"Love Never Felt So Good"... or Did It?

When I saw that Justin Timberlake and Michael Jackson were making their way up the charts with their duet "Love Never Felt So Good", my first thought was, "Hey... isn't Michael Jackson dead?" Modern technology then caught up with my momentary confusion (and fear of zombies) to inform me that the song is featured on Jackson's second posthumous album Xscape (2014); a remixed version has also been released with Timberlake adding his vocals to the track. The song was first written and recorded by Jackson and Paul Anka back in 1983 as a demo, but was never officially released under Jackson's name. So now, as a tribute to Jackson's impact on modern pop music, we have this song in its present form. I'm not a Michael Jackson fan, so I can't speak to the song's faithfulness to his legacy or anything else. What I can say something about is the content of the song, which seems somewhat paradoxical and yet completely stereotypical of the modern approach to love, and the increasing emphasis on the feeling of being in love rather than the essence of love itself.

The song's title carries with it a certain assumption about its meaning: when we hear the phrase "love never felt so good", we tend to complete it mentally with a temporal phrase, such as "until I met you; until I experienced your love". We have a tendency to assume that what is meant by this phrase is that love was never fully appreciated or experienced until the current beloved came into the lover's life and opened new vistas of love for him. Now, in the arms of this beloved, the goodness of love is truly felt and enjoyed. However, this interpretation is dead wrong in the context of the lyrical construction of this song. Rather than the beloved enhancing or perfecting the experience of love for the lover, the beloved is actually being held in opposition to love: "Baby, love never felt so good / And I doubt if it ever could / Not like you hold me". The message being conveyed here is not "you perfect love", but "you are better than love; I prefer you to love". In all likelihood, the pleasure of love could never give to one the same type of "goodness" that this other person is able to offer. The "goodness" that exists between the two is explicitly not love; it is something else, something better. But what exactly do the poet and the subject of his song share together? It is described in the lyrics as holding one another, spending nights together, and, oddly enough, loving each other. All of this appears to be a contradiction in terms: how can you prefer the beloved to love itself? How can your experience of the beloved be both love and not love at the same time? How is it possible to separate the two?

The truth is you can't, really. As human beings, we were built to love and be loved. It's everything we desire to receive from others and everything we truly want to give to others. To say we don't want love or that we want something better than love is to lie to ourselves about what we really are. There's no shame in desiring to be loved; it's part of what it means to be human. But we do need to understand the nature of love itself properly before we can fully understand what we truly desire when we want to be loved. As we are all well aware, loving and being loved are complicated matters. And the examples and experiences of love that we are privy to tend to mix that deepest desire of our hearts with a lot of other things that are not so desirable. As Josef Pieper comments in his essay "On Love", "we need only leaf through a few magazines at the barber's to want not to let the word 'love' cross our lips for a good long time". Sentimentalism and commercialism and sexualism, cheating and abuse, breakups and makeups and divorce and remarriage, pills and Playboy and prostitution and Cosmo, rape and abortion and cohabitation and commitment, almost everything surrounding the idea of love between the sexes serves to scare people away from love entirely. In the face of all of this, people have a tendency to want to boil things down to the basics and strip away anything else that seems extraneous. In the case of love, many people ask themselves: what do I like about being in love? And the answer usually runs something like this: the good feelings I get from it. Therefore, in order to avoid the bother and responsibility and even trauma that comes with the experience of love, a person may try to isolate those good feelings and work only to perpetuate them. In this case, the so-called lover and beloved will only come together in order to perpetuate good feelings with one another. All of the other nuisances and responsibilities that come with loving and being loved by another person are neatly avoided. One only keeps "the good stuff".

It's perfectly acceptable that the poet should make a distinction between what he experiences with his beloved in this song and what love actually is. It is true that what the two are doing together is not anyone's definition of "love". What's interesting to me in the chorus of this song is the evidence that, despite our insistence that the "good feelings" separated from the responsibilities of love is really what we want, we can't really fool the deepest desires of our hearts. The chorus of the song says this: "Baby, every time I love you / It's in and out of my life / In, out, baby / Tell me if you really love me / It's in and out my life / Drivin' me crazy". Is this the best songwriting the world has ever seen? Definitely not. (And they accuse Justin Bieber of being unoriginal.) But it does express something inherent to our human desire for love: we can't escape it. No matter how good the setup seems to be -- a beloved who provides a maximum experience of pleasure for a minimum amount of effort seems ideal -- the human heart will constantly clamor for more. "Good feelings" are actually not good enough. Erotic love desires permanence, commitment, and, yes, responsibility. We don't actually want the good things of our lives to flit in and out, to be here one moment and gone the next. We don't really want the beloved to be nothing more than a call-girl (or boy), an instrument of pleasure that we bring out of the closet when we're feeling down and put away again once we feel better. We actually want to relate to other people; we want the beloved to truly love us, to be a permanent part of our existence, to care for us in all aspects of our lives and not just physical stimulation. We want to know that we are valued as persons, that we are loved for who we are, that we are indispensable to someone. This is what the human heart truly longs for; this is what is driving the poet crazy.

The poet wants the beloved to "tell me if you really love me". This admission in a certain sense undoes everything that is said in the previous stanzas: there is nothing actually better than love, even if it doesn't always "feel so good". Our true happiness does not consist of a maximization of pleasure and a minimization of pain. Our true happiness consists of being affirmed by the true love of another, of abiding in that love with the assurance of permanence, and upholding that love in responsible reciprocity. Nothing truly feels as good as being secure in the love of the ones we love. This is a human truth that, no matter how much we twist and turn to try to get around it, and no matter how much we mangle the reality under a commercialized, sexualized, utilitarian mentality, will always rise to the surface, driving us crazy and making us restless until we seek it out and find it.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Is Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" Really All That Fancy?

When I was initially introduced to the musical stylings of Iggy Azalea, I thought, "Interesting, a
female Eminem." Listening to "Fancy", from Azalea's debut album The New Classic (2014), however, I started to change my mind: she's more like a modern incarnation of Gwen Stefani. Picking through the lyrics to "Fancy" changed my mind once more: no, no, she's just another media doll who is willing to sell her talent in exchange for fast cash and splash-in-the-pan fame. It's a shame, really. I think she could be a really refreshing voice if she took the time to rap on some poignant and original topics, but no, it's just sex and money pretty much 24/7. B-o-r-i-n-g, I-g-g-y. And this is a real shame, not just because it means that our culture continues to be pummeled with nothing but egotistical smash-and-grabs instead of true art. That's a travesty in itself, of course, but the real-life tragedy is in Azalea herself: rather than taking the opportunity to truly set herself apart in the rap world, she chooses to squander her talent in the same cesspool as Jason Derulo and Chris Brown, which, in my opinion, is a pretty sad place to be. Azalea may be able to buy all the fancy things the name brands have to offer her with all the money she's after, but it can't buy her -- or any of us -- meaning or integrity.

Azalea's "Fancy" spends most of its time -- I mean, most of its time that isn't spent in self-aggrandizement -- harping on the same tired tropes you'll find in any female party song, from Ke$ha to Lady Gaga to Nicki Minaj to Miley Cyrus. All of the necessary chants in favor of one's own world status and Venusian power over men are present to make clear just how much of a goddess one is: "Film star, yeah, I'm deluxe, / Classic, expensive, you don't get to touch". The demands for first-class treatment and prestige are trotted out with due process: "Swagger on super, I can't shop at no department". And of course, it is made abundantly clear to everyone what kind of alcohol is being consumed (necessarily expensive), and that it is being drunk excessively: "Cup of Ace, cup of Goose, cup of Cris / ... Takin' all the liquor straight, never chase that / ... Champagne spilling, you should taste that". Because nothing says "fancy" like spilling your drink. Or wasting good alcohol just because you can. And, of course, nothing says "class" like flaunting your heedless waste and excess, especially for our environmentally-challenged, first-world lifestyle of decadence and opulence. Add a trashed hotel room to the alcohol abuse (classic "fancy" behavior, naturally), as well as some overtly expensive status symbols ("somethin' worth half a ticket on my wrist"), and you pretty much have the recipe for modern "me-generation" disaster. Recessions, and "global warming", and first-world poverty, and pretty much every other buzzword you can think of has its roots in this pattern of behavior.

