I could have danced all night….
Bookworm on Feb 13 2010 at 11:15 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
In my younger days, I could have danced all night. Now that I’m a big rickety, about 2 hours let me ready to call it a night. But what fun I had!
This morning, as it’s Saturday, is devoted to family concerns and this afternoon, because it’s February in these United States, is devoted to the accountant. I’ll blog when and if I can.
I do have one question for you, though. I believe smaller government is best. I also believe that a moral country is best. And by moral, I mean one that hasn’t been overtaken by a hedonism that destroys family. In my my mind, without family, you really have no county. My question for you, then, is how does one encourage basic morality in a country with limited government? I don’t believe you can legislate morality. (By the way, sharia, which promises morality, is not the answer I’m seeking.)
Related posts:
- How to Create a Decent and Moral Society?
- Ghasties and Ghoulies and things that pray to Christ in the night
- The dog that didn’t bark in the night….
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22 Responses to “I could have danced all night….”
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I believe a single notion is the answer to both (all?) problems.
And it will take as long to implement (as a minimum) as it took us to go wrong.
Each believe, and teach, that each of us is personally responsible for all that involves us, our family and our friends.
We need to get back from a “they ought to” world to a “I will” world.
Free speech?
Definitions are going to be an issue. When you talk about a hedonism that destroys family, one of the things here is the word “family”. I think — arguendo, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth — by “family” you mean something like the famous nuclear family, or the Western extended family: a somewhat small kinship group that marries exogamously with monogamous heterosexual pairs. So you have Mom, Dad, kids, grandparents, Mom and Dad’s siblings, with other people fuzzily included.
I see “family” more generally, as a small group of people with kinship relationships who agree to live together and share resources.
Anthropologists do that more formally with definitions like “Family is a group of people or animals (many species form the equivalent of a human family wherein the adults care for the young) affiliated by consanguinity, affinity or co-residence. Although the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by “blood”, anthropologists[who?] have argued that one must understand the idea of “blood” metaphorically and that many societies understand family through other concepts rather than through genetic distance.”
(Golly it’s handy that cut and paste copies the links here.)
I suspect the particular form of family in a particular society at a particular time is an optimization driven by economics. The nuclear family is the optimization that you get in conditions where one of the parents can support the whole family efficiently, but where the work involved is away from the immediate home. The extended family happens when there are economic reasons for people to stay close together, like a traditional farm family. If economic support is completely separated from that parental bond, as seems to happen in our inner cities or happens in some ethic groups in China, you tend to get matrilineal, matrilocal families where the fathers are transient. Polygyny seems almost always to be a fringe phenomenon of the upper classes — at least I have never heard of a society in which a high proportion of families are polygynous — and polyandry is real rare.
All of these seem to be stable family structures in their contexts — which aren’t ours.
The implication is that if you want to encourage what we think of as “normal” families, you can do so by making the economics drive people to traditional families: make it socially hard for women to work outside the home; make sure that men make more money than women, and particularly drive women out of high paying professions like medicine and law, and into low-paying professions like teaching; make divorce difficult and make sure that it has dramatic deleterious economic consequences on the women and children when it happens.
I agree that a country needs to be unified with a moral structure in order to thrive. The problem is that the Left has been very successful in diluting any and all concepts of morality.
Our Judeo-Christian morality established benchmarks against which society could measure itself. Unfortunately, these benchmarks have been pretty much eroded by a combination of factors, one of which is the incredible wealth of our lifestyles, which tends to make people think that they no longer need morality. For example, the Hollywood set can, for the most part, afford to lead immoral lives because their wealth immunizes them from the consequences…at least, that is, until they keel over dead from drug overdoses. Victor Davis Hanson has a boffo piece that addresses this very issue:
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/why-did-rome-fall%E2%80%94and-does-it-matter/2/
Basically, we’ve had it too good. Much of our wealth was borrowed from others. Our wealth made us weak and eroded our moral and social foundations, and now we and our children will have to pay the piper.
Then again, G.K. Chesterton maintained that West European Christendom has been at this point several times before, whereby Christianity almost disappeared to be replaced by periods of pagan revivals and widespread hedonism, only to be resurrected in the face of major existential threats. I recall reading that Germany, during the roaring 20s, exhibited a free-thinking, hedonistic period of deconstructive thought much like today, only to descend into the chaos that gave rise to the competing fascist movements of Bolshevism and Naziism when the economy crashed.
That’s a scenario that we should all strive to avoid at all costs, no matter what our political tags may be.
