My last post dealt at a very general level with the woman question. I argued that it falls mostly to men to create the frame in society, rather than this role being split evenly between men and women. My argument was that women are tasked with embodying the softer virtues, but that a woman's softness paradoxically makes it difficult for her to embody these virtues: she needs a frame that she cannot easily uphold herself in order to reach her true purposes.
What sounds neat and tidy at the general level, quickly becomes more complex when you look in a more detailed way at how women vary. I want to look in particular at how women differ when it comes to the attainment of feminine virtue; and at differences amongst women when it comes to reason governing feeling.
Feminine virtue
I argued in my last post that many women are influenced by the feelings that descend on them, and that a passive "recipient" mentality can lead women to certain characteristic vices, such as a lack of constancy and accountability.
However, it should be said that some women are so well-natured that their positive feelings/emotions are strong enough to conquer the negative ones. Therefore, they do not rely as much as other women on a social frame in order to reach toward their higher qualities as women.
In other words, you could chart a line with women who are strong in "natural virtue" at one end of the line and women who are most dependent on "learned virtue" at the other end.
There are at least some women who are strong enough in natural virtue that they do not need an outside frame - but they are a small minority of women. They are not sufficient in number to override the general argument I made regarding the necessity for men to lead in creating a frame for society.
And for those women most dependent on learned virtue? This is where the frame is most important. This is not the place for a complete treatment of what is required for the frame to work. But to give some idea of the issues raised, here are a few things that were once considered important in traditional societies.
a) Protecting the ability of young women to pair bond. If women are more influenced by feeling than by commitments of will, then it is paramount that they reach marriage with the pair bonding instinct as intact as possible. There are many factors that can strengthen or weaken this instinct. Being raised as a girl in a home with a strong family culture, in which the parents love each other, can strengthen her desire to have what she has observed her parents to have enjoyed. Being encouraged to protect the sense of reserve or modesty in not giving away her feelings too easily (i.e. not being "promiscuous" in the giving of herself to men) whilst unmarried is another psychologically protective factor. Not delaying marriage until too late in life might also help.
b) Practising doing for others, as a way of overcoming entitlement and ingratitude. In traditional societies young unmarried women might be expected to practise works of charity, or to help look after other members of the household. It is possible for fathers to enable vices in their daughters by cossetting them too much and providing them with the opportunity to live a shallow, party girl lifestyle. Men do want to create a protected space for women, but there is a danger that this space becomes a hedonistic, materialistic, status seeking, self-entitled one.
The public lives of some young modern women may not be like this: they may live under considerable pressure to succeed at school and at work. They may have to develop the ability to discipline themselves to rules and hierarchies. This may help to counteract some of the "entitlement princess" mentality, but it is not necessarily transferred into what is left of the private sphere of these women, i.e. how they conduct themselves in their leisure time and relationships with men.
c) Men's double standards. In traditional societies men were not as rough and coarse in the company of women as they were in male company. If graciousness and delicacy are female virtues, then this double standard has a logic to it: men instinctively felt that they were damaging or degrading something in women by acting too roughly and coarsely in their presence.
Another point I'd make is that motherhood can draw out some of the finer and more mature qualities in women, perhaps because it is less possible for women to adopt the passive recipient mentality when caring for their children. Mothers become the active, responsible agents in this relationship. It may not help, therefore, when women spend so long in party girl mode before finally becoming mothers relatively late in life. It is also, I believe, more of a test of a woman's virtue how she treats her husband, rather than her children, as this is the relationship where she is more vulnerable to expressing her vices.
Reason
In my last post I repeated the claim made throughout history that women are less able than men to govern their feelings/emotions with their reason/intellect. But this is obviously a generalisation. When you look at a range of individual women, then you see a significant degree of variation.
I believe there are two factors that influence how much a woman is able to govern her feelings with her reason. The first is her level of intelligence, or, more specifically, her intellect. The less intellect there is, the less likely it is to come into play. Second, there is another line you can draw, with "male mind" at one end and "female mind" at the other. Some women have a strikingly female mind, a small number are at the opposite end of the line and have something closer to a male type mind.
What this means is that a woman can be highly intelligent but yet still have a strikingly female mind, one in which the influence of floating emotions (and emotional insecurities) is still highly visible.
There are all kinds of possible mixes here.
This does complicate the attempt to apply a frame to society. For instance, there are some women who are relatively able and competent to aim at masculine standards and ideals rather than feminine ones. These women may have internalised the idea that the masculine ideals are the superior ones and the feminine inferior. And so they move into a kind of rebellion against their own created nature as women - a rebellion which is often accompanied by an existential rancour and rage.
Such women tend to form the dominant strain within feminism: the strain which wants to maintain the male frame, but with women running it (these women have an animus against men - they want to take men down).
