"This is less radical than it may first appear. Indeed, there have been key times in our recent history - when our countries were flourishing - that all of the items on the above list were the norm. "
In your opinion, is their an underlying reason that there was a shift away from the items you listed at the end?
Yes, but if the question is why has society become more progressive in the last 300 years that’s a bit too grand of a question to dive into without writing new essays. I believe that Curtis Yarvin’s explanation is probably true and a large part of it
EXCELLENT piece. I really appreciated it. Thought provoking and more!
As a father of 3 little kids with a stay at home wife I take a huge amount of pride that I can provide for them and not have my wife work, but it is clear many (especially working) women do not see other stay-at-home mothers as socially valuable.
Not the first to float this idea but if you are paying daycare or a nanny say $15/hour to oversee/watch/raise (choose whatever verb you'd like) your child(ren) the mother of the family asks if her value is worth more than $15/hour and that's that. There are so many extreme fallacies in adopting this hyper-capitalist model I won't begin to list them.
Obviously we would wish to live under a government that enables, aides, and appreciates larger families but government policy is hard to change. What we can do from a personal level is truly admire our contemporaries that do have larger families. I have peers that have 3 kids but I honestly cannot even think of a single couple I know that has 4+. I think we should start at home, local, and really venerate the parents with 4+ children when possible among our respective social circles.
Brilliant as an analysis of the problem, but I don't think it is a coincidence that you give the solution in point form and read it so fast it's hard to even hear it. I think you know that the solution is no solution, as it would merely roll back the course of history. But history doesn't roll back; it only moves forward to something new, which might resemble some past but isn't exactly. This is why I'm not a Liberal, but I'm not a Conservative either. One always wants to destroy the present; the other always wants to go back to some perceived better past. If you zoom out from centuries to millennia, what we are witnessing is the transition from democracy to tyranny that Plato describes in The Republic, where he explains how democracy, the second worst form of government, inexorably devolves into tyranny. Tyranny is something worse than merely autocracy, communism, or fascism. Tyranny is literally the rule of an arbitrary tyrant who does not even have a goal. I think THAT is what we are headed towards, and there is no automatic course change and no way out of it. A civilization starts as high as its founders aim for, and what follows is a gradual slide of political entropy. Then again, we could aim as high as a full Republic (in Plato's sense), and we could do it (start again) now. But that takes a revolution —not necessarily a bloody revolution, but a revolution non-the-less. Trying to hit the brakes or going into reverse gear is never going to work.
"This is less radical than it may first appear. Indeed, there have been key times in our recent history - when our countries were flourishing - that all of the items on the above list were the norm. "
In your opinion, is their an underlying reason that there was a shift away from the items you listed at the end?
Yes, but if the question is why has society become more progressive in the last 300 years that’s a bit too grand of a question to dive into without writing new essays. I believe that Curtis Yarvin’s explanation is probably true and a large part of it
EXCELLENT piece. I really appreciated it. Thought provoking and more!
As a father of 3 little kids with a stay at home wife I take a huge amount of pride that I can provide for them and not have my wife work, but it is clear many (especially working) women do not see other stay-at-home mothers as socially valuable.
Not the first to float this idea but if you are paying daycare or a nanny say $15/hour to oversee/watch/raise (choose whatever verb you'd like) your child(ren) the mother of the family asks if her value is worth more than $15/hour and that's that. There are so many extreme fallacies in adopting this hyper-capitalist model I won't begin to list them.
Obviously we would wish to live under a government that enables, aides, and appreciates larger families but government policy is hard to change. What we can do from a personal level is truly admire our contemporaries that do have larger families. I have peers that have 3 kids but I honestly cannot even think of a single couple I know that has 4+. I think we should start at home, local, and really venerate the parents with 4+ children when possible among our respective social circles.
Couldn’t agree more. And very glad you enjoyed it. More audio coming!
Brilliant as an analysis of the problem, but I don't think it is a coincidence that you give the solution in point form and read it so fast it's hard to even hear it. I think you know that the solution is no solution, as it would merely roll back the course of history. But history doesn't roll back; it only moves forward to something new, which might resemble some past but isn't exactly. This is why I'm not a Liberal, but I'm not a Conservative either. One always wants to destroy the present; the other always wants to go back to some perceived better past. If you zoom out from centuries to millennia, what we are witnessing is the transition from democracy to tyranny that Plato describes in The Republic, where he explains how democracy, the second worst form of government, inexorably devolves into tyranny. Tyranny is something worse than merely autocracy, communism, or fascism. Tyranny is literally the rule of an arbitrary tyrant who does not even have a goal. I think THAT is what we are headed towards, and there is no automatic course change and no way out of it. A civilization starts as high as its founders aim for, and what follows is a gradual slide of political entropy. Then again, we could aim as high as a full Republic (in Plato's sense), and we could do it (start again) now. But that takes a revolution —not necessarily a bloody revolution, but a revolution non-the-less. Trying to hit the brakes or going into reverse gear is never going to work.