A Letter to Susan Boyle

What, haven’t you heard yet?  I suppose that I don’t have room to talk, since I just heard today, but apparently, there’s some hidden talent in Britain!

In case you haven’t heard, a 47-year-old woman named Susan Boyle tried out for Britain’s Got Talent a week and a half ago, and the world hasn’t been the same since.  This ordinary-looking woman from Scotland has set off a firestorm of acclaim in a relatively short time.  Since I’m certain that I can’t really describe what happened, here’s a youtube video displaying her musical performance.

Dear Susan:

Thank you.

Thank you first of all for reminding me that beauty is only skin-deep.  I am ashamed to say that my initial reaction to you was not that dissimilar from that of your audience that witnessed your first performance.  You should also know that my reaction was very similar to that of your audience when you began to sing: as your judge Amanda Holden said, it truly was a privilege to hear your performance.  You not only shamed the audience that was against you; you have shamed our entire culture for thinking that success in life is determined by appearance.

Thank you second of all for giving me and the rest of of our society something to cheer for, to hope for.  I have even briefly googled news articles, and I found one that made the audacious claim that your performance alone might tip the scale of the global economy, might even save it (see here for the article).  I would show you more of how your single performance has changed the world, but I can’t even see it all.  I have taken several moral lessons away from hearing your performance, and I know that I’m not the only one.  Your sudden fame has gone beyond just that of another new idol; you have given people hope, and that is more valuable than the most precious gold that could be found.  Not only did you give people hope, but you brought out the best in them, and that is a power that few people possess.

Finally, thank you for reminding me that even the most unachievable dreams are achievable, and that when we let go of our dreams, we die.  You stood there on that stage, and your pursuit of your dreams brought you alive in a profound way, and I honestly believe that that made you beautiful in a deeper way than any form of makeover could ever hope to achieve.

Just some thoughts for you: now that you are famous the world over, don’t let it go to your head.  Part of the reason your performance was so stunning was because of the great hope and determination wrapped in humility with which you approached it.  You went before those judges as simply a human being; in your future performances, let that quality continue to grow, and I have no doubt that you will continue to be successful.

I do have one request: don’t just be a celebrity.  As Daniel J. Boorstin once said, “time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.”  I’m asking you to be a hero that people can aspire to be not because of your success, but because of your honorable character and kindness.  Hold to your kindness and character as your most valuable possession, even more valuable than your voice, and you will join the ranks of Mother Teresa and the many other people who made a difference in the lives of your peers.

Oh, and don’t listen to your critics.  There are some people who will try to find the worst about everything, even the most extraordinary and gifted of people.  Just be yourself, and you will shame them and their criticism of you in the same way that you shamed me and my preconceptions of you.

Thank you for dreaming a dream.

thefaithfulmind

John Donne, Holy Sonnet 14: “Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God”

For my Introduction to British Literature class, I have been assigned a paper about one of the authors that we have discussed in class thus far.  Here’s a quick list of the works that we have read and talked about in class:

• Beowulf
• Lanval - Marie de France
• Miller’s Tale - Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Passionate Sheppard - Christopher Marlowe
• The Nymph’s Reply – Sir Walter Raleigh
• Sonnet 18, 29, 130 – William Shakespeare
• Paradise Lost – John Milton (Books III & IV)
• The Sun Rising, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, and The Flea by John Donne.
• To His Coy Mistress – Andrew Marvell
• Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
• Assorted Poems from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
• Tintern Abbey and Michael by William Wordsworth (Just finished today)

So, for my paper, I have been given three options:  1)  Discuss Unferth’s gift of Hrunting to Beowulf and take a stance on whether this was Unferth betraying Beowulf with a kiss or actually seeking reconciliation and back it up, 2)  Discuss the themes of justice in the medieval social order illustrated in Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale and how these themes relate to one of the three main characters-John, Abasalom, or Allison-and how each character’s transgressions against society are punished in the end, or 3)  To read and analyse John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV, explaining the argument and message.  Obviously, by the title of this post, I chose the third option.

