I basically don't care about the musical chairs relationships of Hollywood types, but I thought the following story was indicative of our culture in general...and that is not a good thing. This headline was important enough to show up in the Top 20 stories of Google News recently: "Alex Rodriguez and Cameron Diaz Get Cozy in Miami." The piece started out: "Don't tell Madonna, but New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez was spotted getting cozy with Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz at a pre-Super Bowl party in Miami last weekend." According to this inane report, she was tipsy, flirty, and began "grinding on 'A-Rod', who had just broken up with Kate Hudson. Clearly, sports is not the only thing for which you need a score card! Generally, women who have nothing going on in their lives become groupies, because attachment to a star (even in their imaginations, much less their beds) brings them a feeling of importance. Madonna, Kate Hudson and Cameron Diaz are all successful in their own right, so "groupie-ness" is not the issue. Then what is? What makes women "give it up" so easily for a guy who is good-looking, successful and has lots of money? I guess it's the looks and success, and the feeling that even more money is always good. There is so little dignity left in Hollywood's elite, and many political marriages are also aflame with betrayals. Our young girls grow up next to young boys who have both misguided values and expectations. The boys realize that respect and courtship are irrelevant when it comes to getting sex and companionship; the girls think that explosive beginnings mean something deeper. I had one female caller who was just amazed at my admonition not to have sex as a flirtation, rite of dating, way to get to know someone, or stress releaser. She actually was surprised when I suggested to her (and her 21 year-old "reality") that scarcity brings value. While that is an economic issue, it also works for interpersonal relationships. If the act of sexual intercourse is to mean
anything
, it has to have a context of love and commitment, and
that
is a scarce resource. People wonder why they're depressed, anxious, unhappy, unfulfilled, lost, or compulsive about hookups. There is an inherent knowledge that meaning and purpose are everything to their psychological well-being, but they are surrounded by the likes of an A-Rod and Madonna world which tells them there isn't any, except for notoriety and sexual flamboyance. It's sad, really, because there is more to morality than just being a "rule system of the constipated," which, unfortunately, is what too many people believe. Morality is a means by which we make human beings rise above the rest of the animal kingdom with symbols and actions: like marriage and commitment, for example.
