I listened to an African American kid on NPR yesterday give an essay for Youth Radio about being spanked by his father. He hated being spanked, of course, but he said in hindsight he deserved it and it made him sure that his parents cared enough to do something “that hurt them more than it did me.” He said all we have to do is watch the kids in the mall to know the difference it makes. White parents with kids who are out of control are prime examples of parents who try to bargain with their kids and talk to them about not doing this or that, rather than disciplining them, which he said is what African American parents do with their unruly kids by spanking them. He and his friends would brag with each other about who go the worse “woppin’.”
I really don’t think this kind of story would have appeared on NPR just 10 years ago. Corporal punishment, after all, is nothing more than child abuse, or so conventional wisdom would have us believe. Of course, when conventional “wisdom” bears no resemblance to reality it will eventually be overturned, but not without a great conflict. Kids need boundaries and consistency that provide guidance. Kids also need to know that their parents are adults/parents and will go to whatever lengths necessary to guide the growth and development of their children in order to prepare them for the real world – and to protect them from the real world. Kids also need to learn that behavior has consequences – good and bad – and that they will be held responsible for their acts, with a good measure of mercy, grace, and forbearance thrown in for good measure.
We are seeing the final days of Modernism – or at least the “Age of Aquarius” generational zeitgeist. We all know that Modernism and the ideals coming out of the Enlightenment were shown to be unattainable and fundamentally flawed throughout the 20th century. Utopia born of humanity continually improving through education, yadda, yadda, yadda, is not the reality of the world as we live in it. It just isn’t. That is not to say that education, and all that, is not important or that such things do not help or contribute to the overall improvement of society.
We are also bearing the brunt of the misunderstanding of human nature and societal dynamics that propelled common thinking in academia, government, and the social sciences and services organizations from the 1950’s through the end of the 20th century. Common sense is coming back into vogue!
I have also heard and read more and more about the demise of current understandings of “diversity” and cultural relativism. We are seeing the resurgence of belief that we can make moral and social judgments about what is good, just, and better. Some cultures really are better and more advanced than others, not just “different.” It is okay to say to immigrants that they need to adapt to American culture and learn English as the national language (or the culture and language of any country) – a melting pot and not a mosaic.
The danger, of course, is that reactionary forces will attempt to pull society back into some kind of fantasy world of yesteryear. Hopefully, the pendulum will not swing too wildly.

This, from another Episcopalian blogger, Doghouse, commenting on conflict between those who hold to the Englightenment/Modernism and those who move in Post-Modernism. He writes about the need to come up with an alternative name for “Post-modernism,” but this paragraph caught my attention. I’ve been saying something similiar for a while now, but this guy says it much better than I do.
“It has been important to keep the term up until now to make it clear that the rationalistic assumptions of Modernity have been rejected. Despite impressive technological and medical advances, the utopian goals of the Enlightenment failed. The grand experiment where humanity shook off the fetters of religion and took up the reigns of existence only resulted in advanced bloodshed, world wars, the A bomb and now terrorism. What started with such loud promise at storming of the Bastille, finally died with a whimper two centuries later with the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
Read the whole thing here.

When did hitting fists together become the prominent way of greeting between guys? I know subcultures have been doing it for a while now, but it is now mainstream.
I’ve also read two different articles about how American males are discovering another way of greeting – hugs!
So, fist hitting or hugging, which is it, and will it replace the good ole’ shaking of hands?

I went to SixFlags Great Adventure yesterday with Ashton and a close friend of his, Chris. Chris used to be a high-school teacher and taught in California, Boston, and Florida. He got so fed up with the attitudes and actions of both students and administrators that he left teaching.
One example he gave that caused him much frustration in one particular district concerned assigned daily duties for teachers outside the classroom. In this particular school, certain teachers were assigned the duty of breaking up sex between students during the school day. This was not a poor school, but a successful public school with a dress-code, etc. The school had security cameras that caught guys putting on condemns while the girls lifted up their skirts and the two would go at it in – in front of cameras. “Let’s skip class and go have sex!” Chris, seeing what was going on via the cameras, would then go and break up the activity. He was quick to add that this problem was not only in this particular school! He also said that at least they were wearing condoms. I guess so.
Sex, for so many, has simply become a recreation activity. It has lost is uniqueness and “specialness.” I remember hearing a marriage counselor saying once that sex was like a Band-Aid. The more you play with it by putting in on and pulling it off, the more it loses its stickiness and its effectiveness. The counselor talked about sex losing its ability to act as a bonding agent in marriage relationships, resulting in more loneliness, less intimacy, infidelity, adultery, and divorce.
I believe sex is one of many primary means by which relationships are held together. If it simply becomes recreational and something to play with – putting it on and pulling it off – we lose one very important aspect of successful married relationships. We are bearing the whirlwind of “free” and “non-consequential” “love.” It is a great confusion between love and lust. Sex as a recreational activity may be fun at the moment, but long term the consequences of havin’-all-this-fun is nothing less than failing and dysfunctional future relationships. I think that then leads to much more loneliness, isolation, and a profound lack of fulfilling and life-giving relationships.
I see this in many gay guys who have played with sex for so long that the confusion of sex, love, and lust has caused them to be unable to form long-term committed relationships, which results in extreme loneliness, heartache, and with some great illness. This isn’t something that is specific to being a homosexual, but is the result of the homosexual subculture accepting with great gusto the whole “free-love” notion. This is, of course, common among heterosexuals as well, but our cultural boundaries still said to hold off and value sex as something deeply shared only between two people who have committed themselves to one another for life. These boundaries seem to be in their final collapse among most young people, and I suspect will result in a profound increase within their populations of the same things we witness among those who have gone before them. Sex is a wonderful and enjoyable thing, but like anything used in ways it is not intended and then abused, it turns into something that destroys.