So, as part of simply immersing myself in the text, I thought I would write it down in my blog.  In fact, I was thinking that poetry might compose a second weekly update that I do for my blog, to go along with my Musician Monday’s updates.  However, for now, I’ll just post Holy Sonnet XIV.  So, without further ado, I give you, “Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God:”

Batter my heart, three personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captivated, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

So, for the introduction to my paper, I will be looking up some historical background to begin the paper.  This will be my major project for the weekend.  The paper is due on Wednesday, so I’m not in a terrible hurry to finish it this weekend, but I want to so I can read it and reread it and have friends read it, proof it, think about it, and just absolutely do the best I can to make it a great paper.

Anyway, that’s the main thing going on for me right now.  Other than that, this will be a rather relaxed weekend.  I have a large amount of reading to do in Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley for History next week; Religious Studies is fantastic; I’m pretty well caught up in music theory (even a little ahead); and I will need to be practicing my major scales for French Horn practice pretty extensively this weekend.

So anyway, that’s how things are going for schoolwork.  For Kenushi Ryu, I’m continuing to refine the map for Kenusha that I have already posted (if I have a newer version, I’ll just leave a UPDATE note on the post and upload the newer versions).  In addition, I’ve started working on a map for the Plains of Halsom region, as well as doing other various work.  I’ll keep the blog updated as I get more done.

In addition, I have borrowed from a minister The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel finally.  I have read The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith and found them both to be very thought-provoking books, and a very intellectual friend of mine owns The Case for a Creator and really enjoyed it, so that will likely occupy some of my free time for a time as well.

Have a great day and a great weekend!

SfC

World War II and Counting the Costs

In my previous post, I mentioned one of my classes which is taking an in-depth look into Second World War, both on the domestic and foreign fronts.  This class is largely responsible for my rather large stockpile of reading material; six of my reading books are in that class alone and two of them are very formidable historians’ examinations of the War.  However, I approached the class with relative enthusiasm; I have, in my youth, always been fascinated by human conflicts, both in recent and far-removed history.  I think that I always admired the caliber of intellect wielded by a man who can lead his subordinates into battle and emerge victorious and I have always been fascinated by the weapons and vehicles that humans have engineered to adapt to changing and evolving war.

The class hasn’t really gone into an in depth examination of the major battles that I knew of, however; instead, the beginning of the class has been composed of a look into the behind-the-scenes conflict between President F.D. Roosevelt and the American Isolationists as well as the Japanese attitudes and thinking-patterns that led them into a conflict that even they knew was militarily un-winnable.  I have also begun to understand the arguments of the Isolationists of the time.  Of course, I realize that had the United States not entered the conflict when it did our potential allies likely would’ve capitulated, either by diplomatic coercion or military force, and then the war would have been exponentially more difficult for the United States, even approaching impossibly winnable.

In the process of this class, we studied Charles Lindbergh, who contributed to the Isolationist cause during the months and years leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.  I suppose that, beyond the Spirit of St. Louis flight, I had little other knowledge over the years.  Now, I believe that I have found a man who I find fascinating in his own respect.  A jack of all trades and possibly even an obsessive-compulsive (from my own examination), he became a leader of aviation advances and research right up until late in his life in addition to learning biology, rocketry, writer, inventor and many other life accomplishments.  Though he, of course, wasn’t perfect, I still found his character a fascinating read (Here’s a link to the specific Lindbergh biography we used.)

However, one thing that I did not expect in my academic examination of World War II was the extraordinary, unspeakable crimes of the war, perhaps due to my naive inexperience and romantisized lense of the war.  Of course, my reaction to this scale of human tragedy cannot really be described in words, though as a writer I’m obliged to try anyway.

