Moral Health

I should like, if I may, to share with you one of the most beautiful stories of my life.  It is a story that confirms my sense of goodness as it should be in this otherwise complicated world.  Whether we like it or not, the simple truth of the matter is that we reveal an awful lot about ourselves over time.  Thus, consistency in character over time is revealing as anything can be about what we are really like.

I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with two young teenagers—Brian and Paul.  They both graduated from high school this year.  They are typical teenage males in that they are playful, full of energy, and masterfully spontaneous.  Clearly, there is a very straightforward sense in which there is absolutely nothing more revealing of a teenager’s upbringing than the way in which he is spontaneous.  You want to know what boundaries have been set in the home—set not just by word but by example—then watch two teenagers being playful and spontaneous.

A perfect illustration of this pertains to language.  If profanity is commonplace in the home, then I can assure you that, as the night follows the day, two teenage males who are being playful and spontaneous will invariably resort to profanity, and lots of it, in order to express themselves.

Again, when parents in the home are tolerant of excuses for moral slothfulness, then playful and spontaneous behavior on the part of two teenage males will invariably cross over into inappropriate behavior.

I do not claim that Paul and Brian are perfect.  But I do know that they are the beneficiaries of excellent upbringing in the home.  And this shows in every conceivable way.

I met Brian first, when he was doing some work for his family business.  I later met Paul who was also helping out.  Our interaction was jump-started by the French language, as the boys were both studying French in high school; and French is my second language.

They delighted in the banter that passed between us, as I would make various remarks to them in French and they tried to respond in French.  But along the way I noticed something much more important, namely the extent to which the boys very much enjoyed good clean fun.  And Brian’s father very much noticed and liked that as well.

The parents of Paul and Brian trusted me; and trust from morally upstanding parents is about as affirming as things can get in interactions between mortals.  There is all the difference in the world between parents who will take any opportunity not to have to attend to their children; and parents of enormous character who make it clear that they judge one to be worthy of their trust in interacting with their children.  If there is anything that qualifies as a moral gift, surely a judgment of worthiness from upright parents in this regard is the moral equivalent of a gift of diamonds and rubies.  It simply does not get any better than that.

And when genuine trust is engaged by genuine trust, the result is a good that is truly greater than the some of its parts.  For there are ways of interacting and expressions of goodwill that are possible only when there is genuine trust on the part of both parties.  Trust gives rise to options that distrust forecloses.

Here is an illustration of this point.  For the very first time in my life I served as a tour guide in Paris for some friends.  Who were those friends?  You guessed it: Brian and Paul, along with a few of their family members.  But trust and only trust made it possible for something like the following to happen.  To the adults, I remarked: “Why don’t you folks go out to a very fancy restaurant, while the boy and I explore Paris”.  I knew that the boys would be playful and spontaneous.  But I also knew that they would never ever behave inappropriately.  I would never have made the offer had I thought otherwise.

The parents, by contrast, knew without a shadow of a doubt that I would behave appropriately with respect to the boys.  The very Paris trip would never have gotten off the ground had they thought otherwise.

The result was an extraordinarily rich evening for all involved that would never have happened were it not for the remarkable trust that prevailed between us all.  The boys and I went out Puteaux to visit some close family friends of mine, and afterwards we viewed the sprawling grounds of La Defense.  The guys loved it.

To this day, the Rougemont family asks me about Brian and Paul.  And here too is a moment of trust.  Although neither Brian nor Paul is Jewish, they were my guests.  And the trust between me and the Rougemont family is so extraordinary that it is simply understood that I may bring to their home anyone from the states to whom I am giving a tour in Paris.  That welcome was extended even to an Arabic friend of mine.  Trust at is best.

It is a simple truth that some of the most beautiful moments in life are predicated upon trust.  And trust, as with all matters of character, is not something that one can purchase when one needs it.  Quite the contrary, there is nothing on the face of this earth that can stand in for a history of moral goodness—an untarnished record of trust.

In this ever so fast-paced world, it is this simple reality that way too many fail to grasp.

Trust is like a credit history.  Either one has the appropriate history or one does not.  In particular, sincere avowals today are no substitute for an excellent record of trustworthiness yesterday.  No matter how quickly one can communicate; no matter how fast we can travel; no matter how fast technology permits us to alter things: It remains true that nothing on the face of this earth can change the fact that there can be no substitute for an excellent record of trustworthiness.

This is a moral lesson.  But how might we teach it to children?  Of course, we can always proclaim that nothing substitutes for a record of excellence.  We can yell it.  We can even through pots and pans as we yell.  And whilst doing that we can sprinkle our yelling with threats here and there—just to underscore the point that we mean what we are saying.

Will this ensure that children learn the moral lesson that nothing substitutes for a record of excellence?  Of course not.  And the reason why is very simple.  Neither yelling nor proclamations from the top of the highest mountain can take the place of being the beneficiary of a record of goodness on the part of another, one’s parents in particular.

For when we are the beneficiaries of a record of goodness, the result is an emotional configuration that cannot be wrought otherwise.  Paul and Brian are the beneficiaries of such a record of goodness on the part of their parents.  And it shows.

