On the remnants of romance

For better or worse, this is an invitation to imagine a different response to the pseudo-empowered sexual economy of transactional empowerment. This post must be brief and, (worse?) blunt due to inescapable time constraints.

There is a video circulating of some young women engaging in a semi-choreographed dance involving the routine genital thrusting and tongue displays. It has elicited condemnation as well as “let them have fun” counter-signals. It’s prompted a flurry of thoughts about what our culture is and is not, what our youth do and do not have, and emotional reactions to the anti-aesthetics of pop culture.

The video will be forgotten in a few days but we will continue to be affected by the state of our discourse, pop culture, advertising, and speed of the hypnotic images thrust at us each second. Outrage, empowerment - the responses fail to knit together something which has grown threadbare.

Men and women in the West, which includes almost everyone on earth who enjoys access to modern communication while suffering a lack of meaning, have long been taught to be empowered at the price of their relationships. Love in the West has long been reduced to a sterile exchange. Because it excludes life in the name of empowerment, it is cut off from transcendence. And slowly then quickly it delivers itself to Hell. There is a loneliness epidemic amid all the displays of fun which makes the feeling heart weep.

One cannot imagine, would prefer not to imagine, Elizabeth Bennet thrusting her groin at Mr. Darcy and sticking out her tongue before drinking a bottle of wine from her Stanley and passing out. One would also not want to picture Mr. Darcy returning to Pemberley in a hoodie which hasn’t been washed in 2 years, earbuds in, to sit in a dark room and cycle through social media, video games, and porn.

Despite social media displays of individual empowerment through acts of twerking and lifting, men and women are alone in the heart while dissolving back into the formless blob of a world abandoning love and responsibility. In a world without meaning, without hope, without risk or grace, men and women cannot find the humility or the fulcrum from which to enter life-giving communion.

Overstimulated from birth while being stripped of the ability to give thoughtful attention, we seek dopamine hits. Convenience, efficiency, pleasure. It’s why the West is a culture of escalating addiction. Even if they have the 1.7 children, there is an epidemic of wine moms and micro-dosing dads. It is a world which gets louder by the day. Even the most well-meaning outrage adds to the noise. We become spastic and frantic in our consumption, seeking an ever more elusive satisfaction that can only ever be “mere” satisfaction. We are having a hard time growing up past 25, and the pleasure of taboo-breaking in youth become soul-destroying addictions mighty quickly.

The romances of Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility required gifts which are in short supply. And to be fair, those books reveal Jane Austen thought they were in short supply back then. Yet, rare as it may be, those who can still focus must give that attention to nurturing the capacity to build a love that weaves itself together in dance and work, in life and death.

Right now we and our children are free to do anything but commit our hearts, to bear burdens, to think slowly, to love longly, to change our ways.

Social media takes won’t change any of that. It’s good to know there’s a problem, but what’s the cause and where do we go? Despite the cynicism of the media and advertisers, the heart craves a living faith, not scolding or sarcasm. For those who see the barrenness of our hearts, who ache at the loneliness experienced by so many, who realize the beauty of forgiveness, we have a lot of work to do in communicating hope in the romance of reality.

There are other ways to be in the world. There is more to hope in than this world. Much that has been broken may yet be redeemed. May we have the courage to witness to such love. Blessings and love to you all.