Alexander writes:

This week, you’ve featured a letter from a women in her mid-twenties struggling to find a husband. It is also interesting to read from the perspective of a single man in his mid-twenties. I find it’s very difficult to know what a girl is really interested in, and whether she is interesting to me. I fear that given the standards of the society we’re in, those of us who are interested in more than the normal contemporary relationship come off to most people as not interested in a relationship at all.

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 Kidist Paulos Asrat has interesting observations at her blog Camera Lucida on the latest cover of O Magazine, the scripture of all things Oprah. Could Oprah be depressed? Miss Asrat says Oprah looks “insecure, hesitant and certainly non-powerful” in this photo. So ubiquitous is Oprah’s face, I do not possess the ability to sharply discern one image from another. She seems uniformly plastic in all. Oprah’s handlers like to present her as both fragile and fantastically more attractive than she is, the better to draw the weak to her throne. The hair on her shoulder seems to represent the conceit of a woman who is far too old for this sort of “come hither” gesture. Increasingly, Oprah is a sop to the middle-aged and their search for perennial youth.

I wonder if Oprah has ever gazed into the mirror and said to herself, “I could be wrong. I could be hopelessly and irretrievably wrong.”

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When summer’s heat reaches its climax, there is a renewed awareness of the benevolence of shade. The outstretched limbs tower above, waving their green fans with indolence and occasional vigor. The motion of a million scraps of parchment creates white noise. A 120-foot oak can send several tons of moisture into the atmosphere in a single year and produce 100,000 leaves. It may lower the temperature in its vicinity by as much as 20 degrees. The sheer busyness that lies behind this diminution of light is remarkable.

We find more than physical relief in these recesses. The moist leaf, the wizened bark, and the statuary of limb contribute to a sense of longevity and inspiring paralysis, as if life were halted and summarized in these enclaves of composure and meditation. It is no surprise Buddha found his path in the shade of a large tree:

“Therefore, with resolution as his only support and companion, he set his mind on Enlightenment and proceeded to the root of a Pipal Tree, where the ground was carpeted with green grass.”

 Cemeteries seem incomplete without living monuments that provide at least a modicum of the “thousand years of gloom” of the yew in Tennyson’s In Memoriam, “who changes not in any gale,/Nor branding summer suns avail.”  Shade shelters the dead and fosters memory.

Trees possess personality and their beckoning shade draws us closer to their idiosyncrasies. The Japanese maple is feminine, almost erotic in a restrained way while an aged oak is paternal, commanding, and indifferent. Lying under shallow-rooted maples, you feel uneasy, as if someone is about to pull the carpet up from under you. No one would even think of lying under an ornamental pear. Why bother? It’s so stingy.

The leaves begin to yellow in August. We dimly perceive a lessening and, before we can experience its full return, shade falls to our feet. The leaves, as Robert Frost put it, “They must go down past things coming up/ They must go down into the dark decayed.”

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Katy writes:

Thanks for your site — I read it daily through my Google RSS feed with much enjoyment. Like you, I think the correlation between the decline of domesticity and the decline of thought is no coincidence. Both children and ideas need time and nurture to grow to maturity. One of the side-effects of modernity seems to be that we push both out the door and into the world a bit too fast, or perhaps just in the wrong ways, before they are ready.

To get to our topic, though — without having read Bellatin, I must point out that there is a long and fine tradition of “literature of the wound,” better known as the grotesque, in the West. One of its exemplars would of course be Flannery O’Connor, in stories such as “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” and “Good Country People.” The fault in contemporary authors in general seems to be not that they fixate on the deformed, disfigured, or diseased. All reflection on human nature must, to be complete, explore our inescapable flaws, either directly or through some metaphor. Rather, the fault is that contemporary writers of woundedness increasingly seem to indulge a tendency to exploit the macabre and prurient for its own sake — seeing it as attractive in itself rather than in what it can reveal about us. They show increasingly less of the gentleness and good humor O’Connor showed even as she left Hulga abandoned in the hayloft, and their characters show increasingly less of the peaceful yet profoundly disturbing self-acceptance of the sideshow hermaphrodite in “Temple” as it lifted its dress and said: “God made me this away, I don’t dispute hit.”

