The supernatural comes to meet a Harvard professor

Roy Schoeman, who 'fell into heaven', filling his life with meaning and purpose

 “Thanks, but no thanks” is often the way people respond when someone offers to tell about a deeply spiritual experience they have had. Awkwardness around anything to do with the spiritual realm may be because of a lack of familiarity with the immaterial, the supernatural, the transcendent. Or maybe prayer, a spiritual act at the simplest level, is a practice that has been relegated to the past and so they just don’t want to get involved with that sphere of life anymore because they’re too busy in dealing with the complexities of the world.

But I dare you to read my summary of Roy Schoeman’s account of two spiritual encounters he had and not sense that something extraordinary did in fact occur, and that those encounters enveloped him in a deep love, a love that is available to everyone.

First, a little background and then it's over to Schoeman to recount what happened to him and why the events had such a profound effect on his life.

He was born in 1951 into a New York family and grew up in a fully Jewish environment. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - becoming an atheist in the process -  and at Harvard Business School, where he received an MBA, impressing his professors so much that he was invited to join the faculty and was offered support to complete a doctorate. That was in 1980. He taught as a professor of marketing there for a few years, moving on to consulting, which allowed him to pursue his interest in rock climbing and skiing.

Then, in 1987, he had his first astonishing experience, where he "fell into heaven", as he describes it. In this account, edited to stay just with the main features, he first sets the scene by referring to his success at joining the Harvard faculty:

Although it may sound rather surprising that's actually when the bottom fell out of my world because ever since I had been a small child I knew there has to be a real meaning and purpose to life and expected to come into the real meaning and purpose of life at some point when I got older. 

I thought it would be when I began my career but I was already more successful in a worldly career than I had ever anticipated being a professor in Harvard but there was still no meaning or purpose to life and therefore I fell into the darkest despair of my life.

I was walking in nature early one morning in a kind of nature preserve right off the ocean that was half pine trees and half sand dunes and I received the most spectacular grace in my life.

I was walking along lost in my thoughts. I had long since lost any hope, not believing that God existed or anything like that, when from one moment to the next the curtain between Earth and heaven disappeared and I found myself in the presence of God, very knowingly in the presence of God, and seeing my life as though I had died and was looking back over my life in the presence of God.

In an instant [...] I saw that we live forever; I saw that every action has a moral content that's recorded for all eternity, that everything that had ever happened to me had been the most perfect thing that could have been arranged, coming from the hands of an all-knowing, all-loving God, not only including those things that had caused the most suffering at the time that I had thought of as the greatest disasters, but especially the things that had caused [God] suffering at the time.

I saw that my two greatest regrets after I died would be, number one, all of the time and energy I had wasted worrying about not being loved when every moment of my existence I was held in an ocean of love greater than I ever imagined could exist coming from this all-knowing, all-loving God. The other great regret would be every hour I had wasted doing nothing of value in the eyes of heaven.

The most overwhelming aspect of this experience, the most transformative, was to come into the intimate and deep and certain knowledge that God himself,  the God who not only created everything that exists but created existence itself, not only knew me by name, not only cared about me, but has been watching over me, controlling everything that ever happened to me, actually knowing how I felt at every moment and caring about how I felt at every moment, such that, in a very real way, everything that made me happy, made him happy, and everything that made me sad, made him sad. Coming into the knowledge of this was really the most revolutionary, transformative aspect of this experience. 

I knew that the meaning and purpose of my life was to worship and serve my Lord and God and Master who is revealing himself to me, but I didn't know his name and I couldn't think of this as the God of the Old Testament. I couldn't think of this religion as Judaism. The picture of God that emerges from the Old Testament is certainly a picture of a God far more distant and severe and removed from ordinary mankind than this God was, so I [...] didn't know what religion to follow. 

So I prayed at the time - I was actually still walking at the time - even though I had fallen into heaven, so to speak, and could see the spiritual world. and was in this intimate communion with God, I was still also seeing the physical world around me. The physical world had become as though transparent and I could see through it into the spiritual world.

Anyway, as I was walking I prayed to know the name of my Lord and God and Master. [...] "Let me know your name. I don't mind if you're Buddha, and I have to become Buddhist; I don't mind if you're Krishna and I have to become Hindu; I don't mind if you're Apollo and I have to become a Roman pagan, as long as you're not Christ and I have to become Christian."

That desire for God not to be Christ was because I didn't want to become Christian. [This] came from my being Jewish and I didn't want to kind of go over to what I saw as the enemy side. And he respected that, and he did not reveal his name to me, so I returned home happier than I had ever been in my life.

[...] Since this had been a mystical experience I turned in that direction to find out more about it, which was a very imprudent thing to do, and I looked into some rather foolish new-agey kinds of directions, but I also did something which brought great fruit, which was every night I would say a short prayer that I had made up to know the name of my Lord and God and Master who had revealed himself to me.

Those are the circumstances of the "mystical experience" that gave Schoeman an awareness that he was in the presence of God. Exactly one year later he had his second transformative spiritual experience. He describes that night this way:

 I thought I was awoken by a hand gently on my shoulder and [was...] alone with the most beautiful young woman I could ever imagine, and I knew without being told that it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. When I found myself in her presence all I wanted to do was was honor her appropriately.. [...] She offered to answer any questions I might have for her. [...] 

