Letters From a 14 Year Old: A Letter To the Culture

Written by Kathlyn Copley

Dear Culture,

When I first heard you tell me “Love is Love” I’ve got to say, it sounded compelling. Me? Getting the freedom to love anyone I want? No judgment, right? But as I dug deeper I realized there are problems with that statement. (More problems than the fact that as a slogan it explains nothing. I mean, Culture, you do realize you’re not supposed to have the word you’re defining in the definition, let alone be the definition itself!) But no, there are more problems behind this pretty slogan than any logical error.

First, most people don't consider what kind of love is the love that you, Culture, put behind Love is Love. What I’m getting at is there is more than one type of love. I have learned that way back in the time of the Greeks, they had four main understandings of love: agape, storge, eros, and philos. Agape is self-sacrificial love, getting at God’s love. Storge is love between family. Eros is love between spouses, a sexual love. Last is philos, which is love between friends. (See, now those are better definitions of love!)

But Love is Love talks about one certain type of love; and dear Culture of our times, it's easy to see what you mean by “Love is Love.” You mean Eros is Love; my sexual desires are love.

We’ve all seen it - your movies, media, celebrities, and flags all show our way of life is all about sex. Love is Love means we support all love, or should I say, all sexual desires. At this point, Culture, you must realize you’re going in a direction that would say even eros love towards an animal or a child is okay. Right now the thought of eros love with a child is abusive, but not long ago the thought of it between two women or two men was not to be heard of either. So if you got this far, what's stopping you from making eros love control all love?

But I may ask, “Culture, how did you get so sexualized?” Then I should bring in another one of your famous slogans: Follow Your Heart.

One example of this is from a great book - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. In this book are five sisters, the youngest is Lydia Bennet. All of Lydia's life she’s permitted to go and “follow her heart.” Because Lydia had four older sisters, she’s had the perfect opportunity to go “out” early and follow her desires. She went to balls and dances and was exposed to adult culture at a young age. Blinded by the notion of following her feelings, she soon got comfortable flirting with all the guys. We see Lydia become a fool by throwing herself at any boy she thought worthwhile. Lydia became, as her protagonist older sister Elizabeth says, “A determined flirt". She always did what she wanted, never listening to others. She did this to the point that she made the ultimate act of “following your heart” by running away with an evil man, never caring that she was ruining her and her family's life. No, she just wanted to follow her heart and she followed it to a man's bed. Unmarried. We all have “Lydia hearts”, and you, Culture, make it worse by celebrating it.

Did you notice, Culture, that in Jane Austen's time, running away with someone before marriage was a terrible thing? Sex before marriage (speaking in your terms) got you cancelled. Sure, that was their time, not ours. But you, Culture, made it a common thing to live with a boyfriend or girlfriend before marriage. That's just the way it goes. Who knows– maybe they'll have kids? Oh, sorry Culture, I said the K-word. Let's just stick to saying they live together and go to bed with each other before marriage, that's better right? But hear what I'm saying: The whole "skip the marriage, skip the kids, keep the bed" idealism that is normalized is just hurting us kids, and it made me wonder what else is hurting us.

It starts with the fact that you, Culture, have seemed to normalize every different variation of anything involving sex. I guess that's what the whole + thing is for.

Culture, you have done a great job of bombarding our phones with Disney and news and social media to make us feel that this whole + business is the best way to go. And believe me, we kids feel that. The future of society is now lying on the backs of kids who believe that parents should get together for their own sexual desires, not for having kids. Now, I'm not saying this because I'm a homophobic bigot of an 8th grader (even if that's what you think). No, I'm saying this because I see the truth. The truth is that the future is in the kids, and just look at the kids: my generation is more lonely, more depressed, more fearful, and more hateful than ever. I see this as confusion, a confusion that phones and social media spam into our eyeballs.

Nowadays it's hard to find, let alone live, as a kid without a phone. Sometimes it seems that you, Culture, did a better job connecting the kid to the phone than using the phone to connect the kid to reality. And isn’t that great, because now you can use that phone to share all of your messages and slogans.

Then with this use of social media, you exploit us kids who, like all kids, just want to fit in. So you show us a place that is so-called “safe.” A place away from the outside voices of the enemies (our parents).

You show us the cool place, the woke place, a place so far from reality that kids can go all-out-Lydia, do whatever our hearts desire, and create whatever truths we want. You made this place easy for kids to access. Most of the time it is in our hand or maybe back pocket until it goes into our mind. This place, these ideas, are literally brainwashing us kids to the point where we will do anything for it–to the point of cutting off our own body parts.

Remember, if truth is relative, morality must be too. But all of this is masked behind nice phrases like Love is Love and Follow your Heart.

So dearest Culture, you may be wondering what a 14-year-old girl is doing getting involved with these weighty matters, and the reason is… you, Culture, you.

But I’m going to end with a question for you: Why? Why are you doing these things that easily attract people, especially kids, and then as easily attack them?

What are your motives for all this hurt?

Sincerely,

The 14-year-old

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Kathlyn Copley is a member of Trinity CRC in Ames, Iowa and will be entering high school this fall. She loves drumming, longboarding, hiking, her family, and her faith.”