intended_ to suggest that traditional values and notions of right and wrong were something to be sneered at and deliberately torn down, and all the more so if one could place something "non-Western" or "multicultural" or "Other" in opposition to them. If you don't know that this has happened in Western culture, MZ, you have been living in a cave or else are willfully blind. And, yes, the attacks have come, proudly, from the left. Indeed, anyone who opposed it was tarred with the brush of being "conservative," which has caused many an academic to back down, even if he was not, in fact, politically conservative. He was challenged to prove his leftist credentials by embracing multiculturalism, undermining whatever the standards were in his own discipline, and all the rest of it. I have seen this for myself, as have legions of others.

The Catholic part was addressed to Vermont Crank.
As for Haugaard, she is being seduced by basic demagoguery as is Chaput, although for him it is a matter of convenience. I suppose I could ask around campus if I desired to verify that students indeed believe human sacrifice is wrong, but I kind of take that as a given. The reaction to some short story seems to be an awful proxy for evaluating attitudes toward human sacrifice. And then the conflation of individual student responses to be the hidden class reaction is pretty old school fare. As the prof herself admits, the student reaction was that the story was boring. She was able to browbeat a couple reactions out of people and these are supposed to have great information value or at least they are treated as if they do.

Dear Masked Chicken. About my "So My very earthy Mother Jane..."

That was intended to indicate how those memory aids stay with you over time (I have many others to). In any event, I am as old as Israel, after all, and so I cant be expected to keep-up with all of the latest scientific errors/lies.

Scientists told me, dammit, that Pluto was a Planet. It was scientific dogma back in the day and Disney named Pluto after that Planet and Disney... Hey, wait a darn minute; Heaven forfend, are you insinuating that Disney is a liar?

I am glad I am a simple Catholic. Our Dogmas never change.

BTW, I love your sly and clever substitution of my old sentence

Dear MZ. I am better looking than most of the old school Catholics; especially the dead ones ('cept for St Silvan) but I do not think it is even arguable that Catholics of The Baltimore Catechism Generations knew the Basics of the Faith far better than do today's uncatechised kids.

Scientists Make Very Egregious Mistake Jettsoning Said Nugget.

Dear Masked Chicken; You are running around without Uranus.

Thanks for the set-up; you lobbed that one right over the middle of plate :)

MZ, her experience is by no means an isolated one. See here, for example:

http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/tag/kay-haugaard/

Great quote concerning another prof. who, I suppose, you will say must have "browbeaten" his students for a response:

In 20 years of college teaching, Prof. Robert Simon [of Hamilton College] has never met a student who denied that the Holocaust happened. What he sees quite often, though, is worse: students who acknowledge the fact of the Holocaust but can’t bring themselves to say that killing millions of people is wrong. Simon reports that 10 to 20 percent of his students think this way. Usually they deplore what the Nazis did, but their disapproval is expressed as a matter of taste or personal preference, not moral judgment. “Of course I dislike the Nazis,” one student told Simon, “but who is to say they are morally wrong?”

I don't know what it is about you, MZ. To say that young people taught in the public schools in the past twenty years tend to have been taught moral relativism and to have imbibed it faithfully--and especially when it comes to things _other_ than environmentalism or other pet leftist projects, as Haugaard herself noted--ought to be about as controversial as saying that most of them know about the Internet. I must attribute your grouchy desire to pooh-pooh all of this and tell us that there is no problem to your own ideology. It certainly is very strange indeed.

Likewise, the idea that prior generations were better educated Catholics is more wishful thinking to drive agendas than reality.

I have often wondered how much Christians of earlier centuries actually knew. It wasn't until at least the 16th century or so that schooling was common for most kids, and wasn't until well into the 19th century that schooling was common past 8th grade. How much of the faith can you teach to someone who is illiterate?