Oddly enough, I can bear witness to this in ways that their parents cannot.  For you see, I have never had any authority over Brian and Paul.  I have never held either the purse strings or the key ring to the car.  I have had no leverage with them whatsoever.  So their comportment around me is profoundly revealing of the emotional configuration wrought in their lives by their parents.  For just as nothing is more indicative of an individual’s character than how the person behaves when no one is watching, what we have next in line is that nothing is more indicative of a child’s character than how that child behaves when her or his parents are not around.

Life is full of surprises in that we cannot always know from which direction a bit of confirmation will come.

To the parents of Brian and Paul, this alas is one of those moments.  I am the most unlikely of all candidates to confirm the wonderful moral configuration that your parenting has wrought in your son: Brian in one case and Paul in the other.  Why?  Because I mattered to them when I did not have to matter at all.  The house of moral decency is built upon this rock.  Thus, the boys also know something very wonderful about themselves as well.

To Paul and Brian: As you each go on to pursue your perspective dreams, let me just say, having been the beneficiary of the moral excellence wrought in the life of each you and which you both exude so gracefully:

Thank You for the Memories

Freedom is an absolutely wonderful thing.  But freedom without responsibility is disastrous.  And surely an important part of that responsibility lies in the use of commonsense.  Anyone is free to pick up a hitchhiker.  And doing so is easy enough, in that all one has to do is stop the car.  Yet, everyone knows that this simple act can be one of the most ridiculously foolish things that a person can do.

We all know that rape is wrong.  This, though, does not change the fact that a person did something absolutely foolish if he or she picked up the hitchhiker who committed the act of rape.  For we all know that picking up hitchhikers is very, very, very dangerous.  Suppose the hitchhiker had a sign that read “I was just robbed”.  As it turns out, this was but a ploy to get some driver to stop.  Needless to say, the hitchhiker cannot be sued for both misrepresentation and rape.

It is, to be sure, a truism that no one asks to be raped.  Alas, this truth does not change reality that a person has acted foolishly in failing to take certain precautions.  Commonsense requires that we not act foolishly.  And there are very few excuses, if any, for not exercising basic commonsense.  Everyone who drives knows that it is basic commonsense not to p[ck up hitcherhickers.

In a very real sense, MySpace.Com is rather like a highway with all sorts of people standing around looking for a ride.  Some of these people are indeed innocent.  Other, unfortunately, are exceedingly malicious.  The problem, of course, is that distinguishing between the innocent and the malicious is next to impossible.

It is my view that the lawsuit against MySpace.Com has virtually no merit.  It is common knowledge that misrepresentation is a rampant feature of the site.  In fact, it is known that sexual predators of all sorts avail themselves of the site and misrepresent themselves.  Thus, believing what someone on the site says about himself and than actually meeting the person is rather like believing the hitchhiker’s sign that reads “I was just robbed”, and stopping to give the person a ride.

Indeed, I understand that the defendant is already contemplating filing a counter-lawsuit on the grounds that plaintiff misrepresented herself on the site: He claims that she is younger than she claimed to be.  If she did misrepresent her age, that can hardly come us a surprise.  For expecting that someone is actually representing himself accurately on MySpace.Com is rather like going to a costume party and supposing that the various modes of attire represent the way in which the person wearing the attire actually carries herself or himself.  Only a fool would do such a thing.

This is a commonsense moment.  Laws can never ever protect us from the failure to exercise basic commonsense.  Lest there be any misunderstanding, the young girl’s rape—if indeed that occurred—was inexcusable.  But no less inexcusable was her agreeing to meet with the teenager in the first place.  Her doing so does not excuse the immorality of his raping her.  But the immorality of his raping her does not excuse her foolish irresponsibility.

It is well-known that MySpace.Com does not verify age.  Indeed, it did not verify the plaintiff’s age.  So I would be stunned if the courts held the site liable for the male’s representation of his age.

But the question that invariably arises is this: What explains such a manifest lack of commonsense on the part young people nowadays?  I do not hold that all things can be explained by reference to the family, but much can.  Having and exhibiting commonsense is very much a function of the kinds of parental expectations in place, as well as the kind of parental behavior that is modeled by the parents in front of their children.

Think of commonsense on the order of a language.  As everyone knows, the more masterful a command of the spoken language that parents exhibit around the home, the greater the command of that language the children will come to have.  No one learns a language by first being given the appropriate instruction: the rules of grammar, syntax, and so forth.

Much of commonsense behavior is exactly like that.  It is not so much by instruction that occasion commonsense on the part of our children by way of instruction as it by way of example.  And it is this simple truth that we are losing sight of with our increasingly busy lives.  Just as 20 minutes of instruction per day would never in and of itself suffice to render a child a competent speaker of the language spoken at home, it also the case that 20 minutes of instruction per day will never in and of itself suffice to bring about on the part of the child what we refer to as commonsense.  For in both cases, it is not the instruction but the exemplification that makes the biggest difference.

Like every decent person, I am pained by the rape.  But there is the issue of preventing harms and wrongs to oneself by taking reasonable and basic precautions—by exhibiting rudimentary commonsense.  And we cannot ignore the conspicuous absence of commonsense in the name of our favorite ideology.  The truth that no man should ever commit a rape will never entail the negation of the truth that a woman has the responsibility of taking reasonable precautions.

I do not like being assaulted when walking down the street.  And anyone who does wrongs me.  But this truth does not absolve me of the responsibility of taking reasonable precautions.

