If you have not yet read Theodore Dalrymple’s Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses, do so soon. There is a chapter in the book titled “Barbarians at the Gate” which chronicles (and predicted as it turns out) the lawlessness we see in France today. This book is a must read. My review of it can be found on Townhall.com.
Related Posts:
Two other recent books have touched on the same theme of cultural debasement: “Pornified : How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families” , by Pamela Paul, and “Female Chauvanist Pigs and the Rise of Raunch Culture” by Ariel Levy.
“Having already carved out a major niche among 20-to-30-somethings with The Starter Marriage, Paul takes on another bane of postfeminism: the Internet-enabled “all pornography, all the time” mentality of many younger men and its ripple effect on the culture. For this pornograph, Paul interviewed more than 100 peopleâ??80 of them young, straight men. Some findings are predictable: porn allows men “to enjoy the fantasy of endless variety,” but can distract men from their partners, detract from their sexual skills and harm relationships. More valuably, Paul finds women caught under new forms of social pressureâ??from men and womenâ??not to disdain porn: to do so, now, is (among other things) to be seen as limiting women’s sexual self-expression. Paul also sees porn seeping ever sooner into preteen life and sensibly observes that there’s no reason for porn to be limitless on the Net when it’s regulated elsewhere.
“What does sexy mean today? Levy, smartly expanding on reporting for an article in New York magazine, argues that the term is defined by a pervasive raunch culture wherein women make sex objects of other women and of ourselves. The voracious search for what’s sexy, she writes, has reincarnated a day when Playboy Bunnies (and airbrushed and surgically altered nudity) epitomized female beauty. It has elevated porn above sexual pleasure. Most insidiously, it has usurped the keywords of the women’s movement (liberation, empowerment) to serve as buzzwords for a female sexuality that denies passion (in all its forms) and embraces consumerism.”
Thanks Dean Scourtes, I will check those out.
Father Hans,
One of the most striking thing to me about Theodore Dalrymples first book (Life at the Bottom)was that he geuinely likes people-even poor people with serious social problems. He treats them as individuals; not as social victims as a liberal would, or failures/losers like some conservatives would.