Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXVI. Pets and Pope Francis, the man who can't get a break. Pangur Bán. Warped Hollywood. Ghislane? The return of Boston marriages. Khardasian Attention Disorder
There's no such thing as "fur babies"
Before I go into that, I'm going to note that one of the things about Pope Francis is that he tends to be incredibly hard to pigeonhole, even though his fans and critics love to go around doing just that. And here we have just such an example. Only weeks away from making it pretty clear that the Latin Tridentine Mass needs to be a thing of the past, as far as he's concerned, and while he's the Bishop of Rome, he says something that's radically. . . traditional.
Here's what he said, in so far as I tell, as I can't find a full transcript of his remarks.
Today ... we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child.
Sometimes they have one, and that's it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.
This may make people laugh, but it is a reality.
[This] "is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity", he added.
Oh you know where this is going to go. . .
Right away I saw predictable "I'm not selfish, it's my deep abiding love of the environment. . . "
Yeah, whatever.
Apparently there were a fair number of comments of that type, as a subsequent article on this topic found that, nope, most childless couples are childless as they don't want children, not because of their deep abiding concern about the environment.
Indeed, tropes like that are just that, tropes. People tend to excuse or justify conduct that they engage in that they are uncomfortable excusing for self-centered or materialistic reasons for more ennobled ones, or even for ones that just aren't attributed to something greater, in some sense.
Not everyone, mind you, you will find plenty of people who don't have children and justify that on that basis alone. Indeed, in the 70s through the mid 90s, I think that was basically what the justification was, to the extent that people felt they needed one. More recently that seems to have changed, although there are plenty of people who will simply state they don't want children as they're focused on what the personally want, rather than some other goal. Others, however, have to attribute it, for some reason to a cause du jour. In the 80s it was the fear of nuclear war, I recall. Now it's the environment, although it was somewhat then as well. I suppose for a tiny minority of people, that's actually true, but only a minority.
Whatever it is, the reaction to the Pope's statement will cause and is causing a minor firestorm. Oh, but it'll get better.
The same Pope has already made some Catholic conservatives mad by his comments equating destroying the environment with sin. And there's a certain section of the Trad and Rad Trad Catholic community that's unwilling to credit Pope Francis with anything, even though he says some extremely traditional things, particularly in this area.
A comment like this one, if it had been made by Pope Benedict, would have sparked commentary on the Catholic internet and podcasts for at least a time. There's no way that Patrick Coffin or Dr. Taylor Marshall wouldn't have commented on it, and run with it in that event.
Will they now?
Well, they ought to.
Am I going to?
No, not really.
I could be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.
The Pope's point will be difficult for the childless to really grasp. I don't think I became fully adult until we had children, really. People who don't have children don't really know what its like to, I think. And I think that probably includes even those who grew up in large families.
At any rate, I have a bit of a different point, that being my ongoing one about the industrialization of female labor. In no small part, in my view, childless couples in general have come about as our modern industrialized society emphasizes that everyone's principal loyalty should be to their workplace or a career, without question. As put by Col. Saito in the epic The Bridge On The River Kwai, people are to be "happy in their work".
That means that they don't have time for children, they believe, and moreover the children are societal obstacles to the concept that the only thing that matters is career. It's the one place that ardent capitalist and ardent socialist come together. And, as its often noted, particularly by both working mothers and folks like Bernie Sanders, it's difficult to be both a mother and worker, with it being my guess that the more education that goes into a woman's career, the more this is the case. Society, and by that we mean every industrialized society, has no solutions to this, and there probably aren't any. About the only one that Sanders and his ilk can come up with is warehousing children sort of like chickens at the Tyson farms.
It's also a lie, of course. Careers, by and large, don't make people fulfilled or happy, for the most part, although there are certainly individual exceptions. Statistical data more than demonstrates that.
The Pope, by the way, is not against pets.
