Celebrating Mutilation

I am currently writing about human evolution, but this item in the news compelled me to cover a different topic today.

Once upon a time there was an adorable little girl named Chastity. She was the daughter of Sonny and Cher Bono and the entire world used to watch her, along with her famous parents, on the television. She was cute, but then again, all children are cute. We want to protect them and we want to help them grow up to be the best people they can be. However, this story does not end well and it breaks my heart, because something inside of her broke and now she is forever damaged. 

As nearly everyone now knows, Chastity became less and less happy with herself. She announced to the world at age twenty-six that she was gay, but her discontent continued culminating with a sex change operation at forty. There are those who would argue that Chastity’s gender confusion is actually a blessing and that she cannot choose her sexual identity. Science still does not fully understand the social and biological basis for gender identity, but does it matter? Are we to assume that just because someone is born a certain way that it is good? Is alcoholism a choice? Many would argue that alcoholism is a genetic disease and alcoholics cannot choose their alcoholism away, all they can choose is whether to drink or not. If alcoholism is not a choice must it therefore be good? Some people are born without arms or working organs, is their condition also to be declared good?

Can we all agree that whether a condition is genetic or congenital (environmental factors that affect one before birth) does not make that condition good or bad? Perhaps a propensity to rage and violence is also genetic or congenital. The genetic and environmental cards that you were dealt do not make you good or bad, it is what you do with them; it is how you overcome their limitations that determine whether you are blessed or cursed.

So, is Chastity Bono’s homosexuality a good trait? Is it blessed by her creator? Let us look at the actions that it caused her to take. She has irreparably mutilated her genitals and other parts of her body. In essence her homosexual drive is no different than the drive that causes teenagers to cut themselves, but much worse because the cuts ran so deep and scarred her so badly. Her mental condition is probably more akin to body dysmorphia in which an affected person is excessively concerned with perceived defects in their body. There are other conditions that are beyond people’s control such as apotemnophilia in which a person takes sexual gratification from the thought of removing part of their body, or when they strongly desire to remove a body part known as body integrity identity disorder. Out of all of these horrible curses, Chastity’s self described homosexuality was probably most akin to apotemnophilia. 

I don’t claim to be able to psychologically diagnose people, but Chastity was so discontented with her body that she mutilated it. Perhaps she had no more choice than the schizophrenics who hear voices, or the bipolar individuals that fight lonely battles with their minds. When we encounter a person who is so self destructive, our natural reaction is fear, or perhaps even anger. If this person is so capable of hurting themselves, what else could they do?

My own feeling about Chastity is not fear or anger, but profound sadness. She reminds me of a beautiful china cup with a deep crack in it. I am not angry at the cup for being cracked, but the brokenness takes a bit of light out of the world. 

Chastity’s broken mind and mutilated body do not make her evil, but the act of mutilation was not a good thing. The true evil is when people try to convince us that her brokenness is good and to be admired. 

Winter Knows What Summer Has Forgotten

Do you remember the new economy? In the late 1990s nearly all of the Business magazines and business sections of the newspapers trumpeted nearly nonstop that the economy had changed meaning that the stock market could only go up. A number of phrases became common knowledge: manufacturing was no longer important, stock momentum mattered more than profit, and the business cycle had ended. As we have learned in the last few years, much of the conventional wisdom of the new economy was really temporary trends and not a timeless truth. The new economy really did succeed for a while and some people today are still wealthy from it, but it did not change the economic rules the way that we thought it would. No matter how often people repeat that the business cycle is dead, it still rolls on as it always has.

Will there come a day when the racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural tolerance that seem so strong and inevitable today will reverse and become unfashionable?

 

In a similar fashion, we were told by too many experts that the value of houses simply could not go down. As Alan Greenspan famously said, “a destabilizing contraction in nationwide house prices does not seem the most probable outcome...nominal house prices in the aggregate have rarely fallen and certainly not by very much.” Pundits and business magazines said that the chances of house prices falling on a national scale were a million to one, but still they fell. 

What we should learn from these two examples is that even short term trends begin to be seen as inevitable and the way things will always be. America has been a world leader since World War I and the predominant superpower since World War II and it will always be that way. We must assume that America has some trait that makes it unique so that it will never diminish. The US stock market has trended upward for well over one hundred years (except for a small blip in the 1930s), which means that economics is now a well understood science and stocks will always be a good investment. Food has been inexpensive in the US for decades so we should assume that agricultural technology will always keep food cheap. Is it really safe to assume that when a trend go on for several decades it means that the world has fundamentally changed and the trend will always continue?

If we are to assume that the trends of US dominance, ever increasing wealth from stocks, and low cost food will always continue can we also make the following assumptions? Three months ago it was January 1^st and for the past 90 days each day has been getting longer at an ever faster rate. I must assume that one day in the near future daylight will last for fifty hours at a time. I have also noticed that my son who is 30 days old has grown at an alarming rate. I figure that in a few short years he will be as large as an elephant. 

Of course these examples are ridiculous. We know that days grow longer for six months and then grow shorter for six months. We also know that newborn babies grow very fast, but as each month goes by, their growth slows down until they stop growing altogether. We can safely assume that there are many cycles in nature that wax and wane over days, months, years, centuries, and eons. Just because something has increased or decreased for as long as you can remember, does not means that it will always be this way. The flowers of summer were born in the spring and have always known a world of warm sunlight and plentiful rain. They are unaware that one day frost will come.

We could look at many cycles such as housing prices or glacial volume and talk about periods of growing and shrinking. However, there is one cycle in particular that will have a profound impact on all of humanity. This is the cycle of altruism (kindness) versus competition. Every person, every community, and every nation has the capacity to be either cooperative or competitive with those around them and at all of these levels we constantly see both at work. Each person, community, and nation is both kind and cruel on a continual basis. Sociologists and evolutionary psychologists are still trying to understand under what conditions a person or group is cooperative and friendly as opposed to being unfriendly and competitive. The details are still somewhat of an unsolved puzzle, but it often is related to resources. Those who have much tend to be more giving, while those who have little tend to be more stingy. We know that there are many exceptions, but the rule seems to hold often true.

Could altruism and competition on a national or global scale be something that waxes and wanes? The United States has been a very generous country for decades. We have a generous welfare system; there is general good will among the different races, religions, and cultures; and overly competitive people are seen as being in some way defective. Is it safe to say that the Western world has developed a new political or social system of universal harmony? Have our souls been made better in some way so that competition and conflict between different groups has been expelled from our culture? Or, is it possible that this trend of the past few decades could be reversed? Will there come a day when the racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural tolerance that seem so strong and inevitable today will reverse and become unfashionable? The answer may very well be yes and if so, it will change humanity in ways that are fundamental and far reaching.