I guess the main tool that brought to the forefront of my mind was reading War Without Mercy by John Dower.  The book looks into the strong racist component of the war as whole, but he also casts the limelight heavily on the often-overlooked racist component in the Pacific War; the demonization of the American people in the eyes of the Japanese citizens in addition to the indoctrination provided not just by the military but by the entire society that transformed young men into the cannon fodder for the political and military purposes; the degradation of the Japanese in the eyes of Americans, that they were sneaky and dishonorable by attacking Pearl without an overt declaration of war, betraying the underlying attitude among the United States that in any “mono-a-mono” engagement, we would always win.

Now, let me interject here that I had always known that World War II was costly in every aspect of the word concievable.  I suppose that, before then, my mind could not comprehend the enormity of those facts.  I was also not aware of the hate — hate beyond words — that seemed to posses the belligerents on all sides, including the United States (though we started the war with the attitude of a “fair war,” we too capitulated to the “victory at all costs” attitude).

Perhaps the most well-known result of WWII was the Holocaust, which was the mass genocide of 6,000,000 Jews in the European theater.  Here, I will naturally omit the precise level of atrocity to ensure that my blog stays rated at least PG, but mass murder and human experimentation are barely glossing the surface, let alone going into detail about how these actions were carried out.  Of course, I knew these things; I don’t think I had quite grasped the fact that most nations around Germany might as well have condoned it all by failing to even protest (some even actively aided in the “rounding-up” of the Jews) as well as the American media, which did have some ideas of what was happening, failing to report it to the generally Anti-Semitic environment of the United States.

On the same level of this, I place what historians call the Raping of Nanking, China when the Japense conquered the city early in 1937 and commenced with equally unspeakable atrocities to the people there.  I can consciously relate only that they don’t call it the Raping of Nanking as an exaggeration (if you want more information, look it up yourself…and follow that up with something to lift your spirits).

The Bataan Death March also comes into mind, as well as the Japanese-American internment in the United States, the Atomic Bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which I consider atrocious due the nature of the targets being civilian, though I also acknowledge that the war could have been protracted by even more death and destruction had we invaded), etc.  The sad thing is, everything I have listed thus far is on the civilian side of the scale; I haven’t even taken into consideration death and destruction on the East-European front, the Battle of Britain, and so much else, but I believe that I have given ample illustrations of the death that previously was unheard of…but the atrocity of WWII doesn’t end with the death.

I guess I’m part of an older school of thought in conflict, the school of thought that says you can have a disagreement with someone and even wage war against them while still respecting them for their humanity.  Lindbergh was from the same school of thought, and he too was shocked when on the Pacific battlefront he observed the wanton hatred on all sides of the conflict.

This, I feel, is the gear upon which the Second World War turned: hate, specifically racial hate.  I mean, the historical cause of the Holocaust was hate: pure, irrational, animalistic, racial hate (though I also acknowledge that indifference also played a role in the tragedy and perhaps plays an even greater hand in modern tragedies).  For another example, the Japanese education system was completely standardized, to the point that every school was teaching the exact things as every other school across the entire country.  They also twisted religious deism into believing the Emperor was God (Roman Caesar, anyone?) and that death in the pursuit of furthering the Emperor’s nation was the highest good.  The Japanese had their own racial indoctrination, believing themselves to be superior to the other Asians but especially to the “White Demons” that had exploited their corner of the world for hundreds of years.

Of course, the United States was not innocent in this conflict, either; the blood of hate is on our hands also.  It wasn’t enough to say that we were fighting for the future peace of the world or for the safety of our children; it was often cast by media and political speakers as the “War between the White and Yellow Man”, the “War that Decides that Fate of the White Man,” and racial hate-talk like that, not to mention the environment of Anti-Semitism that I have already mentioned was prevalent in the United States.

