Now this modern refusal to undo what has been done is not only an intellectual fault; it is a moral fault also. It is not merely our mental inability to understand the mistake we have made. It is also our spiritual refusal to admit that we have made a mistake.
G. K. Chesterton Eugenics and Other Evils
There's no such thing as "fur babies"
Before I go into that, I'm going to note that one of the things about Pope Francis is that he tends to be incredibly hard to pigeonhole, even though his fans and critics love to go around doing just that. And here we have just such an example. Only weeks away from making it pretty clear that the Latin Tridentine Mass needs to be a thing of the past, as far as he's concerned, and while he's the Bishop of Rome, he says something that's radically. . . traditional.
Here's what he said, in so far as I tell, as I can't find a full transcript of his remarks.
Today ... we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child.
Sometimes they have one, and that's it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.
This may make people laugh, but it is a reality.
[This] "is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity", he added.
Oh you know where this is going to go. . .
Right away I saw predictable "I'm not selfish, it's my deep abiding love of the environment. . . "
Yeah, whatever.
Apparently there were a fair number of comments of that type, as a subsequent article on this topic found that, nope, most childless couples are childless as they don't want children, not because of their deep abiding concern about the environment.
Indeed, tropes like that are just that, tropes. People tend to excuse or justify conduct that they engage in that they are uncomfortable excusing for self-centered or materialistic reasons for more ennobled ones, or even for ones that just aren't attributed to something greater, in some sense.
Not everyone, mind you, you will find plenty of people who don't have children and justify that on that basis alone. Indeed, in the 70s through the mid 90s, I think that was basically what the justification was, to the extent that people felt they needed one. More recently that seems to have changed, although there are plenty of people who will simply state they don't want children as they're focused on what the personally want, rather than some other goal. Others, however, have to attribute it, for some reason to a cause du jour. In the 80s it was the fear of nuclear war, I recall. Now it's the environment, although it was somewhat then as well. I suppose for a tiny minority of people, that's actually true, but only a minority.
Whatever it is, the reaction to the Pope's statement will cause and is causing a minor firestorm. Oh, but it'll get better.
The same Pope has already made some Catholic conservatives mad by his comments equating destroying the environment with sin. And there's a certain section of the Trad and Rad Trad Catholic community that's unwilling to credit Pope Francis with anything, even though he says some extremely traditional things, particularly in this area.
A comment like this one, if it had been made by Pope Benedict, would have sparked commentary on the Catholic internet and podcasts for at least a time. There's no way that Patrick Coffin or Dr. Taylor Marshall wouldn't have commented on it, and run with it in that event.
Will they now?
Well, they ought to.
Am I going to?
No, not really.
I could be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.
The Pope's point will be difficult for the childless to really grasp. I don't think I became fully adult until we had children, really. People who don't have children don't really know what its like to, I think. And I think that probably includes even those who grew up in large families.
At any rate, I have a bit of a different point, that being my ongoing one about the industrialization of female labor. In no small part, in my view, childless couples in general have come about as our modern industrialized society emphasizes that everyone's principal loyalty should be to their workplace or a career, without question. As put by Col. Saito in the epic The Bridge On The River Kwai, people are to be "happy in their work".
That means that they don't have time for children, they believe, and moreover the children are societal obstacles to the concept that the only thing that matters is career. It's the one place that ardent capitalist and ardent socialist come together. And, as its often noted, particularly by both working mothers and folks like Bernie Sanders, it's difficult to be both a mother and worker, with it being my guess that the more education that goes into a woman's career, the more this is the case. Society, and by that we mean every industrialized society, has no solutions to this, and there probably aren't any. About the only one that Sanders and his ilk can come up with is warehousing children sort of like chickens at the Tyson farms.
It's also a lie, of course. Careers, by and large, don't make people fulfilled or happy, for the most part, although there are certainly individual exceptions. Statistical data more than demonstrates that.
The Pope, by the way, is not against pets.
Messe ocus Pangur Bán,
cechtar nathar fria saindán;
bíth a menma-sam fri seilgg,
mu menma céin im saincheirdd
Caraim-se fos, ferr cach clú,
oc mu lebrán léir ingnu;
ní foirmtech frimm Pangur bán,
caraid cesin a maccdán.
Ó ru·biam — scél cen scís —
innar tegdais ar n-óendís,
táithiunn — díchríchide clius —
ní fris tarddam ar n-áthius.
Gnáth-húaraib ar gressaib gal
glenaid luch inna lín-sam;
os mé, du·fuit im lín chéin
dliged n-doraid cu n-dronchéill.
Fúachid-sem fri frega fál
a rosc anglése comlán;
fúachimm chéin fri fégi fis
mu rosc réil, cesu imdis,
Fáelid-sem cu n-déne dul
hi·n-glen luch inna gérchrub;
hi·tucu cheist n-doraid n-dil,
os mé chene am fáelid.
Cía beimmi amin nach ré,
ní·derban cách ar chéle.
Maith la cechtar nár a dán,
subaigthius a óenurán.
Hé fesin as choimsid dáu
in muid du·n-gní cach óenláu;
du thabairt doraid du glé
for mu mud céin am messe.I and Pangur Bán, each of us two at his special art:
his mind at hunting (mice), my own mind is in my special craft.
I love to rest—better than any fame—at my booklet with diligent science:
not envious of me is Pangur Bán: he himself loves his childish art.
When we are—tale without tedium—in our house, we two alone,
we have—unlimited (is) feat-sport—something to which to apply our acuteness.
It is customary at times by feat of valour, that a mouse sticks in his net,
and for me there falls into my net a difficult dictum with hard meaning.
His eye, this glancing full one, he points against the wall-fence:
I myself against the keenness of science point my clear eye, though it is very feeble.
He is joyous with speedy going where a mouse sticks in his sharp-claw:
I too am joyous, where I understand a difficult dear question.
Though we are thus always, neither hinders the other:
each of us two likes his art, amuses himself alone.
He himself is the master of the work which he does every day:
while I am at my own work, (which is) to bring difficulty to clearness.
