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The Age of Consent : The Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of Popular Culture

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Author Robert H. Knight, in his "Age of Consent," tackles a huge topic. Yet his historic survey-like description of popular culture's decline misses two key consequences of "Relativism," as a social ethos: (1) Comparativism (which neutrally treats all 'belief/opinion systems' as equally valid); and (2) Moral Legalism (which suggests that legal permissibility--and arguable legal versions of fact, however interpretive--is the ultimate moral authority. (If it's legal, or in a gray area, or undetectable...it's OK, so long as no real harm comes to anyone.) The author fails to expand on the two-edged sword predicament of Relativism, as both a media marketing necessity in a multi-ethnic America, and also the divisive foundation for potential Balkanization. A good intro to the subject.

If you want a genuinely serious and reflective examination of the philosophical roots of what has been called America's "culture war," you'd be hard-pressed to find a better choice than Knight's book. Knight is a Christian and a conservative, but I am sure even a secular liberal reader could benefit from reading Knight's critique. A lot of people who rant about "the Religious Right," it seems to me, are actually angry at politicians and TV preachers (or perhaps are motivated by some personal resentment of authority, or by a grievance against religion) and thus do not consider the deeper moral questions that Knight explores in "The Age of Consent." This book is eminently readable, told in a calm, sure and clear narrative style (Knight is a former L.A. newspaper editor). The reader is free to disagree with Knight's analysis, or with the answers he proposes to the problems he diagnoses, but this is a book that should not be merely ignored.

Bob Knight is angry with an America that has taken the wrong path, and he takes the cultural leaders to task for leading the country astray since the 1960s. High culture, low culture, and middlebrow are all misguided, according to this book, and only a return to American traditions will rescue American civilization from decay. In his final chapter he finds hope in grass-roots America, which Knight argues can revitalize the country's intellectual and cultural life, if given a chance. Written from a Christian perspective, it presents an important point of view which should be seriously considered by all Americans interested in cultural developments.

The Bible verse that opens the preface sums it up nicely: "And they all with one consent began to make excuse." (Luke 14:18)

The age of consent, in the way that Knight uses it here, refers to an era in which absolute authority (or even the attempt to appeal to absolute authority) has been drowned out in a flood of changes to the modern cultural pillars (largely the entertainment and cultural fields) that have rendered equal every lifestyle, no matter how destructive or self-absorbed it becomes. In anticipation of the counterargument that suggests that if another person does what he or she wants, it's nobody's business but their own, Knight lays out the landscape of what the cultural fields look like as compared to just a few decades ago. The institutions that have buttressed society and made them better -- the family, religion, and sound education -- have become the targets of the relatively recent cultural barrage. In this sense, Knight argues, it affects everybody, especially the generations that grow up with this environment being the norm.

Although there are separate chapters on each of the two subjects, Knight is concerned about more than just the exaltation of sex and the denigration of God in the culture. The linchpin of his argument is that by dismantling the mechanisms to discern good from bad -- in other words, by making all things equal -- it only festers a further breeding ground for the more base desires to be promoted underneath a glossy veneer of "tolerance" and so-called progressive enlightenment.

One of the ways to distinguish between these types of books is, now that they have described the problem, what is to be done about it? The final chapter of the book points to positive trends in the hope that it provides a transition into an overall improvement, which Knight details in several bullet points to express how the cultural change will have not only moral improvements, but also fiscal improvements as there will be fewer personal messes for the government to clean up.

Even though it came out several years ago, most of the book is not confined to that timeframe. Most of it is still relevant today.

As a person interested in philosophy (particularly moral philosophy), my interest was piqued when I saw this book. I am always up for a good criticism of relativism (whether theoretical or pratical). What I got was a far cry from that. Instead, I got a very tired, rambling and oh-so cliche christian-right harrangue against everything not conservative. If that is what you want, go for this book (though Pat Robertson has written better). If that is not what you want, you have been forewarned.

The biggest problem I have with this book is that the author frankly misunderstands the 'relativism' he rails against. While he rightly states that relativism is the belief that there is no meta-arbiter to decide which beliefs are superior to others, this is not what he laments. He does not lament that society has been rendered incapable of choosing values (because of relativism), but rather that society HAS chosen values, but that they are ONES THE AUTHOR DISAGREES WITH. When he states, as he tirelessly does, that "society has no values/standards anymore," he does not mean literally this. Rather, he means only to say, "Society has values that I think have moved in the wrong direction." If this is what Mr. Knight means, he should have been honest. Instead of substitling the book, "the rise of relativism and the corruption of popular culture," it may have better read, "the rise of secularism, leftism and other things I can't stand and the corruption of popular culture."

The next problem is that from a philosophical standpoint, Mr. Knight only asserts that conservative Christian beliefs are better than leftist/secular beliefs but offers precious little argument as to why this is so. The only argument he uses is a (?!) utilitarian one. This, of course, only after he argues against utilitarian thinking! See the humor?

The third problem I have is that while the book is organized into chapters, the author wanders around so much from sub-rant to sub-rant, that it might as well not be. Most every chapter, whether on secularism, declining standards in TV, or declining standards in architecture (a most unfortunate chapter, by the way), finds our author admonishing against the 'homosexual agenda.'(I am left to assume that the 'heterosexual agenda' is the better agenda, but have no idea why, as Mr. Knight doesn't argue for it.)

I could write more, but I think my point has already been made. The book is sloppy; the book is cliche; the book is poorly thought out and written. Quite simply, it is not worth the time or effort.

If you want to see what happens to a country when a fundamentalist religious movement hijacks a country you need only look at Iran and Afghanistan. The same would happen here if Gary Bauer and his ilk actually achieved a real measure of power. Their ascendancy would result in a financial collapse that would make the Great Depression look like a tea party. It's so easy to blame easy targets like film, music and the latest whipping boy of the right wing, the 60's, for what's going on in America today. It lets lazy politicians look like they're actually accomplishing something. Watch out...Bauer's running for President.