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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
April 10, 2011
Made for malice
I was glancing briefly through the comments to last Sunday's column, posted on this newspaper's website, and some directly to me. Apparently, I hit a nerve by sledging into Imagine, the smiley-face atheist anthem of the late Beatle, John Lennon. (Of course, I was trying to do so.)Some things are holy, even among those who categorically deny the existence of holiness; and we expose this by goring their own sacred cows. They claim the inalienable right to gore those of the religious faithful. The anthem in question spits in the face of every Christian believer, and by extension believers of all faiths that acknowledge God. My column asked what it means, when a politician who depends on the electoral support of millions of such people, feels free to insult them so casually. Perhaps this point was missed. Conflict of views will always be with us, yet there is a question of tone. I have noticed this in reading comments on the Internet, generally. The insolent mocking tone, of juvenile bluster and bloviation, laden with obscenities, and leavened by a crude humour reduced to sarcasm alone -this may be found on any Internet site where comments are not carefully moderated. I will not say it is evidence of "the decline of Western Civ." That would be too obvious. Rather I would observe in the more McLuhanesque way that it is in the nature of the medium. There is this keyboard, and a screen. You can hardly see what you are trying to hit. You make gratuitous assumptions about the recipient of your bile, whom you have never met, nor ever tried to understand. And thanks to the provision of Internet pseudonyms, you may do this anonymously, assured that your selected bogeyman will never find you. "Comment is free," as they say. The Internet might as well have been designed as an efficient medium for the communication of malice and obscenity. It is no accident that an "image search" on a word such as "charity" or "chastity" will call up vast electronic acreage of pornographic filth. And ditto any other word, with some moral resonance; or almost any word at all. A techie friend estimates that more than half of the content of the Internet consists of displays of sexual perversion, in which force or violence is invariably also present, seldom subtly. That is what is out there, and always was, to some degree, though it should be observed that things grow when they are nurtured, including evil things. Prior to the invention of the Internet, "self expression" of this sort was reasonably contained, even hidden, within people's souls. Printed pornography remained underground, peeping up only through "decency" restraints upon commercial advertising, in the form of "sex appeal." Now it can be shared: the vile thing itself. It has come "out of the closet." Likewise, e-mail provides a means to "self express" at people one cannot see, to push "pain" buttons in the way a modern general launches cruise missiles at abstracted targets, tracked entirely by electronic means. He does not hear the screams or see the carnage, unless by chance some flicker is brought back by the same electronic means. He need not follow the busted lives. Or in a younger and more innocent age, nasty little boys pelted stones at squirrels; and celebrated the occasional hit. It was a game to them. Now we play computer games. These two broad categories -- the juvenile ranting and the pornographic filth -- are closely related. I have come to think of them as two sides of the same coin. Each reifies the content of a dark human soul; makes something spiritual into something tangible. It is the first principle of art, read backwards: in which ugliness rather than beauty is being sought and expressed. Pornography presents sex with an object (as opposed to a person). By analogy, much of our political discussion today is a kind of pornography: an argument with persons considered as objects. There is no attempt to reply to an argument with a better argument, or appeal to common principles. Rather, each assertion is advanced with a mallet: "Take this! Take that!" The effect on the body politic is visible all around: the reduction of political partisans to something like soccer hooligans, getting their kicks in at the other side. Notions of "the gentleman" and "fair play" are themselves mocked -replaced by "sensitivity" policing, meant exclusively to shut opponents up. Except, buried in the comments are intelligent remarks, some genuine wit, interesting references, thoughtful assignments of praise and blame -- soft things, turned in the sharp gravel. There is no way out of this, for we can move only forward in time: in Lenten terms, towards a Crucifixion, and what will come of that. In societal terms, with all our technology, we are trapped in a dead end, in which what is precious is desecrated, and what is worthless triumphs on the day. It is the world of Imagine realized: without morals, without God. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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