So what should be the male attitude to such women? First, the danger has to be recognised. These women are not the true allies of men, they are not trying to serve the larger good. Second, as many of these women as possible should be encouraged to see the feminine more positively, even if they are capable of achieving along more masculine lines. The rage and the rancour is connected to a rebellion not just against society, but against created reality, so the solution is not to change society but to encourage these women to identify more positively with creation itself (including their own role as women within it).
Another group of women have nothing like a male mind; nor do they accept the imposition of a male social frame. From the ranks of these women is drawn the lesser strand of feminism, i.e. the strand which openly wants to assert a female, feelings-based frame on society. This type of feminism is more accepting of sex differences, but it is still hostile to men and it does not recognise the need to bring the female mind to virtue.
But there are also women who do identify positively as women; who are able to look at the good of society as a whole; and who are able to defend the good in a reasonable way. My own view is that it would be wise of men to draw these women into positions in which they can influence society in a positive way (but with men still taking ultimate responsibility for the maintenance of the social frame).
I'll finish on this note. There are now many men who are critical of women, in particular Western women. But it is inevitable that women would lose respect in a culture that, in a sense, abandons them not only to the best but also to the worst of their own natures. There is an underestimation of what is required to get the best out of people, of what traditional cultures did to try and achieve this. The culture, the social structures, the frame have been dismantled (for the purposes of "liberation") and whilst this remains the case, then how could we expect a better outcome?
The hardest case to be made is for the intelligent woman of a male sort of mind. Unless she's blessed with external beauty, she's likely to be lost in ressentiment owing to her lower "SMV." She will naturally desire attractive men above her, but: these men are fewer, since they must be more intelligent than she; and these men won't choose her over a more feminine woman.
ReplyDeleteHence, she will effectively have to be told she's just drawn a bad hand in life. She will see her options as: 1) deal with it; or 2) rebel against reality.
At the end of the day, most of these women need a fulfilling form of celibate life to choose, and with the loss of religious zeal (and the decline of religious orders for women), their options are dwindling by the day.
Ryan, I hadn't thought of that angle, but it does fit for many of these women. What seems especially true is your comment that "these men are fewer, since they must be more intelligent than she; and these men won't choose her over a more feminine woman."
DeleteMore might be added to this. Men of high verbal IQ once had an excellent chance of rising in society - university results in England in the 1800s, for instance, were based to a considerable extent on a man's ability with ancient languages. Furthermore, such men did not face competition with women, as women at the time were committed to family rather than career.
Now the situation is that men with high verbal IQ have to compete with very large numbers of women for a very limited number of socially prestigious jobs; the women who are their peers will have been indoctrinated with an anti-male feminist ideology; plus there is the issue of heterosexual men preferring women with a more feminine mindset.
I suspect that the intellectual, university type woman who has beauty and a reasonably female mind often settles for a man with less SMV than she might otherwise have attracted, so the situation for similar women without those advantages must be difficult.
You suggest a fulfilling form of celibate life (some of these women seem to choose academia). I think it would help if such women lost the anti-male attitudes; if they tried to at least present themselves in a feminine way; and if men with high verbal IQ had more chances in the labour market.
Another thought occurs to me here as well. The men and women from this social class play a peculiar game. They hold formally to beliefs which deny sex distinctions; in which men are held to be the oppressors of women; in which sex roles are thought to be oppressive to women; in which femininity is thought to be oppressive to women and so on. These ideas are held to seriously and yet heterosexual courtship and family formation still have to be negotiated. It requires a fair degree of social skill to understand the rules of play: femininity can only be taken so far, but must still be expressed, but preferably in trendily iconic ways; distinctions in sex roles are still permissible but have to be counterbalanced by formal commitments to feminist politics and so on. You have to wonder how much the male-minded intellectual women are willing to give in this game playing - some, from what I've observed, are male-minded enough to put a lot more emphasis on the formal principles, rather than the unprincipled exceptions.
"I argued in my last post that many women are influenced by the feelings that descend on them, and that a passive "recipient" mentality can lead women to certain characteristic vices, such as a lack of constancy and accountability.2
DeleteThe mentally stable person of both sexes has both emotional awareness, stability and control. The above description of the descent of emotions on the woman, is a description of a mental disorder and not normal psychology. The 2 categories to which this scenario relates are personality disorders and psychosis, both of which are characterised by emotional instability.
Contrary to your assertion, emotional instability is more common in males and presents a considerable social problem. Impulsiveness and poor emotional control in males leads to violent crime, reckless driving, sexual crimes and assaults, gambling, alcohol and substance abuse.
Impulsiveness, recklessness and violence are essentially male problems.
The issue is not the "woman problem" but the "man problem" and the traditional way of controlling this is that elder men control younger men by directing their energies into work and military service.
