I agree. And while standing on the sidelines being virtuous may make you feel good, isn't it a form of narcissism? I would also say that although the rout of the Catholic Church has cleared the decks for full on consumerism, from the foundation of the state there was always a capture of republican ideas by vested interests....as Yeats put it. 'to fumble in the greasy till and add the shivering half pence to the pence..' The death of Collins and Griffith put paid to the possibility that the nascent republic would challenge the real nexus of power in the country, the Catholic Church was always very fond of upholding the existing economic status quo, for instance the Mother and Baby reforms of Noel Browne were fiercely contested. The fig leaf of religion has now been removed and the naked greed which was always there is now covering itself with progressive language, the new religion of the age which is just as intolerant as its predecessor. It will be really interesting to see the result of this. I find it depressing that we have gone from one orthodoxy to another without question......the old Ireland always had a few writers to kick against the status quo, unfortunately I can't see any in the new Ireland....(present company excepted!)
Thanks for this analysis. I'm not Irish enough to be in this august company, and my grasp of the subtleties of the history here isn't deep enough either. I do long for some Irish literary rebels to arise again though. Maybe it will happen. It is long overdue. Poor Ireland, like poor England, is under the thumb right now. We need to wake up.
Yeats was Anglo Irish and I think that gave him a unique perspective.....so don't sell yourself short! And what's happened in Ireland also happened in lots of ex colonies...native culture annihilated by Empire, gets 'freedom' but retains underlying structures and inequalities only this time by a local elite, further eviscerated by international capital aka the Empire 2.0 but this time masked by a Potemkin 'democracy' run by 'locals'..... However the ravaged natural world, rising poverty of the masses and homogenisation of cultures against the shiny money towers of the cities tell the real story....
Sorry, but I came across this quote from Padraig Pearse (half English) and had to share it 'English rule in Ireland has aimed for the subsitution of men and women with 'things'....it has not been an entire success...men and women, however depraved have kindly human allegiances, but these Things have no allegiances, like other 'things' they are for sale.....
That was written over a century ago. Pearse could see the direction of travel even then. And what the English started the neo liberal establishment of today intend to finish. We are fungible consumers with no individuality or unique characteristics like motherhood or fatherhood. God help us......
"The activist group The Countess, which campaigns for womens’ rights in Ireland, is doing an excellent, if sometimes lonely, job of explaining just how the state is attempting in this referendum to con women out of their constitutional rights, while pretending to do the opposite. As they point out in a detailed argument against the proposed changes, the 1937 constitution does not oblige women to stay at home. Rather, as the wording makes clear, it protects them if they choose to do so."
Don't you understand? This sort of thing prevents rich people from making more money.
As you alluded, economics is the most salient driving factor behind the collapse of Old Ireland. If Marx teaches us nothing else, he teaches us that everything is downstream from technology (what is possible) and economics (what choices are feasible). Thing is, he accurately describes the bloodless way in which The Real World actually works.
If Christ is opposed to Marx, it is that He see humans as something other than means to an end, NPCs to be deployed when they're useful in achieving some goal and discarded when they're not, but as an end in and of themselves.
This could lead one to infer that Big Business supported post-WW2 feminism not for the societal good of women, but for primarily economic reasons. Shame, sir! Shame!
I once tried to succinctly define "evil" and came up with: "Evil is the exploitation of weakness in another for your gain and their loss." This may be a definition that is satisfying only to me, as clever sods will bring up sports contests or the eating of chickens, but I've found it to be rather durably instructive when it comes to basic interpersonal behavior. Having emigrated to Ireland from the very belly of the Machine beast - San Francisco - it's easy for me to see how this little country would be seduced and crushed beneath the wheels of all that money, all that promise of antiseptic ease and status, of becoming one of the kewl kids and obscuring a past having grown up on the wrong side of the tracks.
In fact, what I've found in Ireland is a country disappointingly in thrall to America, just without the incessant gunfire; filled with impoverished wage slaves on the financial balls of their arses being exploited to death by rent-seeking parasites of every creepy-crawly shape and size. You might even say Ireland, by my own limited definition, is today quite an evil place.
It's still not wholly evil, however, still not comprehensively demonic. No, that remains the work of so many in power here (though the degree to which one is "in power" while serving some shadowy, half-understood agenda is arguable): to eradicate the last goodness from these people and this land and to see them prostate themselves to the ruling dark power of the day that is the financial might of transnational oligarchs.
And whom do those oligarchs serve?
"It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody"-Bob Dylan
1. "I once tried to succinctly define "evil" and came up with: "Evil is the exploitation of weakness in another for your gain and their loss.""
I suppose I am evil then, in that I exploit the weakness of mice and rodents for my meals, at the cost of their lives., just as dogs and Cat Eating Monsters exploit my weakness.
2. Was it not written from old, the Easy Money Is One Hell Of A Drug?
Yeah, I tend to always assign it to the notion of being a landlord. It's amazing how many people get offended when you bash landlords, but that is evil right on the button. I don't care how normalized it is in this culture, or what a wholesome picture is painted by defenders of "mom and pop" landlords. That relationship is e v i l.
You would really like the songs of "Les Frères Jacques", Feral, if you understand French. Even if you don't understand French, there are some songs that are in English and they are priceless. For cats.
Whoooff. I'm posting this on the fridge. Which will be understood by pretty much nobody else, because it won't fit on a bumper sticker. Thanks, sincerely.
While I often agree with you, Feral, here I have to take exception with your analysis that makes oligarchical capitalism, and money, the sole explanations of our collective predicament, (if I read you correctly). I tell my friends here in the country that gave the world the 1789 revolution that if you explain all of our troubles with the word "money", or "capitalism", or "technology", or whatever, you are putting ALL of your eggs in ONE basket, and that, outside of worshipping the God of Israël, is called "idolatry". So, you don't really want to engage in idolatry, do you Feral ? Not me, in any case. The model of the French Revolution enshrines a quasi mathematical concept of equality that ultimately reduces us to interchangeable, and replaceable parts of the big Machine which is the anthill (aw, shucks, not even the hive, because the bees make that delicious product called honey), and mathematical equality synonymous with social justice is a powerful motor for the modern progressive state. Not just oligarchs, and not just money. Equality.
A great post Paul, and what The Machine hates most of all, because it really is the final barrier against its total domination and control of every aspect of our lives, is marriage and the family.
I recently discovered the Catholic priest Fr Chad Ripperger, whose Youtube videos I find utterly compelling. He’s woken me up to many things, not least the reality of the demonic in his role as an exorcist - but also to the fact that any primary focus by politicians on the economy is in fact an iteration of Communism, whatever their apparent political party.
I had never understood it this way before, but of course it’s true, and the truth of it these days is becoming clearer by the month. Any non-Communist government would focus on the genuine welfare of the people beyond the merely material, and beyond Capitalism’s - and Communism’s - relentless need to regularise, standardise, streamline, reduce choice under the pretence of widening it.
As far as I understand him, a focus on the economy is basically giving in to pragmatic, controlling materialism. Once you prioritise the economy, as they all do, anything non-material becomes lost to the purview of accountants and economists; when it can’t be quantified by such gatekeepers it then loses value when seen from their perspective and can be safely ignored - or actively undermined as inimical to a government’s overall project. It’s all just slavery to materialism in the end, whether communist or capitalist. Both are more or less coercive, both use endless brainwashing, both will tend increasingly towards ever-smaller elites running the system, both will standardise wants, corrupt tastes, debauch mass education, target the family and seek conformity wherever possible. I haven’t heard Fr Ripperger discuss this a lot, and some of what I say is me reading my interpretation into what little I’ve heard him say about it - but I think I’m not going too far wrong. I’ll try to discover more when I can.
I agree with this analysis, Jules, but I think that there is a problem in the fact that our money is becoming more and more... DEmaterialized. So... what does it MEAN, money, if it is dematerialized ? If you destroy the link between money as symbol, and money as matter ? to take action, then what does money... do ? How can you/we understand it ? Isn't our dematerializing a black hole towards destroying the meaning of money ?
Yes, I don't see the specific connection with communism as such, though. Marxist communism is certainly a materialist ideology, but so is the state-capitalism it attempts to challenge. That's the problem. Both 'left' and 'right' walk us into the Machine.
perhaps it it is the foundational premise of marxism/communism that uniquely pits one group against another, then seeks to divide and destroy? Only 10 minutes long, but at the 4:30 mark he gets into it a bit.
I think that this is the core defect of Marxism (along with the materialism that it shares with capitalism): the division of people into the oppressor and oppressed classes, and the mission of the eradication of the "class enemy". There is nothing in this of the Beatitudes.
Capitalism and communism both came out of the Enlightenment. Communism really originated in the French Enlightenment (rather than with Marx), and capitalism came out of the Scottish Enlightenment.
As the Canadian philosopher George Grant wrote in 1969, "These days when we are told in North America that capitalism is conservative, we should remember that capitalism was the great dissolvent of the traditional virtues, and that its greatest philosophers, Hobbes and Locke, Smith and Hume, were Britishers. In the appeal to capitalism as the tradition it is forgotten that the capitalist philosophers dissolved all ideas of the sacred as standing in the way of the emancipation of greed". (I wonder what Jordan Peterson would say about this...)
There are lots of people in that particular boat. I once was. Thing is, the light about the contradiction doesn't go on for everyone at the same time. Since I was once among them, I tend to cut these folks some slack.
It’s very hard to refute this. The contradictions inherent in Thatcherism in the UK (and Reaganomics in the US?) were clear enough even at the time: an attempt to foster traditional values *while at the same time* unleashing the raw greed of capitalism. What could possibly go wrong…?
Ironically, the Thatcher/ Reagan hard focus on economics and contempt for the arts and culture allowed the Communism they defeated a back door to return through, i.e., via the institutional capture of arts organisations, university departments. And then it spread out from there, with the dire results we see everywhere today.
In the virtual places where I hang out, which are rare, but take up (too) much of my time, I have challenged our assumption that capitalism only goes back to the Enlightenment. I have read Ellul (I think...) saying that conditions were not ripe for capitalism before the Enlightenment, BUT...
I know that in the days of the comparatively long Roman empire, probably when it was the most prosperous, around 200 A.D. or so, amphoras were being manufactured to carry mucho merchandise, oil, wine, etc, all around the Mediterranean. Those amphoras were pretty much identical, and they embody the idea of manufacturing identical products to be brought to the Most Possible (identical...) People. That is the ethos of the industrial world, in my opinion. So... why do we continue to refuse the continuity in Western civilisation that Latin, and Greek have brought us ? forced upon us ?? Why do we refuse to see that the root of our problems ? goes way way back ?