So without having ever met the parents of the teenage girl, there is little doubt in my mind that they were irresponsible parents.  For there is the poignant truth that a 14-year old was hanging out with a 19-year old.  In teenage years, they are in different worlds.  And parenting a teenage daughter is about driving this simple and basic point home.  There is nothing that a 19-year old male wants with a 14-year old female other than sex.  This is one of those bits of commonsense that are part and parcel of parenting.  Every mother knows this; every father knows this.  At least each mother and father should know this.

Do I believe in equal rights between women and men?  More ardently than most would ever suppose.  Yet, I do not think that women and men are the same.  And good parenting reminds us of those difference and it reminds us of the importance of keeping those differences in mind.

If anyone ought to be sued, the parents ought to be sued for failing in their responsibility as parents.

What is happening in this case is something quite horrendous, namely that a wrong that a child has suffered is being used to mask the utter irresponsibility of the parents.  And this is becoming one of the grave social patterns of the American culture.

As for the male, there is certainly no pity in my heart for him.  If I had my way, he would be castrated (given that he actually raped the girl).  But to live well in any society is to recognize that some people are to be avoided, which brings me back to the daughter.

Had her parents been giving her the attention that she deserved and had her parents been paying attention to her activities, it is most unlikely that the scenario with the teenage male would have ever gotten off the ground.  For one thing, they would have known about her false profile on MySpace.Com.  Then they would have been monitoring her on-line communication.  Finally: they would have known where she was going and with whom she was spending time.  That is what responsible parenting is about.

If I am right, then MySpace,Com is none other than the portal through which the manifest neglect of the girl’s parents became realized.

After all that has been said about MySpace.Com in recent years, it is simply not possible to be a decent parent and not closely monitor an account that one’s child has on the site—if, that is, one’s child is allowed to have an account there in the first place.  That is the responsible thing to do in this world of ever increasing freedoms.

Every now and then life bestows upon us an absolutely stunning irony.  Of course, it is generally the case that Hollywood opposes the war in Iraq, whereas the religious right has generally been in favor of it.  What makes this odd is that the following.  On the one hand, the Iraq Muslim population of Iran and the Middle East in general has to be against just about everything that Hollywood is for.  On the other hand, when it comes to basic moral values, the religious right and the Muslim population of the Middle East have much in common.

This is certainly true in the area of sexual morality.  While the religious right is hardly in favor of the burka, it is certainly for modesty on the part of women.  By contrast, if there is anything that Hollywood seems to be against, it is female modesty: the more sexually provocative the better.  Again, homosexuality is considered a sin by the Muslim religion.  But for Hollywood, being gay is just about fashionable.  I understand that ever since the success of Brokeback Mountain, leading male actors have been looking for gay roles to play.  The religious right, obviously, condemns homosexuality, and wanted nothing more than to see the film fail at the box office.

Non-marital sex and affairs are what Hollywood is all about.  I mean nothing like a sexual trysts to pump up a star’s declining ratings.  Needless to say, the Muslim Middle East flatly rejects this behavior as morally bankrupt, as does the religious right.

More generally, Hollywood eschews sexism, whereas the Muslim Middle East comes dangerously close to embodying it.  The religious right is not quite as far along as the Muslim Middle East.  Still, many suppose that the man is the head of the household.  This line of thought can be given various non-sexist interpretations.  One might be that women and men are equal but have different roles owing to differences in gender.  Hollywood, needless to say, is not having any of that.

So it is ironic beyond words that Hollywood opposes the Iraqi war and the religious rights supports it.  After all, we are not talking about mild discord, on the one hand, and passing agreement, on the other.  Hollywood despises the very values that the Muslim Middle East represents; for Hollywood makes a mockery of the religious right for embracing those very same values.  The religious right, by contrast, shares many of the fundamental moral values embraced by the Muslim Middle East.

So why isn’t Hollywood for the war and the religious right opposed to the war?  Wouldn’t that be the logical line-up?  Let us start with the religious right.

Many Christians see the Muslim Middle East in the throes of a Muslim crusade, where this entails the diminution of the role of Christ.  There seems to be little that is conciliatory about Islam.

Christians get to have Jesus in their heart; and this allows for a person to disagree and still claim that he is a Christian.  Jews by birth don’t have to believe much of anything and they can still claim to be Jewish.  The same holds for converts.  Indeed, the only kind of Jew that Israel rejects as matter of principle is she or he who claims to be a Jew for Jesus.

Islam is a compliance-heavy religion.  And many on the religious right have felt threatened by its non-compromising vision of who is the one true prophet.  Whereas Christianity has managed to think of Jews as their Elder Brother, Islam seems threatening to the religious right precisely it offers nothing that is conciliatory to Christians.

Officially, Christianity claims to have superseded Judaism and Islam claims to have superseded Christianity.  Christianity artfully insists upon this; whereas Islam seems to insist upon it with a vengeance.  And that makes it a threat to Christianity.  So we have an explanation for why the religious right has generally favored the war.

This leaves us, then, with Hollywood.  Why on earth has it been so adamantly opposed to the war?  Surely, the answer cannot possibly be that it sees values in the Muslim Middle East with which it resonates.  Nor can the issue for Hollywood be the European one.  I suggest that the real reasons for Europe’s opposition to the war was its fear of violent uprisings on the part of its large Muslim Arabic population.  Threats of violence have a way of persuading people.  And large parts of the Muslim Arabic world have turned being violent into a form of art.