I'm not trying to put the blame on poor Iggy. After all, this modern mess is over a century in the making, and Azalea is just as much a symptom of it as recession. But her example is a very effective way to hold a mirror up to ourselves and to see our own individual and social problems. Perhaps the most disturbing trend exhibited here is Azalea's obsession with money: "So get my money on time, if they not money, decline / ... Put that paper over all... / Never turn down money". She basically admits in this song that she is willing to do anything for money, suffer any degradation, give up any sort of integrity: the money is priority. Money is god. It is money that she worships, that she works for, that she chases after, that she lusts after. It is telling that the line "Never turn down money" occurs immediately after she has been tantalizing a supposed male with her desirability: the desire for money above all else almost instantly degenerates into prostitution. The lust for money is so all-encompassing that even the integrity of the body, the dignity of one's own person, can be sacrificed to it in a heartbeat. None of us are immune to this threat. Whether it's our bodies, our time, our talents, our families, even our opinions, everything about us can be sacrificed on the altar of money if we are willing to "put that paper over all". And the modern world tells us that we should do exactly that. Men and women should give up their ability to serve their spouses and raise their children properly in order to chase the almighty dollar. Young people should sacrifice their true talents and desires in order to pursue lucrative career paths they neither desire nor enjoy. Our governments are willing to cater to the whims of wealthy lobbyists rather than pursue the common good in order to maintain an exorbitant status quo. This is a pervasive problem; it starts with the fear and selfishness of the individual and spreads to affect the entire population. Intense individualistic greed is at the heart of the breakdown in our culture.

The more modern problem with our wealth -- at least, compared to how these problems appeared sixty years ago -- is that their destructive aspects are more evident and more consequential. Practically speaking, money cannot be an end in itself. We cannot really "put that paper above all". Money is just a symbol, a sign for other things. Our wealth has to be directed to some sort of end: the maintenance of a family, investment in societal goods, charitable work, and so on. The problem for most modern people is that their focus on money has no end goal. It has become an end in itself, and, when its uselessness is perceived by those who acquire it, its end tends to become destructive -- self-destructive first, and then socially destructive. Young starlets, like Iggy Azalea and Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus and whoever else, end up in trouble precisely because they have money without purpose. The media tells us that happiness lies in money because money can get you things. We are subjected to a veritable onslaught of advertising that convinces us to dump our money into alcohol, fashion, cars, technological gizmos, and whatever else, but even these things lack a purpose in our lives. Why do we want these things? The makers of "stuff" can't really tell us that. They can't give us purpose. Things can't give us purpose. And the frustration of wasting all of our time and effort on purposeless things tends to drive us to destructive ends. We try to tell ourselves that the end of alcohol is fun (which is true), but fun becomes drunkenness, debauchery, and destruction, none of which are really any fun and are harmful to both ourselves and others. Fashion and cars and gizmos, purposeless in and of themselves, take on a role as status symbols; they become a way for us to bring others down and build ourselves up. Azalea uses her "fancy" status symbols, her wealth and her fame, to put down other people: men are not good enough to have her, and women are not good enough to compare with her. Azalea, of course, is not unique in this; almost all pop music caters to this mentality. More importantly, we cater to this mentality. We want to be envied. We want others to see what we have and think we're somehow better because of it. We think that wealth and influence over others we will gives us meaning and purpose. We think that, as Azalea's rap collaborator Charli XCX says, it "feels so good getting what I want", so that must be what the goal of life is. But it's not. And persisting in this misconception is what is destroying our world, our culture, our relationships, and ourselves.

So what can we do about this? I think a good first step would be to rethink our priorities in life: what is truly important? What do we truly want out of life? What truly makes us happy in this world? What is a reasonable and balanced way of achieving that?  And perhaps a good second step would be to put our desire for money in its proper context, remembering that money is a means to an end and not an end in itself. Earning money must be for a purpose, and we should have an awareness of what that purpose is in our own lives. Finally, rather than encouraging individual wealth and success in our culture as the entire measure of our lives, we should really be encouraging personal integrity and social responsibility if we plan on living in a civilized society in the next century. Selfish individualism is a cultural dead-end. It's time to take a cue from the "fancy" lifestyle of Azalea and the rest, and make an about-face before we become the indentured slaves of the dollar bill.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

300: What Does Sacrifice Actually Mean?

Zack Snyder's 300 (2006), an adaptation of Frank Miller's comic series of the same name, is one of my favorite films. From that, and from my previous post on Fight Club (1999), you are perhaps already forming an idea of what kind of moviegoer I am. I like epic films. I like brain-twisters. I like a lot of bloody carnage. But what I really like in these films -- something that is often absent or co-opted in other films -- is their sense of heroism and self-sacrifice. In some films (like Fight Club and 300), this can be difficult to see and often can be overshadowed by things like multiple personality disorders and CGI-enhanced abdominal muscles. I find it unfortunate and rather bizarre that the first thing many people say to me when I express my admiration for this film is, "You know their abs are fake, right?" It bothers me that many people can't seem to get past the superficial elements of the film in order to see the strength of the story being told beneath them. Underneath the CGI are real characters, not empty husks, and underneath the slow-motion action sequences and suspended globules of blood is a story that tackles head-on the question of what sacrifice really means.

There are two ideas of sacrifice being used throughout the narrative that are, in a sense, directly opposed to one another. On the one hand, there is the "sacrifice" required or recommended by the villainous or cowardly characters, such as Xerxes, Theron, Ephialtes, and the Ephors (those creepy old men who divine the will of the gods through drugged dancing girls). The notion of sacrifice proposed by these characters is one that undermines the true meaning of sacrifice by using the language of heroism to promote a form of moral slavery. It is in the "best interest" of Leonidas, king of the Spartans, to give Xerxes what he desires. It is "heroic" of him to allow Xerxes to conquer them without bloodshed, to put his own desire to fight aside in favor of "protecting" his people from certain death. Xerxes and Ephialtes tell Leonidas that it is in his own interest, as well as that of his comrades and nation, to join Xerxes; he and his loved ones will receive wealth, power, prestige, and reward beyond measure. Isn't that what a good leader should provide for his people? Isn't that what a good husband, father, king should choose for those he loves? Is it not a kind of sacrifice, a heroic sacrifice, to put aside his own pride in order to protect his family from the pain of losing him and his people from the horror of Xerxes' merciless army?

This notion of "sacrifice" is deeply flawed in two important ways. The first is in the means: it is never acceptable to make concessions to moral evil for the sake of a supposed good. The ends never justify the means. Leonidas desires to protect his nation from Xerxes' army, yes, and he could do so by simply agreeing to allow Xerxes to "oversee" Sparta and paying a tax. Bowing to Xerxes would allow his people to live in peace and avoid bloodshed. But this act has serious consequences attached to it. Xerxes' world is one built on slavery, and not just the kind that subjugates a person's physical body to the will of another: the slavery of Xerxes is a spiritual bondage. It is slavery to money. It is slavery to pleasure. It is slavery to ambition. The Ephors, Ephialtes, and Theron all make this abundantly clear through their words and actions throughout the film as they encourage Leonidas to capitulate to Xerxes' demands. In bowing to Xerxes, Leonidas must bow to all that he represents; he must bow to evil, yield to it, make concessions, and every concession is another step down the road to eternal bondage. There is no deal we can make with the devil that does not end in hell. When confronted with evil, there is no accord that can be struck, no truce to be made. The only proper response to evil is to fight it.

The second flaw in the villains' notion of "sacrifice" is the idea that one can demand the sacrifice of others for some vague notion of the "common good". Theron encourages Leonidas to use his power as king to make the decision to sacrifice the freedom of his people in exchange for their lives. Ephialtes asks Leonidas to sacrifice the safety of his men to satiate Ephialtes' own desires for glory and perhaps to strike a blow for equality. In both cases, Leonidas is asked to make others into a sacrifice on behalf of larger goals. This can be a very tempting idea, but it denies the reality of what a sacrifice truly is. A sacrifice must be a denial of self to oneself and a gift of self to others. No one can make the decision on behalf of others to sacrifice anything. No world leader anywhere can ever justly say, for example, "My people are going to make the sacrifice to never eat fast food again in order to ease the strain on our health care system", and then enforce that sacrifice on them. This is immediately not a sacrifice on anyone's part, but a slip into totalitarianism that denies the inviolability of the free will of every individual human person. It is true sometimes that "sacrifices must be made", but they can only be made on the individual level by the free choice of the person making the sacrificial gift of themselves on behalf of others. This is exactly what Leonidas and his three hundred do. Leonidas is careful to stress the importance of freedom in going to face Xerxes. He chooses to do it himself, and the men who come with him are each willing to sacrifice themselves to help stop the threat to their homeland. By telling the political leaders of his kingdom that he is merely "taking a walk", Leonidas strives to ensure that his sacrificial actions do not impinge on their freedom to make sacrificial choices of their own. This is what lies at the heart of all heroic sacrifice: the courage to make a sacrifice of oneself in freedom and out of love.

