Valentine's Day, or how the rules keep us pure
It's been so strange and sad watching free peoples of the world pretend, these last 10 or so years, that it is their might and not their freedom that makes them great.
And the almighty Kingdom of Saudi Arabia offers a story to give us perspective on that ugly and foolish belief.
Saudi Valentine's Day: Authorities Crack Down on Anywhere Selling Red
"The Saudi religious police launched Thursday a nationwide crackdown on stores selling items that are red or in any other way allude to the banned celebrations of Valentine's Day, a Saudi official said.
Members of the feared religious police were inspecting shops for red roses, heart-shaped products or gifts wrapped in red, and ordering storeowners to get rid of them, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Red-colored or heart-shaped items are legal at other times of the year, but as Feb. 14 nears they become contraband in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom bans celebration of Western holidays such as Valentine's Day, named after a Christian saint said to have been martyred by the Romans in the 3rd Century.
Most shops in Riyadh's upscale neighborhoods have removed all red items from their shelves. A statement by the religious police, informally known as the muttawa, was published in Saudi newspapers, warning shop owners against any violations.
'Those who don't comply will be punished,' the statement said, without spelling out what measures would befall the offenders.
The Valentine's Day prohibition is in line with Saudi's strict Wahhabi school of Islam that the kingdom has followed for more than a century. The birthplace of Islam also bans several Muslim holidays except the two most important ones because it considers them 'religious innovations' that Islam doesn't sanction.
Even birthdays and Mother's Day are frowned on by the religious establishment, although people almost never get punished for celebrating them.
Many Saudis, who still want to mark the popular Valentine's, do their shopping weeks before the holiday.
Each year, the religious police mobilize ahead of Feb. 14 and descend on gift and flower shops, confiscating all red items, including flowers.
Attitudes toward Valentine's Day vary across the Arab world, with devout Muslims opposing the holiday as a Western celebration of romantic love that corrupts Muslim youth."
Repression is the long history of humanity. The presumption that it will make us good and make all the bad go away, or too afraid to raise it's unholy head, has been with us since the evolution of moral codes to organize human behavior in every grouping of homo sapiens since the beginning of humanity.
It just happens to be wrong.
And it is responsible for the great bulk of the history of human tragedy.
And led to reversals of real human progress in every generation.
The Rennaisance and the Enlightenment, in early European history, marked a break from the long history of repression of Medieval Europe.
And their central theme was freedom. Freedom of thought and freedom of conscience. And the freedom and responsibility to challenge repressive governments that had chilled the development of thought, art, and science for hundreds of years.
Does it not seem strange to anyone that the last 10 years, the first sustained liberal democracy in the history of the world has seen it's public debate and discussion shy from embracing the very value that was the original purpose for its existence, at all?
Valentine's Day in Saudi Arabia should be a reminder to those of us in less repressive countries of what that kind of repression looked like in our own history. And why there is no future in that past.
It does not matter for what purpose repression is used. Those who are a genuine threat to others need to be contained until they are no longer a threat. And confusing fear with likely probability of real threat is not an honest substitute for better governance or real safety. But freedom to follow our conscience on all other matters is central to what nurtures all that is great, including real security, in liberal democracies and for all peoples who are more honest about the consequences of repression.
It is the scared and the weak who must bully those who disagree with them.
Courage, greatness, comes from respecting the value of the freedom and conscience that make us great. And it is with that courage that we become better, for real. Not a means of pretending that we are better than we are.
Perhaps we are a species that cannot live up to its highest ideals. Because we lack the courage.
And if so, we should at least have the decency and honesty to acknowledge that we are frauds and cowards. And stop pretending to be anything better.
The Saudi Kingdom has taken this approach. Without all the honesty or courage.
Perhaps we will pride ourselves that we are not quite as bad as them.
Perhaps that is all we have to offer.
If so, we will most assuredly get the lives that we deserve.
Choose wisely.
Happy Valentines.
