Below is a video from a young woman living in Seattle in the U.S. (a city known for its liberal culture). It's her first go at a YouTube video and she does a terrific job. It's longish but it won't disappoint.
What is most significant about the video? I have a theory about this that I'd like to try to explain. If you were to look at the traditional family of the 1950s it would look good in comparison to the dysfunction we see around ourselves today. However, in one crucial respect it was still deeply flawed.
The baby boomer family was built around what is sometimes called the "feminine imperative" - which, to my understanding, means the female sexual strategy of wanting to obtain resources from men. The imperative itself is a natural one, as natural as men wanting sex in a relationship. However, if a culture is built solely around this imperative, then men are likely to become too domesticated - too focused on the task of serving their wives, to try to keep their wives happy through compliance with their wives' truncated view of men's purposes.
Men should really have a dual focus, both a domestic and a civilisational one. They should be protectors not only of their family, but also of the larger tradition they belong to. This means devoting some time and resources to non-family institutions that are designed to protect the tradition: fraternities, churches, cultural associations, political parties, service organisations and so on.
For some women, a husband investing not only in her but also these other institutions will be very confronting. It will run against her instincts and could be deeply resented. Nonetheless, it is actually in her interests, and those of her children, if the men of her society do take care of the larger tradition.
The men of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s often served their families well. But they felt little responsibility for their culture, country and tradition. One half of their masculine focus was missing. And we are paying for that today.
And this is one reason why I find the video significant. It is possible that the level of civilisational crisis is strong enough that some women now recognise that men should be paying attention to it as part of their masculine role in society. The young woman in the video does not simply issue a "man up" message: she is aware that the frame of society is a feminist one that does not encourage men to act in a wholly masculine way.
If we ever do manage to restore a community of our own, I don't think that we should seek to return to the family life of the 1950s. It was a model in which the feminine imperative was too dominant. The older men of the community have to make sure, for the sake of the whole community, that men are able to operate within a masculine frame. If a man's whole life is dedicated to his wife, then he is doing things wrong. It can be difficult for individual men, when women have the threat point of divorce, to do the right thing, which is why it is so important that it becomes a community norm.
In the 19th century the definition of marriage changed in the Anglosaxon world under the influence of atheisim and liberalism from one of an intergenerational social institution to a personal relationship. It is this transformation and reduction of the primary social institution of society to a mere personal relationship which is the greatest causative factor in the collapse of Western civilisation.
ReplyDeleteThe former institutional framework was devoted to the preservation of culture, values, tradition, religion and wealth and the transmission of these to the next generation. The family cared for the young, the elderly and the sick. Personal emotional and sexual gratification, although they existed within marriage, were not the primary purpose of marriage.
The reduction of marriage to a personal relationship was intended to throw off the constraints of formal institutional obligations. Marriage is thus about the fulfilment of the personal agendas of the husband and wife, usually money and sexual gratification. Reduced to an affectionate sexual relationship, the care of the young and the sick and the elderly are abandoned and the well being of society destroyed. Homosexual marriage and polygamy are the logical progressions.
It is not possible to restore civilisation unless marriage is restored to its formal institutional framework.
In the personal relationship model of marriage, women select their husbands. A woman who chooses her husband is therefore dominant in the marriage and the weak passive man who was the object of her selection process is accordingly submissive to her agenda. Men are therefore weakened by their wives' dominance in the relationship and destined to follow their wives agenda.
It is clear that no restoration of civilisation is possible without the acknowledgement of ancient wisdom in which social institutions are overseen by the elders and wise of society and the role of the young is to follow their instructions. The concept of a woman choosing a husband or a young man dictating to his father his choice of bride is an inversion and revolt against the natural order in which the elder and experienced members of society hold authority and the young respect this and acknowledge their own inexperience, ignorance and lack of wisdom.
I agree with you regarding the reduction of marriage to what you aptly describe as "an affectionate sexual relationship". In marriage we are supposed to occupy the "offices" of husband and wife, father and mother, each with particular responsibilities attached. Furthermore, the family is not meant to be conceived just as that particular husband and wife, but as you put it, an intergenerational institution that we belong to, that we take a pride in, and have a responsibility toward. Liberal individualism has corroded all this.