But if you take a shorter (more recent) baseline, there is NO DOUBT whatsoever that Christians of the early 20th century knew much more about their faith than roughly 80 to 90 % of self-described Christians of today. That is more starkly true in Catholic circles: the Catholic parochial school system developed in the 1800's was perfected in the early 1900's, and lots and lots of Catholic kids got both a very sound education generally and a very strong education in the faith. The change since then is striking: more than half of Catholics with 12 years of Catholic education have trouble reciting basic truths that my mother, (who went to public high school and no college) knew about her Catholic faith. Enough to be able to tell when young pip-squeak nuns of the new mold started teaching claptrap, she knew they were wrong and how to prove it.

Thanks for the set-up; you lobbed that one right over the middle of plate :)

Being very naive, I can only say that I had no idea that astronomically-based humor was this popular. I couldn't find a better word to describe Pluto with the letter N than the word nugget. It really doesn't fit very well, however.

The Chicken

Oh, and I misspelled Jettisoning.

How much of the faith can you teach to someone who is illiterate?

A surprising amount, given that most of the original disciples were illiterate. Stained-glass windows were the poor man's catechism back in the day.

As for the early parochial school system, it was quite superior to modern times. Then again, considering the state of modern secondary education ...

The problem, by the way, is not the student. It is the parents who capitulated to indoctrination from the schools. First it was sex ed. Is there any wonder that modernism and nihilism follow, unchallenged? If they had tried to introduce either one in the 1950's the teachers would have been run out of the schools. Parents can stop movements. Look at the New Math. The problem sis that the parents in the 1960's and 1970's had to rationalize to themselves their sinful ways and modernism seemed like an easy way out.

The Chicken

Pluto will always be a planet.

Pluto will always be a planet.
Ever is a mighty long time when you put a 4 in front of it.
http://ask.yahoo.com/20040121.html

"Pluto will always be a planet."

Ever is a mighty long time when you put a 4 in front of it.

OK, so let's give it the kind of construction the king of Siam uses for Moses:

Pluto always "shall have been" a planet.

Lydia -
I'd quibble on the imbibing it faithfully; generally, I only see that when the home was unopposed or supportive of relativism.

It's odd, this is one of several different places I've reading things that remind me of high school. Man, it sucked.

The apostles may not have been all illiterate. Any Jewish man sitting in the synogauge could've been invited to read the torah so it stands to reason that somebody besides the local rabbi, and pharisee could read.

True, but how many other non-Scriptural books (scrolls) did they have to read?

The Chicken

Foxfier, good point, but I'm also thinking of the bullying by the teachers that does go on. For example, there was my post on counseling programs right now in which students were taught as a matter of professionalism that they must not hold that their values apply to anyone other than themselves. One student was going to be kicked out of the program because the teachers could tell that she wasn't going to adopt relativism as a result of the re-education program they had planned for her.

She was standing up to it, but we're talking there about a very strong religious background opposed to it.

I can imagine lots of families in which the parents would be shocked to think that their kids are imbibing an ideology that will lead them to say, "Who am I to say that Hitler was wrong?" but in which there is not a strong enough and unified enough contrary worldview to combat what the kids are getting at school and/or in college. That doesn't really fall into either the category of "unopposed" or "supportive," but it does mean "not effectively opposed."

How much of the faith can you teach to someone who is illiterate?

Last spring, my wife and I were in Florence marveling at The Basilica of St. Mary of the Flower (Duomo)and Battistero di San Giovann (Baptistery of St John)and I remarked to my wife that these great Churches were Catechisms in Stone.

When we walked down Cavour Street and came into the Basilica's square I, literally, felt a force from that art.

The Cathedral was astonishingly and massively beautiful and my first impression of it was “My, God. It’s white.” Of course, the beautiful marble on the outside of The Cathedral is not only white, it is green, and it is red, but the overall initial impression it made on me was that The Cathedral was a Church alive, living and breathing, a sacred gigantic Bishop vested in white.

