Values reversal

Today my wife and I watched the beautifully danced and staged ballet La Dame Aux Camelia,  an interpretation of the novel by Alexandre Dumas fils which was advertised as;"...about a society willing to sacrifice passion on the altar of social respectability". What interested me is, that although I am diametrically opposed to maintaining a 'false' sense of respectability, it is not because I choose to live life without parameters, but because such an 'illusion' of respectability is what the Pharisaical aim for. Living a life which is truly 'respectable and free' is one that willingly accepts restrictions on behaviour (see Galatians, in particular ch5).

No, what interested me about this interpretation was the negative spin afforded the idea of living in a society that would 'sacrifice its passion'! Horror of horrors (and rightly so in the true sense of the word) but we in the modern West have been so indoctrinated to believe that 'passion' is in fact living with as little restraint as possible, i.e. giving full reign to our lusts, emotions and feelings that anything short of such 'freedom' is seen as; repressive, controlling, inhibited etc. I have lived and worked in the Arts for four decades now, and can testify to this reality!

This erroneous and dangerous interpretation of passion has been consistently hammered into the Western psyche through the controlling influences of the media, entertainment and literary establishments who have in turn, been influenced by the successes of Gramsci's 'long march through the institutions' which have undermined the Judeo/Christian foundations of western society and are paralysing the wills of the populace at large.

Freedom without self-control is not freedom at all but licentiousness, and its only restraining control is brute force, welcome to the the flip side of 'freedom without a foundation', an anarchic world driven by the will to power...Mad Max as Emperor!