Vulgarity...Bad Taste...Immodesty...Filth
Where Will It All End?
A Society Geared For Moral Self-Destruction...Make No Mistake: The Immoral and Hedonistic Self-indulgence of the West Will Finally Destroy our Civilization.
"The truth is: a revolution occurred in Britain and America in the 1960s and 70s, but many did not seem to realise it... the eventual changes to British and American society would be just as profound as in the highly bloodthirsty French Revolution of the 18th century!"
'Bad company corrupts good character.' - 1 Corinthians 15:33
It cannot have escaped the notice of a single person reading this article who is in full possession of his or her mental faculties, that modern western society at the beginning of this 21st century AD appears to be drowning in a sea of vulgarity, bad taste, immodesty and - at times - sheer filth. Permissive liberals in the media are especially responsible for this sad state of affairs which is effectively lowering standards of behaviour throughout all of public life.
It is extremely hard to know where to begin any description of the current situation. Popular entertainment programmes aimed at young people on television assume an immoral lifestyle for its main characters...comedy programmes have become virtually unwatchable for anybody with a modicum of decency and integrity...at one time it was safe to watch UK television before the (so-called) '9PM watershed' - the point of that "watershed" was that nothing which might have a corrupting influence on the young was to be said, done or shown before that hour. This, however, is being increasingly challenged and British entertainment personalities have been for some while engaging in the sport of 'seeing how far you can go before 9.' My wife and I have frequently been appalled when viewing programmes even in afternoon or early evening which contain frank references to topics and subjects which are just not for the ears of the young!
Meanwhile Hollywood - dominated by social liberals among leading actors, directors and producers - has long since gone down the road of the explicit, distasteful, vulgar and sordid. Yes, some movies are still made which are based on quite decent and noble themes but - almost invariably - bad language or unrequired sex scenes will surface, and quite often both.
Meanwhile pornography is now - in the opinion of many seasoned observers - completely out of control. It even has its own television channels and the internet threatens to clog up with the sheer volume of this stuff being sent to people who have never requested it and who have to regularly change their e mail address in order to avoid it. Even ads appearing on television go as close to being pornographic as advertisers can get away with. Astonishingly, some of the worst of these ads are shown when children and young people are very likely to be watching television (4.30-7.00PM).
When I was taking my theology degree I recall arriving at the railway station one day and being frankly astonished that a huge billboard-style ad - almost as high as a 2-storey house - had been allowed for display at the railway station. The ad (I think, but I can't exactly recall now) was advertising shampoo or something very similar. The picture (of a young woman virtually naked) would certainly have been deemed pornographic about 20-25 years earlier. I noted the people arriving for their train and becoming somewhat mesmerised by a huge ad which one could not ignore and it crossed my mind that 100-150 years ago such a huge sign may well have been publicising the latest evangelistic campaign. Times have changed: it's now commercial brands - especially those unashamedly using sex as a marketing strategy which demand (and can afford) the biggest spaces. And there is apparently nobody who acts as a regulator or inspector of such things and who asks questions concerning appropriateness and decency (or maybe there is, but he/she has also been bought!).
Let us admit it: modern western society is corrupt. Money rules. The highest bidder rules. There is a lack of moral scruples and moral integrity right across modern life! This is why moslems come to our "advanced" western countries and very quickly deduce that we are all corrupt! Suddenly almost all of society assumes that wealth and money are more important than sound moral and ethical standards and Christianity is now widely ridiculed and relegated to the fringes of life.
But how did all of this happen? Things were not perfect in the 1950s, but during that decade standards of decency were much higher; there was widespread agreement right across society about what was decent and indecent, acceptable and unacceptable, moral and immoral. Everybody recognised it when certain manners of behaviour were vulgar, immodest or in bad taste. People didn't have to be told. How have we got to the present lamentable state where anything goes - and the more outrageous the better?
The Roots of the Unfolding Disaster
It goes back to what started to happen in the universities of Britain and America from the late 1950s onwards. Like a quickly spreading contagious disease, it became 'all the rage' to read and to appreciate philosophers and political theorists like Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger. Perhaps as some sort of reaction to their parents and grandparents anti-German sentiments, the new generation started to venerate German intellectualism. This virulent new contagion spread like wildfire among the young who wanted to change the world - yes, there was a real sniff of revolution in the air!
