Harrison Butker telling us what we don't want to hear.

I'd never heard of Harrison Butker before this past week.

That should be no surprise.  I'm a lot more likely to know the name of a football player of the 1970s, when I was growing up and football was background audio and visual in my household, than I am to know of anyone now.  From high school graduation until early in my marriage, I didn't see a single football game from stem to stern in any fashion, as I don't like football.

I first heard of Butker when he was mentioned on Twitter, where I disregarded the entry. But then my daughter mentioned this speech, in a horrified fashion, and a quite liberal female friend of mine posted about it in hostile terms on Instagram.

So I looked it up, and I've repeated it, for purposes of commentary, below.

Let me start off with something controversial.

I don't think it's a bad speech.

What I think it does is tell us a bunch of things we know, but in our modern world, flat out don't want to hear.

I'll also note that Mr. Butker didn't intend for us to hear this, really, in the first place. This was a graduation speech to Benedictine College, which most people have never heard of.  I may have heard of it, but I didn't really know anything about it. As the name would indicate, it's a Catholic institution, and the fact that so few of us have heard of it would note that it's not very large.

I'll break the speech down in chunks, when I feel like commenting on it.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2024, I would like to start off by congratulating all of you for successfully making it to this achievement today. I'm sure your high school graduation was not what you had imagined and most likely neither was your first couple years of college.

By making it to this moment through all the adversity thrown your way from COVID, I hope you learned the important lessons that suffering in this life is only temporary. As a group you witnessed firsthand how bad leaders who don't stay in their lane can have a negative impact on society. It is through this lens that I want to take stock of how we got to where we are and where we want to go as citizens, and yes, as Catholics.

The "bad leaders" is an interesting comment.  A lot of people will instantly think Biden, although he wasn't in office for the thick of the pandemic, Trump was. Trump doesn't get high marks for the pandemic.

Maybe he means state officials.  I know that here a lot of people were apoplectic when Gov. Gordon imposed quarantines and still think that COVID was a fib. 

The pandemic oddly remains a right wing dog whisle.

One last thing before I begin I want to be sure to thank president Minns and the board for their invitation to speak. When President Minnis first reached out a couple of months ago I had originally said no. You see, last year I gave the commencement address at my Alma moer Georgia Tech and I felt that one graduation speech was more than enough, especially for someone who isn't a professional speaker. But of course president Minnis used his gift of persuasion and spoke to the many challenges you all faced throughout the COVID fiasco and how you missed out on so many milestones the rest of us older people have taken for granted.

Again, "COVID fiasco"? 

While COVID might have played a large role throughout your formative years it is not unique. Bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder. Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I'm sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice. He is not alone. From the man behind the COVID lockdowns to the people pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America, they all have a glaring thing in common: They are Catholic. This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn't cut it.

Again, "bad policies and poor leadership".  Trump or somebody else?  But here's where he really starts getting in trouble.  He calls  abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia and unnamed, degenerate cultural values and media disordered.

And he's correct. Those things are in fact disordered.

These are the sorts of things we are told in polite society to not bring up. You know, the difficult and unpleasant things. But if we are going to be men and women for this time in history we need to stop pretending that the “Church of nice” is a winning proposition. We must always speak and act in charity but never mistake charity for cowardice. It is safe to say that over the past few years I've gained quite the reputation for speaking my mind. I never envisioned myself nor wanted to have this sort of a platform but God has given it to me so I have no other choice but to embrace it and preach more hard truths about accepting your lane and staying in it.

Here again, even if we are told not to bring these topics he's raising up by the "polite", people who do bring them up will be shouted down, including Butker himself.  He's also correct that being the "Church of nice" is a losing proposition. 

As members of the church founded by Jesus Christ, it is our duty and ultimately privilege to be authentically and unapologetically Catholic. Don't be mistaken: even within the church, people in polite Catholic circles will try to persuade you to remain silent. There even was an award-winning film called “Silence” made by a fellow Catholic wherein one of the main characters, a Jesuit priest, abandoned the church, and as an apostate, when he died is seen grasping a crucifix quiet and unknown to anyone but God. As a friend of Benedictine College, his Excellency Bishop Robert Barron said in his review of the film it was exactly what the cultural elite want to see in Christianity: Private, hidden away and harmless.

I haven't seen Silence, but so I won't comment on it, but here Butker has a point, although its a fading one.  It's not so much, really, that Trad Catholics, or the highly orthodox, will be told to be kept quiet, but in really open declarations, outright attacked.  Butker is experiencing that right now.

As an odd example, Catholics in general are not howling with outrage at Joe Biden's actions which are clearly offensive to the faith, while some who wish to be as American as possible are shouting down Butker. 

Our Catholic faith has always been countercultural. Our Lord along with countless followers were all put to death for their adherence to her teachings. The world around us says that we should keep our beliefs to ourselves whenever they go against the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion. We fear speaking truth because now unfortunately truth is in the minority. Congress just passed a bill where stating something as basic as the Biblical teaching of who killed Jesus could land you in jail.

Here Butker strays off into populist conspiracy territory. The bill he noted that was designed to protect Jewish Americans doesn't require any modification of beliefs or statements at all. And for that matter, the conventional Catholic view in that humanity, i.e., we, or us, were Christ's killers.   The unique attribution of that action to the Jews misunderstands the Gospels, with that misunderstanding having formed an excuse for antisemitism for centuries.

He is correct, however, that standing against certain widely advanced cultural trends will get a person attacked in public.

But make no mistake, before we even attempt to fix any of the issues plaguing society we must first get our own house in order, and it starts with our leaders. The bishops and priests appointed by God as our spiritual fathers must be rightly ordered. There is not enough time today for me to list all the stories of priests and bishops misleading their flocks, but none of us can blame ignorance anymore and just blindly proclaim that that's what father said. Because sadly many priests we are looking to for leadership are the same ones who prioritize their hobbies or even photos with their dogs in matching outfits for the parish directory. It’s easy for us lay men and women to think that in order for us to be holy, that we must be active in our parish and try to fix it. Yes, we absolutely should be involved in supporting our parishes, but we cannot be the source for our parish priests to lean on to help with their problems just as we look at the relationship between a father and his son, so too should we look at the relationship between a priest and his people. It would not be appropriate for me to always be looking to my son for help when it is my job as his father to lead him.

St Josemaria Escriva states that priests are ordained to serve and should not yield to temptation to imitate lay people but to be priests, through and through. Tragically, so many priests revolve much of their happiness from the adulation they receive from their parishioners, and in searching for this, they let their guard down and become overly familiar. This undue familiarity will prove to be problematic every time, because as my teammate’s girlfriend says “familiarity breeds contempt.” St Josemaria continues that some want to see the priest as just another man. That is not so they want to find in the priests those virtues proper to every Christian and indeed every honorable man: understanding, justice, a life of work, priestly work in this instance, and good manners. It is not prudent as the laity for us to consume ourselves in becoming amateur theologians so that we can decipher this or that theological teaching unless of course you are a theology major. We must be intentional with our focus on our state in life and our own vocation, and for most of us, that's as married men and women.

