Purity
Our western society has a tendency to create stark, black and white dialectics. Is or is not. True or false. As a computer scientist, I am all too familiar with the usefulness of dialects, of having decisions come down to a simple determination of 0 or 1. Such a clean, simplistic world-view allows for quick, guiltless decisions that flow smoothly and logically with little consideration to the nature of the determination or it's consequences.
Yet in the process of creating this abstraction, data is lost, and with it the underlying truth of the situation. Information deemed unnecessary for classifying a given event or object is discarded in order to keep the model simple. To label an action good or evil requires the elimination of whatever content of the opposite nature is present in the action. So society pigeon holes us, trying to give everyone a neat little cubby so everyone knows where everyone stands.
And, of course, with any creation of society, there comes expectations. Not only are we given boxes, we are expected to find a way to fit into them. Upon receiving our labels, we are gradually pressured to fulfill them. When rejecting "prep" society, you are lead to change your habits to fit into so called "goth" society in order to display his dissatisfaction with the social norm. Even the so call counter-culture follows the tracks the culture it counters has set forth.
So to the topic, purity. Purity and impurity is just such a dialectic. One is either clean or dirty. Either you act like sex is completely unimportant to you, or you act like it is the most important thing in existence. We associate purity here in america with ideas like innocence, perhaps naivety, cleanliness, the straight an narrrow, marriage, chastity, and even with godliness. Impurity is the opposite: being jaded, wordly, dirty, sexually active, the dark path, whorishness, and satan.
But this is merely one of our dialectic abstractions, a stereotyped image. Why must purity go with chastity? Why must sex be dirty? Why do people have to loose their innocence in order to have relations with another person?
They don't. And, in truth, these associated personality traits are not necessarily correlated. Yet our society drives us to conform to these ideas. Too often, I see people become jaded to the point of exaggeration, or innocent to the point of ignorance, because they fit into one group or another and are driven to feel this way. To be clean or to be dirty. People express disgust at your sexuality, or contempt for your perceived immaturity.
And so you are forced to cling to groups that may not be a good fit for you. But at least then you have someone to complain to.
Yet in the process of creating this abstraction, data is lost, and with it the underlying truth of the situation. Information deemed unnecessary for classifying a given event or object is discarded in order to keep the model simple. To label an action good or evil requires the elimination of whatever content of the opposite nature is present in the action. So society pigeon holes us, trying to give everyone a neat little cubby so everyone knows where everyone stands.
And, of course, with any creation of society, there comes expectations. Not only are we given boxes, we are expected to find a way to fit into them. Upon receiving our labels, we are gradually pressured to fulfill them. When rejecting "prep" society, you are lead to change your habits to fit into so called "goth" society in order to display his dissatisfaction with the social norm. Even the so call counter-culture follows the tracks the culture it counters has set forth.
So to the topic, purity. Purity and impurity is just such a dialectic. One is either clean or dirty. Either you act like sex is completely unimportant to you, or you act like it is the most important thing in existence. We associate purity here in america with ideas like innocence, perhaps naivety, cleanliness, the straight an narrrow, marriage, chastity, and even with godliness. Impurity is the opposite: being jaded, wordly, dirty, sexually active, the dark path, whorishness, and satan.
But this is merely one of our dialectic abstractions, a stereotyped image. Why must purity go with chastity? Why must sex be dirty? Why do people have to loose their innocence in order to have relations with another person?
They don't. And, in truth, these associated personality traits are not necessarily correlated. Yet our society drives us to conform to these ideas. Too often, I see people become jaded to the point of exaggeration, or innocent to the point of ignorance, because they fit into one group or another and are driven to feel this way. To be clean or to be dirty. People express disgust at your sexuality, or contempt for your perceived immaturity.
And so you are forced to cling to groups that may not be a good fit for you. But at least then you have someone to complain to.