This second point is intrinsically connected to a third: we cannot sacrifice what is not ours to give. If the reality of sacrifice is a denial of the self in order to give of the self in love on behalf of others, then it stands to reason that the thing we must deny ourselves and the thing we must give of ourselves must actually be ours. And this is where 300 runs into a nasty little problem. Leonidas' queen Gorgo also attempts to make of herself a sacrifice in order to support her husband's heroic stand against evil, but her sacrifice falls short of its aims, both in the plot and in principle. Gorgo believes that she needs Theron's support in the senate in order to move the politicians to support open war against Xerxes; she agrees to give him whatever he wants in order to obtain his support. Naturally, as an ambitious and vicious character, Theron desires the queen's body in exchange for his voice. Gorgo agrees to this and, in doing so, betrays everything her husband is fighting for: freedom, integrity, reason, virtue. Her end goal of helping her husband does not justify the moral evil of adultery, regardless of the circumstances. While Leonidas has gone to war to protect his wife and the wives of his comrades from the rape and pillage of the Persian army, Gorgo enacts the very thing he fights and dies to shield her from. Rather than giving freedom to herself or others, Gorgo's submission to Theron's demands, her act of bowing to evil, makes her a slave to his word when he accuses her before the senate and works to set the politicians even more ardently against her. It may be argued that, regardless of the outcome of her actions, Gorgo's choice was indeed sacrificial because she subjected herself to something she did not want in order to give of herself to help the husband she loved. However, this idea does not take into account the reality of marriage, in which two people give completely of themselves to the other and receive the other in return as a gift. Gorgo's marital relationship with Leonidas means that her sexuality is absolutely something she cannot offer as a sacrifice for the war effort. Her sexual gift is something she has already given to Leonidas through their marriage and cannot be offered to anyone else while that marriage lasts. In effect, her sexual gift is not something that belongs solely to her and, therefore, cannot be sacrificed without denying Leonidas the freedom to make the sacrifice as well. She does not ask him if he is willing to make this sacrifice, nor does she have the opportunity to do so, but I have a strong suspicion that, even if she did, he would say no. Her actions, no matter what good she hoped to gain from it, cannot be considered truly sacrificial because they make concessions to evil and sacrifice what cannot be freely sacrificed.

It might be argued that Gorgo's and Leonidas' actions are symbolic of male and female sacrifice: a male yields his body up to physical death, while a woman yields her body up to a kind of sexual death. However, both men and women are called to the same kind of heroism, a heroism that does not make distinctions based on gender: that of the martyr. Martyrdom, the most perfect form of sacrifice, requires that the integrity of the soul remain unbroken. Martyrdom demands that one endure any sort of physical evil before one would dare to commit or participate in a moral evil. Martyrdom means that one acknowledges the good of the spiritual life as far above and beyond any good the physical life has to offer. For the martyr, the temptations of Xerxes fall on deaf ears, for the temptations to wealth, sex, and power have no hold on their hearts and are seen as the fleeting vanities that they are. It is the martyr who truly hopes for the good of all mankind when he is able to stand firm in the midst of the deepest trials and not crumble beneath the onslaught of evil. It is the martyr, the one who understands what true sacrifice consists of, who is able to "fight in the shade", to stand firm even when the sky is darkened with countless arrows: "You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day" (Ps. 91:5). This is the highest example of heroic sacrifice, and it is also the true glory of which Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans could only imagine.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

"YOLO": You Only Live Once or You Oughta Look Out?

Before I even start talking about the infamous acronym popularized by Canadian rapper Drake's song "The Motto", you have to watch this music video for the song "YOLO" (2013) by the comedy musical group The Lonely Island, featuring Adam Levine and Kendrick Lamar.

Did you watch it? No, you have to watch it first. Go watch it.

Okay, now that you've watched it, I hope you were as entertained as I was. The song was first released on an episode of Saturday Night Live last year, and provides an impressive and important counterpoint to the popular meaning of the phrase "You only live once". Most often, the phrase is used to justify or excuse dangerous, irresponsible, or immature behavior. The idea is that, since we only have one chance to experience everything in this world, we are completely justified in any sort of reckless behavior we may choose to indulge in. As long as we are gaining new experiences, it makes no difference whether these experiences have positive or negative effects on the totality of one's life. This motto is closely linked to the idea of "living without regrets", which most people understand to mean doing whatever one would like and not regretting doing it, regardless of what negative effects our choices might have on our lives. Although these mottoes purport to believe that "you only live once", in practice they actually deny the reality of human mortality and mutability, and naively assume that nothing we undergo has the power to destroy or diminish us in any way, shape, or form. This leads to a false belief about what it means to be a human person, which leads to choices that damage us both physically and spiritually. Both YOLO and "No regrets" have been manipulated by our culture's adolescent mentality to justify infantile behavior and a life philosophy of instant gratification, which have been incredibly damaging to the youth of our culture and, hence, to the future of culture itself.

The Lonely Island, well known for their parodic themes in all of their music, latch on to this infantile idea of YOLO and turn it on its head. Instead of justifying reckless and immature behavior, "YOLO" encourages people to take seriously the fact that we really do have only one life to live, and that the choices we make in this life will have a lasting impact on how this life turns out. To that end, The Lonely Island advises (humorously, of course) that we do everything within our power to protect and extend that life by avoiding dangerous behaviors, looking to our financial future, and basically avoiding any life experience whatsoever. The obsessive nature of this kind of self-preservation eventually devolves, in the video, into phobias, neuroses, and paranoia. The one life we have to live is constantly threatened by death and nothingness. Rather than supporting the recklessness that denies the mortality of the human person, this opposing idea of "you only live once" sees human existence as a one-time, fragile, ultimately meaningless thing that has no life or import beyond the temporal confines of the living body. The physical death of the body is seen as the end of all human activity and the end of our opportunities to gather up any enjoyment for ourselves; yet, in the process of this desperate struggle to store up joys, the joy of life is altogether sucked away. What The Lonely Island expresses in a humorous way is another unfortunate misconception about the human person as inexorably degenerating into nothingness. As with the misconception of immortality, the misconception of nothingness leads to errors in judgement about human life that has damaging effects on us both physically and spiritually.

What we're missing out on in both of these polarizing viewpoints is the pilgrim nature of the human person. Yes, in some ways we are poised between being and nothingness, but nothingness is not inexorable by any means and eternal being is far from assured. The frantic clawing for security in wealth, career, health, or any other area of life is a cover for the deep-seated despair in our lives that believes there is no way to escape the devastation of nothingness, but is desperate to hold it off for as long as possible. The reckless YOLO experience that is heedless of personal danger is guilty of another kind of sin, that of presumption, and a particularly Lutheran presumption at that. Luther believed that our faith in Christ saved us, and our personal acts, regardless of their moral merit or demerit, had no bearing whatsoever on our ultimate fate. In this sense, for Luther, after baptism and the solemn profession of faith in Christ, you are free to do whatever you want. In the same way, the YOLO lifestyle presumes that eternal being has already been bestowed on us and that personal actions are inconsequential to who we ultimately become or to how our actions effect others. Both ways of "only living once" are narrow and selfish, denying the reality of humanity and maintaining a staunch individualism that denies the intrinsic value of the other, as well.

The true way to live once for all requires us to find a mean between these two radical and false views of the human person and its place in the world. We must reaffirm the fact that our existence is a true good, that we were created out of love, and that all things that are set in motion or put into being are meant to stay in motion or in being. We are meant to be, really and truly. The first moment of our existence in the womb of our mothers propelled us forward into being, and we perpetually gravitate towards the Source of all being by nature. We are meant to continue in existence, and this reality must give us, first, the hope and, second, the courage to live our lives to the fullest, to seek after the good in all things, and to fully actualize all the potentialities of our being. This is the answer to the desperate despair of the paranoid neurotic within all of us that is desperate to build a fortress around itself in an attempt to cheat death: hope and courage. At the same time, we must combat the presumption that eternal being is already within our grasp. As long as we exist in this world, nothingness is still a reality for us. It is not inexorable and it by no means has an equal pull on us with the Source of our being. However, we always have the ability to make a free choice for nothingness rather than being. We can choose to deny our nature and aim ourselves towards nothing. This is always within our power. Because of this, we must be on our guard and act with prudence in all our decisions, making informed and wise choices for our good. In this, as well, we are required to hope that, in accordance with our choices for being, we may be granted that eternal being we desire from the core of our very selves.

Yes, it is true that we only live once. But what we decide to do with this one life is of the utmost importance. Courage, prudence, hope: these are the key ingredients for living life to the fullest. We must have the courage to go out into the world and make our mark, to use our talents as best we can, and, through our interactions with others and the experiences we accrue, to become the best person we can possibly be. This is an enormous task and requires great courage. But courage alone is foolhardy; it must be tempered by prudence. We must make choices every moment of our lives, and these choices will affect us in every imaginable way. We must be discerning so that we can make choices for our good, choices that continue to propel us toward being, and avoid those choices that will whittle us away to nothing. Prudence is required to temper courage and direct our lives to their ultimate ends. And, before everything and after, we must hope. Without hope, we cannot be courageous. Without hope, prudence is a false veneer. Hope is necessary to drive us forward and stir in us the fires of ingenuity, passion, creativity, and redemption.

So, YOLO? Yes, YOLO. But, as in all things, it's a matter of quality over quantity. You only live once, so you had better make this the best life you could possibly live.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Is There a Problem with Ariana Grande's "Problem"?

