|
AMERICA'S
GOD LIVES IN THE MALL AND DEMANDS CHILD SACRIFICE The good citizens of our society are outraged and appalled by the explosion of teen violence and murder in our country. We blame it on drugs imported from nasty third-world countries; or on aggressive gang leaders from big cities like New York or Chicago or L.A. exporting their organizations; or on bad schools, or bad parents, or the bad economy, or T.V., or guns, or on any number of things. But these factors seem only to reveal more aspects of the terrible, seismic shift toward violence in our society in the last 25 years, not the root cause of it. Think about it: drugs have always been around (opium dens were not illegal at the turn of the century), why is their use now becoming an epidemic? Gangs have always been around. (Don't we love to watch Ephraim Zimbalist, Jr chasing Al Capone around? Didn't we love "West Side Story"?) Why are they only now spreading so much murder among teens? Bad schools are nothing new, nor bad parents: why only now do we need metal-detectors at schools where the majority of the kids are from broken homes? And the economy? We had bad economy before. How many times have you elders told us about the great depression in the 1930s? Why did that bad economy build character, while this one breeds murder among teens? T.V.? Really, T.V. is not that new either. We all started watching in the 1950s, or about fifty years ago. The terrible increase in teen murder is fairly recent: the U.S. Justice Department statistics show an increase of 85% in teens arrested for murder between 1987 and 1991 (Newsweek, 8/2/93, p.43). To say T.V. is the root cause is not enough. A more perplexing question is why do we all now enjoy watching much more violent shows? Why do regular people, not just Crips and Bloods, enjoy the new wave of crime-reenactment cop shows so much? We all know that T.V. producers give the public what the public wants; that's how they make money. If the senior citizens watching afternoon soaps did not want live sex scenes, there wouldn't be any. The proliferation of guns? Is that the root cause of the teen violence and murder wave sweeping our country? You certainly cannot shoot someone if you cannot get a gun. And guns certainly are much too easy for kids and criminals to get today. But anyone who thinks about it must see that the availability of guns does not explain the root cause of the current epidemic urge to kill. The causes of violence in our society are deeper than any simple trend or single change; they are to be found in the contradictions inherent in American culture itself. Culture (the system of beliefs and institutions that give meaning and purpose to life) in America is a shifting, lurching thing which none of us can get a handle on, but which affects all of our doings and feelings. But certain observations serve to show what great contradictions are lurking on the floor of this jungle of meanings and values we call American culture. For example, America has at once both the most religious and the most violent society in the world. Harold Bloom (The American Religion, p.37) quotes a Gallop poll showing that 94% of Americans currently believe in God, 90% pray, and 88% believe God loves them personally. No other modern or industrialized nation comes anywhere near that kind of belief! On the other hand, a recent study of scientists is based on the recognition that "The U.S. is the most violent nation in the industrialized world" (Time, 4/19/93, p.52). These scientists think we must view violence in America as a "public health threat", one which may have its causes in America's defective gene pool. What kind of culture (belief system) could produce such a contradiction in society, more people praying and more people murdering than in any other? Perhaps the god Americans are praying to with so much confidence is some sort of monster? The most bizarre contradictions in our society are to be seen in our treatment of our children. Daily headlines show stunning contradictions: for example, "New Castle strip-search policy OK'd" (Post Gazette, 8/25/93), and "Teachers censor gorilla sex data" (P.G. 5/5/93). The former is an article telling how the New Castle Area School District instituted a policy, and got court approval, to strip search children if they were suspected of possessing illegal drugs. Strip searching our children! Do you realize how humiliating such a search is? What is the logic in witch-hunting child abusers like Michael Jackson and then subjecting our children to being stripped in school in front of strangers? What is the sense here? Why isn't such a school policy seen as institutional child abuse? Is it because it is controlled by the state, while Mr. Jackson's alleged activity was private? Is it the same logic that prevailed in the decision of the government to gas the children in Waco (and ultimately provoke their death) in order to save them from child-abuse? The second story tells how Erie area school officials blacked out with magic markers certain lines in Diane Fossey's famous study, "Gorillas in the Mist", lines mentioning in technical language the mating habits of the gorillas. It gets worse: these books were used by honors students whose parents objected to the censoring, but the teachers were so afraid of "potential" objection from anyone that they went ahead with the black out. What is this obsessive drive to protect our children from reality? Where does it come from? It is, apparently, another product of a very peculiar and contradictory culture. There is a foundational system of beliefs that is turning in on itself and producing these monstrous contradictions. How can we feel compelled to protect our kids from even the words describing gorilla genitals and at the same time feel we must stop at nothing, even strip searches in school, to keep them from drugs? There is a twisted logic, isn't there? To protect our kids from a dangerous world we must control them absolutely, even if