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We are scolded in today’s New York Times for not caring enough about the work of Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin. Here’s a brief description of the plot of the Bellatin novella Beauty Salon:

In an unnamed city that is suffering from an unnamed epidemic a transvestite hairdresser has turned his shop into a hospice for men dying of the disease, caring for them as indifferently as he tends to the fish he houses in aquariums that are his sole diversion.

Much of Mr. Bellatin’s work focuses on “characters whose bodies are deformed, disfigured or diseased or whose sexual identity is uncertain or fluid.”  I can’t wait to crack this stuff open. Incidentally, Bellatin is missing part of his right arm due to a birth defect, a fact which apparently justifies a new literary genre, “literature of the wound.” Critic Francisco Goldman is quoted: “In Mario’s sense, the wound is literal and comes with all kinds of psychological nuance and pain, and seems related to sexuality and desire, the desire for a whole body. One of my favorite aspects of him is this sense that he is writing for all the freaks — either literally freaks or privately and metaphorically, that he really touches us.”

Contemporary literature is one unending freak show. Or maybe it’s not. It’s normal people who are the true freaks today. If you were missing an arm, would your desire for a new limb be sexual? 

What could be more tedious than viewing domesticity purely in terms of who does which chores? Oxford University researchers, in a failed effort to keep from twiddling their thumbs, have created an “egalitarian index” to measure domestic harmony around the world, according to Science Daily.  All is seen through the prism of efficiently-divided chores, as if families were business franchises. The more men and women reportedly share household chores, the higher a country ranks on the index. The United States comes in fourth in the world even though mysteriously there are few men in the supermarket aisles.

How many people honestly report they do nothing around the house? Yet, the study results have the imprimatur of certified data. Interestingly, the survey fails to look at how well men and women perform the chores or whether many chores important to comfort and daily sanity are even executed. It does not ponder one possible cause of the declining birth rate in top ranking countries, such as Norway, Sweden and Great Britian. Men look awful in aprons.

It is important that men share in household chores. Women are not drudges. But, it is not fair to divide chores evenly if it keeps a woman from being a woman and a man from being a man. 

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A reader writes: 

Dear Thinking Housewife,

I have been perusing your website and enjoy it, with some serious reservations.

If I’m not mistaken I am younger than you (despite your obvious zest and vitality.) I am a single woman in my mid-twenties. Things are not going too well with me. I haven’t found the right man and am beginning to give up. The truth is I haven’t any idea how to go about this. Can you offer advice?

Laura writes:

Thank you for reading. I appreciate your interest.

Only one woman in history never faced your predicament. In her legendary garden, Eve opened her eyes – eyes too clear and deep for deception – and there he was. Her self transcended.  A being familiar and yet strange. There he stood, delivered to specifications. 

Eve’s experience – both mythical and real –  has left its trace in us. It should  be easy. Love should just happen. Why does finding a mate seem the romantic equivalent of building the Suez Canal? 

My first recommendation is that you realize what you seek is not natural. You are not a frog in a pool. Human love is herbs and chemicals, a blend of the natural and the synthetic.

Let it sink in. You have a formidable task before you, something you probably face amid pressure to build a dazzling career. That’s a bum deal. The whole world may tell you to relax. Take your time and it will happen. Even your own mother may seem indifferent, unlike mothers of the past who gazed at unmarried daughters with undisclosed panic. This nonchalance is a lie. Don’t believe it for a second. I advise you to maintain a healthy state of panic until you have found a man worthy to be your husband.

