The Devil's Pleasure Palace, by Michael Walsh, Ch. 6 -The Eternal Feminine
.Jumping into Walsh again as a break from my screenplay.
When I was in grad school studying critical theory in film, the two--and almost only--pillars of such theory were Marxism and Freudianism. Every essay was based on either one or both of them. Walsh tells us why in this chapter. I wish his book had been out earlier!
Marxism of course criticizes a free economy, and our notion of human nature, but sex is a main driver of life, of action. Love and lust can propel humans down many roads, good and bad, and Freud unravels to some extent this mystery. So no wonder that morality developed to control and guide such impulses into productive activity; and thus no wonder that sexual mores were a huge target of the early critical theorists like the Frankfurt School guys and gals. Since then, traditional morality has been mocked and attacked as misogynistic ala the hated patriarchy, racist of course, all to get down to the nub, the nuclear family itself, and to undermine and destroy it. Now the denial of the reality of two sexes alone, the sacramental nature of abortion, the rise of the welfare state, the attack is complete—I think, for I can’t imagine what comes next. Love and sex are free of cost, free of consequences.
At first this was taught only in graduate school, but now dumbed down versions abound in even grade school, as can be seen on numerous school curriculum sites and on TikTok.
Walsh cites historian Arnold Toynbee, who observed that a civilization begins to crumble when the bad manners and morality of the lower orders is aped by the elites. We can see this in thug culture, for instance, single motherhood, drugs, political violence, but Walsh believes that no other culture before the current Western culture has so thoroughly embraced such self-destruction.
I think a salutary sign is that while the professional and academic left embrace radical values, they live themselves orderly, traditional lives: nuclear family, education, delayed gratification. So the anti-family, anti-procreation left is really about “freedom,” they say. If we want a traditional life, that’s great! But the oppressed of society should be free to live however they want too, no matter how deadly. So the professional Leftists must be aware that their theories do not make for a good life. I think it’s a form of performative penance, as in the old days of indulgences in the Church, perhaps.
As further evidence of self-loathing, the left has gone all in on discouraging procreation. When I was in college we were indoctrinated to eschew children because we would all be starving by 1989, per Paul Ehrlich and his warnings about the population bomb. However, fewer people than ever over the globe are starving today, and in fact obesity is rampant. Now, in a switch to avoid that incoherence, girls are told that having children will doom the world to destruction by climate change. Whatever works?
Walsh believes that all the stunning disasters of the late ‘60s, from Vietnam, MLKs assassination, LBJ abdication, touched it all off. Up until then, I agree, the boomer generation grew up with no fears, no hunger, no poverty, as opposed to their parents who lived through the Great Depression and WWII, where nearly half a million US soldiers gave up their lives. Life was pretty easy, so the Left managed to turn an entire generation against itself.
I do think that the Left has been so successful for another reason, though. In a time of affluence of peace, in the American Century, we think we have conquered our outer foes and so turn our critical faculties on ourselves. Benedict Beckeld has a book coming out on oikophobia, or the loathing of one’s own culture. Up until I read his article I had supposed that our culture, Western culture, was the only civilization that had turned so completely against itself, but he shows us that it’s common in many Western cultures from antiquity. I do wonder if we will be the one culture that does not fall to this phenomenon. One reason to hope that we will is our free speech traditions that will keep the flame of traditional civic virtues alive.
Much of Romantic music, poetry, drama glories in the transcendent power of love and sex. The Left however denies that sex is any more transcendent than a good workout at the gym. Their mantra since the ‘60s, “Make love, not war,” will lead to a populace rootless and disgruntled, as many today are. Without the formation of families with children and the responsibilities that come with them, we are eternal adolescents, turning against our own existence in a futile search for meaning in ennui and nihilism.
There is no one issue or failing that the left wants to destroy—they just want to destroy. “They have no rules, only objectives.”