Disposable Goods, Disposable People

In 1901, King Gillette, building an idea of the latter half of the nineteenth century, invented a safety razor with disposable blades (1). A host of disposable products followed including, cameras, tissues, paper cups, and diapers, until today, the disposable good is a common, and almost indispensable feature of society (2). Disposable goods offer a certain convenience, but have three aspects that, when considered, say something about the society that uses them with such abandon.

First, one has no obligation or responsibility to a disposable good; second, disposable goods are replaceable. One disposable razor or cup is as good as another. Finally, disposable goods are cheap, both in cost to obtain them and in the value people place on them. Even non disposable goods can become disposable. One recent writer, for instance, has remarked that people do not typically dispose of their computer because it has failed, but because a new one that seemed more desirable appeared on the market (3).

Today, however, it is not only goods that are disposable; rather, over the course of the 20^th century, people too have become disposable. A divorce rate of approximately 50%, the commonness of extramarital sex and multiple partners, the high rate of abortion, and the various genocides over the course of the century make it impossible to deny that people today have become disposable. Why? Among several reasons, two stand out. One that I do not have space to fully discuss is the divorce between what Fulton Sheen calls, “freedom from” and “freedom for.” The former concerns freedom from external constraint, the latter concerns the purpose of that freedom (4). The other is the “God is dead” materialism that pervades modern society. Man is only random collections of particles in a random universe. He is only matter, and because he is only matter, he does not matter. One cannot believe in a purpose for freedom, because there is no purpose to anything, and so liberty becomes license. Neither can one believe in a person’s objective moral value; on materialism, persons have none. And so in a materialist society (whether ancient Roman or modern Western), people become disposable.

One area in which Man’s disposability is clear is sex. Here, one disposable good, the condom, helps to make people disposable. The connection between the increasing use of birth control, materialism, and Man’s disposability over the twentieth century is no coincidence.

The condom allows rejection of responsibility associated with sex and hence causes a divorce between the persons involved. Fertile sex entails significant responsibility. If a woman becomes pregnant, her ability to work may be limited, she will need to be supported, and so will the child. The condom allows “safe sex,” the rejection of this responsibility, and when responsibility is rejected, love is rejected. The two always go together, when one goes, so goes the other. “Safe sex” is absurd, but “safe love” does not even exist. Real love always burns bridges behind it. When love and responsibility are rejected, then the woman (or man), becomes replaceable. One woman (or man), is just as good as another, and when one is just as good as another, then one is just as worthless as another. So people become cheap. Sex now is simply a matter of scratching an itch and one’s partner becomes a mere scratching post. The commonness of premarital and promiscuous sex today testify to the truth of this. With responsibility rejected, people become replaceable, and they become cheap.

Children too have been disposable. Once a necessary part of a marital relationship, they are now a part of the responsibility that modernity rejects. Now they are only an optional (and often undesirable) side effect, a side effect that if not avoided, can be destroyed.

Historians once thought that people in the Middle Ages loved their children less because of high child mortality rates. There is no evidence for this. There is, however, substantial evidence that parents and people today do love children less. They are less willing to have them, and more willing to destroy them. Children are cheap. In a material cosmos a person’s value is purely subjective, that is to say, dependant on what people think. Thus, in Pagan Antiquity, a child was not a person until the father picked him up. Similarly, in Pagan Modernity, a child is not a person until the mother decides to keep him. 4,000 abortions every day testify to how cheap human life has become.

Other examples might be given, but these suffice to show the trend. To a society fond of disposable goods, one more disposable good has been added, the person. Rejecting responsibility in the name of liberty, human life has become replaceable, and it has become cheap. This it ought never to have been, and it must not be if humanity is to remain human. Otherwise, we will find that we are increasingly living in a world of disposable goods, and disposable people.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor

(2) http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1536 While writing this, I came across this book Made to Break, studying the growing use of and practical problems associated with use of disposable items.

