Mr. Max Mosley’s sexual activities
Why are people getting so worked up over Max Mosley’s sex life, and their supposed right to information about it?
In a mediocracy, legitimate power is deemed to reside exclusively with society, not the individual. And society wants everyone to be answerable to it, or at least observable. Privacy is not considered a right. It is only permitted if society happens not to be interested.Although Mr Mosley does not occupy any political or other position of significance in the UK, he offends mediocratic ideology by being an old-school elitist. He is also regarded as a suitable target for hatred because of his father’s connection to fascism. New-school elitist George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, thus feels justified in arguing that the recent High Court ruling “removes the right of the public to make informed moral judgements”. (Carey evidently believes that the public will be unable to make appropriate moral choices if they are deprived of information about the sexual antics of public figures.)
We also need to remember that sex plays an important ideological role in a mediocracy. Its function is to prove we are all equal, i.e. equally mechanical. Mediocratic culture relentlessly advertises it, the point being not to encourage toleration of human desires but to celebrate our degradation. This is achieved by means of an ambivalent attitude, promoting sex on the one hand while sneering at it on the other.
Sex is presented as ‘individualistic’ in a mediocracy, but is tacitly used to emphasise our role as social agents entering into adult community activities. Every individual’s sexuality and sexual activities have, in a sense, taken on a public dimension. They are to be available for inspection by society, with mass media (of course) playing a crucial role in providing publicity.
Childhood ‘innocence’ is bourgeois
Why are experts demanding that four-year-olds be taught about sex?
Sex is considered an important defining characteristic of the mediocratic individual (see above). Emphasising it helps to reduce the individual to the status of an automaton. Sex is to be regarded as invalidating any idealistic or romantic notions that people might have, particularly about themselves.Sex is the principal criterion of normality in a mediocracy. Abstinence is considered unhealthy, low levels of sexual activity a sign of psychopathology calling for treatment. Efficient sex is said to require training, which is to be provided from an early age by the state education system.
Talk of reducing teenage pregnancy rates or sexual diseases is likely to be a cover for another objective. Calls for more sex lessons, or for sex lessons for four-year-olds, probably have little to do with genuine education in the sense of acquiring information. (There is only so many times you can be shown how to put a condom on a cucumber, before diminishing returns set in.) They are about the acquisition of a particular worldview. That is why experts insist that “Sex and Relationships Education should be a statutory entitlement [i.e. obligation] for all young people”. It is essentially about emphasising the individual's social role, as the Family Planning Association points out:
Sexual health services for young people should be ... underpinned by an understanding of the impact of sexuality and gender on their sexual and social identity and behaviour.Mediocracy does not like the idea that children should be exempt from public scrutiny and inclusion in the mediocratic worldview. One must think of them as little adults, in the sense that they should be as subjected to social evaluation as everyone else. Children, like adults, are to be exposed to ‘realism’ and other aspects of the prevailing ideology. Otherwise there is a risk they could escape indoctrination with the appropriate mediocratic values, at the most crucial stage of life.
Next week
Dr T. analyses Gordon Brown, and the latest piece of in-yer-face theatre.