I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
The Values candidates
While I’m at it, I'm developing a deep suspicion of conservative candidates and figures that express certain highly conservative social positions but don't quite seem to adhere to them in their own lives. This coming from somebody who is obviously highly socially conservative themselves.
This comes to mind in the context of "family values", "protecting the family" and the like. I see and read stuff like that from conservatives all the time. So if you are saying that you strongly value the family, and protecting the family, etc., why don't you have one?
Now, some people are no doubt deeply shocked by that question, but it's a legitimate one, and I'm not the first person to raise it. If a person might ask if I seriously expect people to answer the question, well I do.
Now, in complete fairness, all sorts of people don't have children for medical reasons. But more often than that, if a couple don't have them, they don't want them. That's what's up with that. And you really can't campaign on your deep love of the family if you are foreclosing that part of the family in your own lives, absent some really good reason. More often than not, the reason is money and career.
Recently I saw, for example, a statement that a person is deeply committed to family and loves spending time with their nieces. Well, everyone likes spending time, for the most part, with nieces and nephews. That's not even remotely similar to having children, however. Not at all.
I'll go one further on this and note this as I do.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
Luke, 16:10.
I note this as some of the conservative value candidates, if you look into their backgrounds, have question marks that should give pause for the reason noted above. If a person doesn't keep to their principals in small things, or basic things, why would they keep them on anything else?
One conservative candidate that I'm aware of, when you look up that person's background, was born of an ethnicity that's overwhelmingly Catholic and went to Catholic schools growing up. That person was undoubtedly a Catholic. That didn't preclude, however, the candidate from getting divorced and remarried to another person who was divorced.
Now, that's quite common in our society, but it's completely contrary to the Catholic faith without some explanation. Maybe there is one. I don't know, but it's a fair question, just as it would be if a Jewish candidate grew up in an Orthodox household but operates a delicatessen featuring ham. That may seem odd, but if you are willing to compromise on small things, you'll get around to the big ones, if the small ones also express a deep principle.
If you won't compromise on small things, or things that are represented as elemental to your declared world view, you are dependable in a crisis. On the other hand, if you participated in a faith, and were educated by it, and okay with its elements, and it formed part of your worldview . . right up until you had to do something difficult and chose the easier path. . . well, there's no real reason to believe that haven gotten there once, you won't do it again.
The candidate, I'd note, has been stone-cold silent on the insurrection. From that, you can tell the candidate knows it was an insurrection, but is unwilling to say diddly.
The Primordal Connection
Back to pets for a second, one added thing I think about them is that for a lot of people, they're the last sole remaining contact with nature they have.
There are lots of animal species that live in close contact with each other and depend on each other. We're one. We cooperated with wolves, and they became dogs as they helped us hunt. Cats took us in (not the other way around) as we're dirty, and we attract mice. We domesticated horses, camels and reindeer for transportation. And so on.
We miss them.
One more way that technology and modern industrialization has ruined things. Cats and dogs remind us of what we once were.
And could be, again.
Warped legacies
An awful lot of what the Pope is tapping into has to deal with the combined factors of moderns forgetting what, well, sex is for, and what its implications are, and that root morality and human nature remain unchanged. There are probably more generations between modern house cats and Pangur Bán than there are between your ancestors who were waking up each morning in the Piacenzian and you.
Which takes us to men, behaving badly, and everyone turning a blind eye.
And, of course, Sex and the City.
She is fiercely protective of Carrie Bradshaw and livid that she and everyone else at the show has been put into this position, It is not about the money, but rather her legacy. Carrie was all about helping women and now, under her watch, women are saying that they have been hurt.
Sarah Jessica Parker on the scandal involving James Noth.
M'eh.
A note from Wikipedia regarding the series:
When the series premiered, the character was praised by critics as a positive example of an independent woman in the vein of Mary Richards. However, retrospective analysis tends to place more emphasis on the character's repeated and often unrepentant infidelities, with many critics instead viewing her as narcissistic.
Carrie was about helping women? Well, excuse me if that was deluded.
Scary legacies
This news item came out the same day, I'd note, that Ghislane Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking. And by that we mean procuring underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.
Eew, ick.
Connection? Well, none directly.
Or maybe. More narcissism and obsession with unrestrained desire, or lust.
It sort of seems that you can't unleash this without it oozing out as filth sooner or later.
On Maxwell, because I tend to get my news by reading, I'm left perplexed by how a person says her first name, Ghislaine. I have no idea. I heard it on the nightly news the other day, but the spelling is so odd, I immediately forgot how to pronounce it.
Boston Marriages
What is a Platonic life partnership? These couples are breaking societal relationship norms
Platonic Partnerships Are On The Rise, So I Spoke To These Friends Who Have Chosen To Live The Rest Of Their Lives Together
"I don't think our love and commitment together should pale in comparison to romantic love."
post. Let's take a look:
But there is more to look at here.Another extremely orthodox cleric but one of an extremely intellectual bent, and who is therefore sometimes not very predictable, is Father Hugh Barbour, O. Pream. I note that as his comment on same gender attraction in women was mentioned earlier here and came out in a direction that most would not suspect in the context of a "Boston Marriage". Father Barbour did not license illicit sexual contact, i.e., sex outside of marriage, in any context either, but he did have a very nuanced view of attraction between women that's almost wholly unique in some ways. Like the discussion above, but in a more nuanced form, it gets into the idea that modern society is so bizarrely sexually focused that its converted the concept of attraction to absolute need, failing to grasp the nature of nearly everything, and sexualized conduct that need not be. Barbour issued an interesting opinion related to this back in 2013, at which time there had just been a huge demonstration in France regarding the redefinition of the nature of marriage.Katherine Coman and Katherine Lee Bates who lived together as female housemates for over twenty years in a "Wellesley Marriage", something basically akin to what's called a Boston Marriage today. Named for Wellesley College, due to its association with it, Wellesley Marriages were arrangements of such type between academic women, where as Boston Marriages more commonly features such arrangements between women of means. Barbour noted these types of arrangements in a basically approving fashion, noting that its only in modern society when these arrangements are seemingly nearly required to take on a sexual aspect, which of course he did not approve of.