Your mother may be oblivious in other ways too. She may be ignorant of the cultural disaster that awaits you. Men are in a state of potentially irreversible adolescence. Years in the great educational gulag, with its stultifying classrooms and cinder-block corridors, have killed the male spirit. In a serious world, they are surrounded by unseriousness. Men are bored to death. Men are in a trance. The constant non-reality of electronic games and TV and sexual images flickers on their internal screens. The screens grow larger. Their minds and souls correspondingly shrink.

They hang onto life by some invisible cord. How can something as subtle as love penetrate their psyches? You have a gift that is noble and rare. How can it compete with the glitter that sustains them?

This is bad news. Very bad news. There would be only one thing worse. And, that is if you did not possess the desire to love. Scrupulously maintain this capacity. What did Eve see when she opened her eyes and glimpsed Adam? She saw that all of nature was a master stroke of invention, the result of a love too profound for human comprehension. You cannot put yourself in Eve’s lucky shoes, except in one sense. You can possess her capacity for wonder and reverence. You can possess her soul.

Once you have this, you are halfway there.  Spend as much time as possible out in the world. Any place but bars. Seek not and ye shall find not. All the conventional advice applies. Eve didn’t need nice clothes, but every woman after the Fall has needed conscious attempts at prettiness. Eve didn’t need to reserve herself until after the wedding, but you do. Through simple, age-old feminine inducements and the nobility of your love, you might awaken someone who barely lives. Together, you can create a new world. The Suez Canal wasn’t built in a day.

If this seems vague, it is because the object of your search is as yet unknown. Good luck!

Boudicca Haranguing the Britons by John Opie

History has known a few great women warriors, such as Boudicca, who led the Iceni tribe of Briton in battle against the Romans. But, the normalization of women in combat is a sign of the weakening of a nation’s will to defend itself.

On the subject of women leaders and warriors, Rose writes:

Your other commenter has caused me to ponder the topic of warlike females. I know that many conservatives are displeased by popularity of women-warriors in modern culture, but I believe that they are wrong when they say that the phenomenon is driven only by political correctness.

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Melissa writes:

In reflecting on women leaders such as Queen Victoria, I would like to add that there is more to the “Pharaoh-ess” Hatshepsut. She did not rule as Pharaoh but as Regent to Thutmose III, the legitimate ruler, after the death of their father, Thutmose II. Her memory was all but erased by her brother when he assumed absolute rule in the 23d year of his reign, presumably after her death. Whatever may be said about her, it is an important distinction that she was actually a regent for a pharaoh rather than a pharaoh herself.

There have been rare female military leaders, notably Joan of Arc and the Hebrew Judge, Deborah. Each was more of an ideological leader and encouraged and rallied the troops without really fighting in battle. They were the personification of “a girl worth fighting for”. They pointed to the truth and brought the men they led to see, understand, and appreciate it. This is not to belittle their critical roles, but rather an attempt to be intellectually honest about those roles. It is only logical that their roles were necessarily ideological because they could not be physical. While it may happen on occasion that there is a single women who can physically best a single man, it is not the standard. Warriors epitomize masculinity and all the elements of the manifold identity, and as such no woman could best them as a category. Honesty is necessary. But that does not mean that women do not undertake a comparable burden in building society.
 
Without women, those warriors would be dark men living in caves, eating raw meat, and lacking any compassion for their fellows in other caves. Women birth children, keep homes, cultivate society and give to men guidance that they may protect these,  with their lives if necessary. This is where and how we lead as women, and Queen Victoria knew it. She appreciated the gravity of her responsibility to lead a nation in this way, as do I.

Philip M. from England sends a recent article about parents delaying potty training and schools that  must deal with children in diapers. This has been a big issue in nursery schools here for some time.

Philip says:

Margaret Morrissey, of family lobby group ParentsOutloud, said mothers shouldn’t be blamed for the problem. She said, “If we insist that mothers go out to work when their children are still young – out of the house by 7.30am, dropping off a baby at nursery, then the two kids at school, working a full day and getting back at 6pm – things are going to give.”

Laura writes:

How long before you have a prime minister who proudly declares he wears nappies at night?