I’ve never understood the assertion that “you can’t legislate morality.” Isn’t the prohibition against, say, robbery or murder based on the belief that such activities are immoral? Or to take a less-extreme case, isn’t the prohibition against driving 100mph…even if you are a very important person with a very important meeting to get to…based on the *moral* belief that the risk to the lives of other drivers outweight the savings of time for the driver in question? When you mean “morality” in this context, Book, do you mean specifically sexual morality, or a broader definition? DannyL…the best description I’ve ever read of the climate in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s is in the memoir of Sebastian Haffner, who was there. I review the book here: http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/11181.html …my review is ridiculously long, but I think it’s a very important book. Interestingly, Haffner did see some positive things about the mid/late 1920s: Despite everything, one could find a fresh atmosphere in Germany at this time…The barriers between the classes had become thin and permeable…There were many students who were labourers, and many young labourers who were students Class prejudice and the starched-collar mentality were simply out of fashion. The relations between the sexes were freer and franker than ever–perhaps a fortunate by-product of the lack of discipline of the past years…we felt a bewildered sympathy for previous generations who had, in their youth, had the choice between unapproachable virgins for adoration and harlots for relaxation. Finally, a new hope even began to dawn in international relations; there was less prejudice and more understanding of the other side, and an unmistakable pleasure in the vivid variety that the world derives from its many peoples.
“I’ve never understood the assertion that “you can’t legislate morality.” Isn’t the prohibition against, say, robbery or murder based on the belief that such activities are immoral?”
You provide the proof of the assertion. Have the prohibitions stopped murders?
“Have the prohibitions stopped murders?” Obviously not. Neither have disk brakes and airbags stopped automobile fatalities, but there would be a lot more of same without them.
Without a legal prohibition against murders, we would see a society-wide return to the days of blood-feud.
As near as I can tell, quote the opposite has occurred.
Whqt seems to drive the murder rate down is the risk that the victiom or somebody nearby might be armed.
But the question was “can you legislate morality?” and the answer according to the testimony here is “no”.
I agree with Charlie (Colorado) why our culture is doing such a poor job passing on values compared to other cultures. The lack of extended family.
The neighborhood also fulfilled that function, but with the increase mobility, we were no longer required to know and adapt to our neighbor’s standards. Our friends were across town and we seldom knew our neighbors other than those immediate to the left and right. If any family strayed to far from the neighborhood code, they were shunned and everyone knew they were to be avoided. That’s gone for the most part.
The internet makes this even more problematic. We have anonymous conversations using fake names and possibly fake life stories. We assemble in groups of like minded philosophies and occasionally foray into the other’s camp as they do in ours.
As I noted in another thread, our government “neutrality” toward religion (which has become hostile as the left as capitalized and distorted the intent of this neutrality) has confused us as to what moral code we should follow.
How do we return to the concept of extended family? Our generation was taught not to trust anyone over 30. We ignored our elders and so it goes. The only real power over our children is the popular culture and their peers. To the extent their peers are like-minded (church or conservative social organizations) they might absorb some traditional moral code.
I’m not sure how it works for those families who are hostile to religion.
As near as I can tell, quote the opposite has occurred.- Larry Sheldon
I want to be sure I’m understanding you. Are you saying that rather than reducing murder, the law prohibiting murder has increased the number of murders.
Are you saying if there were no law prohibiting murder, there would be less of them?
You can’t legislate morality because morality is internally driven. Enforcement of the law is externally driven. Therefore, when you legislate something or prohibit something with legislation, you remove it from the internal enforcement and shift it to external enforcement, which means it’s no longer a moral issue.
“You can’t legislate morality” was what many white Southerners said while resisting the Civil Rights movement. Contrary to Helen’s beliefs, in-group and out-group sentiments, one manifestation of which is racism, are not something foreign to human beings that can be “eradicated” from us like smallpox. Nevertheless,the changing laws and social consensus of the last 50 years have have resulted in fewer manifestations of racism. To a degree, morality/behavior CAN be legislated, but only if it reflects social consensus.
I believe that you do *not* do it via laws, which is why we tend to not try to legislate morality.
But the President has a powerful “bully pulpit” that can be used to stress conservative themes of individual responsibility and acting morally. People tend to react in an obvious way: “Oh my God, he’s trying to legislate morality! It’s a theocracy!” But it need be only the bully pulpit, not laws. Reagan was awfully good at this part.
And we can speak up in public. Shame has taken a vacation. Let’s welcome it back home.
It is family standards, but it is also community standards. We should take back control of our community standards. Elect leaders of all sorts who are capable of speaking the language of responsibility and morality. I would add that Sarah Palin is awfully good at this too. ”They” keep accusing her of trying to legislate morality, but as I said above, that’s just their obvious reaction, their game. She’s using the bully pulpit and she’s rarely, if ever, tried to legislate morality. She’s the template. She’s got it right.