Hmmm. . . .
Men and women who don't marry have always been unusual, but the sexualization of everything in the post Hefner world has made their situation considerably more difficult, really. Society has gone from an expectation that the young and single would abstain from sex until married to the position that there must be something wrong with them if they are not. This has gone so far as to almost require same gender roommates, past their college years, to engage in homosexual sex. I.e, two women or two men living together in their college years is no big deal, but if they're doing it by their 30s, they're assumed to be gay and pretty much pressured to act accordingly.
Truth be known, not everyone always matches the median on everything, as we will know. For some reason, this has been unacceptable in this are as society became more and more focused on sex.
At one time, the phenomenon of the lifelong bachelor or "spinster" wasn't that uncommon, and frankly it didn't bear the stigma that people now like to believe. It was harder for women than for men, however, without a doubt. People felt sorry for women that weren't married by their early 30s and often looked for ways to arrange a marriage for them, a fair number of such women ultimately agreeing to that status, with probably the majority of such societally arranged marriages working out. Some never did, however.
For men, it was probably more common, and it was just assumed that things hadn't worked out. After their early 30s a certain "lifelong bachelor" cache could attach to it, with the reality of it not tending to match the image, but giving societal approval to it. In certain societies it was particularly common, such as in the famed Garrison Keillor "Norwegian Bachelor Farmer" instance or in the instance of similar persons in Ireland, where it was very common for economic reasons.
People didn't tend to assume such people were homosexual, and they largely were not. Indeed, again contrary to what people now assume, except for deeply closeted people or people who had taken up certain occupations in order to hide it, people tended to know who actually was homosexual.
I can recall all of this being the case when I was a kid. My grandmother's neighbor was a bachelor his entire life who worked as an electrician. After he came home from a Japanese Prisoner of War camp following World War Two, he just wanted to keep to himself. A couple of my mother's aunts were lifelong single women and, at least in one case, one simply didn't want to marry as she didn't want children, and the other had lost a fiancé right after World War One and never went on to anyone else. Her secretary desk is now in my office. In none of these instances would anyone have accused these individuals of being homosexual.
Taking this one step further, some people in this category did desire the close daily contact of somebody they were deeply friends with, in love with if you will, but that need not be sexual. Love between women and love between men can and does exist without it having a sexual component. Interestingly, it is extremely common and expected when we are young and up into our 20s, but after that society operates against it. People form deep same gender relationships in schools, on sporting fields, in barracks and in class.
Some of those people won't marry, and there's no reason that their friendships shouldn't continue on in the post college roommate stage.
Well, society won't have it as everything needs to be about sex, all the time. Haven't you watched The Big Bang Theory?
Tatting for attention?
Like, enough already?
Apparently Salena Gomez has a bleeding rose tattoo. I don't get that either, but I'm sure that piles of ink will be spilled on it.
Footnotes:
It would be worth noting here that early on a female researching on Hefner's early publications noted how much of it was actually in the nature of barely disguised child pornography, with cartoons particularly depicting this. This lead to an investigation in Europe, and the magazine rapidly stopped it, but it's interesting in that the magazine was so debased that it not only portrayed women as stupid, sterile, top-heavy, and nymphomaniacs, but also underage.
The impact however had been created, and by the 1970s the full on sexual exploitation of child models was on. As debased as society has become, it's at least retreated from this.
Evidence for the “great resignation” is thin on the ground
Job quits are not unusually high
So states The Economist.
And not just the economist.
Perhaps. . . but I think something else may be going on, which explains the caption of the entry here. Let's call it The Great Hesitation.
The recent news stories on the Great Resignation are claiming its pretty much bunk. But what was it in the first place? Well, supposedly just what the name implied. People were quitting their jobs in the post Pandemic world.
Apparently, they aren't.
That doesn't mean something isn't going on.
Some personal observations.
A couple of months ago, in late summer, I tried a case in Denver. The hotel I stayed in downtown had very little in the way of staff. We were warned about that upon checking in. It was also quite spartan downtown in general, and maybe that explains it. Maybe they just hadn't added staff back, as they weren't anywhere near at capacity. . .maybe.
Countering that, downtown restaurants were back open, and they seemed fully staffed and plenty full. Well, full, not hugely full as they often had been.
Further, however, it seems that the entire legal industry is experiencing an entry level lawyer shortage.
Not that there's a shortage of graduating folks from law school. Not hardly. There are lots of new graduates. They're just not taking law jobs. And that isn't a singular observation, it's extremely widespread.
This is also true of staffing positions for law firm. Lots of openings. . .no takers.
So what's going on?
Well, maybe not resignations, although one newly minted lawyer I'm familiar with, who was mentioned in a draft post here the other day, is on her third or fourth position in just two years. But some of those were temporary by nature (one definitely wasn't).Rather, it seems fairly obvious, people aren't going back to jobs they once held, or they're holding off entering the job market entirely.
At some point, that probably has to end, but this is some sort of big social trend. And it's been going on for a while. We may have in fact just noticed it, and in part it may be somewhat amplified right now.
So what's up?
Well, a lot of what's up is what we've noted here again and again about the nature of modern work, and people are reacting to it. And the people who are reacting, are those at the entry level, or those who have been knocked out of work. People aren't getting in, and they aren't coming back.
Those who never left, have kept on keeping on.
The other thing that is going on is, I suspect, something that's been going on for quite some time. And its a generational thing.
The World War Two and Silent Generations weren't given much option about working, but because of the war and developments in it, combined with the advance of certain types of (domestic) machinery, they entered work at a pretty advantageous time. The World War Two Generation built the modern American work culture, although they did it when they were quite young. And the Great Depression and the Second World War enormously amplified a trend that had been going on since the early 1900s, which was the migration from the country to the city. The Silent Generation went along with all of this, as it didn't really have any choice. The Baby Boomers, in spite of initially protesting everything, fully embraced it by the 1970s, theirs being the last generation to enter the workplace in which 1) you didn't need a college education in order to get a decent paying job; and 2) a bachelors degree pretty much let you write your own ticket.
