REDISCOVERING THE OBVIOUS

REDISCOVERING THE OBVIOUS
We've thrown away our compass of what is acceptable behaviour
Ted Byfield
Calgary Sun
Sunday, February 27, 2005

It wouldn't be all that surprising if one day some psychiatrist or sociologist at a leading American university came out with a startling new program for successful living.

It would consist of 10 behavioural principles which, if observed, would result in a positive, wholly integrated human personality.

The rules would be clinically described, of course. One would discourage any protracted mental fixation upon the possessions of another individual.

One would promise intense satisfaction to the person who always recounted past events with meticulous accuracy.

A very important one would extol "spirituality," on the premise that some high power at the centre of one's life confers a profound inner stability.

The study would intrigue the media.

The "health" pages would recommend it widely.

Departments of "Wellness" would distribute copies of it to those suffering tension disorders. It would be intensely discussed on open-line shows. Countless paperbacks would appear with theories on how to best apply "the Ten Techniques for a Tranquil Tomorrow."

Then one day, some media smartass would notice something strange.

Somebody else had already discovered the Ten Techniques.

They had actually been disclosed 3,000 or more years ago by a man named Moses who, as the product of a more authoritarian age, had called them the Ten Commandments.

A great deal of modern social research, that is, is rediscovering the obvious. For instance, a certain Dr. Leonard Sax was interviewed last week on his new book: Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.

In brief, the doctor cites different physiological characteristics of boys and girls, quite apart from the purely sexual differences, which make it imperative they be educated separately.

Go back a couple of millennia and you find that this "science" did its emerging in the ancient world where boys and girls, if they were educated at all, were educated separately. From time immemorial on the family farm, where the parents did the educating, the father educated the boys and the mother the girls.

What drew Dr. Sax's attention to this were the hordes of boys being sent to him by teachers and parents for Ritalin.

Since they can't be controlled in class, they have to be mildly stupefied by drugs.

Knowing something must be wrong, Dr. Sax discovered that boys were being educated as though they were girls and were responding negatively to the process -- an observation that has been made in this column, oh no more than 30 or 40 times over the last 25 years.

Also last week, two psychiatrists, having reached the startling conclusion that the law must recognize a quality known in the past as "evil," proposed 22 gradations of it to give judges an objective standard on which to base criminal sentences.

A murderer with no psychopathic tendencies who took a life in self-defence would be considered a Grade 1 killer. A sexually perverse serial killer would rank at Grade 17. A psychopathic torture-murderer, with torture the primary motive, would stand at the top (or bottom) of the class as a Grade 22.

That these two psychiatrists have performed a service for society and the law is beyond doubt.

What's amazing is that nothing like this has been done before. Why not, you wonder.

Because, replies Dr. Michael Welner, who teaches forensic psychiatry at New York University, "we need a serious attempt to engage evil in the modern world. We have lost our compass of what is unacceptable."

But as a matter of fact, we didn't "lose" it.

We threw it away.

That is, we have so successfully "deconstructed" the moral basis of society that we no longer know right from wrong.

Whatever turns your crank is "right for you" became the universal mantra, still preached volubly by the liberal media.

What turns the cranks of some men is torture, rape and murder -- "inappropriate" conduct, no doubt, but no one dare call it "evil."

That is a "judgmental" word.

One man's evil is another man's good, etc., etc.

Well, we've reached the point where even a New York University prof is prepared to say that evil is evil, that it actually exists, and here's a scale to measure it by.

Wonderful!

We're making progress. Any day now, we may catch up with Moses.