Philip responds:

If anything, our PM should be wearing them over his head, for much the same purposes. But then again, would it be good for the economy, or is there a chance it may cause ‘diaper-inflation’?
 
I apologize for the implied English crudity of the above remarks.

Laura writes:

In all seriousness, few topics are more political or controversial than diapers. Careless remarks about delayed potty-training can permanently destroy a person’s reputation. It’s a complicated subject. The invention of paper and plastic diapers has changed everything, making it far less uncomfortable for children to wear wet diapers. Furthermore, training a child takes a level of concentration that does not fit in with the pace of modern living or the anti-authoritarian style of parenting today. We should remain calm and clear-headed. Colleges are not turning away students in diapers. Not yet.

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Some people dislike the insistent drone of cicadas. Cicada-song grows intense in this part of the world in August. I consider it one of the greatest of nature’s sounds, comparable in beauty to waves hitting the shore. It drowns out man-made noise and calls to mind times past.

Jean Henri Fabre, the 19th century French entomologist, investigated the widely-held belief that the cicadas’ song was purely a mating ritual. His investigations probably would not meet modern scientific standards, but they are fascinating. He wrote:

For fifteen years the Common Cicada has thrust his society upon me. Every summer for two months I have these insects before my eyes, and their song in my ears. I see them ranged in rows on the smooth bark of the plane trees, the maker of music and his mate sitting side-by-side …. Whether drinking or moving they never cease singing.

It seems unlikely therefore that they are calling their mates. You do not spend months on end calling to someone who is at your elbow. Indeed I am inclined to think that the Cicada himself cannot even hear the song he sings with so much apparent delight ….

On one occasion I borrowed the local artillery, that is to say the guns that are fired on feast days in the village. There were two of them, and they were crammed with powder as though for the most important rejoicings. They were placed at the foot of the plane trees in front of my door. We were careful to leave the windows open, to prevent the panes from breaking. The Cicadas in the branches overhead could not see what was happening.

Six of us waited below, eager to hear what would be the effect on the orchestra above.

Bang! The gun went off with a noise like a thunderclap.

Quite unconcerned, the Cicada continued to sing. Not one appeared in the least disturbed …

I think, after this experiment, we must admit that the Cicada is hard of hearing, and like a very deaf man, is quite unconscious that he is making a noise.

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TH:  Good evening, and welcome to The Thinking Housewife. My guest tonight is the eminently fictitious Ellie Forthnaught, founder and sole proprietor of an interesting new venture in education, the New Wave Academy for Women.

Welcome, Mrs. Forthnaught.

Mrs. F:  Thank you. Thrilled to be here.

TH:  Mrs. Forthnaught, –  may we call you Ellie?

Mrs. F:  No, no. Please call me Andy. That’s what all my friends call me.

TH:  Fine then, Andy. Tell us about this idea of yours. I understand you intend to revolutionize women’s higher education in America.

Mrs. F:  Oh well, I’m no revolutionary really, but I recently announced – at a virtually unattended press conference in the nation’s capital – my plan for a chain of prestigious academies for young women. The start-up date is uncertain, but the plan calls for two dozen academies eventually, with four hundred students each.

TH:  This is serious. Sugar?

Mrs F:  Thank you.

TH:  And?

Mrs. F:  There’s likely to be one in every region of America. That’s the goal.

TH:  The name of these academies?

Mrs. F:  The New Wave Academy for Women.  It’s simple and memorable.

TH:  Are you wealthy?

Mrs. F:   Funding is uncertain. I don’t have any start-up funds as a matter of fact and I don’t expect to find sponsors soon.  The plan is well-developed and that’s what counts. Tuition should be in the range of $5,000 per year. I tried to crunch this number to make it less, but that would entail feeding the women only bread and water.

TH:  That’s unconstitutional.
 
Mrs. F:  That’s what I thought.

TH:  Now, these are four-year institutions. And, what will women study?

