The Charles Murray of the Bell Curve fame argues in an WSJ article called “The Europe Syndrome” that the real effect of increasing dependence on the state is that communities, families — and individuals — begin to atrophy like disused muscles. “Europeanization” isn’t a cosmetic change, but a fundamental one. The effect is that we eventually expect things to be “guaranteed” to us by others and stop learning how to do it ourselves. But, from a systems point of view, this is sleight of hand. We are the “others” we’ve been waiting for to save us, and we are also the atrophied.
The problem is this: Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality–it drains some of the life from them … it inevitably takes some of the action away from families and communities, and the web frays, and eventually disintegrates. … After the speech, a few of the 20-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase “a life well-lived” did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling. …
Haven’t the elites always done this? Not like today. A hundred years ago, the wealth necessary to withdraw was confined to a much smaller percentage of the elites than now. Workplaces where the elites made their livings were much more variegated a hundred years ago than today’s highly specialized workplaces.
Perhaps the most important difference is that, not so long ago, the overwhelming majority of the elites in each generation were drawn from the children of farmers, shopkeepers and factory workers–and could still remember those worlds after they left them. Over the last half century, it can be demonstrated empirically that the new generation of elites have increasingly spent their entire lives in the upper-middle-class bubble, never even having seen a factory floor, let alone worked on one, never having gone to a grocery store and bought the cheap ketchup instead of the expensive ketchup to meet a budget, never having had a boring job where their feet hurt at the end of the day, and never having had a close friend who hadn’t gotten at least 600 on her SAT verbal. There’s nobody to blame for any of this. These are the natural consequences of successful people looking for pleasant places to live and trying to do the best thing for their children.
But the fact remains: It is the elites who are increasingly separated from the America over which they have so much influence. That is not the America that Tocqueville saw. It is not an America that can remain America.
It’s an interesting hypothesis, though it remains just that. But if true, it would explain much about the way social mores have changed in the West, including why we are now exhorted not to rescue our neighbors from a fire for “safety reasons”; or why it is acceptable to simply call the authorities if we see a woman being raped right in front of us. It would explain why we need guarantees for everything; require assurances that we will never have to oppose an international aggressor and are irked — feel cheated almost — when we are compelled to defend ourselves; why we ought never be subjected to a climate change the way it has been changing for all of geological history. It would explain why everything has to be “just so”. Why our BMWs and vacation homes in Majorca are now our birthright, which a stimulus must guarantee. For my money, such a world would be a sterile one, and perhaps more importantly a doomed one. But if Murray is right, then I hope the trend is only temporary. Maybe it’s natural for families, communities and individuals to feel adrift at this moment as they pass through. Not every feeling of alienation is wrong; in ancient times it was sometimes the darkness that pushed you into the light.
And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How [is it that] ye are come so soon to day?
And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew [water] enough for us, and watered the flock.
And he said unto his daughters, And where [is] he? why [is] it [that] ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread.
And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.
And she bare [him] a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.
This is somewhat what I have been saying.
ALL across the West, and Coastal China, and Japan, the same effects can be seen. Fearful, temporizing bargaining with aggressors. PC up the wazoo. Status mongering in place of everything else.
Where I differ from Murray, and feel his explanation goes wrong (because he’s an older guy and just doesn’t get it) is that Government moving into social functions did not cause the collapse of civil institutions such as churches, neighborhoods, and families.
Rather, it was the collapse of those institutions that caused Government to move into them in the first place.
THAT is a huge difference.
Western Europe has had urban life since the 1700′s at least. In America, urbanization began very quickly, the revolution cities like Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, and Charleston were old and established.
What happened, the “earthquake” that demolished family, churches, social structures, and neighborhoods was the following:
1. Contraception: women could have sex with whom ever they wanted and not get pregnant, as long as there was:
2. Social Mobility, enabled by the cheap car, and growing economy, that provides anonymous urban living (free from censure by neighbors and friends and family of sexual choices).
3. Rise in Women’s incomes and social freedom by a mobile, professionally-based economy and culture.
Which led to:
5. Far delayed marriage (or no marriage at all) which meant both endless status jockeying for mates in an endless game of musical chairs where status creates what chair you get — AND a plummeting birth rate.