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British society has been digging itself into a bigger and bigger hole ever since Harold Wilson's 1960s trendy Labour government. This was the government which allowed truly committed political liberals access to the wheels of legislative and society-fashioning powers for the very first time. Committed liberals elsewhere too (such as David Steel of the Liberal Party) were given every possible encouragement to introduce malicious anti-Christian law-changing papers to Parliament (Steel introduced the bill to legalize abortion which became British law in 1967). In the very same decade Leo Abse's bill to legalize homosexuality became law. In short, the 1960s was a decade of momentous law changes which would increasingly change the face of British society. But it was perhaps Roy Jenkins more than anybody who quietly but determinedly worked to change the face of Britain. As a young and raw politician in the late 1950s, Jenkins had written a booklet entitled 'Is Britain Civilised?' - in this booklet Jenkins attacked Britain's "archaic" laws on abortion, censorship, homosexuality, and divorce, as well as arguing for the abolition of capital punishment and for changes to the country's criminal justice system, which he labelled “Victorian.” A group of left-wing middle-class intellectuals had risen to prominence in the Labour movement and these men held a devout liberal and “modernizing” agenda. These men were led by Jenkins and his friend Tony Crossland; their dream was to see a truly permissive and liberal Britain - free of the moral shackles of the country's Christian heritage. When The Labour Party came to government in 1964, these men (and others who held their extreme libertarian views) seized what opportunities they could to further an agenda which the public were never openly made aware of. When Jenkins became British Home Secretary in 1965 he became quietly determined to pursue this liberalizing agenda and to encourage others along the same path. It was this new 60's permissive climate which opened a Pandora's Box which nobody has since been able to close – liberals were sent out with a truly missionary zeal and became entrenched in large areas of British society especially in the media (radio and television and large sections of the press) and in the administrative level of public and social services.
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But this revolution would not be bloody, it would be largely social and psychological (although a subversive political element cannot be denied) and it would directly affect moral values. At the time there was a widespread belief among the young that religion had had its day and that the standards of the middle-aged and older people of the 1950s and 60s had also had their day and that it was time for a new order of things which would now be dominated by the opinions of the young! Many who were involved in the universities of that time have commented on how these feelings of revolution, rebellion and usurpation among students just appeared to come from almost nowhere and then spread like wildfire in an almost uncontrollable fashion! The main feeling and drive behind it all was the determination to overthrow the values and standards of the older generation. It was left-wing and liberal generated and - almost overnight - the young wanted to reform western society - moreover, this reformation would be based on Freudian, Marxist and Nietzschean values! The London School of Economics very much typified the whole movement and it quickly became a bastion of Marxism. Students from this college were constantly taking part in various protests, disrupting lectures, shouting down speakers and getting involved in violent demonstrations; this seemed to go on continually throughout the 1960s and 70s. Many seriously wondered if any academic work was ever actually done at that college! The 60s/70s feeling of revolution and rebellion against previously accepted standards of decency and civility was very much reflected in the 'bad boy' image of such British pop groups as The Beatles and (especially!) The Rolling Stones. Of course the rebels from the universities eventually left them and went out into society at large. What I think one might best describe as a 'huge sea' of permissive liberals (almost universally anti-Christian, after all, had not the newly lauded and admired Nietzsche said that "God is dead"?) left the universities and started to move into the Democratic Party in the United States and fairly poured into the Labour movement in Great Britain. In Britain Harold Wilson's Labour Government were voted into office. Behind the mild and benevolent facade, this government was stacked with extreme liberals straight out of the universities (Roy Jenkins is a prime example) who had an agenda to radically change and to liberalize British society and to cut it off from its Christian roots (see inset article to the left). |
These people also went into education, the social services and perhaps especially into the media. Today people wonder why the media is controlled by liberals - here is the reason, and this is when it started to occur. Those who were brainwashed in the souless Nietzschean atheism of the 60s/70s universities are now leaders in the media. This is why complaints that certain television programmes are obscene or indecent receive such short shrift!
The truth is: a revolution occurred in Britain and America in the 1960s and 70s, but many did not seem to realise it. Yes, it was (comparatively speaking) a quiet revolution and a bloodless one at that but the eventual changes to British and American society would be just as profound as in the highly bloodthirsty French Revolution of the 18th century!
Make No Mistake: Our Civilization Will Finally Collapse Under the Burden of its Own Immorality - It Has Happened Before!