Things have fallen apart since then, although the generations that entered upper middle class positions haven't noticed or have excused it away.
It turned out, and turns out, that a bunch of the things Americans were told since 1945 about work, combined with economic policies in place since that time, have created a work life that people simply just don't like. Shipping blue collar jobs overseas, amplifying the move to the big cities beyond what was already in place, and putting everyone in cubicle jobs didn't suit their tastes as it doesn't suit nature.
Additionally the inflating requirement for a college degree, combined with the forced industrialization of female labor has pushed the marginalization of young adults back to some degree.
Indeed, in the draft posts I have up here, I have this item, which I'll incorporate here as its somewhat relevant.
Some time ago we took this highly unpopular view here in our Zeitgeist series.
Children and Forced IndustrializationYou've seen them here before, and yes, here they are again. Migrant farm couples, 1938.I've come to be simply amazed by the degree to which Americans are now acclimated to the concept that the government ought to pay for things, well, related to sex in some way or another.Joe Biden's economic "relief" bill, which really addresses a topic that no longer really needs addressing, includes a big boost for pre K childcare.Why?To make my surprise, if that's what it is, more plain, what that means is that money will come from taxes (and loans) to help pay for the childcare of people so that they don't have to pay for it, directly, themselves.More bluntly, this will make it easier, which is part of what is being boosted as a reason to do it, for those with low incomes to have two working parents, as the thesis is that otherwise they'll have to make economic choices that will be difficult.First of all, while it makes me sound like a Marxist saying it, isn't it clear that what this amounts to is the forced industrial employment of women? What hte goal really is, is to make it easier for working mothers to work, which rapidly equates into forcing them to work, which is essentially what our economy had done over the past 70 years. That is, we've converted from the early industrial revolution economy of forcing men out of their homes to work from eight to twelve hours per day to one t hat now requires women to do the same. In order to do that we've subsidized all sorts of things to the benefit, essentially, of industry, and now we propose to go one step further.Indeed, the irony of this is that this is where Marxist and Capitalist come back around and meet. Early Marxists sought the dissolution of marriage and the collectivization of child care. That has been regarded s horrific, but that's exactly what industrial economies have done over the past seventy years and the Biden Administration proposes to knock it up a notch.This isn't just.It isn't just to force women to leave their children in order to work. It likewise wasn't just to do that in the case of men, but the level of subsidization evolved into force was lower in that case, although still very real.It also isn't just to tax people in order to pay for the children of others, except in dire emergency. People like me who have paid for and raised our own children are now being asked to pay for the care of children we don't remotely know, including children who are raised in circumstances which we wouldn't approve of. If, for example, we can be taxed to pay for childcare for these children, can we also justly require that they be raised with basic sets fo values, including the value of a two parent home, which quite a few won't have? No, certainly not, we won't be allowed to suggest that.I feel this way, I'd note, on a lot of programs in this area, the long lasting ones which provide examples of why going down this path is a bad idea. I've mentioned the "free and reduced" lunch and breakfast programs before, which directly transfers the duty of feeding children from parent to government. I know that it had good intentions, all of these things have unthinking good intentions. The proposals to wipe out student debt or provide free college education also have good intentions, and also are all massively subject to the law of unintended consequences. What they also are, without it really being thought out, are subsidies for industry in varying degrees.I know that the ship has sailed on many of these things, the strong evidence against doing them notwithstanding. It's almost impossible to go back, once these steps are taken. Americans may imagine themselves in some quarters as being rugged individualist, but even people who imagine themselves to be real libertarians acclimate themselves to such things pretty quickly. But it is interesting to wonder what would happen if things went the other way. I.e., if, save for K through 12 education itself, the government simply got out of this area entirely. Feed your own children, provide for you own children, no subsidies for childcare of any kind, and not even any governmental bodies that seek to enforce child support orders. Leave it up to the individual.It'd be really rough for some at first, but I suspect pretty quickly a lot of the old rules would rebound once the burdens returned to the individual. It might even do more economically than proposals to raise minimum wages would, as lots of families would be back to one breadwinner.But no, we're just going to keep in marrying the government and making it the big parent.I should note that probably right away, if anyone reads this, there will be a claim that this is radically traditionalist or something, or maybe anti feminist. Feminism, I'd note, is a term that's now so broad to pracitically not have a meanning without further refining, but in any event, none of that is intended.Indeed, I'd note that its already the case that the public sector has, in some instances, taken care of this much the same way that it took care of health insurance during the 1940s. It's a recruiting incentive. Some big firms of various kinds have in house daycares so their female employees don't have to worry about finding one and still being able to get to work.In addition to that, at least by my observation, it's also the case that workplaces have becoming much more child friendly over the years, particularly in recent years. I never observed children in working spaces when I was younger. Never. Only farms and ranches were the exception. Now I see them all the time. Its not unusual at all for female employees to bring children into the office for one reason or another, often for long hours, and for that to result in very little notice. Therefore, I really don't think that the claim "women will have to choose to go childless" is true, although that no doubt has an economic aspect to it. The poorer you are, the fewer the options. It's one thing to bring your child into a business office. It's quite another to your job at the bar or restaurant.I also don't think that this would ipso facto mean an increase in abortions. Indeed, the current legal trends are towards increasing restrictions in this area as both men and women support increasing restrictions. And social trends seem to suggest that younger people are less interested in acting like their grandparents who came of age in the 60s and 70s in this area in general.What I do think, however, is that it forces choices up front and therefore vest "moral hazard" where it ought to be vested, at the individual level. That probably reemphasizes some old values while combing them with the new economy, which should be done.It probably won't be, however.
That pretty much guaranties that this blog won't be receiving any Radial Feminist Of The Year awards.
Following that, we ran across this item on Twitter:
I don’t want to work. I want to be home with my baby and I can’t afford it. I hate that. I hate it so much.
