Category: Social Analysis

Well, it’s not quite to the point of "spaying" men, of course (since men don’t have ovaries to be removed), but apparently medical science is prepared to introduce a whole new line of male contraceptives, including pills, patches, and gels. But there are a couple of creases in Contraceptive Wonderland that have yet to be ironed out. Some men are cool with the idea of having "choice" but don’t like the idea of medicating themselves:

"Forty-year-old Scott Hardin says he’s glad that men may soon have a new choice when it comes to birth control. But, he adds, he would not even consider taking a male hormonal contraceptive. Hardin is like many men who are pleased to hear they may have a new option but are wary of taking any type of hormones.

"’I would rather rely on a solution that doesn’t involving medicating myself and the problems women have had with hormone therapy doesn’t make me anxious to want to sign on to taking a hormone-type therapy,’ says Hardin, who is single and a college administrator."

Other men are thrilled at the idea of "protecting" themselves. The only problem is that they are eager to "protect" themselves from the real or imagined evil designs of the women they mistrust but have no problem sleeping with:

"[Quentin] Brown has been taking hormonal contraceptives for more than a year. He reports no problems with weight gain or acne, two side effects that occurred in earlier versions of MHCs [male hormonal contraceptives] tested in the 1990s.

"Brown, who is married and has three children, hopes his kids will one day be able to benefit from the new technology. His would like his son, who is now 17, to one day have the option of taking a male birth control pill. Brown believes many men will see ‘their pill’ as a good idea and will want to use it.

"’It is time for men to have some control. I think it would empower men and deter some women out there from their nefarious plans,’ says Brown. ‘Some women are out there to use men to get pregnant. This could deter women from doing this. An athlete or a singer is someone who could be a target and they could put a stop to that.’"

GET THE STORY.

So, once again, contraceptive technology breeds disrespect for and abuse of women. Whether it is the sense that it is a woman’s "job" to "fumigate" herself, something a man rightly figures he doesn’t want to do to himself but has no apparent problem with subjecting a woman to, or whether it is a fear that women are conniving gold-diggers whom a man may use for sex but avoid further responsibility to, Pope Paul VI’s warning in Humanae Vitae that contraception can only have dire consequences for the relationships between men and women is once more proven right.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING PIECE IN THE L.A. TIMES.

I’m not sure what’s more interesting about it–its content or the fact that it appeared in the L.A. Times at all.

The author takes to task California Senator Dianne Feinstein and others like her who display what he dubs "machisma."

Of course, you’re familiar with machismo–insensitive masculinity that frequently leads to blunt, silent behavior.

The author of the piece seems to conceptualize machisma as an insensitive femininity that frequently leads to blunt, talkative behavior. In particular, it leads to demands that others talk about their feelings.

EXCERPTS:

Feinstein asked Roberts how he would handle right-to-die cases. She told him to answer "as a son, a husband and a father." She wanted a personal, emotional response, not the cool logic of a jurist. Contrary to instructions, he answered dispassionately and not as a son, husband or father. She was displeased.

Her question was offensive on a human level, for reasons having nothing to do with the judicial context. She demonstrated a disturbing and widespread phenomenon: A powerful person insists that someone’s private feelings must be spread out for public viewing, like rugs in a Mideast bazaar. Roberts’ feelings as a father, son and husband are none of the country’s business.

"Macha" characters delight in emotional disembowelment; in ordering their victims to let it all hang out. But lots of people have no desire for heart-to-hearts with strangers in public, much less on national TV. Macha is just as toxic as macho, or more so, because it’s harder to laugh off. "How do you feel?" has become a standard media question, a substitute for eliciting actual information. Oprah and her imitators use it; news reporters covering hurricanes use it. Macha helps demolish the emotional walls that protect people, just as hurricanes demolish their physical walls.

In the long-ago age before macha, you called a person Miss Hepburn, say, until explicitly invited to use her first name — which helped English recapture the ancient distinction between "thou" (once the friendly, easygoing form of address among friends) and "you" (for addressing strangers or superiors). Lacking this distinction, English is all sweatsuits and no tuxedos.

When two people were not on a first-name basis, that fact indicated what kind of behavior was suitable and what wasn’t. No child presumed to call an adult by his or her first name; no doctor did so with a patient. Friendships moved forward in small, graceful steps instead of lunges. Keeping a respectful distance and recognizing authority made the world not cold and forbidding but comfortable, reassuring.