What is the relationship between capitalism and abstraction, for example ? The relationship between capitalism and the growing abstraction ? of our money... in our minds ?
This video, while long, is fascinating. I haven’t watched all of it, but as far as I know Fr R doesn’t directly address the economy-Communist connection here - but it’s still well worth watching. (I’ll keep a lookout for a more explicit account from him of economy-Communism link if I can - so far I’ve only seen him make occasional references to the link).
Yale historian Timothy Snyder ("Black Earth") comes to a similar finding. Reliance on some economic "system" to bring about justice and equity is an avoidance of our responsibility to others in the present.
Also this, found by a friend on a Fr Ripperger FB page:
“People don't talk about the evil of communism enough. This talk may help you in your research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU2QseWgKs0&t=1s @27:34 According to Fr. C.R.: "One of the brainchilds of Freemasonry is communism. ... everybody thinks that the most important thing in an election is the economy. No it's not. The most important thing in any election is the spiritual and moral welfare of the citizenry; that's the most important thing in an election... St. Thomas says in the, his work on the "De Regimine Principum". He says the reason that you have to promote a good economy is so that those citizens can develop virtue. That's what it's there for."
Thanks for writing this, Paul. I'm at my wit's end explaining to friends how we're being sold a neoiberal pig-in-a-poke. One online commentator opined, If she could vote to remove the word "family", she would. We love our new priests in this island.
I can only hope that the incompetent arrogance of the current government may save mothers in the end. The proposed replacement language does such a ham-fisted job regarding "carers" that vocal opposition from Disabled Rights activists may truimph were appeals to motherhood won't.
We tried worshipping money but that was too real and eventually failed us with a reality check aka the Crash 2008. Now we've new in-groups and out-groups, new taboos, new saints and martyrs, new priests and handmaidens to police thought and behaviour and promote that most Orwellian of values, kindness. Be kind! All calculated to suck the joy out of life and the colour out of the world. I wonder why we bend towards Machine thinking so readily? How do we rebuild a cathedral without the power structure and corruption such a project attracts?
It seems to be a part of human nature for a majority of the population to wish for a king to rule over them and care for them. Self governance is hard work.
I think many people misread the events of the 70’s which led us to the complete destruction of motherhood and home life. Here in America we were in a cycle of inflation and high energy costs which made it necessary for many women to leave home for part time work as cashiers, sales clerks, waitresses. These were not careers, and were not freely chosen paths to liberation, they were imposed by hard times. Our governments became addicted, as they always do, to the extra tax income, and suddenly the entire media machine turned as with a single focus to the glamorous career woman. The Mary Tyler Moore Show and many drearier spin offs showed just what you were missing out on as a stay at home mom, fun, friends, advancement, romance. Magazines screamed from the check out stands the same message.
Everyone seemed to forget that their fathers, often without a high school education, had been able to marry, buy a home, and raise a family, often quite large and even college educated, on one income. That this represented a loss in real terms of wealth occurred to no one.
There was a book back in the spate of simple living books 20 years or so ago that was tilted Graceful Simplicity. The premise was that the really good life requires someone in the home whose full time duty is to care for it and the people in it. Now the author was a Quaker, sufficiently woke for his times to insist that this didn’t have to be the woman, but admitted that it often worked best if it was. This seems an irreducible fact to me, after 42 years of being that person. To provide an actual safe space, as opposed to the fake “safe spaces” of the world, a home in which comfort, food, warmth, clean clothes, homemade meals and handcrafted goods pleasing to the eye and soul are in abundance is the work of an artist, and artists do not work part time at their art. It is to provide a kind of security that is vanishing, and which cannot be reproduced or procured for any amount of money because it is a work of love. This is a lifestyle now reserved only to the upper middle classes, formerly so commonplace as to be taken for granted.
What a beautiful description of the work of making a secure and welcoming home. I think accessibility to this for even the upper middle class is also at risk.
Susanna, amen. I have been a mother for 14 years now, and though my home is far from perfect, it is most certainly a haven, which I have endeavored mightily to create. I willingly and joyfully walked away from a career and the "potential" of my expensive private education because I saw that there was nothing so important in the world for my children as to have their mother actually present to them. I homeschool them and there is nothing in the world I would rather be doing. A work of love indeed. Thank you.
Thank you, Susanne, for putting this so well. Since we have exchanged previously here, I am going to confront ? your family story with my own, in order, I hope, to shed some light on what has been happening.
My maternal grandmother, born in the late 19th century, was a farm widow shortly after reaching age 40, with a two year old daughter. Circumstances forced her off the farm into a small town job. She was a very ambitious mother, and determined that her daughter should get a college education. My mother got a college education in the 1940's, with a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics (all those words count, folks...). The idea was to rationalize woman's role as homemaker, to make it scientific, and give it added value. My mother married, agreed to stay at home in the '50's to raise her children, but with misgivings, and resentment that she could not really express, I believe. After all.... she had had access to a college education, and that should have given her.. public social value on the job market, right ? Like many stay at home moms, my mother felt somewhat cheated out of something that she... had a right to ? Her marriage resisted this : both parents were God-fearing, church going believers, in a society where there were many other church going, God-fearing believers in the U.S.
Things heated up even more for me in the '60's and '70's. As more and more young women in all social classes were going into higher education, ambitions flamed. For men... and for women, and I believe that we started competing in the job market, to the detriment of the stability of our personal relationships. Also to the detriment of the economy itself, under pressure to find out of the home employment for both men and women.
After all these years now of being a stay at home wife and mother, and while knowing just how priceless this is to the family and society, I still cannot shake off a feeling of inadequacy in my role as purveyor of... grace in the home...
Grace... is not a public virtue... it is behind the scenes.
And the home ? how can there be a home with nobody INSIDE it to keep it ?
I realize that my view is a simplification. And our lives were not simple and straightforward, in that my husband and I made decisions at 19, at university, to have a very traditional family structure because we came from dysfunctional families, alcoholism and adultery figuring prominently in those families. We wanted what we felt we had been cheated out of. We both come from working class backgrounds that were moving into the middle class, I attended a very prominent private high school on scholarship with girls from the richest Catholic families on the Philadelphia Main Line, (Grace Kelly types), so exposure to a lot of different levels and lifestyles of the time.
My mother was obsessed with the idea of more. She wanted more money, but mostly more attention. She wanted to be the heroine of a romantic movie. She found being the mistress of a married man somehow sophisticated, and together they ruined the lives of as many as 10 other people, his family and ours, in the process. Selfishness was thus the main thing we identified as ruinous to family life. My husband’s father was similar, nothing interfered with his whim of the moment.
Something that more people really need to accept is that every decision in life cuts off other choices. There is no such thing as a perennial banquet from which you can endlessly select. A bite of this takes the edge off of that, and it is as true for good choices as for poor ones. There are time I have been envious of those with careers, especially in areas I find personally interesting, but at most I could have only have done one of those things, and with my social limitations possibly not even that.
Something I have wanted to bring into these discussions but which seemed like a long tangent are women’s magazines from the 1960’s which I collect. The cheap newsprint monthlies proliferated in pre internet days as a way for isolated housewives to find penpals, those with common interests, exchange hints, craft ideas and materials, ideas on child rearing, special needs, recipes, collections. They are intensely revealing, like a modern Internet forum only more authentic, because more is invested. In searching for what triggered the Betty Friedanesque intense hatred of the home when the vast majority were contented there are patterns. Many women have their hands full, and are apparently satisfied. Some are very active in volunteer and civic groups and clubs outside the home. Charities, garden clubs, PTA’s, hospitals, libraries, communities were strengthened in many ways by the time these women contributed. Others have large families and home interests such as gardening, canning, camping, travel. The happiest correspondents were probably the ones who prefaced their letters with”I’m not much of a homemaker…” by which they meant they didn’t change sheets and polish the furniture every day. They often had very involved and satisfying artisanal hobbies like quilting or fine arts like oil painting. The variety of hobbies described is dizzying, and husband and wife often worked together, much more often than couples seem to today. This is a real loss as hobbies hold a key to mental health we seem to have forgotten but which was well known in the past before drugs became the quick fix.
The sad letters are the ones from women who “can’t stand a mess”, who complain about the children being home from school in the summer, husbands around the house too much, and whose hobbies are solely the acquisition of useless items like salt and pepper shakers, etc. You can see the nervous energy building up without a fit subject to exercise it. It’s really fascinating, and I am convinced that there is a key in all this information about the personal thoughts of women long dead which helps to explain how we got here.
On the other hand if the media were in it with the government all along to nudge us in this direction how much agency do we have?
We tend to compare our role as a homemaker with an imaginary role in a meaningful career where we make a difference to many people rather than just a few, and hence the feelings of inadequacy result. The reality of most women’s, most people’s careers, is that they are jobs, that they don’t really matter to many people at all, and if they dropped dead tomorrow there would not be a ripple within the week. My grandsons will remember the weeks they spent sewing and baking with Nana 30 years after I am gone. It is a kind of immortality.
I am at work now. An ER nurse in a corporate system that is driven by government controls and a desire to not get sued. Because of this we are one, big, lifestyle (read result of sin) maintenance program. For this we as a culture spend billions of dollars a year to bandaid the results of obesity (diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease), kill the babies women don’t want and kill some of the babies they think they deserve because “I want” is the measure of the rightness of something.
My children are mostly grown and I continue to work so that the youngest can have the privilege of a Catholic all boys boarding school with no technology. I mostly stayed at home when they were young and we homeschooled. But EVEN I—believing in motherhood and fatherhood and family and breastfeeding felt that I had to work. I still feel it!
The tide is so far gone. We as women have bought the lie so completely it takes a genuine conversion to even BEGIN to think differently.
Excellent points, and all of it is infinitely complicated by the way we can’t even have constructive conversations about what is a good life for mothers, fathers, and children without doing violence to the very words “mother”, “father”, “woman”, “man” “boy” and “girl”. We are so far down the road, as you say.
When we started homeschooling in the late 80’s the other women in the group were professional women, about ten years older than me, who had felt betrayed because homemaking and mothering had not been offered to them as a choice. Many had no idea how strongly they would feel about their firstborn, how impossible it was to leave the baby in care. They had been singled out as good students and fast tracked into the sciences, law, etc. the recruitment of academically talented women in those days was very flattering and head turning. But at least the tradition was within reach.
One of the most important things I know, which may sound abstract, and far away, long ago, is that Roman women from rich, aristocratic families did not do housework, basically because housework was considered to be menial work to be done by slaves, and unworthy of them. Aristocratic Roman women were above all that...
This may sound theoretical, but think about it : isn't this the belief that we are being told to embrace ? That we are above all of this, as ARISTOCRATS ??
