Posted on 10/18/2002 4:18:48 PM PDT by Askel5
But when the European horizon was widened by the geographical discoveries of modern times, men suddenly realized the existence of societies whose social organization was utterly different to anything that they bad imagined.The discovery of totemism and exogamy, of matrilinear institutions, of polyandry, and of customs of organized sexual licence gave rise to a whole host of new theories concerning the origins of marriage and the family.
This was written in 1933, and is pretty clearly heavily influenced by the 1928 publication of Margaret Mead's nine-day wonder, "Coming of Age in Samoa", and her 1930 work "Growing Up in New Guinea". The trouble is, virtually no societies like these described here have ever actually existed, Mead's fevered imaginings notwithstanding.
That's the basic problem here - the author wants to make the case that "traditional" family arrangements prevailed over "non-traditional" arrangements, but in so doing he's accepted the basic premise that such "non-traditional" arrangements have ever really existed in the first place. And once you do that, you're reduced to quibbling over the details.
And it's not very good quibbling, either. If patriarchy is the key, then there were few societies that were more patriarchal than classical Rome - the Romans invented the concept of patria potestas, and they took it to extremes not really seen in any other society. But here we're told that they "failed to adapt to urban life" (why, we aren't really told), and thus lost out in spite of their patriarchal society.
Anyway, if you want to argue in favor of traditional families, it seems to me that the classical conservative argument is still the best argument - "non-traditional" arrangements don't really exist in the way some would have you believe, and never have existed, really. So let us not embrace the new and untested simply for the sake of novelty, which is all you've got in the absence of a track-record - traditional families have served us all quite well over the last few thousand years, and we ought to be loathe to simply abandon that time-tested experience for the latest fad in "alternative families".
The moral of the article might as well be: don't frame your own argument in such a way as to implicitly accept the basic premises of your opponents. Do that, and you've lost right off the bat, because you're arguing on someone else's home field ;)
I think he too is rather dismissive of the matriarchy thing ... flat out say any such society is negligible because it cannot -- never has -- produced anything remarkable in the least.
What about his two paragraphs on the Hellenistic civilization. He appears to be describing us.
As again he does appear to nail us in the second to last paragraph.
It's overloading the concept of family, in a sense - the decline of cultures is a complicated thing that doesn't lend itself well to simple theories about the breakdown of family structures. If non-traditional families led to the "decline" of Rome (over the space of several hundred years, no less), why didn't the introduction of Christian values revive it? Why is American influence and power apparently waxing at the very moment that the "traditional" American family is waning?
Thin. Complex events tend to have complex causes...
I think he too is rather dismissive of the matriarchy thing ... flat out say any such society is negligible because it cannot -- never has -- produced anything remarkable in the least.
But that's the point - matriarchal societies have produced nothing remarkable because the number of truly matriarchal societies we know about from history right now is exactly zero. There's no evidence that even primitive neolithic societies were matriarchal - all that happy-happy peaceful pagan Goddess-worshipping tribes (until those damn testosterone-loaded men wrecked it all) bullshit is just that. Bullshit modern mythmaking. There never was a society like that.
What about his two paragraphs on the Hellenistic civilization. He appears to be describing us.
His counterexamples don't follow, though - ask the Tibetans or the Vietnamese about the "peaceful" Chinese. Ask the Pakistanis about the non-aggression of the Hindus. The English may have been a bit thin on the population end of it, but they were hardly "backward" by the standards of the 15'th century. Backwards compared to whom?
Anyway, the trouble with historical analogy is that this is terra incognita in some ways - the "American experiment" continues unabated, and it's increasingly difficult to find historical analogues in some particular aspect. We're a culture built on the notion of exceptionalism - it's served us well so far. Why give up on it now? ;)
Because we're losing the culture wars against those who would destroy us from within?
Those who don't pay attention to history being doomed to repeat it.
And -- given the way our guys are legitimizing homosexuality and de facto unions, invoking population controls (state sanctioned birth control and abortion), upholding and specifically protecting For-Profit Porn as "Free Speech", cranking the legal system AGAINST the father in particular with their "weeding out the white male" syndrome and even seeking to pad our imploding reproduction rate with the drafting in of immigrants ... ALL OF WHICH is taking place under a dizzying assault of the most lurid and decadent salvo of sex and perversion to which any age of man has ever been subjected.
Bob "Down Boy!" Dole hawking Viagra?