In school, my boys have often been harassed by macha teachers demanding that they tell the class their feelings. One teacher had the nerve to tell one of my sons that his book report must "critique without judging" — and she marked him down for trying to analyze what was good and bad in the story instead of saying which passages got him all choked up. (How many teenage boys do you know who like getting all choked up — or talking about it?)

Granted, the demand strikes different people in different ways. Some students welcome it. My boys don’t. Lots of people don’t. For a person in authority to insist that lower-downs reveal their emotions is an abuse of power, a form of emotional groping that can leave the targets feeling violated and mad as hell.

That’s the truth!

The author is on to a real social phenomenon here. I don’t agree with everything he says (notably, I don’t agree AT ALL with his assertion that Sen. Feinstein is "a sensible person who usually says sensible things"–but then this is the L.A. Times).

It is ironic that Sen. Feinstein’s probings of Judge Roberts’ emotional life constitutes a violation of what most of us would regard as private matters that we have a (moral) right to keep private.

Isn’t Sen. Feintein supposed to be kinda big on a right to privacy?

Parents who are frustrated with their local schools and wary of their own ability to homeschool may be wondering if boarding school is the answer. One boarding school alumna assures them that it is probably not the case:

"[A]n increasing number of parents are deciding against boarding school. Enrollment at private day schools has grown 15 percent in the past decade, while enrollment at boarding schools has grown only 2.7 percent. Overall boarding school enrollment dropped from about 42,000 in the late 1960’s to 39,000 in the last school year — even though, according to the Census Bureau, the population of 14- to 17-year-olds was more than 1.5 million higher in 2004 than in 1968.

"Reporting on this, The Wall Street Journal attributed the shift away from boarding school to a trend of greater parental involvement, which translates into parents reluctant to be apart from their children. This is, evidently, the same reason some parents are now accompanying their teenagers to boarding school; these mothers and fathers literally move, sometimes cross-country, to be close to the campuses of the boarding schools their children attend.

"While the new breed of super-involved parent strikes me as slightly creepy (having worked as a private-school teacher, I’ve also seen parents whose idea of "involvement" is doing their children’s homework for them), I don’t think the conclusion they’ve come to is the wrong one. Among the reasons I wouldn’t send my own child to boarding school is that being around one’s adolescent peers 24 hours a day doesn’t seem particularly healthy. It makes the things that already loom large in high school — grades, clothes, sports, heartache, acne — loom even larger.

"Going home at night provides physical distance from the relentlessness of all teenagers, all the time, and, ideally, parents provide perspective. Although they might be dorky, parents know an important lesson about everything from serious hazing to the embarrassment of dropping a lunch tray in a crowded cafeteria: This, too, shall pass."

GET THE STORY.

Maybe it’s my inner fox eyeing the grapes dangling out of my reach, but there’s some satisfaction in discovering that the most expensive educational alternative is not always the best choice for children. What counts is not the money a parent throws at the problem, but his own involvement in shaping his child’s studies. A parent worried about his own ability to homeschool can at least take comfort in the fact that he is likely to do a better job at it than others who are unable to give the child personalized attention and parental values.

In his book How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, author Thomas E. Woods Jr. tells the story of how English monks were on the verge of introducing the Industrial Age to Great Britain when King Henry VIII closed the monasteries and destroyed Catholic religious life in England. As a result of a monarch’s greed, the Industrial Age may well have been postponed some three centuries.

It got me to thinking: What breakthroughs has our modern culture of death prevented us from accomplishing? Although we have accomplished a great deal in the realm of modern science, much of it has been devoted to both fighting and perpetuating the culture of death. The search for cures for deadly venereal diseases, caused in large part by the unchaste lifestyle of modern man, and the fascination with manipulating human life has taken up much of our time, energy, and resources. What if it had been possible to devote those resources to furthering the culture of life?

We can now routinely save premature babies as early as 24 weeks gestation, and have had spotty success as early as 20 weeks. That is no small accomplishment. But will future generations remark that if we hadn’t been consumed with finding ways to murder first-trimester babies in their mothers’ wombs, we might have been able to routinely save first-trimester babies in danger of miscarriage?

If we hadn’t had to focus resources to fighting the worldwide HIV/AIDS pandemic, could we have found a cure for cancer, multiple sclerosis, influenza, or the common cold? Would we have been able to reliably export to the developing world the medicines needed to cure childhood diseases that devastate youngsters in the Third World but are merely a rite of passage in First World countries?

If we hadn’t been diverted by the Cold War and the "need" to compete in the arms race, could we have redirected money used to stockpile weapons of mass destruction into helping developing nations reach maturity on the world stage?

