By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Romance has disappeared from our lives
Placeholder Image
We sure could use some more romance right about now — particularly among our younger people.I speak of the debate surrounding “Skins,” the latest provocative MTV show. It portrays teens indulging in illegal drugs, booze and “hooking up.”Many argue that the show elevates deviant behavior — that it will encourage highly impressionable teens to mimic what they see.Others argue that today’s teens are grappling with a lot of these issues in real life — that the show helps showcase the dangers of such behaviors.Such programming is bound to occur in a free, open society with a massive mass culture and several hundred cable-TV channels in competition with each other.Freedom opens the floodgates for everything that is not so good in the human heart — greed, dishonesty, salaciousness — but it also opens the floodgates for everything that is good in the human heart, such as generosity and selflessness and integrity.And romance.In our loud, over-sexualized culture, I feel that young people are being cheated. They’re being taught everything about biological functions, but know so little about our higher functions — so little about romance.We humans have two natures, in a manner of speaking.We’re part animal, to be sure.