There's something to this, but this really seems over played, particularly in the case of parish priests, but also in the case of a lot of bishops as well. 

Still we have so many great resources at our fingertips that it doesn't take long to find traditional and timeless teachings that haven't been ambiguously rewarded for our times. Plus, there are still many good and holy priests and it's up to us to seek them out. The chaos of the world is unfortunately reflected in the chaos in our parishes and sadly in our cathedrals, too. As we saw during the pandemic, too many Bishops were not leaders at all. They were motivated by fear: fear of being sued, fear of being removed, fear of being disliked. They showed by their actions, intentional or unintentional, that the sacraments don't actually matter. Because of this countless people died alone, without access to the sacraments, and it's a tragedy we must never forget.

As Catholics, we can look to so many examples of heroic shepherds who gave their lives for their people, and ultimately, the church. We cannot buy into the lie that the things we experienced during COVID were appropriate. Over the centuries there have been great wars, great famines, and yes, even great diseases, all that came with a level of lethality and danger. But in each of those examples, church leaders leaned into their vocations, and ensured that their people received the sacraments. Great saints like St. Damien of Molokai, who knew the dangers of his ministry, stayed for 11 years as a spiritual leader to the leper colonies of Hawaii. His heroism is looked at today as something set apart and unique, when ideally, it should not be unique at all. For as a father loves his child, so a shepherd should love his spiritual children, too.

That goes even more so for our bishops. These men who are present day apostles, our bishops once had adoring crowds of people kissing their rings and taking in their every word, but now relegate themselves to a position of inconsequential existence. Now, when a bishop of a diocese or the Bishops Conference as a whole puts out an important document on this matter, nobody even takes a moment to read it, let alone follow it. No. Today, our shepherds are far more concerned with keeping the doors open to the Chancery than they are saying that difficult stuff out loud. It seems that the only time you hear from your bishops is when it’s time for the annual appeal. Whereas we need our bishops to be vocal about the teachings of the Church, setting aside their own personal comfort and embracing their cross. Our bishops are not politicians, but shepherds. So instead of fitting in the world by going along to get along, they too need to stay in their lane and lead.

Again, something to this, but much overplayed. 

I say all of this not from a place of anger as we get the leaders we deserve. But this does make me reflect on staying in my lane and focusing on my own vocation, and how I can be a better father and husband and live in the world, but not be of it. Focusing on my vocation while praying and fasting for these men will do more for the church than me complaining about our leaders. Because there seems to be so much confusion coming from our leaders. There needs to be concrete examples for people to look to, and places like Benedictine, a little Kansas college built high on a bluff above the Missouri River, are showing the world how an ordered Christ-centered existence is the recipe for success. You need to look no further than the examples all around this campus, where over the past 20 years enrollment has doubled, and construction and revitalization are a constant part of life and people, the students, the faculty and staff are thriving. This didn’t happen by chance. In a deliberate movement to embrace traditional Catholic values, Benedictine has gone from just another liberal arts school with nothing to set it apart to a thriving beacon of light and a reminder to us all that when you embrace tradition, success, worldly and spiritual will follow. I am certain the reporters at the AP could not have imagined that their attempt to rebuke and embarrass places and people like those here at Benedictine wouldn’t be met with anger, but instead with excitement and pride. Not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it. But the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the Holy Ghost to glorify Him.

This is the point at which Butker begins to make some interesting observations, and where he also begins to take sniping from the progressive gallery.  Let's break some of this down.  First, this;  "I say all of this not from a place of anger as we get the leaders we deserve. But this does make me reflect on staying in my lane and focusing on my own vocation, and how I can be a better father and husband and live in the world, but not be of it. Focusing on my vocation while praying and fasting for these men will do more for the church than me complaining about our leaders."

That' is the classic Catholic view, and he really can't be faulted for much of what he says here.  He's not calling for marching in the streets, at least not here.

He goes on to note how conservative Catholic institutions are on the rise, and he is correct.

The he stated; "Not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it. But the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the Holy Ghost to glorify Him."

The off handed reference to "Pride Month" drew criticism.  But frankly, anyway you look at it, we now have so many months that they become pointless unless backed up by compulsion. We've written on this before:

On Pride Month, the nature of Pride, and compelling opinions.

Additionally, as we've also noted before, being "proud" of your sexual orientation is an extremely odd concept.  Pride?  If, as homosexuals insist, although its not really solidly backed up by the science, sexual orientation is programmed in, then a person could not really bear any pride for it as it wouldn't be an achievement of any type. 

Reading that article now shared all over the world, we see that in the complete surrender of self and a turning towards Christ, you will find happiness. Right here in a little town in Kansas, we find many inspiring lay people using their talents. President Minnis, Dr. Swofford and Dr. Zimmer are a few great examples right here on this very campus that will keep the light of Christ burning bright for generations to come. Being locked in with your vocation and staying in your lane is going to be the surest way for you to find true happiness and peace in this life. It is essential that we focus on our own state in life, whether that be as a layperson or priests, or religious.

Oh my, he makes a radical suggestion, that being;  "Being locked in with your vocation and staying in your lane is going to be the surest way for you to find true happiness and peace in this life. It is essential that we focus on our own state in life, whether that be as a layperson or priests, or religious."

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2024, you are sitting at the edge of the rest of your lives. Each of you has the potential to leave a legacy that transcends yourselves and this era of human existence. In the small ways by living out your vocation, you will ensure that God’s Church continues and the world is enlightened by your example. For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you, how many of you are sitting here now about to cross the stage, and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you’re going to get in your career. Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.

Butker might be guessing too much, but he raises a real point.  Whether the women at Benedictine University are looking forward to marriage and children consciously is one thing.  The fact is that the majority of people who are not called to celibacy in fact do have it deeply ingrained in them. And the suppression of it is one of the major causes of discontent in the world.  But the concept that this would be true flies in the face of the joint Capitalist/Communist prevailing belief that humans exist for work (careers) and find all fulfillment in it.

The massive great lie of the modern world is just that.  You will be happy in your career and you must have one, and that must dictate your life above all else, at all times.  It was forced upon men first, and then upon women with the feminist revolution of the second half of the 20th Century.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong, of course, with women having careers.  But the truth of the matter is that once the industrial revolution industrialized the work place, it dehumanized it and made it deeply unnatural.  At the end of the day, careers are just work, some of the jobs better than others, and some better suited for their occupants than others. They aren't life.

I’m on this stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me. But it cannot be overstated, that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker. She’s a primary educator to our children. She’s the one who ensures I never let football or my business become a distraction from that of a husband and father. She is the person that knows me best at my core. And it is through our marriage that Lord willing, we will both attain salvation. I say all of this to you because I’ve seen it firsthand how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God’s will in their life. Isabelle’s dream of having a career might not have come true. But if you ask her today, if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud without hesitation and say, “heck no.”