There was a time, in the women's magazines, where I had the impression that as women, we were supposed to not only work OUTSIDE the home in a "meaningful and fulfilling job", but come "home" and be a perfect homemaker TOO.
But... in France, there was a time, too when it was possible for a woman to have a part time job with hours that she could handle, AND have and raise children decently. I would like to stress that IN NO WAY OR MEANS could she, in this part time job, qualify for retirement income that would allow her to live decently, so that meant that she would be still be dependant... ON A RELATIONSHIP ? ON THE STATE ? to get by because she took the time to have children.
I would also add that on a homestead, no woman would have, or have had the time to sit back and raise children the way suburban U.S. women were doing it (with mitigated satisfaction) in the '50's. Because... the work had to be done in order to survive, but the children in that context (which was also my mother's) learned how to fend for themselves, to be truly independant and autonomous ? in ways that they cannot learn now that they are penned into homes to protect them.
And now, I truly believe that man, woman, and child is truly... fulfilled when he is working to fulfill his part to the best of his capacity, and he/she knows that what he is doing is invaluable to making the home ? survive. That is why the farm is such an ideal to me...still.
What a great discussion. I'm a Gen Xer and came of age in the 90s. My parents pursued a traditional arrangement, and my mom stayed home with us two kids. But I was raised to pursue a career, and being strong in academics, that's what I did. I studied chemical engineering and made my way in a successful lucrative career, and was blindsided when I realized upon becoming a mother that I wanted more time with my daughter. My husband could not support us in a middle class lifestyle, and I could not see that even struggling in a lower income in order to stay home might be worth it, or even preferable! Oh, I can see it now, but now I am 47 and my child bearing days are behind me. But you can bet I am showing my daughter that large families and a traditional arrangement where mom stays home and homeschools is a desirable option. We are members of a large Orthodox christian community where it's common to have more than 5 kids, and most of the moms stay home. I think the 70s-00s girlboss feminism will fade and be regarded as a weird aberration. It just does not lead to fulfillment. IMO most women are not cut out to "lean in", be mini-men or Hilary Clinton.
You are absolutely right about the farm, but even into the 60’s and 70’s regular homes could be small engines of production in which the housewife made a direct contribution to the financial well being of the family. Many women sewed their family’s clothing, when the materials still represented a savings over store bought of 75% or more ( today home sewing is a luxury hobby and it costs more to buy a a pattern than a finished blouse!), gardening, canning, baking, do it yourself home decorating, all activities which are now outsourced. It has been proven that people who eat their meals at home eat less than restaurant or fast food meals, and with far less salt and sugar added.
Men often had intense interests as well, the 40 hour work week freed them up and television had not yet eaten up their leisure hours. Woodworking, gardening, home improvement projects, were popular. That the children learned all these skills more or less passively was an added benefit, and families often worked together.
We are so much less than we could be, and I don’t know how you rebuild the bridges between men and women now that we have blown them up?
I am happy that we are having this discussion, and I just thought of something else which is important to me : during the time that I was raising my children, in the home, when we congregated around the dinner table, they knew that they were at a point in time, and a place where they would be listened to, where they would be considered, where they had the freedom to speak their mind. It is only just recently that I realized what they had been given, and why our homes are not just havens ? refuges ? they are places where we CAN be free to speak our minds, IF we allow ourselves this freedom, if we TAKE our freedom ?
I have found recently that since the Covid episode, few people feel free to speak their minds outside of the Internet ? but that around my dinner table, they manage to relax and find support for what they secretly ? think but no longer dare to express PUBLICLY.
This is to me the entire heart of a family, the meeting around the table every day. We homeschooled and my husband even worked at home much of the time so that for two meals a day we ate together. Seldom did the conversation stop when the food was done. The awareness of history, economics, literature, culture, politics, religion, etc. that was imparted through thousands of days was priceless. One of my younger sons who is not academically oriented was complimented by his history professor on what he ( the professor) saw as a vanishing awareness of historical events, my son credits the dinner table conversations entirely for forming his understanding of the past.
There are now 16 of us at holidays, and while we have a little interpersonal tension between daughter and daughter-in-law just now it is not political in any way, our family is not one of those torn to pieces by strong opinions about things that none of us can influence and which ultimately do not matter but which people base their entire identity upon.
You are so right about how fearful people have become about expressing quite harmless opinions. They fear the mob turning on them and it is impossible to predict how the most innocuous comment will be taken. People are unable to engage in adult discourse on any topic, it is as if we are in a totalitarian state where the party line isn’t quite clear and the response is either silence or skewing so far to the left that no one can question your bona fides.
In a world like this what a haven a real home is, but how few have access to one!
I really do believe there is a wealth of information represented in women’s magazine throughout the 20th century. Pre WWI there is a sweetness and naïveté that is truly charming and apparently sincere, as you move into the 30’s the magazines get glossy and have a brittle sophistication in the editorial content that can be distasteful. Post WWII you see the intense focus on babies and children which continues and results in the boomers being the most spoiled generation in history. It’s really fascinating.
I wish I were a younger and more rigorous scholar.
"Everyone seemed to forget that their fathers, often without a high school education, had been able to marry, buy a home, and raise a family, often quite large and even college educated, on one income. That this represented a loss in real terms of wealth occurred to no one."
I crunched this a few months ago from US Census data because I was tired of not getting straight answer on this subject.
From 1973 to 2015, household median earnings went up by 20% ($58K to $68K in inflation adjusted 2022 dollars). During this period, male earnings were essentially flat (plus a couple hundred dollars from 1973 vs 2015) while women's earnings doubled ($15K to $29K). *
Conclusion: American families' financial improvement during the latter half of the 20th century was caused ENTIRELY by women entering the economic game. (This holds even if you move the period +/- 5 years either way.) Politicians and commentators who pretend otherwise are either liars or fools. And as you said, calling this an "improvement" in standard of living beggars the definition of that term.
Data is all available here if you want to verify it yourself:
* The slight differences in Census derived median household income vs the addative median incomes of each sex reflect that a few households consist of multiple working-age members of each sex, but the vast majority over this time period were a male-female pairs.
The changes wrought in actual lived standard of living are another unmeasurable factor. That the obesity and diabetes epidemics began when home cooking was disappearing was not an accident. Many women still spewed clothing for their families in the 60’s and 70’s, certainly things were more likely to be mended, cared for, parents talked to their children rather than their phones, a thousand little things that add up to quite large costs in terms of waste and mental and physical health.
I agree 100%. Much of that is subjective though: "many women prefer to work outside the home", "factory made clothes free women from drudgery", "who are you to deny their rights", "women's income helps families achieve the American dream", etc...
The reason I like the data is because it's objective. The last 50 years, all of the improvement in American household finances has been driven by the introduction of a rising percentage of women to the wage-workforce. Someone can say that was a good thing or a bad thing but can't pretend it's not a real thing.
When I saw your statistics I thought of my son who thinks the same way, he wants numbers. Anecdotal evidence only gets you so far and is open to a variety of interpretations, you are quite right to want more than that.
What interests and confuses me is that there are so many of us still around who remember those days and yet buy into the myth of progress, despite the clear evidence of our senses, most families weren’t agents of degradation and abuse, most mothers weren’t gnawing their legs off like bears caught in a trap, most fathers weren’t tyrants.
It's not just Boomers. I'm only 50 and I apologize both to my own kids and my students for bequeathing them such an economic and social mess: a government whose credit card debt is equal to its annual income but is busy throwing money at wars halfway around the world, while pushing an intersectional racial/sexual spoils system to pit its own citizens against each other and demolishing every other institution and system that might guide people to a functional life.
My generation did much of that entirely on our own. But at least we were liberated and free! Yeah, right.
Modern progressive women portray the Church's sexual teachings as misogynistic and patriarchal, but women in the ancient world found those same teachings liberating, even protective. In a world where women were effectively property, Christianity was a ray of light for them. Edward Watt's Final Pagan Generation is a tome, but this point comes through loudly: the pagan world was horrible for women and girls. And they saw Christianity as a better way. Imagine how terrible your pagan life has to be to think risking being fed to lions or lit on fire as a human torch is an improvement.
As the modern world abandons Christianity, we are already seeing it re-embrace pagan practices around sexuality and transgression. Some are being more explicit in their paganism (https://religionnews.com/2024/02/21/ex-catholics-in-rome-reconnect-with-roots-spirituality-in-paganism/ -- this is seriously dangerous BTW, these people are unknowingly summoning demons.) The protected place give to women and children is simply the latest casualty of this re-paganization of the West. Like everything else that sprang from Christianity, it will gradually fall away as people forget why it ever existed. "Women and children first" only makes sense in a world that knows women and men are different and that values children and families.
"in particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved."
Can the idea of "the common good" even exist in modern West? The highest good in modern, Western culture is maximal individual autonomy (thanks J.S. Mill.). If that's the only thing your society holds sacred, is it even possible to have a "common good"? Sans a collective definition of "good" or "virtue" ( which modern liberalism rejects in the name of maximal individual autonomy) what does "the common good" even mean? I would love to hear a progressive try and defend the idea.
I think that the modern emphasis on maximal individual autonomy goes hand in hand with the ideology of the masses. If this were not the case, many more people would feel free to dress as they please, speak as they please, but for many years now, I see increasing uniformity around me. There must be something else going on...
Was the pagan world horrible for women and girls ? I'm not sure. But I think that even the sophisticated ? wealthy Roman and Jewish women who supported Jesus financially before Christianity came into being noticed something different about him.
In the Genesis creation story, woman is presented as being a helpmeet to man. I like this philosophy ? very much, the idea of being a helpmeet. It gives dignity to both man and woman in the couple. It puts a damper on what could be a natural ? tendency to compete for personal power in the couple ?
In the sentence "in particular the State recognizes that by her life WITHIN THE HOME, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved", we can see that what is being attacked is "WITHIN".. the home. The existence of a separate, PRIVATE place out of the public eye, and PUBLIC scrutiny. A refuge, a haven, as others here have said.
For millenia now, in the Western world, woman has been associated with a separate and PRIVATE place, and even democratic and... pagan Greece associated woman with a separate and private place, but the family structure, to my mind, did not have the dignity ? of the Christian ? Jewish ? model.
I learned recently that it was only in the 12th ? century that, in Europe, under pressure from women, the institution of marriage was generalized to all stratas of society in order to give protection... to women. Technically, marriage as an institution becomes socially necessary and desirable when there is property or liquidity to transmit, which is why the lower classes did not necessarily engage in it. There are not always advantages to having money and property, by the way...
Great comments. And yes, the attitude toward women was very different among Jews than among pagans. I really should have said Judeo-Christian view of women. One of the things I've had to come to terms with in recent years was just how foreign ancient Greek and Roman culture and social practices really are to modern people. There are a number of books that point this out, but the best is probably Dominion, about how the modern world owes far more to Judeo-Christian beliefs than Greco-Roman ones.