DeleteI'm less certain about arranged marriage. It used to be the case that the pool of potential suitors was fixed in various ways (e.g. suitors could not simply cold approach a young woman but had pass an initial hurdle of obtaining an invitation to the family home which gave some initial vetting power to the family) and that the suitor had to first obtain permission from the woman's father. So there was an element of choice with an element of arranging. Would it not be a step forward to at least return to some sort of similar system?
The other problem is that from the 1850s onwards the rules of family changed in ways that gave women a strong "threat point" within marriage (i.e. women could not only begin to threaten divorce but were given the upper hand if a divorce did in fact take place).
Anyway, there are some important things to consider in your comment - thank you.
The offices of husband and wife as you describe apply only in cultures where marriage is a social institution. Institutions define roles and responsibilities. CEO, chairman, father, grandfather, patriarch are specific titles of hierarchical institutions with varying degrees of respect and authority, largely dependent upon age and experience.
DeletePartnerships are non hierarchical , non institutional and as a consequence do not have defined roles. Therefore if you accept partnership marriage aptly defined as affectionate sexual relationships, you have no logical opposition to homosexual marriage, polygamy and divorce. Partnerships exist to fulfil specific goals, generally short term. If these goals are emotional, then the fickle nature of human emotion ensures that these relationships will be short term. It is therefore evident that the partnership model of marriage is in sufficiently stable for sound child rearing and acculturation and its logical progression is civilisational collapse and ethnic extinction.
The traditionalist must therefore adopt the old institutional model of marriage in which there are defined roles, responsibilities and hierarchies. The hierarchical nature of traditional institutions means that authority rests with the patriarchs who decides who can enter into the family. A young man cannot therefore chose his bride. The approval of the patriarch is required and disobedience means exclusion from the family.
Before a man could approach a woman's family, his own father had to first approve the prospective bride and her family and his own father first made the introduction to the girls father. A young man could not simply cold call a girls father. The model was that a mans father or grandfather decided it was time for him to marry and then selected a bride or a few potential matches to whom he could be introduced should the prospective brides father be interested in the offer. The deal is ultimately closed by the two fathers i.e. Patriarch to patriarch who then have leverage over the young couple to ensure the marriage is a success regardless of future problems.
In the 1850s women could not threaten divorce at all. Divorce was expensive and the sole prerogative of the wealthy. The vast majority of the population could not instruct lawyers or pay the court fees regardless of their wish to divorce. Legal aid did not exist. In addition, there had to be an established reason for divorce which entailed further expense to collect reliable evidence of adultery which was the standard reason for the institution of legal procedure.
DeleteA divorced woman received little financial reward as well as a reduced social standing hence women did not initiate divorce unless extremely independently wealthy. It was the 1960s with the institution of legal aid which allowed the ordinary non wealthy person to seek legal advise, commence procedings and progress cases to trial and eventual divorce. Reduction of the legal standards of evidence of fault in marriage meant that the process was simplified with shorter or no trials. Financial settlements favourable to women eventually have made divorce a legal way for opportunistic women to seize financial assets so for women serial marriage and divorce can be a plausible route from poverty to affluence.
This of course is a direct consequence of the partnership model of marriage which makes men victims of their own natural naïveté about women. The traditional arranged marriage precludes this. The due diligence and selection of bride by wiser older men protects young men from foolish choices and the leverage of family connections ensures that it is virtually impossible to pull a quick divorce and asset seizure without serious consequences.
Human nature does not change and needs constraints. Freedom to select marriage partners and the sexual partnership model of marriage inevitably lead to dysfunctional marriage and divorce.
In the 19th century the definition of marriage changed in the Anglosaxon world under the influence of atheisim and liberalism from one of an intergenerational social institution to a personal relationship.
DeleteAn excellent point. Modern marriage is just a formalised version of shacking up together, except it's worse since the woman holds the whip hand.
The first thing we need to do is to eliminate no-fault divorce, and we need to make divorce much more difficult. We also need to remove all the legal and financial benefits of marriage from de facto relationships.
Politically impossible at the moment but the first step is to get such ideas on the political agenda.
"Modern marriage is just a formalised version of shacking up together, except it's worse since the woman holds the whip hand"
DeleteExcellent point!
That is a very sound observation. It is just a legalised version of shacking up without a formally drafted contract but with excessive rights underpinned by Divorce Laws combined with the ability to claim these rights without any assessment or admission of liability for marital breakdown.