As a man who gets a lot of praise and has been given a platform to speak to audiences like this one today, I pray that I always use my voice for God and not for myself. Everything I am saying to you is not from a place of wisdom, but rather a place of experience. I am hopeful that these words will be seen as those from a man not much older than you who feels it is imperative that this class, this generation, and this time in our society must stop pretending that the things we see around us are normal. Heterodox ideas abound, even within Catholic circles. Let’s be honest, there is nothing good about playing God with having children, whether that be your ideal number or the perfect time to conceive. No matter how you spin it, there is nothing natural about Catholic birth control. It is only in the past few years that I have grown encouraged to speak more boldly and directly, because as I mentioned earlier, I have leaned into my vocation as a husband and father and as a man.

This was bound to raise complaints.  We'll note, once again, what we said earlier:

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

To the gentleman here today, part of what plagues our society is this lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities. As men, we set the tone of the culture. And when that is absent disorder, dysfunction and chaos set in this absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. Other countries do not have nearly the same absentee father rates as we find here in the US. And a correlation can be made in their drastically lower violence rates as well. Be unapologetic in your masculinity. Fight against the cultural emasculation of men. Do hard things. Never settle for what is easy. You might have a talent that you don’t necessarily enjoy. But if it glorifies God, maybe you should lean into that over something that you might think suits you better. I speak from experience as an introvert who now finds myself as an amateur public speaker, and an entrepreneur, something I never thought I’d be when I received my industrial engineering degree.

Here he states another truism; "Other countries do not have nearly the same absentee father rates as we find here in the US. And a correlation can be made in their drastically lower violence rates as well."

Living in a town that has had two (reported) teenage murders in recent weeks where you can read the articles and tell, without being told, that this is almost certainly a factor in what occured, well. . .

This is interesting; "You might have a talent that you don’t necessarily enjoy. But if it glorifies God, maybe you should lean into that over something that you might think suits you better. I speak from experience as an introvert who now finds myself as an amateur public speaker, and an entrepreneur, something I never thought I’d be when I received my industrial engineering degree."

The road ahead is bright, things are changing, society is shifting, and people young and old are embracing tradition. Not only has it been my vocation that has helped me and those closest to me, but not surprising to many of you should be my outspoken embrace of the traditional Latin Mass. I’ve been very vocal in my love and devotion to the TLM and its necessity for our lives. But what I think gets misunderstood is that people who attend the TLM do so out of pride or preference. I can speak to my own experience. But for most people I have come across within these communities. This simply is not true. I do not attend the TLM because I think I’m better than others, or for the smells and bells, or even for the love of Latin. I attend TLM because I believe just as the God of the Old Testament was pretty particular and how he wanted to be worshiped, the same holds true for us today. It is through the TLM that I encountered order and began to pursue it in my own life. Aside from the TLM itself, too many of our sacred traditions have been relegated to things of the past. When in my parish, things such as Ember Days — days when we fast and pray for vocations and for our priests — are still adhered to. The TLM is so essential that I would challenge each of you to pick a place to move where it is readily available. A lot of people have complaints about the parish or the community, but we should not sacrifice the mass for community. I prioritize the TLM even if the parish isn’t beautiful, the priest isn’t great, or the community isn’t amazing. I still go to the TLM because I believe the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is more important than anything else. I say this knowing full well that when each of you rekindle your knowledge and adherence to many of the church’s greatest traditions, you will see how much more colorful and alive your life can and should be. As you move on from this place and enter into the world, know that you will face many challenges.

We've made the same observation here on this site; "The road ahead is bright, things are changing, society is shifting, and people young and old are embracing tradition."

Sadly, I’m sure many of you know of the countless stories of good and active members of this community who after graduation and moving away from the Benedictine Bubble have ended up moving in with their boyfriend or girlfriend prior to marriage. Some even leave the church and abandon God. It is always heartbreaking to hear these stories, and there’s a desire to know what happened and what went wrong. What you must remember is that life is about doing the small things well. So setting yourself up for success and surrounding yourself with people who continually push you to be the best version of you. I say this all the time, that iron sharpens iron. It’s a great reminder that those closest to us should be making us better. If you’re dating someone who doesn’t even share your faith, how do you expect that person to help you become a saint? If your friend group is filled with people who only think about what you’re doing next weekend, and are not willing to have those difficult conversations, how can they help sharpen you? As you prepare to enter into the workforce, it is extremely important that you actually think about the places you are moving to. Who is the bishop? What kind of parishes are there? Do they offer the TLM and have priests who embrace their priestly vocation? Cost of living must not be the only arbiter of your choices. For a life without God is not a life at all. And the cost of salvation is worth more than any career.

I’m excited for the future. And I pray that something I’ve said will resonate as you move on to the next chapter of your life. Never be afraid to profess the one holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. For this is the Church that Jesus Christ established, through which we receive sanctifying grace. I know that my message today had a little less fluff than is expected for these speeches. But I believe that this audience and this venue is the best place to speak openly and honestly, about who we are and where we all want to go, which is heaven. I thank God for Benedictine College, and for the example it provides to the world. I thank God for men like President Minnis who are doing their part for the Kingdom. Come to find out you can have an authentically Catholic College and a thriving football program. Make no mistake, you’re entering into mission territory in a post-God world. But you were made for this and with God by your side and a constant striving for virtue within your vocation, you too can be a saint. Christ is King to the heights.

All in all?

The speech started off badly, but frankly it concluded well, and over half of it is receiving criticism in larger society as it tells people what they don't want to hear. Careerism is crap. Having a career central to your being is a mistake.  Being unnatural is unnatural.

It answers Berry's question; "What are people for", but if he's right, our days are spent in the larger society doing things that are meaningless and counterproductive, if we misunderstand their existential nature.

People who tell you what you don't want to hear, aren't well received, particularly if it's true.¹

 Footnotes:

1.  Predictably, and indeed as Butker's speech even anticipated, he's received criticism from inside the church, including, from a group of the Kanasas Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica. Their reply is below.

This response is interesting in and of itself, starting off with the comment of "Instead of promising unity. . . ".

Christ didn't promise unity.

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three;

a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

Luke 12:53. 

Reading the Sister's reply, it's actually a bit difficult to determine what they are actually upset about, as they don't make it very specific and to some degree support what Butker stated.  The "unity" item is interesting however, as noted.

Beyond that, however, their complaint against what Butker stated doesn't actually counter what he stated.  He didn't say women can't have careers, what he essentially challenged is the secular assurance that women are fulfilled, like men, through careers.  Neither is anywhere close to being true.

Criticism that this group of nuns are flaming radical liberals, which was also made, is also unwarranted.

Related threads:

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On Pride Month, the nature of Pride, and compelling opinions.

