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Today's Moral Isolationists

Catolic Twin Circle,
Spring 1995

Ron S e i g e l
Today's Moral Isolationists

Recently, I heard about a comic book character named Jaine Cutter, who waged war against both heaven and hell because, she declared, "I don't want either of them controlling my planet." In many ways, this cartoon character represents a basic attitude of our time - a refusal to be bound by anything.
This Jaine Cutter Mentality has turned us into moral and spiritual isolationists. People are expected to be little islands, separate and "self-sufficient." When others ask us for help, we all too often assume their problems are their own fault. I saw this attitude at work in a particularly infuriating column I read years ago by a feminist therapist named Barbara Schiff.
 She reacted with contemptuous sarcasm to a worker from a women's shelter, who said that violence and abuse could happen to any woman. This, Schiff declared, offended her "philosophy of self-help."
"We must all take an active part in our well-being, instead of leaving it to the environment [ie., the police and courts] to care for us," she wrote. "We live in a democracy that preaches this."
Imprisoned in her "self-help philosophy," Schiff had to believe that any self- respecting woman could find a set of rational rules to deal with every situation - even ones involving irrational personalities.
If some can respond this way to crime victims, imagine the smug reactions directed against those victimized by poverty and homelessness - even when jobs are eliminated by massive layoffs and technological changes. The poor suffer insult as well as neglect.
As a Detroit poverty advocate named Maureen Taylor wrote last year, "Our characters are constantly maligned, our morals questioned, and we are nationally labeled as shiftless and lazy people ... [while in the mass media] we are voiceless and forced into invisibility, as we are slowly removed further and further from the ability to survive."
Those who are considered unable to be self-sufficient are often considered "better off dead."
In so-called "right to die" efforts, relatives and judges have assumed that those with severe illness and handicaps have lost all "dignity" and have inferior quality or even "meaningless" lives be- cause they are "dependent on others" and "helpless."
This dream of self-sufficiency is unattainable.
The feeling that people ought to be in control gives us a false sense of security, a feeling of being superior and invulnerable, an assurance that nothing can happen to us.
Ever since the "Me Generation" of the '70s, it has been considered fashionable and glamorous to be absorbed in the self - or, more accurately to be absorbed in what we consider self-advancement - accumulating material things and power. A self-sufficiency philosophy, mixed with a hearty dose of self-righteousness, ensures that the suffering of others will never distract us from what we consider these all-important concerns.
Complete self-sufficiency, the refusal to give and receive help, robs life of its deepest meanings - our deepest experiences of love and commitment. Christ himself presents the ultimate challenge to moral isolationism and the Jaine Cutter Mentality'. He is involved with all people - even those whose problems were caused by their own mistakes and sins. Christ demonstrated that God himself had this universal concern.

Rob Seigel is a freelance writer who lives in Highland Park, Mich.

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