There is hardly a square yard of this enormous marble structure that does not have devoted to it some scene from Salvation History or some charmingly sacred decorative flourish. The men who designed and carried-out the construction of this Cathedral were men who took enormous pride in their work which was evidenced by the reality that, even before the Campanile was built, way up from the Base of the Cathedral, close to The Dome, where no man could possibly see with the naked eye, where it might be understandable that the men might leave large areas of the marble undecorated or even be lackadaisical with their industry, one can see intricate carvings, carefully wrought by accomplished, loving, hands depicting Crosses or lesser known scenes from Salvation History.

Holy Mother Church educated the masses back in the day by Commissioning Cathedrals and works of Art that told the story of the purpose of life – how to avoid Perdition and gain Salvation – and these very great and beautiful Cathedrals, and Churches, and gorgeous oil paintings were the visual way The Church helped to teach generation after generation after generation of illiterate peasant/parishioner the Truths of The Faith.

In effect, these great stone structures, these Cathedrals and Churches, these beautiful statues, these great works of art, were Catechisms realised in marble. And to walk hand-in-hand with my wife through all of this history made me so proud to be a Catholic.

The Baltimore Catechism was written in reaction to the unevenness of instruction in the faith. These men who were so greatly instructed in the faith were also the same men drinking away their paychecks and leaving their families destitute. Then we have all the beliefs in superstitions, some of which were contrary to the faith.

Lydia,
It appears you and I have very different understandings of what is normative. Defining 10 or 20% of a population as normative, particularly in the case of a dichotomy, is just an example of seeing what one wants to see. Then there is the relative matter where we have to take as a given that 100% of Americans at the time of the holocaust thought it gave us moral imperative to intervene, which is simply contrary to the record.

Then there is the relative matter where we have to take as a given that 100% of Americans at the time of the holocaust thought it gave us moral imperative to intervene, which is simply contrary to the record.

MZ, excuse me, what the dickens????

The story I just quoted concerned students who believe that disapproval of the Holocaust is a matter of "taste or personal preference" rather than a judgement of moral wrong. I just re-read my quotation, and it says _nothing_ about entering WWII, etc. Not one word. What kind of an ideologue leftist nutcase reads that up to 20% of this prof's college students wouldn't condemn the Holocaust as morally wrong and has as his reaction, "Oh, let's talk about whether the holocaust gave us an imperative to intervene in WWII"??

I mean, that just utterly creeps me out. Why would you even _bring that up_? Why would you _talk_ about that instead of about what the students said? Why aren't you bothered by what the teacher found? Your first reaction was that the teacher in my first story must have been "browbeating" her students for a reaction to the story (though you just made that up out of the back of your head). So I supply more information showing casual, horrific moral relativism among young Americans, and your new reaction is, "Ten to twenty percent won't condemn the Holocaust as wrong, ho hum, and oh, by the way, let's talk about the holocaust in relation to military intervention in WWII."

I'm not _at all_ sure you are worth talking to, MZ. Your perspective is so skewed and messed-up given that these are your reactions.

You have an amazing ability to elide major points. How about addressing the treatment of 10 to 20% as normative? As for the minor point, I am challenging your belief that 10 to 20% finding the holocaust an issue of personal taste isn't some recent phenomenon. Not only have you treated 10 to 20% as normative but you also treat it as unique without any real foundation for doing so.

The anecdote says, "The students had nothing to say except that the story bored them. So Haugaard asked them what they thought about the villagers ritually sacrificing one of their own for the sake of the harvest." This is contrasted against, "The tale led to vivid conversations on big topics – the meaning of sacrifice and tradition; the dangers of group-think and blind allegiance to leaders; the demands of conscience and the consequences of cowardice."

I agree with you that this conversation has been mostly worthless for the very simple reason that you want to discuss norms while completely ignoring the foundation of what is normative.