Women at work. "Whoever fought, for women to get jobs. . . . why?. . . . why did you do that?" Looking at women (and men) in the workplace, and modern work itself, with a long lens.

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September 3, 2023.

U.S. Rep. Cory Mills, R-Florida, and articles of impeachment, and issue/culture fatigue

Apparently, Rep. Mills has nothing to actually do.  Perhaps somebody can find something for him, so he has real problems to work on.

I can't help but note that District Attorney Willis in Georgia made a suggestion of that type to Representative Jim Jordan, expressing what is undoubtedly a widely held view that people are really tired of Congress acting like a bunch of children all the time.  

Most people are tired of this.  And by that, I mean a Congress that is monkeying around with bills that aren't going anywhere and are of the nature of throwing gasoline on a fire. We know that this impeachment is going nowhere. We know that a recent bill to do away with the Department of Education isn't either. We know that shutting the government down, which is going to happen soon, just causes the government to lose money.

Some people out in the audience of society may believe that all of this serves to get something done, but it sure isn't obvious.  Most people are simply tired.  Of course, this helps whip up a pre convinced base even though nothing is actually going to happen on a lot of these things.

Relating to fatigue, on another topic I posted on, that being the upcoming Synod on Synodality, I suspect a lot of Catholics are tired of this topic:

Dread and the Synod on Synodality.

At some point, constant change and the search to change things wears people down.  A good argument can be made right now that after Covid, and after a lot of people, would just like things to calm down for a while.  That's part of the reason, I suspect, that younger people are looking back to more traditional times, and maybe that the whole culture is, except in certain quarters.

That may explain why the leaders of the Church, or some of them, are keen on a synod on synodality, as difficult as it is to figure out what that means, while globably, in the pews, only at most 2% of Catholics participated in the survey process.  That alone should give the participants in the synod pause, as it may very well mean that the 2% that responded doesn't reflect anywhere near a statistically signficant number of Catholics.  It may well be that the maybe 5% or whatever of Trads in the parish this morning do.

Of course, part of the reason changed, including unwanted ones, occur is that most people are just busy living their lives. That means people who have what a lot of us do not, surplus time, tend to be reflected in change.  In some instances, that's because of the way that people are employed.  It's ofen noticed by some that institutions are resistant to change, but by the same token, change can be forced on members of an institution simply becuase somebody in charge wants to change things, and everyone else just has their shoulder to the wheel and can't really take note until the change arrives.

On people in different quarters, and obviously wanting things to be different, Saturday I was driving up a really busy city street and saw, on the sidewalk headed towards the center of downtown, which was far away, a young woman riding a bicycle.

She was probably around twenty, fairly thin, had a large tattoo running up her side, and was topless.

It was impossible not to see, and I wonder if she had done it before, as quite frankly she looked nervous.  She probably should have, as she wasn't like the late middle-aged woman, now deceased, who used to ride a Vespa around here topless.  It was always a shock to encounter her, but as impolite as it may be to say it, she wasn't attractive. This young woman was, and for any normal male, she was going to be noticed, an impact added to by the fact that she was well-endowed.

My guess is she was headed to David Street Station, where her breasts were going to be oggled at by many.  And the look on her face belied the fact that she no doubt would maintain that she was there to make some other point.

Another reason we really need to put the brakes on things until we take a look at Chesterton's Fence on all sorts of things.

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Indeed, something of this type, although not quite of this type, lead commentator Amy Otto, in an Op Ed written some years ago, to maintain "Men Did Greater Things When It Was Harder To See Boobs".  The caption on the article, which was flippant but which addressed a serious topic, if not idential one, not too surprisingly went viral.

Also not too surprisingly, this is a topic that's been pretty widely studied and the entire observational nature of this is hard-wired into men.  That some don't get this is another defiance of science.

And one putting all the burden, I'd note, on men.  I don't really want to be in the position of taking note of some 20-year-old woman's bare breasts, and I don't want to be seeing something that only a spouse should.  But now I have, and I can't get that back, nor can she, nor can the probably hundreds of men, most with fewer reservations than me, that saw her on Saturday and whose thought went where every they let them go.

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• Updated 44 min ago
• 0

About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever. That's according to new government data posted Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year. But available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II. Experts caution that suicide is complicated, and that recent increases might be driven by higher rates of depression or limited availability of mental health services. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says a main driver is the growing availability of guns.

A horrific story, to be sure.

It occured to me for some reason that all things being equal, a record number would likely to be set every year, as the American population continues to grow.  Having said that, the rates are very high, which is referenced in this article.

Predictably, the reporter blames it on the "growing availability of guns", but firearms have been easy to get throughout American history. Availability has grown from the mid 20th Century, which saw a lot of gun control provisions come in which have later faded, in part due to being found unconstitutional, with the 1970s probably the high watermark of that, but if we go back prior to the 1930s, we'd find that things were, in most places, wide open.  Even children could buy firearms in most of the US prior to the 1950s.

What has really changed is a society within any kind of foundation whatsoever.  In the entire Western World, the culture built on Catholicism, but heavily impacted by the Reformation, has seen the foundation attacked and dismantled to be instead one that's now centered on radical individualism.  It's not healthy, and it's killing people.  Added to that, the increasing corporatist culture work in a box life throughout the developed world, that removes people radically from nature, is levying a toll. The combination of both is deadly.

Everyone claims to want to do something about this, which seems to amount to doing something about it sort of clinically, rather than existentially.

Storm Warning

At least 55 people died on Maui. Residents had little warning before wildfires overtook a town

• By TY O'NEIL, CLAIRE RUSH, JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER and REBECCA BOONE - Associated Press
• Updated 2 min ago
• 0

Maui residents who made desperate escapes from oncoming flames have asked why Hawaii’s famous emergency warning system didn’t alert them as wildfires raced toward their homes. Officials have confirmed that Hawaii emergency management records show no indication that warning sirens were triggered before devastating fires killed at least 55 people and wiped out a historic town. The blaze is already the state’s deadliest natural disaster since a 1960 tsunami. The governor warned the death toll will likely rise. Hawaii boasts what the state describes as the largest integrated outdoor all-hazard public safety warning system in the world. But many of Lahaina’s survivors said in interviews that they only realized they were in danger when they saw flames or heard explosions nearby.

I really have to wonder how long a large segment of American society, and the official leaders of the GOP, are going to continue to pretend there's nothing going on climate wise.  It's extremely difficult to grasp why they won't face reality on this, unless of course it's an example of worshiping money as if it was as religion.

People are now dying. Shouldn't this be taken seriously?

Without fail, one of our state's Congressional delegation comes on television or other media to promote fossil fuels and at least two out of the three like to talk about "Biden's radical climate agenda".  Keeping a natural climate isn't a "radical agenda" and simply refusing to discuss this topic is foolish.