Perhaps Hollywood simply thinks that all wars are wrong.  Well, there is no real evidence of that.  Nor can it really be that Hollywood thinks that murdering innocent people is just fine so long as it is Muslim Arabs killing Muslim Arabs.  That surely is a despicable moral view.  There is no end to the vicious ways in which Arab Muslim leaders in the Middle East have treated their very own citizens.

Then there is the issue of slavery.  We know that to this day parts of the Muslim Arabic world engages in slavery, where many of the slaves are blacks.  Opposing slavery ! ! ! How much more politically correct can one get.  Where is Hollywood?

I do not necessarily have to agree with where a person stands in order to be able to make sense of why the person stands there.  I hold a very simple view, namely that hostility towards Bush is so great—he so profoundly despised—that many people opposed the word in Iraq for no other reason than that Bush was leading it.

Hollywood is as self-centered and as rapacious as it is possible to be.  There is no reason to think that a higher moral calling explains its steadfast opposition to the war.  For it is its own higher calling—though certainly not a higher moral calling.

I can think of some very good reasons why we should not have gone to war with Iraq.  Some of them, to be sure, come with hindsight.  The problem is that I have heard none of those good reasons come from Hollywood.  Yet, no group of people ought to have been more prepared with good reasons for opposing the war than Hollywood precisely because it is diametrically opposed to just about everything that the Muslim Arabic world stands for.  Insofar as one group of human beings can be considered the natural enemy of another, the Muslim Arabic world is Hollywood’s natural enemy.

Unfortunately, Hollywood is so besotted with its own power that it has never seen fit to make sense of its own stand.  Equally unfortunate is the truth that most people are too busy graveling—for access to the kind of power that the folks of Hollywood have—to be concerned with the simply reality that Hollywood has essentially opposed going to war with those who regard it as representative of the very height of immorality.  Hollywood has opposed going to war with people who despise it as much as it despises Bush.  This is one of the great ironies of the moment.

I believe that gratitude is the greatest of all social lubricants. Gratitude is none other than the appreciative and ever so willing acknowledgment of the good that another has done on one’s behalf.  And limitless are the forms that gratitude can take.  Nothing allows for more originality than the expression of gratitude.  Accordingly, it is very, very, very rare that a person is not in the position to express gratitude.  These cases aside, anyone who is too busy to express gratitude is too busy, indeed.  For reasons that I shall indicate at the end of this essay, it is owing to expressions of gratitude that I consider myself very much alive.

What follows is a confession:  There is much for which I can forgive a person.  For I understand that we all make mistake; and when people are willing to acknowledge and make amends for their mistakes, where genuine sincerity abounds, I can often find it in my heart to forgive that person.  But ingratitude is another thing entirely.  I have enormous difficulty forgiving the ungrateful.  For I have enormous difficulty forgiving someone who is enjoying (or has enjoyed) the benefits of another’s labor, but who does not express his gratitude for the effort that the other person made on his behalf.  This is an incongruity that I cannot abide.

I understand that the absence of gratitude does not make a person evil—a Hitler the Second, as it were.  Still, my natural tendency is to disassociate myself from the person.  This is because the absence of gratitude bespeaks a profound self-centeredness that I simply cannot abide.  Indeed, it seems to me that anyone who maintains a relationship with a person in the face of sustained ingratitude on that person’s part also has a problem.

Gratitude is an independent affirmation of the good intentions with which another takes himself to have behaved.  Thus, gratitude is very much a moral power.  For there is the issue of what a person intends to do for another and there is the issue of whether or not the person’s intentions realized their end.  Gratitude is a way confirming to the agent that his intentions realized their end.

No matter how wonderful you think that the cake that you made for me tastes or how beautiful you think that the piece of art you produced for me is, and all with good reason, there is not and cannot be a substitute for the confirmation that comes with my expression of gratitude to you for what you have done.

Indeed, no matter how much you have may have obviously done to help me, there is nothing on the face of this earth that can substitute for my expression of gratitude.  For that is a confirmation that I judged your behavior as you wanted me to judge it.  And nothing takes the place of that confirmation.  No amount of self-knowledge; no amount of objective assessment of the matter.

The absence of gratitude, when it is appropriate, can in fact be vicious.  For you see, gratitude is an acknowledgement of the purity of another’s intentions.  After all, if in the end your only reason for helping me was to obtain media publicity, then I rightly feel used, though I have benefited.  Moreover, the purity of your intentions has been called into question.  My absence of gratitude may reflect just that.  Or I may engage in what we might call perfunctory gratitude, which is on the order of saying “Congratulations” to the person to whom one lost (being a good sport) or saying “I am pleased to introduce Smith” (mere social protocol).  Perfunctory gratitude can be appropriate.

But if you have helped me and have been there for me over time, giving of yourself when you did not have to, then what is owed is the real thing.  And the absence of gratitude in this case is essentially a denial of the good intentions with which the person acted on my behalf.  Sometimes, of course, we have reason to question a person’s motives, in which case gratitude is indeed not in order.  But when a person has been helpful and decent over time without ever committing a transgression, then questioning the person’s motives is inappropriate.  After all, what other evidence can we have that a person is doing what is right by us, then that the person has been consistently doing so over time without committing a transgression.

The absence of gratitude, then, in the face of a person’s doing what is right over time is none other than an affront to the person’s efforts on one’s behalf.  The absence is an affront precisely because there is no excuse for not showing gratitude.

