If, as I have posited, the principle task of meaning formation (one of four tasks which “culture” performs, and by far the most important one) is contextualizing and reducing psychological pain–as exemplified chiefly by resentment and self pity–then any social order which does not accept the necessity of pain in life, has in fact rejected any and all possible cultural forms. It has castrated itself, and will in short order be taken over by another culture which actually provides solutions to that problem.
I have in mind at the moment Sweden, and stories like this. Even from a strictly materialistic standpoint, girls and boys are put together differntly. Their hormonal landscapes are different. Their bodies are different. Their brains are different.
From what moral principle does the need for reducing and eventually eradicating all cultural markers arise? From where, specifically, are these children to get the raw building blocks of “identity”, and how exactly are small children to decide who they “want to be”? The logical end of giving this freedom would be to stop nurturing and guiding them altogether, and let them stew in silence for ten years, and see what happens. Self evidently, that would be child abuse. As I see it, though, even this abdication of direction amounts to child abuse.
Presumably, of coruse, there will be tacit and unconscious reinforcement for boys to act like girls, and vice versa. The question is: will this make them happier in life? Will this teach them to face the challenges of life–such that remain in a cradle to grave welfare state–with dignity, poise, and perseverance?
I doubt it. All of the Scandinavian countries are committing slow cultural suicide, by reproducing at half the rate needed to maintain their populations. This is happening at the same time as massive increases in birth rates among Muslim immigrants. Unless something changes, Mark Steyn is right is assuming that all the cultures which allows this to happen will be submerged eventually in Sharia.
To my mind, this is an abdication of responsibility on the part of the Swedes and others. They want to live in this make-believe, fairy-tale world, where everyone is always nice, and hard men and hard women are never needed; where suffering is always accidental, and sybaritic pleasures the norm.
That is not the world we live in. We may be able to build it someday, but only by marginalizing and converting or destroying all the anti-liberal elements in it.