Sexualizing Children - Just Another Branch of the Modern Project of De-sensitization

  Here is the underlying morbid philosophy, just one branch of the modern project of desensitization:

Liberals today assume that traditional moral values are superstition, binding people to an irrelevant, outmoded way of thinking.

By breaking through these entrenched thought processes, even to the point of chaos, they are liberating people from man-made, irrelevant value systems.

When they see that people are offended, they believe they have reached the edge of the next level of human development and will keep pushing those limits.

This system assumes that values are man-made; because mankind has progressed, modern thinking must be better and the old thinking must be worthy of replacement.

They see themselves as Abraham knocking down his father Terach's idols. Did our forefather Abraham care that Terach's feelings were hurt when his idols were smashed? Of course not!

If you shock someone, turn their world upside down, they will re-evaluate the situation, then agree with you.

But why sexualize children? The idea is because everyone is smart enough to choose for themselves and no one should dictate limits to them, they can decide. No one should deny them a legitimate pleasure. The only reason anyone thinks there should be limits on sexual behavior is due to old fashioned hang ups which should be uprooted. These were mechanisms of the patriarchy to keep others oppressed. 

If you are bothered by it, then that is like being bothered by sitting next to a black person, or bothered by the fact that women have the vote.

And so what if one girl spoke about how hurtful it was to her, as a sex abuse survivor, to have to hear about sexual issues in the classroom.  She stated that she need to heal from being sexually abused, not hear about sex all the time. 

Answer - get ear plugs. Toughen up.

The claim is that all these are superstitions that kept people oppressed, and need to be done away with. If you are disturbed by it, then that is your problem, the rights of the many are more important than the needs of a few hypersensitive kids and fanatical parents.

Being desensitized to sexuality is, they claim, part of the project of human advancement.

They provoked the parents at Dearborn Michigan into emotional displays, well, they are proud that they reached the limits of your tolerance, and they will continue to push.

Their goal is that every person should be free to choose their own destiny, and nothing should inhibit them, no person, parent, spouse, teacher, or ideology.

That is the underlying morbid philosophy, just one branch of the modern project of desensitization.

Two societal divides: do words have definitions, and sexual purity

One societal divide is between those who define and those who wish to leave things fuzzy and up in the air.

Those who claim that there are no definitions are actually poised to take control, and then they will be the definers.

Be wary of them.

Another divide is between those who hold by sexual purity and those who do not.

A relativist society assumes that off-handed comments, facial expressions, and body language shape one's basic assumptions. Relativism must create an atmosphere in which facts have no place. 

This affects people's interactions. Relativists must push away the conservative and the traditional, because they interfere with an atmosphere. They must inter-personally provoke the conservative or traditional.

 This does not apply simply to who the relativist senses you vote for, but to the mentality that you have. I knew a woman who was basically a relativist but voted republican. No one provoked her, as it was a given that she just had a different idea regarding governance. Her friends were other liberal relativists and she was the odd one out regarding voting, but not regarding lifestyle.

In that group was a couple who were former Catholics. It was okay if they attended Catholic church on holidays, but they never could have been in that clique if they were still strong Catholics, and why not? Because relativists feel a subconscious need, or maybe a conscious one, to push back at the following concepts, which they sense you are holding by, so that these concepts do not creep into their fragile atmosphere:

 Sexual purity: waiting until marriage, loyalty in marriage. You can have loyalty in marriage if you are lucky but it should not be some absolute value, I mean, what a pity that Jackie Onassis's boyfriend's wife would not grant him a divorce, Jackie is so great, she should be able to steal a man from whomever she wants. 

You know, it really is the sexual purity that is the major divide. Relativists do not want that in their atmosphere, they push back on it, and do not want anyone around who may make an off-handed comment that reflects a value on waiting and loyalty.

They do not want to hear:

"My daughter will be living at home and attending college so she does not have to share mixed-gender bathrooms or dorms."

"My son is attending an all men's college so as to keep his mind focused on his studies, there really is no reason to date until he is ready to get married."

