Savage Drowning

I was standing on an island in the midst of a tumultuous sea. There were men and women drowning in the water all around me, but with every swell of water and crack of thunder, they only cried louder that they did not need to be saved. And because we were being filmed, I had to stay and watch them drown.

I attended the taping of the Auburn episode of the new show Savage University as an audience member. A sex and relationship advice guru, Dan intended to have a question and answer session with a variety of Auburn students not only to offer his advice but also to gauge the dating community at our school. I believe that Auburn has been seriously misrepresented, and I hope that the sampling of students who were at this taping does not truly represent the majority of Auburn students. The questions posed about sex were selfish and just plain offensive to me; questions about how to tell a sexual partner that they were not fulfilling your needs, and how much porn you should watch, and how casual sexual encounters were good per se and could often lead to meaningful, long-term relationships. I cannot even repeat more than half of the questions which were asked because the language and content was so contrary to those things I believe ought to be discussed or acted upon, both privately and publicly.

I must work harder to avoid complacency in the future, for I had grown comfortable in my societal microcosm of tender Catholicism. Dan Savage and his MTV show rudely plucked me from my naivety. The depravity I witnessed was appalling, and yet the crowed thrived on it. The more disgusting the question, the louder the applause. The more heinous the joke, the louder the laughter. I forget that outside of those people I come in contact with daily, there is a community of people who reveled in the free condoms given out at the end of the show. I forget that morality for some people is something they create for themselves, based on nothing more than their whims and appetites. I forget what a hard battle we are fighting.

More than anything, I came out of the taping sad. There is so much more that these people could experience if they strove for virtuous relationships. They toss their pearls to swine and do not realize their loss! I was a minority tonight in the most profound way I have ever experienced. I returned to the cave enlightened only to see my brothers and sisters chained to the wall looking at shadows, begging not to be taken away from the pleasure of looking at the false images. I do not know how to combat such misguided fervor. How does one person on the shore save the thousands drowning in the storm? How does that one even know which way to swim first when they all cry out, with equal ecstasy, that they wish for nothing more than to sink to the very bottom of the sea?

To Answer Descartes

It happened on the bus one morning that I was suddenly and very intensely challenged by Descartes. He took the empty seat next to me and, with much less pomp and circumstance than I would have expected, said “I think, therefore I am.”

It was not so much a question as a declaration which demanded a response in kind.

Clearly since I was having a fictitious conversation with a dead philosopher, I recognized my own ability to think, and more specifically, my ability to reason, a capability which many theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas, take to be our uniquely human function. I know that my reason is a defining characteristic of my humanity, but it does not explain why I am and why I continue to exist in a state where I can think and I can reason. There is nothing I am aware of doing which perpetuates my existence, nothing which is either voluntary or involuntary that I know of which keeps me in this world.

At this point, it must be told that I believe in the existence of God. As He is responsible for the institution of the entirety of creation, He is also responsible for maintaining that creation in existence. God created man out of love; He became incarnate out of love; He died for man’s sins out of love. I exist only as God continues to love me.

I see an interesting parallel to my temporal relationships in this idea of love inextricably tied to being. Sometimes I feel that I am only held in one place, in body, mind and soul, by the love of my family and friends. It is when the love of others is distant or absent that I am forced to reflect upon what love still may exist in that void. I always find God there, though He does not always reveal himself immediately. Is that not what we want most when we feel alone? To know unequivocally that we are loved? There is a security and peace in such knowledge.

And then we are back to knowledge and to thought. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Descartes was searching for something which he could not doubt, but the only thing he could not doubt was that he was thinking while searching. I see the answer to that search every time I see the host raised on high at the mass. God has revealed himself to me in the Eucharist, and the very sacrifice which gives meaning to the transubstantiation we celebrate in that Eucharist proves to me beyond a doubt that I am loved to a degree which I cannot fathom. Secure in this knowledge, I can move past Descartes' search.

I am loved, therefore I am.