I asked her what her favorite prayer to her was. [...] Her first response was, "I love all prayers", but I was a bit pushy and I said, "But you must love some prayers more than others?" and she recited a prayer [...] in Portuguese.  I didn't know any Portuguese so all I could do was try to remember the first few syllables phonetically and the next morning as soon as I woke up I wrote them down phonetically. [...] Later, after speaking to a Portuguese Catholic woman and asking her to recite all of the prayers to Mary in Portuguese, I identified the prayer as, Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

When I went to sleep that night I knew virtually nothing about the Blessed Virgin Mary. All I knew was from Christmas carols, mostly from Silent Night and from having seen Christmas creches in public places. I had never touched, much less opened a New Testament. I knew none of what she revealed to me in this experience.

The other thing that I want to say is that although she was perfectly beautiful to look at, indescribably beautiful, even more profoundly affecting was the beauty of her voice. [...] The only way I can describe it is it was composed of that which makes music music. When she spoke, and when the beauty of her voice flowed through me, carrying with it her love, it lifted me up into a state of ecstasy greater than I ever imagined could exist. So most of my questions actually flowed out of my being absolutely overwhelmed by who she was and by her grandeur.

I'll mention a couple of the questions - they were actually more exclamations than they were actually questions. For instance, at one point I kind of [stammered out], "How is it possible, how can it be that you're so glorious, that you're so magnificent, that you're so exalted, how can it be?' Her response was just to look down at me almost with pity and shake her head gently and say, "Oh no, you don't understand. I'm nothing. I'm a creature. I'm a created thing. He's everything!" 

Then, again out of this desire to somehow honor her appropriately, I asked what title she liked best for herself and her response was "I am the beloved daughter of the Father, mother of the Son and spouse of the Spirit."

 I asked her several other questions of somewhat less significance and she spoke to me for another 10 or 15 minutes. She said she had something she wanted to tell me and after that the audience was over and I went back to sleep.

The next morning when I woke up I was hopelessly in love with the Blessed Virgin Mary and I wanted nothing other than to be as fully and completely Christian as possible. I obviously knew from this experience that the God who revealed himself to me a year earlier had been Christ.

In the experience of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I thought I was awake and my memory represents it as that I had been awake, and I remembered with an absolute word-for-word clarity. I actually even remember thinking about other questions that I had decided not to ask, and so forth.

However, I now understand that if there had been a camera in the room it would have shown me asleep in bed throughout that experience. 

Watch the full video where Schoeman expands on this summary. Go here. 

So what impact on Schoeman's life have these extraordinary experiences had? "By their fruits you shall know them." In 1992, he was baptised and since then he has remained unmarried, devoting his life to enabling people to know God as intimately as he does. He has written several books, teaches, and speaks whenever asked, as well as producing and hosting a Catholic TV talk show. He has a special calling to help his fellow Jews so that "their pride in being Jewish will draw them towards, rather than away from, the Catholic Church."   

Such a life witness confirms a high level of plausibility for truthfulness and accuracy of these accounts of the supernatural breaking through into the material world.

Video gaming rules test parents and business spirit

Overuse has to be a concern of the whole "village". (Photo Source)

Reaction to the Chinese government direction on Monday to tech companies that they limit players of video games to a maximum of three hours a week has taken two tracks - a delighted welcome from parents, and an acknowledgement that social needs must be put above the drive for greater profit. 

Here's Reuters reporter Helen Coster doing a good job in localising the news of China's video rules: 

Raleigh Smith Duttweiler was folding laundry in her Ohio home, her three children playing the video game Minecraft upstairs, when she heard an NPR story about new rules in China that forbid teenagers and children under age 18 from playing video games for more than three hours a week.

"Oh, that's an idea," Duttweiler ... recalls thinking. "My American gut instinct: This is sort of an infringement on rights and you don't get to tell us what to do inside of our own homes.

"On the other hand, it's not particularly good for kids to play as much as even my own children play. And I do think it would be a lot easier to turn it off if it wasn't just arguing with Mommy, but actually saying 'Well, the police said so.'"

Chinese authorities have labelled as "spiritual opium" the overuse of video games, and by association social media, and they have highlighted how these are an addiction entrapping a growing number of young people. Coster reports:

China's regulator said the new rules were a response to growing concern that games affected the physical and mental health of children, a fear echoed by parents and experts in the United States.

One such expert is "Paul Morgan, a father of two teenagers and Penn State professor who studies electronic device use." He is quoted as saying: "These electronic devices are ubiquitous. It's really hard to get kids away from them." Though he believes young people with disabilities could benefit from the social interactions provided by video games...

Morgan says negative associations with screen time are particularly evident for heavy users, possibly due to displacing activities like exercise or sleep. [However,] the ban doesn't address social media use, which is thought to be especially harmful for girls. 

Another parent is also in favour of controls being implemented as a way of supporting parents:

Shira Weiss, a New Jersey-based publicist for technology clients including a video game company, sees value in the games that help keep her twin 12-year-old sons connected to their peers, but wants to better limit how often they play the more violent games.

"I think the Chinese rules are good," Weiss said. "You're still saying 'Play video games,' but you're just setting limits." She added, partially joking: "Can they come here and impose that restriction on my house?"

In China, too, parents showed support for the new rules. Li Tong is a hotel manager in Beijing with a 14-year old daughter. In one of a series of Reuters articles used here,* he is reported as saying: 

"My daughter is glued to her phone after dinner every day for one to two hours and it's difficult for me or her mother to stop her. We told her it's bad for her eyes and it's a waste of her time, but she won't listen."

Some details about the rules: 

The new rules place the onus on implementation on the gaming industry and are not laws per se that would punish individuals for infractions. Kids can often circumvent rules that require the use of their real names and national identification numbers when signing into games by using the login details of adult family members.