My point would have been a different one at the time I first noted these things, but they're still relevant to this one. Lots of people who would have entered their full adult years in their late teens and then gone on to pretty stable adult lives by their mid 20s, now are in college and university for many years instead by necessity. Some are pursuing careers that they really want to be in, both men and women, but many are there by economic force or compulsion The reason that's relevant is that they've become acclimated to it, and at the same time know that jobs they've trained for that they really dont' want won't be all that much when they obtain them.
The solution?
Well, maybe they're making it now. If much of the old economy was remade in a much more local, direct, fashion, it would not be a bad thing.
This will be an unusual post for here, as I'm doing something unusual in general.
Anyhow, this blog, which used to simply be a catalog of agrarian themed entries on Lex Anteinternet, has grown into its own a bit and now has a little original content, although not much. Anyhow, we're going to run this post independently, even though another Resolutions thread will already be up on Lex Anteinternet.
Well, two, actually.
Anyhow, this past two years, if anything, have been ones that have shown how Chesteron, Leopold and Abbey were quite right, even though they remain voices crying in the wilderness. The voices we've heard instead, most often that of an ex President and his hard core acolytes, haven't been helpful. Maybe it's time to drag out the Vanderbilt Agrarians, Chesteron, and Wendell Berry and see what they have to say.
Indeed, that will be our first resolution for agrarians, farmers, would be farmers, and just folks in general.
1. Check out Berry, Abbey, Leopold, or Chesterton
The current pack of yappers is offering little in the way of deep content, and a lot of what they have to say about anything is outright destructive. Every now and then something of value is stated, but it's hard to hear it in the general mess of things.
Let's be honest. Almost all of the current "we need to go in this direction" is at least a little bit misinformed. If you aren't grounded in what's real, any wind can blow you over.
Doing a little reading of some grounded folks would be a really good start in things.
And things be Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Aldo Leopold and G. K. Chesterton would be really good starts.
2. Cut out the citations to the "I’m a billionth generation farmer/rancher" in the wrong context, and don't support it when its made in the wrong context.
This is one of a couple of posts here that are really directed at a very narrow few, rather than the majority of ranchers.
Actually, it's not directed at ranchers at all, but rather at the rancher ex pats. Those who hail originally from the soil, but now no longer are working it. For those who descend from prior generations of ranchers and are still in it, the more power to you.
I've posted on this already, but it really doesn't matter if your great-great-grandfather broke the sod in Niobrara County in 1890 if that doesn't mean you are in agriculture today. And it doesn't make you royalty. And. . .
3. Knock off the "agriculture is a hard way to make a living" line
Now, I want to be careful here.
Agriculture is a hard way to make a living, because of economics.
What it isn't, however, is a hard way to live.
This has been on my mind, to the political year, anyhow, but it recally came into the forefront of my mind again recently listening to an episode of Wyoming: My 307. It was the one on ranching, which you can find here:
In it, it had a long session pondering "why do we do this?" which arrived at a very interesting conclusion, that being "it's a vocation".
I think there's something to that.
But, we ought to be careful thinking that somehow because we're out in nature, and nature is a bit rough, that we're suffering. Far from it.
I've been a lawyer, a solider, worked on drilling rigs, a writer and a stockman in what now amounts to a whopping 45 years of working (I started working for pay at age 13). So I think I know a little about work and what hard work is, and isn't. And what work is like for most people.
Somewhere at some point in time somebody fed a line of crap to agriculturalist that their work is uniquely difficult in an existential sense. Perhaps in a physical sense, that's somewhat true, but there's plenty of other dangerous physical work that puts you out in all kids of weather.
And most modern work is, quite frankly, utterly meaningless. Most Americans don't like their jobs, as no rational scientient mammal would like most of the jobs that now exist.
What agriculture isn't is something that makes you work more hours per day than other people, particularly professional people, in horrible conditions. Not even close, quite often. And the working conditions and nature of agriculture are far better than that for most other people. If you think that your job is somehow worse than a computer engineer in a cubicle, you are fooling yourselves massively.
Indeed, this sort of whining, and that's what it is, really needs to stop. It's self deceptive.
Indeed, its harmful it two ways. It's self-delusion and makes us think that, if we believe it, we are really working a lot harder than other people, when in fact that's just not true, and it also causes us to force children off the land for a better "town job" that won't be better.
Almost everything about life in the towns and cities is worse. We ought to realize that.
If you doubt it, leave the ranch or farm and go into town. You can't come back, and you'll regret you left. Pleantly of people will line up to take your place.
4. Having land doesn't make you "landed" nobility.
This, I'll note, is also directed at a narrow few, not the broader majority, of those in agriculture.
Something really disturbing has developed in the US over the past century in which those lucky enough to be born in to agriculture sometimes sort of regard themselves as petty nobility in a way. It expresses itself in all sorts of odd ways.
Now, I don't want to suggest this is common.
Most farmers and ranchers aren't this way at all. But you'll see examples of it where people in agriculture will express a degree of contempt, on rare occasion, about average people. It feeds into the thing above, in a reverse fashion, in that there's a sort of "we work hard for a living" without realizing that a lot of other people do as well.
I'll be frank that the last two items are sort of in reaction to a current political campaign. I'm not going to get into the pluses and minuses of the merits of any candidate, but something about the videos of the campaign really strike me the wrong way for their strong rancher pull. I'm tired of people appearing on political ads in cowboy hats arguing that you need to vote for somebody because they came from an agricultural family that knows what real values are. It's insulting.
5. Support getting people into agriculture.
The worst enemy of ranchers in the west are ranchers and by extension this is true about agriculture in general. Agriculturalist decry those who regard their units as big public parks, which they should, but at the same time they don't do anything to try to help average people get into agriculture.
The reason for that, in no small part, is that it would mean a big personal sacrifice. We could support legislation that made agriculture and agricultural land tied to actually working the land as your real and sole occupation, but we don't as that would massively depress the value of the land. It's that value that operates against us in the first place, as it means the Warren Buffets of the world become the only one who can afford the land.