Well, sure, there are a few. But none of them are really to her detriment. The problem she faces is humanity's problem, one we can all be sympathetic to in one way or another. "Problem" (2014), the debut single from Ariana Grande's upcoming and as yet untitled second album, is catchy and will have you toe-tapping along in no time. Although it makes use of one of my least favorite instruments, the sax, in the worst possible way (see Jason Derulo's "Talk Dirty" for another horrible example, as well as Jennifer Lopez's 2005 single "Get Right"), the song itself is enjoyable enough. The idea behind the lyrics relates an experience rather than an opinion, which leaves room for the listener to deliver the final judgement on what to do in this particular situation. The problem in "Problem" is what to do when you know intellectually that a relationship isn't right for you, but your emotional connection to the person makes it difficult for you to truly cut ties and move on. The experience is common enough, and "Problem" hits on all of the inconsistencies of the will that make firm resolutions largely untenable. I plan to highlight just a few points from the song's theme that I think shed some light on the problem of being resolute in our relationships with others, but also in our relationship with ourselves.

First of all, I guess I should make that judgement which, I think, "Problem" allows its audience to make: Go cold turkey. We are all well aware -- intellectually, at any rate -- that the best way to overcome an addiction is to remove the source of the addiction from your life completely. If you're trying to quit smoking, the best way is to get rid of your cigarettes and not buy any more. If you're trying to quit drinking, get rid of all your alcohol and don't buy any more. Don't even go into the liquor store. Avoid places where you know people will be drinking. We know these things. Of course, I wouldn't go so far as to say that we have "addictions" to our significant others and, if we break up with them, that we are trying to overcome an "addiction" necessarily. But there is a sense in which we truly are trying to "kick the habit", so to speak. Being in a relationship does create certain good feelings in us which, once they are removed, can cause us to feel empty and lonely. We go into a state of "withdrawal" in which we find it very difficult to be happy without those good feelings being fed to us by the significant other. The easiest way to fix that, it often seems, is simply to reestablish the relationship, just like the easiest way to kill the craving for a cigarette is just to have one. If the relationship is not a healthy one, then getting back into it is just like taking up our bad habit again: we satisfy our craving, but we continue to make ourselves unhealthy and make it more difficult for ourselves to make a clean break. In relationships, we have the added problem of the other person, as well. If we have said, in the words of Taylor Swift, that "we are never, ever, ever getting back together", but then we give in to the other's entreaties to satisfy our own cravings for good feelings, or even simply out of a misplaced sympathy, we do damage to the other person by setting up false hopes and do damage to ourselves by making our word something that can be manipulated and ignored. This is what leads to increasingly messy break-ups and severely damaged hearts. We need to make firm acts of the will in these cases and truly make an end of things.

Acts of the will are extremely difficult things for us. Our wills have been weakened by original sin and our bad habits. We can't say no to extra desserts and large sizes, so we're obese. We can't say no to sexual urges, so we fund a billion-dollar porn industry. We can't say no to alcohol, so we're intoxicated every weekend. We can't say no to Netflix and video games, so we waste hours and days of our lives doing nothing constructive. We can't say no to gossip, so the magazine racks, and even the newspapers, are filled with salacious headlines to tempt our curiosity. We can't say no to sales racks, so we buy cartloads of things we'll never need. Why can't we say no? Partially, I think, because no one asks us to. Our culture thrives -- if we can call it that -- on the mantra, "If it feels good, do it". Self-control is frowned upon by the consumerist mentality and laughed at by the corporate billionaires. Don't stop feeding your face, or you'll stop funding our bank accounts! Don't stop getting more of what you want, or you'll be missing out on the good things of life! You're only really living if other things control your life! The truth is that self-control, largely, keeps the rich from getting richer, and they don't want that. That's what advertising is all about. It feeds "addictions", weakens the will, and provides us with excuses to become more and more a slave to things rather than to become their masters. The truth is we can only be the masters of things once we are the masters of ourselves.

So how do we do that? How do we learn to master ourselves so that we can truly be free to make the best decisions for our health and well-being, both physical and spiritual? Well, self-control is a virtue and, like any virtue, it is only attained through exercise. Our wills must be exercised in order to make them stronger. Virtue is a habit and habits are built up through constant practice. So we can build up our willpower in the same way that we might build up muscle: start small with something you can handle, but also something that challenges you, like giving up one of your four coffees a day to try to reduce your dependency on caffeine. Refrain from getting large sizes of things at fast food places to gain mastery over your eating habits. Try getting up fifteen minutes earlier than you normally would on the weekends to gain mastery over your sleeping habits. Allot yourself only two hours of TV-watching or game-playing per day and stick to it. Traditional Catholic discipline stemming from the Desert Fathers and Mothers has always taught that exhibiting constant mastery over the desires of the body in small ways helps us to be steadfast when faced with stronger temptations to self-indulgence in both the physical and spiritual realms. Being able to deny one's stomach its inordinate desire for excess food, for instance, enables one to deny one's sexual drive its inordinate desire for gratification. Even more so, making a habit of denying the body makes it easier and more natural to be able to deny oneself in spiritual matters, such as the desire for fame and undue praise, the desire to be right at the expense of charity, or the desire even to receive the pleasures of God's presence in one's prayer life. The dry seasons of the soul are overcome much more readily by the person who is familiar with imposing "dry seasons" on his body.

All of this comes back around (finally) to Ariana Grande's "Problem". Her problem is a problem of the will and, as much as it relates to the problem of setting aside a bad relationship for good, it also relates to the much greater problem of our cultural lack of self-control. Grande's line, "I shouldn't want it / But I gotta have it", describes us all. We all need to wrestle with our willpower so that we can not only know what's best for us, but also have the ability -- the will -- to do it. This requires effort, it requires practice, it requires exercise in order to build a habit. It can be an arduous task, but it is within our reach and could be the answer to so many of our problems. Wouldn't it be nice to say, along with Grande's rap collaborator Iggy Azalea via rap artist Jay-Z, "I got 99 problems, but my will ain't one"?

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Finding Hope in the Dark Wood of Dante's Inferno

A couple of weeks ago, I read a lovely little story about how Dante's Divine Comedy helped the author overcome his midlife crisis. It was a beautiful testament to the way literature -- and art in general -- can reach beyond time and culture and language to have a substantial impact on our personal lives in the here and now. The story created through the brilliant mind of a 13th-century Italian poet of traveling through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven on a quest to rediscover his beloved Beatrice may seem like it could not possibly have anything to do with us, here and now, in the progressive 21st century with our enlightened minds which are no longer imprisoned by the "superstitions" of the Middle Ages. And yet, no matter how often we insist that we are somehow substantially "different" from our historical predecessors, we are reminded over and over again through literature that we are still very much the same. In fact, the same questions, experiences, emotions, and contemplations have stuck with us throughout our long history because, as long as we continue to exist as human beings in this world, we will always be on a pilgrimage, a journey, a search for the answers to the inmost questions and longings of our spirits. This is an integral part of our being and cannot be removed. We will not be able to "evolve" away from this. We will always be searching through our own personal Hells, Purgatories, and Heavens to find a way to finally soothe our mental unrest. Dante, as one of humanity's most moving authors, gives us a handbook on how to do just that with his magnum opus, the Divine Comedy.

The Divine Comedy is too great a work to ever do justice to in any one blog post, and I don't intend to do so here. Instead, I'd like to just wander through a few moments in the text and muse on their possible applications to us. What does Dante's treatment of the Lustful tell us about the sin itself and our relationship to it? How about the Blasphemers? What can we learn about our own journeys towards perfection from the Proud in Purgatory? Or the Envious? What can we learn from Dante's conversations with St. Thomas Aquinas or St. James in Heaven that may inform our behavior or inspire us with a new fervor for beatitude? This questions will hopefully be tackled over time. In this post, however, I will just wander briefly with Dante through the dark wood in which his story begins and make my way with him to the gates of Hell, upon which is written those famous lines: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here".

At the beginning of Canto 1, we find Dante lost and alone in a dark wood. His description of the wood is an allegory for the state of his soul during his own midlife crisis, his "dark night" of the soul: "Midway this way of life we're bound upon, / I woke to find myself in a dark wood, / Where the right road was wholly lost and gone. // Ay me! how hard to speak of it -- that rude / And rough and stubborn forest! the mere breath of memory / Stirs the old fear in the blood". Rude, rough, and stubborn: these qualities speak to the three types of sin which make up the circles of Hell in Dante's epic, namely, the self-indulgent, the violent, and the malicious. Dante here realizes that he is a lost soul, bereft of grace, and doesn't know where to turn. He says he was "so heavy and full of sleep" that he lost his way; it is through sloth, inattentiveness to the needs of his own soul, that he has drifted from the state of grace almost without realizing it. His defenses were down and sin crept in. How often does this happen to us! Too often I find myself growing tired and lazy, no longer willing to meet the expectations of my life, allowing things to slip further and further out of control, until I one day look around me and am shocked at what my life has become. How did I wander so far off the path? When did I stop paying attention? It can take much effort to shake the sleep from our eyes, stand up, and work ourselves back towards the right road, but we can do it. However, we can't do it alone.

