A Definition of Madness
From the magazine stands in the check-out line, come-hither looks beckon from faces and bodies to exceed the wildest dreams of Caligula (the mad emperor who claimed dalliances with Roman goddesses). Beautiful women are posed and shaded in ways to make them perfectly sexual.
It's madness.
Madness, after all, is nothing but mental distortion: an inability to see reality and the concomitant acceptance of unreality as reality. Distorted Woman — held up by magazines and movies as not only real, but a thing to be admired — is a source of madness because she presents unreality as reality.
Yet few speak against it.
So I will.
I have neither statistics nor empirical studies to support my opposition. I have only my experience as a man in his thirties, a sprinkling of philosophy, and a dose of common sense.
With such un-Dewey like evidence, I offer this declaration against Distorted Woman:
A Man’s a Man for A’ That
I am a man, and therefore am susceptible to swings of passion.
I understand the importance of what the Greeks called apatheia, a peaceful or calm mind, one not disrupted by thoughts it cannot control.
I have fully experienced the difficulty of retaining control of the passions in a natural environment and know that the difficulty increases when spiked with Distorted Woman.
I have an imagination.
I have an imagination that needs to be coaxed and trained to do good things but that, left to its devices, gravitates to bad things.
I have an imagination that races toward the bad things if I give it Distorted Woman.
I am a husband with an attractive wife.
I am a husband with a wife whose physical features are not perfect.
I am content with my wife as a partner, but would not be, if I held her next to Distorted Women.
I am a father of two daughters.
I believe my daughters have minds and souls, the highest faculties of human existence, that need to be cultivated and matured.
I believe that minds and souls are not valued — and therefore not cultivated and matured — in a society that celebrates Distorted Woman.
I believe men desire happiness and contentment, which must be found in the ordinary (or else the ordinary man could not attain it, which would be a cruel trick of nature).
I know the ordinary is downgraded by the glamorous.
I believe the ordinary woman is downgraded by Distorted Woman.
I am a logical man.
I believe in syllogism.
I believe that if a man prefers Distorted Woman, he cannot prefer his wife because she is not Distorted Woman.
I believe women should be allowed to pursue their goals.
I believe they should be allowed to pursue their goals without compromising their natures.
I believe their pursuit will be hindered in a society that celebrates Distorted Woman, unless they are willing to undergo the physical madness of Distorted Woman.
I have an almost mystical respect for truth.
I believe that problems arise when truth is suppressed, even though those problems are difficult to identify or articulate.
I believe truth is suppressed when falsity is promoted, and falsity is promoted and celebrated by Distorted Woman.
Facing the Future
Cosmetic surgery is increasingly prevalent: nose jobs, facelifts, tummy tucks, Botox injections for wrinkles, liposuction, and even cosmetic surgery for feet so they will better fit into designer shoes.
Why? Do we really want to look like Michael Jackson? Or, more precisely, do we really want to be like Michael Jackson?
With science moving forward at steady breakneck speed, it could be a scary culture. We are, in fact, at the doorway of something that sounds like a page out of Mary Shelley: Face transplants. Just as Frankenstein was assembled from bits of dead bodies that his creator found in charnel houses, technology is nearing the point where it will be able to take faces from the dead and dying and place them over the living's faces. It's meant to help people with disfigurements or whose facial nerve endings render their faces expressionless. But just as Viagra was originally concocted to help people with low blood pressure, I assume it won't be long until the face transplant becomes available for less-salutary goals.
If a rich, old woman wants to pay outrageous sums for the face of a dying youth, are we prepared to say no? Are we at least willing to disapprove? What if the youth's family needs the money?
Those are difficult ethical questions.
And the questions become even more difficult to answer intelligently in a culture where unreal beauty and perfection are presented as real and admirable.
Such a presentation, after all, is distortion, and distortion is madness.
And madness makes it very difficult to think.
© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is a freelance writer, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine. You can view his work at a www.ericscheske.com .
