Distortions of Culture and Person

This is something difficult to write about, and can easily be misconstrued. As it is, the way humanity can misconstrue things is at the heart of what I am writing about here. In writing of it, though, I would like it to be a candid sort of thing, where we step back and take off our blinders for a moment and consider how it is possible that we can go terribly wrong, even while we may have the best intentions at heart.


Part of this concerns identity politics, be it on the more common matter of culture we may mean, as in association to race or nationality that we claim, or our particular religion and the way it develops our origins of being. Culture also is defined here with regards to its more modern use when referring to a particular group of people and how they identify themselves, be it by, not just being a woman, but a feminist, or not just a man, but also a homosexual - or even the supposed transcendence of those that identify with the sex opposite of their birth or original biological gender. Even further, culture may also be found in the corporate matter, by the body of politics and the particular set of philosophies that one claims adherence to because they belong to that particular party, or to that particular company or organization that identifies with a particular political view or party line. Even more simply in corporate cultural identity is essentially identifying with the company persona - being the company guy or gal, the face of the company. There are a lot of ways that we identify ourselves and the particular culture we are a part of, and even there, even if we try to distinguish a fine line, there is a certain cross pollination among them, which, generally, on a positive, we may call diversity or inclusion. That is, when people talk of creating a welcoming environment. Conversely, in the negative, we may call this mix of things convolution, pollution, or even poisoning of the well. All these factors ultimately have an effect on an individual person and their own unique identity.

The pondering of this blog post comes from a few places. Two specific ones are the current rape trial and all the back and forth bickering over that, as well as a rather similar incident in the priest abuse scandal.  Having watched the movie Spotlight last night gave me a certain perspective about how culture and personal identity tie into each other and can become distorted. In further relation, there is also the matter of Planned Parenthood and the way people are trying to come down hard on investigative journalism and documentation of the sort of things Planned Parenthood doesn't want people to know about them.  Each of these cases have quite a bit in common, and not just that they deal with sex, abuse, and all sorts of cover ups and conspiracies. There is also the matter of the clash of cultures that collide when these dark elements of humanity are brought into the spotlight, and the way we act and react to such things, not to mention to the particular people that are most personally involved and effected by these things and how we may relate to them, or otherwise demonize them.

For instance, with the rape case, it is culturally accepted to have sympathy for the victim of the rape. Conversely, it is unacceptable to bring up any sort of defense for the person accused of doing the rape, even if you wholeheartedly agree that the act of rape is wrong, but still have questions about the way the issue is being handled by the public and the media, or even with how the trial is proceeding.  Even more heated becomes the discourse when you bring up scenarios that the culture does not like to consider because it is thoroughly entrenched in this whole culture of victimhood, wherein one automatically identifies with the person who claims to be victimized, even sometimes to the point where it doesn't even matter if the victim may be telling the truth or not. The emotional sympathy is there, and strongly so, that to question the supposed victim's story is seen as not merely absurd, but even unconscionable and evil. Indeed, even if among those sympathizers in the culture of victimhood, that would otherwise, due to other views held by the person, be completely against the death penalty of people that are actually convicted of heinous crimes, like a serial killer on death row, are now suddenly calling for the head of the accused, regardless that the supposed victim has no actual memory to go by but what everyone around them is telling the person is the supposed truth. Never mind that both the accused and the victim were at a drunken frat party, and both equally drunk beyond the ability to legally give consent for anything. Never mind that we have no way of knowing if the accused was the only one that was with the victim that night. No, all that matters is that people are outraged about what happened. People were crying about what they saw, or think they saw, and, regardless whether what they saw was true or not - whether anyone actually has the whole story of what happened that night, none of that matters. All that matters is that we have one person identified as being a rapist by merit of the accusation, and the other person identified as being a victim due to circumstances that the victim has no actual memory of, let alone ability to fully identify if indeed the accused did all the things that were done to her.

I'm not saying that the accused didn't do any or all of the things he's accused of, but that there is no clarity that he did any or all of these things either. While people are so focused on the victimhood they identify with, they have put blinders on other aspects, like the culture of Greek life - the culture of the fraternal and sorority system, and even more in particular, the culture of the specific fraternal house that the event in question took place at.  It's not entirely out of the realm of questioning to ask who might the accused be taking the fall for, or had been set up by. It may seem far fetched, but it's not out of the realm of possibility either, especially at a drunken frat party where any number of scenarios could happen among intoxicated young adults that have certain expectations about what crazy misadventures could happen, like a scene out of Animal House or some other college movie, or even just what they heard among friends and relatives about their experiences in Greek life, be they the rumors of the non Greek students that warn or are wary about certain fraternities and sororities, or even what is personally experienced by those that are in a fraternity or sorority, and know of, or had been part of the party fraternity or sorority houses. There's a whole lot of the college, and especially Greek fraternity and sorority culture that the culture of victimhood seems to not take notice of, especially when they have a person to accuse.  Once that face is recognized, the person ultimately takes on the identity of all that is wrong with the Greek house culture, and thus may end up as a detriment to finding out the actual truth of the matter of the specific case.