The one thing I believe, based primarily on what’s going on in Europe and especially in England, is that a lot of morality is about consequence avoidance. Delayed sex means delaying having babies, which is a good thing if you’re young or poor. Avoiding drugs and drunk means avoiding poverty, homelessness and starvation. Likewise, having a work ethic means avoiding poverty, homelessness and starvation. All of those can exist in the most moral of societies, assuming the poverty is there to begin with. (Large chunks of India are mired in poverty and homelessness and starvation, despite its being, in many ways, quite a puritanical country.)
The one thing I do see, though, is that when the government moves in and takes away the risk of out of wedlock pregnancies, and of homelessness, etc., people have less incentive to avoid vice. This is the same point Danny made about the Hollywood rich: up until it all comes crashing down, they get to do all the irresponsible stuff ordinary people have to avoid, because they have a cash cushion against ultimate disaster. If the government becomes a cash cushion for ordinary people, the incentive to live a good life decreases, because the risks associated with living a bad life decrease too.
As for legislating morality, we can make it more difficult (zoning porn, criminalizing certain acts), but those laws only work if society believes in them. Theoretically we still have those laws on the books in most societies, but policeman look the other way if the critical mass of the community no longer cares. And believe me, I know what I’m talking about, because I grew up in San Francisco. Public nudity may be technically and arrestable offense, but no one gets arrested, because the police know that it would be they, not the nudist, who is the subject of a public outcry.
As I look back at the devolution of our society, I see the erosion of personal responsibility as being one of the leading factors.
If you consider that the family (and its extension, the church) was the center of our society until the government slowly but surely began to assume the responsibilities of both. It used to be that when hard times hit, you could go back to you family for help, not to become a permanent obligation, but to keep your head above water until you were able to provide for yourself. As a family member, you didn’t have the option of turning kinfolk away, you simply adapted and helped. Likewise, the church and the community also additional layers of safety nets. For a man, not providing for your own was the ultimate sign of not being a true man.
But, as family ties were cut and replaced by government programs, (and this has been the agenda of the progressives since time eternal), the responsibility of the father to produce became less and less of an expectation and now, it has become truly optional. Who would have believed that given this society’s access to birth control that nearly half of all children are born out of wedlock. Since the government has willingly stepped in to provide assistance for single parent families and society has removed the stigma associated with not providing for your own, we have come to regard our government as being our ’family’ – providing not only our food, our shelter, our education, our values, and our future, but also the excuse to be lazy.
One of the wonderful stories about my father-in-law revolves around the time that my mother-in-law put a library book on top of the car, drove away and lost it somewhere. Not being able to afford paying for the replacement book, he climbed upon his bicycle and with a flashlight retraced her steps until he found it. He was responsible for that book, he accepted that and did what he had to do to make things right.
If we pare the government down to its rightful place, if we reclaim not only the responsibilities but also the rewards that comes from holding a family together, we will prosper.
Books, the problem for me is that what you’re describing as “moral” and “avoiding vice” seems to be very heavily driven by what we grew up with, Mom and Dad and the rabbi and “Leave it to Beaver” all describing the ideal, and much vice being things far from that ideal. You start by saying that you need to have this “moral basis” to have a stable society instead of falling into hedonism.
Were this true, however, you’d expect that unless a society has that kind of family and moral structure, it wouldn’t be stable. We know that’s not true, though: pre-Greek Egypt was probably the most generally stable culture ever, but had pretty durn few limits on sex; some cultures don’t allow marriage until the woman has proven she can bear a child; the Mosuo (or Na) in China have “walking marriage” which means males and females hook up but fathers aren’t involved with their children; the Tibetans have been polyandrous for a couple thousand years.
Similarly, we actually use a lot less alcohol than western countries have historically; Pepys seems to have gone around half in the bag for his whole adult life, and wasn’t a notorious drinker. There was certainly a bad stretch in England, with drinking and “vice”, but the case could be made that the causation is reversed from what you suggest — that is, people drank and stole and wenched in 18th and 19th Century England because things had gotten unstable, not the other way around.
In general, my point is that I think you’re starting off from a false assumption: that morality as we normally think about it, and preserving “the family” as we are used to it, really is all that central to a functioning society.
Charlie:
I’m going to define “morality” in America unequivocally as Judeo-Christian morality. Part of our problem is that cultural relativism has us saying, “Well, the Greeks,” and “Well, the Muslims,” or “Well, the Indians,” or whatever. When I speak of morality, I speak of the set of values that served our nation so well until the 1960s.
I know that, right now, after having read that last sentence I wrote, someone will start another, “Well” line of speaking, such as “Well, what about slavery,” or “Well, what about the Native Americans,” but that’s foolish. We don’t have to be flawless to value our Values. We simply pick a cultural starting point and aim for it.