Speaking of the Maui fires, some real goofballs are claiming that it was caused by a "direct energy weapons", which they also claim the last devastating California fires were.

It's scary to realize that people who believe something so idiotic have the right to vote.

Lil Tay is not dead.

I'd never heard of Lil Tay, aka Tay Tian, aka Claire Hope, aka Claire Eileen Qi Hope, but this line from her Wikipedia entry says a lot:

Tay's father and manager sought for Tay to become more focused on professionalism, suggesting a music career for her, though her mother and half-brother encouraged her to continue her original boastful character.

Keep in mind, she hit the music scene as a foul-mouthed rapper at age 9.

That's frankly sick, and not "sick" in the good pop culture lexicology way.  Her parents deserve a dope slap for letting that happen in the first place.

Whatever her legitimate name is, her story illustrates the poverty of values in the Western World.  Her parents were simply shacked up over a prolonged time, never married.  At some point, they separated and shared custody of the child.  Somehow, they allowed her to enter into the world of hip hop, which is marked for its celebration of criminal culture and high death rate. That made the stories of her death seem pretty credible.  Hardly a week goes by without some hip hop artist with a made up name dying young, in all the ways that tragic young deaths occur.  Just this week, it might be noted, one such artist was sentenced for shooting another, the victim of the shooting being Megan Thee Stallion (yes, that's a made up name).

When it was revealed she wasn't dead, I wondered if it was a PR stunt.  I'ts being claimed her social medial was hacked.  I see I'm not the only one who was speculating on the stunt possibilities, however.

Regarding Tay, even at age 9 to 14 she's an interesting example of a certain public pseudonym phenomenon.

Entertainers have always affected false names, often due to being required to do so by reporters.  Actors with Jewish names, for example, almost had to take another name early on. Paul Newman, an exception to so many rules in the acting community, is notable here as his real name actually was Paul Newman.

That's pretty much stopped as cultural prejudice of that type diminished.  A peculiar modern phenomenon has been people, particularly women, of mixed Asian and Euro-American heritage adopting their Asian mother's surname as a stage name.  It seems clear enough that Chinese American Tay was given the name at birth of Claire Eileen Qi Hope, i.e., Clair Hope, a pretty generic European name, and when she was drop-kicked into hip hop she became Tay Tian, or at least around there somewhere she did, taking her mother's last name. Priscilla Natalie Hartranft, a Korean American, took her mother's name Ahn, becoming Priscialla Ahn for the stage.  The surprising exception is the very successful Michelle Zauner (Michelle Chongmi Zauner) a Korean American born in Korea, who has kept her given name.  Zauner is the front for Japanese Breakfast, which is eclectically named, however, as Koreans are not particularly fond of hte Japanese.

I guess that takes us to Asian Pop, or maybe K Pop.  It's bad, but seems huge.  I don't know why.  Like a lot of Japanese group, K Pop tends to be very Kwaaii

But not all Japanese music actually is:

While I should not note it, by the way, I'm going to note it anyhow.  And what I'm going to note is that the children of European ethnicity people and Asian ethnicity people look very Asian as a rule.

It's simply an observation. But as a genetic observation, the genes that contribute to appearance are obviously dominant for the contributing Asian partner.

When I was in college, I knew a student whose father was British and mother Japanese.  He looked very Japanese.  Zauner looks Korean (and yes, I've been to Korea).  Ahn also looks Korean, and Tay looks Chinese.  This is merely an observation.

Last Edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. XLVIII. Library withdrawals.

Angst. A Then and Now Analysis

I don't know that anyone has ever attempted a history of stress and anxiety, and if they have, it might be tough to do and therefore questionable in the first place.

Indeed, it might in some ways be impossible, in part because the nature of stress and anxiety and related conditions have been perceived differently in different eras, if noticed at all.  In the 18th Century the Melancholic personality, which we'd regard as a Depressive one, was celebrated as a romantic condition as it was perceived that such people simply felt everything too deeply, an observation that was perhaps not entirely inaccurate.  Shakespeare made Hamlet, the Melancholy Dane, the subject of his famous play of no later than 1602.  It's a justifiably famous play, but in recent years its hard not to find the character of Hamlet a bit too mopey, and the character of Ophelia as oddly undeveloped.  

Edwin Booth as Hamlet, 1870.

King Henry VI slipped into such a deep funk, perhaps caused by the monumental strain of being a monarch in an era when somebody was always looking to depose you from inside the country or attack you from without, that he slipped into severe mental illness episodes starting in 1453 and he was deposed in 1461 (and murdered shortly thereafter).  While he attempted to lead on occasion, for much of that period, he was completely incapacitated by his condition.

King Henry VI. While Sheakespeare's Hamlet may have been a depressed fictional prince, King Henry VI was a real one, which lead to periods of complete incapacity and ultimate his death.

Genetics and stress may have pushed King Henry VI over the edge, but it's not too hard to find other examples of lesser figures who similarly suffered.  "Soldier's Heart" was identified as a condition that afflicted combat veterans during the Civil War, which means that it must have existed in prior conflicts as well, as the combat soldier of the American Civil War wasn't really all that different than the combat soldier of the American Revolution or the English Civil War.  Certainly by the end of the Great War Shell Shock was well identified as a psychological condition, from which some afflicted never recovered.

Australian first aid station, World War One.

Less dramatic but just as well noted, the condition described as a "nervous breakdown" was well attested to from at least the early 20th Century up through its third quarter.  The term "nervous breakdown" was once widely used as a medical term but now no longer is, although its still used as a non medical one.  It's generally regarded as a period fo itnense anxiety, stress and depression (hmmm. . .just what we're talking about here) leading to a period of incapacitation.  While the term is no longer used, the condtion described still occurs, so its still something, sort of, at least.  The term has been used to describe periods of mental incapacitation in such famous varied people as Marilyn Monroe to Kanye West.

Indeed, one of the oddities of nervous breakdowns is that while they were hardly limited (or more particularly are hardly limited) to the famous, at one time quite a few well to do people reportedly had them, which routinely lead them taking "the cure", which was usually a very long vacation.  We'll get to that later on, but that's oddly modern in some ways.

On nervous conditions not being limited to the famous, a close friend of mine once related how her grandfather, a railroad worker with a large family, had a nervous breakdown over the birth of her mother, as he was realtively advanced in eyars at the time (60s?).  Having had a large family already, he just couldn't deal with the stress of an added child late in life.  Closer to home, it's family lore that my mother's father suffered from something like a nervous breakdown when young and as a result was sent for "the cure" in Hawaii. Whatever was the case, it's clear that he was a high strung fellow in lifelong poor health and he certainly suffered from high anxiety, a condition that lead him to drink quite a bit until he suddenly one day simply quit drinking entirely.  As my grandmother's late in life poor health also resulted in her being unable to, shall we say, engage in marital duties that was lost to him as well and yet he was, late in life, pretty much universally cheerful, which says something about his personality and perhaps provides a lesson in this overall thread.

