A Crisis in Anthropology

We are living in a world today where people are being encouraged to mutilate their bodies towards a purpose they themselves desire. Even government officials are proclaiming what is the humane thing to do or not. But how do they know? Are they the absolute governing authority to which we rely on for the definition of what it means to be human? To be a man or a woman? A boy or a girl?

Today’s society is facing a crisis in anthropology. People are disconnected with their origins, their history, and most especially themselves. Artificial conception methods and contraceptives diminish the value of life and the family. A “dilemma of adolescence” is rising in which young adults don’t want to adult — they want to remain free and single, able to do what they want when they want, with contraceptives and artificial conceptions available to them at their convenience. Man is so preoccupied with himself that natural “right” as taken place over natural law. Man is the speaker that gives things meaning, not God. Man brings into life and takes life away when he deems appropriate, not God. As to their own bodies, people are creating a generation of sterilization; the body becomes deaf to life and love, the two essential and basic foundations of the human person.

A crisis in anthropology — society no longer knows what it means to be human. Children are growing in a world which teaches that the body is only a machine with parts that can be added or removed according to your own design, according to whatever purpose you wish to give it. Love, however, can only be truly realized in the giving and receiving of life, in the giving of oneself and receiving of another. If the body is made sterile through individualistic ideologies, then is there any freedom to love as society claims? We are entering into another form of Marxism, creating a “sexless” society. Is this truly an authentic way of living? “Being true to oneself” is not authenticity — if two people with opposite views are being true to themselves, what does authenticity mean? Reclaiming who we are as humans, as social beings who can only be fulfilled through loving and serving other human beings, is the path towards authenticity. Our bodies, our sexed bodies (male and female) are keys to connecting to the past and present of our humanity. Our sexed bodies tell us that we were made to give and receive love. Denying the two sexes of the body is distorting the meaning of being human and sterilizing the culture for generations to come, if another generation is able to come.