Why Culture Matters
William D. Howard is a freelance writer who has been published in both secular and religious formats. He had a long career as an educator and has traveled in over 40 countries.
Multiple mass murders proclaim that life is not sacred. Multiple opinion polls proclaim that the majority of Americans no longer believe in a Judeo-Christian definition of sexual morality. We are now officially and popularly a pagan nation.
It took a little over sixty years to accomplish, but we have now committed “Cultural Self Genocide”. In 1945 America had achieved the status of the greatest nation on earth. After four years of World War, we were the generally recognized leader of the Free-world. We were the most admired country on earth, the military savior of Old Europe and the establisher of a New World Order. With the help of our allies we had defeated both the Nazi German Empire and the equally brutal Empire of the Rising Sun. We were also the only nation capable of effectively resisting and containing the new enemy of global freedom, Communism; but as great as these achievements were, we were equally admired for what people now call our “Soft Power”; our love of freedom, our insistence on the rule of law and our compassion for the weak and poor. To borrow Winston Churchill’s famous phrase, “This was our finest hour.”
Since 1945, in terms of wealth, power and cultural influence we have ascended to even greater heights, but sadly our culture is no longer known for its moral excellence. If a poll were taken of the world’s people today, we would be known for our Rap-music and our increasingly violent and sexually explicit movies. We would also be known for our hate-filled politics and all the different forms of violence which pervade our society.
The Judeo-Christian cultural foundation which was established by our colonial ancestors and “Founding Fathers” is no longer shared by most of our educational institutions, our cultural elites, and certainly not the Mecca of movie making called “Hollywood”. Of course we still have laws based upon that culture and we still have the Constitution, but they are standing naked against a freezing wind of secular humanism and the gleeful acceptance of neo-pagan values that increasingly fascinate America’s public.
The two main ways our present culture has departed from our past tradition is in its increasing disrespect for human life and its low level of sexual morality. If the history of the world proves anything about the future stability of a civilization, it is the fact that its success must be rooted in highly moral and disciplined family structure. Without these, peace and order soon begin to unravel. History provides many examples of what I call “Cultural Self Genocide”. This process is always the same: honored values and religious beliefs which had defined a civilization for centuries suddenly become the topic of social/cultural ridicule. Other values or beliefs are accepted with little scrutiny and even turned into a culturally fashionable campaign. A wise old Greek said thousands of years ago, “Custom is King”. Morals, norms, traditions, and religious beliefs are the true foundation of a civilization; and if that template is broken, violence and chaos will soon follow.
Americans are rightly shocked by the terrible mass murders happening all too often, but we should not be shocked by why they are happening. Beginning in the 1960s we began to give up our parental rights to those who create and control our mass media. What all the statistics show is since the 1960s, there has been an almost constant increase in all types of violence. Mass-murders of course stand-out, but there are many types of violence which taken as an aggregate are exponentially greater. Violent crime nearly quadrupled between 1960 and 1991. Since 1973 in America there have been over sixty-one million abortions. In the 1950s there were 72 serial killers reported and by the 1980s there were 768. The rate of suicide increased 33% between 1999 and 2017 and Human Trafficking is increasing in every state.
In the 1960s Americans in large numbers began to give-up on conventional Judeo-Christian sexual morality and as a result premarital sex increased, out of wedlock births increased, divorce, and single parent families increased. The one thing that didn’t increase was the percentage of Americans who were religiously affiliated and who regularly attended religious services. The high point of religious practice was reached in the 1950s and since then there has been a steady decline, but most alarming is the fact that as a percentage of the national population, young adults now make-up the largest group of the American public which describes themselves as non-religious. To quote the Bible, America’s young have become “Sheep without a Shepherd”. Movies, TV, video games and of course music have become their surrogate parents. This was not an accident. There has been an intentional effort, on the part of a committed community of secular humanists and neo-pagans, to bring America’s Judeo-Christian culture to its knees. No matter how negligent American parents have been, they did not create, produce, direct, write, or star in our mass popular culture.
Should we now be surprised that the proportion of young adults who are committing mass murder is increasing and the average age of all shooters is falling? Should we be surprised that the majority of these young murderers come from broken homes and that 85% of all shooters are religiously non-practicing?
Culture matters. Standards matter. America faces many problems, but the greatest problem it faces is the loss of faith in an eternal standard for morality and the ensuing cultural decay.
William D. Howard
3821 La vista Circle, Jacksonville FL 32217
(904) 318-8203
Your diagnosis is correct. It is possible to be a moral atheist, but philosopher Dennis Prager is correct when he says that it is much more difficult, less likely. See his website as he has much to say on this.
In the Occident, religion has drowned in information overload. Before widespread reading, information was spoken, discussed and displayed by behaviors. The songs that played in the minds of our ancestors were sang in the home, church and tavern. The printing press permitted science to flourish and it became fashionable to question more phenomena, assumptions and beliefs. Then came affordable books, magazines, theater, then radio, television and the internet. A couple hundred years ago, religion was the biggest story, today it is one of many stories, but many others have compelling special effects and the competition for brain time is powerful. Information overload inhibits thinking.
Science gave us real material progress. One consequence is that time is devoted increasingly to consuming entertainment. Until recently, most people in the West spent most of their lives having to produce and provide, we were made in the image of the Creator, not the consumer and moral values were more clearly understood to aid in survival. Affluence is an irresistible target for the political class to loot from the successful and bribe other people to become dependent and helpless. This teaches people to believe that envy and sloth are virtues.
What to do about it?
At the family level, parents must take responsible control of their children’s environment. Teach religion, go to church or temple regularly. Homeschool them. Limit entertainment. Teach them to be makers, not takers.
At the public policy level, electorally defeat Democrats for they are in the vanguard of political-social regression; they are the main force for Plunder and Deceit which is the title of an important book by Mark Levin that details the destruction of our civil society and its causes.
WinLoseorDraw thanks Mr. Howard for his insightful commentary, and his defense of traditional Judeo-Christian values. Often people castigate formalized religion by pointing at destructive wars fought in the name of religion. Mr. Howard reminds us that at its heart religion is civilizing and uplifting.
As an additional source on this subject, WinLoseorDraw recommends Nova, season 46, Episode 22, The Violence Paradox. That show uses analytical studies to chart an overall downward trend in violence dating back largely to the rise of religion in the middle ages.
The Violence Paradox also pointed to the role of government to try and monopolize violence. One trend that began over 2 million years ago with Homo habilis was that intelligence won more often than not. The program said that there is a high correlation between income inequality and violence. The Bell Curve reported on a large longitudinal study that showed that income and criminality are more highly correlated to IQ than to any other socio-economic variable. In a large sample, high cognitive ability increases wealth and decreases violence. The welfare system and high taxes on achievers promote faster population growth of the cognitively disadvantaged.
Charles Warwin said, “The Bell Curve reported on a large longitudinal study that showed that income and criminality are more highly correlated to IQ than to any other socio-economic variable.”
Lately the IQ metrics have been called into question. WinLoseorDraw’s take on IQ is that it is a measurement of mental agility only. The poor are smart enough to know right from wrong and they rely on a very common sense evaluation of what governmental actions will impact them positively or negatively. Presumably, the assertion in
The Bell Curve
is that criminality and violence resides somewhat exclusively in the lower class due to a scarcity of brain synapses. I doubt it. I double doubt it! First, criminality and violence are demonstrably not exclusive to the lower class. Second, even if there is a lot of criminality and violence in lower class communities only a small part of it is due to inflexible brain functions. Actually, their brains are working overtime trying to defeat a system that sometimes seems unfair.