JUST PHILOSOPHISING - ON WHETHER THE 'ENLIGHTENED' WEST IS BECOMING MORE PURITANICAL? PART 1.

'There is, sometimes, the paradox of a thing having the dual abilities to be of a benefit and a disadvantage to humans. 

Take, for example, the Sun, that giver of life, of warmth, of rain, the quintessential planetary body which provides us with the crops we eat. The plants we use to build our dwellings and stockade our animals and construct barriers between us and our enemies, both humans and animals. 

And yet, too much of the Radiance and heat of the Sun, and it scorched and set fire to parts of the earth and takes back the lives it has given birth to. 

And, even worse, although not for many millenniums, we are told, said life-giving and sustaining Sun, is fated to incinerate Planet Earth. Is it also the fate which awaits the progression of human social development? 

That we are fated to return to the chaos and puritanicalism from whence we crawled and fought our way, throughout the ages, or be destroyed by excessive and extreme 'freedom' and 'permissiveness' and 'liberalism'?

There is, its seems, a great contradiction taking place in the social development of the western European and more Europeanised countries of the world, today. 

The forces of 'political correctness', and those of conservatism and 'puritanism' are in direct confrontation, although many of us might not be aware that they are confronting each other.

On the one hand, European countries are applying a differential, if not hypocritical 'political correctness' approach towards people in the West practising their cultural and religious traditions. 

Their women and teenage girls, they are being told, should not be covering up their faces and heads with scarves, hijabs and niqabs, they are being told. 

Neither should their women and teenage girls be wearing whole bodied, shroud-like  'beachwear' which had not been seen on European women for the last 60 odd years. 

The implication being that it is 'not sexy enough', if at all. And, as we should all known by now.  

'Sexiness' is what sells many commodities, in the world today, even when these commodities have little or absolutely nothing at all to do with sexual aspirations or associations. 

And how do manufacturers and producers 'sexualise' their products? By associating them with women dressed in skimpy and otherwise sexually suggestive clothes.

To be continued!