I think that this is what Paul is writing about here. The "modern" European/American world has always had a great debt to Judeo-Christian beliefs AND to Greco-Roman... belief, and political structure. After all... democracy is an extremely important Greek... belief system, isn't it ? Isn't the ideal of the city state, the State itself as ideal, based on a belief system ? Wasn't Rome, which allowed tremendous religious freedom to individuals, federating the empire behind the belief in, and the loyalty to, the State itself ? Isn't that what the emperor cult was really about ? Did the Romans believe that their emperors were gods, or was this a convenient... fiction to give authority, legitimacy, and stability to the political regime ?
So... while we chatter on about "paganism", we are not adressing the most potent problem, and that is the problem of enshrining the State ? the nation ? and setting it up as a god ? (By the way, some of the most thought provoking analyses ? of this problem can be seen in the tragedies of Athenian (and pagan...) democracy. Sophocles' "Antigone" is a masterful, powerful study of conflicting loyalties : to the family ? to the city state ?)
And when we start seeing things this way, we are carried back to what blew Judea up and off the map in the years following Jesus's death. Messianic Judaism entailed loyalty to a supra-territorial entity, the Jewish people's Messiah, WHEREVER HE WAS, wherever the people were, too, because by the time Judea got blown off the map, there were Jews scattered all across the Roman empire. The Messianic aspect of Judaism competed with Rome's authority, and was essentially the reason why Judea got blown off the map. Which is not at all unlike the point where we are right now, right ? Not just the Jews are scattered all around the world, everybody else is, too ?
I occasionally say here that Athens, around 460 B.C. went through a period of intense political and social turmoil that greatly resembles what we are going through right now. Athens went through this turmoil because belief in the old.. PAGAN stories was dissolving under the onslaught of belief in "reason", whatever that may be...
"Modernity" certainly caused moral and religious convulsions in 5th century BC Athens. Socrates was executed for "bringing false Gods", and the opening scene of The Republic is an attempt to posthumously rehabilitate his reputation without Plato meeting the same fare. So yes, these problems do recur.
However, "The modern European/American world has always had a great debt to Judeo-Christian beliefs AND to Greco-Roman... belief, and political structure" is conflating two things.
The West is indebted deeply to Judeo-Christian beliefs and mildly to Greco-Roman political structures, but not to the other way around. We do not emulate either the political structure of ancient Judea (which featured a confluence of religious and temporal authority by the state) or the moral order of ancient Rome (which featured such barbarism as gladiatorial blood sports and exposing infants to die if they were unwanted.) Our moral framework is derived from Jerusalem and Christ not Athens or Rome.
Again, I highly recommend the books The Final Pagan Generation and Dominion on this subject. They're both thick, but worth at least skimming through.
This is a sticky subject. When talking about Judea, I was talking about Judea under Roman rule, not before.
I think that many people have false ideas of the moral order of Rome, which lasted a very long time.
Republican Romans were probably horrified by gladitorial blood sports, as they represented Roman... decadence to them, many of them. (Seneca found them revolting, and Seneca was technically a philosophical pagan.) And they were. Where did the circuses and arenas come from, and why ? They start in around the first century before the birth of Jesus, NOT BEFORE. Not everybody enjoyed the gladiator games. Right now, I would say that we are faced with the kind of decadence that Roman Republicans were horrified about. How are we holding up with it ? Time will tell.
On exposing (unwanted) infants, it was common practice in Antiquity. Some of those infants were picked up to become slaves. In our extremely civilized times, unwanted infants are... aborted... So I will not condemn the moral order of the Romans when WE are pushing abortion (admittedly, not all of us).
On our moral framework, I have heard some of my sophisticated and highly educated hellenist friends tell me how barbaric Rome was... next to Greece, but I take exception with their positions. I think that they are prejudiced in favor of Greece., and are quite ignorant of much of the sophistication of Roman civilisation.
When I think that as far forward ? as Claudius, there was a public slave poised on a chariot during a triumph to quietly murmur in the triumphing general's ear to remember that he was not a god, I have the highest respect for Roman moral order. We do not have the imagination to understand what a triumph was to these people now. It is out of our ken. We also do not have the imagination to understand the psychological finesse around the act of having a public slave on a chariot to keep a general from getting so excited that he will seize power. (This did not work forever, admittedly...)
And when I think that way back when, Jacob's... tribe took advantage of the fact that his daughter Dinah's young lover who wanted to marry her had ordered all of his young male warriors to be circumcised, and that the Jews fell on them during their convalescence, and slaughtered them all, I am not convinced by the high moral order of Jerusalem...
I seriously doubt that Jesus himself was convinced by the high moral framework of Jerusalem, because he knew his Bible's teaching, and the history of his people much better than we do.
This move is a reiteration of the Machine's attitude toward human life. There are no fathers or mothers, only parents and coparents, of any number, temporary or indefinite, who may or may not have personal relationships with each other. If the act of parenthood is a construct, inserting the state into this role or to being the ultimate authority on pediatric welfare becomes trivially easy. When the human person is reduced to an economic object, the act of raising children becomes a financial calculus: can the autonomous individual "afford" to take on the expense called "having kids," that is, can they do so without hampering their financial goals and ability to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle? What sort of children will become productive members of society, that is, which children are investments that are projected to yield a high ROI, and which are burdens on society, costs to be cut? At what age does the depreciation of an individual's economic potential reach the critical point where their maintenance expenses exceed their productive capacity? And so on.
Our Machine conspiring president recently harped on about "réarmement démographique", "a demographical call to arms" to address the problem of France's plumetting birth rate.
Really... our leaders have no clue. They are playing at politics in real time.
Yes, you are about to find out. Here in Canada children can transition sex without their parents consent, they can get vaccinated without their parents consent and in the future will be able to end their lives through our Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID, what a diabolical acronym) without their parents consent, even if they are mentally ill. Now the state raises our children. I have heard of one father who refused to support his 13 year old’s transition and was thrown in jail. My prayers go out to all parents raising young children in this world today.
As to motherhood, I remember getting part time work in retail years ago. I trudged from one big box store to another filling out applications. There were several questions that always gave me the opportunity to elevate motherhood to its true position and I took full advantage of the opportunity. One was “occupation” in which I proudly recorded the words Housewife and Mother. The second was Work Experience in which I delighted to always ask for an extra piece of paper in which to scrawl my comprehensive list. And the last question Post Secondary Education into which I gleefully wrote, in all caps, NONE. To be honest, my job search became more like missionary work and I really couldn’t care less if I got the job or not:) I saved my list and turned it into a poem. It really didn’t need any editing, there were no superfluous words and when I stood back and looked at it I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the privilege of such a calling. Of course there are many things absent from the list, but I felt to include them was bordering on narcissism:)
Resume
Housewife/Mother
Retail sales
Florist
Baker
Cheese maker
Horticulturalist
Arborist
Landscaper
Animal Behavioural expert
Renewable Resource Manager
Teacher
Fibre artist
Poet
Interior designer
Construction worker
Chef
Survivalist
Butcher
Candlemaker
Event planner
Musician
Gardener
Guidance counsellor
Herbalist
Fashion designer
Debater
Child psychologist
Dog trainer
Massage therapist
Teamster
Sheep shearer
Horse trainer
Philosopher
Secondary Education - NONE
This list stands in defiance to the eradication of our most precious and sacred family.
Wendell Berry is excellent on this topic, defending men as well as women: "And what are we to say of the diversely skilled country housewife who now bores the same six holes day after day on an assembly line? What higher form of womanhood or humanity is she evolving toward? How, I am asking, can women improve themselves by submitting to the same specialization, degradation, trivialization, and tyrannization of work that men have submitted to? And that question is made legitimate by another: How have men improved themselves by submitting to it? The answer is that men have not, and women cannot, improve themselves by submitting to it."
This was a great article. The recent events in Ireland are extremely sad. And i don’t think Catholic Integralism will ever get off the ground in the US. But here in the US, we are so childlike and gullible than no constitutional change has been necessary to enact a policy for families and our culture that is run by “the Machine.” It was done by media, by college elites, and I suppose ultimately by a “for profit only to the already rich” group of societal controllers to push women into the work force, boosting inflation enough that those women would be trapped there forever.
I am 68 years old. I married young, had 8 sons, stayed home and looked after them. This was out of the ordinary even in my day. But I was a traditionalist who, like de Valera, has become more traditional, more Catholic, more cognizant of the evils of progressivism as I have grown older. People have said to me, you must have been economically privileged. No, if they only knew how poor we were! I was determined though. I knew I would quit my stenographer job when I became pregnant with our first child. I knew I would never in a million years let someone else raise my child. I knew this when I was twenty years old. The money didn’t balance on paper. But so what? And we even bought a house at this time. We made it. Our children are all grown and they are making it too. Doing better than we did. Our sons have good jobs, most own acreage and a home. Number 34 grandchild is due this year. None of my daughters in law who are mothers, work outside their homes.
At our book club last month, mothers were talking about how you have to be committed to poverty if you want to have a large family and stay home with them. Maybe that’s true. But it’s so worth it. Oh young woman-its so worth it!
I wish I could live under such a protection as the constitution offered women in Ireland! What a definition of freedom - protection for carrying out the important field of householding. Beautiful. (And sad, that the machine is now to eat it. Yet, the words inspired.)
Ireland is now, probably not a good name for the island next to Britain. That name is "problematic." Maybe, they should change it to, here goes "Euro Area Green." It rolls off the tongue really well and would fit into some line of code too. This new country will be a land fit for machines and no mothers are needed for machines.
The blah will make a material difference to people in Ireland this week.
I agree. And while standing on the sidelines being virtuous may make you feel good, isn't it a form of narcissism? I would also say that although the rout of the Catholic Church has cleared the decks for full on consumerism, from the foundation of the state there was always a capture of republican ideas by vested interests....as Yeats put it. 'to fumble in the greasy till and add the shivering half pence to the pence..' The death of Collins and Griffith put paid to the possibility that the nascent republic would challenge the real nexus of power in the country, the Catholic Church was always very fond of upholding the existing economic status quo, for instance the Mother and Baby reforms of Noel Browne were fiercely contested. The fig leaf of religion has now been removed and the naked greed which was always there is now covering itself with progressive language, the new religion of the age which is just as intolerant as its predecessor. It will be really interesting to see the result of this. I find it depressing that we have gone from one orthodoxy to another without question......the old Ireland always had a few writers to kick against the status quo, unfortunately I can't see any in the new Ireland....(present company excepted!)
You're not wrong. But your communications style does not invite peace and brotherhood.