So I’m announcing here and now that a moral society is one that cherishes and elevates the traditional nuclear (and extended family), although it does not discriminate against people who come together with love and caring. A moral society is one that tolerates limited alcohol and drunk use in adults, meaning that they are allowed to do it, but that same society frowns on dangerous excess. A moral society is one that does enacts laws in which it believes, and then it enforces them. And so on. I’m not a cultural relativist. I think our traditional system is a good one and should be elevated, even if it cannot be perfected.
‘to encourage basic morality’ There is no freedom without morality, and no morality without virtue, and no virtue without God. There are values without God, but values are fads that pass in and out of vogue without permanence. So to encourage basic morality we need to recognize and teach that we were founded as a nation on the principle of freedom of – not from – religion. People who do not believe in God can benefit the same as believers do from the blessings of a nation founded on religious principles – after all, he sends his rain on the just and the unjust. Candidate Mitt Romney said that ‘freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom . . . freedom and religion endure together or perish alone.’ The United States is not a theocracy where the civil and religious law are one, so if persons wish to live in a theocratic state under sharia they can pack their bags and move to Great Britain.
I would only quibble with part of Charlie’s excellent essay in this respect: it is too simple to paint entire societies and religions with broad-brushed strokes. For example, the Greeks weren’t always licentious. Rumor has it they actually fought a war over a woman leaving her man for another. The periods of licentiousness associated with Greece and Rome were associated with their declines, not their rises. Similarly, in reference to the Tibetans, there are many forms of Buddhism. The self-serving licentiousness associated with some of its later forms (e.g. Tantric) is very different than the simple, respectful worldview preached by the young Siddhartha.
Maybe one of the defining factors underlying this thread on morality is the degree of respect that religion /culture projects for others. Judeo-Christianity defines us in large part by how we respect other individuals by appealing to the exemplary authority of a higher power (the second greatest commandment is “to love your neighbor as much as you love yourselves”).
Government cannot do this, no matter how oppressive a PC ethos that it tries to impose on society. Various personality cult-driven governments have tried this. Leftist utopianism, aside, government cannot help but reflect human corruption and foster disrespect for others. The decadent state of Islam today can in large part attributed to the abysmal way that it treats others, especially others of different faiths.
Book said in #16
> I know that, right now, after having read that last sentence I wrote, someone will start another, “Well” line of speaking, such as “Well, what about slavery,” or “Well, what about the Native Americans,” but that’s foolish. We don’t have to be flawless to value our Values. We simply pick a cultural starting point and aim for it.
That’s the uglier side of American moral and cultural relativism: Not only are all cultures and moralities to be considered equal, BUT in addition, ONLY our culture and morality is valid for criticism. I can’t tell you how many times, in my email debates with my very liberal friend, I’ve suggested that he’s extraordinarily critical of America but never critical of other countries. His reply is always that he is only concerned with what is going on in our country, because the others don’t affect him as much.
Most of them also reserve their harsh criticism for Israel as well. At least he doesn’t do that.
Book, you’re really spot on about all the “Well, what about slavery, and what about…”
There isn’t a country or culture across the world without its historical stains. Requiring perfection, even across our history, is a fool’s errand. Or else a disingenuous ploy to try to render all debate meaningless, since you can’t even start, if you accept that premise.
Mike Devx:
That’s the uglier side of American moral and cultural relativism: Not only are all cultures and moralities to be considered equal, BUT in addition, ONLY our culture and morality is valid for criticism. I can’t tell you how many times, in my email debates with my very liberal friend, I’ve suggested that he’s extraordinarily critical of America but never critical of other countries. His reply is always that he is only concerned with what is going on in our country, because the others don’t affect him as much.
I would wager that your liberal friend is VERY willing to criticize US conduct towards other countries and cultures, and towards illegal aliens in the US. I have noticed that many who criticize our dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have nothing to say to the reply that as the Japanese had killed some 10-20 million civilians during WW2, that any steps taken that would stop such a killing machine were justified.
<B>it is too simple to paint entire societies and religions with broad-brushed strokes.</b>
That’s true. The Greeks, for example, were a bunch of fractious city-states up until Rome conquered them. Until then, the Spartans and Athenians had very different social customs and military priorities as well. The Athenians placed less importance on women’s fitness and knowledge, while the Spartans pushed physical and mental virtues across the social spectrum.
<B> Were this true, however, you’d expect that unless a society has that kind of family and moral structure, it wouldn’t be stable.</b>
Ancient Egypt was both societally and technologically moribund. That kind of stability has nothing to do with modern Western civilization’s social and technological mobility.