.
What happened to innocence? No longer considered a boon to virtuous behavior, innocence — of drugs, of sex — is today deemed a handicap, an affliction to be cured as quickly as possible. Intensive treatment takes place both in the classroom and through the culture. Meanwhile the notion of virtue itself — “conformity to a standard of right,” Webster’s says — is out altogether, replaced by the multifarious “values” of a relativistic culture. By definition, these values conform to no standard of right. This means that not only is virtue no longer its own reward, it’s not even one of the door prizes.
As society spurns innocence in favor of exposure, and virtue in favor of values, it no longer sees any point in inculcating “good” or “moral” behavior in its young. Rather, it labors to encourage “better choices.” Instead of virtues to live by, society provides “news you can use” about hygiene, about cliques, about tattoos, about sex, about STDs, about alcohol, about drunk driving, about rape, about gang rape, about date rape, about date-rape drugs, about other drugs… the list of vices to bone up on is endless.
Take the example of drugs. The object of drug prevention programs, obviously, is to prevent youngsters from using and becoming dependent on illegal and destructive drugs. To that end, they are given in-depth schooling on the drug world, from the finer points of freebasing cocaine, to the assorted hardware of drug use, to the lingo of the streets. A 2005 report out of Washington state brought news of a sheriff’s deputy who routinely took classrooms of high school students through a cooktop recipe for producing methamphetamine [11]. This comprehensive and methodical demystification of the dark side is considered our greatest tool to deter drug use. And maybe it is. But it says something about our society that not only do we assiduously avoid making that dark side taboo, we also purposefully familiarize our kids with it without any regard for its impact on the sensibility of young people. That is, in order to teach our young to function “safely” in a culture of exposure, we have decided, as guardians, as educators, to jade and coarsen them in concert with that culture of exposure, the all-enveloping, virtually inescapable media that dominate the young in particular. Rather than instill virtuous behaviors based on the judgment that it is “bad” to use drugs, or “bad” to engage in premarital sex, we choose to build a logical case against vice based on the risks involved. And these we neutralize by also, logically, teaching the young to “take precautions.” It is a halfhearted argument at best for “healthy” behavior. Without making such behaviors anathema, society merely tries to talk its jaded young out of indulging in them — and for no “good” reason.
[11] Keith Eldridge, “In-Class Meth Demonstration Angers Parents,” http://www.Komotv.com/news/archive/4151301.html .
Diana West
“4. Parents Who Need Parents”
The Death of the Grown-Up