Yes, this is what the loud and the proud always tell themselves. Personally, I just tend to prefer it when people don't behave like dicks.
But I am glad to hear that you are speaking the word of God!
I am sorry for using the word narcissism. You are right it is unkind and that was not my intention.
Thanks for this analysis. I'm not Irish enough to be in this august company, and my grasp of the subtleties of the history here isn't deep enough either. I do long for some Irish literary rebels to arise again though. Maybe it will happen. It is long overdue. Poor Ireland, like poor England, is under the thumb right now. We need to wake up.
Yeats was Anglo Irish and I think that gave him a unique perspective.....so don't sell yourself short! And what's happened in Ireland also happened in lots of ex colonies...native culture annihilated by Empire, gets 'freedom' but retains underlying structures and inequalities only this time by a local elite, further eviscerated by international capital aka the Empire 2.0 but this time masked by a Potemkin 'democracy' run by 'locals'..... However the ravaged natural world, rising poverty of the masses and homogenisation of cultures against the shiny money towers of the cities tell the real story....
Sorry, but I came across this quote from Padraig Pearse (half English) and had to share it 'English rule in Ireland has aimed for the subsitution of men and women with 'things'....it has not been an entire success...men and women, however depraved have kindly human allegiances, but these Things have no allegiances, like other 'things' they are for sale.....
That was written over a century ago. Pearse could see the direction of travel even then. And what the English started the neo liberal establishment of today intend to finish. We are fungible consumers with no individuality or unique characteristics like motherhood or fatherhood. God help us......
I had no idea Pearse was half-English.
That's a good description. It has also happened to England: the first colony of the British empire, in my view.
True enough about Yeats. Wilde was Anglo-Irish too. So there's hope!
Indeed! https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/down-the-river
Grant was right, except now they're on the same yacht. In fact in many cases they're the same people.
"The activist group The Countess, which campaigns for womens’ rights in Ireland, is doing an excellent, if sometimes lonely, job of explaining just how the state is attempting in this referendum to con women out of their constitutional rights, while pretending to do the opposite. As they point out in a detailed argument against the proposed changes, the 1937 constitution does not oblige women to stay at home. Rather, as the wording makes clear, it protects them if they choose to do so."
Don't you understand? This sort of thing prevents rich people from making more money.
As you alluded, economics is the most salient driving factor behind the collapse of Old Ireland. If Marx teaches us nothing else, he teaches us that everything is downstream from technology (what is possible) and economics (what choices are feasible). Thing is, he accurately describes the bloodless way in which The Real World actually works.
If Christ is opposed to Marx, it is that He see humans as something other than means to an end, NPCs to be deployed when they're useful in achieving some goal and discarded when they're not, but as an end in and of themselves.
This could lead one to infer that Big Business supported post-WW2 feminism not for the societal good of women, but for primarily economic reasons. Shame, sir! Shame!
I once tried to succinctly define "evil" and came up with: "Evil is the exploitation of weakness in another for your gain and their loss." This may be a definition that is satisfying only to me, as clever sods will bring up sports contests or the eating of chickens, but I've found it to be rather durably instructive when it comes to basic interpersonal behavior. Having emigrated to Ireland from the very belly of the Machine beast - San Francisco - it's easy for me to see how this little country would be seduced and crushed beneath the wheels of all that money, all that promise of antiseptic ease and status, of becoming one of the kewl kids and obscuring a past having grown up on the wrong side of the tracks.
In fact, what I've found in Ireland is a country disappointingly in thrall to America, just without the incessant gunfire; filled with impoverished wage slaves on the financial balls of their arses being exploited to death by rent-seeking parasites of every creepy-crawly shape and size. You might even say Ireland, by my own limited definition, is today quite an evil place.
It's still not wholly evil, however, still not comprehensively demonic. No, that remains the work of so many in power here (though the degree to which one is "in power" while serving some shadowy, half-understood agenda is arguable): to eradicate the last goodness from these people and this land and to see them prostate themselves to the ruling dark power of the day that is the financial might of transnational oligarchs.
And whom do those oligarchs serve?
"It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody"-Bob Dylan
1. "I once tried to succinctly define "evil" and came up with: "Evil is the exploitation of weakness in another for your gain and their loss.""
I suppose I am evil then, in that I exploit the weakness of mice and rodents for my meals, at the cost of their lives., just as dogs and Cat Eating Monsters exploit my weakness.
2. Was it not written from old, the Easy Money Is One Hell Of A Drug?
Yeah, I tend to always assign it to the notion of being a landlord. It's amazing how many people get offended when you bash landlords, but that is evil right on the button. I don't care how normalized it is in this culture, or what a wholesome picture is painted by defenders of "mom and pop" landlords. That relationship is e v i l.
You would really like the songs of "Les Frères Jacques", Feral, if you understand French. Even if you don't understand French, there are some songs that are in English and they are priceless. For cats.
Whoooff. I'm posting this on the fridge. Which will be understood by pretty much nobody else, because it won't fit on a bumper sticker. Thanks, sincerely.
While I often agree with you, Feral, here I have to take exception with your analysis that makes oligarchical capitalism, and money, the sole explanations of our collective predicament, (if I read you correctly). I tell my friends here in the country that gave the world the 1789 revolution that if you explain all of our troubles with the word "money", or "capitalism", or "technology", or whatever, you are putting ALL of your eggs in ONE basket, and that, outside of worshipping the God of Israël, is called "idolatry". So, you don't really want to engage in idolatry, do you Feral ? Not me, in any case. The model of the French Revolution enshrines a quasi mathematical concept of equality that ultimately reduces us to interchangeable, and replaceable parts of the big Machine which is the anthill (aw, shucks, not even the hive, because the bees make that delicious product called honey), and mathematical equality synonymous with social justice is a powerful motor for the modern progressive state. Not just oligarchs, and not just money. Equality.
I said nothing about a "sole" factor. Even Marx would note the role of technology.
Point taken, then...
A great post Paul, and what The Machine hates most of all, because it really is the final barrier against its total domination and control of every aspect of our lives, is marriage and the family.
All this brings to mind Satan’s pedigree.
He is a liar and murderer.
I recently discovered the Catholic priest Fr Chad Ripperger, whose Youtube videos I find utterly compelling. He’s woken me up to many things, not least the reality of the demonic in his role as an exorcist - but also to the fact that any primary focus by politicians on the economy is in fact an iteration of Communism, whatever their apparent political party.
I had never understood it this way before, but of course it’s true, and the truth of it these days is becoming clearer by the month. Any non-Communist government would focus on the genuine welfare of the people beyond the merely material, and beyond Capitalism’s - and Communism’s - relentless need to regularise, standardise, streamline, reduce choice under the pretence of widening it.
'any primary focus on the economy by politicians is in fact an iteration of Communism, whatever their apparent political party.'
I don't understand that claim. What does he mean?
As far as I understand him, a focus on the economy is basically giving in to pragmatic, controlling materialism. Once you prioritise the economy, as they all do, anything non-material becomes lost to the purview of accountants and economists; when it can’t be quantified by such gatekeepers it then loses value when seen from their perspective and can be safely ignored - or actively undermined as inimical to a government’s overall project. It’s all just slavery to materialism in the end, whether communist or capitalist. Both are more or less coercive, both use endless brainwashing, both will tend increasingly towards ever-smaller elites running the system, both will standardise wants, corrupt tastes, debauch mass education, target the family and seek conformity wherever possible. I haven’t heard Fr Ripperger discuss this a lot, and some of what I say is me reading my interpretation into what little I’ve heard him say about it - but I think I’m not going too far wrong. I’ll try to discover more when I can.
I agree with this analysis, Jules, but I think that there is a problem in the fact that our money is becoming more and more... DEmaterialized. So... what does it MEAN, money, if it is dematerialized ? If you destroy the link between money as symbol, and money as matter ? to take action, then what does money... do ? How can you/we understand it ? Isn't our dematerializing a black hole towards destroying the meaning of money ?
Yes, I don't see the specific connection with communism as such, though. Marxist communism is certainly a materialist ideology, but so is the state-capitalism it attempts to challenge. That's the problem. Both 'left' and 'right' walk us into the Machine.
perhaps it it is the foundational premise of marxism/communism that uniquely pits one group against another, then seeks to divide and destroy? Only 10 minutes long, but at the 4:30 mark he gets into it a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lsCFo088L0
I think that this is the core defect of Marxism (along with the materialism that it shares with capitalism): the division of people into the oppressor and oppressed classes, and the mission of the eradication of the "class enemy". There is nothing in this of the Beatitudes.
Capitalism and communism both came out of the Enlightenment. Communism really originated in the French Enlightenment (rather than with Marx), and capitalism came out of the Scottish Enlightenment.
As the Canadian philosopher George Grant wrote in 1969, "These days when we are told in North America that capitalism is conservative, we should remember that capitalism was the great dissolvent of the traditional virtues, and that its greatest philosophers, Hobbes and Locke, Smith and Hume, were Britishers. In the appeal to capitalism as the tradition it is forgotten that the capitalist philosophers dissolved all ideas of the sacred as standing in the way of the emancipation of greed". (I wonder what Jordan Peterson would say about this...)
Peterson likes to live in shallow intellectual waters. He also wants to have his cake (spirituality, meaning) and eat it too (capitalism)
There are lots of people in that particular boat. I once was. Thing is, the light about the contradiction doesn't go on for everyone at the same time. Since I was once among them, I tend to cut these folks some slack.
It’s very hard to refute this. The contradictions inherent in Thatcherism in the UK (and Reaganomics in the US?) were clear enough even at the time: an attempt to foster traditional values *while at the same time* unleashing the raw greed of capitalism. What could possibly go wrong…?
Ironically, the Thatcher/ Reagan hard focus on economics and contempt for the arts and culture allowed the Communism they defeated a back door to return through, i.e., via the institutional capture of arts organisations, university departments. And then it spread out from there, with the dire results we see everywhere today.
In the virtual places where I hang out, which are rare, but take up (too) much of my time, I have challenged our assumption that capitalism only goes back to the Enlightenment. I have read Ellul (I think...) saying that conditions were not ripe for capitalism before the Enlightenment, BUT...
I know that in the days of the comparatively long Roman empire, probably when it was the most prosperous, around 200 A.D. or so, amphoras were being manufactured to carry mucho merchandise, oil, wine, etc, all around the Mediterranean. Those amphoras were pretty much identical, and they embody the idea of manufacturing identical products to be brought to the Most Possible (identical...) People. That is the ethos of the industrial world, in my opinion. So... why do we continue to refuse the continuity in Western civilisation that Latin, and Greek have brought us ? forced upon us ?? Why do we refuse to see that the root of our problems ? goes way way back ?