Messe ocus Pangur Bán,
cechtar nathar fria saindán;
bíth a menma-sam fri seilgg,
mu menma céin im saincheirdd
Caraim-se fos, ferr cach clú,
oc mu lebrán léir ingnu;
ní foirmtech frimm Pangur bán,
caraid cesin a maccdán.
Ó ru·biam — scél cen scís —
innar tegdais ar n-óendís,
táithiunn — díchríchide clius —
ní fris tarddam ar n-áthius.
Gnáth-húaraib ar gressaib gal
glenaid luch inna lín-sam;
os mé, du·fuit im lín chéin
dliged n-doraid cu n-dronchéill.
Fúachid-sem fri frega fál
a rosc anglése comlán;
fúachimm chéin fri fégi fis
mu rosc réil, cesu imdis,
Fáelid-sem cu n-déne dul
hi·n-glen luch inna gérchrub;
hi·tucu cheist n-doraid n-dil,
os mé chene am fáelid.
Cía beimmi amin nach ré,
ní·derban cách ar chéle.
Maith la cechtar nár a dán,
subaigthius a óenurán.
Hé fesin as choimsid dáu
in muid du·n-gní cach óenláu;
du thabairt doraid du glé
for mu mud céin am messe.I and Pangur Bán, each of us two at his special art:
his mind at hunting (mice), my own mind is in my special craft.
I love to rest—better than any fame—at my booklet with diligent science:
not envious of me is Pangur Bán: he himself loves his childish art.
When we are—tale without tedium—in our house, we two alone,
we have—unlimited (is) feat-sport—something to which to apply our acuteness.
It is customary at times by feat of valour, that a mouse sticks in his net,
and for me there falls into my net a difficult dictum with hard meaning.
His eye, this glancing full one, he points against the wall-fence:
I myself against the keenness of science point my clear eye, though it is very feeble.
He is joyous with speedy going where a mouse sticks in his sharp-claw:
I too am joyous, where I understand a difficult dear question.
Though we are thus always, neither hinders the other:
each of us two likes his art, amuses himself alone.
He himself is the master of the work which he does every day:
while I am at my own work, (which is) to bring difficulty to clearness.
I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
The Values candidates
While I’m at it, I'm developing a deep suspicion of conservative candidates and figures that express certain highly conservative social positions but don't quite seem to adhere to them in their own lives. This coming from somebody who is obviously highly socially conservative themselves.
This comes to mind in the context of "family values", "protecting the family" and the like. I see and read stuff like that from conservatives all the time. So if you are saying that you strongly value the family, and protecting the family, etc., why don't you have one?
Now, some people are no doubt deeply shocked by that question, but it's a legitimate one, and I'm not the first person to raise it. If a person might ask if I seriously expect people to answer the question, well I do.
Now, in complete fairness, all sorts of people don't have children for medical reasons. But more often than that, if a couple don't have them, they don't want them. That's what's up with that. And you really can't campaign on your deep love of the family if you are foreclosing that part of the family in your own lives, absent some really good reason. More often than not, the reason is money and career.
Recently I saw, for example, a statement that a person is deeply committed to family and loves spending time with their nieces. Well, everyone likes spending time, for the most part, with nieces and nephews. That's not even remotely similar to having children, however. Not at all.
I'll go one further on this and note this as I do.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
Luke, 16:10.
I note this as some of the conservative value candidates, if you look into their backgrounds, have question marks that should give pause for the reason noted above. If a person doesn't keep to their principals in small things, or basic things, why would they keep them on anything else?
One conservative candidate that I'm aware of, when you look up that person's background, was born of an ethnicity that's overwhelmingly Catholic and went to Catholic schools growing up. That person was undoubtedly a Catholic. That didn't preclude, however, the candidate from getting divorced and remarried to another person who was divorced.
