Anderson Cooper recently appeared on a morning show and gave an impromptu speech about his experiences in his health club’s locker room. He noted that it is not unusual for elderly men to walk around in the nude. His exaggerated facial expression of disgust elicited a strong reaction from the audience, who clearly understood the situation he was describing and laughed in response.
ANDERSON: “I mean they (YUK) walk around all sticking out and wrinkled up and YUK …”
I was recently reminded of my childhood days spent at the Chester, PA YMCA. As an adult, I am too modest to use locker rooms, but evidently the old men of my memory are still around. As we boys (ages 8-12) swam nude in the indoor pool (bathing suits were prohibited), we dove and jumped and the naked old men, as Anderson described, sat along the side watching us play and poking fun. This experience left me feeling uncomfortable.
Cooper’s remarks, however, made me consider the idea that this is a part of the perennial Human story. Historically, people have enjoyed watching children play in the nude; it is only in the past 20 years that it has been considered ‘dirty’, and even then only in America. My thoughts then turned to the Cathedrals of Europe, including the Vatican, where thousands of pictures of naked children are portrayed; here, there is nothing seen as ‘dirty’.
The next morning, I passed by the standup mirror in my bedroom and spotted a naked old man; there was nothing sexual about the sight. This made me wonder why Americans spend so much effort writing, addressing, emphasizing and concentrating on nakedness and sexual behaviors.
I had the opportunity to perform a wedding at a nudist resort in NJ, surrounded by a hundred people in the buff for about an hour. It was here that I first discovered that there is nothing about bare people that elicits the slightest sexual desire. I also remembered my Historical Sociology Classes learning that humans invented clothing partly because they found that “if everyone is unclothed, sex and the birth rate almost disappear”.
The recent “Harper Valley PTA” discussion, in which an attractive girl in our church achieved “Teen Status” and was met with outrage over her wearing a mini skirt, and the ridiculous hooping and hollering of about 50 screaming guests when Brad Pitt mentioned on TV that he was not wearing underwear, made me realize that we are a society that is “artificially” acting like a pack of “loony birds”.
My knowledge of Social Psychology led me to conclude that Americans are covering up our real social sin, hoping the world will look in another direction. This real American sin of sins is war. We claim to be a peace-loving people yet we create war all over the earth. Even the President said in the State of the Union “America MUST move off a permanent war footing!”.
We address sex and nakedness like giggling sixth graders, with a wink and a nod, attempting to show the world what good and moral people we are, while not facing our true evil self. We are all aware that we are committing the worst atrocity possible: the wanton, deliberate, act of killing, stealing and horror upon other innocent peoples. Even when war becomes unavoidable, most wars are fought for profit and gain. We are aware that our rulers hype us, tell out and out lies, stretch the truth completely out of context, and ignite social fear and patriotism, so that we will gladly give over our kids to get killed or maimed. We are immature killer animals who will soon destroy our civilized world and then return to the forest, where we’ll all live naked and act like the monkeys we truly are.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Many have accused me of being an iconoclast, but what I am is a realist and a pragmatist who is fighting against the human tendency to deny reality. The Ruling Class has long relied on our refusal to confront the truth, instead preferring a world of fantasy in order to manipulate us into sacrificing our children and our hard-earned security to fight their wars of wealth accumulation. Any combat veteran will tell you that the greatest memorial they could hope for is an end to the “waste of war”. As we enter the New Year, I urge you to join me in my mission to put an end to war. Please share these newsletters and post them in your workplace. Let us honors those who have made such great sacrifices by ensuring that war is consigned to the past.