Dante first attempts to "do it alone", to find his own path to his goals without the help of any other power. He attempts to climb a mountain to get out of the dark wood, the mountain of Purgatory. However, he is prevented from climbing it by three creatures: the Leopard, the Lion, and the She-Wolf. These animals, like the description of the dark wood, are emblematic of the three main levels of sinfulness in Hell. When faced with these three hindrances, Dante is completely overwhelmed by his inability to overcome them and falls into despair: "at that dread sight a blank / Despair and whelming terror pinned me fast, / Until all hope to scale the mountain sank." He despairs of ever escaping the darkness and climbing the mountain; he despairs of ever escaping the darkness of his own soul and making the climb to purgation. Despite our many affirmations that we can "do whatever we set our mind to", or that our will is capable of conquering anything set before us, this is not the case when it comes to conquering sin. We are not capable of simply willing sin out of our lives. We cannot will ourselves into Heaven, and neither can Dante. Dante needs help to find salvation and, in his time of need, he finds Virgil -- or rather, Virgil finds him.

Virgil, for Dante, is the poet of all poets; he is Dante's inspiration. He is also considered by Dante to be a philosopher and natural scientist, a vast reservoir of knowledge about the world and man, possessing all of the wisdom of the ancient world of Greece and Rome. Encompassing both aspects of the human mind, creative and analytic, poet and philosopher, Virgil represents allegorically the height of intellectual and moral virtue that human reason can attain without the aid of supernatural grace. It is through the wisdom, virtue, and beauty of man before grace that Dante will discover himself and discover the path to salvation. This recalls the personal experiences of many great saints, the greatest perhaps being St. Augustine of Hippo, who approached the salvation of Christ first through the works of the Greek philosophers. Discovering the need for salvation, the need for grace, is something that is within the reach of human reason. Our first step back on the path of our earthly pilgrimage is to seek after the truth wholeheartedly and recognize our own insufficiency in bringing about our own happiness.

Virgil tells Dante that he can't just climb up the mountain: they must go through Hell and come out at the other side of Mount Purgatory. In other words, Dante must come to a full understanding of sin, and then a purgation of those sins, before he can find Beatrice and, through her, the Beatific Vision. Virgil, of course, cannot lead Dante all the way to Heaven because he had not received the light of grace in his life on earth; in the same way, human reason and human effort alone are not enough to bring us to God. It is only through Christ and, in the beautiful participation of all humanity in the Divine Plan, through the intercession of His servants that each of us attains the grace of God. In Dante's case, Beatrice will be the faithful servant and intercessor who brings Dante to Christ.

Dante wavers on whether he should follow Virgil into Hell or not. He compares himself to both Virgil's hero Aeneas and to St. Paul to prove his inability to commit to such a journey: "But how should I go there? Who says so? Why? / I'm not Aeneas, and I am not Paul! / Who thinks me fit? Not others. And not I." Dante expresses what might be considered his humility in protesting against undertaking such an epic journey with so prestigious a guide. Who could think themselves worthy and not be guilty of some kind of pride? However, Dante's reluctance is not humility but the remnant of the slothful attitude that got him into this spiritual trouble in the first place. Allegorically, this is the figure of the human soul's difficulty in choosing to set aside its own selfish desires to follow in the footsteps of Christ. It's so much easier to just remain as we are. This is what C. S. Lewis is referring to in the title of his book The Weight of Glory: being called to spiritual greatness, to sainthood, to the inheritance of the Eternal Kingdom, is a great responsibility. It requires much of us. It is a burden that, in some ways, our lazy souls wish that God had not called us to. It would be so much easier to be mediocre. But Virgil -- or reason -- can help us overcome our doubts and fears and unwillingness. Reason argues with the will, urging it to make the choice. Virgil urges Dante to follow, to make the choice to come out of the darkness.

Virgil uses the imagery of courtly love, the same courtly love for which Dante had been a fervent adherent to and poet of in his youth, to cajole Dante into continuing: "What ails thee then? Why, why this dull delay? / Why bring so white a liver to the deed? / Why canst thou find no manhood to display / When three such blessed ladies deign to plead / Thy cause at that supreme assize of right". How can Dante dare to lack the courage to continue when three worthy women -- Beatrice, St. Lucy, and the Blessed Virgin -- are interceding for him, waiting for him, asking for him to please them? He must show courage and do as they ask! It is this hope for Beatrice's favor, as well as Virgil's application of reason, that gives Dante the courage to continue and the ability to hope for his eternal beatitude. With reason bolstering us to follow our good intentions and the gift of hope being infused into our souls, we are able to bear the weight of glory, to dare to approach the throne of God as His true children, and to lay claim to all the spiritual treasures Christ has won for us. Without hope, we have already lost everything. When we give up on the possibility of achieving Paradise through the grace of God and our willing response to that grace in our lives, we deny God's power to save and willfully refuse to allow His grace to transform us. We refuse to be all that we were created to be. And, when we do that, we truly do enter those forbidding gates that read: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". The damned can no longer hope that anything will turn out right for them again; they have refused all chance at bliss and have embraced their own self-defined futility.

When Virgil and Dante reach the gates of Hell, Dante is struck with fear at the inscription written on the gates: "'Sir, / This sentence is right hard for me,' I cried." Virgil comforts and reassures him that all will be well, taking him by the hand and leading him into Hell's caverns. In this moment, we are shown the difference between hope and presumption. As despair abolishes the virtue of hope by negating its very possibility, presumption abolishes hope by presuming that those things hoped for are already assured. By being afraid at the gates of Hell, even despite the special grace being accorded him by God, Dante shows that he does not assume that Heaven is already the assured destination of his pilgrimage. He recognizes the very real possibility of losing grace through sin and losing Heaven in Hell. As long as we are pilgrims in time, we are always capable of denying our true fulfillment by turning away from the path of life and losing ourselves in the dark wood. There is never one moment in our lives on this earth where we can say with absolute certainty that we possess the Kingdom of Heaven. We always and only can possess it here insofar as we possess it in the hope of Christ's promise. The virtue of hope allows us to fully appreciate the fact that we are required to "work out our salvation in fear and trembling", but also to recognize that Christ has given us all the tools we need to find our way to Him, even when the way seems most hellish. Dante will not be trapped in Hell with the damned souls because Virgil has renewed hope in his heart; he is just passing through.

In the first three cantos of the Divine Comedy, Dante has already laid out for us the prerequisites for a true conversion of heart: we must recognize our need for salvation and hope that we will attain it. It is this hope that gives us the courage to move forward in faith and love, to respond generously to the call of God. Rather than abandoning hope, we must abandon despair and presumption, and trust in the mercies of God. Our pilgrimage through this life towards eternal Being begins when we acknowledge the very "ground of our Being", as Josef Pieper says, and walk our path through hell or high water towards perfect union with Him in the Beatific Vision of Paradise.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Is There Revolution in Lana Del Rey's "West Coast"?

Lana Del Rey's newest single "West Coast", from her upcoming album Ultraviolence (2014), is not the most accessible song in the world lyric-wise. Listening to it for the first time, however, I felt like she was trying to convey some sort of message about political revolution underneath the breathy vocals and surf-rock composition. Despite its summer-festival sound and laid-back vibe, there seemed to be something more poignant brewing underneath. So I decided to take a closer look to see if there really was some kind of revolution going on in Del Rey's new album. Its title -- Ultraviolence -- seemed promising, referring as it does to the disturbingly "revolutionary" ideas bantered about by the character of Alex in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed with the outcome of my close reading: revolution turns into a form of "selling out" as the poetess embraces the glamor of Hollywood as an escape rather than working to change the political situation her people suffer under.

I guess what first made me feel like maybe this was a "revolution" song was the underlying story of two Cuban lovebirds trying to escape their oppressive political reality. The poetess makes mention of their nationality in the chorus with the Spanish phrase "Y Cubano como yo", which translates to "and Cuban like me". And then there's the other line from the oft-repeated chorus: "His Parliament's on fire and his hands are up / On the balcony". This made it seem like the song may be advocating for political upheaval in Cuba, and maybe it really is. However, the revolutionary aspect is undercut by being subsumed into the experience of a concert. The young man's actions of "swaying" and holding his hands up become mere dance movements to the poetess's music. The "Parliament" that is on fire can be seen now as simply a metaphor for the man's rational mind, perhaps, or his pragmatic judgement. While listening to the poetess's music, the man is freed from his analytic mind and allowed to experience an emotional pleasure, supposedly free from the constraints of the practical world. Music has the power to make peace, not war, by allowing us to stop thinking about our problems and drift away on the hypnotic waves of island jams. Peace and love, glory, hallelujah.

