What a culture embraces most deeply is seldom articulated. It is, rather, presupposed. Today’s secular media culture is given expression via thousands of messages every hour —in film, television, CDs, magazines, and iPod presentations—but its philosophical roots are largely invisible.

Freedom is certainly a basic dogma of the media culture, as it was of the Judeo-Christian culture that preceded it. But the purpose of post-modern freedom is largely undefined. Today the idea that individuals can do “whatever they want” is reiterated ad nauseam. The notion that people “should” do certain things, except for recycling, is given short shrift. Even the much-touted virtue of tolerance, when scrutinized, turns out to be a non-negotiable demand that non-secular folks abandon restrictive beliefs about right and wrong.

This purposeless freedom, freedom for its own sake, is a concept that feeds into the popular notion of “pushing the envelope.” Those who employ this phrase typically do so with the tacit assumption that destroying taboos is a progressive enterprise—an activity that puts taboo-breakers on a higher plane than individuals who dwell in the passé world of “thou shalt nots.” Accordingly, bi-coastals view cultures that take blasphemy seriously as primitive and theocratic.

What one expects to gain by normalizing depravity, exhibited most completely in gangsta rap, isn’t articulated beyond vacuous clichés like “openness” and “artistic freedom.” A vague romantic hope persists that, with the aid of science and midnight basketball, utopian bliss will break out once nine-year-olds can swear proficiently and are no longer naïve about varieties of sexual expression once labeled “perversions.”

The apotheosis of individual freedom also requires the abolition of concepts like natural law. There are, it seems, no self-evident truths. Even distinctions between male and female are treated as arbitrary constructs. Just as individuals can be whatever they want to be, so families and marriages can be constituted in ways limited only by our capacity to imagine them.

Tepid and unimaginative formulations—“My freedom to swing my fist ends at your nose.”—limit the possibilities of self-expression under this cultural myth that presupposes a godless universe devoid of freedom.

Youngsters raised within this cultural framework are told to view nature as a meaningless fluke that must be revered and preserved. They are told to view their existence as accidental and their desires as rights. They are told (dozens of times every day) that religion is a childish delusion rooted in wish fulfillment. And they are assured that predatory corporate magnates must be allowed to corrupt the souls of children for the sake of “freedom.”

Is it any wonder that many young adults, especially those with links to non-Western culture, find an intransigent religious sect that boldly preaches the exact opposite more nourishing—and even more reasonable?

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer published regularly by (San Diego's) North County Times. Other posts: http://musingwithahammerkirk.blogspot.com