They limit under-18s to playing for one hour a day - 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. - on only Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, according to the Xinhua state news agency. They can also play for an hour, at the same time, on public holidays.

The rules from the National Press and Publication Administration regulator coincide with a broader clampdown against China's tech giants, such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.

The campaign to prevent what state media has described as the "savage growth" of some companies has wiped tens of billions of dollars off shares traded at home and abroad.  

What worries the business sector is the long-term consequences of an interruption in the habit-forming pattern of game-playing that companies rely on for their spectacular profits, à la cigarette companies:

While the hit to gaming stocks was relatively measured as children do not provide much revenue for gaming companies, analysts noted that the implications for the long-term growth of the industry were much more severe.

"The root of the problem here is not the immediate revenue impact," said Mio Kato, an analyst who publishes on SmartKarma. "The problem is that this move destroys the entire habit-forming nature of playing games at an early age."

There was also relief that the regulations did not go further.

"What the industry is really afraid of is if the government stops approving new games like they did in 2018," said a Beijing-based private equity investor, referring to a nine-month period when China suspended approvals of new video game titles as part of an overhaul of the regulatory bodies that oversee the sector.

However, we saw how Coster's article quotes Ohio mother Smith Duttweiler in drawing attention to what would be expected as a typical American response to the Chinese rule-setting, namely, that it is an infringement of personal - and business - rights.

On those lines, Coster cites another American parent:  

Michael Gural-Maiello, who works in business development at an engineering firm and has an 11-year-old son, believes parents should be the ones regulating their children's video game use. "I don't think governments really have a place in telling parents how their children should be spending their time."

But if the source of the problem that pits children against parents is something that is truly addictive, then parents need support from society as a whole in combatting that overwhelming attraction. Parents are not able to cope; therefore, government has a role to play in preserving the well-being of its young people.

Notice that the Chinese rules force gaming companies to act; it is not the government as such intruding into homes.   

 Authorities in China, the world's largest video games market, have worried for years about addiction to gaming and the internet among young people, setting up clinics which combine therapy and military drills for those with so-called "gaming disorders".

About 62.5% of Chinese minors often play games online, and 13.2% of underage mobile game users play mobile games for more than two hours a day on weekdays, according to state media.

Chinese regulators have also targeted the [fee-gouging] private tutoring industry and what they see as celebrity worship in recent weeks, citing the need to ensure the wellbeing of children.

Yes, "to ensure the well-being of children" first should come parents' exerting their status, lost since the days of "no-rules" parenting starting in the 1960s and 70s, the status of being guardians of the psychic as well as physical health of their children. That status involves the exercise of God-given authority, which young people have to learn to submit to, even if the rest of society is telling them that they have a "right" to do what they want, parents be damned!

That struggle within the home has to be a "whole village" effort if children, and therefore the whole of society, are not to be crippled by the various forms of dis-ease we see all around us.

What we see happening in China this week is not a sudden impulse. Rather it is part of ongoing engagement of the government in trying to recruit business conglomerates in acting for the common good:

In 2017, Tencent Holdings said it would limit play time for some young users of its flagship mobile game "Honor of Kings", a response to complaints from parents and teachers that children were becoming addicted.

A year later, citing concerns over growing rates of myopia, Beijing said it was looking at potential measures to restrict game play by children and suspended video game approvals for nine months.

In 2019, it passed laws limiting minors to less than 1.5 hours of online games on weekdays and three hours on weekends, with no game playing allowed between 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. It also limited how much minors could spend on virtual gaming items each month, with maximum amounts ranging from US$28 to $57, depending on the age.

In addition, minors were required to use their real names and national identification numbers when they logged on to play and companies like Tencent and NetEase (9999.HK), set up systems to identify minors.

In July, Tencent rolled out a facial recognition function dubbed "midnight patrol" that parents can switch on to prevent children from using adult logins to get around the government curfew. 

In this context, and given the Western subservience to powerful business interests,  it is worthwhile for me to repeat what I ran in a post earlier this year on how to "right the ship" vis-a-vis doing business and achieving the common good.  I quote from Jonathan Sacks, who, in his 2020 book**, urges everyone to take stock of why Western society is in such a state of moral crisis, with the spirit of meaninglessness erupting everywhere:  

There is no question that the behaviour of banks, other financial institutions and CEOs of major corporations has generated much anger at the most visceral level. After all, gut instinct is what drives our feelings of justice as fairness. But that behaviour is the logical consequence of the individualism that has been our substitute for morality since the 1960s: the ‘I’ that takes precedence over the ‘We’. How could we reject the claims of traditional morality in every other sphere of life and yet expect them to prevail in the heat of the marketplace? Was that not the point of the famous speech delivered by the actor Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street that ‘Greed – for lack of a better word – is good’? Greed ‘captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit’, he said: it marks ‘the upward surge of mankind’.

Markets don't distribute rewards fairly

 In a world where the market rules and its operation is driven by greed, people come to believe that their worth is measured by what you earn or can afford and not by qualities of character like honesty, integrity and service to others. Politics itself, because it can assume no shared morality among its citizens, ceases to be about vision, aspiration and the common good and becomes instead transactional, managerial, a kind of consumer product: vote for the party that gives you more of what you want for a lower price in taxes. You discover that politicians are claiming unwarranted expenses or getting paid for access: in short that politics has come to be seen as a business like any other, and not an entirely reputable one. That is when young people no longer get involved. Why should they? If all that matters is money, they can make more of it elsewhere.