I almost feel like Detective Jim Gordon in the Gotham series that takes place before Bruce Wayne becomes Batman.  As it is, Gotham City and the particular culture, despite the caricature, and something of a complex simplicity of the issues, is an example of where the fiction reflects the sort of distortions of culture and person that we see in these real life issues. The movie Spotlight is a bit more realistic a depiction, albeit there is the theatrical presentation of it that is similar to a Greek drama. That is, you could see the Spotlight team for the Boston Globe as a group being the protagonist that seeks out the truth. The Church, the school, the city officials, lawyers, and even the citizens of Boston are in some ways like a chorus that interact with the Spotlight team, giving hints here and there about the systemic distortions that led to the tragedy of the scandal. In the end, certainly the priests that committed the crimes of abuse were the most directly to blame, however the whole system of the distorted culture carry their own burden of blame and shame for either covering up the issue, or just flat out putting on blinders so that even the Spotlight team was found as part of the oversight themselves. Thus, it wasn't just a matter of an evil church and wicked priests, but a broken community, a distorted culture with equally distorted persons that, while they may have known something, did not want to act. The things were too difficult to believe, because how could a man of God do such things?  The Church does so much good, how could things within the Church have gone so terribly wrong?  How could people keep covering things up?  Part of it has to do with how the culture was distorted. This distortion can happen in both the instance of the former scenario mentioned of the charges of rape that led to the one accused taking on all the sins of the distorted culture, regardless whether the accused did all the things he was accused of or not. It even happens in the closed system culture that developed in Boston, that tried to make the problem disappear, despite that this distortion in the culture ultimately led to the problem continuing and growing worse.

Looking at Planned Parenthood, we see a similar sort of cover up as was seen with the priest abuse scandal.  There is a good bit of irony to this, considering that many of the people that side with Planned Parenthood would otherwise be calling bloody murder against the Church for the priest abuse scandal. Consider how this distortion in culture leads to a certain duplicity wherein a person is fully convinced and full of conviction when it comes to how wrong and evil the priest abuse scandal is. They may even applaud the investigative journalism done by the Spotlight team and how necessary it was to shed light on the truth.  But what about in the case of similar investigative journalism and documentary that was done to show where Planned Parenthood was indeed doing things that were illegal to do? What about when they show actual aborted fetuses that in no way shape or form look like a glob of cells, but rather a developing human baby with an actual human face? There certainly are blinders being put up there, and a distorted culture that can be so adamant about the evil of the things done in the priest abuse scandal, but see no evil in what Planned Parenthood does. Not only that, but whereas they may praise Spotlight for showing the truth about the priest abuse scandal, this same culture in distortion shames the similar investigative journalism and documentation done on Planned Parenthood and demands the people that documented the evils of Planned Parenthood to be prosecuted instead. Where a Catholic judge in the former was willing to open the documents of priest abuse, when it comes to the abuses and crimes of Planned Parenthood, there is an unwillingness to shed any light on the truth.

There aren't any easy answers to any of the scenarios brought up. I won't be surprised if people attack me just for having this blog discourse on them, nor would I be surprised if people ignore or shun me either. It's that sort of paradox where, despite how we may say the truth will set you free, certain candid glimpses into what is wrong with our culture can lead something that doesn't feel all that liberating. Knowing there's more to any given story can be more of a burden than being ignorant of the possible scenarios that people would rather not consider. Thus, rather than taking that deep cleaning reflection and examination of conscience, most of us would rather toss around blame like shallow bombshells that only hit the surface, but never reach the dark caverns deep below.  For how could we possibly do these things?  And yet, as it is said, "but for the grace of God, there goes me."  Still, even further, as the priest abuse scandal shows, this can be reworded to, "even as I believe I have the grace of God, there goes me as well." In our distorted culture, anything is possible, even claiming crimes against humanity on one hand, while on the other permitting them, because, as has also been said, "Who am I to judge?"  Even so, this is not to say we should be hypercritical and looking for evil everywhere and in everyone. But we do have to realize that our human culture is distorted, and, in turn, we each have our own distortions in our individual human personhood that is influenced by the distortions in our human culture. In knowing that, we may at least be able to take a step back and reflect on whether our judgments are sound, or whether we are finding our interpretations of justice and mercy coming from the distortions of our human culture.