So your conjecture is that 10-20% of the teacher's students _always_ felt they couldn't judge the holocaust as morally wrong? Somehow, he didn't seem to be saying that. And I think that if you were honest about your own anecdotal experiences, you would have to agree that it seems enormously unlikely that 20% of college students in the 1950's or even 1960's would have said, "Who am I to judge Hitler as morally wrong?" It's a sign of _how far_ they will take their relativism.

you want to discuss norms while completely ignoring the foundation of what is normative.

?Huh? I didn't notice Lydia deliberately skirting direct questions about the "foundations of what is normative."

First of all, if 20% of students feel free to say things like "I don't try to judge whether Hitler was wrong", then probably another 20% feel it without being willing to say it. And another 20% are ambivalent, don't really know what they think about the matter. That could constitute roughly 60% of the student body who have been so damaged by relativism not to be able to recognize moral norms.

But aside from that: even it the real number is only 20%, that's about 19.5% over and above what was true half a century ago. Even if the body of students who are so plagued by deadened consciences is not a majority, they are common to the point where you run into them in all classes and all spheres of academic life. They have become part of the "normal" (just as it is now normal to run into tons of Hispanics on campus, and normal to run into people from India, and nobody thinks twice about it, even though neither one of these groups constitute a majority either). But for this kind of evil thinking to be normal means the general body of students is gravely damaged thereby - that they can "accept" that sort of moral relativism as one of the "normal" expressions of the human moral order is inherently to be damaged by relativism, even if they don't accept relativism itself intellectually.

Dear M.Z. 1st, you wrote this; Likewise, the idea that prior generations were better educated Catholics is more wishful thinking to drive agendas than reality.

And then I referenced The Baltimore Catechism Generations vs the fact that even The bishops admit they have failed at catechesis with today's youth and you respond:

These men who were so greatly instructed in the faith were also the same men drinking away their paychecks and leaving their families destitute.

So,even while you are changing the focus from knowledge to behavior you do appear to be (I think) conceding the fact that The Baltimore Catechism Generations were more knowledgeable about The Faith.

Well, that wasn't so hard.:)

Bingo, Tony. And if 20% think they can't judge Hitler, what percent think they can't judge, say, post-birth infanticide for severely disabled infants? In other words, the Hitler thing is at the outskirts, but that we have that many at the outskirts tells us something about how many we likely have who are "unwilling to judge" barbarisms that just happen to be becoming chic in our own society. In Canada there is a man (Latimer is his last name, I believe) who murdered his daughter (she was something like 9 years old) by running a pipe from his truck's exhaust into the cab where he had placed her. She was disabled. There is _huge_ sympathy for him in Canada. There's no way that would have been the case fifty years ago?

Is this article by Haugaard online? I couldn't find it anywhere. She herself describes "The Lottery" as a "message about blind conformity", which suggests that she's got her own ideological filter there. Anyway, here are some random comments.

I think the problem is not so much that kids are taught bad moral philosophy, as that they're taught to be little moral philosophers at all. Most of them should be taught to be moral ("don't sacrifice people", duh) without worrying too much about philosophical issues. Personally, I doubt there's a good philosophical argument for the metaphysical reality of moral value. I see that as a reason for not taking philosophy too seriously.

For those conservatives who favor nonintervention as a foreign policy, isn't this sort of vulgar cultural relativism OK in practice, even if wrong in theory? The political consequence is not to intervene to try to stop human sacrifice in Ruritania. Good policy, right? On the other hand, this is bad news for old-fashioned liberal interventionists.

As other right-wingers have pointed out, there are few if any moral relativists on campus. If you ask whether it's morally OK for fundamentalist Christians to prevent their women from having abortions, you're not going to get a relativist answer about "a religion of long standing". The Holocaust is so far away from everyday life that it's more of an academic, hypothetical exercise than anything else.

A good teacher could easily get past the students' vulgar cultural-relativism gambit. Even if you're not horrified by the synopsis of the story, you should be horrified by the story itself. If you're not, that says something about your reading ability, not your moral philosophy. "Human scapegoat sacrifice is horrifying" is not a donnée that you have to believe beforehand: the horror is created in the story itself.