Mrs. F:  The first year will involve intensive de-programming of students. Most will have been exposed to pernicious ideas. At times, it may seem like breaking wild horses, but I assure you wherever there is error, truth tastes sweet. By the second year, the women will be ready to learn.

TH:  And, then?

Mrs. F:  Our subjects will fall into two categories. One, there will be traditional higher education courses in the liberal arts: history, literature, mathematics, science, music, art history, and philosophy. In short, the whole Gordian knot of human affairs and ideas will be crammed into their pretty little heads in an entertaining and compelling fashion. New Wave students will be chosen for their avidity for learning so this shouldn’t be much of a problem.

TH:  And, the second category?

Mrs. F:   The second category will involve the womanly arts, including homemaking, psychology, child development, domestic crafts, etc. Not too much, not too little. Most women today emerge from college tens of thousands of dollars poorer and with no inkling how to live their real lives, not the slightest knowledge about men or children, about sickness or health, about rich or poor. They are untutored. To put it unkindly, they are idiots, and have spent a small fortune becoming so.

TH:  Were you an … idiot once?

Forthnaught:   Me? Oh, fortunately I was interested in archaeology in college and in my senior year I went on an expedition in Crete with the famous Professor James Hoovenhollen.

TH:  The Professor Hoovenhollen?

Forthnaught:  I fell in love. We married and had six children.

TH:  But, your name is Forthnaught, Andy.

Forthnaught:  James died ten years ago. I am now married to Allan Forthnaught.

TH:  Not every woman can have a Professor Hoovenhollen, or a Forthnaught. What will New Wave women do when they graduate?

Mrs. F:  One question will be strictly forbidden in the hallways, the classrooms and the dormitories of New Wave. That is this: What will you do? This question regarding the young womens’ futures after graduation will have already been implicitly answered by their way of life and by the curriculum at New Wave.  What will they do? They will wrest civilization from the clutches of certain doom. What will they do? They will raise the next generation and love men. What will they do? They will perpetuate what is highest in their culture and extend the delicate bonds of community and family. They will defend beauty, guard revelation, and cherish the old and the sick. “But, what will they really do?” some will still demand to know. These are people who insist on one answer and are satisfied with only one answer. Here it is: New Wave Women will do nothing!

TH:  I foresee protests.

Forthnaught:  Yes, protests and pickets. From both the left and the right.
 
TH:  Have you ever been publicly flogged?

Mrs. F:  I expect things to calm down so the girls and my teachers can get to work.

TH:  This type of education, isn’t it … aristocratic? I mean, aren’t you imposing your values on others?

Mrs. F:    Once they go out into the world and astound people with their beauty and grace, their well-behaved and intelligent children, their contented marriages and their orderly homes, many people will accuse New Wavers of elitism. “Not everyone can be like that,” people will say, “and therefore no one should be like that.” This is the great leveling argument of democracy run amuck. We should all strive to live for money and only for money because some people are poor. We should all live for our jobs and nothing but our jobs because people need jobs. We should all have ill-kept homes and children who watch television because not everyone has orderly homes and children who play outside.

It’s strange but this same leveling argument is not applied to Old Wave Women. No one makes the same cry of elitism against the woman senator or the woman corporate executive or the teacher. Somehow she is permitted to reach the pinnacles of her endeavors without being accused of elitism. Why can’t domestic women excel at what they do? Odd, isn’t it?

TH:  You make it sound as if New Wavers will be perfect. You make it sound as if the whole world will be imperfect, except New Wavers.

Mrs. F:  The aspirations of our students will be perfect, not their lives. 

TH:  Let’s talk about funding.
 
Mrs. F:  I fear for the possibility of corporate sponsorship. New Wave women will make poor spenders compared to their mainstream counterparts. Frugality is one of the most charming of feminine arts. It is a social discipline, best practiced with like-minded others. Every day will be a Stone Soup day for a New Wave Woman if necessary. As long as she has a stone, her family and friends will eat.

