In the cauldron of what passes for the day’s news is the ongoing pathetic accumulation of stories of  decades of abuse and sexual harassment imposed by the leading figure of Hollywood’s film industry upon untold starlets and aspiring actresses. At the beginning of October, Harvey Weinstein stood like a colossus over the production of cinematic art in the United States.  The industry that had made him a billionaire and positioned him as the “conscience” of Hollywood due to his devotion and monetary support of liberal causes and ever more liberal candidates, suddenly awakened to the raw stories of ruined lives and possibly criminal assaults that had been an “open” secret, but sublimated by payoffs, fear, intimidation, or worse, casual acceptance.  The ‘colossus’ first attempted to deflect the stories, as had worked so many times before, but this time, the sheer volume and profoundly pathetic nature of the actions prevented any coverup from taking root.  For the first time, high priced lawyers with the politically correct belief set were not enough to dissuade the pent up anger and outrage of the many victims from pouring out.  Weinstein, so used to burying such stories, in the briefest of times found himself buried by the avalanche. An attempt to deflect the criminal nature of his acts through the typical liberal weapon of converting himself into a victim needing “treatment for his sickness, sexual addiction” only brought forth more scorn, more stories, and eventually, the wrath of the very entertainment company he had founded and led.

There can be no treatment of Harvey Weinstein for sex addiction, because sex is the last thing  to which this self absorbed power thug could relate.  He is another progressively perverse example of the lack of  human responsiveness in modern society that is poisoning and weakening civilization to the point of collapse.  As outrageous as are the perpetrated violent assaults is the global lack of recognition of his peer community of the anti-human character of such people, empowered by a societal fatigue for the traditional strengths of  human relationships. Weinstein, despite the untold number of sexual assaults predicated on his ability to threaten and intimidate, was revealed to have a sordidly predictable, asexual and profoundly vapid interaction with his victims.  Story after story told of Weinstein entrapping young women into vulnerable environments, only to be asked to passively watch him bathe or pleasure himself, as if they were props in a movie set. Sex, as a human interaction between adults based on mutual attraction, was the furthest thing from this amoral, anti-social character’s psyche.  So self absorbed in the action, he could often not remember, upon later meeting the person, as to whether a positive or negative event had taken place.

Modern society has drawn us into this dark place.  The blurring of genders, the flattening of the importance and responsibilities of masculinity, the outsourcing and perversion of femininity, the relegation of sex into a hormonally discharged act of inwardly directed sensory release has displaced the centerpiece of a healthy society, the mutually projected love of a man and a woman. This core strength of a society to procreate for the purpose of creating its next generation, and linking the act to the positive expression of the human instinct to support and protect towards this purpose, is under massive assault.  The modern culture that has glorified an impersonal sex, directed inward, absolved of  the lack of any meaning beyond physical, celebrates this perversion as an achievement of personal freedom and expression.  The movies that Weinstein specialized in making often promoted such gratuitousness into subsequent expressions of casual violence where pain and loss were whitewashed, societally destructive anti-heroes were celebrated over those with principles, and villains were cartooned on the basis of race or politics to tear down conventions of civility.

We are at one of those tipping points where society has lost its compass to the point that the basics of interactive behavior ultimately defining our humanness are at risk through such casual distain. In Japan, it is estimated a third of the population of procreative age has not had a sexual interaction with the opposite sex, resulting in a population implosion that threatens the very future of a Japanese cultural existence.  In that same society, and in parts of the enlightened west, men look to experience their sexual interactions with idealized robots rather than another human being.  It is all in all a profound loss of understanding for the deeper meanings of existence and the cognitive recognition of the critical role of both the physical and the metaphysical in bringing meaning to life.

Modernity, expressed in such profoundly empty, valueless lives of those who supposedly are the exemplars of our modern societal intellect and self proclaimed projectors of our culture, have ensnared a large proportion of society into their ultimately aspiritual, meaningless vision of existence.  The restorative powers of redemption will not be found in a sex addiction clinic or in paying indulgences.  It can only come from a reinvigorating of our very humanness, and a return, as did the prodigal son, to the healing powers of what is fundamental and good.  We will not find our happiness in the superficial, the dominated, or the passive. We will not find it in amoral equivalences. We will find it, dear Brutus, not in our stars, but in our selves.