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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
January 21, 2007
Taking responsibility
I do feel like a rank hypocrite sometimes, writing about “traditional marriage”, and other items on what nice liberal people might call the “social conservative hit list” -- when I have myself lived a disastrous life, making all the standard postmodern mistakes, and a few more on my own initiative. But consider the authors of self-help books, on “how to make a million”. On close inquiry, most of them turn out to be public bankrupts, who never came near a million until they wrote their books.And my point is? Their bankruptcies are a kind of assurance of sincerity on their part. They genuinely tried to make a million, and in the course of badly failing to do so, they probably learned a thing or two. So it is with me, and stuff like marriage. Nothing I write is intended to make any living individual squirm, in other than a generic way -- about the way he has lived, or is living. Or if you squirm, then I’ll squirm with you. My intention is to make people think, and my confidence is that when people think, they are more likely to find answers, than when they let all thought roll over. One of the things I have tried to make clear, by repeated allusions over time, is that we are living in a fairly dark age. It may not look that way, from all the city lights. But it is that way, when you look into the soul of postmodern man. We do not have the security that came to our ancestors, who could cope with much worse difficulties than we face, from day to day, thanks to loyalties and certainties of faith. As I wrote last week, they did not have to re-invent the whole moral order from scratch. Whereas we, often, have to do so. And I am quite sure that a loving God makes allowances for the squalor into which we were born. I want to draw a picture of what I have just said, about living in times of moral disorder, and needing guidance. It is like trying to see the stars through the city glare. Our little human lights delete the big universal ones. Much mail from last week’s column, in which I tried to recall the elementary principle upon which the traditional, and to my belief the only practicable, institution of marriage was founded. Upon one man and one woman, as complements to one another -- the man playing the man, and the woman playing the woman. This singular arrangement admits of great variety, in individual types, but they are variations upon just one large, universal theme -- of masculine and feminine in their combinations. Never interchangeable, yet never ceasing to interchange, under what one lady insisted on calling, “The Lord of the Dance.” Several wise women wrote, generally in agreement with me, using the analogy of ballroom dancing. Someone has to lead, and the man is bigger. It is the devil for a woman to have a partner who can't lead, even more than for a man to have a woman who can't follow. "But a woman can teach a man to lead," wrote one generous female soul. Most of my critics (at least, writing to me directly), were of a class that has tried my patience through the years. They are men, but “feminized” by schooling and counselling, who feel some urgent, squeaky need to condemn errant men like me, on behalf of an imaginary sisterhood that must haunt their dreams. Who accuse me of being some kind of “chauvinist” reptile, from out of the primaeval swamp. If these guys only knew what most women thought of them, I am convinced, they would stop speaking for women, and start speaking for themselves. Hardly ever does a woman write to me like that. And when one does, I have noticed, she invariably uses intensely masculine language. But again, I do not hate these people. Nor feel sorry for them, for in pity we often find real contempt. I think instead they are lost, and disoriented; confused, and rather obviously unhappy. My hope is that they will find a guide. The world is a mess around us. But the secret to making it less of a mess is, paradoxically, not to condemn it. Instead it is to take responsibility for the mess. The solution is to own that it doesn’t matter how it started. For with the help of God, it is ours to re-order. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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