"My son will not date until he is ready to marry, I told him that, I think that after college graduation he can date, but he wants to wait until he completes his master's"

"I was thinking of taking an evening course but evenings are the time to spend with my teens, a strong family is so important."

I never heard liberals say the above comments, I never met liberals who hold by chastity and loyalty.

When you are in liberal society, they always have to bring up some story of a horrible religious person, even if they never met one. They cannot live and let live, because they cannot let in concepts of definition and sexual purity.

Victimhood

Relativists like the concept of victimhood, yet somehow they worked hard in college and at their well-paying jobs to attain the lifestyle that have. They like the idea that minorities are victims, and will not acknowledge in a real way the accomplishments of minorities and consider thus jettisoning the victim mentality.

They may like the victim mentality because it gets them off the hook for personal responsibility, which is an ingredient in sexual purity and the concept that you can wait and you can remain loyal.

Gender roles, the modern secular family, and alienation

 You are not just an interchangeable android.

Gender roles actually bequeath happiness and purpose.

 Uncle Peter was the last remaining man of the family.

But he reneged on what could have been a fulfilling role.

His wife had taken offense when, early in their marriage, say, in 1967, her mother in law, Peter's mother, offered to sweep their floor and imposed a gift of family heirloom chairs upon them. 

So, from then on, Kaitlin cold-shouldered Peter's extended family.

 A few years later, Peter's brother in law died, and two years after that, his own father died.

With a widowed mother and sister, Peter could have declared, "I am the last remaining man of these families. I need to offer my mother, sister, niece and nephew some family time and male influence." 

 And Kaitlin may have become a nicer person for it.

I cannot really blame feminism, as Peter came of age in the1950's.

The roots of his hands-off attitude to his mother, sister, and niece and nephew who now were bereaved of son, brother, and a father, and with Peter following his wife's lead, lay in the lackadaisical attitude towards religion in his New England Protestant forebears. 

They lived only one town next to us, a fifteen minute drive, and when we would go on Thanksgiving, neither uncle Peter nor aunt Kaitlin nor cousins would even make eye contact with us. I later dubbed this, "the yearly rejection."

There had been no call to scripture and tradition in his formative years. You cannot suddenly call people to duty when times get rough, that call needs to be groomed from a young age.

But the extended family, shrinking, but still there, had not emphasized religion or duty, as times had been good and people's lives were stable in their nice suburb, supper with mom and dad at six o'clock sharp, fun on the weekends.

Uncle Peter never achieved in business what his father had, he had graduated college, was charming and smart but somehow things did not go well for him, and he even had to declare bankruptcy. Kaitlin developed health problems which stayed with her until her death at age 75.  

I do not believe he had lots of happiness in life, and looking back, from the perspective of the religiously traditional community I live in, I believe that if he had seen himself as having a God-given role of being the "man of the family", he would have at least had that source of happiness, and may have even been blessed in other ways, as those who do the Lord's Will reap blessings in this life and the next.

When one is attached to scripture and tradition, one has a source from which to draw, but when one is an interchangeable android among equals, and must assert one's individuality and draw only from oneself, they that person may have nothing much to offer. 

Believing you have a unique role just because of your gender actually bequeaths a sense of purpose and confidence.

After my interview at Middlebury college, in 1985, I was on my way to tour the campus when, lo and behold, there was aunt Kaitlin and my first cousin! A year younger than I, he was apparently also looking into the college! I was amazed at the coincidence! I approached them with a warmth and enthusiasm and this was her response: she stared with a half smile, half quizzical expression and did not say one word. Her son looked back and forth from me to his mother, as if seeking what to do next. Neither greeted me. I saw the scene and quickly made excuse that my tour guide was waiting - snubbed on Thanksgiving, snubbed in public, with no consideration that her weak stare could hurt or embarrass me, and how odd that her son likewise would not greet me.

Years and years later:

I visited the states in the summer of 2022 and reached out to Peter by email, his younger sister knew I was coming as she had responded to me - lives out west now - but from him there was no answer: it is sad for me, but I think even sadder for him, so I wrote about it:

---

Reclining on the beach, mighty ocean waves are rolling towards you, surely the turquoise arch and white foam tipped wave will continue journeying to embrace the bleached, sun baked sands, parched, waiting for a splash of ocean coolness, and as you anticipate what should come naturally,  you see the waves suddenly fall limp, sink down into themselves, churning slowly, thick, whirlpool like, then flattening out to nothing but still and murky water.  I thought this was an ocean? A bog after all, an unmoving marsh. You rub your eyes and wonder if something is wrong with you.