However, Sacks is not advocating the overthrow of the free market system. But he is saying that when the morality that made the markets work, involving trust and confidence and faith in people and their words and signed documents, is neglected, "something significant is going wrong". He explains:

The market economy has generated more real wealth, eliminated more poverty and liberated more human creativity than any other economic system. The fault is not with the market itself, but with the idea that the market alone is all we need. Markets do not guarantee equity, responsibility or integrity. They can maximise short-term gain at the cost of long-term sustainability. They cannot be relied upon to distribute rewards fairly. They cannot guarantee honesty. When confronted with flagrant self-interest, they combine the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. Markets need morals, and morals are not made by markets.

They are made by schools, the media, custom, tradition, religious leaders, moral role models and the influence of people. But when religion loses its voice and the media worship success, when right and wrong become relativised and all talk of morality is condemned as ‘judgemental’, when people lose all sense of honour and shame and there is nothing they will not do if they can get away with it, no regulation will save us. People will continually outwit the regulators, as they did by the so-called ‘securitisation’ of risk that meant no one knew who owed what to whom.

Markets were made to serve us; we were not made to serve markets. Economics needs ethics. Markets do not survive by market forces alone. They depend on respect for the people affected by our decisions. Lose that and we will lose not just money and jobs but something more significant still: freedom, trust and decency, the things that have a value, not a price.

Parents, business leaders and investors, politicians, the media, that is the community as a whole, have a grand task ahead of us to protect our young people and so serve the common good. 

* Reuters articles used can be found here, here,  here and here

**Jonathan Sacks, 2020, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, Hodder & Stoughton/Hachette, London and New York. 

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God works in simple but wondrous ways

The supernatural is part of our world, but it often escapes our notice. A friend in Vietnam offers this testimony as to how a simple act of kindness and a word shared can be used by God in a mighty way to draw someone to Jesus.

More than a month ago, one of our neighbours in another unit had a sick kitten and didn't know what to do. She also had been haunted by ghosts, in her own words, for the past few weeks. She literally had felt her hair being blown over her ears and there had been knocking on her door in the middle of the night.

She first sought a fortune-teller who told her that she was cursed and that she had to move out of that place immediately. However, she did not feel peace with that advice and turned to my wife and I because she remembered that we were Christians.

It had been a simple act of buying some food for her new kitten a few weeks earlier that gave us a chance to tell her a bit about God. We didn't realise it then, but a seed had been planted in her heart by the Holy Spirit.

So when she called and told us about the "haunting" and her sick kitten, we immediately felt the need to go over to see her and asked our pastor and friends for immediate prayer covering. We got down on our knees to pray for covering over ourselves and our family and friends as we knew we were going to enter into spiritual battle.

We went over and my wife shared with her that ghosts are not as we think and that there is a spirit world unseen but yet have power to affect the natural world. Then we shared the Gospel and asked her if she would like to receive Christ. She accepted (all praise and glory be unto God) and we asked if she had things like tarot cards and stones or pendants for good luck. She brought out a set of tarot cards and a pendant that had been given to her for luck.

Through the prompting of the Holy Spirit my wife asked if she had anything else and mentioned the 12 Viet zodiacs. She suddenly said she had forgotten that she had stuck a 12 zodiac golden sticker on her phone battery so she took that out. I ripped it up. We prayed for a cleansing for her and her unit and took the objects downstairs and tore up the tarot cards and crushed the pendant with a rock.

The next morning, she rang and told my wife it was the first time in a few weeks that she had not been haunted and that she had had a peaceful sleep.

In our hearts we gave thanks to God: "Hallelujah ... Praise the Lord." 

[] Photo credit: Photo by David Monje on Unsplash (Cropped)

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Careful! The world is catechizing you

BUSINESS NEWS: "The English family that founded the sex-worker social media platform OnlyFans extracted tens of millions of pounds from its parent company in the last year, as it profited from a lockdown-induced rush to use online pornography" (The Guardian here).

During August, leading news sources covered with a great deal of interest the twists and turns of a business based on pornography. Maybe it was a complete hoax, a publicity stunt, but first OnlyFans banned "adult content" from the platform but quickly went on to announce a reprieve. Given its prevalence, sympathetic publicity of the impact on sex workers' income may have been behind the policy reversal.

So, during the month we observed normal business news item being interspersed with the affairs of "sex workers" and conjecture about how customers might be affected by a service breakdown in the provision of pornographic "products"! 

What's odd about this type of "news" is how it fits into the commonplace pattern of acceptance of immorality. A perspective that the behaviour involved is undermining society is lacking completely. The issue is also how this amoral mindset is, day by day, being absorbed by society at large through such influences.

Another example of  Western societies' loss of their moral compass and its likely impact is highlighted by a sports fan who followed the Summer Olympics intently.  He writes about his family watching the American TV coverage:

Every day we were taught to celebrate men weightlifting as women or to smile as a male diver talked about his husband. Every commercial break was sure to feature a same-sex couple, a man putting on makeup, or a generic ode to expressive individualism. And of course, Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird were nearly ubiquitous. If America used to be about motherhood and apple pie, it’s now about birthing persons and lesbian soccer stars hawking Subway sandwiches. 

Then he puts those comments into a broader context:

Some will object at this point that the last paragraph is filled with a toxic mix of homophobia, heteronormativity, cisgender privilege and a host of other terms that were virtually unknown until five minutes ago. But those labels are not arguments against biblical sexual morality so much as they represent powerful assumptions that no decent person could possibly believe that homosexuality is sinful behavior, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that switching genders is a sign of confusion more than courage.