See, that's a common view as well, but I have found it to be wrong in my own life experience. There is a common view that women come "premade" and don't have to be worried about, but that young men have to be civilised and turned to productive purposes. The things is, once you put a man in a position of responsibility, chances are that his deeper masculine instincts will kick in and that he will not act in anti-social ways. The men who are anti-social tend to be outside of normal social responsibilities - they are not the fathers or the men holding down steady jobs.
DeleteI think it is a big mistake to see women as coming premade. My own generation of men have seen all sorts of dysfunctional behaviour in women. Furthermore, the dysfunctional behaviour tends to follow a pattern.
As I wrote in an earlier post, the most telling sign that there is indeed a "woman question" is the female attitude to marriage. I have met too many women, including well-educated women in the professions, who have a feelings-based attitude to marriage. These women just do not understand the concept of caritas - of a commitment in the will that actively disposes one to love another person. Instead, they have a fatalistic view that you have the feeling that you want to be with someone or you don't, and if you don't, then that is the proper test as to whether or not you should remain married. For them, this is just the normal, proper and expected way to do things. It would shock them, I believe, to be told that there was any other way.
A society will not survive into the future if men are not clearly aware of the need to create a frame which will help to raise women to feminine virtue. For the large majority of women, feminine virtue will not come by itself. Most women, left to themselves, will live a shallow, self-oriented, socially destructive lifestyle. It is an achievement of culture and civilisation to raise the majority of women beyond this, to something better.
No one comes premade and in stating that I made that assumption, you are misrepresenting what I said.
DeleteThe incontrovertible fact is that men are responsible for the preservation of the social order. That includes the order of the nation state and the order of the family. When men do this effectively, women fall into line. Dysfunctional behaviour in women is largely a consequence of the failure of men to uphold the familial and national social order.ie it is a secondary phenomenon. The same can be said of child dysfunction and of poorly trained family pets.
You state "The men who are anti-social tend to be outside of normal social responsibilities - they are not the fathers or the men holding down steady jobs." This is evidently untrue. Some of the greatest problems in the West today are corporate crime and political corruption, both of which are committed by men holding some of the most responsible jobs. You will also find that most men in prisons are fathers, often with large numbers of offspring, as are most substance abusers and gamblers. Most of the politicians who commit treason by opening national borders are also men.
Men more than women switch partners according to emotional state. Men who become bored or lose attraction to their wives have affairs and abandon their spouses. Women are primarily attracted to social status and money. They may hold a man like a stock, seeking to trade him in if a better deal comes along.
Women don't take a fatalistic view of life, they are too materialistic and status driven and have too strong and overriding a need for security to allow major life decisions to be made on the basis of emotion.
Its men who make major decisions on the basis of emotion. Look at the large number of men who have entered into foolish marriages on the notion (usually deluded) that a woman loves them.
Anon wrote:
Delete"The incontrovertible fact is that men are responsible for the preservation of the social order. That includes the order of the nation state and the order of the family."
I agree with you, but both of us are then obliged to give a reason why this is the case. In my post, I attempted to explain how the telos of men and women differs and how this affects the ability of the sexes to establish a social frame.
"Dysfunctional behaviour in women is largely a consequence of the failure of men to uphold the familial and national social order"
See, you are assuming here the kinds of things I wrote about in my post - that women are less likely to be the active element in establishing the social frame. But moderns do not assume this. We have to explain why they are wrong.
"Men more than women switch partners according to emotional state."
I agree in part with what you write in the last section of your comment. It's true that women are sometimes more pragmatic than men in their approach to relationships and that I overlooked this in writing my post. It goes to show how complex it can get in writing about this topic.
However, I think you overstate things yourself. There are plenty of women suddenly declaring themselves to be unhappy and dissolving their families even when there is little prospect of a wealthier or higher status trade-in spouse on the horizon. There are legions of such women being supported by the welfare state and by child support/alimony.
As for fatalism, it may again be true that I need to describe better the kind of passivity in women that I was talking about. Yes, women do have an agenda of their own in relationships that provides some logic to the way they choose to act (e.g. the desire for security as a motivating factor). Their decision making is not entirely random. But I was attempting more to describe the way that the female mind grabs at reality - that the female mind does not attempt to tie together feeling states - to integrate them according to a principle held in the mind - to the same degree that the male mind does (though this varies amongst women - some women have a strikingly female mind in this regard, others do not.)
I think you would have to acknowledge as well that women are far more likely than men to use psychics to help guide them in major life decisions.
A most frugal expression of freedom in this most chaste environ! If only more Conservatives on the Tea Party side were as bold in their support for untrammelled freedom of expression, political, social and sexual!
DeleteOf course, the moral revolution that has transformed marriage in our times did not start with the demand for legal same-sex marriage. It did not begin with homosexuality at all, but with the sexual libertinism that demanded (and achieved) a separation of marriage and sex, liberating sex from the confines of marriage and moved into the backroom, the steamroom, the sordid jock changeroom - anywhere where sweaty lust could parade in the most audaciously sexual form. Husbands were a part of this but probably an involuntary part, at least initially.