it means damaging them. When this underlying logic becomes apparent, the dysfunctionality of American culture is clear. Absolute protection of children from the world is to remove them completely; the best way to remove children from the world is to kill them. Koresh would rather have his children die and go to heaven than let them be taken away into an evil world; isn't that really the logic of American culture itself? Isn't that just a more self-conscious version of what every "good" family in America feels? Isn't it a product of such a high degree of belief in a god who will rescue us from our dirty world? Isn't it the way the defenders of Masada felt who cut the throats of their children rather than let the Romans get them? Weren't they right to do so? If you are a true American, you have to agree. The contradictions in America's reaction to the terror of child abuse are too numerous to document. Everyday the headlines trumpet another case of child sex abuse found in the local day care center, or the local school, or the kindergarten, or the Sunday School (Post Gazette, June 1, "On the rise: harassment at primary school age"; June 2,"Sex harassment common in school"; June 3, "4 at day care center charged with sexual abuse".) On the other hand, there are increasing reports that children are being pressured into remembering abuse incidents by hysterically frightened parents (PG, 4/30/93 -"Child abuse hearing held in defiance"; PG, 6/13/93 -"Studies throw doubt on testimony by children"; Newsweek, 7/26/93, p.52 -"Anatomy of an Abuse Case"; PG, 8/23/93 -"Trial tests the reality of child abuse".) In these debates lawyers and therapists fight one another and make horrifying charges, on the one hand that children are being horribly abused by adults in nearly every private setting, and on the other that scores of innocent adults are the victims of witch-hunting hysteria. The only truth we observers can agree on is that America is indeed hysterical regarding the concept of child sex-abuse. But at the same time there is a contradictory current of cold disregard for the well being of children all around us. Despite studies showing that children without two parents suffer disadvantages, more single professionals are choosing to have children out of wedlock. What is the logic in that? Is it indicative of a shift away from concern about a child's well being and toward the adult's feeling of having a right to experience parenthood? Perhaps the most chilling example recently has been the court battle over 2-year-old Jessica, adopted by a set of parents at birth, only to be taken away by legal action of her biological parents. In her wailing face pictured in every newspaper (PG 8/3/93), we got to see parents fight for their rights before the state magistrate while a child was damaged - adult selfishness thinly veiled as justice. It was an ugly twist on the story of King Solomon who was asked to judge between two women who claimed to be the rightful mother of a baby in dispute (I Kings 3). He threatened to cut the baby in half. The real mother immediately dropped her claim to save the child. I think Jessica would have been cut in half. If Americans are so concerned about the welfare of their children, why do they relish such court battles as real, live soap-opera? Or why do they go for such images as Kate Moss, the hottest model selling Obsession perfume? In September this model (who looks provocatively like a child) will appear nude in Obsession's current ad campaign. The company is making mega-buck profits from American society's interest in kinky, child-like sexual images. I have no moral objection to the ads. The girl is a strangely beautiful naked child. It's fine with me to show off her body. What interests me is that a Roman Catholic priest made headlines in New England when it was discovered that he liked to photograph pubescent boys in their underwear. He was found guilty of serious felony charges and put into a forced treatment program, and, of course, removed from the priesthood ("Unholy Acts", Paul Wilkes, The New Yorker, 1993). There seems to be a contradiction. The twisted logic of American culture, however, provides a key. If we look closely, American culture is a market culture, a culture of consumption. If we understand the rules and machinery and values of consumption culture, we can see why Obsession makes millions photographing a pubescent youth while a priest goes to jail for it. In a recent book, Race Matters, by an impressive young writer, Cornel West, this point is well established: "Why is this shattering of black civil society occurring? What has led to the weakening of black cultural institutions in asphalt jungles? Corporate market institutions have contributed greatly to their collapse... the primary motivation of these institutions is to make profits, and their basic strategy is to convince the public to consume. These institutions have helped create a seductive way of life, a culture of consumption that capitalizes on every opportunity to make money. Market calculations and cost benefit analyses hold sway in almost every sphere of U.S. society. The common denominator of these calculations and analyses is usually the provision, expansion and intensification of pleasure...In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation... the reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in the culture industries...in which gestures of sexual foreplay and orgiastic pleasure flood the market place...The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward off self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America" (pages 16-17). The terrible truth about American culture is that the primary by-product of a culture of consumption is nihilism. What is nihilism? It is the face of Derrick Sean O'Brien, 18, glaring defiance from the page in Newsweek (7/19/93, p. 16) as he is tried for the death of two teenage girls he and his gang members killed in a horrible and meaningless