What is the relationship between capitalism and abstraction, for example ? The relationship between capitalism and the growing abstraction ? of our money... in our minds ?
This video, while long, is fascinating. I haven’t watched all of it, but as far as I know Fr R doesn’t directly address the economy-Communist connection here - but it’s still well worth watching. (I’ll keep a lookout for a more explicit account from him of economy-Communism link if I can - so far I’ve only seen him make occasional references to the link).
https://youtu.be/XeXsTgqBKeY?si=WqYfIyt3ItzbIijJ
This is a bit more concise, perhaps helpful to the conversation here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lsCFo088L0
Yale historian Timothy Snyder ("Black Earth") comes to a similar finding. Reliance on some economic "system" to bring about justice and equity is an avoidance of our responsibility to others in the present.
Also this, found by a friend on a Fr Ripperger FB page:
“People don't talk about the evil of communism enough. This talk may help you in your research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU2QseWgKs0&t=1s @27:34 According to Fr. C.R.: "One of the brainchilds of Freemasonry is communism. ... everybody thinks that the most important thing in an election is the economy. No it's not. The most important thing in any election is the spiritual and moral welfare of the citizenry; that's the most important thing in an election... St. Thomas says in the, his work on the "De Regimine Principum". He says the reason that you have to promote a good economy is so that those citizens can develop virtue. That's what it's there for."
Also, from the same friend:
“Also found: Spiritual Warfare and Communism - Full Length https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeXsTgqBKeY and he mentions Bella Dodd's book, "School of Darkness" https://www.amazon.com/School-Darkness-Bella-V-Dodd/dp/1621382931
Thanks for writing this, Paul. I'm at my wit's end explaining to friends how we're being sold a neoiberal pig-in-a-poke. One online commentator opined, If she could vote to remove the word "family", she would. We love our new priests in this island.
I can only hope that the incompetent arrogance of the current government may save mothers in the end. The proposed replacement language does such a ham-fisted job regarding "carers" that vocal opposition from Disabled Rights activists may truimph were appeals to motherhood won't.
And priests they are, of another religion. Man is a religious animal and he will worship something; too often himself.
We tried worshipping money but that was too real and eventually failed us with a reality check aka the Crash 2008. Now we've new in-groups and out-groups, new taboos, new saints and martyrs, new priests and handmaidens to police thought and behaviour and promote that most Orwellian of values, kindness. Be kind! All calculated to suck the joy out of life and the colour out of the world. I wonder why we bend towards Machine thinking so readily? How do we rebuild a cathedral without the power structure and corruption such a project attracts?
It seems to be a part of human nature for a majority of the population to wish for a king to rule over them and care for them. Self governance is hard work.
I think many people misread the events of the 70’s which led us to the complete destruction of motherhood and home life. Here in America we were in a cycle of inflation and high energy costs which made it necessary for many women to leave home for part time work as cashiers, sales clerks, waitresses. These were not careers, and were not freely chosen paths to liberation, they were imposed by hard times. Our governments became addicted, as they always do, to the extra tax income, and suddenly the entire media machine turned as with a single focus to the glamorous career woman. The Mary Tyler Moore Show and many drearier spin offs showed just what you were missing out on as a stay at home mom, fun, friends, advancement, romance. Magazines screamed from the check out stands the same message.
Everyone seemed to forget that their fathers, often without a high school education, had been able to marry, buy a home, and raise a family, often quite large and even college educated, on one income. That this represented a loss in real terms of wealth occurred to no one.
There was a book back in the spate of simple living books 20 years or so ago that was tilted Graceful Simplicity. The premise was that the really good life requires someone in the home whose full time duty is to care for it and the people in it. Now the author was a Quaker, sufficiently woke for his times to insist that this didn’t have to be the woman, but admitted that it often worked best if it was. This seems an irreducible fact to me, after 42 years of being that person. To provide an actual safe space, as opposed to the fake “safe spaces” of the world, a home in which comfort, food, warmth, clean clothes, homemade meals and handcrafted goods pleasing to the eye and soul are in abundance is the work of an artist, and artists do not work part time at their art. It is to provide a kind of security that is vanishing, and which cannot be reproduced or procured for any amount of money because it is a work of love. This is a lifestyle now reserved only to the upper middle classes, formerly so commonplace as to be taken for granted.
What a beautiful description of the work of making a secure and welcoming home. I think accessibility to this for even the upper middle class is also at risk.
Susanna, amen. I have been a mother for 14 years now, and though my home is far from perfect, it is most certainly a haven, which I have endeavored mightily to create. I willingly and joyfully walked away from a career and the "potential" of my expensive private education because I saw that there was nothing so important in the world for my children as to have their mother actually present to them. I homeschool them and there is nothing in the world I would rather be doing. A work of love indeed. Thank you.
Thank you, Susanne, for putting this so well. Since we have exchanged previously here, I am going to confront ? your family story with my own, in order, I hope, to shed some light on what has been happening.
My maternal grandmother, born in the late 19th century, was a farm widow shortly after reaching age 40, with a two year old daughter. Circumstances forced her off the farm into a small town job. She was a very ambitious mother, and determined that her daughter should get a college education. My mother got a college education in the 1940's, with a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics (all those words count, folks...). The idea was to rationalize woman's role as homemaker, to make it scientific, and give it added value. My mother married, agreed to stay at home in the '50's to raise her children, but with misgivings, and resentment that she could not really express, I believe. After all.... she had had access to a college education, and that should have given her.. public social value on the job market, right ? Like many stay at home moms, my mother felt somewhat cheated out of something that she... had a right to ? Her marriage resisted this : both parents were God-fearing, church going believers, in a society where there were many other church going, God-fearing believers in the U.S.
Things heated up even more for me in the '60's and '70's. As more and more young women in all social classes were going into higher education, ambitions flamed. For men... and for women, and I believe that we started competing in the job market, to the detriment of the stability of our personal relationships. Also to the detriment of the economy itself, under pressure to find out of the home employment for both men and women.
After all these years now of being a stay at home wife and mother, and while knowing just how priceless this is to the family and society, I still cannot shake off a feeling of inadequacy in my role as purveyor of... grace in the home...
Grace... is not a public virtue... it is behind the scenes.
And the home ? how can there be a home with nobody INSIDE it to keep it ?
I realize that my view is a simplification. And our lives were not simple and straightforward, in that my husband and I made decisions at 19, at university, to have a very traditional family structure because we came from dysfunctional families, alcoholism and adultery figuring prominently in those families. We wanted what we felt we had been cheated out of. We both come from working class backgrounds that were moving into the middle class, I attended a very prominent private high school on scholarship with girls from the richest Catholic families on the Philadelphia Main Line, (Grace Kelly types), so exposure to a lot of different levels and lifestyles of the time.
My mother was obsessed with the idea of more. She wanted more money, but mostly more attention. She wanted to be the heroine of a romantic movie. She found being the mistress of a married man somehow sophisticated, and together they ruined the lives of as many as 10 other people, his family and ours, in the process. Selfishness was thus the main thing we identified as ruinous to family life. My husband’s father was similar, nothing interfered with his whim of the moment.
Something that more people really need to accept is that every decision in life cuts off other choices. There is no such thing as a perennial banquet from which you can endlessly select. A bite of this takes the edge off of that, and it is as true for good choices as for poor ones. There are time I have been envious of those with careers, especially in areas I find personally interesting, but at most I could have only have done one of those things, and with my social limitations possibly not even that.
Something I have wanted to bring into these discussions but which seemed like a long tangent are women’s magazines from the 1960’s which I collect. The cheap newsprint monthlies proliferated in pre internet days as a way for isolated housewives to find penpals, those with common interests, exchange hints, craft ideas and materials, ideas on child rearing, special needs, recipes, collections. They are intensely revealing, like a modern Internet forum only more authentic, because more is invested. In searching for what triggered the Betty Friedanesque intense hatred of the home when the vast majority were contented there are patterns. Many women have their hands full, and are apparently satisfied. Some are very active in volunteer and civic groups and clubs outside the home. Charities, garden clubs, PTA’s, hospitals, libraries, communities were strengthened in many ways by the time these women contributed. Others have large families and home interests such as gardening, canning, camping, travel. The happiest correspondents were probably the ones who prefaced their letters with”I’m not much of a homemaker…” by which they meant they didn’t change sheets and polish the furniture every day. They often had very involved and satisfying artisanal hobbies like quilting or fine arts like oil painting. The variety of hobbies described is dizzying, and husband and wife often worked together, much more often than couples seem to today. This is a real loss as hobbies hold a key to mental health we seem to have forgotten but which was well known in the past before drugs became the quick fix.
The sad letters are the ones from women who “can’t stand a mess”, who complain about the children being home from school in the summer, husbands around the house too much, and whose hobbies are solely the acquisition of useless items like salt and pepper shakers, etc. You can see the nervous energy building up without a fit subject to exercise it. It’s really fascinating, and I am convinced that there is a key in all this information about the personal thoughts of women long dead which helps to explain how we got here.
On the other hand if the media were in it with the government all along to nudge us in this direction how much agency do we have?
We tend to compare our role as a homemaker with an imaginary role in a meaningful career where we make a difference to many people rather than just a few, and hence the feelings of inadequacy result. The reality of most women’s, most people’s careers, is that they are jobs, that they don’t really matter to many people at all, and if they dropped dead tomorrow there would not be a ripple within the week. My grandsons will remember the weeks they spent sewing and baking with Nana 30 years after I am gone. It is a kind of immortality.
I am at work now. An ER nurse in a corporate system that is driven by government controls and a desire to not get sued. Because of this we are one, big, lifestyle (read result of sin) maintenance program. For this we as a culture spend billions of dollars a year to bandaid the results of obesity (diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease), kill the babies women don’t want and kill some of the babies they think they deserve because “I want” is the measure of the rightness of something.
My children are mostly grown and I continue to work so that the youngest can have the privilege of a Catholic all boys boarding school with no technology. I mostly stayed at home when they were young and we homeschooled. But EVEN I—believing in motherhood and fatherhood and family and breastfeeding felt that I had to work. I still feel it!
The tide is so far gone. We as women have bought the lie so completely it takes a genuine conversion to even BEGIN to think differently.
God bless Ireland.
Excellent points, and all of it is infinitely complicated by the way we can’t even have constructive conversations about what is a good life for mothers, fathers, and children without doing violence to the very words “mother”, “father”, “woman”, “man” “boy” and “girl”. We are so far down the road, as you say.
When we started homeschooling in the late 80’s the other women in the group were professional women, about ten years older than me, who had felt betrayed because homemaking and mothering had not been offered to them as a choice. Many had no idea how strongly they would feel about their firstborn, how impossible it was to leave the baby in care. They had been singled out as good students and fast tracked into the sciences, law, etc. the recruitment of academically talented women in those days was very flattering and head turning. But at least the tradition was within reach.