But is this what we really want from the arts? Do we really want music that is going to lull us into submission by washing away our sincere worries and cares in fuzzy feelings? Is the role of music, and art in general, to be just a form of entertainment, an emotional massage to knead out the stress of the work day, an anesthetic for the mind that drains thought away and replaces it with ephemeral feelings? I don't think it is. Art should be entertaining and enjoyable, I agree, but, if that's all it is, it becomes nothing but a form of pablum to feed intellectual and emotional children. In fact, we tend to become children by exposing ourselves to it. I found it interesting that one of the lines of "West Coast" says, "I guess that no one ever made me feel I'm a child". The poetess is referring to the man's love for her in this line, but it fits nonetheless. There is a danger, in both our desire for entertainment and our desire for love, to feel like we deserve to be coddled, to be given only the fuzzy feelings. In both scenarios, we are reduced in maturity. Someone who is treated like a child in love will not learn to reciprocate that love as a mature person; art and entertainment that treats us as children who need to be mindlessly amused works to make us mindless. In a sense, art -- and love -- should inspire within us some kind of revolution, whether it be on a political/economic/social level or a personal/psychological/spiritual level. The power that art -- and love -- has to touch us on a deeply emotional and spiritual level should not be uncoupled from its ability to speak to our minds and inform our decisions. Both should strive to make us better people who are able to make better decisions for ourselves, those close to us, and the world at large.

But how did we get to here? How did the poetess get from this artistic chance at revolution to a sedate swaying to the theme of fuzzy feelings? Where did the fire go? Well, in large part, it was wholly misdirected. The verses of "West Coast" deal largely with the separation of the two Cuban lovebirds: the poetess, although her love for her man is undoubtedly passionate, has chosen to leave him (and Cuba presumably?) to pursue her music career on the West Coast of the United States. She leaves her lover -- and the revolution -- to seek out fame and fortune in Hollywood: "Down on the West Coast / I get this feeling / Like it all could happen / That's why I'm leaving / You for the moment". It seems to be the classic tale of leaving the homeland in order to find a better life in the "land of opportunity". Once the poetess has made her dream a reality, she will undoubtedly enable her lover to join her. But the poetess knows that what she's really doing is selling out. She knows that the glamor of Hollywood is almost a cultish phenomenon in which she will have to make sacrifices in order to succeed: "Down on the West Coast, they got their icons, / Their silver starlets and Queens of Saigon / ... Down on the West Coast, they love their movies, / Their golden gods and rock-and-roll groupies". She will have to fit herself into one of these molds, to allow herself to be fashioned into a queen, a god, a groupie, or some hybrid combination of all three. Despite the fact that "you've got the music in you", the exterior must be covered in gold and silver before the inside will be allowed to come forth. She'll have to "fake it till she makes it", as the saying goes; in order to succeed in Hollywood, she will have to be fashioned in their image before she can contribute her own. But in doing so, does she not lose that passionate fire that she seemed to possess back home in Cuba? Did not the glamor of Hollywood cause her music to lose something of that passion and instead become nothing more than an emotional drug to soothe away thoughts of real revolution? In her attempts to be "free", the poetess seems to be regurgitating that same cloying pablum that renders her art nothing more than glitter and fluff. The substance has been sucked out of it in favor of mindless pleasure.

Rather than revolution, perhaps "West Coast" should be taken as a warning. If you have the music in you, if you have the passion and power to create true art, then let it be revolutionary. Let it wake people up and shake them out of their complacency. Call them to action and encourage them to take sides, to take a stand, to make up their minds, come to decisions, and act. Art should not be a passive experience, but a dynamic and life-changing interaction. This is what is worth creating. This is what is worth suffering for. This is what is worth risking revolution for.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Who's Our Brother in Avicii's "Hey Brother"?

Swedish DJ Avicii's "Hey Brother", from his debut album True (2013), is a weird panoply of dance/electronic beats and mixing, with a bluegrass vocal overlay that lends the song a strange, haunting quality despite its upbeat rhythm. The lyrics tend to point towards the sense of loyalty between siblings who will always be there for each other, regardless of the disappointments life may throw their way. The music video for the song takes this in a different direction by depicting the relationship of two brothers, later revealed to be father and son, and the pain at being separated through war and death. In this sense, the idea of brotherhood is taken to a more universal level, pointing to the brotherhood of those who are not only related by blood, but by nationality, by causes, and by strife. Although Avicii's song does not necessarily subscribe to this, the lyrics can also be taken to an increasingly universal level by making the song about the brotherhood of all mankind, and, with a Christian interpolation, about the enduring faithfulness of Christ, our Brother, on our behalf.

The lyrics lend themselves to a Christological interpretation because they are in their very nature redemptive. The brother and sister referred to in the lyrics are "far from home" and afraid they may "lose it all". They are faced with undefined but obviously tempestuous events in their lives. They are perhaps at a turning point. The poet says in the first stanza: "Hey brother / There's an endless road to rediscover / Hey sister / know the water's sweet but blood is thicker". The fact that the brother needs to "rediscover" the road and the sister is coming to an understanding of the difference between water and blood signifies that they have come to certain turning points in their lives from which they are uncertain of where to go. They have come to a crisis and the future is unclear. The poet offers his support and love to his brother and sister in their time of trial, signifying his undying fidelity and his willingness to do whatever it takes to help them: "If the sky falls down for you / There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do".

Christ approaches fallen and troubled humanity in the same way. When our own plans fall apart and the path we have chosen to take results in a dead end, Christ calls us to the "endless road" of Himself so that we may travel to eternal happiness. He is the Way by which we all may attain the joys of Heaven; in following Him, in walking His road, we are able to rediscover our purpose and our end, our telos. The events of our life begin to fit together in a new way and we are able to see with more clarity the road before us into our future. Similarly, Christ calls us away from the "sweetness" of water to something deeper and more lasting: the "blood". Christ's blood is the family tie that remains stronger and more integral to our existence than any other fleeting attraction to any worldly thing, be it success, pleasure, fame, wealth, or even a beloved person. The new covenant that has been ratified in His blood is a stronger bond than anything else we can experience in our lives. There is no tie on earth that can demand our submission or obedience like this bond can. And yet, He does not demand it of us; He invites, He calls, He reminds, He urges, He persuades. But He does not force our response to this love. Instead, like the poet, He uses the language of love and fidelity to encourage us to respond to Him with a return of that same love and fidelity: "If the sky falls down for you / There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do". When we are in danger of losing everything, of having our world cave in upon us, there is nothing Christ would not do to save us. He has already done everything necessary to save us. His incarnation as man, His passion, death, and resurrection, the entire process from womb to manger, from Egypt to Nazareth, from Galilee to Jerusalem, from the cross to the tomb to the right hand of the Father, is one great outpouring of love and fidelity on our behalf, not only to hold the sky up so that it doesn't crush us, but to remove the sky entirely so that there will be no limit to our flight after Him.

The question of interpersonal relations becomes important in the second stanza, in which the brother and sister are asked: "Do you still believe in one another / ...Do you still believe in love, I wonder". When our relationship with Christ, the ground of our being, is weakened, so too is our relationship with others. We often cease "believing" in one another in many senses. Primarily, we lose the conviction of the inherent goodness of each and every individual; we no longer "believe" that we are capable of goodness or virtue, and these things begin to be seen as alien concepts, almost unnatural to what it means to be human. As our belief in our inherent goodness begins to wane, so too does our trust in one another as brothers and sisters in a human community. We become strangers to each other, suspect creatures who may rob us of our happiness, and the Hobbesian "state of nature" begins to look like a very realistic view of humanity. In this sort of atmosphere, it is almost impossible for love to exist. If we do not believe that there is anything inherently good in another person, then there cannot be anything there for us to love. We can only love those things that we perceive to be lovable, or "good"; without a certain belief in the goodness of humanity, we become essentially unlovable creatures. Under these conditions, "love" becomes a veneer for personal wish fulfillment. We "love" others only in order to serve ourselves. We become little Freudian monsters who see our interpersonal relationships as nothing more than means to the end of the goals of our id: sex. Freud even goes so far as to say that any "love" that is non-sexual is actually just "goal-inhibited" love; it is "love" waiting to achieve its end of self-fulfillment. Our interpersonal relationships break down in the worst way when our essential goodness and, therefore, lovability are denied.

It is only through Christ that these basic concepts of our humanity can be fully integrated and upheld. It is in the union of the perfect Divine love of the Trinity with the humanity of the person of Christ that the fullness of our human potential for goodness, love, and happiness is actualized. And it is when we turn to Him in love and faith that we can truly love both ourselves and others. This can be a difficult hurdle for many people, but the third stanza of the song brings out beautifully the response of Christ to all our misgivings about choosing to follow Him. The brother and sister make response to the poet with questions: "What if I'm far from home? / ... What if I lose it all?" The poet responds with his unconditional fidelity: "... I will hear your call / ... I will help you out". No matter how far we travel away from Christ, the moment we turn to Him in faith, He is with us. No matter how difficult our lives become, no matter how low we sink, He is ready to lend us His strength and shoulder the burden of our crosses for us. This is the love with which He is willing to love us, a love that does not criticize or reject, but a love that is willing to give everything of itself in order to bring the beloved to perfect bliss. The repeated phrase, "There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do", becomes a constant reminder that there is nothing that can be too much for Him who has taken on the sin of the entire world and wrestled it, even unto death. The loyalty of Christ to us, his fickle and fallen brothers and sisters, is beyond anything our sisters and brothers of this world can hope to offer, however sincere their love for us. Only Christ can say with complete certainty that He has done and will do everything possible for our good. All we need do is desire it of Him.