So sex was separated from marriage, and then sex was separated from the expectation of procreation and child-rearing except for those pedophiles from US who adopted that kid but that was a rarity and they caught anyway. Marriage was separated from sex, sex was separated from reproduction, and the revolution was launched all in the name of sexual liberation. Women responded accordingly and the whole women's lib movement caught on and before you knew it every vestige of societal repression ie morals was thrown away.
Adding to the speed of this revolution, then, was the advent of no-fault divorce and the transformation of marriage into a tentative and often temporary contract, and a whole lot of on-site sex parlours popping up like the proverbials - meaning suddenly the open marriage thing was out in the open and on everyone's lips!
Once that damage had been done, the demand to legalize same-sex marriage could not be far behind. And now polygamy is enjoying its moment of legal liberation especially in the inner suburbs where it has become the norm and in businesses like advertising, broadcasting, florists, hairdressers, fashion, entertainment etc and in universities where it absolutely flourishes.
Once marriage was redefined in function, it was easy to redefine it in terms of permanence and tie it to a libertarian freedom long supported by conservatives, especially libertarian homosexuals who weren't holding back either!
"I agree with you, but both of us are then obliged to give a reason why this is the case. In my post, I attempted to explain how the telos of men and women differs and how this affects the ability of the sexes to establish a social frame. "
DeleteI thought that you were claiming to be a Christian. It appears that is not the case. The Christian does not have to explain why men are responsible for maintaining the divine social order, the Bible does it and there is no need to add anything to it.
The legions of women that you report living on welfare and alimony payments are in general not doing that by choice. Most of the welfare dependent have never been married and have been the partners of feckless and irresponsible men who have dumped them and left them dependent on the state.
The women living on alimony are, in the majority, victims of adulterous marriages in which the husband has traded them in for a younger model. There are few women who set out to live in that precarious situation by design.
The women who do divorce for "emotional" reasons, have the intention of using the legal system to seize unearned assets. They are often termed gold diggers but asset strippers may be a more appropriate term as their manipulations are more akin to those of forensic accountants. These marriages are temporary contracts for the purpose of accruing unearned wealth. However statistically these are few in number.
All psychologically normal people integrate emotional states. A failure to integrate emotional states is a sign of psychopathology and this is more common in men who have a greater tendency to act out emotional states with violence.
The use of psychics is pagan in both sexes. Pagan men use psychics and resort to drug abuse which is far more dangerous.
Anon, your answer is inconsistent. First, you talk about the existence of a divine social order. But then you deny that there is any order to the divine social order - you suggest that it is just something arbitrarily willed by God, put in the Bible as a kind of instruction manual, with nothing more for anyone to comprehend.
DeleteAnon, here's another problem with your approach. You talk about men needing to lead, but then you also take the view that women are not accountable for the way they behave- i.e. that if women do something wrong, it must be men's fault. But much of the point of men leading is to make sure that women are held accountable. It is one of the thorniest tasks of male leadership.
Anon, the Australian welfare state made the guarantee some years ago that "no Australian child will live in poverty". This means that the state will guarantee a mother with children an income similar to that of a woman who goes out to work. There is a perverse incentive at play, in which a woman who decides to divorce her husband will through the combination of welfare and child support be able to live at a similar standard of living as a woman who works - this is particularly true for women without tertiary qualifications, which probably helps to explain why divorce is more common amongst women with fewer qualifications.
"All psychologically normal people integrate emotional states". There are many people of both sexes who are no longer as psychologically intact as this - they have contradictory wants and moods; in particular, they don't have the psychology necessary for a successful long term relationship.
The situation with women is a bit worse, I believe, because women are not as steadily and coolly intellectual in their mindset as men, but are more buffeted by emotional states. Furthermore, in a society based on the idea that there is nothing for us to discipline ourselves to, but only doing what we have a mind to do; and if women's experience is a transition of feeling states; then what many women will seek is to have pleasurable or enjoyable feeling states as their aim in life. That becomes the "integration" - the "life is for living pleasurably in the moment" aim. In marriage, this can be translated into "make me happy" as a test of life.
"Anon, your answer is inconsistent. First, you talk about the existence of a divine social order. But then you deny that there is any order to the divine social order - you suggest that it is just something arbitrarily willed by God, put in the Bible as a kind of instruction manual, with nothing more for anyone to comprehend."
DeleteHow do you reach this conclusion based upon the comment to which you allegedly respond? You are once again misrepresenting the comments made.
I make it quite clear that the Bible contains the detail of the divine order and the blue print for its maintenance. I suggest you read it and study it until you understand it. Then you will finally gain the understanding of how society should be ordered and will not have to indulge in liberal fantasies of how to re- engineer it.
