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.
Per post 172.
Please don’t take my clumsy wording to mean that I consider myself a gay activist, or a gay anything, FTM.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
*snert*
This has all been very informative.
I don't believe it's that simple. Rome had gone through periods of civil war much more severe than those of Theodosius and recovered quite nicely. They had one year when 30 men were claiming to be Emperor and everybody was fighting everybody else. Yet the Empire bounced back.
Cultural and economic factors were no doubt important. Perhaps it boils down to the fact that the relatively poor West just didn't have the resources to bounce back one more time, while the relatively wealthy East did.
The Lost Toy People also looks inviting!
;-o)
No, no, no.
Perhaps I didn't communicate my perspective very well, so permit me to try again.
Having children is the only way to create "society." That's exactly what baby-having is all about: extending human fellowship --- society --- into the future. That includes "developing new people" who have a bond with you which works out in terms of intergenerational interdependence. You care for your parents and your children. Your children care for you, and for their children.
That is how human cultures have always survived, from the days of the proto-hominid Lucy and --- well, Mr. Australopithecus --- or Adam and Eve, whichever you prefer. Over the milennia, it has proven indispensible to human survival, and is, for that reason alone, perfectly respectable.
As for "genetic immortality": seeing your spouse's family line and your own, mirrored in your child, is one of the innocent pleasures of life. It provides just the right mix of comic-opera zaniness and familial empathy.
My son Ben has long thigh bones, just like Great-grandpa Ben McNabb. He has full-ish, "bee-stung" lips like my husband. All contributing to positive kidding and good fun. Makes a kid feel like he belongs, makes the parents feel he belongs to them. That is a major contributor to human contentment.
"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 consider Skinner a depraved individual.
"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."
You have mis-stated the principle entirely. It's connection and inter-dependence. Which is what the life of love consists of, both here and hereafter forever.
We made that decision in the early 60s.
We could see the cesspool this nation was headed for only expected the current situation to develop sooner.
The deterioration hasn’t stopped, just retarded by conservatives fighting it.
I don’t do boiled peanuts. Took me years to tolerate grits with eggs. (Recovering Yankee.)
Thanks! I’ll add them to my amazon.com wish list!
Grits are the staff of life! Excellent for starving teenage boys. (Mine is currently making a double batch of lasagne, which comes out to about five servings for him :-). I’d better go make sure he puts the eggplant in.
My nephew by marriage from the Palmetto State swears by them. I usually just grab a Guinness and watch him eat the things...
Same as the government school brainwashing of the past 30 years.
Very interesting topic.
I guess it’s okay, as long as he chews with his mouth closed.
The society thing doesn’t apply to what I’m talking about. There’s nothing wrong with building society... well assuming it’s a good society, and yes you need to breed to do that. What I’m talking about is this:
“You are going to be mighty lonely when you are in your seventies and all your friends are dead. I hope the memories of your last vacation or useless toy you bought will sustain you then. When you pass, I hope you realize that within a few weeks, people will forget that you ever existed, and you will have no impact on the world whatsoever.”
This is a fine collection of shallow ego driven and subsequently BAD reasons to have kids. This is making people that will wind up having to deal with all the bad things in life (and the good too, but we’re talking costs here) so the sole purpose of keeping the “parent” company in their old age and remembering them when they’re dead. And it’s funny because it always seems to be the people that accuse the childless of being shallow that throw around these shallow reasons to have kids. (And note I’m not talking about you, I haven’t seen you throw any of this around, but you stepped up to defend the position so I go deeper in explaining my problem with it to you).
I think any sane person thinks Skinner was depraved. I sometimes wonder what lead to the seriously messed up behavior of the inventor of behavioral psychology.
I didn’t misstate a principle, it’s arguable the principle I’m attacking is a misstatement of good principles for having kids, but that’s not on me. I don’t think creating people to keep you company when you’re old and remember you after you die is any kind of love, it’s a pretty sad reason to make a kid.
I hope you’re aware that this has been the attitude of pessimists just about as far back as we have records. Doesn’t mean that you’re wrong, of course, just that historically those who think things are getting worse have at best a mixed record.
Certainly from an economic standpoint things are better for more people than ever before in history.
In 1800, England was one of, if not the wealthiest country on Earth. Its average standard of living was about the same as that of Ghana today. Although comparing such things over time is quite difficult.
Hundreds of millions of people have climbed out of absolute poverty in the last decade. This is a good thing, although it has negative side effects such as rising oil and food prices.
Well, OK. I wouldn’t want to chain my kids to me, either physically or economically or by some sort of emotional manipulation, so they had to hover nearby while my husband and I progress toward the final ischemic incident. But I don’t think parents can be scorned because they hope for surviving kindred to love and be loved by.
This still doesn’t explain why the people of the Western Empire didn’t rouse themselves to fight back. The Republic suffered far worse military defeats from the Gauls, Germans and Carthaginians, amounting to around 50% of available military manpower in a few years in some cases.
They reorganized, fought back and won.
The Romans of the Western Empire, although they doubtless outnumbered the invading Germans by 10s or even 100s to one, don’t appear to have cared enough about their Empire to voluntarily fight for it.
Assume the entire US military disappeared tomorrow. Does anyone seriously think an invasion by say a united Muslim world could win? Americans will fight for their country. The Romans of the Western Empire wouldn’t (unless forced to by the government).
To me that spells serious societal problems.
“Do all y’all like boiled peanuts?”
Although I live in the Deep South (I live in Maryland, LOL), I’m not actually southern. I’m a native New Yorker, and thus, don’t approve of things like boiled peanuts.
;-)
sitetest
Bill threw me out of the kitchen and said rude things about the eggplant. Maybe I should stop doing his laundry ... although that would probably be worse for me than for him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.