Bjcorbin's Blog

I originally wrote this piece when the “Fifty Shades of Grey” books were ruling the best seller list.  Now that the movie is being released, I find it sad to see how much further our society has progressed down this road.  Obviously, the “Grey” referred to in the title of the book is the name of the main character, but to be sure there is an intent of blurring the lines of what is reasonable and acceptable within the context of the story.  While the book tries to come on as some sort of psychological intrigue, the draw is ultimately the explicit sexual content.  It’s really just fluffed up porn, but we like to think of it as being somehow more sanitary and appropriate than renting videos from the local “Adult” superstore.  That seems to be the pattern in our culture.  We keep looking for ways to push the boundaries of what is acceptable, and then find ways to legitimize it in our minds.  We’ve got phenomenally popular artists like Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, and Nicki Minaj, who are trying to sell our young women on the idea that flaunting their anatomy will ultimately empower them, when in fact; it leads to the most ancient form of slavery known to mankind.  Check out the cover of the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.  We rationalize that this has something to do with sports or swimsuits, but it’s just another repackaging of the same old thing.  For most men (& boys), it will be the only Sports Illustrated they purchase this year.  All of these things are meant to activate the same trigger, and they do.  But like a patient who is provided with a button to dispense their own medication, we quickly find out that it never really gets us where we want to be.  We can convince ourselves that all of this is really harmless, but make no mistake; it’s carrying us, and more importantly our children, down a path that we are sure to regret.  The fruit of these things is already beginning to blossom, but we as a culture are unwilling to connect the dots.  There is no blindness as profound as the refusal to see.

 

50 Shades of Gray

There must be 50 shades of gray

Maybe even more

But they’re nothing more than shadows

And a place to lose our way

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No one ever sets out to be a hypocrite, or a liar, or a cheat

Yet, every day we find a way

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It’s not the things we call “evil” that so entangle us

It’s the things that we’ve justified as being “good”

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It’s the pursuit of “having it all”, that so often costs us the things that matter most

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There must be 50 shades of gray

Maybe even more

But they’re nothing more than shadows

And a place where we can hide

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No one ever sets out to be an addict, or a prostitute, or a thief

Yet, every day we find a way

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It’s not as much a question of our history

As it is the conclusions that we’ve drawn from it

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It’s ultimately self-deception that paves the road to self-destruction

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There must be 50 shades of gray

Maybe even more

But they’re nothing more than shadows

And a place for us to perish

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No one ever sets out to be a pedophile, or a rapist, or a murderer

Yet, every day we find a way

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Many of us choose to explore our dark side

But none of us ever finds the bottom of it

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The poison gets harder to detect when you take it one drop at a time

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There must be 50 shades of gray

Maybe even more

But they’re nothing more than shadows

And only the light can set us free