My point?  Not just that 72,771,500 (according to Wikipedia, anyway) men, women, and children died in the Second World War, and not even that 41,743,400 of those people were civilians (though that in and of itself is indescribable human suffering) but that these deaths were inflicted not by tanks or the atomic bombs or guns but by hate.  Just in reading of all of this and finally understanding that it takes hate to wage such merciless war, hate that I can’t comprehend, I think I came closer to weeping than I have since I last heard in detail the sufferings of Christ.  Indeed, I have recently heard a minister who suggested that perhaps, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Evil Itself revealed to Jesus that all of this death would occur and perhaps — not necessarily, but perhaps — Jesus wondered if his life, death, and resurrection was all worth it.

The saddest thing?  We haven’t learned.  You can see it in the immediate reaction to the World Trade Center attacks; a sudden explosion of suspicion and, in some cases, outright accusations toward people just because of their skin color or religious beliefs, and in our hands today are the weapons to inflict killing on a scale that would make even WWII look like a small battle…yet, as I implied earlier in the post, today’s general indifference in America to the sufferings of the other 4 billion people on Earth are perhaps as deadly as the hate that bred the last war because not only does it cause human suffering but it allows breeding grounds where new movements of hate and conflict-seeking people can consolidate power.  Martin Luther once said, “War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.“  I fear that I must concur, but not that the weapons of war kill, but that people with demonic, hateful hearts kill people during a war…or at least in modern war, where hatred seems to be a prerequisite to conflict.

I guess the reason I shared all of this was with the hope that maybe someone can read this and be inspired to take their own steps toward averting such catastrophes from ever happening again.

SfC

Reawakening to Education & Curiousity; Continued Sythesis of Thought and Faith

Forging on ahead in Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind, I have finally finished his extensive chapter on Relationships.

First, I believe that I have started to grasp the observation on feminism that Bloom has made. Bloom observes that, because sex is easy to obtain, feminism has begun to attain greater lengths of power in the intellectual community. However, Bloom goes on to point out that, though women claim the same rights as men, they are wired differently in that they have the desire to bear children (though I do recognize that not all women have this desire) and have associated struggles that deal with this. Of course, Bloom brings the discussion back to the university by observing that more and more of today’s students suffer under the influence of broken homes from divorce as a result of the desires of women to not have to deal with having children and instead cling to their “rights” to have the same job opportunities as men, which taken from their perspective means that men must drop their responsibilities to the family and try to be mothers while women try to successfully be the men of the house, both in having authority, in supporting the family, and everything else. This causes psychological problems to the families that go through these divorces, and these problems are (Bloom generalizes, but I say that the problems can be) aggravated by the use of psychologists who try to comfort the parents into thinking their children will be alright while both parents pursue their own individualized goals (I insert the term “selfish” where Bloom says “individualized,” though I must also realize in saying this that it can hardly be called selfish when some people are never exposed to the thought that there is fulfillment in serving and seeking Truth rather than the Self)

Bloom does say that he doesn’t say that the old system (the system of the nuclear family) was good or that we should go back to it. I must insert a disagreement here; I do believe that the system as it was was good; that is, it was functional and effective in providing people with a template for a functional system by which to raise their children successfully (then again, I can speak only lightly on this subject; the old system did have its own imperfections and I haven’t seen it implemented on as large a scale as the way it is being decommissioned today and therefore don’t have the personal experience to say for certain if things today are better or worse). Should we go back to the original system? Honestly, I do believe so, though I doubt that such is possible in today’s relativistic circumstances. Then again, if we aren’t going to go back to the old system, then what new system has been proposed or enacted to replace it? None, so far as I know.

Bloom points out that, the way the old system was set up, virtues were acquired by way of appealing to the nature of people. Men, who were (and, to an extent, are) possessive and protective of self, and thus this possessiveness was expanded to encompass his family (and, in my personal experience, I see that this possessiveness was encompassed further to include the best and closest of my friends). Instead, today, the possessiveness is condemned as evil, replaced with a fake nature that men will never truly possess, and then the men are condemned when both the fake nature and the desired virtues are unsuccessful.

