As we see it, some individuals want to feel morally superior.  This feeds their Puritanical attitudes.

The Puritans, historically speaking, embraced a repressive code of sexual conduct, which justified their claim to such moral superiority.

Puritanism may seem to be a thing of the American past. But in reality it is very much alive. It lurks almost invisibly - and with all its evil consequences - underneath a lot of the messages of the American media, even the most liberal variety.

Media messages often point in the direction of abstinence. Rather than showing the natural end of the mating ritual, it presents a Puritanically sanctioned alternative. This goes for news, commercials and movies - like in American Beauty. In this movie a beautiful but insecure young girl seems contented when, at the moment she opens up to an attractive but older guy for her first sexual experience, he rejects her. He does this in a completely unnatural way, and after weeks of lusting after her. The Puritanical ideal is thus well served: their mating ritual ends up in no mating at all.

Of course, in a real life situation, such inexplicable and unhealthy rejection would have been an insult, an unkind contribution to her mounting insecurities. They are robbed of a romantic, fulfilling and maturing experience. An experience that both would have treasured for life. But that’s the loving reality that Puritanism hates.

 

But this is just one example out of many. The Puritanical ideal is widely portrayed in many other expressions of the media. As in some beauty product commercials where the objective initially is to attract the opposite sex, it later, as the Puritanical ideal demands, turns to rejection. For example, in 1982, a body spray was advertised named “Mischief”, manufactured by a company called Impulse. In the commercial a man is turned on by a woman who is wearing the sexy smell and runs to give the woman, who is entering an elevator, a full bouquet of flowers, only to be rebuffed by the closing doors. The ending is puritanical: the mating ritual is aborted, ending up in no mating.

A more voluptuous ending would be, for example, adding one second with the elevator reopening and him getting in with a manly smile. That would have projected a lot of positive non-puritanical messages to the audience (To women: the product does work; open the door to evaluate the men you have attracted. To guys: be charming and daring, see a better image of the opposite sex, etc... all very non-puritanical values.)

Or a car commercial, in which, under a mesmerizing rhythmic tune, two separate groups, one of young women and one of young men, enjoy their respective separate cars, without enjoying the company of each other.

But the evil of Puritanism goes beyond making sex and romance casualties. The repression of sexual love in the end translates into the repression of all kinds of love. Our still thriving Puritanical roots have made America a love-starved society.

Such a condition is easily perceived when we examine the role religions play in America. While in other Western societies religions focus on the traditional promises of the afterlife, of miracles, and of hope, the primary offer and promise that religions make in America - and what has made them so successful - is simply of what is in such extremely short supply in our affluent and materially wealthy society: love (marketed as the human love of an almighty god.)

This makes America quite unique: we are perhaps the only society in the world in which the main, and probably sole, role of the vast majority of our religions is to provide love.

Thus, our Puritanism has robbed us of what even the most technologically backward societies on earth have plenty of: human love.