What NBC presented as heroic and wonderful was considered wrong and troublesome by almost everyone in the Christian West for 2,000 years. Is it possible that instead of deconstructing the beliefs that have marked Christianity for two millennia, we might want to deconstruct the academic jargon our culture has only come to affirm within my lifetime? Remember, it was only in 2008—hardly the dark days of the Middle Ages—that Barack Obama said he did not support marriage for same-sex couples.

This blog has many times addressed the concern that certain lines of thought have shaped the way we think so that, for many of us, rationalism, consumerism, and individualism are like the air we breathe. This blog regularly points out the lapses in science, where practitioners are so blinkered by a series of assumptions about the nature of the human person, and of the cosmos, that they fail to see the rich vein of research possibilities that an openness to spiritual reality offers. Check out this blog's archive for many relevant posts.

Our featured writer, Kevin DeYoung, gets down to the nitty-gritty:

The Christian family, Christian church, and Christian school must not assume that the next generations will accept the conclusions that seem so obvious to older generations. We must talk about the things our kids are already talking about among themselves. We must disciple. We must be countercultural. We must prepare them to love and teach them what biblical love really means. We must pass on the right beliefs and the right reasons for those beliefs.

We must prepare our children—and be prepared ourselves—that following Christ comes with a cost (Luke 9:23). The Jesus who affirmed marriage as between a man a woman (Matt. 19:4-6), the Jesus who warned of the porneia [disordered desires] within (Mark 7:20-23), the Jesus who warned against living to be liked by others (John 12:43), this Jesus demands our total allegiance (Matt. 28:20).

The world is already busy promoting its catechism. The only question is whether we will get busy promoting ours. 

We promote our Christian beliefs within our family first. Therefore, parents must be strong themselves in order to pass on a rich legacy. That parents can resist the invitations from neighbours or colleagues to betray their Christian instincts, will provide children with a life lesson in how to withstand the powerful pressure of peers. 

Read The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation and Live Not By Lies, both by concerned American parent, journalist Rod Dreher. He has powerful insights into the way the sexual revolution has created a true transformation of the moral foundation of society. This bombshell has now been coupled with Critical Justice Theory, launching all kinds of "rights" into the midst of an population ignorant of where the basis for human rights came from, namely, the revelation that we are made in the image of God.

In addition, parents must limit their own use of social media, other devices and TV, and thereby provide a model for their children.

Another point made on this blog has been that couples should be generous in planning the size of their family. That decision will guide parents in many other important areas of decision-making, such as how to create a work-life balance, and in the need to rein-in ambitions that those enamoured by the world pursue.

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America's decline, society's collapse into trauma

TikTok is rife with young people, particularly young women, taking time to identify something in their life that caused distress or anger. The #trauma hashtag has had a staggering 3.9 billion views. With "trauma" defined as a deeply disturbing experience, what is going on in society that turns predominantly young TikTok users to apply this concept to their own life?

Poppy Coburn finds that there has been the popularisation of ‘trauma theory’ — "the idea that most of a person’s problems can be traced back to some unresolved, vague traumatic events in their life" — related to a book that is ranked #1 in sales on the Healing section of Amazon, The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma by psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. This is a seven-year-old publication whose target audience is doctors specialising in post-traumatic syndrome disorders.

Coburn notes that the book's success ties in with the fact that "‘trauma’ has become the latest fad to hit feminist wellness circles":

Perhaps the reason for its enduring popularity with young, socially-conscious people is thanks to van der Kolk’s assertion that, left untreated, trauma can begin to manifest itself through physical ailments. Constant headaches? Back pain? Short of breath? Don’t call an ambulance, call a psychiatrist.

While there's no denying the reality of the link between trauma and physical or mental conditions:

What is curious is why exactly so many ostensibly normal, healthy young people believe themselves to be suffering such mental distress, without any of the typical experiences of those traditionally diagnosed with PTSD.

Mental illness and trauma disorders are different in that "trauma is explicitly defined as a responsive action to a negative external stressor":

Trauma, and the mental illness most closely associated with it (PTSD), are therefore closely linked to broader societal conditions. If there is a significant uptake in young people identifying themselves as traumatised, it stands to reason there is a significant stressor embedded in wider culture.

And that advanced societies generally are not healthy is clear from the United Kingdom statistics Coburn provides: 

It is not healthy to have 1 in 8 [adults] seeking out professional mental help, nor for 17% of the adult population to be hooked on powerful anti-depressant drugs with nasty side effects. 

The Children's Society in the United Kingdom gives this information:

In the last three years, the likelihood of young people having a mental health problem has increased by 50%. Now, five children in a classroom of 30 are likely to have a mental health problem. 

It continues that 17 to 22 year old women are the group most at risk of developing a mental health problem, adding:

Given the prevalence of mental health problems in children and young people, it's no surprise that psychotherapists on TikTok have amassed millions of followers and likes over the past year.

Coburn concludes her article:

We should be concerned that young people pathologise their dissatisfaction with modern life, adapting in unhealthy ways to untenable societal conditions. Falling back on "trauma" as a catch-all explainer doesn’t bring us closer to a genuine solution.

To determine solutions, scrutiny of causes of distress among young people is imperative. A book just out examines their condition from the frontline perspective of California teacher Jeremy Adams, a National Teacher of the Year nominee.

In Hollowed Out: A Warning About America’s Next Generation:

Adams frets that today’s youngsters are “barren of the behavior, values and hopes from which human beings have traditionally found higher meaning … or even simple contentment.” 

[He] calls them “hollowed out,” a generation living solitary lives, hyperconnected to technology but unattached from their families, churches or communities. He cites statistics showing teen depression rose 63 percent from 2007 to 2017 while teen suicide grew 56 percent. Tragically, he writes, suicide has become the second leading cause of death for the young. 