From this, I see some wisdom. As a Christian, I see that you do not manufacture feelings of kindness to people that you naturally have a disliking for (though, as far as trying to become like a Son of God, as C.S. Lewis points out, there is a legitimacy in trying to behave as a Son of God with the goal of actually becoming more like a Son of God). Instead, you refrain from expressing your feelings of dislike to people (letting it die) and “fertilize” your natural feelings of kindness that they may grow. Of course, Lewis also points out in this that there are some who are possessed wholly of rottenness and unkindness, which means that the person is blessed with an automatic dependence on God for change in the raw materials of their souls, that they might be better Christians.

Finally, in the last section of Bloom’s chapter on relationships, he discusses how the commonness of sex has disabled it as a path that some people in past cultural circumstances might have sought enlightenment. This I understand personally: having no true romantic experience of mine own, so I find myself drawn into the romantic experiences of others (fiction or nonfiction) that I might better understand my own circumstances (though I am cautious with this, for I also recognize that excessively focusing on this incomplete part of my distracts me from today’s opportunities to serve God and explore the world as well as focuses me on myself, which is a side-track into selfish sins).

This last section of Bloom’s “Relationships” reminds me of curiosity and the need to have it in my search for knowledge and wisdom and it has reawakened my innate curiosity. It is as though some thoughts that I have had in the past have resurfaced: the recognition that the path to wisdom and ignorance must first go through ignorance, child-like ignorance of everything and to never stop asking questions. It was Christ, was it not, who said, “Unless you change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of God?” while one of Socrates’ last statements was an acknowledgment that he was the only one who realized his complete ignorance. Didn’t Socrates teach that the truly wise do not desire great power (politically) and avoid it while Christ spent his whole ministry running from the crowds when they tried to crown Him and make Him their ruler?

Bloom also reminds me that, in seeking fulfillment in studying history, I must also visualize the lives of heroes and villains long gone, to be able to walk into a monastery older than all my known relatives and imagine the many days and nights spent by the monks residing there, imagine their prayers, their studies, their hunger for righteousness, to be able to walk the streets of Washington, D.C. and imagine the British invasion in the War of 1812 or the inauguration day of Lincoln or the assassination day of Kennedy…

Finally, I’m reminded that the true goal of education is not to get a job but to know oneself through the lens of the greater thinkers past and present. This is achieved through curiosity, imagination, and (as a Christian) the desire to know God that transcends all self-seeking drives, instead overriding them and making me more aware of how awesome a creation I (as a human being) am and how God is working in my life.

I thought that such reawakening would be worth posting. Take care!

SfC

The American Cornerstone and More Reading of Bloom’s American Mind

In a conversation with another writer and thinker that I am acquainted with, this thought came to me about America’s origins:

Psalms 118:22 is a well-known verse to studied Christians. It states, “The Stone that the Builders rejected has become the cornerstone (or capstone in some translations).” It is referenced several times in the New Testament, pointing to how Christ, though He declared himself to the Jewish people as the Messiah that had been prophecied of since the days of Moses and the 40 years in the wilderness, was condemned by the religious leaders of the time and was crucified. However, because Christ lived the perfect life and bore the sins of the world, He rose to new life and spawned a movement within Judaism.

However, even though the movement was peaceful, the leaders of the time (and for the next 300 years) continued to reject the teachings of Jesus. However, from the perspective of history, the stone that the builders the builders rejected truly did become the cornerstone for today’s largest sect of faith on Earth’s surface as well as one of the dynamic elements within the dialectic that is Western culture.

Similarly, the values that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Paine, and many of their co-conspirators (I use the term loosely to refer to America’s Found Fathers) held to political (and in some cases, religious in the form of Protestantism) ideals that had faced persecution in Europe. However, in America, these same ideas held strong and eventually became the cornerstone of the U.S.’s government, ideas about “all men being created equal” and having freedom to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Again, the rejected stone became the cornerstone.