Naturally, this interpretation of the song is entirely my own. I'm not necessarily trying to promote Avicii's "Hey Brother" as a definitively Christian song in any way. But the song itself brings these thoughts to my mind and stirs up a religious connotation for me, so that's what I'm sharing with you. If the song is now a "Christian" song for you because you've read this, I hope it improves the song for you. If not, it's still a decent song without any Christological associations whatsoever. Enjoy it for what it is to you.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

"Mulan": Feminism with a Twist

Sixteen years before Frozen's Elsa and Anna were being touted as the only Disney princesses who didn't need a man to save them, Mulan was saving a military general's son and all of China with nothing more than a shoe and some fireworks. While she may not technically be a princess (but, let's face it, neither are Cinderella, Belle, or Tiana), Mulan has stood in almost unnoticed opposition to the all-too-common complaint that Disney heroines are stereotypically helpless beauty queens. So why has she been forgotten or ignored by the majority of female Disney fans who have apparently been dying for a heroine that could stand up for herself against her male counterparts? I think there are two reasons for this: 1) she's not power-hungry enough to satisfy the neo-feminists; 2) she's not boy-crazy enough to satisfy the girly-girls. Mulan is not out to prove that women are equal to or better than men; she's not out to impress the guys and win their undying admiration, either. Despite all the gender-bending possibilities presented by a heroine who dresses as a boy and Chinese warriors who dress as girls to save the Emperor from Hun invaders, Mulan is a film principally about the relationship between a father and his daughter. It's about the difficulty of not knowing your place in the world and feeling like you are letting down the people you love most. It's about loving someone so much that you'd be willing to risk a shameful death for him, and being so committed to your ideals that you'd defy anyone to uphold them. It's about discovering your inner strength and accepting yourself for who you are. Apparently, none of this really counts as being an image of a strong female figure to modern Disney acolytes; what matters most is being able to punch one guy in the face, while kissing the next.

Mulan's experience with the matchmaker in the beginning of the film set the tone for what is principally important to her. As her mother and grandmother prepare her for the meeting in which a husband will be prescribed for her, Mulan (in song, of course) prays to her ancestors for help in this matter: "Ancestors, / Hear my plea, / Help me not to make a fool of me, / And to not uproot my family tree, / Keep my father standing tall". Her three desires are intrinsically linked to each other: her love for her father encourages her to want to love what he loves and uphold what he upholds, specifically, the honor of her family's name and history. In order for her to uphold the family's honor, she must fulfill her societal role worthily by making a good match with an honorable man, being a model wife for him, and bearing sons to carry on the family's honor and to serve the Emperor. None of these things are necessarily bad; it's not a bad thing to marry an honorable man, nor to be a good wife, nor to have children. What is problematic, especially in Mulan's case, is that the societal definition of femininity is so extremely limiting: "Men want girls / With good taste, / Calm, obedient, / Who work fast-paced. / With good breeding / And a tiny waist, / You'll bring honor to us all". Other words used to describe the perfect, honorable, match-worthy woman are: "soft", "pale", "serenity", "balance", "beauty", "cultured pearls", "silk purse", "perfect porcelain doll". Mulan herself at the beginning of the film lists off the necessary female virtues: "Quiet and demure, graceful, polite, delicate, refined, poised". The matchmaker adds to these: "To please your future in-laws, you must demonstrate a sense of dignity and refinement. You must also be poised ... and silent." None of these traits are bad things in and of themselves -- politeness and obedience are actually very valuable things -- but, when they become the only acceptable features of femininity, social acceptance and honor become things near impossible for women with outgoing, gregarious, confident, and assertive personalities to obtain. Mulan, who possesses most of these latter qualities and few of the former, is deemed unfit for any of the eligible matches and is sent home from the matchmaker in disgrace.

It is not this disgrace, however, that drives her to dress as a man and join the Chinese army. Although Mulan is ashamed of disappointing her family, especially her father, his reaction is to remind her that she is still young and still has time to discover her true talents and abilities. Using an analogy to cherry blossoms, Fa Zhou points to a late bloomer and predicts that, "when it blooms, it will be the most beautiful of all". Far from encouraging Mulan to seek out fame in battle as an alternative form of honor for her family, her father encourages her to allow herself time to discover herself and find her place in life. Mulan is content to do this until Fa Zhou is conscripted into the army to fight the Huns. Having already fought in many battles and having retired due to a war injury, there is little hope that he will survive. It is this love for her father that spurs Mulan into action by taking her father's armor and conscription notice in order to take his place. Suddenly, Mulan's story becomes one of of self-sacrifice instead of self-discovery. Rather than running away in order to prove that she is a valuable member of society, or closing in on herself and rejecting the demands of society, Mulan's aims are for the good of others and are steeped in self-giving, though impetuous, love. This is what makes Mulan stand out as a Disney heroine: her aim is not to prove that she can best the boys at their own game; her aim is to preserve the life of those she loves regardless of the cost to herself. Although her father insists on following the social norms for honor and encourages Mulan to understand her place within those norms, Mulan's love defies place, time, norms, culture, and gender, declaring dramatically that the law of love is more binding than any other human imposition.

It cannot be denied that, after joining the other recruits at the Moo-Shung camp, Mulan does feel the need to prove herself to her fellow soldiers, especially to Captain Li Shang. However, despite her own reflections on her reasons for joining the army after it is discovered that she is a woman, gender equality is never the first thing that is on her mind. Instead, Mulan draws on a heated conversation with her father before her decision to take his place in the army. Mulan argues vehemently for all of the very understandable reasons why her father should not have to fight: he has already fought for China and done his duty, he has an injury, and there are plenty of young men to fight for China. Fa Zhou responds that it is an honor to fight for his country and his family, and Mulan is outraged that he will die for something like honor. Her father responds with one of the most integral lines in the film: "I will die doing what's right". Despite the fact that this line is uttered in a heated argument between father and daughter, this is what is at the heart of all Mulan's actions. She leaves to join the military, and risks death and dishonor for doing so, in order to do what is right for her father. Mulan stops Shan Yu's army in the Tung Chow Pass, not for her own honor or to strike a blow for equality, but to protect the comrades she has come to know and love. She flies to the Imperial City to warn the Emperor of Shan Yu's impending attack, not in order to receive any reward or so that women will be recognized for anything more than wives, but because it is the right thing to do. She reveals herself to Shan Yu as the soldier who took away his victory in the Tung Chow Pass, not because she wanted to show that women could be successful military leaders or so that everyone would recognize her personally for her deeds, but in order to save Li Shang from the Hun's wrath. Mulan does not stand any more chance against Shan Yu than Shang does; she just happens to have a dragon guardian and a lucky cricket helping her get things done. In all of Mulan's actions, what is emphasized is that doing what is right and just, like love, are also actions that transcend time, place, laws, cultures, and genders. No one has a monopoly on love, justice, or goodness; we are all called to uphold these virtues and live them out in all aspects of our lives.

The film does promote the right of women to have their voices heard in equal proportion to that of men. Mulan is told multiple times to remain silent, when she speaks out in favor of her father and when she tries to warn the army of the imminent attack on Imperial City. Chi Fu, the misogynistic chief advisor to the Emperor, interrupts Mulan's plea on behalf of her father and encourages Fa Zhou to teach her to "hold her tongue in a man's presence". Li Shang, hurt, angry, and most likely embarrassed over the discovery that his friend Ping is actually a girl, refuses to listen to Mulan's warning about the Huns because her lie about her gender proves her to be untrustworthy. Even though Mulan insists that she and Ping are the same person and both worthy of trust, Shang tell her that she doesn't belong there and to go home. When Mulan tries to warn the male citizens of the Imperial City, none of them will listen to her because of her gender. At the end of the film, the Emperor strikes a blow in favor of equality by bowing to Mulan in gratitude for saving the city, offering her a position on his council, including Chi Fu's own job as chief advisor, and grants her gifts acknowledging her service to the Emperor and to China. What might make many neo-feminists squirm in their seats is Mulan's refusal of a place of political and social power in favor of simply going home to her family. One could argue that Mulan denies herself the opportunity to give other Chinese women a voice in the political and social realms of her nation, thereby keeping women trapped within the same roles that originally caused her so much distress herself. But Mulan's aim has never been to fight for gender equality; her aim was to preserve the father she loved. She has done that, and so she can return home to that father in peace. Mulan's actions have never been self-serving, but have constantly been other-oriented; her entire work as a soldier and hero of China has been a true labor of love.

