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Thursday, March 02, 2006

Lent Vs. Butt Surgery

Ann Althouse takes a look at the growing phenomenon of cosmetic buttock augmentation surgery. This is the sort of thing that makes one long for a return to Ur-Feminism, which held up the ideal that women should spend more time thinking about what they wanted to achieve in life than staring at their butts in a mirror and spending $20,000 a pop to achieve the perfect butt. (Which, given the inexorable forces of gravity, will not be the perfect butt for very long.)

In a pretty powerful post named "
Perversion & The Destruction Of Rational Thought", Shrinkwrapped dissects the core of the problem with Eve Ensler's approach to life:
In the Utopian PC world, there are only dependent victims, who need to rely on the goodness and bounty of the state to protect them from the predations of the evil oppressors, white males and their equivalents. In such a world there are no grown, adult women in relationships with grown adult men. There are only children, non reproducing beings who can have all manner of recreational sex with no responsibility and no expectations, while denigrating those "breeders" who raise children and families.
SW goes on to observe that this type of thinking is spreading rapidly and that it has broader implications. He defines perversion:
A perversion subverts a relationship by substituting a body part for a person.
And SW writes:

Perversion reduces the individual human being to a representative of a class. In so doing, it destroys the complexity that inheres in all individuals. It springs from the same font that gives us Identity Politics.

It also robs the individual of power, because perversion instills the concept that a person is an object acted on by the object's environment, rather than an individual with the capacity to choose. That is the essence of the moral conception of a human being - choice!

Or, as Mamacita frames the choice issue:

Envy is the desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation.
Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.
Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work. ...
Is it just me, or have those Deadly Sins somehow become the typical lifestyle of a lot of people?
...
The Seven Deadly Sins are gross, disgusting, inferior lifestyles; don't let anyone try to cover them with sparkle-dust and fool you. ...

The Seven Virtues might be difficult at times, but ultimately, they are your best bet for a good life. And Ghandi's list is perfection.

Which brings me to Lent, or Yom Kippur, or Ramadan, for that matter. We are asked to deny ourselves in order to become more fully ourselves. We are asked to make a meaningful choice to deny ourselves something to build up other, more meaningful aspects of ourselves. We are asked to trade the transitory for the permanent.

A functioning human being is able to put aside some aspects of his or her desires in order to achieve other desires. Human desires are innately self-contradictory, and we need to practice forming goals and self-denial. Planning. Holding ourselves to account. Or, as
Mamacita points out:
School is also about organization and remembering obligations and becoming independent and learning about natural consequences.

Stand in the way of that, and
you're standing in the way of your child becoming responsible for his/her own actions. We all know how repulsive that kind of adult is. Why do we enable such qualities in our children?
Because we have lost the ability to recognize how repulsive that kind of adult is! That is the truth. We have foresworn accountability, responsibility and rationality in favor of worrying about our butts and our bank accounts, with great detriment to both. After all, no butt was ever made more shapely by just sitting on it.

The PC elements of our culture are all about intellectual and moral passivity. The mindset doesn't work for human beings. One way or another, everyone has to make the choice. You can pick some form of Lent, or you can opt for some form of cosmetic butt surgery. You can make demands on yourself or let the demands of others act upon you.

If you compare Eve Ensler's writings with Mamacita's, you can see what each path leads to. It's an easy choice if we are willing to lift up our eyes and look down the road. Mamacita has joy; Eve Ensler seems to have a mutating neurosis.


Comments:
Both SW and Mamacita had wrote great posts- must reads, really.

Add this one to the list.

Your remark re intellectual and moral passivity are spot on.

We no longer work to earn intellect or even morality. Instead, we are spoon fed highly agendized versions of both by the agendistas.
 
That's it- no more all nighters. 'Had wrote'?

Till tomorrow.
 
Sounds good to me!

I guess it's Friday.
 
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