(3) Giles Slade, Made to Break, 2007. http://www.amazon.com/Made-Break-Technology-Obsolescence-America/dp/0674025725/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302443391&sr=8-1

(4) From his talk “On Freedom” Available on You tube. I would like to write a future blog post on this talk. “Freedom from” would describe how a person must not be externally contrained, while “freedom for” would describe the purpose, such as being free to choose a spouse. Today, however, the two are divided and people insist on “freedom from” while denying the purpose of that freedom. Hence the commonness of pre-marital and promiscuous sex.

Pride and Humility

Lenten reflections drawing on C.S. Lewis and Fulton Sheen

            I have a booklet of daily Lenten reflections that include excerpts from various works by C.S. Lewis.  A recent reflection was on pride and humility, taken from the "The Great Sin" chapter in Mere Christianity.  I wanted to think more about these two concepts, and I find the things that both Lewis and Fulton Sheen say about them (Sheen in "The Infinity of Littleness," one of the chapters in Life is Worth Living) pretty interesting.  Just thinking and comparing is basically what I'm doing here.  I'm not being very original.

            What exactly is pride?  What exactly is humility?  Just as importantly, what are they not?  I think sometimes it does help to understand what something is by also understanding what it isn't.  One example is that pride is not taking pleasure in being praised, as long as the pleasure is from the fact that you have pleased someone else, and not about yourself (Lewis 106).  Lewis states, "The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, 'I have pleased him; all is well,' to thinking, 'What a fine person I must be to have done it.' The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming" (p 106).  In contrast, humility is not refusing praise, and is not denying that statements of praise are false.  In fact, these acts of false humility are actually pride.  Sheen gives an example that if after being complimented on his telecast, he replied that "it was nothing" and he only prepared three minutes for it, that would be pride, because it implies "Just think how of what the show would be if I spent four minutes preparing for it" (42). 

            Lewis states that pride is "competitive by its very nature" (p 104) in that it comes not only from having something, but having more of it than someone else, or doing something better than something else.  Sheen seems to agree, stating, "Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals" (p 44).  Lewis also states, "Pride is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God" (p 105).  He explains that a prideful person refuses to acknowledge something superior to himself, and therefore cannot know God without being able to acknowledge him as superior.  Similarly, Sheen states, "If we are filled with our own importance, then we can never be filled with anything outside ourselves" (p 40).  For this reason, humility is necessary for getting to know God: "Humility is the condition of discovering the Infinite Truth and Love...

No man discovers anything big unless he makes himself small.  If he magnifies his ego to infinity, he will learn nothing, for there is nothing bigger than the infinite.  If he reduces his ego to zero and is no longer proud and conceited, then   he will discover everything big, even bigger than himself.  His world begins to be infinite.  In order to discover truth, goodness and justice, and God, one must be very humble" (p 40).

            Lewis mentions how pride is different from self respect.  I think he means that it comes out of an excessive perversion of self-respect.  Sheen states, "Pride is inordinate self-love" (p 43).  Many evils are perversions of good things.  So it could also be inordinate self-respect, or maybe an improper recognition of it.  Lewis mentions that sometimes a person might use pride disguised as self-respect to conquer other vices by the fact that they are beneath his dignity.  "The devil laughs," he says:

 He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride—just as he would  be content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer.  For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, contentment, or even common sense (p 106).

While (I think) I understand his point, I am caught on what seems to be a complete prohibition against using the concept of self respect or dignity to avoid a vice or a sin.  What confuses me is that numerous sins are things that we should avoid because they truly are contrary to our dignity as persons created in the image and likeness of God.  I do not think that any recognition of this fact is automatically and inherently an act of pride.  It probably would depend on whether the motive is obedience or competition.  Thinking back to where Lewis says that pride is competitive, if the motive is simply to be better than others, then that would be pride.  On the other hand, if the motive is obedience to God's laws, then that would be humility, "the virtue that tells us the truth about ourselves, that is, how we stand, not in the eyes of men, but before God" (Sheen 41). 