Later, you buy tickets to a symphony orchestra, and when the music is reaching its crescendo, suddenly the violinists stop the bow in mid air, place their cherished violins in their boxes, snap them shut and make way to leave, the pianists close the piano’s lids, alight from the podium, fold up the music sheets, the floutists place their flutes under their arms and make their way out of the hall, the conductor does not even take a bow, just wipes the remaining perspiration off his brow and exits left. You are sitting in the theater feeling stunned. Some of the other attendees also make their way to an exit like nothing strange had happened, others look around and say, this is a bit odd, but feeling outnumbered, they shrug, pretend this is normal living, and head out. You are left alone in the darkening theater, somehow refusing to believe that this can be real, expecting a comedian to announce that this was all a joke while the orchestra and audience return for a good laugh. 

Well you can keep sitting there but eventually you fell hunger pangs and need a meal and you will feel sleepiness and need a place to take a nap. You grudgingly leave the theater, part of you wonders, like that day at the beach, if something is wrong with you, but a certain anger starts to rise inside of you.

No, it is not me - something is wrong in my surroundings. 

I was right to expect the crest of the wave to reach for the parched sands, a natural ebb and flow, to be expected. The beach does not earn the embrace of the wave.

The agreement was a concert, not suddenly coming to a halt mid-stroke, leaving the audience either to pretend this is normal, or feel pressured to go along with what everyone else is doing, or maybe allow a real feeling to emerge and guide you elsewhere.

Family is the one place you should feel welcomed, that people should take some interest in you, as they have a stake in your success. It is not normal to visit family and be chronically snubbed.

My recent trip to the USA meant visiting my brother in his beautiful home, receiving nonchalantly some family heirlooms, and inheriting some old pictures.

 

I had written to uncle Peter, who lives a half hour drive from my brother, saying I was coming stateside to visit my mom, his sister. He did not write back, I nonchalantly wrote him again, still no answer.  Then again after I returned to Israel, I was chit chatty and upbeat in all three emails - still no answer.

Upon my return to Israel, I was going through the pictures, there was an old snapshot of Pete, who, while I was growing up, had lived a fifteen minute drive from our home in Brookline Mass, and who we saw no more than once a year. I could not tell you the color of his eyes, he never looked at me. Nor did his wife, Kaitlin, and she was a teacher in the local public school system, I mean, she probably knew something about child psychology, but you see, the story was that my grandmother once offered to sweep the floor when she visited the newly married couple, and for that she could never be forgiven, and by extension, Pete’s relatives were in a sort of Herem (Hebrew for excommunication). They had kids our age, and they had no other family nearby. You’d think, hey let’s get together for a day at the Museum of Science, or on the Freedom Trail - nope, just a begrudging annual Thanksgiving in front of the television.

They would have been kinder to not let us come at all than grant me a thankless day, once a year, though I can thank them in part for getting me out of that secular relativist individualist society.

I will never understand what they gained from snubbing us, I am in a strong position now, I am not exactly going to barge in on them and offer to sweep the floor or demand family support.

But the snubbing must go on.

Yet, during that summer trip, my elderly  orthodox Jewish cousin Toby limps up the stairs from a wedding hall with her cane several years after knee operations to give a warm hello to myself and my sons. 

Her son, whom I had never met, comes racing across town at his mother’s behest (honor your mother should be universal, the Bible is famous outside of Brooklyn, but hey, offer to sweep the floor and that sin will be visited upon your niece, yeah?), to welcome us.

Cousin Bessie, in the middle of the hardest move of her life, age 84, leaving her home of fifty years to move to a place near her daughter, welcomes us and procures watermelon and kosher orange juice which I almost finished to the last drop after a hot day at the Statue of Liberty. Her daughter took a break from the packing to sit down with us, and gave me the phone number of her daughter,  who welcomes me a few days later at her home in Boston Massachusetts, just half an hour away from Uncle Pete, who fears I may offer to sweep, or something.