In a similar vein, I have never said that women are unaccountable. Yet again you provide false testimony. The point I made is that much of female behaviour which is errant is the direct consequence of male failure to preserve the social order. You are very keen to blame women for the high divorce rate but conveniently fail to notice that the divorce laws which permit no fault divorce were passed by men, as were the over generous welfare and alimony provisions. It is human nature to take advantage of legal loop holes and one cannot blame some women for taking advantages of these provisions in the manner that corporations take advantage of loopholes in tax law. The world is full of opportunists. Its the men who irresponsibly give them the opportunities and encourage them to make full use of them who are to blame.
" they don't have the psychology necessary for a successful long term relationship." This has nothing to with psychology. It is about values. A large number of people do not hold the values, beliefs and behaviours which are essential to maintain long term formal relationships and build social institutions.
The incidence of personality disorder is increasing as a direct consequence of dysfunctional family formation with the inevitable high rate of family breakdown which follows. This however does mean that the majority of the population suffer from some form of psychopathology. This assertion is quite unfounded.
A large number of people lack the moral foundation and the commitment to establish stable family life. They are self centred, narcissistic, hedonistic and immature. A people who are devoted to idolatry (the pursuit of idols such as happiness, romantic love, money etc) will lack the will to make stable social commitments which may bring them none of these things. The pursuit of the common good and social stability means that the interests of the group and society take complete precedence over the interests of the individual. The modern West has rejected this. Rampant individuality and idolatry mean that the majority lack the values and ability to maintain social order.
Women are less buffeted by emotional states than men and are less likely to develop pathological emotional states or to act out on them. Any visit to a criminal court, prison or forensic psychiatry ward will quite clearly reveal that strong emotional associated with loss of reason is on over 90% of cases a male phenomenon. Male violent criminals usually describe being overwhelmed with emotion to the extent that all rational thought is lost and they no longer know what they do.
A woman's desire for a man to "make her happy" is, in virtually all cases, related to financial or social success and not emotional states. Conversely, when a woman is unhappy with a man, it is because she perceives him as unsuccessful and unable to provide her material wants. These are rarely basic needs, which most men could provide, but a desire for premium and status items such as large houses and cars, designer clothes and jewels and travel. Most men cannot provide these items, and hence are seen by many women as losers or failures.
DeleteThis phenomenon of unentitled expectation is encouraged by the media which promotes unbridled materialism. However it is also a consequence of a social order which gives people freedom to chose their own partners. In this system a woman's natural unrestrained goal is to snare a high status male with large financial resources. Most women do not delight at marriage to an ordinary man if the possibility of a bigger catch is on the horizon, remote as it may be. Like a cat hovering around a buffet rejecting the food which drops on the floor whilst waiting for the left over salmon at the end of the meal, most women will reject ordinary men until all possibilities of a better catch are exhausted. Finally and reluctantly they will marry the lesser catch, always mentally comparing him to what they would have preferred but could not attain.
A system which permits unrestrained choice, creates unreasonable expectations and bitter resentments when these expectations cannot be met. A system which restricts or eliminates choice minimises expectations and forces the women to find happiness in what she has
as there is no other option.
Anon, that's an interesting comment. However, the fact that the discontent is related to material concerns still does not change the fact that we are dealing with a feeling state, i.e. of discontent and of other related feeling states, e.g. contempt or disdain for her husband.
DeleteI agree that the system should not permit unrestrained choice. It would be better, for instance, if women knew that the top tier men were likely to pair off in their early to mid 20s, therefore requiring more decisive choice. It would help too if divorce and cheating were less easily available. Also, the system should be designed in such a way that the efforts of ordinary men to provide are not treated with disdain by women. That means that parents should not be too ready to financially support their daughters post-divorce, particularly when it is the daughter who has ditched her husband, but should require her to make her own way financially. Similarly, the welfare state should require such women to make their own way financially. It was once the case that a man's efforts at work made a real difference to the living standard of his wife and children - this has been artificially undermined.
A final important point. If women were entirely as you describe, then they would be lesser beings than men and not deserving of our love. The chief purpose of society would have to be to merely control and contain women as a destructive element in society.
And yet it's not that straightforward. Some women, for whatever reason, do manage to stay married to men with ordinary jobs. Why? What is different about these women? Are they women who care more about the impact of divorce on their children? Are they women of better character, of better virtue? More conscientious, less ruthless?
"I make it quite clear that the Bible contains the detail of the divine order and the blue print for its maintenance."
DeleteI've never understood how people can think this. The Bible does not read like a detailed instruction manual at all. Christ in the New Testament says things like "If I really have to boil things down to one thing I would say...." He doesn't go into a detailed explanation of what to do in particular circumstance.
