The Church keeps trying to convince people not to use condoms because it’s a sin. Perhaps they need some information about harm reduction.
Speaking of deliberate harm, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have a great ode to alcoholism, and Michael Pollan (of “Botany of Desire”) has a great article in the NYT this week on obesity which I wanted to turn into some sort of rant about the way people cede control over their lives to marketers and corporations, and then blame the corporations for running their lives poorly.
Of course if you give your life over to alcohol or television or junk food or consumerism, it’s not going to be yours, and it’s not going to make you happy. Of course if you give your life over to a philosophy that has very strict absolutes you’re going to find uncomfortably sharp edges and contradictions, like persuading people that condoms are useless in order to prevent contraception, and being unable to recognize that you are spreading potentially fatal misinformation and are therefore responsible for the deaths of thousands.
If I’m a marketer of a branded lifestyle like, say, McDonalds or Catholicism is it my responsibility to make sure that my customers are emotionally healthy and moderate in their beliefs? If someone loves me in an uncomfortable way, I can distance myself from them, help them love themselves instead. But I don’t want to make myself unlovable. I want to still be loved, just not loved by this person, or not so immoderately. What does Disney do with someone who loves, really LOVES, Disney? What does the Catholic Church do with someone who is, perhaps, over-fanatic? They don’t want to shut down! They can’t.
If someone gives their life over to your control, even partially, what responsibility do you bear for that? If it’s my job to be loved and lovable, and someone grows obsessed, what do I do? A celebrity, a product, an ideology, a lifestyle… are they the same in their obligations to their fanatics?
I’d say an ideology has a greater obligation to avoid its adherents getting out of control, since adherence is part of its makeup, whereas a product doesn’t include fanaticism by default and isn’t as in control of, or responsible for, that fanaticism. But I’m not sure. Is McDonalds as much an ideological state apparatus (to get a little althusserian on you) as the Church? Urgh, I’m getting back to my thesis here…
Secretly Ironic 