Brian H — social controls used to exist in what Hillary terms “the village” it takes to raise a child. Older women and social circles would press women to make wiser choices than purely ones driven by status and testosterone. Just as men were pressed to make choices beyond pure physical beauty.

But, women make the fundamental choices. So they are usually where traditional societies placed the most guiding of choices.

One of the negative consequences of Western/modern life is the atomizing of individuals without mediating institutions. Qutb and others may have been nasty pieces of work, but as outsiders they certainly DID nail that aspect of modern Western life — rootless, disconnected, no sense of community and family and tradition and belonging and CONTROL over ordinary people’s lives.

In many ways this lack of control is good. It gave us Apple Computer, Linux, genetically engineered treatments, DNA analysis, most modern medicine and science, the airplane, and more. However, the guiding principal in Western/modern life is isolation, loneliness, and lack of any real social control on behavior even obviously negative ones.

Even thinkers fundamentally warped in their analysis of Western society (Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and Qutb) can have some insight into our ills, simply by being outsiders. This lack of social cohesion/control in any meaningful way is one of them.