It should now make more sense as to why I distance myself from those who show an absence of gratitude.  It should now make sense why anyone should.  Living right calls for considerable self-control and foresight.  It requires making sure that one does what is appropriate as well as making sure that one does not do what is inappropriate.  Not acknowledging such behavior on the part of another is a form of viciousness—a form of moral discounting if you will.  Essentially, then, the absence of gratitude is an insult.  Its absence is tantamount to attributing—and entirely without good reason—unsavory motives to a person who had every reason to think that she or he has acted with good will.  Only a psychologically unhealthy person would put up with that.

It should also be clear why gratitude is such an extraordinary social lubricant.  For insofar as we aim to be decent human beings, nothing provides greater independent affirmation of that than the gratitude of others.  Gratitude is the moral affirmation with one’s own will of the will of another.  And for all of its simplicity that is an absolutely riveting expression of moral power.  The proof of this is just how much we treasure those expressions of gratitude that we have received.

Over the years, I have received various gifts from my friends students: a shirt from Africa, the Hebrew Bible in French and English, a pen with my name on it, and various notes of thanks from this one and that one.  These are like rubies and diamonds in my life.  I try to live right.  And these gifts are indications from various individuals with whom I have formed ties or whom have taught (or both) that I may have met with some success in that regard.  These gifts are an acknowledgement that I, with all the various things in life that I have going for me, could not possibly give myself.

I remarked at the outset that gratitude takes a multitude of forms.  And one of the remarkable forms that it has taken is that one of my former students shares with me the joys of his fatherhood.  I sometimes wonder if he realizes how precious and transforming a thing he is doing.  That is a worthiness I could never give to myself, though I lived an eternity.  The same holds, but in a different way, for the Rougemont family in France (which now ranges over three generations).  I have to remind myself that once upon a time I did not know them.

I believe that I live one of the richest lives on the planet.  Not because I travel between two continents like some people move between adjacent towns.  Not because I pretty much have the material things I want.  These things are nice; and there is no denying that.  But I live one of the richest on the planet because I have been blessed with expressions of gratitude that have elevated my soul to unimaginable heights.  This does not make for immorality, but life shorn of gratitude would surely be some form of death itself.  Thank God: I am very much alive.  To the many who have made that a reality:

T h a n k  Y o u

The radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger holds a quite simple view about sex, namely that a man is apt to swim through shark infested waters to protect a woman who provides him with good sex and, moreover, he will worship the ground upon which she walks. Of course, the context here is marriage.  At first blush, one might suppose that Dr. Laura’s view regarding sex, as developed in her book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, treats sex as a form of bartering: If a woman wants X from a man (to wit, his undying devotion), then she should give him Y (to wit, sex).

Fortunately, that is not Dr. Laura’s thinking at all.  Nor, a fortiori, is she recommending some form of servitude on the part of women.

Let’s face it: anything can be recast as a form of bartering.  The best way to keep a friend is to be friendly towards the person and do something kind for the individual from time to time.  But no one thinks for a moment that kindness towards a friend is none other than a form of bartering.  Yet, it is unmistakably true that kindness towards a friend is one sure way to keep the friendship healthy.  Only a fool would think otherwise.

What is more, kindness towards a friend has to come from the heart; and this requires being mindful of the friend’s interests and needs.  There is no point in giving a friend a gift of chocolates in the name of friendship, if from the outset one knows that the friend does not like the stuff.  To state the obvious, one needs to give the friend something else.  The self-evident truth here is that good friends are mindful of one another’s different interests.  Each does not simply project her or his interests on to the other.

This brings me back to Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s view about sex.  She thinks that on biological grounds women and men are not identical when it comes to sex.  And she further thinks that one of the fundamental mistakes of feminism is to maintain that women and men are the same in this regard, and that all differences between the two in this area are merely owing to socialization.  She thinks that women and men typically bring to marriage different strengths, and that sex is no exception to this.

On Dr. Laura’s view, sex might be understood as a gift that only women can offer to men.  And this gift of sex on the part of a woman to her man motivates him out of gratitude to offer gifts that will flatter his woman.

The Dr. Laura argument might be put as follows:

P1 Men absolutely and unequivocally enjoy sex

P2 A man cannot have sex with his wife in the absence of her consent; otherwise, what we have is rape

_____________

C3 The woman’s consent is the gift of sex

Another way of putting (C3) is that women have a power that men do not have.

To be sure, men consent to sex also.  Indeed, even an aroused man can be forced to have sex against his will.  But we must be careful not to let philosophical imagination get in the way of reality.  It takes a very unusual story to make sense of an aroused husband having been forced to have sex against his will with, of all people, his wife.  That is to say, the probability of this sort of situation occurring is very, very low.

This is where the truth of (C3) proves to be a most significant consideration.  A woman’s consent is always relevant.  It is never the case that an unusual story makes it otherwise.

So guess what?  It looks like we have a difference between women and men that feminism has most certainly not eliminated.  Quite the contrary, feminists insist upon a quite different wording of (C3), namely the following:

(C3*) In the absence of consent, all sex between a female and a male is rape.

Please notice that both (C3) and (C3*) are equally true.  What is more, Dr. Laura is as committed to the truth of (C3*) as any person I know.  Indeed, the argument the Dr. Laura argument constructed above formally entails (C3*).  Notice (P2).

