So much evil so successfully doing what it does best. A lot of your posts very articulately highlight the sad plight of an enfeebled human race haplessly orchestrating their own demise in response to the immaterial promptings of disembodied adversarial spirits including the prince of darkness himself and one presumes a host of other subordinate recently-incarnate evil spirits including the likes of the late Sir Jimmy Saville and perhaps, who can tell?! your local seemingly affable school teacher, a pensioner or superficially friendly neighbour. It is quite sad really and apt to cause a sense of hopelessness if one dwells too much on the abundant darkness in the world instead of the light. It makes me wonder where all the good guys are? Or have all the Ghouls claimed them for their own already? And well, I can't shake this inner conviction that good conquers all but at the moment it feels like Heavenly father has gone away from home on a business trip somewhere and has left us all with uncle Satan to babysit for the time being or else why would a loving father knowingly leave us in the presence of such evil (or is this another limit we must place on God? He couldn't do it any other way except prevent Satan becoming incarnate? But stick around he must for now?). I suppose I just assume heavenly father knows best and will show up when it is really needed but I can't help but wonder. Surely we would expect to see more good in the world than naked evil thanks to his intervention? Just a thought. I try to dwell on the good and not the bad if I can. The ring beguiles the longer one looks at it. Is focusing on love,kindness, beauty and virtue not an important antidote to be deliberately imbibed daily to inoculate ourselves again the massing throngs of worldly evil? I hope so.
I used to think the reason for declining fertility was easily explained by the enhanced status of women: childbearing is painful and child-rearing toilsome and expensive, so it stands to reason that once women no longer feel obligated to bear and raise children, owing to changing social mores and easily-obtained contraceptives, fertility would plummet.
But I feel there are too many women who genuinely want to have children but are prevented from doing so by circumstances, such as the pressure of work and lack of suitable mates (i.e. men who earn enough that their wives can stay at home), so I agree that our society is ultimately short-changing women on this matter. Despite feminist claims that women are now free to choose motherhood or career or both, the fact is that government and employers now expect women to be just as available for work as men, with the result that very few couples are able to live on one income and allow the other partner to devote their time and energy to domestic work.
@jgress - But that can't be the main reasons. We have been living in the most prosperous circumstances in history, but say children cannot be afforded.
People spend many years and 100Ks of dollars on worthless and unused college degrees, but say children cannot be afforded.
They spend 1000 dollars a year on their hair, 10,000 dollars on holidays, 30,000 dollars on a wedding party, 20,000 on a better car than they need, tens of thousands on divorces...
Apparently the *only* thing that is just too inconvenient and too expensive in the modern world, is children.
The fact is that modern women, modern people, could have successfully raised more children than at any time in history - if it had been a priority.
But it wasn't.
21 July 2014 at 17:19
ajb said...
Following what BC said, when people say they "can't afford a kid," they usually *mean* they can't both have a kid and have as many luxuries (historically, that is what they are) as they otherwise would or perhaps would like to have.
In other words, they are saying they would like to have a kid, but not if it gets in the way too much of the other things they've been sold on.
So, the next question is who's sold them on those things as being more important?
@Imn - Sorry I forgot to thank you too - actually I was a bit stunned at having made you lost for words ;-)
21 July 2014 at 19:07
Glengarry said...
It's somewhat amusing, or should that be eerie, to see the smart phone zombies shuffling about these days. On account of that, it looks like this will get worse before it gets better.
26 July 2014 at 11:54
*
In a superficial sense, women are pandered and pampered by modernity - in a deeper sense they are the primary victims.
I know that women are privileged above men in almost all human societies (there are more than half a billion women living in the culture that is the exception); and that this preference is biologically-based upon each specific woman being on average reproductively more valuable than each man (see The Woman Racket by Steve Moxon before disagreeing with this) - BUT when it comes to the fundamentals of life, women are in the situation of having been duped by modernity so profoundly that they do not even recognize but profess to enjoy the situation!
*
I will not weaken my case by stating too many pieces of evidence: two will suffice:
1. Among the wealthiest, healthiest, most able and (on average) most attractive women - those women who are free-est in our society, and perhaps in the history of the world - the fertility rate is about half a child per woman, and about half of these women choose not to have any child.
Somehow, women en masse have been duped into forgoing, indeed rejecting, the greatest of all earthly mortal gratifications: motherhood; for which nothing can remotely compensate - and what is worst of all they embrace their victimhood (at least they do in public).
2. Healthy young women are intrinsically the most valued, desired, and attractive entities on this earth - and yet, about half of these beautiful creatures strategically, deliberately and (what is worst) proudly mutilate, deface and uglify their bodies with tattoos - they pay to do this, they go through inconvenience and pain to do this, the damage cannot be undone - and yet they advertise and boast about and display their foolish choices and wicked actions (wicked - because gratuitously to mar beauty is indeed wicked - and to advertise it is to encourage wickedness in others).
The trend is recent, the scope and inclusiveness of the trend is increasing and spreading, the extent of self-inflicted defacement and mutilation are expanding year on year.
*
How has this happened? I think the answer is fairly simple. Women calibrate their behaviour mostly by reference to the peer group of other women - in modernity this peer group has been hijacked by the mass media.
The only force powerful enough to overcome the peer group for women is religion; and in modernity religion has been rejected (or subverted into being merely a mouthpiece of the mass media).