If we hadn’t been consumed with an alleged "right to privacy," "freedom of choice," and "right to die," would we have turned our efforts to the rehabilitation (where possible) and comfort care (where not) of our disabled, elderly, and otherwise dependent citizens? Could Terri Schiavo have been rehabilitated, perhaps even cured, if our society hadn’t been more interested in warehousing and eventually murdering her and those who suffer from similar catastrophic disabilities?

How will future generations judge us? Somehow I doubt they will be impressed with our ability to clone sheep, walk on the moon, and treat (but not cure) venereal disease. They will be more likely to sigh, shake their heads, and note a lot of similarity between our society and that of Tudor England during the Protestant Reformation.

Ever wonder how to sap the fun right out of non-conformity by teens and other social anarchists? Easy. You take their cultural rebellion and make it mainstream.

"As models flaunted head-to-toe body art and hard rock pulsated in a cavernous ballroom, veteran tattoo artists at a New York convention on Saturday wondered if their once taboo artistry was losing its nonconformist lure.

[…]

"Americans, especially women, are embracing a practice once considered seedy. A growing number of people are subjecting themselves to the whir of engine-driven needles spitting pigments into their body, tattoo artists said.

"According to some published reports, around 20 percent of Americans aged 18 to 25 are getting tattooed. Skin motifs are increasingly shedding their subversive image, some tattoo artists said. And women, who were once scarce in tattoo parlors, now make up about half the clientele, they added.

"’It used to be secret and underground,’ said a man who identified himself as R.J. ‘There’s more tattoo shops than ever before … anyone can order a kit and do it in his garage,’ said R.J., who owns the Tabu Tattoo shop in West Los Angeles."

GET THE STORY.

Of course the only problem with this strategy of mainstreaming rebellion is that the social misfits will go to even greater lengths to shock society. Which is probably one reason body piercings have gotten so out-of-control. When the thrill of piercing ears evaporated, the non-conformists began experimenting with piercing other body parts. So maybe we should continue to feign chagrin over tattoo art in the hopes that it will keep the non-conformists from desperately seeking other ways to horrify us.

Abigail Palmer has diagnosed the preeminent problem of American Catholics:

"American Catholics are the most spoiled Catholics on the planet. A Catholic in Baghdad just hopes that his church won’t be bombed this Sunday; Sudanese Catholics hope that they can face another day without brutal, unspeakable religious persecution. In many of the dioceses of the world, a roof on the church or running water would be nice. And we, in all of our prosperity, want more ease. We can go to church when we like, say what we like, do what we like. We want, if it’s even possible in this world, an easier life, a life less uncomfortable, and one that doesn’t involve explaining ‘arcane’ doctrines to non-believers. The idea of prosperous people sliding into laziness and insolence is not unheard of in history. The real outrage is that it is happening to a people who has received teachings that extol sacrifice, humility, fidelity, and love of the helpless and lowly. The excuse ‘But Zeus does it, too’ won’t work for us."

Go, GET THE STORY; don’t come back until you do.

Back, already? Then, for Exhibit A in support of this diagnosis, Dale Price of Dyspeptic Mutterings renders another brilliant fisking, this time of Fr. Charles Curran.

GET THE FISK.

You know how you hear a lot of people, especially in the wake of a terrorist attack, saying that the root causes of terrorism must be addressed and that these causes have to do with poverty and lack of economic development (which is another way of saying . . . well, poverty)?

Here’s a fascinating article that contents the situation is far more complex. In particular, the author suggests that religious ideology has much more to do with the spawning of terrorists than is generally recognized.

Excerpt:

Thirty years ago, when the terrorism debate got underway, it was widely asserted that terrorism was basically a left-wing revolutionary movement caused by oppression and exploitation. Hence the conclusion: Find a political and social solution, remedy the underlying evil — no oppression, no terrorism. The argument about the left-wing character of terrorism is no longer frequently heard, but the belief in a fatal link between poverty and violence has persisted. Whenever a major terrorist attack has taken place, one has heard appeals from high and low to provide credits and loans, to deal at long last with the deeper, true causes of terrorism, the roots rather than the symptoms and outward manifestations. And these roots are believed to be poverty, unemployment, backwardness, and inequality.