Not that I have never rubbed my brother or orthodox Jewish cousins the wrong way, I am sure that I have, but in those circles, family overrides friction.

I had cried on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. The ferry’s motor was loud so I was not ashamed, but some tourists nearby looked at me a bit quizzically. This is where  my great great grandfather  Thomas Keegan sojourned alone, 1880’s, escaping Ireland and criminal charges for stealing a fish from a lake during the Irish potato famine. I cried that for such a “crime”  that a nineteen year old had to flee for his life, I cried for all those that had to escape tyrannies that only worsened on European soil, and I cried that only one of his descendants, from that side of the family, and there are not many, even cares or remembers his story.

I cried for my Jewish ancestors, who fled the pogroms and found safe haven in the USA, and thrived and built more strength of family than my Irish-English side did.

I cried also, tears of joy, because I too, had escaped.

Classic liberal assumptions must be defined, lest they give way to endless progressivism

The classic liberal assumed that people would naturally know limits of decent behavior and would not cross those limits. 

The challenge today is to give voice, to, describe, and define the limits that the classic liberal assumed everyone would agree to.

Some examples:

The classic liberal assumed that abortion would be safe and rare and early in a pregnancy, that sexual activity would occur between people who bore mutual respect and affection for each other and were likely to marry each other, that the institution of marriage would persist  with no need for social protections, that affirmative action would give favoritism to those very close to the academic performance of everyone else and that there would not be huge gaps in student achievement or teacher performance, that homosexuality was natural, but rare, they had no concept of gay culture, they had no concept of transexuality and gender confusion whatsoever.

Other assumptions: three square meals a day without mentioning who prepares them, neat table manners, bedtime routines, attention to fitness. In the 1990's the concept of "sinkies" started: wolfing down a meal while standing over a sink because people were too busy to cook, sit and eat.

The modern lifestyle does not allow for the three square meals a day concept such that recommendation are now to get the food groups into your children over the period of a week and not over the period of a day.

Liberals like to stay obtuse, speaking of issues that do not relate to real life, it is a mark of elitism to be concerned about global warming and not about your own neighbor.

I will never understand why a family I knew made no effort to protect their daughters, once the oldest one was behaving in a promiscuous fashion, why they could not curb their other daughters, two of whom got date raped, one violently. They had a beautiful home in Brookline Mass, why not keep their daughters home, give them curfews, educate them on abstinence? Social pressure was just too stacked against sexual limits

The Christians of ancient Rome slowly took over

The swing to the Right is partially empowered by those who were raised liberal and called to activism.

 Liberals are raised to see injustices in the "system".

Liberals who leave the liberal world and become conservative or traditional have been trained in the above paradigm, so that is going to add force to the swing to the Right.

So that grooming for activism is going to be used against the left, but this is actually a problem. You cannot fight fire with fire, in this case, because the liberal-left makes a full time job out of manipulating semantics and popular culture; they will always win at this game.

Trump's approach was flawed because it was too strong a front-line challenge. By declaring that he is going to "drain the swamp" he sort of "showed his hand" at the poker game.

He needed to learn from the Christians of Ancient Rome. Those Christians quietly and slowly built an alternative society based upon charity, an idea foreign to mighty Rome.

Constantine was probably not overcome by a vision of "in this sign, conquer", oh please he was a Roman warlord, I believe  he basically surrendered to the popularity of growing Christianity and gave in, declaring Rome a Christian nation, after Armenia had done so.

Christians had slowly and quietly built an infrastructure, and they slowly and quietly conquered Rome.

Some conservative activists, who had grown up liberal, were using liberal-left tactics to battle the modern liberals, the democrats, and they were bound to lose at that.

They should have built more quietly.

Marxism in the Jewish World: it's fine to be a Marxist as long as it is not happening to you.

The modern secular relativist project of desensitization takes many forms.

 

It is related to Marxist dialectic.

