Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Jimmy, This has got to be one of the freshest essays I have read in a long time— probably as far back as when I first read some Marilynne Robinson or Sayers.

Eberstadt is amazing.

I thought it was fascinating how she showed that Nietzsche’s goal was to devalue sex (and everything else for that matter) to the point of “moral neutrality,” not necessarily degradation. Eberstadts conclusions were brilliant: even our social movements deny an all-inclusive acceptance of a Nietzschian worldview. They must have morality in some arena. I like how she said that there has been a “transubstantiation” from sex to food. In other words, society rejected the notion of everything being “morally neutral,” and replaced one set of stigmas placed on sex to another: food. Man, that was a great find.

She has some other essays on the same Hoover Institution website— I’ll definitely have to read. (The follow-up essay to this one is: “Is Pornography the New Tobacco?”)

This is a must read for both generations, no?

I agree with Tim. What a fantastically thought-provoking essay.

Eberstadt seems to come to the conclusion that, based upon the research piling up chronicling the ill effects of libertine sex, that one day it may again see some type of moral circumscription. About that, I disagree.

Eberstadt points to the reason for my disagreement in her essay. Isn’t it conceivable that the reason for all this attention to healthy eating is the desire for prolonged youth and vitality, making one able to compete in the sexual marketplace longer? Has anyone taken a look at the 50 year old Madonna lately? Does she look 50? Why not? “Healthy diet” workout, and, I’m sure, plastic surgery (which is also on the rise in the US - conincidece?)

I suspect that, more than some subconscious need for an imposed morality in some corner of our lives, the driving factor behind the food police is that their prescriptions will ultimately make one more sexually desirable.

At the risk of being a cynic, I think that the genie is out of the bottle with sex. It’s the real American idol. As a culture, we worship it. Maybe my week at the beach has given me some timely perspective on this, but I doubt very seriously that, short of a divine intervention, American attitudes toward sex are going to do anything but get even more libertine.

clay, let me play the foil (if not, the fool) to your disagreement that sex will one day be subject to a re-invigorated moral circumscription. I think that Eberstadt gave a nod that the “genie was out of the bottle,” but she also hinted that all forms of social moralizing enjoy some sort of cyclical ebb and flow.

I think history bears that out in less controversial philosophies as well as the explosive subject of sex. (See ancient Rome’s standard sexual mores as they vary from Caesar to Caesar…) Take for example the Greatest Generation’s (TM) fidelity to the institution and the idea of viewing society as “one”— and then being a productive cog for the greater good. Then look at GenX,Y,Z’s (TM) distaste for institutions and their correlative love for the individual, minority. The epic philisophical question: are we one or are we many? I heard a great lecture that presented a thesis that laid out proofs for the ever-cyclical societal patterns as it relates to this one question. I know it is separated by almost too many years to be a healthy academic comparison, but by your reasoning Puritanical and Victorian (or any sexually restrictive society)societies could not have existed because the Athenians and Romans had already let the “genie out of the bottle.”

I would agree with you on this point: our society is not at the end of the sexual revolution. We are still no where near socially-accepted after-dinner orgies of the Romans. I don’t think that we should get particularly giddy about any moral high ground, it just means the airplane is still locked in freefall.

But actually I think you are probably asking the tougher question: Can one particular society stuff the genie back— or at least cover her up—with something as psychologically and physiologically gripping as sex? Good question.

I just don’t think the essay was constructed to answer that— it was more geared to intersection and apparent reversal of thoughts on food and sex.

I agree (and should have made clear in the last post) that my genie-out-of-the-bottle comment applied to the current civilization in which we live (i.e. Western Christian Civilization) - one admittedly on the decline. It may well be replaced one day with another that re-stigmatizes sexual licentiousness.

However, I read Eberstadt’s article to posit that the reason for the switch was the need for some corner of moralization in humans:

Who can doubt that the two trends are related? Unable or unwilling (or both) to impose rules on sex at a time when it is easier to pursue it than ever before, yet equally unwilling to dispense altogether with a universal moral code that he would have bind society against the problems created by exactly that pursuit, modern man (and woman) has apparently performed his own act of transubstantiation. He has taken longstanding morality about sex, and substituted it onto food. The all-you-can-eat buffet is now stigmatized; the sexual smorgasbord is not.

In the end, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the rules being drawn around food receive some force from the fact that people are uncomfortable with how far the sexual revolution has gone — and not knowing what to do about it, they turn for increasing consolation to mining morality out of what they eat.

My previous post takes issue with this conclusion. I think that this not a transubstantiation, but rather a corollary: better watch what you eat so that you’ll be able to get in on the sexual marketplace now available to you. Because I believe that one (food morality) is driven by the other (sexual liberty), I see no reason that sex should be remoralized by Western Civilization.

Am I misreading Eberstadt? If not, do you disagree with her theory of what caused the switch?

Remember, you agreed to be the foil! : )

When I read the essay, I didn’t agree specifically with the idea that the food “morality” is being driven by how deeply western civilization has fallen into a sexual morass and unwilling to relent we are. I think Ms. Eberstadt is absolutely correct in that “Jennifer” uses food as a moral standard in the same way “Betty” used sex. My idea is that it is guilt in general, for sexual and other sins, that requires some sort of guilt/good antidote, and that food is, because of tenhnology and other reasons, available for that purpose.

Once the idea of God is given over (post-Christian goes with post-modern and is, in fact the chief antecedent of post-modern), we are left with our personal moral guilt and have no place to put it. Thus there must be something “moral” we can do to expiate our guilt.

My example has always been the celebrity entertainers who have the morals of an alley cat and who, if they were not celebrities, would not have neighbors who would want to live on the same block. Yet they put on these charity rock concerts for Africans they read about in the paper and make dramatic statements about their “concerns.” Other options are to adopt six starving kids from another country and hire someone to look after them, never seeing them after the initial publicity is done. And then there’s always support of the Democratic party! Moral guilt demands something.

I think Ms. Eberstadt is absolutely correct in the food/sex analogy. Since both are basic, it is a natural. However, there are others. Another of our “great issues” that society uses to transfer guilt is being “green.” There is a sense in which food and green go together but green, or GREEN has so much more to offer. Its redemption is not just for yourself, it’s for “future generations.” It is an extension of Tim’s thoughts on the “one” or the “many” and how it lies underneath misplaced morality.

My idea is that we have exchanged the possibility of redemption by God, an underlying idea for centuries, whether you were Christian or not, with the so-called options of redemption by us, and we have to find ways “us” can redeem ourselves. If we can’t, we have no choice but to go look into that abyss over there when we consider our lives.