Dear Friends,
It seems to me, we are a product of our culture, as much as our parents and our genetics. Take the example of someone born in nineteen ten compared to twenty ten. Back in nineteen ten, a teen would be working on the farm, able to read, write and do mathematics, their education in history was far superior… and the child of the early Twentieth Century would go on to have a family and a life. While the kid born today will probably die of a fentanyl overdose or suicide, has no education, doesn’t even know if they are a boy or girl… and will die alone, lonely and barren. This is not because the genetics of the children born today are defective, or the parents don’t love their children, it is because of the perversion of our culture. Pragmatically, the results of our culture condemn it.
Culture has an overpowering effect on people and especially the children raised in it. Because children are starting from zero and learning everything… thus absorbing the lessons the culture teaches. Those lessons can be good or bad, the culture cares not. It only transmits those lessons. Like water seeping into a submerged dry sponge. The sponge has no other source of water to fill it. So it absorbs the local culture. As we grow and the culture changes, often we chafe at it, but the kids are molded by it. If the culture lionizes a thing, those raised in it will also lionize it. No matter how absurd. Often we even make our decisions based on cultural convention, rather than self interest, magnanimity or pragmatism. The kid who grows up in the thug culture, will be a thug, it’s not his choice, its the culture.
The thing about culture is that it is pervasive and invisible at the same time. We float in the culture like a fish in water. We take it in and we expel it. The more social among us require it like air. Even the loners need a little. Culture then is a thing that surrounds us, is inside us, we breathe it in and out… yet we hardly notice it, unless we look. That invisibility of culture makes it easier to manipulate. We don’t notice changes in a thing we don’t notice. How could we? Yet those changes we don’t notice have become a mortal danger. Not only to us and our children, but the human race itself. Those who actually look at our culture today are horrified at its heinous visage. A seven headed demon, that promotes the gang lifestyle, normalizes pedophilia and eats babies, is not a pretty sight.
One would like to think that morality comes from our religions, but I think a careful examination reveals that it comes to us, through the culture. Religion is often one source of culture and by that mechanism, morality comes to us from religion, through the culture. It is culture that is the direct transmitter of ethics. Today we get our morality from our “idols of the theater, the marketplace and the cave.” Some stand outside the culture and so derive their morality from religious teachings, but they are not the average today, they are the exception. Moreover, they have always been the exception. Archaeologists digging in Israel have discovered many pagan idols in ancient Jewish homes. They didn’t have them because Judaism told them to, they kept them because it was the cultural convention.
Since culture is so important, perhaps we should stop taking it for granted, and instead take an active role in shaping it more to our liking? Instead of letting the cultural elite have carte blanche with our children’s minds we need to act. The first thing to do is take a good long hard look at the ugly thing our culture has become. Next we have to beat that hideous face into a shape that is less obnoxious. How? By becoming intolerant. Stop tolerating the intolerable. Boycott early and often. Write letters to your senators and representative. Speak up when lies are told. Tell people, “Lies lead to Gulags.” Disengage from it by turning the TV off. Home school your kids. Take a stand. Since we breathe culture in, and exhale it out, we can change it. So… change it.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