One of the most important things I know, which may sound abstract, and far away, long ago, is that Roman women from rich, aristocratic families did not do housework, basically because housework was considered to be menial work to be done by slaves, and unworthy of them. Aristocratic Roman women were above all that...
This may sound theoretical, but think about it : isn't this the belief that we are being told to embrace ? That we are above all of this, as ARISTOCRATS ??
There was a time, in the women's magazines, where I had the impression that as women, we were supposed to not only work OUTSIDE the home in a "meaningful and fulfilling job", but come "home" and be a perfect homemaker TOO.
But... in France, there was a time, too when it was possible for a woman to have a part time job with hours that she could handle, AND have and raise children decently. I would like to stress that IN NO WAY OR MEANS could she, in this part time job, qualify for retirement income that would allow her to live decently, so that meant that she would be still be dependant... ON A RELATIONSHIP ? ON THE STATE ? to get by because she took the time to have children.
I would also add that on a homestead, no woman would have, or have had the time to sit back and raise children the way suburban U.S. women were doing it (with mitigated satisfaction) in the '50's. Because... the work had to be done in order to survive, but the children in that context (which was also my mother's) learned how to fend for themselves, to be truly independant and autonomous ? in ways that they cannot learn now that they are penned into homes to protect them.
And now, I truly believe that man, woman, and child is truly... fulfilled when he is working to fulfill his part to the best of his capacity, and he/she knows that what he is doing is invaluable to making the home ? survive. That is why the farm is such an ideal to me...still.
What a great discussion. I'm a Gen Xer and came of age in the 90s. My parents pursued a traditional arrangement, and my mom stayed home with us two kids. But I was raised to pursue a career, and being strong in academics, that's what I did. I studied chemical engineering and made my way in a successful lucrative career, and was blindsided when I realized upon becoming a mother that I wanted more time with my daughter. My husband could not support us in a middle class lifestyle, and I could not see that even struggling in a lower income in order to stay home might be worth it, or even preferable! Oh, I can see it now, but now I am 47 and my child bearing days are behind me. But you can bet I am showing my daughter that large families and a traditional arrangement where mom stays home and homeschools is a desirable option. We are members of a large Orthodox christian community where it's common to have more than 5 kids, and most of the moms stay home. I think the 70s-00s girlboss feminism will fade and be regarded as a weird aberration. It just does not lead to fulfillment. IMO most women are not cut out to "lean in", be mini-men or Hilary Clinton.
You are absolutely right about the farm, but even into the 60’s and 70’s regular homes could be small engines of production in which the housewife made a direct contribution to the financial well being of the family. Many women sewed their family’s clothing, when the materials still represented a savings over store bought of 75% or more ( today home sewing is a luxury hobby and it costs more to buy a a pattern than a finished blouse!), gardening, canning, baking, do it yourself home decorating, all activities which are now outsourced. It has been proven that people who eat their meals at home eat less than restaurant or fast food meals, and with far less salt and sugar added.
Men often had intense interests as well, the 40 hour work week freed them up and television had not yet eaten up their leisure hours. Woodworking, gardening, home improvement projects, were popular. That the children learned all these skills more or less passively was an added benefit, and families often worked together.
We are so much less than we could be, and I don’t know how you rebuild the bridges between men and women now that we have blown them up?
I am happy that we are having this discussion, and I just thought of something else which is important to me : during the time that I was raising my children, in the home, when we congregated around the dinner table, they knew that they were at a point in time, and a place where they would be listened to, where they would be considered, where they had the freedom to speak their mind. It is only just recently that I realized what they had been given, and why our homes are not just havens ? refuges ? they are places where we CAN be free to speak our minds, IF we allow ourselves this freedom, if we TAKE our freedom ?
I have found recently that since the Covid episode, few people feel free to speak their minds outside of the Internet ? but that around my dinner table, they manage to relax and find support for what they secretly ? think but no longer dare to express PUBLICLY.
This is to me the entire heart of a family, the meeting around the table every day. We homeschooled and my husband even worked at home much of the time so that for two meals a day we ate together. Seldom did the conversation stop when the food was done. The awareness of history, economics, literature, culture, politics, religion, etc. that was imparted through thousands of days was priceless. One of my younger sons who is not academically oriented was complimented by his history professor on what he ( the professor) saw as a vanishing awareness of historical events, my son credits the dinner table conversations entirely for forming his understanding of the past.
There are now 16 of us at holidays, and while we have a little interpersonal tension between daughter and daughter-in-law just now it is not political in any way, our family is not one of those torn to pieces by strong opinions about things that none of us can influence and which ultimately do not matter but which people base their entire identity upon.
You are so right about how fearful people have become about expressing quite harmless opinions. They fear the mob turning on them and it is impossible to predict how the most innocuous comment will be taken. People are unable to engage in adult discourse on any topic, it is as if we are in a totalitarian state where the party line isn’t quite clear and the response is either silence or skewing so far to the left that no one can question your bona fides.
In a world like this what a haven a real home is, but how few have access to one!
On the dinner table : YES YES YES.
But we are still free to invite people to eat with us. And if they come, we can share our freedom (of speech, opinion) with them IN FLESH AND BLOOD.
And this is exactly what Jesus was doing... during his last supper...
Susanne, really interesting points about the magazines! I would read a book or article about that!
I really do believe there is a wealth of information represented in women’s magazine throughout the 20th century. Pre WWI there is a sweetness and naïveté that is truly charming and apparently sincere, as you move into the 30’s the magazines get glossy and have a brittle sophistication in the editorial content that can be distasteful. Post WWII you see the intense focus on babies and children which continues and results in the boomers being the most spoiled generation in history. It’s really fascinating.
I wish I were a younger and more rigorous scholar.
"Everyone seemed to forget that their fathers, often without a high school education, had been able to marry, buy a home, and raise a family, often quite large and even college educated, on one income. That this represented a loss in real terms of wealth occurred to no one."
I crunched this a few months ago from US Census data because I was tired of not getting straight answer on this subject.
From 1973 to 2015, household median earnings went up by 20% ($58K to $68K in inflation adjusted 2022 dollars). During this period, male earnings were essentially flat (plus a couple hundred dollars from 1973 vs 2015) while women's earnings doubled ($15K to $29K). *
Conclusion: American families' financial improvement during the latter half of the 20th century was caused ENTIRELY by women entering the economic game. (This holds even if you move the period +/- 5 years either way.) Politicians and commentators who pretend otherwise are either liars or fools. And as you said, calling this an "improvement" in standard of living beggars the definition of that term.
Data is all available here if you want to verify it yourself:
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-people.html
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html
* The slight differences in Census derived median household income vs the addative median incomes of each sex reflect that a few households consist of multiple working-age members of each sex, but the vast majority over this time period were a male-female pairs.
The changes wrought in actual lived standard of living are another unmeasurable factor. That the obesity and diabetes epidemics began when home cooking was disappearing was not an accident. Many women still spewed clothing for their families in the 60’s and 70’s, certainly things were more likely to be mended, cared for, parents talked to their children rather than their phones, a thousand little things that add up to quite large costs in terms of waste and mental and physical health.
I agree 100%. Much of that is subjective though: "many women prefer to work outside the home", "factory made clothes free women from drudgery", "who are you to deny their rights", "women's income helps families achieve the American dream", etc...
The reason I like the data is because it's objective. The last 50 years, all of the improvement in American household finances has been driven by the introduction of a rising percentage of women to the wage-workforce. Someone can say that was a good thing or a bad thing but can't pretend it's not a real thing.
When I saw your statistics I thought of my son who thinks the same way, he wants numbers. Anecdotal evidence only gets you so far and is open to a variety of interpretations, you are quite right to want more than that.
What interests and confuses me is that there are so many of us still around who remember those days and yet buy into the myth of progress, despite the clear evidence of our senses, most families weren’t agents of degradation and abuse, most mothers weren’t gnawing their legs off like bears caught in a trap, most fathers weren’t tyrants.
Baby boomers have an awful lot to answer for.
It's not just Boomers. I'm only 50 and I apologize both to my own kids and my students for bequeathing them such an economic and social mess: a government whose credit card debt is equal to its annual income but is busy throwing money at wars halfway around the world, while pushing an intersectional racial/sexual spoils system to pit its own citizens against each other and demolishing every other institution and system that might guide people to a functional life.
My generation did much of that entirely on our own. But at least we were liberated and free! Yeah, right.
Modern progressive women portray the Church's sexual teachings as misogynistic and patriarchal, but women in the ancient world found those same teachings liberating, even protective. In a world where women were effectively property, Christianity was a ray of light for them. Edward Watt's Final Pagan Generation is a tome, but this point comes through loudly: the pagan world was horrible for women and girls. And they saw Christianity as a better way. Imagine how terrible your pagan life has to be to think risking being fed to lions or lit on fire as a human torch is an improvement.
As the modern world abandons Christianity, we are already seeing it re-embrace pagan practices around sexuality and transgression. Some are being more explicit in their paganism (https://religionnews.com/2024/02/21/ex-catholics-in-rome-reconnect-with-roots-spirituality-in-paganism/ -- this is seriously dangerous BTW, these people are unknowingly summoning demons.) The protected place give to women and children is simply the latest casualty of this re-paganization of the West. Like everything else that sprang from Christianity, it will gradually fall away as people forget why it ever existed. "Women and children first" only makes sense in a world that knows women and men are different and that values children and families.
"in particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved."
Can the idea of "the common good" even exist in modern West? The highest good in modern, Western culture is maximal individual autonomy (thanks J.S. Mill.). If that's the only thing your society holds sacred, is it even possible to have a "common good"? Sans a collective definition of "good" or "virtue" ( which modern liberalism rejects in the name of maximal individual autonomy) what does "the common good" even mean? I would love to hear a progressive try and defend the idea.
I think that the modern emphasis on maximal individual autonomy goes hand in hand with the ideology of the masses. If this were not the case, many more people would feel free to dress as they please, speak as they please, but for many years now, I see increasing uniformity around me. There must be something else going on...
Was the pagan world horrible for women and girls ? I'm not sure. But I think that even the sophisticated ? wealthy Roman and Jewish women who supported Jesus financially before Christianity came into being noticed something different about him.
In the Genesis creation story, woman is presented as being a helpmeet to man. I like this philosophy ? very much, the idea of being a helpmeet. It gives dignity to both man and woman in the couple. It puts a damper on what could be a natural ? tendency to compete for personal power in the couple ?
In the sentence "in particular the State recognizes that by her life WITHIN THE HOME, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved", we can see that what is being attacked is "WITHIN".. the home. The existence of a separate, PRIVATE place out of the public eye, and PUBLIC scrutiny. A refuge, a haven, as others here have said.