But Laura Schlessinger’s idea is truly sublime.  From the fact that we would have rape if a woman’s consent is not freely given, what most surely does not follow is that her consent cannot be freely given.  And Schlessinger’s quite straightforward view is that a woman’s consent freely given to her man makes a most dramatic difference in his behavior of gratitude towards her and his appreciation of her.  And if this were not enough, Dr. Laura is quite straightforward in her view that sex is enjoyable and that married women ought to avail themselves of it more rather than invoking every excuse to avoid it.

I have a friend who brings chocolates back from to Paris for various friends of his in the United States.  Imagine that one of those friends were to steal a box of chocolates on the grounds that she was going to be given a box anyway.  It is too obvious for words that this would be wrong.  Taking chocolates (or whatever) without consent constitutes theft.  That truth, however, does not change one iota the reality that those very same chocolates can be freely given as a gift.

Feminists focus upon one reality about sex.  Dr. Laura focuses upon another.  The differences is that Dr. Laura’s reality encompasses the feminist view about sex, whereas the feminists have become too myopic to see the veracity of Dr. Laura’s view.

Sex may not be the elixir of life.  But when it comes to psychological uplift, its properties are certainly ever so potent.  Generally available to all married couples regardless of this or that background, sex can be an extraordinary form of relief for the weary.  Thus, Dr. Laura continues to wonder why so many married women put down sex and refuse sex to their husband in the name of being too tired and having worked too hard during the day when sex may very well be just the thing that floats the concerns of the day out of the way.

It is generally held that men are rarely too tired for sex.  Dr. Laura makes two points in this regard: (i) However tired a woman may initially be, the truth is that good sex invariably brings about an immeasurable psychological uplift.  (ii) Given the knowledge that (i) is true, then it is rather shortsighted for married women to be so adamant about refusing sex, since in the end they would be helping themselves.

Needless to say, consideration (i) makes the Dr. Laura argument even more efficacious.  For then a woman’s gift of sex is the gift that gives back—and immediately, at that.

Dr. Laura does not deny that a woman’s consent is hers to give.  But with everything in life that is clearly ours, the question that inevitably arises is this: How shall we use it?  The wherewithal to offer what others do not have constitutes a moral power.  And the refusal to acknowledge and to be gracious in that regard can constitute a form of viciousness.

To understand a man, Dr. Laura holds, is to understand that for a man sex is one of the most fundamental forms of sharing between a man and his woman that can take place.  In this regard, Dr. Laura draws attention to a mind-boggling irony: Outside of marriage, many women seem to think that licentiousness is good thing: the more sex the better.  Yet, these very same women, as the years in marriage pass, seem to think that just about anything constitutes a good excuse not to have sex.

Here is the irony.  The idea seems to be that it is fine for unmarried women to offer themselves to one man after another who does not treasure the gift of sex.  And then when women are in a committed relationship, offering the gift of sex to the man who most values it, namely the husband, is some how seen as a burden—nay, a sexist imposition on the part of that man.

It is in regard that Dr. Laura thinks that feminism has hardly been a friend to women.  We need not deny that men, too, can offer sex as a gift to their wife.  It suffices that between women and men there is an irrevocable asymmetry between them with regard to offering sex as a gift, in that men will never have this power to anything like the extent that women have it.

The very idea of sex as a gift is at odds with the idea of sex being performed merely as a conjugal duty.  As everyone knows, mere conjugal duty sex is extremely unsatisfying.  And if tomorrow there were a pill that gave men a 4-hour erection while he slept, I doubt if many women would find that attractive.  After all, the point of sex, as opposed to masturbation, is the sexual energy between the two parties that charges each other.

Like it or not, it would appear that this asymmetry between women and men is anchored in none other than nature itself.  One option is to curse nature, and brood about the asymmetry.  Another option is to acknowledge this reality and to build upon it in a very constructive way.  If insanity consists in banging one’s head against the same wall time and time again, all the while expecting different results each time, then arguably Dr. Laura’s view has the virtue of being remarkably sane.

Multiculturalism is the view that we embrace rather than eliminate differences between various groups.  And this many embrace, although there cannot possibly be any biological basis for cultural differences.  Dr. Laura, then, might be understood as the most basic of multiculturalists; for she starts with, of all things, the differences between women and men that would seem to have an ineliminable basis in biology.

One of the very exceptional things regarging the Catholic Church is its acknowledgement of its own historical hostility towards Jews.  This started with Vatican II and culminated in the work of Pope John Paul II.  Has the Catholic Church done all that any Jew would like?  Probably not.  Yet, it can be said that the Church’s shift in its attitude towards Jews went farther many a Jew would have expected.  When John Paul II referred to Jews as the Church’s “Elder Brothers” that was tantamount to a veritable iceberg of ideology fully changing course.

What felicitous terminology !  An Elder Brother is someone from whom one can learn as well as disagree with.  In either case, the person is always one’s brother whom one respects, at least ideally.  This is the very excellent move made by the Catholic Church vis à vis Jews: We Christians do not need to agree with Jews in order to respect them, and there is much that we can learn from them notwithstanding our differences.  This is a most radical shift from the view that Jews are incapable recognizing moral truth owing to their willful rejection of Christ.

This brings us to what is very deep about antisemitism and to what makes it a very special species of racism.