No fault divorce should be ended and legal aid for divorce abolished. To some extent the latter is happening under general welfare cuts and trimming of the welfare state. However the court costs should also be substantially increased as a deterrent to the instigation of legal proceedings and their continuation to costly trials and prolonged legal argument. Defacto relationships should have no legal status.
However the above legal remedies do not resolve the root of the problem which is dysfunctional marriage caused by poor partner selection. In many divorce actions, lawyers will make the comment"I don't know how this pair ever got together". And that is the crux of the matter. As the cold logic of the legal procedure relentlessly moves forward, it puts the parties to divorce action under pressure and remorselessly uncovers and displays the fundamental incompatibilities of background, values, traditions, beliefs, behavioural patterns, education, culture and physiology which have made the formation of a sound functional marriage impossible. Even without the legal action of divorce, the majority of these couplings would fail and collapse into bitterness, resentment and informalised separations with dysfunctional disturbed offspring. Hence the abolition of divorce or at least its severe restriction to those with considerable financial means to offset its negative effects, would not stop family breakdown and civilisational collapse.
In many divorce actions, lawyers will make the comment "I don't know how this pair ever got together".
DeleteThat's one of the worst things about easy divorce - there is no incentive to choose one's spouse carefully. So people choose on the basis of lust, rather than choosing someone with whom they could actually imagine sharing an entire lifetime.
And now that de facto relationships are pretty much legally indistinguishable from marriages it's even worse - people drift from one disastrous lust-fueled "relationship" to another. "Long-term relationships" might be six months, interspersed with even briefer liaisons. It's all about instant sexual gratification, probably the worst basis on which to base interpersonal relationships. After a few years of such a lifestyle people are psychologically unfit for marriage - they have no capacity for resolving problems and no capacity for thinking unselfishly. By age 30 they're ruined for marriage.
Quite apart from the fact that by that age they're probably riddled with STDs and the woman's fertility has quite likely been compromised as a result.
Since morality no longer seems to exist the best course of action would be to impose massive legal and financial disincentives on de facto relationships.
Most people don't think about divorce or relationship breakdowns when they select their spouse. They are infatuated and lose a sense of objectivity, if the latter is genuinely possible to those in a relationship and they believe that even the most serious problems will be miraculously resolved over time.
DeleteTherefore the barriers to entry into relationships should be made harder so that people have to be more cautious before entering into relationships. In the past, people required formal consent of parents to marry and defacto relationships were stigmatised. You cannot set up a business or any other institution without formal legal process and due diligence so why should people be able to set up a family without the same procedures. It is more difficult to close a business or a bank than to dissolve a family by divorce but the consequences of the latter are far more serious to society.
If you were to look at the traditional family of the 1950s it would look good in comparison to the dysfunction we see around ourselves today. However, in one crucial respect it was still deeply flawed.
ReplyDeleteThe 1950s is a deeply misunderstood decade. It was not a decade of stability, it was a decade of rapid (and disastrous) social change. Just about everything that is wrong with our civilisation had already firmly taken root by the 50s. The rise of pseudoscientific academic disciplines like sociology, the cult of youth, celebrity worship, consumerism, the racial grievance culture, television, the wallowing in guilt over the supposed crimes of the West, the rapid feminisation of our society, the liberalisation and subsequent decay of Christianity - these were all part and parcel of the 50s.
Even before the 1950s, these social changes you mention were in action. The First World War was the point at which the changes initiated by atheism which morphed into liberalism and socialism in the 19th century exploded. The First World War is thus the watershed of western civilisation and the most significant event in its collapse. The old order which sustained the civilisation was at this point destroyed.
ReplyDeleteThe First World War is thus the watershed of western civilisation and the most significant event in its collapse.
DeleteAgreed. The 1950s was the decade in which ordinary people started to embrace the pernicious social changes that had already been fully embraced by the elites in the 1920s.
Mind you the seeds of collapse had already been sown in the 19th century. If the 50s is a misunderstood decade then the 19th century is a misunderstood century. Christianity was in decline among the elites throughout the 19th century, liberalism was establishing itself as an alternative religion, socialism and democracy were on the rise. You have only to look at the art and literature of the fin de siècle to see that something was going terribly wrong - beauty and truth were going out of fashion to be replaced by sordidness, degeneracy and ugliness.
dfordoom, a nice summing up of the timeline - I agree with it.
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