I just received another installment of the New Yorker magazine and I continue to notice an escalation of a campaign to discourage people from having children. I will be the first to admit that having children is a big responsibility. And that not all people are cut out to be parents. But it is a different matter when an entire culture (USA Today) regularly belittles parenthood. It's apparently not enough anymore to campaign against marriage--gay marriage being the exception--but it has become evident to most of us by now that cohabitation does not cut down on the population, but makes parenting a very casual matter, secondary to materialism and entertainment rights, with predictable results.
All this and more was noted in 1949 by Harvard sociologist in "Family and Civilization," a book well summed up in 2 of its 800 pages of highly erudite material, observing that such campaigns are the rule not the exception in the end stages of any given culture in history and they are often run more by indolence and neglect than by intentionality--although TNY has plenty of advocacy intentions. Is this due to population pressure as noted by VSP (Very Smart People)? Or is this still an irrational self destructive tendency found in every dying, used-up current of civilization and ethnicity at the end of its tether?
Having broken all the rules not once but twice--four children now four grandchildren--somethimes I find myself rather discouraged by the lack of general support; however, if I am looking for support from McWorld I am very much in thrall to our entertainment-insane dying culture--when I could be focusing my attention on being on the cusp of a new generation that has the sense of purpose necessary to do parenting and to do it well; according to guidelines that are not of McWorld or its entitlement mentality. That is, I can focus on new life rather than lamenting what is 3/4 dead already.
I do lament the many people killed in the theatre yesterday; but the irony of it will escape most people. In the midst of an entertainment culture that is often anti-human or sub-human as much as the Roman "games," it is surprising to me that this has not happened before; and I suspect, like school shootings, this will become another trademark of our time; and that there will be a growing blurring between our entertainment offerings and its escalation of violence against people in general, not just an "enemy" but one's neighbor if s/he gets in the way of our "lifestyle," or just rubs us the wrong way. "Society Against Itself" is becoming more and more of a reality; there will be small islands of sanity and I hope to be stranded on at least one of them--but clearly our national culture is not worth much of an investment-- and that is at least subconsciously clear to many who cannot describe the process but withdraw from the "Centre" progressively and are too bummed out to create anything new.
This topic may be worthy of more exploration in the future; if one takes care to, "strengthen those things""--people more than things-"-that remain."
Interesting topic and thoughts on the decline of the family unit. It seems to me that as societies become more prosperous and affluent that their citizens tend to have fewer children. Most of western Europeans as well as our own country are not reproducing at a rate to replace the people dying giving a negative population growth. If it weren't for the immigrants from Mexico and the Turks in Europe the situation would be much worse for these countries.
ReplyDeleteWe are always told about how much it costs to raise a large family as a reason for not having more children. I think that the real reason is not so much money but the role that government plays in our lives. It used to be that having a large family was a positive financial thing. The more children you had the more work the family unit could perform and thus earn money. Children were the original social security system as they were going to take care of you in your old age.
Now the government has stepped into the role that large families used to perform. The same thing has happened to our fraternal organizations like the Moose, Elks, and Masons. They are all dying for lack of interest of the younger generation. Before social security it was these organizations at the grass root levels that took care of our families if the bread winner was injured or died.
When our governments collapse under their own weight, as seems to be happening now, we will enter a new cycle where people will once again reproduce and be forced to take some responsibility for their own lives and those of their neighbors.