murder spree. He boasted on local TV, "Human life means nothing". Nihilism comes from the Latin word, "nihil", which means "nothing". Our teens, especially in the black community, have been infected with the results of consumer culture; they no longer feel like anything matters; there is nothing to care about; if one cannot have or participate in the glitzy stream of expensive pleasures marketed in our society, there is no point in living, life has no other meaning. Kill, trash and burn! That's the only rush left for those excluded from the mainstream of consumption - as more and more people are. This nihilism affects not just black teens. White teens are catching it as well, witness white interest in rap music and the tee-shirt industry which indicate it is cool to call each other "niggers and bitches" (Newsweek, 8/23/93, p.61). And, of course, the spread of this nihilism is OK because it makes money for the adults who sell the stuff. If it makes money it has to be ok, that is the foundational instinct of consumer culture. That is also why it is ok for Obsession to display nude child photos, but not for a priest: his interests cause no profits, they cost his corporation big bucks in law suits. White middle America participates in this nihilism when the shopping stops and consumption is limited. Without the ability to consume more and newer stuff constantly, life loses its purpose. At this point, the majority of middle Americans still enjoy the ability to consume heedlessly, only a marginal segment has recently become unemployed, ulcerated, addicted, violent. But the tension is high. If the ability to consume should be taken away from the bulk of the American middle class, there would be an orgy of nihilistic violence that would make our current urban problems pale in comparison. Why such hysteria about child abuse in America? There is that underlying contradiction in a consumer culture's orientation toward children: on the one hand, society needs to breed masses of new consumers to keep the machinery of profit running for those in charge; but rearing children places extreme limitations on the parents' ability to enjoy the pleasures of consumption. The rich have no problem, they never did. But the middle class couple is often shocked to realize what children cost; there is often an angry feeling of being excluded from the good life (or at least the selfish life) by the cost of these children. If society needs them as consumers, why should I have to sacrifice all alone to raise them? It's not fair! In a consumer culture, all things will eventually be reduced to commodities. Healing a hurt becomes a medical service package which you buy; having a trusted friend or family member to confide in and get helpful advice from becomes a therapeutic relationship which can be sold by the hour; having a child becomes an opportunity to gain person ego extension into the future which you must pay for. But a consumer eventually dreads the future, for it means the end of the direct pleasures of consuming; children are a poor substitute gratification, especially if they were born as by products of personal gratification. Looking at America's orientation toward children from the point of view of a consumer culture helps us make sense of the love/hate relationship we see. The symbol of consumer culture's triumph is the shopping mall. Contrast the huge mall with the traditional market place. It is glitzy, impersonal, aims to turn wants into needs, projects no values other than profit, specializes in non-essentials, looks like a temple (giving the aura of the sacred to the act of buying), and it promotes the unhealthy use of cars. The traditional community market is earthy, personal, aims to meet needs, represents the value of quality goods and food stuff, specializes in essentials, looks functional and thrives where people can walk to it. The mall encourages youth to walk around and desire what their peers consider the latest. Even games in the mall involve money and machines, not human interaction. Without money, says the god of the mall, you are nothing! The mall is the temple from which come the disappointments for the poor which lead them to kill each other. To those who bring in their offerings the mall god gives pleasure; for those without offerings he gives the curse of nothingness - being and feeling like nothing and believing that nothing matters. Why not kill or be killed? Are our churches a real counter culture to the culture of consumption, one that would give hope to people who have been rendered nothing by the god of the mall? It seems that many churches have bought into the culture of consumption rather than taken any kind of counter position. Some, in fact, aspire to look like malls, the "mega-churches" of California or Texas. And they offer religion as another commodity. Unfortunately, many small churches seem to wish to be such consumer culture churches, and fail. They, like black youth, fall into the nihilism and self-hate that leads to death. Because they can't compete in the consumption market, they see no point in living. If we in our Confessing Synod churches wish to help the sad victims of America's consumer market culture, people troubled by violence and fear, let's just take a strong stand against shopping malls - anyone who has seen one built, as they are now in Frazer, knows just how much of an evil joke they are. Don't shop in malls; condemn malls from the pulpit; fight their installation in your community. The mall is the antithesis of true human community; true human community is the only antidote to youth gangs and teen murder (you probably won't be a gang member if you are home doing homework or if everyone knows you and keeps an eye on you); pay a little more for the stuff you need and keep your community alive; once your community dies, so will you. And the god of the mall temple will not give you new life, only new stuff until you can no longer pay for it, and then you are nothing.
|