Right now people should be shouting the warning that the Roman Empire fell as a direct result of rampant immorality among its citizenry. This immoral frame of mind polluted every aspect of their society, the most powerful empire in the world at that time. Back in the 1960s people were warning liberalizers where their monumental changes to society would lead. Today nobody is shouting a warning any more, mainly because to issue such warnings is to open oneself up to abuse and ridicule in the media. But we must shout that warning again!
Roman excesses and immorality polluted the home and caused the destruction of the Roman family. The government became less effective because of widespread internal corruption; such corruption caused it to lose its focus. Even the military (which had once been so disciplined and powerful) were beset by squabbles, strife and self-doubt. Many wanted to complain and to leave it at the slightest justification. The moral weakness went so deep that the leaders of whole legions were not even sure they wanted to fight or to defend the empire any longer! Why not retire at the first opportunity instead and spend a lifetime of ease in the prosperity of the time? The Roman army eventually became infamous for its cruelty, rather than its strength and discipline, and much of this was a direct result of the devaluation of human life which always accompanies unbridled immorality. A former higher rule of nobility, respect and decency among Roman philosophers and leaders became compromised everywhere. Chaos came to reign in the Roman social order from the emperor all the way down to the common people.
Of course, we know from history that it still took a long period of time for the Roman Empire to fall to such levels that it ceased to be an empire. It did not happen overnight. But, they are long gone and the affluent former Christian West seriously needs to examine right now exactly what happened to them (and why it happened) in order to recognize the parallels to our own peoples. Those parallels are profound and unmistakable.
But we don't need to restrict ourselves to the example of the Roman Empire! The Grecian Empire provides another example for us. That empire was totally democratic so it has more in common with our own modern example. The ordinary Greeks had absolute control over the politics of their country. But the Greeks teach us that when a people are totally free, that is, without any restraint, they will often descend into anarchy, widespread immorality and finally to chaos. The lesson of history is that people operate better with more cooperation between each other when there are some constraints upon themselves. Total freedom for all tends to ultimately lead to total moral chaos and finally to Nihilism ('Nihilism': the doctrine of 'nothingness' or that nothing can finally be known or agreed upon with people therefore free to finally destroy themselves and their own societies! Some fear that 'postmodernism' will ultimately provide an entrance to Nihilism).
The Grecian Empire was originally a great empire, producing some of the greatest minds that have ever existed upon this earth. The Greeks produced some of the most wonderful literature and philosophy which have ever been produced by any anybody. Societies have always reflected upon the greatness of the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Homer as well as many others. Justin Martyr, the first Christian Apologist who lived toward the beginning of the second century AD, strongly believed that God had prepared the Greeks for the Gospel through much of their philosophy. 'Logos' philosophy seemed to naturally lead to the revelation of Christ and was willingly used by the apostle John.
Greece was a brilliant society, but it eventually became wholly corrupt and was finally destroyed from within by an implosion of mass immorality and mass corruption. So the same immorality which destroyed the Romans also eventually destroyed the Greeks. Today, like Rome, Athens is merely a very pleasant tourist destination and (to be perfectly frank), neither Italian nor Greek governments are taken too seriously!
Christians - Separate Yourselves!
Let all of us who call ourselves by the name of Christ find a renewed urgency to warn our peoples that the lesson of history is absolutely clear: Many other great empires and great peoples have come to enjoy huge superiority militarily, intellectually and economically but ultimately fell into oblivion when they succombed to mass corruption within. When people are united and behave in a noble, courageous and decent fashion they tend to become great peoples but when they come to the very height of their ease and prosperity, mass moral corruption always tends to follow and it is usually this which finally destroys those peoples. How many lessons do we want history to offer us before our people will heed? In our own case we can expect the final collapse to be especially grievous since we are a people who have known the Gospel of Jesus Christ and have actually sent it around the world, but now we ourselves have departed from the warnings of that message. What can now await us except degradation, suffering and final self-destruction...
'It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.' (2 Peter 2:21)
'Nevertheless, God's solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription:
"The Lord knows those who are His," and, "Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness."' (2 Timothy 2:19)
'"Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you."
"I will be a Father to you,
and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty."' (2 Corinthians 6:17-18. NIV throughout).
Robin A. Brace, 2006.
Permission Granted To Redistribute This Article By UK Apologetics
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