Adams blames the dissolution of the American family for this [...], with marriage rates down and the number of traditional two-parent homes plummeting. Although studies have shown that regular family dinners leads to less youth “smoking, binge drinking, marijuana use, violence, school problems, eating disorders and sexual activity,” most of Adams’ students say they eat dinner alone each night, focused not on family but the device in their hand. 

“The neglect of family life is one of the greatest causes of the hollowing out not only of students, but of American life,” Adams writes.

Hollowed Out highlights the lack of general awareness of young people, especially about political affairs and civics. But Adams also finds a big shift in the practice of religious life:

While only 2 percent of Americans identified themselves as “atheists” in 1984, that number was 22 percent by 2020. A college religion professor notes that when he discusses Matthew from the Bible, many students think he’s talking about Matthew Perry of Friends. And Luke? His students assume it’s the guy from Beverly Hills, 90210. 

Religion has been replaced by “a mass culture of ‘banality, conformity, and self-indulgence,’” Adams writes, not to mention an obsession with technology. He notes that in the 1970s, more than 50 percent of high schoolers hung out with friends “every day,” but by 2020, that number had dropped below 33 percent.

Modern high schoolers regularly forgo traditional activities like Friday night football games to hunker down alone, “watching Netflix, Hulu, or Disney+.” That helps explain why in 2012, 49 percent of teens ranked “in person” as their favourite way to talk, but in 2018, only 32 percent did. 

Young people's use of technology - smart devices - certainly is a central factor in the general malaise of  the population. One of the points Adams makes is:

Studies show the average Gen Z student uses five electronic devices and has an 8-second attention span, which results in “lower grades, diminished ability to concentrate, and stunted academic achievement”. 

Two other statistics from Hollowed Out illustrate the overall problem:

} In 2014, a US general was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying “the quality of people willing to serve has been declining rapidly,” with 71 percent of current 17- to 24-year-olds ineligible due to obesity, criminal records, or mental health or drug issues.

} A survey found that while 70 percent of senior citizens could pass a US citizenship test, less than 20 percent of those under 45 could.  

Based on the evidence he provides, Adams concludes:

We need to brace ourselves for what lies ahead. I write this book as an alarm bell … a project born out of worry, concern and frustration. 

In identifying solutions, we can pick up some of the factors that Adams highlights as hollowing out the generation that is now entering their twenties. Chief on his list are:

} Instability in family life, and a lack of religious upbringing, both of which have a bearing on the lack of awareness of moral values such as respect for others, but also on the lack of a sense of self-esteem - within the family and as a valued child of God;

} No respect for learning in the widest sense. Families have abandoned the search for knowledge, but simply want "passing the test" to be made easy. Ideological pressures such as Critical Race Theory are also lowering standards and creating turbulence in the school setting;

} Overuse of electronic devices and social media; which lead to:

} Lack of opportunities to develop personal relationships - in person;

} Lack of opportunities to exercise, which also affects the building of social relationships, and bad eating habits.  

Adams, like Coburn, has a grave concern for the well-being of young people, so commonly seen in the shape of the suffering individual. But both acknowledge the impact on society as a whole, with Coburn highlighting the present "untenable societal conditions", and Adams seeing "America's decline" gathering pace without concerted action by the older generations who are leading their descendants up a dead-end gulch.

This is the time that parents and politicians alike must show courage in putting in place whatever measure they can - it's an incremental process of protection and innovation - to endow the next generations with those personal attributes and social assets which comprise the common good. Once again it is so clear where we are at: "What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?"

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Do bare boobs spell an end to modesty?

Senior Guardian fashion writer Lauren Cochrane predicts that women's fashion is reaching the tipping point where the concept of modesty will be abandoned altogether. The subject of her article is the cut-down version of a cardigan where the "two curtains of the top are held across the wearer’s breasts by a safety pin or a tiny piece of string". Apparently, there is a fashion statement in a woman's having her breasts largely exposed.

Cochrane explains:

Curtain reveal tops are part of a wider trend in fashion for clothes that reveal breasts in ways beyond typical Wonderbra-style cleavage. If the Kardashians’ wearing bikini tops upside down was spotted on Instagram earlier this year, Love Island has brought this experimentation into living rooms nationwide. Contestants Millie Court and Faye Winter regularly wear open blazers and shirts without anything underneath and – presumably – strategically placed tape keeping their modesty intact, while so-called “underboob” swimwear is worn by all female contestants.

The article quotes Hannah Banks-Walker, the fashion and beauty director at Grazia, on the revealing underboob swimwear:

She suggests this is part of a bigger shift. “Fashion went through that period of shying away from anything that could be deemed remotely sexy and dresses became oversized,” she says. “I think now we’re definitely seeing a return to that sex appeal, unapologetically.” 

So, here we have it: these fashion experts state that there is a trend that encourages women to reveal most of their body in order to look sexy or for sex appeal. Further, that the news and entertainment media cultivate this trend.

Let me say immediately that women should be positive about their body, but my question is, why must women try to be sexy, to exude sex appeal in a public setting? A second question is, what do women think is the effect in men?

On this, I quote a Chinese writer of the 1920s who mocked his fellow males for their reaction to women as emancipation brought about changes in hairstyle and clothing:

The sight of women's short sleeves at once make them think of bare arms, of the naked body, the genitals, copulation, promiscuity, and bastards.