We could pull this up by the root and cut it off at the head. If we really think we're special and the real examples of the common men, we should.
6. Think local and organize.
My entire life I've heard complaints about the midstream in agriculture. The price of beef goes up, and cattle on the hoof do too, and the very few packers there are reap the rewards. It's hard on consumers, and it's hard on ranchers.
I'm sure the same is true in other fields of agriculture as well.
Well, enough of that. We know it's unfair, so what we have to do is to replace the middle men with processors of our own. We could do it.
Indeed, some agricultural enterprises, like sugar, do in fact do just this. But it should expand. Co-ops for this purpose, organized to process for the member's benefits and not their own, would be ideal, and could more than compete with the big packers.
7. Think Agrarian
Modern agriculture suffers heavily from the worship of materialism that intruded heavily into the 20th Century and, along with it, specialization of everything. We in agriculture often hear of "monocultures", but we almost all do just that.
Our predecessors did this much less. Up into the mid 20th Century it was really rare to find ranches that didn't also farm a little bit, for the table, and every rancher hunted (often illegally) as well. Farmers were the same way. A wheat farmer in Kansas was a wheat farmer, but he was probably also taking some game with a shotgun and probably kept a few pigs for the table,, and so on.
We have the resources and could lead the say on that, and indeed, some do. But the real banner carriers on this sort of thing shouldn't be people in the "homestead" movement, who are mostly chopping up big parcels of land to the ultimate detriment of everyone.
8. Know who is your friend and who isn't.
This doesn't apply to everyone either, but I'm sometimes surprised how some in agriculture can be hostile, intentionally and unintentionally, to those who aren't, but who want to enjoy something on the land.
"No Trespassing" signs and "No Hunting" signs are signs to locals that they aren't welcome. Signs stating "This Land Leased To Outfitter" are the same thing, except they show that the lack of welcome has been monetized.
Bills to privatize wildlife are the ultimate acts of hostility. Falling in second are bills to transfer public lands into private hands.
We should realize that there are people who are genuinely hostile to agriculture. The local newspaper publishes op ed articles by members of an organization that definitely is. There are a lot more people who aren't in agriculture than who are, and we tend to forget that, as for most of us most of our friends are in it.
Given this, at some point we really risk public hostility. Shut access off to the land, and next thing you know you'll be seeing "tax ag land like other land" and things of that nature, and you are out of business and out of cash.
It doesn't really take that much to be friendly to people.
Likewise, for some reason those in agriculture often support entities and operations that are land destroying. I've never understood that, indeed as we'll often complain about the same entities if they're on our places.
9. Think really local.
None of us are here forever. Try to keep that place, and keep the familiy in it.
People do a lot of things for a lot of reasons, but every time I encounter somebody, and I do fairly frequently, who ends up telling me "I grew up on a ranch", and I find them working as a lawyer, doctor, accountant, or whatever, I think it's a tragedy. That shouldn't have had to happen.
Here recently, and elsewhere recently, and again coming up once more soon, I've posted on the Western phenomenon of ranching in political ads.
I'll admit that I am not a fan of this genre of ad for a variety of reasons, part of that being, frankly, that I'm cynical. When ever somebody tells me, as a Wyoming native and whose first ancestor in this region came into the 1860s, well I get crabby about it.
And I really don't like it when locals adopt some slogan introduced by some Wall Street dude or when people who move in here suddenly declare loudly and frequently what it means to be a Wyomingite. It's one thing if somebody from Nebraska or Montana does that, but unless you are a native of a Rocky Mountain or bordering Plains state. . . you don't know what it means to be a Wyomingite.
Heck, for that matter, people from Platte County and people from Sweetwater County are different, and that's just one example.
Anyhow, in honest short video snippets with a ranching themes, I still think this takes the A+ for honesty.
If there was an ad like that, I'd listen to it.
Anyhow, Wyoming native Harriet Hageman, who does come from a ranching family, has this recent Wyoming ranching setting television ad.
I'm not going to comment on the political positions themselves, but rather on the back theme to this.
As far as anyone can really tell, there's no real difference between the politics of Hageman and Congressman Cheney. As one recent local politician and former primary opponent of Cheney stated, Ms. Hageman's complaint about Ms. Cheney is that Ms. Cheney doesn't love Donald Trump enough.
That'd be reducing the dispute between them to an over simplistic level, but there's something to it. As far as politics go, there really isn't any difference between them, or at least not an obvious one. What brings this primary dispute up is that Cheney is taking a principled stand for democracy, and the local GOP has bought off on the "stolen election" theme.
I don't know if Ms. Hageman believes the election was stolen, but I sort of doubt it. She's extremely intelligent and probably knows much better. For that matter, she's a former opponent of Trump's.
That gives us an oddity in which Cheney, who never opposed Trump's running in the first place, is facing a candidate who opposed Trump running the first time he did and who called him some choice terms. So if not loving Trump is a political crime, well I guess they've both committed at some point.
Now, of course, Hageman is using the "ride for the brand theme", which is scary frankly as it comes pretty close to the old SS phrase. "my honor is loyalty" phrase. I'm sure nobody, perhaps other than me, has taken it that way.
Loyalty is in fact not honor. Loyalty must be earned and earned again to be kept. And if your brand is proposing to ride into a neighbor's place and scatter their cattle, you ought not to be riding for them.
For that matter, in the 19th Century, from which that phrase supposedly stems, most career cowhands were riding for themselves. Top hand took part of their cattle so that they could start their own places. The brand they were ultimately riding for was the one that they hoped to apply to their own cattle, which may be what Ms. Hageman is really suggesting.
Most hands only worked from the spring through the fall. They rode for the brand then, and then were let go. Not an ideal model, really.
Anyhow, she's released the ride the brand video, with lots of cowboy hat wearing relatives, so we know she's an authentic Wyomingite, which she is of course. Cheney we know is not really from here (the majority of Wyomingites aren't from here either), which bothered me when she first ran, but it's a little late now to complain about that, particularly if the dispute is the degree to which we're loyal to democracy itself.