Here is one example:

 

The group that calls itself Women of the Wall are saying the Kotel (Western Wall, the last remaining part of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem) has no sanctity.

 

They are saying they hope to offend traditional women as they gather there for their "alternative prayer".

 

They can “sing in a high, operatic voice” - in their own words, which they would never do anywhere else, in their own words.

 

They are saying that their plan is to dismantle.

 

Dismantle. That is their own words.

 

The mask is alternative prayer, a deception in order to accuse the traditionalists of bigotry against "alternative prayer".

 

The plan - dismantle.

 

All part of the modern relativist project of desensitization.

 

So against those who declare that the Kotel has no holiness, declare that they are seeking provocation, to disturb, and to dismantle, there is no legal protection. 

 

You have a choice. Numb your senses, and join in with the secular relativist project to desensitize.

 

Numbing your senses is the exact opposite of the call to any of the Abrahamic faiths, because we are supposed to be in a relationship with God, and indeed, sensitized to holiness.

 

Since you cannot really agree that nothing is sacred - you do care for something - your childhood home, a special pathway in the woods, your children’s intellectual integrity, something somewhere is precious to you that defies explanation, that you will draw a line for and say, “this far and no further.”

 

So you may resist comprehending or defending traditionalists’ view of the Kotel, well maybe you really think the Kotel has no holiness, maybe you too are intimidated by their clever rhetoric and apparent cultural pull and influence, maybe you are secure in the notion that you will just switch philosophical horses along with political correctness, ride with the winds, anything that comes up, sure, you will go along with.

 

But there will be a day when you say, “this far and no further.” It may be a bid to cement over some precious woodland in order to make an amusement park, it may be choice up until birth (oh no one really means that do they? Yes they do.) It may be forcing your small children to mouth incoherent pronouns and suggest that they wonder if they are really a different gender, made possible by PC public education. Til now, you decided to bend and sway with every current that blows.

 

But that time will come when you hold something as inviolate.

 

By refusing to comprehend and defend now, there will be no one left to come to your aid when you face that some things really are sacred and inviolate. You have needs, and no one is there, they were scared off, numbed, pushed away, they moved already to an ashram somewhere that no one thinks to provoke.

You participated in the project of modern secular relativist desensitization. That day, when you must draw that line, there will be few to comprehend or defend you. As what is precious to you slips away due to the same attitude that you show now, you may realize in a state of hushed personal horror - you brought your isolation and loss - on yourself.

 

--

The most brilliant minds are behind Marxism. They have key insights into the intellect, psychology, sociology and societal trends. They know exactly how to maneuver in the modern relativistic individualist project of desensitization. 

 

They manipulate, for example, here are some examples of the constant stream of questioning that has characterized the Torah observant world for milenia: is the Rabbi a wise person, or does he posses an aspect of ruach hakodesh (prophecy)? Should women lain from the Torah scroll? Should Talmud learning begin as early as possible, or only when the child is more developed? Should women wear yarmulkes? How do we balance the needs for a secular education and career with the demands of a Torah lifestyle? Should women don taleisim and tefillin?

 

Torah observant society is riddled with constant questioning and readjustment. The brilliant minds behind the modern secular individualist project of desensitization have matched trigger points in western society - gender roles - with traditional Judaism, creating flashpoints of provocation, one of them dons the guise of the group that calls itself the Women of the Wall. What are passing questions in the constant stream of questioning in our Torah community have been filtered out and brandished, weaponized, on the road to dismantling, and this is in their own words.

 

The bigger picture is the modern secular relativist individualist project of desensitization. And beyond that - Marxist calls to destabilize society.

 

But know this well: unless you have the platform, reins of power, and access to the purse-strings of such mini movements, disguised as efforts towards equality, you will suffer mightily in your personal and professional life if you hold seriously to these calls to action, cleverly disguised. Only very few succeed in positions of influence because positions of influence are, by definition, limited. To hold to the values that the WoW says they espouse, is personally ruinous. 

 

And that is because it's fine to be a Marxist as long as it is not happening to you.

--

 

I escaped the liberal - left world and became an orthodox Jew. I escaped a tiny manipulative elite and joined a community. You can escape too.