Given all of this above, there'd be real reason to doubt that stress and anxiety are really on the rise. And yet it is reported that in recent decades they are, and there does seem to be good reason to believe that stress and anxiety, let's call it Angst, are on the rise.  Indeed, mental health professionals commonly report it so, and we see all sorts of societal reactions, most probably wholly ineffective, but a few that are likely on to something, being floated here and there.

So what's going on here?

We'll, we aren't licensed to really opine, but that's never stopped us before, so we'll add our thoughts about what is going on to cause this modern plague here in this thread.  Before we do, however, we'll note that we sort of touched on this before, here in this thread:

A Western World Modern Crisis: Suicide

Indeed, that thread directly deals with this topic and is worth revisiting.  And shoot, it's less than a year old as well.

Indeed, that thread noted much of what we're noting here, even though our reason for posting this one, a series of recent news articles, isn't directly the same.  Our earlier item, anyhow, noted the following:

The first one was a headline which noted that Americans are dying of suicide and alcoholism at all time record highs.

U.S. deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide hit highest level since record-keeping began

Alcoholism, if that's correct, would be amazing, and I'd at least somewhat question that figure as the alcoholic rates before Prohibition were stunning.  But the suicide one deserves some attention, and an increasing rate of alcoholism also does.

Of course, we have to be aware that statistics are only relevant in the context of the period they address, and this one only addresses a fairly compact period of time.  The USA Today article noted:

The number of deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide in 2017 hit the highest level since federal data collection started in 1999, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data by two public health nonprofits.

The national rate for deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide rose from 43.9 to 46.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 2017, a 6 percent increase, the Trust for America's Health and the Well Being Trust reported Tuesday. That was a slower increase than in the previous two years, but it was greater than the 4 percent average annual increase since 1999.

Deaths from suicides rose from 13.9 to 14.5 deaths per 100,000, a 4 percent increase. That was double the average annual pace over the previous decade.

Anyhow, let's start with something obvious.  And in doing so, we'll link in a few things here that we've noted before.

Let's start with our Third Law of Behavior:

Holscher's Third Law of Behavior.  I know why the caged tiger paces.

Everyone has been to a zoo and has seen a tiger pace back and forth, back and forth.  He'll look up occasionally as well, and the deluded believe "look, he wants to be petted," while the more realistic know that he's thinking "I'd like to eat you."  You can keep him in the zoo, but he's still a tiger.  He wants out.  He wants to live in the jungle, and he wants to eat you for lunch. That's his nature, and no amount of fooling ourselves will change it.

It's really no different with human beings.  We've lived in the modern world we've created for only a very brief time.  Depending upon your ancestry, your ancestors lived in a very rustic agrarian world for about 10,000 years, long enough, by some measures to actually impact your genetic heritage.  Prior to that, and really dating back further than we know, due to Holscher's First Law of History, we were hunters and gatherers, or hunters and gatherers/small scale farmers.  Deep down in our DNA, that's who we still are.

That matters, as just as the DNA of the tiger tells it what it wants, to some degree our DNA informs us of what we want as well.  I do not discount any other influence, and human beings are far, far, more complicated than we can begin to suppose, but it's still the case.  A species that started out eons and eons ago being really smart hunters combined with really smart gatherers/small farmers has specialized in a way that living in Major Metropolis isn't going to change very rapidly.  Deep down, we remain those people, even if we don't know it, and for some, even if we don't like it.

This also impacts the every sensitive roles of men and women.  Primates have unusually great gender differentiation for a  mammal.  Male housecats, for example, aren't hugely different from female housecats.  But male chimpanzees are vastly different from female chimpanzees.  Male human beings are as well, but even much more so.

That's really upsetting to some people, but it simply isn't understood.  If understood, this does not imply any sort of a limitation on either sex, and indeed in aboriginal societies that are really, really, primitive there's much less than in any other society, including our modernized Western one.  Inequality comes in pretty early in societies, but some change in condition from the most primitive seems to be necessary in order to create it.  So, properly understood, those very ancient genetic impulses that were there when we were hiking across the velt hoping not to get eaten by a lion, and hoping to track down an antelope, and planting and raising small gardens, are still there.  That they're experienced differently by the genders is tempered by the fact that, in those ancient times, a lot of early deaths meant that the opposite gender had to step into the other's role, and therefore we're also perfectly capable of doing that.  It's the root basic natures we're talking about, however, that we're discussing here, and that spark to hunt, fish, defend and plant a garden are in there, no matter how much steel and concrete we may surround ourselves with.

The reason that this matters is that all people have these instincts from antiquity, some to greater or lessor degrees. But many people, maybe most, aren't aware that they have them.  Some in the modern world spend a lot of their time and effort acting desperately to suppress these instincts.  But an instinct is an instinct, and the more desperately they act, the more disordered they become.

This doesn't mean, of course, that everyone needs to revert to an aboriginal lifestyle, and that's not going to happen.  Nor would it even mean that everyone needs to hunt or fish, or even raise a garden.  But it does mean that the further we get from nature, both our own personal natures, and nature in chief, or to deny real nature, the more miserable they'll become.  We can't and shouldn't pretend that we're not what we once were, or that we now live in a world where we are some sort of ethereal being that exists separate and apart from that world.  In other words, a person can live on a diet of tofu if they want, and pretend that pigs and people are equal beings, but deep in that person's subconscious, they're eating pork and killing the pig with a spear.

Nature, in the non Disney reality of it.

In short, you may have forgotten nature, but nature hasn't forgotten you.

Here's something we noted earlier on this topic.

There's a seeming epidemic of suicide in the Western World.  In at least one area of the East, Japan, suicide has been at blistering levels for decades.

This is not true, however, of all societies everywhere.  Most specifically, it isn't true of those areas of the world that remain more rural than the West, and frankly more agrarian, and more authentically religious.  And by religious, I mean in the real sense, not the vague meaningless "spiritual but not religious" sense that Western "moderns" sometimes profess or in the Western Hollywood Buddhist sense.**

Our species has been around for a really long time.  It'll turn out, I'm confident, that as a species we've been around a lot longer than we now believe we were. But we have only lived the way most of us do now for a very, very, brief time.  For almost our entire history as a species we were nomadic.  Following that, we were agrarians for a long time.  We've become what we are not, urbanized, only very briefly and we've become urbanized in our current massive way only very, very recently.

In fact, nature is giving moderns the dope slap.  You weren't made to live in a giant city of millions working in an office of thousands for a company of thousands with a rootless career. But that's what we've come around to and what we celebrate.  No, nature figures you ought to be out in sticks, maybe the veld, or the steppes, or in short nature, living a natural life and nature isn't interested in any of your wacky diets of the moment, vegan, essential oils, baloney.  Kill a deer and eat is what nature figures, and that doesn't take 40 hours every week to accomplish.