You can certainly derive a theology from the Bible; you can certainly find inspiration and wise words. But it's not a detailed instruction manual. If, for instance, you look up marriage in the New Testament, you get a number of references and a few brief statements, but that's it. It is not enough to merit the title of "detailed blueprint".
The point I was trying to make to you is that we have to avoid the Islamic approach. My understanding is that for a Muslim something is right because Allah wills it. It is not right because of its inherent goodness: if Allah says kill the infidel, then killing the infidel becomes good, if Allah says don't kill the infidel, then killing the infidel becomes bad. There is nothing in the nature of reality itself to make these things either good or bad. This has not generally been the Christian approach. God does not make a bad thing good by willing it to be so. And so there is a point for men to make sense of their experience of reality, i.e. to look to reality to see what is written in it in terms of good and evil.
The Bible does have a blue print for marriage although it is not written in the style of a self help manual with bullet points hence not obvious to the casual reader. You cannot read the bible in terms of verses on subject matter. It needs to be read in context. Nevertheless it is there and needs to be followed as the failure to follow it results in dysfunctional family life and social collapse.
DeleteThe Bible requires interpretation and this is provided by the Church.
The first lesson comes in the Gospel where Jesus' crucifixion results in his abandonment by all his fellow Jews except his mother, Mary. The lesson to the reader is that human emotion and loyalties are fickle and unreliable. At the last supper the apostles promised devotion in the first communion, several hours later they had abandoned Jesus. One's only reliable companion in life is God. On earth the only source of reliable support is from blood relatives.
Relationships with non blood relatives are based upon interests and emotions which change over time. The sacraments alone are not enough to hold together unrelated people for a higher purpose under the weight of stress, disappointment or attack.
The second lesson rests in the genealogy of Jesus himself, his full ancestry detailed at considerable length in the Gospels. His parents, Mary and Joseph, both of the same ancestry. Jesus is the model for all humans and all humans should have a clear and identifiable line of descent with parents of common ancestry. This is the basis of physical and psychological strength. Strong genetic complementarity minimises disease. (Hybrid genomic structures lead to increased rates of aggressive malignancy). A Strong sense of identity is essential for psychological stability.
The lesson here is, as the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches teach, the righteous man marries within his own tribe. In Europe and Asia (an in parts of Europe this is still followed), this means within the extended family, barring first cousins, and between related families.
The third lesson is one repeated throughout old and new testaments for fathers to find wives for their sons and give their daughters in marriage. Throughout the Bible women are given by their fathers to other families or taken from other families for their own sons. Marriage is therefore initiated by patriarchs of families to secure bloodlines. Young men and women never initiate or close these deals. Their consent is required and their wishes considered but they are not the ultimate decision makers.
DeleteThe reason for this is logical. The human frontal lobe is immature until age 25. The young are impulsive, poor decision makers, subject to strong emotion and irrational behaviours and their immaturity and lack of worldly experience means that they do not have the knowledge or understanding of the qualities required to build stable families and raise children. They are also easily duped and lack the financial means to investigate the strangers they meet. The family is the basic structure of society and leaving its formation to the young, impressionable and immature means that society collapses.
The commandment "Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you." has meaning. To honour one's parents is to keep their traditions and culture and follow their will with obedience.
The latter part of the commandment has a striking resonance today. Traditionally families are attached to land with a strong connection between family name and land ownership in particular areas of a country. Land is passed from one generation to the next through families all related to each other by blood and marriage. When this link is broken, tradition is lost, land is lost, sold to outsiders and the original owners of the land become the tenants and serfs of others.
Land, blood lines, families and marriage are all gifts from God which serve the purpose of God. The modern western marriage with its foundation not in God or Truth but on emotional and fleeting loyalties and frequent disobedience to parents is revolutionary. But this revolution has lead to the dispossession of the Western peoples as they lose control of land and assets, once theirs, to foreigners who increasingly control their destiny and are creating their progressive impoverishment.
Anonymous (the one arguing with Mark),
DeleteYou claim men are the ones more given to emotional instability. You also say men are charged with leading women, who are (you claim) more emotionally stable.
You don't think that'd be an odd order for God to have set up? Why would the emotionally unstable be tasked with being the leaders of the more emotionally stable?
This somewhat gets to the point Mark's trying to make, namely, we should seek out the intelligibility of the order God established. He established creation reasonably, which means we can discover the reasons behind His commands and His order. Indeed, doing so is a way of getting to know Him. Yet this runs contrary to your assertion, when you stated, "The Christian does not have to explain why men are responsible for maintaining the divine social order, the Bible does it and there is no need to add anything to it."
We shouldn't just stop inquiry at the command and its "blueprint." We need to ask, "Why?" And you haven't offered any such explanation, while criticizing Mark's attempt. Moreover, your own claims arguably suggest God's design is, at the very least, counter-intuitive.
Ryan, that's well put, thank you.
