Judgment Day

Judgment Day, according to those who were convinced the world would come to an end around 6PM this past Saturday, is when believers “…expect to be absorbed into heaven in a process known as the rapture” (“Make My Bed? But You Say the World’s Ending,” NYT, 5/19/11). A different kind of Judgment Day will occur when the jury hands down a verdict in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. In the first case, judgment leads to the Gates of St. Peter. In the second, it will in all likelihood lead to the gates of prison. Perhaps the roots of Strauss-Kahn’s epic downfall lie in the I.M.F.'s personnel policies, which the Times excerpted in a separate piece: “‘Intimate personal relationships, between supervisors and subordinates, do not, in themselves, constitute harassment’” (“At I.M.F., Men on Prowl and Women on Guard,” NYT, 5/19/11). Was this credo by any chance lifted from the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom? The word subordinate would send a frisson of pleasure down the spine of any member of the Eulenspiegel Society. Here is the first line of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.” The I.M.F., “the lender of last resort for governments that need money,” is an organization that employs many economists. Perhaps they would do well to go back to the author of The Wealth of Nations in proposing guidelines for how members of their little society, a microcosm of the world they purport to help, should comport themselves.

The Dictatorship of the Pervertariat

Has sexuality become a political act, a matter of party affiliation like voting Democrat or Republican, Working Man’s Party or Green, and getting into trouble like Arlen Spector when you switch horses midstream? If you have a particular sexual inclination, are you obligated to vote for it and become an activist advocating it on the part of a whole group of practitioners? It’s a great thing that we live in a more liberated age in which medical advances have proven that masturbation doesn’t lead to insanity. Yet in order to disabuse others of their primitive beliefs, are you obligated to make your sexuality into a collective experience? Must you walk around with a button that reads, “I like to jerk off”? In the socio-political arena, we have seen exactly this type of behavior. Victimhood replaces the awareness of inner conflict that needs to be understood and worked through. Rather than being presented with a complex set of conditions, we are asked to make a choice. You are either for or against. We who have suffered shame at the hands of those who believed that jerking off leads to madness now ask you to show your support for our rights by jerking off too! Better yet, we urge you to choose the jerking off way of life over the repressive, anachronistic, even colonialist idea of having sex with a partner. Naturally, there are important issues that need to be voted on, like gay marriage and the recent decision to extend hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners. But in the course of liberating ourselves from certain strictures, there appears to be a new kind of morality in which practices that were once considered to be perversions are turned into causes. Consensual adults should naturally be allowed to do whatever they like to each other, unless its causes serious harm. (Although the average marriage might not survive such criteria.) But must we all be card-carrying members of the Eulenspiegal Society?

Foot in Mouth Disease

Animal activist groups are gearing up for a fight over President Obama’s health care plan. While elderly Americans worry about a decline in Medicare payments, and those with costly disabilities are concerned about the consequence of leveling costs (precluding coverage of expensive treatments for exotic disorders like Munschausen Syndrome by Proxy), animal activists are asking important questions about why government plans should not pay for fMRI’s for cats, and if rodents who are routinely exterminated will be given a fair deal in any plan extended to other mammals.

In other notes, the Obama health plan has also posed some serious philosophical concerns regarding in particular the issues of immortality and oblivion. Will government support cryogenic freezing that allows people to be suspended until a cure is found for their diseases? And will the health plan also cover the transmigration of souls. Let’s say you are born in New York, but you die, fall into oblivion, and then get reincarnated in New Rochelle. Does your coverage follow you?

These and similar questions were the subject of an animated town hall sponsored by the Eulenspiegel Society, a group traditionally known as a champion of consensual sadomasochism, and Right to Kill, a group that propounds the benefits of homicide for those who don’t have the courage to kill themselves. Representative Barney Frank appeared before the gathering to present the administration positions and to answer questions, but he excused himself soon after the Q & A began, explaining that, while he was happy to have been able to present some keys issues, he had plainly gone to the wrong address.