And the mass media is evil - indeed in modernity it is the very source and focus of evil
The mass media has duped women into becoming willing mass victims - and the mass media has done so deliberately, from its intrinsic wickedness and its strategic onslaught upon good.
The reason for the greater success among women than men is simply that the mass media can successfully mimic (at the psychological level) the peer group of women and can shape their active, chosen behaviour.
*
(The mass media can and does destroy men - but as a rule men know their lives are miserable and wicked and futile; and do not embrace and celebrate and make political movements out of their desperate condition, in the way that women do.)
*
To do all this to women, the mass media first had to clear away religion by portraying Christianity as intrinsically anti-woman and a misery-inducing fraud, and imposing a secular world view - and this was accomplished very fully about fifty years ago - in the mid 1960s.
*
Modern secular women are helpless before the mass media: psychologically, nothing stands between each modern woman and the pervasive, crushing, gleefully destructive power of the mass media.
*
Since the mass media is the source of evil in modernity, it can be equated with Sauron's One Ring - which puts modern women into the situation of Frodo when he had become 'addicted' to the Ring.
So here - from The Lord of the Rings - is the situation of modern, secular, media-addicted woman:
No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree
or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked
in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of
fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.
"Women as victims of modernity"
11 Comments -
So much evil so successfully doing what it does best. A lot of your posts very articulately highlight the sad plight of an enfeebled human race haplessly orchestrating their own demise in response to the immaterial promptings of disembodied adversarial spirits including the prince of darkness himself and one presumes a host of other subordinate recently-incarnate evil spirits including the likes of the late Sir Jimmy Saville and perhaps, who can tell?! your local seemingly affable school teacher, a pensioner or superficially friendly neighbour. It is quite sad really and apt to cause a sense of hopelessness if one dwells too much on the abundant darkness in the world instead of the light. It makes me wonder where all the good guys are? Or have all the Ghouls claimed them for their own already? And well, I can't shake this inner conviction that good conquers all but at the moment it feels like Heavenly father has gone away from home on a business trip somewhere and has left us all with uncle Satan to babysit for the time being or else why would a loving father knowingly leave us in the presence of such evil (or is this another limit we must place on God? He couldn't do it any other way except prevent Satan becoming incarnate? But stick around he must for now?). I suppose I just assume heavenly father knows best and will show up when it is really needed but I can't help but wonder. Surely we would expect to see more good in the world than naked evil thanks to his intervention? Just a thought. I try to dwell on the good and not the bad if I can. The ring beguiles the longer one looks at it. Is focusing on love,kindness, beauty and virtue not an important antidote to be deliberately imbibed daily to inoculate ourselves again the massing throngs of worldly evil? I hope so.
20 July 2014 at 12:07
@D - We are in the end times/ latter days.
But God is not absent in any way, shape or form - He is there as close as He always has been - patiently waiting for us to turn to him.
But, on the whole, we do not.
20 July 2014 at 15:08
Great post, Bruce. Having thought about men and women for years, I wanted to add something but I think there is nothing to add. Thank you for sharing.
20 July 2014 at 16:52
Spot on, Bruce C.
21 July 2014 at 11:02
Yes, this was an exceptional post.
Religion provides women with a positive peer group e.g. the Relief Society who visited my wife yesterday evening.
21 July 2014 at 12:36
@Adam and Bruce - Thanks!
21 July 2014 at 13:40
I used to think the reason for declining fertility was easily explained by the enhanced status of women: childbearing is painful and child-rearing toilsome and expensive, so it stands to reason that once women no longer feel obligated to bear and raise children, owing to changing social mores and easily-obtained contraceptives, fertility would plummet.
But I feel there are too many women who genuinely want to have children but are prevented from doing so by circumstances, such as the pressure of work and lack of suitable mates (i.e. men who earn enough that their wives can stay at home), so I agree that our society is ultimately short-changing women on this matter. Despite feminist claims that women are now free to choose motherhood or career or both, the fact is that government and employers now expect women to be just as available for work as men, with the result that very few couples are able to live on one income and allow the other partner to devote their time and energy to domestic work.
21 July 2014 at 16:39
@jgress - But that can't be the main reasons. We have been living in the most prosperous circumstances in history, but say children cannot be afforded.
People spend many years and 100Ks of dollars on worthless and unused college degrees, but say children cannot be afforded.
They spend 1000 dollars a year on their hair, 10,000 dollars on holidays, 30,000 dollars on a wedding party, 20,000 on a better car than they need, tens of thousands on divorces...
Apparently the *only* thing that is just too inconvenient and too expensive in the modern world, is children.
The fact is that modern women, modern people, could have successfully raised more children than at any time in history - if it had been a priority.
But it wasn't.
21 July 2014 at 17:19
Following what BC said, when people say they "can't afford a kid," they usually *mean* they can't both have a kid and have as many luxuries (historically, that is what they are) as they otherwise would or perhaps would like to have.
In other words, they are saying they would like to have a kid, but not if it gets in the way too much of the other things they've been sold on.
So, the next question is who's sold them on those things as being more important?
21 July 2014 at 17:51
@Imn - Sorry I forgot to thank you too - actually I was a bit stunned at having made you lost for words ;-)
21 July 2014 at 19:07
It's somewhat amusing, or should that be eerie, to see the smart phone zombies shuffling about these days. On account of that, it looks like this will get worse before it gets better.
26 July 2014 at 11:54