            Toward the end of Lewis's chapter comes the part that my reflection booklet quoted.  He explains that God does not forbid pride and demand our humility for his own good, but for ours.  Humility is necessary for us to get to know God, and that pride hinders our ability to be open to Him.  "He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are" (Lewis 107) [I had to quote that.  I found the ending hilarious].

            Sheen ends his chapter by talking about the "greatest act of humility this world ever knew" (p 44).  It's obvious to us what he means, but he begins with an interesting analogy of a person becoming a dog, "that gives a faint idea of something that actually happened.  Think of God becoming man... He would not forgo the companionship of men, but would become a victim to their abuse, their misunderstanding, their scorn, and their cruelties." I really like how he doesn't stop at what pride is and what humility is and tell us why we need to be humble.  He reminds us just how humble God was willing to be for our sake.  

Here's a link to Fulton Sheen's talk, "The Infinity of Littleness"

http://www.fultonsheen.com/Fulton-Sheen-MP3s/Life-Is-Worth-Living---The-Infinity-of-Littleness.cfm?PID=251#

You can listen for free, the website just wants you to register.

Books:

The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. C.S. Lewis

Life is Worth Living. Fulton J. Sheen.

(Yea, I know those aren't proper citations. I'm being lazy.)

God, Suffering, and the Earthquake

One skeptic, commenting on the recent earthquake and the tremendous suffering it caused in Japan, asked how anyone could seriously believe God had some reason for allowing that suffering. Are people supposed to believe that God sits around and does nothing because He has some grand plan to make it all work out? The skeptic continued that seeing such suffering was causing him to suffer a mental breakdown.

In spite of his conclusion in favor of skepticism, there was something almost Christian in this unbeliever’s reaction. The English Cardinal Newman once said that if he did not believe that the wrongs and sufferings of the present life would be made right by God in the next, that he would go mad. The skeptic was right to consider madness a logical conclusion, he was wrong to deny the afterlife. The skeptic was also right to think that there was something unsatisfactory in the idea that God sits on his hands doing nothing, simply watching evil happen as part of his grand plan to bring about a greater good. But he was wrong to think that God does nothing.

God does not do nothing. He does not merely sit on his hands watching human suffering as part of his grand plan. Rather, as part of his plan, He became man himself, entering into and sharing human suffering. He suffered rejection from his hometown and misunderstanding from his own family. He suffered from hunger and the temptations and attacks of devils. He suffered the evil of a corrupt religious hierarchy, a corrupt government, and a sham trial. Finally, He suffered the most cruel and humiliating death his society could devise, though He was wholly innocent. He suffered all the evils in the world and wondered where God was. Finally, He asked “my God, my God, why have you abandoned me. A moment, as Chesterton said, when God Himself seemed to be an atheist. A glorious moment for any rebel or sufferer forever; a moment when God Himself felt abandoned by God.

If the story ended here, for God or us, the story would be a tragedy, but it does not. In one of those ironic little twists that make for good stories and better history, the cross, a symbol of torture and shame, became a crown. Evil could not hold the one person who had never given in to it. Abandoned by all his friends “he stood up the bridge alone, and fire and shadow both defied” (1). And then He rose. The gates of hell were locked with a hatred and bitterness stronger than adamantine or steel; they were smashed open with something far stronger, a wooden cross and the sovereign love of God. And when He rose, he still had the wounds from which He had suffered, but neither they nor the memory of His suffering would ever torment Him again. They were the signs on an enemy, but of a defeated enemy, and became part of His glory.

And then he ascended into heaven, but not to twiddle His thumbs. Rather he said “I am going to prepare a place for you. A priest at my church says that he finds this one of the most hopeful passages in the Bible; I think that I can see why. St. Paul speaks of Jesus as the firstfruits, and of his Resurrection as the model for ours. This means that there is hope. The modern skeptic, like Newman, need not go mad. He need only believe in the Incarnation and the Resurrection. There is a next world to right the wrongs and suffering of this one. I do not think (though I am not sure) that they will be forgotten, or made as if they had never happened, but they will be defeated enemies, and their scars will become the marks of our glory.