In the absence of religion, antisemitism would be absolutely impossible.  Quite simply, antisemitism is the view that Jews are evil owing to their willful rejection of the path of righteousness—the path of righteousness that had been first shown to them.  There are passages in the Qu’ran that can be read in this way; and there are passages in the New Testament that can be read in this way.  It may very well be that a very careful reading of either sacred text yields a very different view of Jews.  But the truth is that the average person (Christian or Muslim) does not have this very careful reading of the sacred texts.  Indeed, the Catholic Church, itself, most certainly did not.

Racism, by contrast, is not tied to religion as such, because it is not tied to blacks having willfully rejected a conception of the path of righteousness that had first been shown to them.  Racism generally refers to inferiority, as such, rather than evil.  A person can even be morally inferior without being able.  That is, it may be that a person is absolutely incapable of achieving the moral excellences that it is expected of people; yet the individual is by no means evil.  Suppose that Sam does little more than get drunk and waste his money gambling.  Needless to say, he thereby exhibits very little moral excellence.  Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to characterize him as evil.

Typically, though, racial inferiority implies that the people in question are intellectually inferior.  And in the case of blacks, this has been the primary way in which blacks have been configured by racism.  Can they dance or sing well?  Absolutely !.  But if you are looking for genuine insight about a matter, look elsewhere.  For breathtaking intellectual horsepower, don’t expect it from a black.

Jews as a people are never seen as intellectually bereft.  Blacks as a people are never seen as intellectually talented.  This brings us to something very important.

The characterization of Jews as evil entails not only that they have rejected the path of righteousness, but that they are quite clever people—people who are quite capable of beguiling others.  A stupid person, after all, really can’t be an evil person, at least not in terms of masterfully deceiving others and plotting against others.  For blacks, there is nothing equivalent to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

So getting rid of Jews is often characterized, as Hitler himself did, as work on behalf of righteousness itself.  For Jews, by their continual existence, are an impediment to the spread of righteousness because Jews consciously and willfully do things that undermine righteousness.

No one characterizes blacks in that way.  To be sure, it has been said that blacks can get in the way of people doing what is right, because blacks appeal to the baser instincts of human beings.  But the thought is not that blacks consciously and willfully do things that undermine righteousness.  Blacks are not thought to be intelligent enough for that.

Starting with the Enlightenment era, Jews have often been deemed too evil to be slaves—a sentiment which had its fullest expression in the Shoah.  Blacks, on other hand, have often been seen as quite appropriate for slavery, provided that one can get to them before bad habits set in.  So a Final Solution for blacks has never really been a major concern throughout the world.

The number of blacks in the world enormously dwarfs the number of Jews in the world.  Yet, it is Jews—and not blacks—of whom people have sought to rid the world.

Leaving aside the case of Jew for Jesus (there are no Jews for Allah, curiously), part of what it means to say that one is a Jew is that one has an in-principle rejection of Christianity (and Islam), which is quite different from saying that one simply does not share that point of view.  There are lots of points of view that I do not hold, but against which I am not opposed as a matter of principle.  Many Jews do not appreciate this.  Being a Jew is not like choosing carrots rather than celery from the menu.  No, it is rather like saying that as a matter principle one eats only carrots, say, rather than celery.  Needless to say, this view of eating carrots changes everything.

To be black, on the other hand, is not to be against any religious view as a matter of principle.  One can be black and be Jewish or Muslim or Christian.  And so on.  At this point and time in the United States it is typically assumed that a black is a Christian, as the popularity of black gospel music would suggest.  Islam, however, is gaining ground.  But one is not more or less black on account of this choice.  No one expects Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson to convert to Islam because blackness requires it.

Antisemitism against Jews and racism against blacks both pertain to a warped view of the group question.  But the two warped views here are far from being identical, precisely because the former is tied to religion whereas the latter is not.

Religion gives views Jews a visibility that they would not otherwise have.  Like it or not, Christianity and Islam have a religious debt to Jews.  And it is not implausible to argue that much of antisemitism is, in various ways, anchored in opposition to that unshakable religious debt.  No one has a religious debt to blacks.  Speaking textually, there is no religion whose texts gives blacks visibility on the intellectual and social map; whereas Jews feature prominently in the religious text of Christianity and Islam.

I have not claimed that antisemitism is worse than racism.  After all, both antisemitism and racism have endured down through the ages and have both taken rather vicious forms.  I have merely pointed out that it is a mistake to suppose that antisemitism is but racism that has Jews as its objects rather than, say, blacks or Asians.  For what we have with antisemitism is a difference not in degree (racism and antisemitism can be equally evil and obnoxious), but in kind (as antisemitism, unlike racism per se, presupposes religion).

One of my very favorite sayings is that “One Never gets a second change to make a first impression”  This is saying is somewhat of an overstatement, as sometimes (albeit ever so rarely) it is possible to correct the initial first impression.  Just so, the statement reflects the indisputable truth that first impressions make an absolutely extraordinary difference.  It is in this context of making a first impression that many Jews might want to understand some of the negative sentiments that presently stem from the black community towards Jews.  I shall address the issue of antisemitism on Wednesday.