Put another way, Great Thunberg, age 16, just reported that her recent fame pulled out of a year long depression.  She's 16 years old

No doubt, you figure, her intense angst over the environment is causing this depression?

No, it's probably her moronic diet and deeply unnatural lifestyle.

Just fifty years ago most Swedes, which is what Thunberg is, were farmers or fishermen.  They're famous for being dour, but that was a product of their combined think resources and the harsh brand of Evangelical Lutheranism that came to dominate in Scandinavia in the late 19th Century. Strict adherence to the Evangelical Lutheran Church has greatly waned as the Swedes became wealthy (like lots of people, the Swedes found the Gospels inconvenient when they had money and the pill), but in another way it lingers on in a dour view of life, now added to through the messed up concept that one diet or another will extend your life forever, the more unnatural it is the better.

Now, I don't really mean to pick on the 16 year old directly as I figure her stupid diet and her being used in the manner she is, no matter what you think of the cause, isn't her fault or even really doing.  Left to their own devices and a chance to run their own households a sizable minority of 16 year olds would make bad decisions.  No, the point is that now that we've lost contact with nature in a direct form, the entire Western World is making bad choices.

This blog has, obviously, focused on the past and the past of a century ago.  Let's not fall into the illusion that everything in the past was perfect.  That's far from true.  But let's also not pretend that evolutionary biology has skipped us. We're not really made to do what we're doing, in the examples of most people.

And, to take it out further, in the very modern world, the intense devotion to money and material goods has unhinged us.

The post World War Two world has been vastly rich.  When the free market economy nations, which of course were the democratic nations, by and large, of the post war era triumphed over Communism in the Cold War, that process of wealth ramped up even more than it had.  Capitalist like to point out, and quite rightly, that capitalism has lifted huge swatches of the globe out of poverty.  Indeed, again only fifty or so years ago, the majority of human beings once lived in poverty.  And as we've noted here before, prior to World War Two most Americans were middle class, but lower middle class on the edge of poverty constantly, and even when things were good.

Economically, therefore, we're now far, far better off, globally, than every before. But at the same time the real question now is whether we can handle that wealth.  The evidence isn't good.  We've clearly become obsessed with it and we've become extremely narcissistic about it.  We live in hideous conditions, in real terms, for wealth, we enter career occupations solely due to it, we live in cities because of it, and we avoid children and dump spouses due to it.  More recently, a lot of younger people avoid marriage entirely and simply live in a series of sad shacking ups, which implies the ability to leave somebody who nature has bonded, through their conduct, at the drop of a dollar bill.

Nature doesn't like that.  Not any of it.

Indeed, as we earlier noted:

Well so what, you may ask.  Haven't sociologist determined that agrarian life was miserable and people moved to the cities to be super happy?

No, well not any more anyhow.

There was at one time a running line of sociological thought, propaganda really, that basically ran just that way.  But more recent research has determined that nomadic people today, who are admittedly very few in number, are the happiest people on earth hands down.  Next to them, people who are basically agrarian in nature fit that category.  The least happy people on Earth are those who live in highly urbanized societies.  And as we now know Western suicide is beginning to become a plague, meaning we're joining the highly urbanized Japanese in that tragic classification.

Depression and anxiety are nature's wake up calls.  Nature is giving us a dope slap.

As we earlier put it:

It really doesn't require all that much thought.  But we won't think about it as it runs entirely contrary to the concept of "progress" and the intellectual dictatorship of progressivism we are now in.

Let's break it down even further.

We're a really smart animal, but an animal none the less, and we were evolved to live out in the wilds.  That's where, it truly turns out, we are the happiest.  In our native state we hunted and gathered, which more accurately means we hunted, gathered and existed in subsistence nomadic agriculture.  We at some point evolved the latter into a more fixed form, but often missed in that is that early agriculture was an adjustment of the existing pattern, not an abolishment of it.  In hunter gatherer societies, the men principally engaged in hunting and the women in gathering and both in some farming, quite often.  In agrarian societies, even fairly modern ones, the men engaged in the farming, the women supported the farming, but the men were almost always still hunters.  If you look at a society that was agrarian fairly recently, such as Finland or Norway,  you'll find that hunting and fishing is always common.  Even in Ireland, which was agrarian to a large extent up until the Celtic Tiger changed that and began to change Ireland to its ultimate misery, that was more true than we might suppose, with fishing, bird hunting and small game hunting common in a land that was otherwise obsessed with depriving the population of the means of rebelling in the same fashion which it had only recently against the English.

What are the features of such a life?

Close connection to nature is one thing.  Nature for such populations is everyday and immediate, not something that they encounter, probably in a sanitized form, on vacation somewhere.  Not the safe nature that people who pay to ride on a zip line in Costa Rica encounter either.

To add to this, one of the things contributing to our anxiety is forgetting the past, along with forgetting evolutionary biology, which gets us to this:

Holscher's Fourth Law of Behavior.  Old standards existed for a real reason.

Not every standards that used to apply to human behavior and institutions needs to be retained for all time, but it's a mistake to believe that they existed at whim.  There's trend, fashion, and fancy, and then there's long term standards.

From time to time, almost every society throws off a bunch of old standards.  When they do that, they usually declare them to have been irrelevant for all time, but they hardly ever are.  They were there for a reason.  Sometimes, they no longer apply, but that's because something deeply fundamental has changed.  Other times, the underlying reason keeps on keeping on and the reason for it tends to be rediscovered, slowly, as if its a new discovery.  People fail to think about the deep basis for standards, the really deep ones, at their behavior.  Again, that doesn't mean that some shouldn't be changed, or should never have come into existence, but even in those rare instances careful thought should be given to the matter so that the basic nature of the underlying error can be understood.

Out of combination of desperation, narcissism and wealth, the tail end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st have been marked by a dumping of old standards in celebration of what amounts to a new "Me Decade" on steroids.  It's been taken to the absurd level.

At almost any earlier time in history people who  lived well defined themselves by things outside themselves.  The now highly celebrated "Greatest Generation" is celebrated due to the imperfect and inaccurate memory of them as a class of men who left their homes, families and their lives, for the greater good of 1) their nation and 2) the world as a whole.  In other words, they're remembered as people who gave up something for everyone and not for themselves.

In contrast to that, we now have the absolute celebration not only of the individual, but the interior mind of the individual, no matter how poorly formed.  Wealth and the pill have given individuals in the Western World time to do not much other than feed their inclinations.  This has in recent years been focused on sex, one of the most trivial things imaginable to be obsessed on an existential level about, although this trend, in fairness, started as long ago as the during the influential period of Sigmund Freud.

Sigmund Freud, unscientific weirdo.

Truth be known, if approached from a scientific prospective, and again from evolutionary biology,t he entire sex thing sorts out pretty easily.  There are two genders and only two.  Human beings are possessed of a high sex drive.  In a state of nature people pair up generally in their twenties and the resulting bond, while perhaps beset by the assaults of time and trials, is generally lifelong.