Men do have powerful sexual instincts that women should recognise as part of reality. Men have to learn to restrain themselves, but, without encroaching on victim shaming, women should not be provocative, rather show restraint themselves. As it often plays out in real life - from the gospels:

Everyone looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Mt 5:28)

Restraint is a central element when it comes to modesty. One definition of modesty is: restrained by a sense of seemliness. In turn, seemliness is defined as what is fitting or suitable for the situation.

It would pay us all to refresh our thoughts on what the classical concept of modesty is all about, and why it is valuable to society as a virtue alongside generosity, patience, loyalty and so on.

First, look at these aphorisms:

🔆Modesty isn't about covering your body; it's about revealing your dignity.

🔆 What attracts a man's attention doesn't always attract his respect.

For good order in society we should focus on the body as integral to the dignity of the human person. If a person, by their behaviour or appearance allows the body, even unintentionally, to detract from their dignity, that is a personal failure but also a fault borne by the society that condones such a failure.

We are in this together, not as a collection of individuals who will only to satisfy their own desires, but as a community that protects the welfare of all.  

For the Christian, a sense of the dignity of the person is usually well-embedded. "Each person is obliged to regard their body as good and to hold it in honour since God has created it", and "we are made in the image of God", says the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#364). 

 See this video on how one woman deals with modest but smart clothing.  To watch, click here

The Catholic Church declares that modesty "protects the mystery of persons" and that it is directed to building committed relationships. Modesty..."encourages patience and moderation..." 

This is a worthwhile insight:

The forms taken by modesty vary from one culture to another. Everywhere, however, modesty exists as an intuition of the spiritual dignity proper to the human person. It is born with the awakening consciousness of being a subject. Teaching modesty to children and adolescents means awakening in them respect for the human person. (#2524) 

And this:

Modesty isn’t the end goal - the person is. ... Our bodies and our souls are entirely intertwined. ... Fashion tells someone something about you before you even speak!  (Source)

The wish to be a subject and not an object is what we hear from women, but they allow themselves to be enticed into being little more than sex objects. Women complain about the voyeurism of pornography, of advertising, but do little to resist the pressures from the fashion world to keep up with influencers and trend-setters in presenting themselves in public in just the way they elsewhere think offensive.

See how the fashion magazines use, even abuse, women for their own financial gain. Cochrane tells how Vogue's use of photos of celebrities has propelled the pin-top innovation that seems to surprise her, telling how explicit photos from the Kardashian clan in that same magazine has launched another type of bare body fashion.

The main problem seems to be that a misunderstanding of "freedom" has taken hold since the sexual revolution of the 1960s. That it was a true revolution, that is a concrete departure from a previous order of thought and behaviour, has been confirmed by the ripple effects still playing out in society heaping damage on marriage and the family especially, with subsequent damage to the mental health of the young generations.

The idea of freedon in the context of how we should dress and behave needs some revision. It's a matter of "freedom to" rather than "freedom from". So-called moral permissiveness rests on an erroneous conception of human freedom - only when we have built up self-control and knowledge of our impulses can we say we are free. Otherwise, we are driven this way or that by whoever wields influence in our lives at any particular time.

In Britain at present there are public concerns about rape culture at certain universities and about the need for young girls to wear shorts under their school uniform skirts. Many parents are horrified at the way young males are treating their daughters. They should be asking why males have learnt to regard girls and women with such contempt that they fail to show the necessary respect.  

Obviously, we need an alternative approach to women feeling they have to bare their body in order to make a noise for their photo to appear on social media and celebrity websites. See the British tabloids like the Daily Mail for its daily line-up of near naked women and, lately, the use of Billie Eilish to sell copies of British Vogue.

Lillian Fallon is a freelance writer in Philadelphia. Previously working as the style editor at Verily Magazine, she is "passionate about exploring the connection between the physical and interior of the human person as seen through personal style".

She says that showing who you are is what fashion is for. There is a lot fun involved in getting an outfit together so that you look elegant or spunky or whatever. But the point is to not let others determine how you should look:

The fast fashion industry warps the visual connection between the external and internal of the human person as expressed through our clothing by telling us that 1). You must buy into trends to be relevant, and 2). Your individuality doesn’t matter and you need to fit in. But there will never be anyone else like you — you are unrepeatable. Why not choose clothing that represents this? 

About three and a half years ago, I made the switch to building an ethical wardrobe and to completely stop shopping fast fashion. I had started seeing the growing connection between the fast fashion industry and the cultural diminishment of personal style and [...] of the human person in general.

It’s important to remember that clothing should express our self-worth, not define it. To stay in check, I try not to give into the pressure to look “perfect” all the time. When I get dressed, I make sure that creativity is my goal — not perfection. Being creative means being okay with outfits that end up being weirder than you anticipated (I once accidentally dressed like Peter Pan.) Also, if I have days where I just don’t feel like putting together a super amazing outfit, that’s totally okay. Regardless of what I’m wearing, my worth as a woman made in the image of God can never change.

Disorder in society arises when principles and passions are led astray. As human beings, men and women are always battling the innate impulses that cause us to rebel against our better selves. When they dress to impress, both men and women have to consider the condition of the other sex to allow people to mix in such a way that they truly encounter each other, generating harmony rather than a distracting internal struggle. That's what modesty is all about.

Read for yourself the Christian perspective on modesty. Go here. 

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Income inequality is increasingly cruel

Private jet travel is "way over the top" this year at Aspen.  Molly Briggs/Aspen Daily News

Christopher Ingraham of The Washington Post highlighted late last year the extraordinary statistic that if Amazon executive chair Jeff Bezos gave all his employees a US$105,000 bonus he would still have more wealth than he did at the start of the pandemic.

