There are those of us who are thinkers and those of us who are feelers, most of us operate between these two poles. We are male and female, a community of persons not defined by a variance of body parts but by a predisposition toward a particular life methodology. These past blogs have struggled to define our “henish” culture or the “henish” church and never quite succeeded despite the obvious causal relationship.
This blogger stumbled on a quote by the humanistic philosopher Bertrand Russell circa 1930. Negatives aside, this atheist thinker had a very perceptive eye toward understanding how we function together as a culture or a community of persons. What he is saying in his book, “The Conquest of Happiness” is that our morality should not be thought of as God driven but should be derived from a rational understanding of our humanness. The quote from page 84 is as follows.
“Our nominal morality has been formulated by priests and mentally enslaved women. It is time that men who have to take a normal part in the normal life of the world learned to rebel against this sickly nonsense.”
In 1930 Bertrand Russell, was right and he was wrong. He was wrong by entertaining the thought that morality was about being happy and that we can think our way to happiness. However, he was correct to direct all of us toward a rebellion that would reject a growing affinity for femininity. Real men, male or female, make truly moral decisions based upon our human thought processes and not the feelings of priests and enslaved women. To enslaved women the immediate feelings resulting from the consequences of any decision are the primary preferred moral value.
That which is good and moral is that which feathers the nest, our immediate personal space. However, the female priority is meant to be balanced by the God given male priority for rational thought. In the male morality, “thinking” is the dominate ingredient for any valid understanding of right and wrong. Men are at their best when they frequently consider the broad implication of their actions that hopefully touches on the greater good.
The “sickly nonsense” of priests and mentally enslaved women results in a false morality, a superficial sentimentality that seeks to avoid the harsh realities of life. Long ago there was a secular prophet who so warned America about growing up female. He said, beware of the hypocrisy of a feminized understanding of right and wrong. What did he mean? America, look around eighty years later, we are Petticoat Junction. We have allowed our culture, economy, politics and religion to become dominantly touchy-feely.
The priests of Bertrand Russel's day responded to his challenge by accusing his crowd of situational ethics. They said the spiritual person has no need of using his mind because the Bible plainly states what is right and wrong. This was and is a decidedly female response. There are a multitude of moralities in the Bible, all of which have a historical context that we have to use our minds to understand. In brief, all moralities are situational. Most priests lazily dump their personal bias's on the Biblical record.
Our American culture has never rebelled against this sticky nonsense. Christianity has remained in lock down mode prescribed to us by the nest minding clergy and the church has remained female. Our politicians have waged a war to dumb down the American voter and thinking in the Church is even less desirable. Most thinking persons in the Church have sadly chosen the way of Bertrand Russell and written off the demands and blessings of a God inspired thinking morality.
We are long overdue for a male morality that is more significant than the current in name only morality. Men and women, let us revolt against this nonsense and be whom God created us to be.
G.Goslaw
Victorville, Ca