Besides, Jackson meant the story to apply to our own culture, which we are entitled to judge (and how!). The lottery even seems to have been based on lotteries in our own cultural heritage: Joshua 7:13-26, with its stagewise selection of the victim. So non-judgmentalism is not a valid reaction to the story, even if you're a cultural relativist.

~~~In other words, the Hitler thing is at the outskirts, but that we have that many at the outskirts tells us something about how many we likely have who are "unwilling to judge" barbarisms that just happen to be becoming chic in our own society~~~

Exactly, and the fact that this even needs explaining speaks volumes.

well, she was probably some WASP slut, so like deserved it just on principle---part of the Oppressor class and all.

:|

Au contraire, Beau.

The Lottery might be read from...a skeptical point of view, actually. The WASPs, Descendants of puritans, hold the Lottery. There are hints of a Hawthornian sort of milieu (the names--Graves, for one). The Lottery ensures a good harvest, supposedly (tho...that demands a certain suspension of disbelief on the reader). While she attacks traditionalism, Miss Jackson may be hinting that the puritan small town morality and scapegoating has merely been upgraded via somewhat utilitarian methods. It seems fairer, perhaps, but really it's not--though primitive people often thought that the gods (or God) demanded sacrifice, and when the harvest or rains arrived, they probably felt...justified in a sense.

The story does not seem prima facie...overly religious, or positive towards religion. Perhaps the villagers all go to the same church (as was the case in puritan America), and have chosen a method of a sort for punishing the outcast--Like Hawthorne, Miss Jackson thus seems at least slightly...misanthropic, certainly not sympathetic in spirit with religious fundamentalists.

It doesn't matter whether Jackson was "sympathetic in spirit with religious fundamentalists" as she perceived them. The truth is that in the year 2010 it is those called "religious fundamentalists" who are opposing the sacrifice of humans and the killing of the innocent in our own culture, and it is those who dislike (even virulently dislike) "religious fundamentalists" who are teaching young people that they must not "impose their values" on anyone else.

Perhaps, except when it's time for those conservatives to arrange a war and invade a foreign country (mostly on false pretenses-- "WMDS"), and sacrifice 200,000+ iraqi civilians--lottery winners, in a sense-- in the name of 'Merican democracy.

And given the recent [edited LM]/Fox war-monger rhetoric, they'll probably be holding the death-lottery again (admittedly with help from many corporate demos).

Either way, the moralistic readings of The Lottery are mostly offbase. Miss Jackson does not really imply moral absolutism holds. She was suggesting (via analogy, not a necessary argument) something like...small-town, conservative-christians sacrificed people for mostly absurd reasons, even if it looks ..."fair".

Ciao,

00001001

Oh, well, who cares what those nasty small-town, conservative Christians do if moral absolutism doesn't hold?

And watch your language, please.

She was suggesting (via analogy, not a necessary argument) something like...small-town, conservative-christians sacrificed people for mostly absurd reasons, even if it looks ..."fair".

Christian? Nope, sorry, I don't think anything in the story had one shred of connection to conservative-christians. It does on its face have something to do with "conservatives" though - those who would keep tradition instead of allow it to be broken. Small-town, small-minded, knee-jerk, stone-age conservatives, who would rather see people die uselessly than break with tradition... that kind of conservative. Christian had nothing to do with it.

The gist of the story is the survival of an evil pagan (i.e. pre-Christian) practice into modern times, amongst seemingly good 'Christian' people. In other words, it's precursor to 'The Wicker Man' without the latter's anti-Christianity.

BTW, 00001001, it seems you stumbled here laboring under the misapprehension that you're at The Weekly Standard's blogsite. Sorry, but I doubt that your tired Daily Kos ruminations will get much attention here, let alone traction.