It is not too difficult to examine whether there is such a correlation between poverty and terrorism, and all the investigations have shown that this is not the case. The experts have maintained for a long time that poverty does not cause terrorism and prosperity does not cure it. In the world’s 50 poorest countries there is little or no terrorism. A study by scholars Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova reached the conclusion that the terrorists are not poor people and do not come from poor societies. A Harvard economist has shown that economic growth is closely related to a society’s ability to manage conflicts. More recently, a study of India has demonstrated that terrorism in the subcontinent has occurred in the most prosperous (Punjab) and most egalitarian (Kashmir, with a poverty ratio of 3.5 compared with the national average of 26 percent) regions and that, on the other hand, the poorest regions such as North Bihar have been free of terrorism. In the Arab countries (such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also in North Africa), the terrorists originated not in the poorest and most neglected districts but hailed from places with concentrations of radical preachers. The backwardness, if any, was intellectual and cultural — not economic and social.

These findings, however, have had little impact on public opinion (or on many politicians), and it is not difficult to see why. There is the general feeling that poverty and backwardness with all their concomitants are bad — and that there is an urgent need to do much more about these problems. Hence the inclination to couple the two issues and the belief that if the (comparatively) wealthy Western nations would contribute much more to the development and welfare of the less fortunate, in cooperation with their governments, this would be in a long-term perspective the best, perhaps the only, effective way to solve the terrorist problem.

Reducing poverty in the Third World is a moral as well as a political and economic imperative, but to expect from it a decisive change in the foreseeable future as far as terrorism is concerned is unrealistic, to say the least. It ignores both the causes of backwardness and poverty and the motives for terrorism.

READ ARTICLE

In 1991 Pope John Paul II wrote the encylical Centissimus Annus, in which he dealt with economic and workers’ rights themes following the collapse of Soviet Communism and the seeming triumph of capitalism as an economic system. While noting that capitalism unrestrained by moral values was a Bad Thing, he nevertheless notes its practical success. He went on to say this regarding the kind of welfare states that exist in much of the developed world, and particularly in Europe:

In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called “Welfare State”. This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the “Social Assistance State”. Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need [Centissimus Annus 48].

Unfortuantely, with the exception of Britain, Europe has been slow to wean itself away from welfare state ideology. Fortunately, there are now signs that Europeans are beginning to realize that the kin of welfare state utopia they hoped to build is unsustainable and must be abandoned.

This blog entry contains some fascinating analysis.

Here’s the story: Westerners aren’t replacing themselves poplation-wise because they’re having too few children. Meanwhile, Muslims are experiencing unrestrained population growth. Soon the West will have effectively depopulated itself (at least until there aren’t any folks left except high-birthrate groups like highly conservative members of the Catholic, Evangelical, and Mormon communities, who will launch the next phrase of Western civilization), and Muslims will be encroaching everywhere, leading to a global degeneration to third world status, exacerbated by Muslim fanatacism.

Right?

Well, not exactly.

The dire predictions of the death of the West may be a little premature.

Oh sure, some places–especially Europe–are depopulating themselves right on schedule. So is Japan.

But a new population study suggests the following items:

1) America isn’t radically depopulating itself. Americans are the exception among Westerners and, although their birthrate isn’t quite break even, it almost is, so we’re more or less holding our own.

2) The Muslim world isn’t having a sustainable population explosion. In fact, the urge to have fewer children is hitting the Muslim world hard, and some Muslim countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey) are now sub-replacement level countries when it comes to birth. As modernization spreads in the Muslim world, birthrates fall there, too.

3) The death rate is going up in many places, and lifespans are shrinking. This is particularly true in Africa, where widespread HIV infection is leading to plummeting lifespans. It is also true in other areas, where the problem may not be AIDS. In Russia, for example, the average lifespan has shrunk by four years due to incresed cardiovascular disease and accidents, both of which are precipitated by increased alcohol abuse.

4) This one (like the last one) isn’t really a surprise, but there are many Asian countries where there are now sharp, unnatural imbalances between the number of males and females. The normal birthrate is about 104-105 males per 100 female babies, but in some places the ratio has gone up to 130:100. These imbalances are caused by sex-selection (i.e., aborting female babies) in cultures that have a strong preference for sons and now have ultrasound technologies that can detect the sex of the child before birth. The imbalances have appeared, as one would expect, in China (where couples are limited to having one child per couple), but also in other places, such as India. This will cause a huge problem in 20 years (or less), when the young men want to get married and there aren’t enough women their age.

So. An interesting time ahead, but one not quite so dire as some have forecast.

Want to know what I’m talking about?

Read this article on the differences of American and Canadian culture. (Tip of the Stetson to Southern Appeal.)