I was blind to the coming decline of love and duty in the home, the school, the church, and throughout the terrain of public and private life. The fashions that have become dominant in the years since my marriage belie the assumption that we live in an information age. The lust for information itself signals a preoccupation with immediate and easy satisfaction, far distant from and usually inimical to the love of wisdom. The brief attention span and limited concentration required for surfing the Web cannot prepare a person for serious, let alone intimate, conversation. Intimacy, because it is made possible only in and through love and duty, cannot be separated from constancy, patience, and sacrifice.
Instant intimacy is an oxymoron.
An understanding of our most primary and overriding duties to our intimates rests on knowing who they are, who they understand themselves to be, and what matters to them. Intimacy always has a history. The doctrine of closure is embedded in the fashionable proliferation of putative rights and entitlements. The perpetrators must be caught and punished to satisfy this need. The position presupposes erroneously that when bad things happen, someone must be to blame.