You’ll also see all sorts of supporting evidence for this hypothesis, against Murray’s (that it was the social institutions that failed first, not government shoving them aside).
Example: Religious attendance. Women are the backbone of Christianity. Among Catholics, Protestants (excepting Evangelicals) and so on female attendance at churches has become non-existent except for a few old women. The only exception is Mexican immigrants in the US, where the old social bonds still apply.
Critically, however, second and third generation women of Mexican background DO NOT attend Church any more than White nominally Catholic peers.
You find the same patterns among Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and so on.
Only Mormons and some Evangelicals (the latter making Church a show and a Oprah-esque, Dr Phil-like support system). There is a reason that Rick Warren packs them in by the thousands, and most Lutheran Churches are empty. The former is a Dr. Phil with a pulpit. Mormons connect faith to family explicitly, and try to insulate themselves in culture.
You can also see these patterns in other areas: the way in which men act in professional settings: status-driven, uber-PC, etc. which is light years away from blue collar guys, a big shift and driven by sexual selection in a rising, wealthy world that has never known anything else.
Our social systems collapsed because they could not adapt to wealth, near absolute social freedom, and reproductive collapse and abandonment of family.
The CDC has released data on single motherhood. It is 28% for White Women, over 51% for Hispanic women, and 90% for Black Women in the Urban Core, 70% for them nationwide.
By contrast, the rate for Hispanic (Mexican really) women was 17% in 1980; in 1965 it was 4% for White Women (source: Juan Williams Father’s Day Column in the WSJ) and for Black Women it was 24% in 1965 (again, Juan Williams the source).
These are massive changes over time, observed in all ethnic groups, and tracks with the similar collapse of the Nuclear Family in Britain among Whites, particularly the White British Underclass which has similar numbers to Black Americans for illegitimacy.
GIVEN that the Welfare State does not apply much to White Americans (Robert Reich’s demand that “No White Men Need Apply” is merely the latest repetition that Welfare is NOT for Whites), similar patterns of nuclear family collapse in Japan and China, both of which have not much Welfare Statism …
I have to REJECT Murray’s hypothesis as not supported by the evidence, and suggest rather that contraception, mobility, and income/status for women caused the collapse of the West.
And that it will only get WORSE, not better, until either new institutions arise that CONTROL Male and Female sexuality and restore the nuclear family, or decades-long poverty and war leave only contraception as a social force intact.
Either way, the future looks remarkably ugly. It isn’t what it once was, though it’s not Blade Runner or Soylent Green. More like Max Headroom without the Network 23.
What this country needs is a ban on the birth control pill, a firm class structure, women out of the work force, and no divorce!
And no gayers, neither.
True story about Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn.
In 5687 (1927) the Rebbe founded the Lubavitch seminary in Uzbekistan, a remote province of Russia.
His stand against those who wanted to undermine the Jewish religion became even more perilous. The Yevsektzia was determined to stop him, and even resorted to intimidation and mental torture.
“One morning, when the Lubavitcher Rebbe was observing yahrzeit for his father, three members of the Yevsektzia rushed into his synagogue, guns in hand, to arrest him. Calmly, the Lubavitcher Rebbe finished his prayers and followed them.
Facing a council of armed and determined men, the Lubavitcher Rebbe again reaffirmed that he would not give up his religious activities, whatever threats might be made. When one of the agents pointed a gun at him, saying: “This little toy has made many a man change his mind”, the Lubavitcher Rebbe calmly replied: “That little toy can intimidate only the kind of man who has many gods-passions, and but one world-this world. Because I have only one G-d and two worlds, I am not impressed by your little toy.”
Bob from Spudland: while you’re in a banning mood, you forgot to add a ban on trolls like you and all the other hypocrisies of the Left.
I ain’t need no learnin’ be happy. Lukas, he provide. Laundry needs turnin’…
Raoul, I’ve been called a lot of things, but never a leftie.
Whiskey said Government moving into social functions did not cause the collapse of civil institutions such as churches, neighborhoods, and families. … Rather, it was the collapse of those institutions that caused Government to move into them in the first place.