Of course, this might be why the United States and Christianity have seemingly walked hand-in-hand for the last couple of centuries; both share similar histories and, regardless of what people say, freedom to practice religion are one of the central reasons as to why people came to (and still come to) the United States since its birth.

Of course, from my perspective, I see that both are facing (and losing to) the same enemy. The United States and the American Christian Church faces many struggles ahead, not the least of which is the death of the American culture, consumerism, egalitarian ideals towards both people and ideas, and lack of concern over these problems, which multiplies the potential damage they could inflict on our nation exponentially.

When I speak of Egalitarianism as a danger to our democracy, I do not contest the belief that the Declaration of Independence is true in that “All men are created equal” insofar as men all have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as well as the many other rights that the Constitution grants. The egalitarianism that endangers us all is to take the phrase, “All men are created equal” and not continue on. The purpose of the statement was to assert that men are all, in the eyes of the government, the same (which in today’s society is not true in total practice; I know people who are given leniency from speeding tickets because their relatives are police or city government officials). The assertion was not that all men were created completely equal in mental capacity and capability, which is an idea that has broken our education system.

To illustrate this point, I will reference something that my director at church camp told me and the rest of the counselors in relation to caring for the students. The gist of her thought is, “Equal is not fair.” From there, she elaborates that some of the campers coming to camp will have lived perfect (or at least passably normal) lives and will need no extra attention. On the other hand, there will be other campers who struggle with obesity or who have abusive parents or who have had no exposure to God or Godly people in their lives. These campers will need more attention, more care, and more love than some others.

I believe this to be a very meaningful phrase to consider in a world that is constantly pushing for fairness through equality. With first-hand experience of passing through the public school system, I can safely say that equal is never fair. I have seen it; students who are ultra-high achievers who are capable of being the next Abraham Lincoln, Frederich Nietzsche, Rene Descartes, or J.R.R. Tolkien are put in the same institutionalized holding pen as kids who won’t learn to read or write until they are ten or twelve and are expected to receive the same training and exposures (in the public school) as everyone else. This not only can’t be achieved; it shouldn’t’ be. The end result would be taking the standard Bell curve that illustrates a class and manipulating the whole thing until all you have is a straight line: no incredible geniuses, no mentally challenged students either. So, here’s my question to this philosophy of education: is the squandering and suffocation of our greatest minds worth the effort of trying to hoist everyone onto the same level? Remember, “Equal is not fair.”

I have also continued reading Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. His chapter on relationships is highly interesting to me who, as a Christian, am taught that our relationships with other people are the most important part of our life on Earth. I also think that the “Relationships” chapter is one of the longest ones in the book.

First, Bloom discusses the “niceness” of his students and how they, living in a society where they have no great need, are neither greatly good or evil, though they do seem without ambition. Next, Bloom notices how Equality seems to have shattered all racial barriers save for the one between Caucasians and African-Americans, where a new barrier called affirmative action has reinforced some of the barriers that were nearly completely destroyed and might become a catalyst for greater racial unrest in the future. Also (and this is as far as I have read thus far), Bloom talks of how the new modes of sexual relations (brought on by music and media that promoted release from sexual inhibitions during the sixties) have given rise to feminism. Unfortunately, even now, I do not fully understand the full extent of what Bloom is trying to say here, though I do recognize that, at the point I am in the book, he is only making observations of his students, not stating opinions. From what I could understand, his observation is that sex is so easy (by easy, I mean to mean simple or common to obtain) as to be common knowledge and thought for today’s youth (especially young girls, who were expected to be the “proper” ones in cultural periods past).