DeleteRyan your reasoning is intellectually incoherent and simplistic. The Church has elucidated the order which God established. It is the place of man to follow it. It does not require lay people who have no formal theological training to seek to its "intelligibility" . You will get to know God by following his order and will, not by seeking to "understand" it. The point of God's plans is that they are not always apparent to limited human intelligence, they may become apparent in retrospect and they do not generally comply with human wishes.
DeleteGod's plan has a purpose which is evident in my comment. It's the preservation and perpetuation of ethnic groups. You should understand at least that failure to adhere to that plan leads to ethnic demise, a fate which many ethnic groups throughout history have brought upon themselves.
Men are more prone to emotional instability in youth, a trait which matures with age. The leaders of society are old men with wisdom. Young men are not leaders, they are lead by older men. In traditional societies young men are under the authority of their elders until around age 30.
The instability of young men makes them unfit to lead anyone, even themselves hence the need for military service and other forms of discipline and support.
Anon, here is a problem with the coherence of your own position. You assert two points:
Delete1. God's plan is to preserve ethnic groups.
2. We should follow the teachings of the church.
The problem is that the modern church teaches that we should not preserve ethnic groups. Therefore, we can only accept either 1 or 2, not both.
My impression is that the leadership of the church here in Melbourne wishes to become the religious arm of the liberal state. I would not advise unthinking obedience for lay people in the current situation.
"The problem is that the modern church teaches that we should not preserve ethnic groups"
DeleteWhat is the evidence of this? Can you quote sources on the Church teachings?
If the Church in Australia promotes genocide and ethnic displacement then it is acting erroneously and independently of the Vatican. The Church teaching is that each ethnic group has a right to its own identity, pride in that identity and a right to self preservation. The Church has never taught destruction of ethnic groups.
There is no incoherence in my position. The Church teaches and accepts both points.
There is no chance of the church in Melbourne being the liberal wing of the state. That is the role of the Anglican Church which was created for that purpose.
Either the Church in Australia has separated from the Vatican or you are misrepresenting its teaching.
If the ‘State’ can arrogate such powers over marriage, then what would logically prevent it from say, for the sake of argument, asserting that “priavate” education in any form, or the possession of private property (houses over a certain value) are “anti-social”, and should therefore be subject to some sort of “control” for the wider good of “society” or that cats should get the vote or that Universities should be run by mental patients or indeed that socks should only be red? This is no mere theory.
ReplyDeleteThe slippery slope argument is always the most persuasive in resisting change and in the case of gay marriage - theres almost nothing that doesnt apply.
In most EU member countries, home schooling is outlawed, although thankfully not yet in the UK. Think of how that impacts upon Christians where the ban is enforced, forcing them to seek educational ‘asylum’ for their children in freer countries – USA and UK. This has been achieved by legalising gay marriage!
Indeed, the motive behind SSM is ideological and political In Europe, so that in its manic drive to impose uniformity at every level, “gay marriage” is to be enforced so that a same-sex couple “marrying” in one member state, will be legally recognisable in any other EU member state, together with all the all the state benefits, and status under EU law, whether or not the national policy of a member state opposes it or not. This is more than an extension of statism – it it totalitarian.
Its likely that in the future - as in Finland - gay marriage wont just be legalised but enforced for a certain proportion of the population - so that citizens have to marry same sex just to keep the statistsics up! Talk about the slippery slope! Next men will be forced to live their lives as draught horses, with paying customers riding them bare back around cities, and using them for breeding at night! It will be enforced under exactly the same moral imperatives that insists that gays be entitled to anything they like in a society (ie marry).
The USA and UK are not freer countries than Europe. Both are far more advanced down the road to totalitarianism than most of Europe. However the Governments of all are aiming to dismantle Christian civilisation and impose totalitarian control.
DeleteGay marriage is a side issue with the percentages still very small. The main agenda is the destruction of the social order and the weakening of the individual into an impoverished dehumanised animal who is easily controlled.
Side issue or not, I think you may find that not all homosexuality in nature is "wrong" and much of it involves Christians. For example, if a prominent monarchist were to for example "marry" his life long loving partner, and keep a gaggle of young lads who are experimenting with their sexuality - would you throw a stone? I think not. But if two women did it, even paid by the state for fertility, debauching every societal norm...would their local church accept them as members?
DeleteIf polygamists DID involve for example members of their distant family in the marriage bed - all above board? Well, probably if they followed the Old Testament! Social order and the role of the individual would take a second position.
Religion binds us up to our Lord and love itself - and if the law recognises Christian and Muslim marrying into a joint religion where common goals are shared in loving matrimony - we would be a lot better off!
I know for example a Priest who has wed a young chap and theres no ructions in the congregation - and thats on the North Shore of Sydney! It takes all kinds.
