Distraught after he accidentally took the life of a colleague, Alec Baldwin took to Twitter to issue a statement. The actor began: “There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother, and deeply admired colleague of ours.”
That phrasing, in the year 2021, was problematic. Baldwin, you see, transgressed against the cultural revolution by beginning his description of her as “Halyna Hutchins, a wife.”
Aura Bogado, a liberal reporter, was appalled by Baldwin’s tribute. “Halyna Hutchins was a person in and of herself,” Bogado wrote. “She was a cinematographer. She was a professional. For [women to] continue to exist only in reference *to* men. It’s patriarchal, it’s violent, and in this particular case, it feels especially disgusting.”
Of course, Baldwin had spent more words on Hutchins’s professional work as a “deeply admired colleague of ours” than he did on her familial work as “a wife, mother.” But Bogado’s condemnation of Baldwin was telling and damning regardless. And it’s a perfect reflection of the narcissistic materialism that underlies our current cultural revolution.
Are we sinning against a person if we describe her by anything other than her profession? That’s quite a strain of progressivism: You are what you are paid to do. Your employment defines you.
But there’s something beyond materialism here. It’s an irreducible atomism that rejects the idea of understanding humans relating to other humans.
What would it mean to honor someone as simply “a person in and of herself?” You would have to begin and end with her name — except that the last name indicates her family and thus once again commits the crime of placing her in relation to others.
In truth, we can only understand people as people when we understand them in relation to other people. Jesus said it clearly: Love thy neighbor is the greatest commandment, second only to love the Lord your God.
The teaching that love is our highest calling is not an exclusively Christian one. It’s nearly universal across religions and secular worldviews before today. And other people are the best things in this world to love. Without your relationships, the only thing left to love would be yourself.