Indeed, in another irony, when she ran the first time I pointed out to one of her door-to-door boosters, whom I've since learned was pretty high up in the GOP, that she wasn't from here and one of her opponents, whom I was going to vote for in the primary, was, and that person insisted that Cheney was in fact from here, as she attended some part of grade school here. Given what I know of that person's politics, I'm pretty sure she's now in the anti Cheney camp.
These things are fickle.
Anyhow, down in the big rectangle to the south of us, Colorado, the whole western ranching theme and native them has been turned on its head:
Donovan is the underfunded Colorado Democrat from Vail. She's a Colorado native, from Vail, something that's also a rarity, and a graduate of Notre Dame. Her grandfather was in the 10th Mountain Division, which is pretty darned cool.
Her ad takes on Western themes as well, as well as community, which is frankly probably quite a bit more authentic than "ride for the brand.".
Up to our north, Democratic Senator Jon Tester had a series of ads from his campaigns emphasizing that he's a farmer, and he is a farmer. Not from a farm, but farming. It's harder to get more authentic than that. His ads even poked fun at his very old-fashioned crew cut.
The point?
Well, I don't know that there is one, and then again there is. Maybe the reader has to ponder that, however, to discern that.
Merry Christmas to you and your families! It is a glorious and beautiful feast—with the tenderness and simplicity of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—attracting us to worship the newborn King. Come, let us adore Him. On Christmas, we remember the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity—the Word made Flesh, Jesus—entering the world. He came on a mission to save us from our sins and open the doors to heaven.
But let’s face it. Most of us don’t think that’s enough.
Some of you might remember a hilarious movie from the 1970s. A cranky old guy on TV, fed up with the world, complains that the life situation is “bad, really bad” and he wasn’t “going to take it anymore!” So he calls on everyone to go to their windows and scream, “I’m mad as [Hades], and I’m not going to take it anymore!” For the uninitiated, the name of the movie was Network.
A lot of us feel the same way today. We’re tired of the lies and baloney. Honestly, many of us are tired of life. Oh, for the good old days: The days of the Cold War, the Tet Offensive, the Sands of Iwo Jima, Flanders Field, or Pickett’s Charge. Would that I had been born into, say, an Old South plantation with an easy life. No, wait, as long as I wasn’t one of the field slaves and never exposed to cholera, polio, or sepsis. What was dental care like in the 19th Century? Didn’t George Washington have wooden false teeth?
Every once in a while what you're doing, how you are going about doing it, how you have done it, and what that means can hit you like a ton of bricks.
Down in the parking lot where I park every day, there used to be a car with a sticker that said this on it:
We all do things we say we never would
Soccer Mom
Quite true.
I suppose that's similar, in a way, the more grim
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
Henry David Thoreau
Or not.
And then there's the observation by the observant:
#talkedtotheboss He said there is no place where we can stop & think “I’m good where I am.” We are called to a state of blessed discontentment; where we recognize the blessings of where we are while striving to know more & love more. Never stop growing.… instagr.am/p/CX_Ha-bLcZ8/
That, we might note, is called Blessed Discontentment, or Holy Discernment.
I frankly think there's a lot to that. I feel that from time to time, maybe frankly most of the time. But in my selfish way I'm not really grateful for it.
I'd like to feel contentment, quite frankly, but the origin of my present discontent isn't, I think, of the blessed variety so much as it is of the "Yeoman, you're an idiot", variety.
Added to that, I think, is the affliction of Generation Jones, that being that we're pretty risk-adverse. Or maybe we're like my father's generation, the Silent Generation, in that we feel we have to make huge sacrifice as by and large, we're not going to take the brass ring anyway, and better hang on to what we got.
I dunno. . .
Maybe it's my father's life being disrupted by the early death of his father, and then mine being disrupted by the early death of mine, preceded by the extreme illness of my mother for many years prior to his death.
Still, there's something to it. The art of compromise for a greater purpose over pursuit of dollars, which is the only American alternative, has merites to it. Entire cultures, in fact, once prized that, over what we do, that being apparently only money.
None of which is much salve for the first thing noted here.
Or for the fact that time runs out. Americans like to believe "your never too old", but you can be.
For example, the maximum age to go to work for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is 37 years old. Not that old. Does that makes sense? I don't know, but it's likely based on young people being in better physical shape than old ones, and the need for a person to be able to retire from Federal service by age 60.
The current maximum age to join the U.S. Army is 35 years old. And that's for active duty or any of its reserve components. For awhile it was up around 40, but they've apparently dropped it back down. That age is 28 for the Marine Corps. . . 28. It's 39 for the Navy and Air Force (38 for Air Force reservists), so they'll take "older" enlistees. It'a a bottoms out at 27 for the Coast Guard, which will take reservists up to 38.
You get the point, however. If you are sitting in your cubicle in Boston watching the Coast Guard cutters go out, and you are thinking, "you know, my job at Amalgamated Amalgamated sucks, I think I'll join the Coast Guard!", and you are 30, you aren't.
The Canadian military, I'd note, is the real outlier, FWIW. A national "never too old" policy, and something to do with how Canadian old age pensions work, caused the Canadian government to up their maximum enlistment age, or commission age, to 57 years old.
Truly. This is what their recruitment page states (I just looked it up for this super interesting thread):
To join as a Non-Commissioned Members are skilled personnel who provide operational and support services in the CAF. Non-Commissioned Members start out as recruits and are trained to do specific jobs. | To join as an Officers in the CAF hold positions of authority and respect. They are responsible for the safety, well-being and morale of a group of soldiers, sailors, air men or air women. Analyzing, planning, making decisions and providing advice are a few aspects of an Officer’s role. |
You are between 16 and 57 years old. If you are under 18 years old, you will need permission from your parent or guardian. | You are between 16 and 57 years old. If you are under 18 years old, you will need permission from your parent or guardian. |
You are a Canadian citizen. | You are a Canadian citizen. |
You have completed Grade 10 or Secondary IV (Quebec). | You have completed Grade 10 or Secondary IV (Quebec). |
You have, or are working towards, a Bachelor's Degree. If you do not meet this requirement, you may be eligible for one of our Paid Education programs. |
I meet all the criteria save for one. I'm 58.