The story then, is not a tragedy. It is not one for God, and it need not be one for us. Rather, it is a heroic quest. It is so because there is a goal and a purpose, and at the end, a triumph. Fulton Sheen, quoting, I think, of all people, Nietzsche (2), said, “ ‘We can bear anything in this world, any kind of a how, as long as we know the why,’ and the why was given, on the road to Emmaus.”

This post makes no pretense at learning, completeness, or originality, it is simply some confused notes of a slightly overworked and very presumptuous graduate student. Take it as such.

Further Reading:

David Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? (2005).

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

NT Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (2009).

1. Frodo Baggins in Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring.

“A Virgin Shall Conceive”: Isaiah 7:14 and a Problem with the NABRE

On Ash Wednesday of this year, the revised edition of the New American Bible will be released (1). In preparation since 1994, the appearance of the new translation is long overdue and generally welcome, but the text contains one serious flaw. In Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah prophecies the birth of the coming Messiah. God commands Achaz to ask a sign and Achaz refuses, saying that he will not tempt God. The prophet replies,

“Is it a small thing for you to be grievous to men, that you are grievous to my God also? [14] Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.” (2)

Jewish readers, recently joined by modern skeptics, have protested that the word “virgin” is not in the original Hebrew and originates from an ancient Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint. In the NAB-Revised Edition (henceforth, NABRE), the US Catholic Bishops have capitulated and render the highlighted text “a young woman will conceive.” This capitulation fails to account for several good reasons for keeping the word “virgin,” including, its initial translation by BC Jews, the social context of the time, and the context of the passage itself.

Early in the 3^rd century B.C., many Jews, spread abroad by the diaspora, no longer knew or could read Hebrew and so Hebrew scholars translated the Old Testament into Koine Greek. St. Augustine relates a legend of how the Septuagint, as this Greek translation of the Old Testament was named, came to be. One of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt (Ptolemy Philadelphus), desired a Greek translation for his library and commissioned the translation by 72 learned Jewish scholars. Working independently, these 72 scholars each returned a translation of the text that was in perfect agreement, taken to be a divine sign of its excellence (3). The Septuagint continued to be used by Jews and Early Christians until the 2^nd/3^rd century AD, when the Jews, probably for several reasons (4), went back to the Hebrew .

After Jesus’ Ascension, early Christians searched the Old Testament for messianic prophecies fulfilled by Jesus. Probably using the Septuagint, they found in Isaiah 7:14, a passage perfectly suited to their needs, reading, “a virgin shall conceive etc.” Such a passage was naturally a good fit for the early Christians, much of whose strategy for preaching Jesus to the Jews included appeals to fulfilled prophecy. Ancient Jews who remained resistant to Christianity began to protest that the Hebrew text did not read “virgin” at all, but rather simply almah, “young woman,” while many modern secularists have taken up the critique.

Despite the recent capitulation by the US Catholic bishops, however, at least three compelling reasons remain for supposing that the translation of the Hebrew word almah should remain “virgin,” rather “young woman.” First, Septuagint was translated by Jews for Jews. Closer to the context and understanding the language better than we, they chose to render the word almah by the Greek word for virgin, parthenos rather than neanis, young woman. Second, while true that almah does not explicitly mean virgin, this is misleading. The late Carsten Peter Thiede has pointed out that,

“critics have asserted that “virgin” should read, young woman… [but] almah [is] a young unmarried woman of childbearing age. Given the social culture of Isaiah’s days, she was therefore either a virgin or a prostitute. Since the context of the prophecy rules out the prostitute, we are left with the virgin (5).”

Finally, the context of the text of Isaiah itself speaks of this as a sign. As Origen said long ago, a young woman becoming pregnant would not be a remarkable sign, but a virgin becoming pregnant would (6).

