Posted on 02/25/2008 1:13:10 PM PST by Caleb1411
Civilization depends on the health of the traditional family.
That sentiment has become a truism among social conservatives, who typically can't explain what they mean by it. Which is why it sounds like right-wing boilerplate to many contemporary ears.
The late Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman believed it was true, but he also knew why. In 1947, he wrote a massive book to explain why latter-day Western civilization was now living through the same family crisis that presaged the fall of classical Greece and Rome. His classic "Family and Civilization," which has just been republished in an edited version by ISI Press, is a chillingly prophetic volume that deserves a wide new audience.
In all civilizations, Zimmerman theorized, there are three basic family types. The "trustee" family is tribal and clannish, and predominates in agrarian societies. The "domestic" family model is a middle type centering on the nuclear family ensconced in fairly strong extended-family bonds; it's found in civilizations undergoing rapid development. The final model is the "atomistic" family, which features weak bonds between and within nuclear families; it's the type that emerges as normative in advanced civilizations.
When the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, the strong trustee families of the barbarian tribes replaced the weak, atomistic Roman families as the foundation of society.
Churchmen believed a social structure that broke up the ever-feuding clans and gave the individual more freedom would be better for society's stability and spent centuries reforming the European family toward domesticity. The natalist worldview advocated by churchmen knit tightly religious faith, family loyalty and child bearing. From the 10th century on, the domestic family model ruled Europe through its greatest cultural efflorescence. But then came the Reformation and the Enlightenment, shifting culture away from tradition and toward the individual. Thus, since the 18th century, the atomistic family has been the Western cultural norm.
Here's the problem: Societies ruled by the atomistic family model, with its loosening of constraints on its individual members, quit having enough children to carry on. They become focused on the pleasures of the present. Eventually, these societies expire from lack of manpower, which itself is a manifestation of a lack of the will to live.
It happened to ancient Greece. It happened to ancient Rome. And it's happening to the modern West. The sociological parallels are startling.
Why should expanding individual freedoms lead to demographic disaster? Because cultures that don't organize their collective lives around the family create policies and structures that privilege autonomous individuals at the family's expense.
In years to come, the state will attempt economic incentives, or something more draconian, to spur childbirth. Europe, which is falling off a demographic cliff, is already offering economic incentives, with scant success. Materialist measures only seem to help at the margins.
Why? Zimmerman was not religious, but he contended the core problem was a loss of faith. Religions that lack a strong pro-fertility component don't survive over time, he observed; nor do cultures that don't have a powerfully natalist religion.
Why should we read Zimmerman today? For one thing, the future isn't fated. We might learn from history and make choices that avert the calamities that overtook Greece and Rome.
Given current trends, that appears unlikely. Therefore, the wise will recognize that the subcultures that survive the demographic collapse will be those that sacrificially embrace natalist values over materialist ones — which is to say, those whose religious convictions inspire them to have relatively large families, despite the social and financial cost.
That doesn't mean most American Christians, who have accepted modernity's anti-natalism. No, that means traditionalist Catholics, "full-quiver" Protestants, ultra-Orthodox Jews, pious Muslims and other believers who reject modernity's premises.
Like it or not, the future belongs to the fecund faithful.
I like to try out new words in Scrabble. Sometimes it works, especially if it’s getting late and everyone’s had some wine :-).
Ok,
Not everyone needs as much socialization as others. For some folks, being alone is like the best part of their day. For some, seeing people at their workplace is all they need plus an occaisional chat with a friend and a once a month visit to a relative for sufficient family time.
I had a Granny who lived with us and refused to EVER be alone in the house, ever. I thought she was crazy (well, she was actually). She had nine kids and I do believe she was never ever alone more than for 1 hour at a time in her entire life. For many reasons, I formed in the opposite direction, absolutely hating crowds and only feeling safe and happy when I was alone.
Not everyone can be a parent, not everyone can even live under the same roof or even sleep in the same bed with another person.
Are we in the minority? Of course. Do we have happy lives? We’re trying, but we’ve learned the hard way, and to the sadness of others and ourselves that we aren’t meant out for the ‘married, 2 kids and a dog’ life. Happiness and even survival for us is often very very different from what others feel is ingrained in human DNA.
Our purpose I guess is elsewhere.
Frank Sheed, General Factotum and Busy Body...
Point to Mrs. Tax.
Hmmm ... it sounds like the Founding Fathers would have said they were in agreeance.