This is a very interesting series of posts. Perhaps I can add some thoughts more suited to the twentieth century. A great advantage of the internet is seeing how bias selection can really affect everyone. It also seems with the internet men have followed women in letting tabloid media bias how they view relationships. Now it is mostly men who use examples like degenerate Hollywood celebrities like Charlie Sheen or Madonna as what relationships are. It seems since there is no community anymore, we are unable to have real examples of both successful and failed marriages.
ReplyDeleteIn actual Australian society at least, the want of say designer clothes and brands is low when considering the entire population. If one observed your own community at your local shopping centre you would observe that 'fancy types' are minority among everyday Australians. In fact the high end brand stores in Australia cities are catered to new Asians. My point being that average women (and men) are not constantly looking to trade up in life just for material goods.
A big issue, maybe the biggest, is that women in their child rearing years are just not cut out for the workplace. They are unable to cope with being a wife, mother and (usually) a drone in some service position. Most women who leave marriages know they can't be both a good wife and work a unrewarding job while they have young children. That is why to us men it may seem as though women become unhappy out of nowhere and want to leave a marriage. It can also be male bias to be shocked that a woman could leave a marriage without any prospects for another man. These women are resigned to being alone as they know they can't cope being a wife with modern stresses. It seems women are unable to deal with the workplace in these key years. Younger women and women whose children are older are better to deal with in the workplace. Modern women know that it is now unacceptable to any man to not work while having small children. Very few men will accept any less. Unfortunately, under these modern circumstances if feels pointless looking for any feminine virtue.
Interesting anonymous, thank you. At one level, as a traditionalist, I am sympathetic to your point of view. But all of this is complex - there are advantages and disadvantages to each kind of arrangement. And I'd like to point out here one possible danger of a traditional arrangement. When a woman has a husband who works so that she can stay at home it becomes possible that she then becomes discontented for several reasons. First, once the children are a bit older and at school she has more time on her hands, and more energy, than her husband. So the husband wants to come home and have the opportunity to recuperate in preparation for another day's work. The wife, on the other hand, feels bored and has much time to ruminate and fantasise. She might spend part of the day reading romantic fiction. She wants the husband to entertain her on his return from work; she wants to feel alive in the relationship and so on. If she has not engaged in the paid workforce for a period of time, she may no longer remember how taxing it can be; the humiliations it sometimes requires; nor the need to quietly unwind at the end of a working day or week. A wife at home might, therefore, not appreciate her husband's sacrifices as much as a woman who herself must shoulder some of the burden - it is as if husband and wife are put on different life tracks opening up the danger of lifestyle incompatibilities.
DeleteFor these reasons, it does not surprise me that women are statistically happiest when they are working part-time. They are kept grounded by the work routine and by work demands; they have reason to appreciate their husbands taking on most of the paid work burden; but they still have time for children and home. Furthermore, this option is less risky for men in the current conditions of easy divorce; a man won't be financially plundered to the same degree if his wife continues to have a connection to the paid workforce.
[cont.]
Another problem. Women can become unsettled if they feel that the family is not making financial progress. It is part a feeling of insecurity (even if unjustified) and partly a sense that they have proven their attractiveness/worth if they have the nice house, expensive holidays etc. But the reality with the high housing prices in Australia is that a family living off a single male income is at best likely to tread water and not make financial progress. Therefore, a wife whose husband is the sole provider might become discontented on this basis - she might not really accept the trade-off, that her staying at home necessarily means that the family, though financially viable, might not be making obvious financial progress. There exist women who rather than accepting the trade-off still become resentful toward their hard-working husbands, demanding that the husband work several jobs and so on, even as they live a relatively easy life at home.
DeleteAnon, my ideal society would have most women at home raising children whilst supported by their husbands. But I don't know if I would recommend this in today's conditions to young men - not unless the young man had the very rare job in which you could earn a great deal of money with short working hours and little work stress.
If a society were to go back to traditional arrangements, then the cultural supports for this would also have to be put in place. There would need to be, for instance, an effort to control housing prices so that a family could make progress on the husband's wage. There would need to be a better attempt to control women's expectations of relationships, to make sure that they were grounded. There would need to be different family laws, ones which did not make husbands the "fall guy" in the event of divorce. There would need to be opportunities for women to socialise with other adult women rather than spending the day at home alone with children. There would need to be a better awareness of the "culture" of family life, of the family as a unique world and source of value, in which individuals find purpose, identity and security - rather than the modern girl, "sex in the city" type of romantic fantasy mentality. And so on.
I don't see much evidence that traditional arrangements work outside of traditional societies/cultures. In the modern world, for instance, they work in orthodox religious communities. But transferred into the secular liberal world, run along secular liberal individualistic values?
It is not hard to comment using initials or a screen name. It is very hard to have a conversation with multiple people named "Anonymous" and it is not clear how many of them there are. Perhaps if they understand how anti-social their online behavior is, they will change?
ReplyDelete