Because of this, we have the rise of feminism, which to my mind’s eye seems like affirmative action and the rising “tyranny of the minority” that I observe: for a long time, blacks and females seemed to have fewer cultural (not political, mind you) rights than Caucasian men and, in government, political minorities were respected though not calling the shots. Now, this is not to say that the principles behind affirmative action are wrong; I would hazard a guess that there are good intentions in those who do this. However, the end result is that, instead of a stabilization of equality between Caucasian and Blacks, men and women, we know see that the ball is rolling further into their court; instead, Blacks, women, and even political minorities are receiving special treatment, which goes against the principles of equality that were the basis for the push towards abolition of slavery and Woman’s voting rights as well as the Constitutional assertions that the majority vote rules.

However, that leap-frogs into an entirely other political ballgame that I don’t have enough time to cover. I’ll likely comment further on Bloom’s observations of feminism when I better understand them. Thanks for reading!

SfC

The Nature of Music and the Corruption of the West

Music is something that I thoroughly enjoy. Even as I am typing, I am listening to Chris Sligh’s “Empty Me,” a major hit on Christian radio. I also respect music, acknowledging its impressive power. After all, music is one of the most powerful forces in the world, and in my mind arguably the most powerful force ever conceived by man: guns, missiles, and nuclear bombs have the power to take life on an enormous scale, true enough, but music has the ability to affect the state of one’s soul in a more profound way than anything else. I look at it this way: a gun can take someone’s life; music can convince that same person to give their life for you.

The youth group that I have attended for three years has covered a unit of music a couple of times and our teacher puts it this way: music is a combination of two of the most powerful forces in the world. One is sound with a beat, rhythm, a sense of organization, etc. With music, we are taught our ABC’s when we are five years old and we never forget them. I learned the books of the Bible through song, and I remember them to this day in perfect order. The other force is words, which are one of the most powerful forces in the world. With words alone, the President can cause the deaths (or continued existence) of thousands or millions of people; with words, a husband can either reinforce or end his relationship with his wife. Put words and rhythm together, and what do you have? Music, a synthesis of two ultra-power elements.

So, the question becomes, how does this relate to the “Corruption of the West” spoken of in the title? Think of it this way: a great man once said that you can gauge the health of a society by hearing its music. Okay, fair enough, right? I don’t know about you, but when last I was listening to the mainstream radio, I was hearing a song entitled, “The Seven Things I Hate About You,” written from the perspective of a girlfriend who is vocally (and vehemently) expressing her anger at her boyfriend for the many things that frustrate her. If I was to gauge the values of the entire society on that one song, I should think that our society values hatred and intolerance. Of course, I believe that in reality, that would be an accurate though incomplete evaluation of Western society.

As a Christian, I believe that such music corrupts our society because of the exact nature of music. I know that when I listen to a song that talks of anger and rebellion, if I hear the song enough times, I start to find myself reciprocating the emotions expressed in the song. This is because of the way our brains are hard-wired: the same part of our brain interprets speech and maintains the beat and rhythm when performing music.

Music is by its nature emotional, and this is not a bad thing. Aldous Huxley is quoted saying, “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music,” and I concur with this: music seems to awaken within us an otherwise-unresponsive longing, which is best expressed through music. The danger is to deactivate the rational aspects of our minds and completely switch on the emotional side.

This also hits on a major part of my personality, the closely-contested dialectic tension between the rational and emotional aspects of my soul. I understand that I require my mind to guide my emotions; I need my emotions to give life and joy to my mind. To lean to much in either direction is to lose life either in the form of lost joy or direction-less emotion. I also believe that this makes me a stronger, more complete person, much in the same way that Jeffrey Hart acclaims that the Science-Religion dialectic of the West has granted it greater vitality than any other civilization in Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe.

The reason I speak of this at length now, however, is because I have just this afternoon read more from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind. In it, he has already posed that the “openness” that American society preaches as actually an openness to closeness: to the lack of Absolute Truth, which results in the inability to discern Good and Bad (with no truth, there is only endless interpretation, whereas the belief in a good requires that there be a Truth), the inability to seek the Greater Good (other than societal and personal good insofar as what we enjoy and what keeps society going), and so on.