Now, that's quite common in our society, but it's completely contrary to the Catholic faith without some explanation. Maybe there is one. I don't know, but it's a fair question, just as it would be if a Jewish candidate grew up in an Orthodox household but operates a delicatessen featuring ham. That may seem odd, but if you are willing to compromise on small things, you'll get around to the big ones, if the small ones also express a deep principle.
If you won't compromise on small things, or things that are represented as elemental to your declared world view, you are dependable in a crisis. On the other hand, if you participated in a faith, and were educated by it, and okay with its elements, and it formed part of your worldview . . right up until you had to do something difficult and chose the easier path. . . well, there's no real reason to believe that haven gotten there once, you won't do it again.
The candidate, I'd note, has been stone-cold silent on the insurrection. From that, you can tell the candidate knows it was an insurrection, but is unwilling to say diddly.
The Primordal Connection
Back to pets for a second, one added thing I think about them is that for a lot of people, they're the last sole remaining contact with nature they have.
There are lots of animal species that live in close contact with each other and depend on each other. We're one. We cooperated with wolves, and they became dogs as they helped us hunt. Cats took us in (not the other way around) as we're dirty, and we attract mice. We domesticated horses, camels and reindeer for transportation. And so on.
We miss them.
One more way that technology and modern industrialization has ruined things. Cats and dogs remind us of what we once were.
And could be, again.
Warped legacies
An awful lot of what the Pope is tapping into has to deal with the combined factors of moderns forgetting what, well, sex is for, and what its implications are, and that root morality and human nature remain unchanged. There are probably more generations between modern house cats and Pangur Bán than there are between your ancestors who were waking up each morning in the Piacenzian and you.
Which takes us to men, behaving badly, and everyone turning a blind eye.
And, of course, Sex and the City.
She is fiercely protective of Carrie Bradshaw and livid that she and everyone else at the show has been put into this position, It is not about the money, but rather her legacy. Carrie was all about helping women and now, under her watch, women are saying that they have been hurt.
Sarah Jessica Parker on the scandal involving James Noth.
M'eh.
A note from Wikipedia regarding the series:
When the series premiered, the character was praised by critics as a positive example of an independent woman in the vein of Mary Richards. However, retrospective analysis tends to place more emphasis on the character's repeated and often unrepentant infidelities, with many critics instead viewing her as narcissistic.
Carrie was about helping women? Well, excuse me if that was deluded.
Scary legacies
This news item came out the same day, I'd note, that Ghislane Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking. And by that we mean procuring underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.
Eew, ick.
Connection? Well, none directly.
Or maybe. More narcissism and obsession with unrestrained desire, or lust.
It sort of seems that you can't unleash this without it oozing out as filth sooner or later.
On Maxwell, because I tend to get my news by reading, I'm left perplexed by how a person says her first name, Ghislaine. I have no idea. I heard it on the nightly news the other day, but the spelling is so odd, I immediately forgot how to pronounce it.
Boston Marriages
What is a Platonic life partnership? These couples are breaking societal relationship norms
Platonic Partnerships Are On The Rise, So I Spoke To These Friends Who Have Chosen To Live The Rest Of Their Lives Together
"I don't think our love and commitment together should pale in comparison to romantic love."
post. Let's take a look:
But there is more to look at here.Another extremely orthodox cleric but one of an extremely intellectual bent, and who is therefore sometimes not very predictable, is Father Hugh Barbour, O. Pream. I note that as his comment on same gender attraction in women was mentioned earlier here and came out in a direction that most would not suspect in the context of a "Boston Marriage". Father Barbour did not license illicit sexual contact, i.e., sex outside of marriage, in any context either, but he did have a very nuanced view of attraction between women that's almost wholly unique in some ways. Like the discussion above, but in a more nuanced form, it gets into the idea that modern society is so bizarrely sexually focused that its converted the concept of attraction to absolute need, failing to grasp the nature of nearly everything, and sexualized conduct that need not be. Barbour issued an interesting opinion related to this back in 2013, at which time there had just been a huge demonstration in France regarding the redefinition of the nature of marriage.Katherine Coman and Katherine Lee Bates who lived together as female housemates for over twenty years in a "Wellesley Marriage", something basically akin to what's called a Boston Marriage today. Named for Wellesley College, due to its association with it, Wellesley Marriages were arrangements of such type between academic women, where as Boston Marriages more commonly features such arrangements between women of means. Barbour noted these types of arrangements in a basically approving fashion, noting that its only in modern society when these arrangements are seemingly nearly required to take on a sexual aspect, which of course he did not approve of.