Welcome as the NABRE is, the choice to render the Hebrew almah in Isaiah 7:14 as “young woman” rather than “virgin,” unfortunate and flawed. As it has read for the past 2,250 years (and has meant for longer), Isaiah 7:14 should still read, “a virgin will conceive and bear and son and his name shall be called Emmanuel.”

1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110302/us_nm/us_religion_bible, see also: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/04/controversial-bible-revision-about-that-virgin-thing/

2. Isaiah 7: 13-14. Douay-Rheims Bible. http://www.drbo.org/chapter/27007.htm

3. Augustine, City of God bk.18.ch.42 http://www.bible-researcher.com/vulgate2.html

4. These may have included a declining use of Greek among the Jews, perhaps the result of many Jews of the Diaspora becoming Christians, as well as the desire to avoid a text that became associated with Christianity.

5. Carsten Peter Thiede, Jesus: Man or Myth, (2004) p.47. Thiede was Professor of New Testament History and Papyrology and Archeology at STH in Basel Switzerland. He is also author of, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish Origins of Christianity (2003).

6. Origen, Against Celsus, ed. Henry Chadwick, (1953), p.34. (Available on google books)

-additionally, the greek word for young woman, neanis, occurs elsewhere in the Septuagint, which makes it appear that the initial Jewish translators did have reason to render almah as parthenos (virgin), rather than neanis (young woman).

Contraceptive Culture-- Commercialized

I was recently very bothered by a TV commercial for a certain contraceptive device.  Now, really, it bothers me as a Catholic whenever I see a commercial for contraception.  When I see another commercial for yet another pill, I tend to roll my eyes and shake my head and perhaps mock the snazzy name given to it.  This was one for an IUD.  That is, an Intra-uterine device.  Similar to the pill, it is abortifacient.  These things can and will cause an abortion by preventing an embryo from being able to attach inside the uterus.

What appalled me about this commercial was not only the fact that it was for an abortifacient device, but that it was a representation and commercialization of contraceptive culture as a whole.  When I say "contraceptive culture," I don't just mean a culture in which methods of artificial birth control (ABC) are used.  That's just on the surface.  I mean also all of the concurrent characteristics of such a culture.  A few examples: A general lack of respect for the sanctity of human life and failure to recognize and value human life in its most vulnerable stage; a lack of reverence for the dignity of the person –that is, the image and likeness of God; a lack of esteem both for one's own body and the body of another, when one's own body becomes a tool to be controlled and used, or worse, a threat to be fought.  Finally, there is a lack of reverence for the sacrament of marriage and sexuality itself. 

The main purpose of contraception is to allow a "carefree" sexual (and likely non-marital) relationship, free from any potential "burden" (ie. "children").  And their commercials serve to convey how that can be made possible.  But this commercial conveys much more below the surface; unfortunately, something much more sinister about the culture in which we live. Here is a link to the commercial on YouTube.

The woman in this commercial is meant to be relatable to other women; in this case she is specifically meant to be relatable to mothers.  She is meant to represent the "typical" mother, and her children, "typical" children.  This "typical" mother's inner monologue is "Did I take my pill this morning? I can't even think of having another child," as she runs over to where her (unsupervised) children have accidentally dropped fruit on the store's floor.  The commercial's representatives of "typical" children, who result without the usage of their device, are shown to be inherently unruly and burdensome in order to convey society's general view of children.  There is also the brief but noteworthy presence of her apathetic and disinterested husband in the commercial.  He is intentionally portrayed as completely disconnected from her.  They don't even have a scene together.  To further stress society's view on children, her inner monologue concludes with "Ooooh, I think two's plenty."  OK, she adds "maybe," but who are they kidding? 

Lastly, there is the product's tagline: "Keep life simple."  Is that really all that it's about though? Simplicity?  We know already that life is not simple.  The gift that is life really is quite complex.  It is likely the most complex gift we can ever receive, and is from the most divine Source we can only try to fully imagine.  He calls us to accept His greatest gift, with all its complexities, to have faith that He will guide us through them, and not to let a desire for simplicity become a temptation to reject Sanctity.