That factoid came from an Oxfam report that arose from observing around the world, but most starkly in the United States, that  “windfall” profits flowed to a small number of very large businesses whose products and services have been in high demand during the pandemic.

Oxfam saw this phenomenon aggravating the inequality evident everywhere: 

The worsening inequality crisis triggered by Covid-19 is fuelled by an economic model that has allowed some of the world's largest corporations to funnel billions of dollars in profits to shareholders. At the same time, it has left low-wage workers and women to pay the price of the pandemic without social or financial protection.

That economic model is not inevitable - it's a result of decisions taken by those who hold corporate and political power. 

Bloomberg writer Anders Melin has been tracking the short-sighted corporate behaviour furthering inequality (see here and here), He reports the reaction to last Wednesday's action by senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to lodge a bill that would use a tax mechanism to discourage companies from "paying CEOs lavishly and workers feebly":

The proposal is a long shot given Washington’s political gridlock and broad disagreement about how income inequality should be addressed—or whether it’s even a matter in need of fixing. But if enacted, it would hit most of the biggest U.S. companies.

The typical CEO among the 1,000 biggest publicly traded firms in the country receives 144 times more than their median employee, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

Walmart Inc., for instance, has a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 983:1, with the median person receiving $22,484.

At Coca-Cola Co., the ratio is 1,621:1; GameStop Corp., the company at the center of  this year’s stock trading frenzy, has a ratio of 1,137:1 with its median worker getting $11,129.

Sanders said at a Congressional hearing Wednesday that anybody who works 40 hours a week shouldn’t have to live in poverty.

“It has always been true, of course, that CEOs make more than their employees,” he said. “But what has been going on in recent years is totally absurd.”

Ingraham picked up some of the key points from Oxfam:

The Oxfam report identifies mechanisms by which major companies have “exacerbated the economic impacts” of Covid-19.

Chief among them is the long-standing tendency of many large companies to prioritise shareholder payouts over employee wages, which has continued even as millions of workers have been laid off during the pandemic.

From 2010 to 2019, companies listed in the Standard & Poor's 500 index spent US$9.1 trillion on payouts to their wealthiest shareholders – equalling more than 90 per cent of their profits over the same period, the report said. “Several companies not only paid out all of their profits to shareholders, they sometimes went into debt or used reserves to pay their rich investors.”

Because the wealthiest 10 per cent of Americans own more than 80 per cent of the stock market, these massive payouts are a key driver of the skyrocketing wealth inequality in this country. They also set many companies up to have little financial cushion to soften the blow of the coronavirus recession, contributing to the mass layoffs and even to the shortages of medical and personal protective equipment that have plagued the US response.

"Decision-making by corporate managers has become disconnected from any sense of community or national obligation"

Oxfam said the payouts are continuing even during the public health crisis. Focusing on recent earnings statements for the 25 most profitable S&P Global 100 countries, they found that they are expected to distribute a “shocking” 124 per cent of their net profits to shareholders this year [2020]. And many companies continue to funnel cash to shareholders even as they lay off their workers.

The continued flow of shareholder payouts during the economic and public health crises “underscores the degree to which decision-making by corporate managers has become disconnected from any sense of community or national obligation,” said Oren Cass, a former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the director of American Compass, a think tank advocating for what Cass calls a “pro-worker conservatism”.

According to the report, the 32 most profitable companies globally – including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and others – are expected to collectively pull in profits totaling US$109b above their average annual haul, according to the companies' earnings statements. In July [2020], the chief executives of all four companies were peppered with questions about their profits and business practices during a House antitrust hearing.

The state of the business world mirrors the moral state in most societies. The "absurd" imbalance in pay levels show how the values of a few decades ago that stressed the importance of a sense of community have deteriorated, and business people have grown casually cruel out of habit - perhaps Gordon Gekko's "greed is good" code has fully taken hold.

In that light, Amazon's anti-union efforts besmirch a company I find very convenient in buying from. I will take my business away if instances of such efforts continue to surface. Of course, Amazon is not alone in fighting to prevent workers gaining a platform for securing a bettter deal with pay and benefits.

I think this is where progressives in advanced economies have got on to a morally bankrupt path by pursuing culture issues like "white privilege" and "human rights" that satisfy loud campaigners dealing with sexual matters that ignore reality and, in fact, run heavily against the family. 

Here's a statement I came across recently in a book dealing with China's struggle in the early 20th Century to modernise. I see weak-minded Western progressives very clearly in these words:

If you demand political rights you will not be met with much opposition, whereas if you speak about the equal distribution of wealth you will find yourself up against real enemies.

John Harwood of CNBC has some pertinent remarks:

The rise of income inequality and the struggles of so many families to get ahead have shaken American politics across the spectrum.

President Donald Trump invokes the plight of “the forgotten people.” Liberals call for massive new government programs.

Wall Street titan Jamie Dimon proposes “a Marshall Plan for America.” Ideological conservatives warn of a socialist uprising that would ruin American capitalism.

But economists who study the issue say it need not come to that. With bold and targeted steps, they argue, government can increase opportunity and incomes for many more people in ways that strengthen, not weaken, American capitalism.

He goes on to list five ways to fight wealth inequality. It's well worth a read to get an insight into the possibilities available for lifting millions out of a decidedly stressful condition in life. Action is well overdue, and public support at all levels is needed in order for the common good to be achieved. The US infrastructure legislation is a necessary first step and it needs to be replicated widely. But social welfare programmes are also essential.  

Read Harwood's solutions to our predicament that entraps a horrendous number, and see an earlier post titled "Morals and markets and outlandish CEO pay" (here), as well as the related post "Morals and markets and the common good" (here). 

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