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March 27, 2006
Multiple
Personality:
A dissociative
disorder in which two or more distinct personalities exist
in the same person, each of which prevails at a particular time. Also
called
split personality
In 1974, walking
down the mall at Arizona State University could be a highly unpleasant
experience for young women. The mall was the central thoroughfare for
all college traffic. It featured an intersection at the Memorial
Union and Library, where four paths led off to the colleges for
business, education, science and liberal arts.
Around the
library, a two-foot high block wall served as a mid-day “home” to a
group of fraternity men, a perfect perch from which they could survey
women walking by. These frat jocks, elevating the sport of
girl-watching to a new level, had created a set of large score cards
with bold black numbers 1 through 10.
Their system was
meant for entertainment, not for human compassion. For the “lucky”
women walking by, winks, laughs, calls and whistles would “reward” her
with a row of perfect 10s. But, with the same compassion of Simon
Cowell, these winks, laughs and calls from the frat men could just as
easily produce score cards of seven, six, five…or zero.
Thankfully, this
crass frat game died out in the summer heat, never to reappear. This
was the Age of Aquarius when peace and love were
painted on torn jeans. Women were busy exercising their new-found
liberation, and in this new world, there was no place for a game that
trivialized women.
Alas, in the
short span of forty years, these same men and women of my college
years are now parents to a new college generation weaned on the lyrics
of such rappers as Snoop Dog, Ice-T, and Eminem. Tepid cards with
numbers have been replaced by crude lyrics that describe women and sex
in violent and abusive slang.
How did we get
here from there? In 1974, college women were insulted by a rating
system that traded respect for a few cheap laughs. In 2004, college
women seek hoots and whistles by pulling off wet t-shirts in public
bars. How did the sixties in America fail to produce the fruit of
peace and love?
On television,
Lucy and Rickie have been replaced by Sex and the City, which
unlike the frat scorecards, did not fade away into summer reruns. In
its sixth season, Sex and the City churned out episode 76,
“Great Sexpectations” where Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte
continued to tryout and discard men like last-year’s shoes. If one
day they ever do find “true love,” they will probably end up cast as
characters on Desperate Housewives.
Abstinence
educators daily witness the impact of this cultural shift. As they
work to reconnect our children with the truth of what love means,
their greatest handicap is the American dissociative order which
allows us to believe that the two distinct personalities of love and
hate can peacefully co-exist in the same heart. America suffers from
multiple cultural personalities.
In one world, we
work to teach adolescents the connection between love and sex.
Classroom lessons help students analyze situations between girls and
guys, distinguishing between abusive and controlling behaviors and
selfless, caring relationships.
In the other
world, like switching the channels with the remote, we infuse our
children’s hearts with entertainment based on abuse, control, violence
and disrespect. In the darkest moments, we write comedies where kids
laugh at crude and destructive behavior as easily as we once did over
Gilligan’s Island.
We have lost the
understanding that a house divided cannot stand. Integrity is now
passé. We chafe at morality, rejecting the idea that good must be
good all the time in order to be good. Instead, our life is a
tortured contradiction where good can be bartered for whatever suits
us at the moment.
If we want to
restore the future happiness of our children, we must restore our
culture. We must reclaim our integrity. We must pull together our
cultural personality into one house, undivided, that stands for peace
and love at all times and under all conditions.
To know what is
right and not to do it is the worst cowardice,
Confucius said.
And as an author
on divine unity, he teaches a singular method for coming together into
one undivided national personality. To put the world right in
order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in
order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in
order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set
our hearts right.
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October 29, 2004
Food for the Brain
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