The question of where Mulan fits in her family and in her social circles is left open-ended; despite all of her accomplishments, she is still on the road to self-discovery. Mulan's return home to face her father is one of uncertainty. She is the young girl again, rather than the warrior, afraid of her father's disappointment and anger at her dishonorable actions. She approaches him hesitantly and, when he sees her, throws herself at his feet and offers the Emperor's gifts to him, seeking his approval. In this most beautiful moment in the film, Fa Zhou pushes the Emperor's honors aside and takes his daughter in his arms, saying: "The greatest gift and honor is having you for a daughter". Mulan and Fa Zhou both come to understand that it is not our social status, our political connections, or our reputations that make us valuable. It is our very persons. The fact that we are human persons, capable of loving and being loved, is what makes us intrinsically valuable and worthy of honor. Of course, Mulan's gendered societal honor is still greatly assured, as Captain Li Shang follows her home and gets an invitation to dinner, signifying the beginning of a romantic courtship. But what is most important for Mulan, as a character and as a film, is the universal importance of doing what is right, even in the face of untold opposition.

Mulan stands out from almost all the other Disney films that purport to make a statement to girls about the value of being girls in that its focus is on the girl herself. Rather than watching supposedly strong heroines get sidetracked by one romantic affair after another, the story of Mulan remains firmly rooted in the heroine's own motivations and self-reflections. She has purpose and motivation outside of those of the principal male; she acts on her own initiative and for her own initiatives; and most, if not all, of her actions are rooted in objective virtues. She is also the only heroine who presents a positive and maturing relationship with her father, something that is desperately needed by this generation of women. But she doesn't get to rule a kingdom in the end or kiss a boy, so I guess she has little value as a prominent female role model.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!

Should We Play "Play It Again" Again?

Today I embark on my first serious consideration of a country song. This is a big moment for me because the only thing worse than country music, to my mind, is nails on a chalkboard. So getting into Luke Bryan's "Play It Again" from the album Crash My Party (2013) was an enormous feat. Lyrics to country songs can be more uplifting and meaningful than most pop songs, but modern country music suffers from the golden bug of fast cash as much as anybody else, so many of their songs suffer from the same drunk 'n' debauched content as the rest of the mass media. Their love ballads can also be so syrupy-sweet that they make you want to gag, despite the often positive messages about love, marriage, and family. Bryan's song is a little bit of everything, but not so much of anything that you feel too overwhelmed by it. So I plan to pull out some of the elements I truly enjoyed in this song and try not to be too negative about its eye-rollers. This is a song that essentially gets the early evolution of a loving relationship mostly right, so I want to give it the nod it deserves.

The development of the relationship between the poet and his beloved is, in many senses, everything that most modern club-pop songs are not. First of all, the poet's narrative begins with an affirmation of circumstances outside of the self and its desires. When the poet sets eyes on the woman he becomes enamored with, his first thought is to her relationships with others: "I was lookin' for her boyfriend / Thinkin', no way she ain't got one". The poet does not exist in a navel-gazing world of the mind in which the only thing that matters is himself. When the poet recognizes the beauty and value of the woman before him, he also recognizes that he is not the only one who may have noticed these qualities. In fact, the woman's value is considered so great to the poet that he thinks it must be impossible for no one else to have noticed and attempted to make himself part of her life. Of course, we can be more pragmatic and see this as nothing more than the mental calculations of a man "looking to score" (boyfriend present = no chance, boyfriend absent = less chance, boyfriend non-existent = good chance), but we shouldn't be too quick to hop on board the jaded train. This kind of pragmatism does not preclude the idealism of the loving relationship. In order for any loving relationship to establish itself, both parties must have the ability to give freely of themselves. And any honorable person, male or female, should acknowledge and respect the relationships of others by avoiding becoming a stumbling-block or a source of temptation for the other. This is the kind of mature, loving self-control that shapes us into great men and women instead of overgrown toddlers.

Once it is established that the beloved is in a position to freely give of herself to the loving relationship, the poet engages her in conversation. Although the only hint as to the content of this conversation is expressed as "Tryin' to pour a little sugar in her Dixie cup", which could consist of nothing more than the standard type of sweet-talking one might find anywhere, at least this is where he starts. And the conversation continues in the second stanza, in which the couple are sitting in the poet's truck after he has driven her home. I'm assuming, of course, that they weren't sitting in the truck in silence, and they obviously weren't smooching or anything since the poet is so desperate to find the song she likes so that he will get a kiss from her. So the only natural thing they might be doing in the truck is talking. The emphasis on conversation -- in some sense, regardless of its actual content -- shows how the loving relationship evolves primarily through a deeper appreciation of the person of the beloved and not through physical intimacy. Physical intimacy can only tell you things about a body, and even that is severely limited in scope (do you know what hand she writes with? do you know what blood type she has? do you know if she had her wisdom teeth out? has she ever had surgery? ever broken a bone? does she like to have her back scratched? what's her natural hair color? does she wear contacts? did she ever have braces? does she have allergies?). The only way to truly know a person, and to know her intimately, is through the commitment of time and attention. This is how loving relationships are formed and fostered. And, at least from what we can tell, this is what the poet does.

The final stanza brings in another element that strikes me as being inherent in the development of a loving relationship. The beloved's attachment to a particular song inspires the poet to learn to play it on the guitar so that she will be able to hear it whenever she wants. She won't have to wait for the DJ or the radio to choose to play it (apparently, the girl hasn't invested in digital music, or even a CD player); now she can hear it whenever she wants to by asking the poet to play it for her. Obviously, for the poet, this results in two immediate benefits: he becomes the instrument of joy for the beloved, and his presence is required to facilitate her joy. (The third immediate benefit is that he will receive her kisses, but we'll look at that element separately.) The fact that the poet willingly engages in activities that will make her happy, that he devotes the time and attention to learning to play the song she likes, regardless of whether or not he enjoys the song, shows an element of self-sacrifice that, while not completely devoid of its immediate rewards, is integral to the development of a truly loving relationship. The desire to make the other happy and the will to sacrifice for the other are at the heart of happiness between all persons, and especially between the sexes. This is what love, marriage, and family are rooted in and cannot be successful without.

The only issue I might have with this song (and it's pretty major, since it's the entirety of the repeated chorus) is the kisses. After hearing her song and dancing with the poet to it, the beloved bestows a kiss on him. This is all the encouragement the poet needs to do everything in his power to make that song play for her as often as possible; his ultimate desire is to receive kisses from her. This tends to play back into the idea of seeing the beloved as nothing more than an instrument of physical pleasure. Just as the lover becomes the instrument of the beloved's pleasure by bringing the song to her, the beloved becomes nothing more than an instrument of the satisfaction of desire. Now, maybe that's being a bit harsh. A kiss is, perhaps, not too much to desire from a beloved person outside of marriage, and is a far cry from the more obvious demands for intimacy from most modern pop music. Of course, we also may be suffering from a cultural blindness as to the symbolic (and perhaps almost sacramental) nature of the kiss as an image of intimacy between two persons. It's not for no reason that the kiss is seen as the symbol of consummated love in most marriage ceremonies. So perhaps there is something a bit too free about the behavior of the beloved that leads the lover to desire a more physical encounter with her, especially considering that this is their first twenty minutes together. Of course again, we shouldn't forget that romantic love is not meant to be a completely altruistic affair in which the lover gives everything of himself to the beloved with no thought to receiving anything in return. If that were the case, there would be far fewer babies in the world. Romantic love, the complete and free giving of oneself to the beloved, does by its nature deserve its reward in the complete and free giving of the beloved back to the lover. In some sense, perhaps, learning to play the beloved's favorite song out of love for her truly does merit the reward of a kiss. Can that return of love for love be demanded? No. And the natural end of all this giving and receiving of love should confine itself to the circumstances of marriage, in which the free and complete giving of self is most perfectly upheld, fostered, and protected. So perhaps this smaller exchange of loving tokens between lover and beloved is also part of that evolutionary process by which the romantic relationship grows towards its ultimate end.

Although the freedom with kisses may cause me some uneasy contention, "Play It Again" generally reveals both a realistic and idealistic picture of the growth and development of a solid loving relationship, at least in its initial stages. Where it might go after the beloved gets bored of her song may require some deeper soul-searching and discernment on both their parts. But a better foundation is being laid here than in most modern music.

NB: If you have an aversion to blasphemy (which I do), you might want to avoid this song. The chorus starts with "OMG, this is my song" and is extremely catchy. I've had it in my head for days now, and the only alternative that springs to mind is "Oh hot damn, this is my jam" (thank you, Flo Rida and Will.i.am...), which only really serves to make me chuckle in the midst of my annoyance. Consider yourselves forewarned.

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The point of this blog is not to tell anyone what they should or should not consider entertaining, nor what films, books, lyrics, or television shows are morally or artistically good or bad. The point is to engage with the stories that are creating our culture on an intellectual level, to meet the morals with our minds before they go to our hearts. Once you know what's in the entertainment you imbibe and you're aware of how it may be shaping your perceptions of the world around you, well then, imbibe away!