Wow, all of that from watching an episode of Sex in the City!!! Talk about getting paid for over-the-top "verbage"!!
Philip Rieff's last work before he died has very much in common with LaTulippe's analysis. From just being in the academy as briefly as I was, I am able to concur with these sentiments and thoughts.
I've never actually watched the show, but from what I hear, it featured men as well.
To give the Devil his due, he says, the script, acting, cinematography are amazing, and the comedy truly hilarious.
And he is wrong. Kim Cattrall couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag. I can only watch a few minutes of the corny dialog before sensing pieces of my brain falling out--then I turn it off. And this has nothing to do with being prudish. Just as it is possible for a conservative to find Garrison Keilor unfunny because he genuinely is unfunny, so I can find SitC bad because it is just plain bad.
Scott, you'd have to be the judge. I haven't seen one episode. I don't even have a TV.
Dr. B,
You can buy the complete Sex in the City DVD set at http://store.hbo.com/product/ind...757&
cp=.1885647. Cost is $299.95. One assumes you have a DVD player on your computer? And you can get a SITC screensaver at http://www.hbo.com/city/. Enjoy!!! 
Being an AARPIE, I am assuming there will be no impure thoughts.
Oops,
Make that "Sex and the City"!!!! Trailers can viewed at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159...159206/
trailers
The thoughts and observations comprising this essay seem pretty familiar.
The strongest (most moving) part of the essay is the melancholic interpretation of Sex in the City and that urban anti-culture.
I would say the theoretical component of the essay is weaker.
Against the author's apparent pessimism, I would say that the divine "ace in the hole" is always the nature of man himself. Man can lose sight of, forget, or even reject God---but he cannot do this without losing sight of, forgetting, or rejecting himself. Thus his defection from God always contains a defection from humanity, and so contains also the seed of his return to God. That seed cannot be eradicated.
So I would fault the author a bit, for too much of a null, blank-slate anthropology. With at least part of his mind, he assumes human nature to be plastic and indifferent with respect to his disjunction of "organic culture"/"postmodern culture". Perhaps there is even, a bit of (presumably unintentional) materialism in the way he uses Spengler. "Organic" analogies for man and society tend implicitly to deny man's spiritual nature, running afoul of Percy's trenchant argument against man as a mere "organism in an environment," instead of a creature in search of his own meaning.
The author is not really that clear on his commitments: there is no doubt that he sees the loss of an "organic culture" as disastrous, but has he actually made contact with the realities that constitute such a culture? He almost seems to have a Point of View from Nowhere, which is always the point of view that sees least, because it looks "at" rather than "along."
In other words, does he really know where "organic culture" comes from?
So I would say the author's pessimism is ill-grounded to that extent. I know the argument (or rather the fear) is that people will anaesthetize themselves to higher ideals, and that statism will make sure they have adequate supplies of anesthesia. He seems to see the sole avenue of "deliverance" (if one wants to call it that) in economic breakdown/loss of affluence. Now that may happen. But that will not be the deepest cause, just as the cause of the fall of Communism cannot be explained by mere economics.
Even if capitalist economy and soft statism avoid a breakdown, though, there is still plenty of grounds, not only for fear, but for a hope that rests on grace and human nature's order to grace. Anaesthesia never works completely, and there are always people who, for whatever quirky reason, prove immune to anaesthetics. Reality is messier and more blessedly chaotic, in other words.
K, Thank you for that detailed and trenchant analysis.
Ditto!!!! that. I wonder what K has to say about the philosophy/ psychology underlying other topics on Dr. B's blog i.e. The Tridentine Mass, Mass hymns and more Mass hymns, B16, Limbo, the historic Jesus etc.
K,
Just guessing here, but if, as appears the case, Stephen LaTulippe is associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, his view is from the "nowhere" of libertarianism. If that is the case, then he probably deplores most about the modern, independent feminist girl toys of "Sex and the City" is their lack of productivity. Why aren't they moving and shaking the means of production, like Ayn Rand's masturbational hand puppet Dagne Taggart? Why aren't they PRODUCING something, these useless bimbos, even whose acts of copulation result in precisely nothing?
Thus, secularism criticizes itself.
"If that is the case, then WHAT he probably deplores most about . . . "
I read the original article of LaTulippe. Very interesting!
Also, I never watched that tv show... and I don't think I ever will, he, he...
I don't know if you, people, read Spanish, but here you'll find another article on this topic, even though this is spotted with a hilarious light: http://weblogs.clarin.com/podeti...ives/
000538.php. Hope you like it.
Best regards.
LaTulippe: "A woman of [tribe] does not desire to be a "companion" or a "lover," but a mother"
I comment that Catholic woman should desire to be both a lover and a mother. And her husband should stay her no. 1 (after God) - even if they have many children. That's the view of JPII, D. von Hildebrand or Christopher West - great Catholic theologians of marriage.
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