Yoo having a nice day, Frank? It’s cold and raining here, and the little boys keep opening the windows because (as far as I can tell) they are cats. Pat, in fact, just slithered down the stairs wailing that he’s not a boy. Or a girl.
Somebody shoot me?
If you’re playing ME in Scrabble, you have as much chance of getting “yoonz” or “y’all” in as you have of getting “agreeance.”
Which is to say, none.
;-)
sitetest
They can keep company with Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.
I can only say that when a lot of these folks were starting their famlies, I was on active duty in the MARINE CORPS and proecting our rights. Now that I am older my Wife & I have started our family late in life and have 2 kids, one of which has Down Syndrome. And with that is all that we could afford to have and support. I have had a problem working more than one job [at low pay at the time] So we made a choice that is right for us. May our Daughter finish colledge and bless us with lots of grandchildren [after she graduated first]
I’d love to play you in Scrabble. We’ll use MY Scrabble game...the one in Gaelic.
;-o)
So your children are not, then? Children, that is? Have you watched “Cat Woman” on the “Tellie” recently Mrs. Tax?
It is good to hear you are getting rain. You are in the thralls of a drought if memory serves me correctly.
I am having a sterling day. I’m off to the store for a bit!
Frankie
The rain is very welcome. I have to go to the store, too, after I drop Young Bill at his Logic class.
Yup. Pretty good example of what goes around comes around.
It is quite interesting that Muslim conquest of Christian lands, in that first mad expansion, was pretty well limited to countries which had significant internal religious conflicts.
Syria and Egypt were Monophysite, as you correctly point out. North Africa was still in conflict over the Donatists, and Spain was involved in conflicts between Catholics and Arians.
The Arabs were repulsed when they ran into fully Orthodox populations in Anatolia and Armenia and fully Catholic ones in what is now France.
Good points. I especially enjoy the attempts to claim that the fall of Greece and Rome was a direct result of their toleration of homosexuality.
This requires ignoring the fact that the heyday of the glorification of homosexual relationships in both Greece and Rome occurred during the very pinnacle of success for both cultures. A turning away from glorification of homosexuality coincided in time with the decline of the cultures. In fact, from the time of Constantine on homosexuality was severely, often capitally, punished in the Roman Empire.
I’m not, unlike some gay activists, proposing that homosexuality caused these civilizations to be great, but I think the timeline shows that homosexuality certainly didn’t cause them to fall.
We didn't do it that way, though. The boys very occasionally sleep in the living room, but only on really cold nights when they want to be close to the wood stove!
I don't think those are bad reasons. Not at all. They probably factor into many people's decision to have children. Then one learns broader and more altruistic aspects as one goes along, inasmuch as parenting is many people's gateway to adulthood, in the noblest sense of the word.
Those are horrible reasons. It’s the ultimate in bad Dr Frankenstein type stuff. It’s bringing human beings into the world for your entertainment and sense of accomplishment, pure shallow ego. About the only reason I can think of that’s worse would be Skinner who had a kid basically to prove his psychological theories correct.
I doubt people with so much ego that they think new people need to exist to keep them entertained have any hope of ever learning altruism, nor will they ever enter a noble form of adulthood.
Plus your clever children can keep you supplied with fabulous snacks.
Or so my wise materfamilias tells me...
Good point.
Heh. Seriously, congratulations! All joy to you and your beloved.
Scratch one stereotype of rabbits.
;-)
John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)
British economist. repr. In Collected Works, vol. 2 (1971).
The Economic Consequences of Peace (1919).
Our philosophical nemesis, Keynes, was theorizing that rapid population growth caused the Communist Revolution in Russia in which the "power of ideas" = Western liberalism and the the "errors of autocracy" = Czarist rule. But I think his theory points more appropriately to today, in which "power of ideas" = Conservative ideology and the "errors of autocracy" = Elite, liberal socialist central planning and economic manipulation of his (Keynes') ilk. If Muslims are overcoming Europe with demographics, then we can restore America with demographics.
Infancy's the tender fountain,
Power may with beauty flow,
Mother's first to guide the streamlets,
From them souls unresting grow--
Grow on for the good or evil,
Sunshine streamed or evil hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
Woman, how divine your mission
Here upon our natal sod!
Keep, oh, keep the young heart open
Always to the breath of God!
All true trophies of the ages
Are from mother-love impearled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
Blessings on the hand of women!
Fathers, sons, and daughters cry,
And the sacred song is mingled
With the worship in the sky--
Mingles where no tempest darkens,
Rainbows evermore are hurled;
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.
- William Ross Wallace
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