Krauthammer on Rap Music

Krauthammer’s column is an accurate expose of the messages of Western culture and its media of today. I do believe that there is a light at the end of the long, dark, undeniable tunnel he describes. That light flickers in each one of us in the very undeniableness of the problem. The only way to treat culture’s pathology is to treat the multiple components of that culture. We are beginning to see the enemy and it is us!

Adults of today are feeling the pain and emptiness of our microchip and luxury dip, instant gratification society. Expression of grief and making amends for grief caused are beginning to emerge from the dark tunnel of “looking good” and “having it all.”

As more and more of us become willing to look at our own individual parts in our culture’s pathology, we become able to begin healing that part which is ours. As small parts begin healing, larger parts such as relationships begin to change, and perhaps heal. Relationships build families that then have to adjust to the healing of the fundamental relationship. And then a family learning to be caring, expressive and dynamic goes out to work, shop, school and maybe even the polls. Caring people who value life, who recognize the value of other’s lives, can be the route to entertainment selling when it’s about dreams of happiness and wholeness, love and caring and growth and adventure.

We do have free will, and that will is expressed in what we make our culture. We won’t change Western society overnight, any more than we got to this violent, destructive, object-focused version of it overnight. But amid the darkness of this seemingly endless tunnel, I do see some evidence of a route to emergence.

KRISTEN K.A. NORRIS

Psychology Lecturer

Cal Poly Pomona