Humans are also a species that's best by lots of individual deviations many of which are destructive and cause us misery.  Eat too much you get fat and can die, which doesn't mean that certain people aren't super driven towards food.  Alcohol may have made the water safe but drink too much of it and you'll die.  You should sleep around eight hours every night but some people can't and that shortens their lives.  

Modern life contributes to all of that.  It would have been really hard to become a fat Cro Magnon. There probably weren't any.  You don't see any photographs of chubby Native Americans in Edward Curtis films, nor do you find any of chubby yeoman farmers in anyone's photographs, nor of obese 19th and early 20th Century cowboys.  But they had extremely active lives and they didn't eat a lot of process high fat, high sugar, food.  Likewise, there have been alcoholics for a long, long time, but chances are that the numbers in the Middle Ages, even when alcohol was hte normal drink for most, weren't that high.  Most yeoman farmers and Native Americans no doubt slept the whole  night through peacefully.  And so on.  And, no matter what their inclinations on an individual basis was, nobody went around demanding that they be identified by who they wanted to bed, or how many, or under what terms, at any time in human history right up until the 21st Century.

The fact that we make such demands now is a symptom of our misery, idleness and purposelessness.  The biographer of Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery was of the opinion that the Field Marshall was a homosexual, and indeed his son likewise had that opinion.  But they were also of the opinion that Montgomery, who was an extremely busy man, wasn't even aware of it if he was.  John Ford, the filmmaker, routinely fell in love with multiple actresses according to his biographer, but in spite of rumors that exist to the contrary, his biographer was of the opinion that while he fell deeply in love with some, he remained loyal to his wife Mary, and his Catholic faith, and deeply devoted to his craft. Roger Casement may have had very strong homosexual inclinations, or he may have been framed by British agents so that people believced that, but his defining characteristics were his dedication to humanitarian causes and Irish indpendence.

The point of all of this is something that Max Hastings, the famous British historian, noted at a speech he delivered to American university students following the release of his book on the Vietnam War.  When asked how students of the 1960s who opposed the war compared to students today, Hastings simply noted that he hoped current students would think about something that wasn't as trivial as sex.

My point is a little broader, however.  The absolutely manic focus on everyone self defining in every single way  is because that same 60s generation tore down the concept that the old standards meant anything. They very much did, and we keep trying to grope our way back to them. At the same time, society is also engaged in the absurd concept that everyone can self define what they are and who they are. They can't, as we're all members of the same species, and that actually defines most of what we are, and who we are.  The differences we otherwise see are very often extremely trivial and, beyond that, may simply be erroneous and inaccurate self assumptions based upon living in unnatural conditions without much to do.

Straying off of this a bit, another aspect of this is the manic emphasis on career.

There have always been "careers", but for much of human history most people occupied a fairly manual labor set of careers and the emphasis on career was limited to a few, and even then it was rarely expressed at the manic level things are now.

Now, you simply must have a career.  You must.  You won't be fulfilled if you don't have a career.

Well, we've long known that careers don't fulfill anyone.  And yet the lie continues on.  Indeed, not only does it continue, it's spread to where now women, who formerly weren't under the same pressure that they must have a career, are.  The great lie of female advancement is that men have let them into the fulfillment of careers.  In fact, due economic developments, they've been forced upon them.

As noted, careers have always been around, but the emphasis on careerism was not present in the same degree, except really among the upper economic classes, where oddly the truly wealthy were exempt from it.  Now, everyone is subject to the continually pressure of career success.

I've seen this among the young, but even among the old.  In some fields the career pressure has reached the point where people of retirement age are expected not to.  Indeed, I just oddly had a conversation with a lawyer (I'm not of retirement age) on this myself, in which they suggested that I should switch party emphasis in the law field and could have a "long career as a plaintiff's lawyer ahead" of me.  At my age, 56, I don't have a long anything ahead of me, but why would somebody even conceive of a person approaching 60 years of age as wanting to have decades of future hard work in front of them?  That's an odd thought, but not odd anymore in the legal field where people really aren't ever supposed to retire. That same view isn't unique to this field, however, but is common in business as well.

As part of all of this the old, and normal, focus of people on having "jobs" to support their families is gone.  Now people actually talk about their families or their spouses supporting their careers.   That's really messed up, and people know that at their core.

Then there's the news:

Holscher's Sixth Law of Behavior.  A lot of folks believe they live in the worst times ever even if they don't.Human historical memory is amazingly short.  As a result of that, people often think that they're enduring epic hardship and live in hideous times, even if they do not.Current times are a good example.  Many people believe the entire world is awash in a sea of massive violence such as the world has never known.  In actuality, things have never been so peaceful. Crime of all types is down all over the globe.  Warfare between sovereign states has almost disappeared.  Civil wars continue to rage on, but not at the level they once did.  Consider the 1930s and 1940s. For much of that time every major nation was engaged in a war so violent that destroying entire cities was regarded as okay.  Now, if we look at sovereign states  at war we'd find. . . well, only one example.  North and South Korea are in a legal state of war, and have been since 1950, but in which they don't shoot at each other.Or consider crime.  In the US, in spite of a recent horror, murder, the worst crime, is way, way, way down.  This doesn't seem to make the news, but its' the case.  For folks with long memories, you should be able to recall a time a couple of decades ago in your own neighborhoods where your town was much more violent, because it was.  But most people don't have memories that really stretch back that far.

Part of the reason we moderns are so stressed is that we have unparalleled access to information. 

The news media has existed for a long time, and indeed since the introduction of the wire service early in the 20th Century the ability to get up to date news daily has been very much there.

But what only became the case recently is the screaming immediacy of all news.  Fires in Australia, Ebola in Africa, all the way down to major car wrecks in distant cities and crime in places that we don't live come screaming through to us all the time.

We aren't really built to take that and it contributes to the idea that everything is a disaster, when in fact in spite of the bad things we have to contend with being bad, things really aren't as bad as they once were.

So what to do about all of this?

Well, there's plenty of advice, and much of it just leads to more stress.

One of the most pronounced characteristics of the current age is to find problems that are rooted in fairly recent changes in our societal behavior, and then suggest that we need to do something new to address them, when in fact what we might need to do is the one thing that never occurs to us. . . go back.

There's a widespread western belief that you can't go back.  But you most definitely can, and history has shown that again and again.  And even if we won't go back to a prior era completely (and we wouldn't want to), we can revive and apply those things from nature and our natures that were proven to work as they were part of nature and our natures.

That means, however, giving up a lot of narcissism, which has come to nearly define western values.  We aren't the center of everything.  It also means giving up the idea that you can have it all or that you even should.  You can't, you won't, and you shouldn't.

Slow down and get out there.  Try the old things that worked before espousing the new ones, which often don't.  Things existed, including standards and ways of life, for a reason.