Tom Purcell: Why we need romance

We sure could use some more romance right about now - particularly among our younger people.

I speak of the debate surrounding "Skins," the latest provocative MTV show. It portrays teens indulging in illegal drugs, booze and "hooking up."

Many argue that the show elevates deviant behavior - that it will encourage highly impressionable teens to mimic what they see.

Others argue that today's teens are grappling with a lot of these issues in real life - that the show helps showcase the dangers of such behaviors.

Such programming is bound to occur in a free, open society with a massive mass culture and several hundred cable-TV channels in competition with each other.

Freedom opens the floodgates for everything that is not so good in the human heart - greed, dishonesty, salaciousness - but it also opens the floodgates for everything that is good in the human heart, such as generosity and selflessness and integrity.

And romance.

In our loud, over-sexualized culture, I feel that young people are being cheated. They're being taught everything about biological functions, but know so little about our higher functions - so little about romance.

We humans have two natures, in a manner of speaking.

We're part animal, to be sure. We're a few links away from monkeys - at least most of us are! But don't we also have hearts, souls, minds and spirits?

Our lower nature is biological and clinical. It is the one so often celebrated in the popular culture.

Our popular culture does its best to keep our lower nature, our animal part, in a constant state of agitation and overdrive.

When our biological side is inflamed, all we think about are animal things, such as booze and sex and indulging our physical needs.

MTV might call this "realistic" and kids might think such a show is "hip," but what it is mostly about, in my opinion, is provocative programming designed to exploit young, impressionable kids.

In our free and open society, I suppose, it is easier to draw viewers by appealing to their lower nature rather than their higher nature.

Romance appeals to our higher nature. It appeals to our sense of hopefulness and ideals.

Romance is about kindness and honesty and graciousness and affection. It is about trust. It is the sense that someone places you above all others and cares more for your needs than his or her own.

It is about a longing for love, a commitment to another, a harmony of two people coming together to create something much more beautiful than they could ever have created or been on their own.

Maybe if MTV crafted a show that celebrated teen romance, rather than teens gone wild, it'd be on to something big.

But then, I'm a romantic.

Tom Purcell, a freelance writer is also a humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.