I differ. It is the process leading to the development of the State as Savior. If a benefit is offered, some will embrace it no matter the consequences. If there is no sanction on the benefit or if the sanction is minor, more will embrace it. Soon it becomes a commonplace. As these benefits come from the State, they are everyone’s birthright. The State is identified with these rights (or entitlements, if you prefer) and is assumed to be universally benign.
A benign entity cannot do something to harm you nor can it allow conditions to occur that are not beneficial. The Russian peasantry thought the Tsar was divine and beneficent, so when something ugly happened their response was “If the Tsar only knew…” Well, it never occurred to them that he could have cared less.
The reality is that States are not by any measure benign. Herb’s Law says: Governments do nothing well except kill people and break things, and then if and only if provided with unlimited resources with which to do it.
Jefferson and the rest knew this. We have forgotten it and are learning to trust the Government. Not a good idea.
I tend to disagree with Whiskey about the uniform perfidiousness of the evolving status of women. I do however think that reproduction is terribly important and the historical role of the female in the conveyance of the culture is equally important. But I know too many who have managed both roles magnificently. [I will only admit this in the security of the BC]
Best not to dump too hard on Murray and the evidence, he has earned a powerful rep on the evidence.
Over the last half century, it can be demonstrated empirically that the new generation of elites have increasingly spent their entire lives in the upper-middle-class bubble
It sounds as if he’s talking about Hyde Park…
Historically, there are two ways to raise the birth rate. One is to create a comfortable environment for women to be “barefoot and pregnant”. The other is Saudi-style misogyny that deprives a woman of any real choices in her life.
If western civilization were to seek to imitate Saudi-style misogyny and disenfranchise its female population in the process, the question ought to be asked whether the West would really be part of western civilization anymore.
Whiskey is talking a bout the age of being without consequences. Most of us live in a fairly civilized locale. We have running water, shelter, heat, ac, and food a short drive away. We do not spend 25% of our time hunting for food. Or the time it takes to walk to the market or split wood for heat. Swelter in front of an ice block with a fan. I love those civilized amenities. When I camp I prepared to be without and not so bad, But yesterday I woke up in the middle of night and no water pressure. That was bad. By mid morning I had containers and located a working spicket at a nearby store just so I could flush the toilet.
Sex without consequences freed man to take more risks of sex without having to worry about fatherhood or marriage for life. Also contraception allowed women to experiment with sex and check out different males. Women became pickier.
Look at teenage girls and they start hunting males in elementary school and had fastened on one by high school. Their drive to secure a mate is obvious and often poorly done. If they survived that period without pregnancy and marriage they wait a long time before she decides on a mate for the long term. Perhaps they got used to the pain of breakups and decided no more.
Risk free or easy divorce also devalued marriage. Too easy for stupid reason to dump a mate rather stick nit out for the long term benefits
Marriage is because the female wants it s and rarely because the male wants it. Look at Brad Pitt and A. Jolene. He wants marriage maybe to secure his rights to his children and she has been putting it off. His previous marriage with Jennifer she had put off the children but accepted marriage.
Marriage is primarily a device to ensure protection and maintenance for the female and her young by one male. He gets heirs and they get property rights and maintenance. She takes car of the home, children and man, and with contraception and abortion she could refuse children and the male has no legal recourse. Once she no longer needed maintenance and earned her own money she could leave for the flimsiest reasons and did. Many man have lost rights to their children and have been badly damaged
Without the need to survive and life being so easy, many feel life is meaningless. You see it in the search for spirituality even if that is not the recognized religions. The Tai Chi and Gala stuff that many flirt with. Without strife or great effort, winning does not mean much. That is why many in the Iraq war felt such a need to get back because they had such a purpose and felt that satisfaction that overweighed the lack of amenities.
Actually the issue I see Wretchard upset about is the lack of self-sufficiency and responsibility that this country was founded on. The rugged individualism. Many have been trained due to specialization, which is, and efficient aspect of civilization. When we let farmer produce efficiently, more food is produced. And the printer specializes and we even created new services such as firemen and police. We decided that it was better and easier to pay a specific person to a certain duty so they could be an expert rather than an amateur. Thus the police were born. We delegated certain tasks and duties and authority and we then feel our duty is done.