Not that I was going to call the recruiting department, I wan't, but if I were, the answer I'd get is "go away, you geezer, eh?"
Makes sense, really. Who wants to serve under a 58 year old lieutenant who's a veteran of the US reserves system. "Why back in the day. . . "
Indeed, as the long-suffering readers of this blog know, all two or three of you, we've been doing day by day playbacks from the early 40s recently here, and had been doing the same for the late 10s and early 20s. This relates to the ostensible purpose of this blog. A person had to serve in the Frontier Army for 40 years in order to draw a pension, which very few enlistment men did, but which also explains why promotions were glacially slow in the Regular Army. Around 1900, however, the system was changed to allow early retirement after 30 years of service, with 75% of the benefit drawn, reduced to 60s% in 1924. That system also evolved in that time period such that, at first, if you had 40 years in the service you were put in the "retired list", absent some unusual exception. As a practical matter, that meant most servicemen left by age 60, if they were career men. In the early 20th Century, however, that was changed so that at age 64 you had to go.
This system was changed again just prior to World War Two as Gen. George Marshall wanted to clear out as many old soldiers as he could before the U.S. entered a new mechanized war. Tired of older ossified officers like Chief of Cavalry John Knowles Herr, he managed to bring in a 20 year early retirement system, again scaled so that those retiring didn't receive a full pension, and the mandatory retirement age dropped to 60. He then simply sidetracked most of the senior commanders in their 50s. Herr, I'd note, retired in 1945 at age 56, his career wrecked by his refusal to ever acknowledge that the age of the horse was over.
That system is the one the military still has, and most law enforcement agencies have it as well. Given the physical and mental toll that being a policemen seems to have on people, that makes sense. At least by my observation, after twenty years, most are ready to retire.
Not all, however, as the Wyoming Game & Fish Department used to require its wardens to retire at age 60, but some jerk occupying that position sued them and won, so now you don't have to retire. I'm 58, and I thought about becoming a Game Warden when I was young. If I could retire at 60 years old, I'd do it.
Or so I claim.
A similiar age restriction, I'd note, exists to become a Catholic Deacon. It varies by diocese, but at some point people age out. So, roughly, if you've been hearing a call to be a Deacon for your whole life and decide to act on it by, let's say, age 60, or in some areas, age 50, you are too late.
Being privately employed, and employed in a field where seemingly nobody ever retires, its actually difficult to imagine how retirement comes about. It's even more difficult for those around you to imagine it. Having said that, I could imagine my father retiring and urged him to do so. He was a professional also, but not a lawyer. He died at age 62, having never retired.
That's a bit haunting frankly. He never retired, but he was awfully tired. I receive occasional thanks for things he did even now, some 30 years or so after his death, which I appreciate but which also shows me how much he was identified by what he did. By his late 50s it was clear to me, as he was frank about it, that he'd had enough and he wanted to retire. I kept urging him to do it, but I was in university and he probably worried about the expense. I told him not to, that I'd be fine. I'd been in the National Guard as an undergrad, and I was willing to go back in as a law student. Indeed, I'd gotten out of the Guard as I'd believed the fable that law school is hard (any idiot can graduate from law school, truly), and didn't think I'd have time to be a Guardsmen. It turned out that I would have, and by my last two years I was well aware of that.
Well, he didn't retire. He was holding out for 63. He didn't make it. What hopes and goals were lost in that? I know a few which were irretrievably lost. . . or maybe not.
In some odd ways, perhaps because of my age, I tend to feel worse about people who experience that late career death than I do those who die in their 40s, oddly enough. Dying at that age is a disaster, most particularly for those around those who depart, but dying just before retirement age seems to have cheated somebody out of something they were working for.
On being cheated, I'll also note the postponed dream or goal.
My mother had a friend who was a banker. I didn't know him well, but my mother, who had no real interest in agriculture at all, always referred to him as a "rancher". He wasn't. He was a banker.
Now, there's nothing wrong with being a banker. But his story was that he'd grown up on a farm or ranch as a young man, and then worked his entire career as a banker. He'd never lost the interest in agriculture and it was pretty clear that's what he really wanted to be. Around retirement age, but prior to his retiring, he bought a small acreage. I'd not regard it as a farm, but it was in a farming belt, and he put up hay there.
Or, rather, he tried to. By that time, in his late 60s, after a lifetime of indoor work, he couldn't hack it physically. And his wife of many years, additionally, was in extremely poor physical health and had a serious allergy problem.
He ended up selling.
He's now passed away, but I wonder how a person reacts to that? You live for years hoping for one thing and then the toll of years won't let you do it. Is your conclusion that you should have done it in the first place?
Some people, I'd note, keep on keeping on as others require them to. I knew a physician at one time who worked right up until his death. I don't know how old he was at that time, but he was at least in his 60s. He was old enough to retire, and his not retiring was a topic of conversation. It turned out that he didn't, as he supported a large number of extended relatives with his income. He wanted to, but he his loyalty to his extended family kept him at his office.
Admirable? In some sense, to be sure.
And tragic also.
Which I guess takes us back to the first item here. Surely, occupying a worthwhile career that you have sought to enter and do, isn't a tragedy, even though staying too long may be. But what about working for years with a lingering "lost vocation" in the background? Surely, that is tragic. The American belief that "I'll be able to do that some day" is a crock, and realistically, people who live in that world should realize that age, health, economics and circumstances are in fact more likely than not to terminate some of those dreams. Some others not. A guy who dreamed of being a cowboy, for example, can, if he has the talent and skills, write about that. Some hobbies that are close to vocations, such as hunting and fishing, can usually be carried on well into advance years.
But we don't get any time back at all. Time can't be banked. Money acquired in hopes of a dream retirement can just as easily be lost to the worker by death.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
Ah well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes:
And, in the hereafter, angles may
Roll the stone from its grave away.
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