AN ALLEGORY IN THE TIMES

I found myself harboring a fantasy that the New York Times was telling an allegory today in it’s Opinion section. In there, we find an editorial about fishing in the south Pacific titled Pacific Miracles. Here’s some bits:

“The trouble with modernity is how efficiently it obliterates the troves of age-old knowledge otherwise known as wisdom. The good news from Palau, a Pacific island nation near the Philippines, is that some wise old ways have reasserted themselves to the great benefit of that tiny republic’s fish and reefs, and the people who depend on them.

Under an ancient system of laws known throughout the South Pacific as tabu or kapu, rulers would forbid fishing in certain areas to let them recover from overuse. Their decisions relied on deep knowledge of seasons and of the habits of fish and plants, and were strictly obeyed by islanders, who understood that depletion of fisheries meant death.”

“…Native Hawaiians know all about kapu. What the lobbyists pushing the legislation are banking on is that Hawaiians will forget the usefulness of the old ways and bristle at the supposed paternalism. It would be a perverse victory for “rights” if such an attitude hastened the demise of a shared, precious and vulnerable resource like an island fishery.”

Now, I do care about reefs, ugly fish, blah, blah, blah – but, that’s not what this about. See how the Times is pining away for the “old ways”? See how they are even willing to call a victory for “rights” (notice the scare quotes?) a bad thing?

To me, this is all an allegory for the loss of social norms. I have wept for the demise of social norms for years in this blog and I still do. Social norms were those little rules we all knew and lived by. They were not the law of the land and they certainly did infringe upon your “rights”. You didn’t dress like slut. It was a BAD thing to get pregnant if you weren’t married. You married that girl, deadbeat. Being on the public dole was something to be embarrassed about and you did everything to get off it.

Now, the Times, of course, is not saying this at all. They support the loss of norms and the damage it has done to society. But, I’ll still live in my fantasy world and read this article the way I mean it to be.