Police often feel isolated and those they cannot depend on anyone other than fellow police so they get very risk adverse. They require huge amount of authority in the name of officer safety.
If someone sees something happen that needs action then someone will step up and do it. If many are around they often wait to see if the best suited person will step forward first. Again the search for the specialized expert.
Most people are socialized to a great extant and follow the expected patterns. Call police, fire. Only those less risk adverse will take risks to save someone. I have come upon a car off the road and se that it is fresh and stop and ask if they need assistance. Most of the assistance needed is a call for a tow truck.
Charles Murray mistakenly thinks that the truth of science will overcome the misrepresentations of the socialists. This is not working re global warming.
–great juxtapose wretchard, our new entitlement to life without struggle and the Exodus phrase “stranger in a strange land” — which Heinlein named the novel wherein the hero comes to believe that humankind is violent because it needs violence to ‘weed itself out’ from under bad, or weak, or stupid, or silly, people and ideas that unweeded-out would otherwise kill off the whole human project. Why in Heinlein’s world that isn’t fascist is that it doesn’t organize (forbidden: the community organizer) –he meant the weeding out was an enterior self-driven bottom up individual duty to the future, to pay back those who did the service for your own future, to keep the future in being and flexible, so that someday everything could get figured out maybe. Not any sort of Eugenics crap. IOW, he’d've murdered Hitler, not worshiped him.
Alexis/9; “Hyde Park” –funny, that’s what the rent-seekers do, ‘hide’ and ‘park’ until someone walks by they can regulate for a fee.
Wow. What a great article.
I think that both Murray and whiskey are correct. They each describe different parts of the same death spiral.
The missing link in their views is the role of media concentration, and their world view. For decades, they controlled the messages we received, choosing particular stories to emphasize and promote.
The cycle would work like this:
1. The MSM would pick one place, one circumstance, one instance where our families, communities, neighborhoods, or our churches failed. Create a news story – or a news cycle – that highlighted this failure and its associated injustices. The injustice, and its telling, sold newspapers and TV advertising because people love watching a train wreck or a public execution. And there are always failures somewhere in the world; randomness and small design margins driven by increased economic efficiency guarantee it.
2. Ambitious politicians would seize upon this failure as something that needed to be “fixed,” and propose a “solution” that had very broad impact. After all, if you’re going to prove that you’re a force for “good,” you need to fix the entire problem, not just the very specific instance that got the press. Problem: Ms. Jones loses her job and gets evicted from her apartment, along with her two kids. She ends up homeless for two weeks before being taken in by a local church. Solution: free transitional government housing for single mothers who lose their jobs.
3. With the government now providing transitional housing, the local churches stop taking in single mothers who have lost their jobs. Philanthropists stop funding those programs – why donate to something that is the government’s responsibility. Staff are laid off. Eventually, the entire transitional housing “industry” shuts down, except for the government. Unfortunately, this creates the need for more government facilities, since this takes supply out of the market.
4. The government shelters get unionized, and the cost of providing that space goes up, and quality goes down. Taxes go up to pay for the extra cost, which causes more job loss, and greater need for the housing. Advocacy groups push to include more people in the program. Cost keep rising, and taxes to support them.
5. With a large supply of government housing, the local community comes to see this housing as an entitlement. People stay longer. The stigma of living in a “flop house” is replaced with a sense of pride that comes from “belonging” to a group that has been “wronged.” Advocacy groups foster a sense of resentment in this group because it is in their interest to have an angry, easily mobilized protest force.
6. With costs out of control, calls (from “heartless conservatives”) begin for cutbacks. But if you did start scaling back the government program, there is no longer any private sector capacity to step into the void. And since there is now an expectation of having such a program, leaving people to fend for themselves is considered cruel. Moreover, if a private sector group does try to help, it is soon told that it must only hire unionized workers to prevent unfair competition with the government workers.
When complete, this cycle has destroyed the private sector solution (which, in truth, worked pretty well on the whole) with a government solution that is worse for everyone.
So which came first: the atrophied institutions or the government intervention? Neither. They both happened under the watchful eye of our elected officials, an eye fed with news reports generated by a sensationalist media.
