Lifestyle and Entertainment

THIS is a standard section in all papers, radio and TV. No matter how serious the press may be, there’s always this part that seeks to lighten people’s minds and hearts.

If only for that reason, it deserves not only a good space and airtime, but also praise from everyone. I have met many men and women, otherwise serious in their endeavors, who follow closely, either openly or secretly, the items there. It’s clear they enjoy it.

But precisely because of its immense popularity, everything has to be done that it properly serves its audience. This should always be in our mind. Its instant allure should not blind us to this concern.

That moral dangers and abuses abound there cannot be denied. First, the tendency to be frivolous, flippant, seems to be a permanent threat. Then there is the easy slide to vulgarity and bad taste that are getting to be more common these days.

Many people are complaining that values promoted in this section, not very openly, of course, but as it were, in hints and shadows, are rotten. It seems they advance all possible variations of the capital sins.

The spin of the stories, the celebrities placed in the limelight in all their luscious glory, at least subliminally hype vanity, pride, greed and gluttony, lust and sensuality, laziness, avarice, envy, etc. They tease and gratify the senses, while poisoning the spirit.

It appears that the now fashionable idea of lifestyle and entertainment includes the element of absolute freedom as to what can be done, said and shown in this section.

Any limitation set by whatever law or standard is considered against the very nature of that section. Talk about censorship, and you’re bound to provoke a blistering storm of protests!

I’m actually all out in support of literary or artistic freedom. The problem is that while freedom, artistic rights and privileges, and creativity are supposed to bring us to our potentials’ highest level, without any guiding law they bring us down instead, like water seeking its own lowest level.

This has always been the challenge. The passage of time, the great strides of progress, the accumulation of a wealth of experience, have hardly improved the picture. On the contrary, there are indications things are deteriorating.

We don’t have to eyeball our surrounding to see there is a glorification of the body, sex, and worldly values—materialistic, consumerist—at the expense of the spiritual values.

The problem is not only a matter of focus. It’s now a matter of a systematic negation and even war against anything that has to do with the spiritual and supernatural values that are supposed to govern us.

What’s happening there obviously is a mere reflection of a deeper crisis swamping our culture today. Without conscious effort to refer ourselves to God, we get lost about what true freedom is, or what comprises our authentic development.

Sadly, to many, freedom nowadays is purely a matter of choice. Artistic privileges and creative licenses are entirely a matter of self-expression. Any reference to any objective law or goal outside of the subjects concerned is considered a violation to their nature.

With this frame of mind, the idea of human development can go free-for-all, completely subjective and loose. Legitimate human and material values get spoiled as they are detached from their proper context and purpose.

Pope Benedict talks about a gripping relativism that is ailing the world these days. This is the sick ethos of considering everything as relative to oneself, to a culture, to time and place, etc. Nothing is held absolute and objective.

This, I think, is the core of the problem. And as the Pope says, there is a certain tyranny involved, since the only absolute rule relativism follows is precisely that everything is relative.

We should congratulate ourselves, since we are still in relativism’s beginning stage, still playing it coy and sweet. We are not yet in its ultimate, most rotten stage!

But there’s an inherent contradiction in this madness. It can’t last. But its exposure and untangling depend on us. Do we take the challenge?