C'mon guy ... we first tangled on the "War Stressed Prostitutes" thread wherein I was balking at the notion that men were entitled not only to use sex as "stress relief" but -- desensitized readers of the Penthouse Forum they are -- sit and detail their escapades on a forum ostensibly a mecca for Conservatives and the wives and family of military men looking for the latest on the war in Afghanistan. You think a thread where folks are down to talking about what their bunk buddies do with their black socks isn't clogging latest posts and attracting some attention?
And I was FLAYED ALIVE for having the audacity to complain about "men being men".
Boys is more like it.
I could take 30 minutes and likely bury this thread in links on how marriage is "passe", no longer attractive for men, how women have their own money and don't need men if they can pay top dollar for a nanny (unless they want the ever-more popular "Trophy Husband" who's content to work at home while the wife pulls down the big bucks in Diversity Land where the Corporate Governance types have taken a page from the Bush I Administration's military and made no bones about "weeding out the white male" in favor of women, minories and homosexuals).
Maybe it's all just happening too fast for you do draw the connections.
I realize population control and culture wars are kind of my bag but I really am kinda stunned you dismiss him out of hand because he starts with what may well have been the rage at the time but -- without a doubt -- is the bottom of the heap where civilizations are concerned ... the same "alternative" lifestyles all the rage today.
With the added incentive, of course, that is our sexually liberated and Enlightened society's having removed the stigma entirely from either aborting or keeping -- or purchasing to spec -- your illegitimate and fatherless child.
I realize population control and culture wars are kind of my bag but I really am kinda stunned you dismiss him out of hand because he starts with what may well have been the rage at the time but -- without a doubt -- is the bottom of the heap where civilizations are concerned ... the same "alternative" lifestyles all the rage today.
I'm trying not to dismiss it out of hand. You (and he, I think) argue that those societies are the bottom of the heap - I'm saying to you that those societies never really existed in the first place. IOW, once you accept that such a thing exists, you inevitably open the door for airy-fairy Margaret Mead and her intellectual heirs to come over and lecture you about how wonderful they were, and how happy and well-adjusted everyone was. And you're basically reduced to arguing about how horrible or wonderful these completely imaginary cultures were, and trying to apply the lessons of these imaginary cultures to modern society. He's pointing to someone else's imaginary pie-in-the-sky and telling us it's a steaming pile of dung. Fine, but it sort of misses the obvious point that it's pie-in-the-sky in the first place...
But I think you mistook what I said in my other post anyway - my point is that American power and influence is at its very peak exactly when the traditional family is on the decline. So maybe the two aren't directly linked after all, or maybe they are, but there are a whole host of other factors....
As were many of the great theologians. What's that got to do with anything?
tut-tut. Did you care to know? Let's just put it this way. Sometimes the one wants nothing to do with the other.
Such as...?
The question deviates. It matters when it does, but it does not always matter. Your own examples will work fine, but not every time.
Polybius brought up this point in his Histories, Book XXXVI, when he discussed when historians should not attribute certain calamities of society to the work of Fate or Chance or the Gods.
Polybius noted that, for example, a natural disaster such as a flood from heavy rains or a drought could be attributed to Fate or a god for lack of a better explanation.
However, Polybius observed that the explanation for many of the calamities that certain communities suffered from needed no further explanation than the examination of the behavior of the people in those societies.
"Now indeed as regards things the causes of which it is impossible or difficult for a mere man to understand, we may perhaps be justified in getting out of the difficulty by setting them down to the action of a god or of chance, I mean such things as exceptionally heavy and continuous rain or snow, or on the other hand the destruction of crops by severe drought or frost, or a persistent outbreak of plague or other similar things of which it is not easy to detect the cause. So in regard to such matters we naturally bow to public opinion, as we cannot make out why they happen, and attempting by prayer and sacrifice to appease the heavenly powers, we send to ask the gods what we must do and say, to set things right and cause the evil that afflicts us to cease.
But as for matters the efficient and final cause of which it is possible to discover we should not, I think, put them down to divine action. For instance, take the following case.
In our own time the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth-rate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit, although there have neither been continuous wars nor epidemics. If, then, any one had advised us to send and ask the gods about this, and find out what we ought to say or do, to increase in number and make our cities more populous, would it not seem absurd, the cause of the evil being evident and the remedy being in our own hands?
For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensilby grew. For in cases where of one or two children the one was carried off by war and the other by sickness, it is evident that the houses must have been left unoccupied, and as in the case of swarms of bees, so by small degrees cities became resourceless and feeble.
About this it was of no use at all to ask the gods to suggest a means of deliverance from such an evil. For any ordinary man will tell you that the most effectual cure had to be men's own action, in either striving after other objects, or if not, in passing laws making it compulsory to rear children. Neither prophets nor magic were here of any service, and the same holds good for all particulars."
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