But Murray is right about this: grown-ups wouldn’t have let such a thing happen. They would have known better, the way grown-ups know that you can’t let kids eat Fritos and Coke at every meal.
The question, though, is how the system changes from adolescent to grown-up. The first part of the answer is already here: the death of the MSM.
What’s next? Who knows. But it will be interesting to observe.
And participate…
L3
I’m not sure how a society becomes feminized when women progressively act more like men.
It is supposed by some that the Morlocks are monsters and the Eloi are innocent victims.
I see the Eloi as just as morally depraved as the Morlocks, if not more so. Eloi move together in herds and don’t bother to defend themselves. By refusing to be martial in any way, the Eloi effectively create the Morlock. If the Morlocks didn’t exist, the Eloi would need to invent them.
It is common to suppose that the “barbarian” is an enemy of civilization, and yet one could argue that the “barbarian” is a creation of a civilization in decadence. Perhaps barbarians are conjured into existence by civilizations with a death wish. Whenever the leaders of a society ask “what did we do to deserve this” instead of “what must been done to defeat the enemy”, this shows a society with decaying vitality.
Whenever the leaders of a society ask “what did we do to deserve this” instead of “what must been done to defeat the enemy”, this shows a society with decaying vitality.
Ultimately, you can’t “save others” if they don’t want to save themselves. That’s why every act of rebellion — Camus’ distinction between the Rebel and the Bolshevik Revolutionary is worth revisiting — begins with an act of self-discovery. If you can’t find your own humanity, your own worth, then there is nothing you will care to save. Forget for a moment whether God loves you; or even you believe in a God. Do you believe in yourself? Even a secularist who has no use for faith or transcendance may eventually recognize the utility of the concept of redemption. Humanity condemned is a race with no future; while a humanity with even a glimpse of heaven is something worth fighting for. For a variety of reasons it make sense to say, “be not afraid”.
When the Lord turned the staff of Moses into a writhing serpent and the hand of Moses into a leprous ulcer I don’t think he was suggesting be not afraid. There are things we should be afraid of.
When Jethro gave Moses Tzipporah for his wife they were not afraid to have children. When the Lord wanted to kill Moses a short time later it was because Moses had not circumcised Gershon. In effect if you are blessed with children you must teach them of the covenant.
The Europeans and their children don’t know what the covenant is. They have decided to worship a beating heart. Europe has abandoned the individual believing soul. For them only the rare genius is special. In America there still are families where every soul is a glorious prayer of thanks to the Almighty. Blog statements like this in Europe are laughed at with scorn and vile.
RAH and Whiskey, David Hume argued that men’s control over women’s sexuality was caused by the need to make sure that the children whose rearing men were paying for were really their own. (That was in a different time, back when, in the words of Fielding, every lord of the manor had a few little bastards running about.)
Linbeck, you are right, the danger of the state’s crowding out private activity is very real. The next place for this to happen is private philanthropy. This was already a stated goal during the campaign. As tax deductions for charitable contributions are reduced, so too will the contributions dry up. Goodbye symphony orchestras, opera companies, and art museums. Ah, but we’ll increase NEA funding! Yes, perhaps, and as Hayek warned, we’ll then need to curry favor with the bureaucrat of the day to get funding. Who will demand what, exactly, in exchange for his favors?
Alexis, everybody’s mama used to call those nemesis relationships “bad influences” –as in, “son, you really MUST learn to stay away from bad influences” to which you, the bad influence on the kids you just got in trouble with, would (glaring at your shoes) murmer “Yes’m, i’ll sure try”.
The new Nyquist column is precisely on topic with this thread –it begins:
The last surviving work of classical antiquity, The Consolation of Philosophy, was written by Ancius Boethius (c. A.D. 480-524), a Roman official imprisoned in the wake of a political conspiracy. The Consolation was the most influential philosophical book of the Middle Ages. In it, the doomed prisoner reflects on the real meaning of life:
By Boethius’ time the Roman Empire was done for –unremarkable, just history, except it IS remarkable how very many generations of post-republic politically inept vulgarians lived so well behind a good early-established military institution. the Roman Centurion just kept on keeping on buying his civilian bosses time to get their act back together. But nobody can stand on one leg forever.
solovyev/20; Who will demand what, exactly, in exchange for his favors? –the gauleiter system ain’t so bad, if you is a gauleiter.