For millenia now, in the Western world, woman has been associated with a separate and PRIVATE place, and even democratic and... pagan Greece associated woman with a separate and private place, but the family structure, to my mind, did not have the dignity ? of the Christian ? Jewish ? model.
I learned recently that it was only in the 12th ? century that, in Europe, under pressure from women, the institution of marriage was generalized to all stratas of society in order to give protection... to women. Technically, marriage as an institution becomes socially necessary and desirable when there is property or liquidity to transmit, which is why the lower classes did not necessarily engage in it. There are not always advantages to having money and property, by the way...
Great comments. And yes, the attitude toward women was very different among Jews than among pagans. I really should have said Judeo-Christian view of women. One of the things I've had to come to terms with in recent years was just how foreign ancient Greek and Roman culture and social practices really are to modern people. There are a number of books that point this out, but the best is probably Dominion, about how the modern world owes far more to Judeo-Christian beliefs than Greco-Roman ones.
I think that this is what Paul is writing about here. The "modern" European/American world has always had a great debt to Judeo-Christian beliefs AND to Greco-Roman... belief, and political structure. After all... democracy is an extremely important Greek... belief system, isn't it ? Isn't the ideal of the city state, the State itself as ideal, based on a belief system ? Wasn't Rome, which allowed tremendous religious freedom to individuals, federating the empire behind the belief in, and the loyalty to, the State itself ? Isn't that what the emperor cult was really about ? Did the Romans believe that their emperors were gods, or was this a convenient... fiction to give authority, legitimacy, and stability to the political regime ?
So... while we chatter on about "paganism", we are not adressing the most potent problem, and that is the problem of enshrining the State ? the nation ? and setting it up as a god ? (By the way, some of the most thought provoking analyses ? of this problem can be seen in the tragedies of Athenian (and pagan...) democracy. Sophocles' "Antigone" is a masterful, powerful study of conflicting loyalties : to the family ? to the city state ?)
And when we start seeing things this way, we are carried back to what blew Judea up and off the map in the years following Jesus's death. Messianic Judaism entailed loyalty to a supra-territorial entity, the Jewish people's Messiah, WHEREVER HE WAS, wherever the people were, too, because by the time Judea got blown off the map, there were Jews scattered all across the Roman empire. The Messianic aspect of Judaism competed with Rome's authority, and was essentially the reason why Judea got blown off the map. Which is not at all unlike the point where we are right now, right ? Not just the Jews are scattered all around the world, everybody else is, too ?
I occasionally say here that Athens, around 460 B.C. went through a period of intense political and social turmoil that greatly resembles what we are going through right now. Athens went through this turmoil because belief in the old.. PAGAN stories was dissolving under the onslaught of belief in "reason", whatever that may be...
"Modernity" certainly caused moral and religious convulsions in 5th century BC Athens. Socrates was executed for "bringing false Gods", and the opening scene of The Republic is an attempt to posthumously rehabilitate his reputation without Plato meeting the same fare. So yes, these problems do recur.
However, "The modern European/American world has always had a great debt to Judeo-Christian beliefs AND to Greco-Roman... belief, and political structure" is conflating two things.
The West is indebted deeply to Judeo-Christian beliefs and mildly to Greco-Roman political structures, but not to the other way around. We do not emulate either the political structure of ancient Judea (which featured a confluence of religious and temporal authority by the state) or the moral order of ancient Rome (which featured such barbarism as gladiatorial blood sports and exposing infants to die if they were unwanted.) Our moral framework is derived from Jerusalem and Christ not Athens or Rome.
Again, I highly recommend the books The Final Pagan Generation and Dominion on this subject. They're both thick, but worth at least skimming through.
This is a sticky subject. When talking about Judea, I was talking about Judea under Roman rule, not before.
I think that many people have false ideas of the moral order of Rome, which lasted a very long time.
Republican Romans were probably horrified by gladitorial blood sports, as they represented Roman... decadence to them, many of them. (Seneca found them revolting, and Seneca was technically a philosophical pagan.) And they were. Where did the circuses and arenas come from, and why ? They start in around the first century before the birth of Jesus, NOT BEFORE. Not everybody enjoyed the gladiator games. Right now, I would say that we are faced with the kind of decadence that Roman Republicans were horrified about. How are we holding up with it ? Time will tell.
On exposing (unwanted) infants, it was common practice in Antiquity. Some of those infants were picked up to become slaves. In our extremely civilized times, unwanted infants are... aborted... So I will not condemn the moral order of the Romans when WE are pushing abortion (admittedly, not all of us).
On our moral framework, I have heard some of my sophisticated and highly educated hellenist friends tell me how barbaric Rome was... next to Greece, but I take exception with their positions. I think that they are prejudiced in favor of Greece., and are quite ignorant of much of the sophistication of Roman civilisation.
When I think that as far forward ? as Claudius, there was a public slave poised on a chariot during a triumph to quietly murmur in the triumphing general's ear to remember that he was not a god, I have the highest respect for Roman moral order. We do not have the imagination to understand what a triumph was to these people now. It is out of our ken. We also do not have the imagination to understand the psychological finesse around the act of having a public slave on a chariot to keep a general from getting so excited that he will seize power. (This did not work forever, admittedly...)
And when I think that way back when, Jacob's... tribe took advantage of the fact that his daughter Dinah's young lover who wanted to marry her had ordered all of his young male warriors to be circumcised, and that the Jews fell on them during their convalescence, and slaughtered them all, I am not convinced by the high moral order of Jerusalem...
I seriously doubt that Jesus himself was convinced by the high moral framework of Jerusalem, because he knew his Bible's teaching, and the history of his people much better than we do.
This move is a reiteration of the Machine's attitude toward human life. There are no fathers or mothers, only parents and coparents, of any number, temporary or indefinite, who may or may not have personal relationships with each other. If the act of parenthood is a construct, inserting the state into this role or to being the ultimate authority on pediatric welfare becomes trivially easy. When the human person is reduced to an economic object, the act of raising children becomes a financial calculus: can the autonomous individual "afford" to take on the expense called "having kids," that is, can they do so without hampering their financial goals and ability to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle? What sort of children will become productive members of society, that is, which children are investments that are projected to yield a high ROI, and which are burdens on society, costs to be cut? At what age does the depreciation of an individual's economic potential reach the critical point where their maintenance expenses exceed their productive capacity? And so on.
Our Machine conspiring president recently harped on about "réarmement démographique", "a demographical call to arms" to address the problem of France's plumetting birth rate.
Really... our leaders have no clue. They are playing at politics in real time.
Yes, you are about to find out. Here in Canada children can transition sex without their parents consent, they can get vaccinated without their parents consent and in the future will be able to end their lives through our Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID, what a diabolical acronym) without their parents consent, even if they are mentally ill. Now the state raises our children. I have heard of one father who refused to support his 13 year old’s transition and was thrown in jail. My prayers go out to all parents raising young children in this world today.
As to motherhood, I remember getting part time work in retail years ago. I trudged from one big box store to another filling out applications. There were several questions that always gave me the opportunity to elevate motherhood to its true position and I took full advantage of the opportunity. One was “occupation” in which I proudly recorded the words Housewife and Mother. The second was Work Experience in which I delighted to always ask for an extra piece of paper in which to scrawl my comprehensive list. And the last question Post Secondary Education into which I gleefully wrote, in all caps, NONE. To be honest, my job search became more like missionary work and I really couldn’t care less if I got the job or not:) I saved my list and turned it into a poem. It really didn’t need any editing, there were no superfluous words and when I stood back and looked at it I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the privilege of such a calling. Of course there are many things absent from the list, but I felt to include them was bordering on narcissism:)
Resume
Housewife/Mother
Retail sales
Florist
Baker
Cheese maker
Horticulturalist
Arborist
Landscaper
Animal Behavioural expert
Renewable Resource Manager
Teacher
Fibre artist
Poet
Interior designer
Construction worker
Chef
Survivalist
Butcher
Candlemaker
Event planner
Musician
Gardener
Guidance counsellor
Herbalist
Fashion designer
Debater
Child psychologist
Dog trainer
Massage therapist
Teamster
Sheep shearer
Horse trainer
Philosopher
Secondary Education - NONE
This list stands in defiance to the eradication of our most precious and sacred family.
Wendell Berry is excellent on this topic, defending men as well as women: "And what are we to say of the diversely skilled country housewife who now bores the same six holes day after day on an assembly line? What higher form of womanhood or humanity is she evolving toward? How, I am asking, can women improve themselves by submitting to the same specialization, degradation, trivialization, and tyrannization of work that men have submitted to? And that question is made legitimate by another: How have men improved themselves by submitting to it? The answer is that men have not, and women cannot, improve themselves by submitting to it."
This was a great article. The recent events in Ireland are extremely sad. And i don’t think Catholic Integralism will ever get off the ground in the US. But here in the US, we are so childlike and gullible than no constitutional change has been necessary to enact a policy for families and our culture that is run by “the Machine.” It was done by media, by college elites, and I suppose ultimately by a “for profit only to the already rich” group of societal controllers to push women into the work force, boosting inflation enough that those women would be trapped there forever.
I am 68 years old. I married young, had 8 sons, stayed home and looked after them. This was out of the ordinary even in my day. But I was a traditionalist who, like de Valera, has become more traditional, more Catholic, more cognizant of the evils of progressivism as I have grown older. People have said to me, you must have been economically privileged. No, if they only knew how poor we were! I was determined though. I knew I would quit my stenographer job when I became pregnant with our first child. I knew I would never in a million years let someone else raise my child. I knew this when I was twenty years old. The money didn’t balance on paper. But so what? And we even bought a house at this time. We made it. Our children are all grown and they are making it too. Doing better than we did. Our sons have good jobs, most own acreage and a home. Number 34 grandchild is due this year. None of my daughters in law who are mothers, work outside their homes.
At our book club last month, mothers were talking about how you have to be committed to poverty if you want to have a large family and stay home with them. Maybe that’s true. But it’s so worth it. Oh young woman-its so worth it!
I wish I could live under such a protection as the constitution offered women in Ireland! What a definition of freedom - protection for carrying out the important field of householding. Beautiful. (And sad, that the machine is now to eat it. Yet, the words inspired.)
Thank you for sharing, and blessings from Sweden!
Ireland is now, probably not a good name for the island next to Britain. That name is "problematic." Maybe, they should change it to, here goes "Euro Area Green." It rolls off the tongue really well and would fit into some line of code too. This new country will be a land fit for machines and no mothers are needed for machines.
Thank you for this. I found it very interesting valuable. I agree with all of your basic and fundamental principles