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You're moving too fast for me tonight - I may have to pick this up in the morning with my morning extra-caffeine brain fuel ;)

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....

>> I'm saying to you that those societies never really existed in the first place<<

I'm totallly lost here and this isnt even my debate...

In college I took cultural anthropology how ever many semesters it was required in order to cross it of my "you have to sit through this crap if you want to graduate" list.

I remember one of the first groups we talkked about or read in the text about. If I remember right it was even a current culture to boot. Anyways the adult brothers and sisters lived together with the brothers suppporting the sisters and the sisters children. The brothers were free to go visit other peoples sisters and teh sisters were free to have whatever male visitors were currently catching their fancy. I remember this because I thought it so totally and completely odd -and depraved.

Over the course of the class I ran into other similarly odd cultures. All third world backwards groups lauded as being culturally rich- I guesss that is the PC view. I thought it was terrible to live the way they did. I am not an evolutionist or otherwise accept Darwin's musings- but if we had descended from animals these peoples we studied would definately be the missing links.

Now- is this what you are saying never even existed in the first place?

>>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<<

I love this statement because it is so accurate- this is exactly how tehy were pictured in our textbook- wonderful happy thriving cultures. Yes- if it came to me I would definately argue the wonderful/horrible debate- on the horrible side.

>>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<<

I'll respond backwards to this. Certainly there is no single simple reason for a civilizations demise, there are many reasons adding up. Internationally we are powerful and influential, but this, to me, focuses outward- in the world we are that way but so what. Within our borders we murder are young while still in the womb. We have teenages taking assault rifles to school and killing fellow teenagers Mothers kill there born children and fathers kill their wives AND children. We just had a summer where it seemed every week another young girl was showing up dead, sexually abused. There is a nutcase running lose in our capital. Need I go on about all the internal conflicts, the cultural defiencies, the decline of civilization. Maybe it is just coincidence that these things seem to get worse as the state of the traditional family gets worse. For now, maybe we are still a powerful and influential nation, but how much longer will be able to keep that up- how long until internal conflict blows this whole "social experiment" up in our faces. And our predecessors will learn lessons from us- until they too forget the foundations.