In Bloom’s chapter on music, he takes on a position that brings new light to my evaluation of pop culture music. He talks of how, using music, the “love and sex” ideas infiltrated our culture in the sixties and have become commonly accepted in our culture today (which might be our downfall). Of course, it is nearly impossible to change what the music industry is churning out after allowing it free reign for forty years; it has become part of the culture.

Bloom pointed out, in addition to the immorality of it all, as far as education is concerned, today’s pop music cuts students off from their own souls; in combination with the many other cultural problems America faces, the students are taught through modern music that sex, hatred, and self are all there is. It isn’t necessarily that youth refuse the freshness of the writers of the past in their quest for the fountain of truth (though it is likely some do); for many of today’s youth, the existence of that fountain and the relative ease of seeking it are masked from them. It isn’t that they don’t want what Truth is selling; they are ignorant that Truth is on the market. They are indoctrinated from birth that the only fulfillment on the market is available for small periods of time in the form of the new and catchy, the newest gadgets, clothes, and accessories for their iPod: the triumph of Capitalist marketing.

Bloom also points out that those who do unplug themselves from the music machine of modern culture are left on a permanent low, like someone who has been off of drugs for the first time in years. Suddenly, that person realizes that they will never have another high quite like the first one they had; all they can hope for is something that helps them vaguely remember what their first high was like or the infinite dullness of daily living. Of course, Bloom states, liberal education is meant to show these people that this is not the way things have to be, regardless of what they are told on television and by modern culture.

Bloom also points to another strange and, when examined, alarming trend among modern youth: many have no heroes to look up to, no one who embodies what they want to be. Of course, when you get do to it, many modern youth point to people who have “made it” according to cultural standards as people worthy of emulation. Few people try to emulate Christ (after all, he had no multi-million dollar mansion, no awesome car, not even a family; he just taught us to live right and something about “storing up riches in heaven,” whatever that means, and “the last will be first,” whatever that means, and “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” whatever that means), I’d bet that no one tries to emulate Hercules, Odysseus, Moses, Achilles or any other hero of the past. If students are honest, many would likely say that Bill Gates, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Donald Trump have lives they wished to have; others might say the name of some movie actor or Olympic athlete that is all the rage today and unheard of tomorrow. After all, if most of today’s youth accept the propaganda that there is no Absolute, then Jesus was just another preacher or even a heretic, Achilles was just foolishly clinging to foolish traditions when he allowed Priam to bury Hector honorably, and Bill Gates is the greatest man in the world because he, having the most money, is able to watch out for himself the best.

Music as it is will probably continue as it has been for the last forty years, which I’m almost certain will be one of the final elements that bring our society to its knees. Something else that Bloom points out is when he tells students of Socrates’ desire to censor music in his perfect society in The Republic, many of them feel as though Socrates is assaulting something precious to them. However, it is in light of our current situation that I see that Socrates may have had a more valid idea than is readily apparent at first examination. I do not think I am quite ready to advocate the censorship of music, but I do now see that such censorship might be necessary if we are to turn back the tide of relativism and remind people that there is something else besides sex, hatred, and selfishness. Of course, some would be turned away by the fact that, in all these years, none (outside the field of religion, anyhow) have claimed to discover the Absolute face-to-face…yet we must also see that men of the past have found more fulfillment in the search for Truth than we have in the abandonment of this search. Perhaps that is what we were built to do…

As a writer, I also feel I must mention that, as a creative writer, I find today’s music destructive in that, instead of conveying otherwise-inexpressible longing and thought, today’s pop music is used to convey our baser instincts: sexual love, hatred, and despair. Such music doesn’t promote creativity; it destroys it, incapacitates it, limits it. From this perspective, it is no wonder that America hasn’t produced any recognizably great thinkers or politicians or artists for the last century or so.

SfC