Are there physical features or mannerism (or both) that might incline us to say of an individual that she or he is Jewish?  Absolutely.  I was in the metro yesterday on my way to a meeting when a man got on who struck me as unquestionably Jewish; and when he started reading an English newspaper, I entertained the thought he was the new Jewish member, whom I had not yet met, of the group to which I belong.  As it turns out, he wasn’t that person, but I would have been willing to wager a lot on money on the fact that he is Jewish.

I could have been wrong, though; and had we struck up a conversation, he could very well have said “Yea, I know.  Everyone mistakes me for a Jew.  But nothing could be farther from the truth.  On both sides, I come from a very long line of Christians”.  Had he responded in that manner, it would obviously have been silly to have countered with “Well damn, I am just going to think of you as a Jew, anyway”. (more…)

After its laws, the key to democracy is none other than the good will of its citizens.  It goes without saying that unjust laws make for a bad democracy.  But, alas, all the laws the just laws of a democracy are for naught if good will is notoriously lacking among most of its citizens.  Good will is not substitute for justice.  All the same, without good will justice cannot prevail.   And it seems to me that over the past few decades good will has been drying up rather like a well is running out of water.  Good will is a social lubricant for the simple reason that it enables each party to acknowledge the good intentions of another when such intentions are present.

In a society shorn of good will, then it becomes rational for persons to be prudent and not to extend themselves lest they be harmed for their efforts to act on behalf of another.  It is good will that moves me to open the door for you when your arms are full.  But that act of good will is tied to the presupposition that you will not accuse me of trying assault you when I do so.  For if I think that, then I shall deem it best that I let you struggle on your own to open the door, though your arms are full.

It does not take much to indicate good will.  If you are coming to take the seat next to me on the subway, then the appropriate shift in my posture, however slight, acknowledges this.  In most cases, the shift does not really make more room for the person coming to sit down.  But it does count as an acknowledgement; and that, in turn, counts as a small gesture of good will.  Not much at all.  Just so, it beats an appearance of hostility or crass indifference any day of the week or year.

There are two fundamental aspects of basic good will.  One is that people will not expect more of one another than is reasonable.  The other is that people will accept responsibility insofar as this is reasonable.  The first is related to the second in that when we see that a person is accepting responsibility, then we do not use this as an excuse to excoriate or belittle the individual.  Nor do we discount it.

While friendship may spring out of good will, it is important to realize that good will, as such, is not an inevitable springboard for friendship.  For one thing, good will can be enormously localized.  There may be considerable good will between me and my physician; yet, it would we are not about to socialize or hang out together.  Either one of us would be stunned if the other made such a suggestion.  Just so, there is no mistaking the good will between us.

Good will is rather like the small coin of social interaction.  The collective of good will makes for huge sum.  Indeed, it makes for a most desirable moral climate.  A moral climate of majestic good will is one thing.  A moral climate completely shorn of good will is quite another.  It is not possible to live the same kind of life in both moral climates.  Not even a saint could.

What I am about to say is awkward but strikes me as true nonetheless, namely that we live in a society with more equality and less good will.  By contrast, I have seen more good will when equality flowered far less.  This shows quite simply that there is no logical connection between good will and equality.  In particular, it is a mistake to think that equality will bring good will in its wake.

The defining feature of good will is that taking oneself seriously is never an excuse not to take another seriously.  Modern society has perverted things.  For the prevailing view seems to be that taking oneself seriously provides one with an excuse not to take others seriously.  In some case, it is even worse that that: Taking oneself seriously is actually thought to be a justification or at least an excuse to harm others.

Significantly, it is only in the context of good will that the exercise of discretion is possible.  After all, if I thought that your intentions were to harm me in whatever way you could, it would be very, very foolish of me to trust you with just about anything of value that I have.  By contrast, where it is apparent that your good will towards me is abundant, then I know two things about you: The first is that you will not seek to harm me.  The second is that insofar as things go wrong, you will be concerned to make things right again.  The upshot of the second is that your first line of defense will not be to blame me for what went wrong.

We need more than laws of justice.  The reason for this is not that the laws of justice are dispensable.  Surely they are not.  Rather, it is that by themselves laws are not adequate for the task of social interaction.

Good will is the very fountain of basic politeness, often enabling people to whether differences that would otherwise be explosive.

One of the most horrendous things that is happening in the United States is that people are allowing ideological commitments to blind them to the good will of others.  The mark of a person’s good will is not whether she is conservative or not.  It is not whether he is for abortion or not.  And so on.  Yet, vilifying the other has become the modus operandi of many with opposing views.  Needless to say, vilification destroys good will.  And good will destroyed rarely if ever becomes restored to its full measure again.

One of the striking things about Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee is that both highly respected one another, although they fought on opposite sides of the Civil War.  Often enough, we cannot get that level of mutual respect between opposing parties in, say, a debate over affirmative action, where the issue of racial equality itself is the unyielding point of departure for both sides.  Needless to say, that is a most chilling truth.

So what we have is more equality than ever.  But the moral climate is more chilling than ever—as good will, like the sands of an eroded beach, constantly retreats.  And the metaphor here is perhaps all too apt.  For the demands for first one thing and then another have become like hostile tidal waves relentlessly beating against the shores of life.  The gentle current that nurtured our fantasies and soothed our souls: that current now seems to be all but a thing of the past.

Democracy without good will makes for a very unstable edifice, which will make for a very poignant case of winning the battle but losing the war.  This is because democracy without good will is rather like a plant without water: it will simply shrivel up and die, taking equality along with it.