But civilization is so much more comfortable, don't you think? Beer, grocery stores, police services, fire services, Wal-Mart, fast food, sleeping without watch standing, courts of law for disputes, styling boutiques.
Et cetera. 
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.
“It does save you from the leprosy of loneliness”
Yes, there is definitely that.
I think too, that people confuse satisfaction with self-indulgence.
It’s like when we were kids and ate too much candy until we got sick.
We had great fun up until that point, and then we suffered for it.
So...many adult think they’ll be happy if have the freedom to self-indulge, but then they wind up paying for it.
The notion that great “satisfaction” can be had by forgetting yourself and concentrating on the needs of others seems to be going by the wayside.
People call this “losing yourself” and they think it is a bad thing.
That's me ... managerial semi-leisure! Or at least I'll attain it as soon as Ubiquitous Anoreth gets her driver's license :-).
I suppose the date and the extent to which the Christians actually became dominant in the Empire remains controversial?
I think dicostu needs a penguin! It’s a wonder that aliens only ate “his/her” Buick!
F
My parents used to have Buicks. If aliens find them tasty, that’s an improvement over my opinion of them!
My longm observation has been that for the marriage to flourish, both marriage partners have to be committed to 'marriage' as an institution, covenant, sacrament, rather than just committed to each other. Commitment to 'each other" is wonderful, but on its own it is not nearly as stable as commitment to marriage per se.
That generally means they have religious beliefs, whether Jewish, Christian, Mormon or whatever, which highlight marriage as a covenant that involves God. In which case the partners understand that they have freely ruled out divorce as a possibility. And which means they both are highly motivated to make the marriage as harmonious and satisfactory to each other as possible, because it's your state of life til death intervenes, so it behooves you to live with a satisfied person.
Mind you, atheism/agnosticism does not automatically rule out lifelong marital fidelity, and religious beliefs don't absolutely immunize you from divorce. But it helps.
As for the kids: don't raise them with a sense of being pampered house guests but make sure they always, at every point, have work to do. And after they move out, at 18 or 20 or whenever, sell the house.
Ha!
As in "Comp'ny's comin', you'uns best red up the table."
Well, in the Really Rural South (say, 5 miles south of me :-), “y’all” is the second person singular, and “all y’all” is the second person plural.
Always sounded like YOONS to me but you are undoubtedly correct.
I am not scoffing. I am constantly being corrected for referring to meself as “meself.”
;-o)
Do all y’all like boiled peanuts? It is not a taste I have acquired, particularly, although a few pints of Guinness does make them palatable for meself.
F
I am worried that the traditional way will not be the only way to procreate in the future.
I am imagining that if China or other totalitarian societies face a bearth dearth in the future they will just mass-clone them, and that later than that, future totalitarian governments will build androids, robots, or what-have-you.
Absolutely in my mind. First, what is a Christian (not to be dense or rhetorical, but is it group defined or individually defined or a combination)? How is that measured? A hundred years after the fall of the empire in the west, Gregory of Tours writes about all the pagan temples / shrines in Gaul that were still in use. The German tribes except the Franks (they were catholic with a small c) belonged to a heretical sect of Christianity called Arianism. But were they really Arians or were they still pagans with a Christian veneer?
Here are some really good books on the subject: I am reading this one right now: The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire by Michele Renee Salzman
I read this one two years ago (really good)
Rodney Stark
Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome
But civilization is so much more comfortable, don't you think? Beer, grocery stores, police services, fire services, Wal-Mart, fast food, sleeping without watch standing, courts of law for disputes, styling boutiques.
Et cetera.
Thanks! If it was heavy metal, I’d have ordered it for my son!
I’ve never tried boiled peanuts (they have a bazillion points), but Der Prinz lived in South Carolina for ten years, and he says they’re horrible.
It’s a brilliant album, though the first song is a little not kid friendly (highly suggestive).
The time that Rome was being Christianized is when the west fell. This was Gibbons main point, one led to the other. People that throw out the decadent charge against Rome as one of the reasons she fell then have to explain why she grew so fast when she was more decadent in terms of Christian morality. The homosexuality card is overplayed in my opinion. The new work done on the fall of Rome is leading to other conclusions. Rome was just fine in terms of culture and population, she self-destructed thru civil war played out between pretenders to the throne and Theodosius. Theodosius won and Rome lost. The Germans took over the remains.
Then Bill probably wouldn’t understand it :-).
LOL!
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