When it became possible for elected officials to hide expenditures in a voluminous budget that the public could not read, then it became possible to use those hidden monies to purchase more votes from various groups, and thus amass more power. So, it really makes no difference whether Whiskey or Murray is correct (a chicken/egg analogy) there was a weekness that was exploited with money from the government. Once the process began, the end result was fairly inevitable since there were those who welcomed the changes and those who thought that they could ride the tiger.
@ 22. Willie G
and those who thought that they could ride the tiger.
Tiger? More like an overgrown weasel. Even considered cute, but its odor, it’s cyanide. Dunno whose brilliant idea was it to have a Narcissus in Chief… Maybe they still think they can pull the BC and pull the plug if push comes to shove and the NoC misbehaves. It was all very linear to them.
Buddy/21,
there can be only this many gauleiter.
Every week I get the letters in my mailbox from the American Museum of Natural History and the Frick collection and the Jewish Museum and the Noguchi Museum and Living Memorial to the Holocaust Museum and the New York Botanical Garden. They ask where is my membership renewal? In my stomach I feel like I do when I see the ads for the ASPCA with the desperate puppies and kittens. If we do not support what makes us civilized then who will? The circle draws closer and the choices become harder. Obama wants no competition from private charity. Families will look at the children and ask who can go to college? Families will look at the family pet and ask can we afford this?
Whiskey,
Your point and the one presented by Charles Murray are not that far off. In olden days children were viewed as wealth. It wasn’t just a sign of the ability to feed them, but as a means to feeding period. Of course, in one’s old age one could then count on the children to return the parental generosity. Now, listen to conversation, and children are more often viewed not as a blessing but as a curse and a wealth sink.
If you know any Catholic farmers you know very well their family reunions are huge — there is a reason for that and to claim it is lack of condoms puts the the carriage first.
Now, since most workers in the West generate and capture wealth unimaginable in earlier days children are no longer necessary — we can just hire someone in a home to take care of us when we need to be fed & changed.
Bill Bennett observed that parents don’t turn babies into adults, babies turn old adolescents into adults.
I saw the movie “Stepbrother” recently and while the movie is AN exaggeration it isn’t by much.
A helpful antidote to a personality dependent on the state is a proper narrative. Here is a sunday prayer song which provides one.
twoby/23; that’s what nights of the long knives are for
I’ve been reading lately not just about how the Nazi party came to power, but how they immediately began to gather up folks they regarded as problematic and plop’em down in gated communities… for their own protection. Oddly, the parents of a number of children who had been placed in homes for the mentally retarded – the management of which institutions was taken over by the National Socialist Party , began to receive notices that, sadly, their child had developed a severe case of pneumonia, and, well, incurably died, and here are the ashes in this cheap cardboard box.
Curiously, this same accelerated mortality seemed to be singling out chronically ill German veterans of the Great War, whose care was coincidentally defined as a drain on the state’s resources.
Intriguing how the aims of the state can so conveniently converge with the unfortunate failure of certain troublesome patients to thrive.
Astonishing that the veteran Hitler tossed aside his peers.
I maintain that the ‘design margin’ of the contemporary first world is among the elderly.
An amazing stack of stats turn on a dime IF you can disappear mom and dad.
Look at the demographics of Soviet 1990′s.
there’s some insane stat out there –a truth, not a made-up, from some statistical studies organization not Joe’s Blog –that something like half the money an average person spends on medical care his entire life is spent in his last month.
the Nazi eugenics & genocide “programs” were inevitable, once the doctrine of logic, efficiency, and the state became an idol.
the Nazi eugenic programs WERE socialized medicine. no less, no more. They learned the politics of eugenics in the 1930′s from American intellectuals.
Yes, there is a big charitable foundation named after the doyen of the movement. names escapes, but Hillary just a week or two spoke at the foundation’s annual meeting. hell, was it “PLanned Parenthood” ?