Monday, November 24, 2008

Appearances, Autism, and the Culture of Death

Ok, once again, Karen of Clear Blue Water wrote a few blogs this weekend on typepad that caused me to write this.

One of my major problems with being "A practical Catholic man" as my membership as a third degree Knight of Columbus puts it, is that as a person suffering from Asperger's I rarely notice, let alone judge people by, apperances.  If you don't tell me you're a sinner, you might even be sinning right in front of me and I simply won't notice.

This is especially true of the frivoulous way American culture has chosen to treat the Seamless Garment of Life.  You might be married to your same sex partner, you might be spending your weekends in the loving embrace of farm animals, I'm not going to notice.  You might be an old guy living in sin with your divorced neighbor and actually a part of my family, and I'm not going to say a word to you about it until you come right out and shove it in my face and ask my opinion (yes, this actually happened to me- at which point I had to get very autistic about my theological obsession and explain the differences between sin and sinner, between ideals and reality, to a man whose previous experience contained nothing more complex than the proper water-to-agregate ratio for concrete.  Not a fun experience).  

Yes, I'm like many "orthodox" Catholics, and I think that divorce is wrong in just about every instance- but that won't keep me from going out to coffee with a friend in the midst of an awfull divorce and offer my shoulder to cry on.  I can survive it because I *don't* have NT empathy, because it's just another story to me in a world that I'm not certain is real to begin with.  And because, I don't think individuals should be blamed for the mistakes of society at large- and certainly the frivoulous way we treat marriage in this society is a bad mistake. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You and I see marriage differently (and sin for that matter)....and I think that'll just be that.
But it brings up another issue/question.
We each have the right to those differing views, but what do we do when one view infringes on another?
I see your view as taking away the freedom of others and you (correct me if I'm wrong) see my view as infringing on your freedom by forcing you to support (with tax dollars) behavior you see as a sin.

So...what to do?

We debate...and vote...and the majority rules (usually)
But then how do you protect the rights of the minority?

Theodore M. Seeber said...

The one thing we DON'T do is write it into law- either way.

I'd be fine if we replace the current *civil* marriage laws with a basic *household* law, covering groups of people living in the same household.

Leave Sacramental marriage to the theologians. Cut divorce down to not destruction of a *marriage*, but destruction of a *household*.

Morality *always* destroys freedom, because freedom is only the freedom to do wrong, never the freedom to do right.

And in a democracy (note, the United States isn't one) the rights of the minority are NEVER protected, because they are almost always morally wrong.

In a Republic (which is what the United States is supposed to be, but isn't) the rights of a minority are protected by two things:

1) the ability of the minority to stay hidden
2) the courts

In an Oligarchy (which is what the United States actually is) rights are just word games- campaign promises given so that you'll choose candidate X, who is already bribed and bought by the corporations, over candidate Y, who is already bribed and bought by the corporations. You have total freedom in an Oligarchy as long as your activities support the transfer of wealth from the bottom of society to the top; and it doesn't really matter who you debate and vote for, it's all just a scam to make you think you're living in a democracy or a republic, when in reality you're living in an Oligarchy and you're just a debt slave to the corporations.

Creative Commons License
Oustside The Asylum by Ted Seeber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://outsidetheaustisticasylum.blogspot.com.