Hmmm. . . .
Men and women who don't marry have always been unusual, but the sexualization of everything in the post Hefner world has made their situation considerably more difficult, really. Society has gone from an expectation that the young and single would abstain from sex until married to the position that there must be something wrong with them if they are not. This has gone so far as to almost require same gender roommates, past their college years, to engage in homosexual sex. I.e, two women or two men living together in their college years is no big deal, but if they're doing it by their 30s, they're assumed to be gay and pretty much pressured to act accordingly.
Truth be known, not everyone always matches the median on everything, as we will know. For some reason, this has been unacceptable in this are as society became more and more focused on sex.
At one time, the phenomenon of the lifelong bachelor or "spinster" wasn't that uncommon, and frankly it didn't bear the stigma that people now like to believe. It was harder for women than for men, however, without a doubt. People felt sorry for women that weren't married by their early 30s and often looked for ways to arrange a marriage for them, a fair number of such women ultimately agreeing to that status, with probably the majority of such societally arranged marriages working out. Some never did, however.
For men, it was probably more common, and it was just assumed that things hadn't worked out. After their early 30s a certain "lifelong bachelor" cache could attach to it, with the reality of it not tending to match the image, but giving societal approval to it. In certain societies it was particularly common, such as in the famed Garrison Keillor "Norwegian Bachelor Farmer" instance or in the instance of similar persons in Ireland, where it was very common for economic reasons.
People didn't tend to assume such people were homosexual, and they largely were not. Indeed, again contrary to what people now assume, except for deeply closeted people or people who had taken up certain occupations in order to hide it, people tended to know who actually was homosexual.
I can recall all of this being the case when I was a kid. My grandmother's neighbor was a bachelor his entire life who worked as an electrician. After he came home from a Japanese Prisoner of War camp following World War Two, he just wanted to keep to himself. A couple of my mother's aunts were lifelong single women and, at least in one case, one simply didn't want to marry as she didn't want children, and the other had lost a fiancé right after World War One and never went on to anyone else. Her secretary desk is now in my office. In none of these instances would anyone have accused these individuals of being homosexual.
Taking this one step further, some people in this category did desire the close daily contact of somebody they were deeply friends with, in love with if you will, but that need not be sexual. Love between women and love between men can and does exist without it having a sexual component. Interestingly, it is extremely common and expected when we are young and up into our 20s, but after that society operates against it. People form deep same gender relationships in schools, on sporting fields, in barracks and in class.
Some of those people won't marry, and there's no reason that their friendships shouldn't continue on in the post college roommate stage.
Well, society won't have it as everything needs to be about sex, all the time. Haven't you watched The Big Bang Theory?
Tatting for attention?
Like, enough already?
Apparently Salena Gomez has a bleeding rose tattoo. I don't get that either, but I'm sure that piles of ink will be spilled on it.
Footnotes:
It would be worth noting here that early on a female researching on Hefner's early publications noted how much of it was actually in the nature of barely disguised child pornography, with cartoons particularly depicting this. This lead to an investigation in Europe, and the magazine rapidly stopped it, but it's interesting in that the magazine was so debased that it not only portrayed women as stupid, sterile, top-heavy, and nymphomaniacs, but also underage.
The impact however had been created, and by the 1970s the full on sexual exploitation of child models was on. As debased as society has become, it's at least retreated from this.
