When I had a parish in in the City of Detroit in the late 80s, Devil’s Night was a feared Halloween Eve tradition. Pranks, vandalism, and crimes were up as youth ran wild. That’s how it was billed and the news story reported it. We lived in the city, and frankly we didn’t see this, but the concept is catching on thanks again to our friend psychology.
Watch any of the various films or shows under the title The Purge. In their dystopian future, right-wingers decide the only way to reclaim civilized society is for one 12 hour night to allow any and all crime for criminals to purge their system, and spoiler alert, for society to be cleansed of the marginalized that are expensive to maintain.
Far-fetched? This is the basis for Primal Scream Therapy from the 70’s and in the 90’s psychologists were still encouraging people to beat and curse effigies of the people who had abused them. And in 2009, “Rage rooms” were all the rage. But the concept of “purging” to purify goes back way father than this. It goes back to Freud. Repression is bad. Holding back your anger, burying your feelings, repressing anything is more dangerous than suppressing that sneeze. We all know and dutifully expect “acting out” to follow repressing.
Freud’s theory is related to the dominate power of his day which was steam or water under pressure. Everyone knew what happened when that wasn’t properly vented or over pressurized. Psychologists regularly take the dominate technology of the day and use it to explain how the human mind works. In the 80’s, it was replacing the cassette tapes playing in your head. In the late 90’s, the mind was like a computer it had a central processor, random access memory, software, and hardware. I haven’t heard it yet, but AI is probably the dominate comparison now. We’re programmed to respond by fear, childhood, abuse.
Just as it was not harmful when the Early Church Fathers compared sin to disease as an illustration but became very destructive for repentance and faith when taken literally as the AA model now does, so the mind as a boiler, tape, computer, or AI can be illustrative. But woe to you if you think: Ah my mind as a computer explains why I do this or that or how not to do think this or that.
If you’ve stuck with me this far, you think: All this free time is making him batty. Au contraire, mon frère! Remember my sermon from the 1990’s that I published in the 2-26-24 blog “Danger Close”? Here’s a response from an inmate in Indiana. He correctly quotes my sermon and is correct on that study: Luke Eckrich letter
That study rules the internet. Check it out yourself. This is where the World is. It should be noted that some dispute the study based on the fact that sex crimes are very underreported in that country. But even if the study is accurate, that doesn’t mean they are “right”. As my mom would say, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Frankly, I am surprised that prostitution hasn’t been legalized all over by now. The same goes for drugs. And pedophilia is the next stop of sexual liberation. There is nothing in modern thought to put the brakes on going there or to bestiality for that matter. Without a divine standard anything goes, and the thought that you prevent sinning by other sins is something that Gnostics taught long ago. No wonder righteous Lot’s soul was vexed.
