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As I approach middle age, I am coping with a situation that affects mi vida loco. For a multiplicity of reasons,
it’s becoming more and more difficult to have stable relationships with significant others. I’m not sure why it’s
happening but the problem seems to be escalating at an alarming rate. I blame the pressures of modern society.
Most
adults, I talk to or see on Reality Television, seem to be in a mild state of panic, when it comes to relationships. I receive
daily testimony about men and women abandoning relationships for all the wrong reasons. There is some sort of disconnect in
present society.
I blame the media for the current discord in modern societies which tells us it’s to okay to
be gay; it’s okay to be irresponsible; it’s okay to be sexually ambiguous; it’s okay to perpetuate single
parent households; it’s okay to have same sexed parents; it’s ok to be narcissistic and self involved; it’s
okay to expose your children to drugs, media and experimental lifestyles with yet unknown consequences; it’s ok not
to have limits.
Sociologist predicted thirty years ago that as deviant behaviors became more widely practiced, the
behaviors would eventually be perceived as normal. The Brave New World is here. Huxley’s nightmare of classicism and
narcissism is a new age malady.
FEAR OF SUCCESS
I am the product of a dysfunctional nuclear family. Momma and
Daddy lived in the same household until Daddy’s failed plot to murder Momma was thwarted by me one Friday night when
he thought nobody but he and Momma were at home. Me, my brothers and my Mom moved away from our family home, struggled for
3 years and finally were able to force the Ogre out of the castle. We moved back into our family home without the Ogre. His
life, that he imaged would be better without us faltered then ended prematurely.
Severely damaged by serial familial
dysfunction, as an adult, I was determined not to suffer the pitfalls of competition, infidelity and financial mismanagement
which are common deterrents to a healthy marriage. My error in planning was not picking a mate less damaged than I. My mate,
Countess Dracula, not only feared success but actively sabotaged any hopes we had of obtaining it. Over the course of 10 years,
she undermined every attempt I made at having a healthy relationship with her. Dracula told me, on our tenth anniversary,
that she never believed she could live up to the happiness I expressed on our wedding day and over the course of our relationship!
All through my teenage years, I watched my father and other male relatives erode their marriages by trying to have
women and sometimes extra children on the side. Men have historically measured their successes by the number of women and
progeny they could manage. The mythology surrounding Euro-Christian ethics have so corrupted the fabric of western society,
that we are no longer able to have functional family networks that promote polygamy and polyandry. So, there are more mommies
with babies than there are babies with daddies.
Not having a male head of the household, however fucked up the male
may have been, was the exception rather than the rule, in households up until the last quarter of the 20th century. The last
30 or so years have been a cultural free for all.
It Must Be True, I Saw It On Television
Father knew best
in the 50’s, Ozzie and Ward held it down in the 60’s. The 70’s brought you blended families ala Brady, or
momma Partridge shifting gears and mackin her children and Julia; the perfect, selfless, celibate black female with a perfect centered
child who never plagued her with questions about his daddy.
Social service agencies primed the pump by paying female
headed households if and only if daddy was no where to be found. The Women's Movement, deregulated birth control products
and The Free Love movement propelled the erosion of the basic nuclear family.
Reality shows reveal the disconnectedness
of society. Sitcoms portray homosexuality as the next best thing and dramas promote the pathos of villainry in the business
world. The viewer believes that everything portrayed on TV to be a true reflection of real life. The plug in drug has become
the guideline by which people assess their lives.
Brave New World
The Maury Show had a young black woman on
the show 13 times in her attempt to establish paternity for her 2 of her 3 daughters! She brought man after man on the show.
It was grueling to watch, as she threw herself on the floor and screamed and pulled out her hair, each time she was told that
none of the men she had slept with then drug on the show were those poor girl's fathers. There will be a 14th show and the
nation will watch in horror as she further humiliates herself. Her daughters will eventually drop out of school rather than
be taunted by their peers and suffer the humiliation associated with their mother’s rabid indiscretions. The cycle will
repeat itself.
Reality Television provides a view of society that is raw and inescapable. The people on that show
represent the underclass and the working-class of American society. For the most part, they are semi-literate and emotionally
disconnected. Self esteem issues seem to be central to the catharsis of the hapless folk parading before the camera. The young
woman on the Maury Show was literally looking for love in all the wrong places one partner at a time. She bedded down with
anyone willing to give her the time of day. going from man to man. Women and men mutilate their bodies, so that they might
be a suitable mate to someone they deem more worthy than themselves.
I lived with a beautiful, articulate, reasonably
intelligent woman who told me for 8 years that she was “not worthy” of the relationship we found ourselves in.
Adoration, financial security, emotional stability and good sex did not serve as suitable reinforcers to assure her that she
was in a good relationship.
Now matter how dysfunctional my nuclear family was, I always understood that I was loved.
That knowledge allowed me to move beyond self love, avoid self loathing and have emotionally viable relationships with other
people. I have come to understand that most people are not that fortunate.
Narcissism, self indulgence and magical
thinking pervade the psyche of the emotionally disenfranchised. People question your motives, when you smile at them. Public
laughter causes people discomfort. They initially think you are laughing at them and will step to you and question why you
are laughing! Relationship failure has reached critical mass.
Society is devolving. We devalue traditional ideals.
We have pushed the elderly aside and marginalized their worth in lieu of the latest ideas being promoted.
The youth
movement has no intrinsic social value because of it's malleability. The moment a trend is embraced by the larger society
it is no longer tenable. Instead of embracing the best ideas, we denigrate them the moment they reach mass acceptance. In
the olden days, we fought wars in an attempt to control what people did. Governments suppressed information in their efforts
to control the lumpen . Fascism quietly reigned. Today we allow music and television to decide what we should wear and drink
and drive.
The collective mindset in westernized cultures is biased and material. We mindlessly fall victim to popular
trends. We watch. We listen. If the information feels good, we adopt it without questioning the validity of it. Society behaves
like the viewer of a multiple car crash. As horrified as we are by what we see, we still stand by idly and view the carnage.
WOE THE NEW METROPOLIS!
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