Here’s what I figure. If New Wave women have an average of five children –

TH: Five!

Mrs. F:  Okay, six. If they have six children each, in 50 years the results of their work will be visible in hundreds of communities. People will wander into some of these lucky towns and notice something different. Residents say hello and smile. The rough edges are worn away and the hideous strip malls are gone. The children speak in full sentences and actually play outside. The old spend their days amid family. The food is delicious. Divorce is rare.

TH:  It sounds as if you are imposing your values on others, Andy.

Mrs. F:  New Wave is a school, not a prison.

TH:  Isn’t this an attack on non-New Wave women?
 
Mrs. F:  An attack?

TH:  It’s fine for you to do whatever you want in the privacy of your home, Andy. Go ahead and be recklessly domestic if you want. If you’re into nouveau-patriarchy, that’s fine. But, you shouldn’t impose it on society or on other women. That’s not right.

Mrs. F:  The school is voluntary.

TH:  But, the idea might spread!

Mrs. F:  I don’t believe –
 
TH:  Do you think men will… like New Wave Women?

Mrs. F:  New Wavers will gently persuade.

TH:  This isn’t Sex and the City, I see.

Mrs. F:   I’m hoping for even more academies someday, perhaps six in every state and five or ten in each major city.
 
TH:  Andy.

Mrs. F:  Yes?

TH:  Have you ever heard of fascism?

Mrs. F:  I used to tell my children they could have no dessert unless they –
 
TH:  That’s fascism, pure and simple, Andy.  Listen, before you go, could you describe for our readers your necklace? I can’t take my eyes off it.

Mrs. F:  Oh, this?  This is a bronze cast of a little medallion I found in Crete. You see, there’s a woman holding an urn on her shoulder.

TH:  It’s lovely.

Mrs. F:  It brings back great memories, memories of days sifting through antiquity with James, chisels in our pockets and dust on our shoes.

TH:  Did you ever regret giving up archaeology and becoming a nobody?

Mrs. F:  Me?  Why no, not for a second. I moved forward in my life.

TH: Forward?

Mrs. F:  That’s the opposite of backward.

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In an age when many people do not believe in immortality, Paradise is truly lost. Or is it?

I like to question people about their views of life after death or, as the case may be, of non-life after death. Often, their ideas do not include a heavenly resurrection, but a state of long and lasting sleep. “I will simply fall asleep,” they say. “I will close my eyes and never wake up.”

For them, there is Paradise.  Heaven is a very strong anaesthetic and a firm mattress. Perhaps the ceaseless vitality and busyness of modern life makes the idea of doing anything after death unappealing. This is the perfect reward for a life well-lived, an eternal coma.

On the face of it, immortal sleep bears the marks of common sense.  Death resembles sleep.  It resembles sleep if one has never seen real death, if one encounters the end of life only in its doctored form, with none of the gruesome grimaces a fresh corpse displays before the mortician arrives. 

The truth is the idea that the afterlife resembles sleep makes less sense than the idea of some form of resurrection.  Both beliefs imply immortality. To be in a state of sleep, one must exist. To rest one must breathe. What sort of God would want to superintend an eternal state of dormancy? 

I would not mind sleeping forever. Good night and Farewell. God of Endless Bedtime and Heavenly Mattresses, grant me a blissful sleep. A night of dreams. Dreams of Paradise, not fire.

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“The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.” 

                                                                                        Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Such is the bygone world of Austen’s Mrs. Bennet, mother of the legendary Elizabeth Bennet, who ultimately lands the most grumpy and charming man in all English literature. It is rare, if not unknown, for a British mother to lavish attention on her daughter’s marital prospects today. Young women enter the wilderness of contemporary love on their own.

Karen from England writes:

Up until recently, marriages in Britain were all but arranged in name. Parents, relatives and friends selected people who they thought were compatible. Men could not date women without being viewed and vetted by their familes and usually fathers. Courtships were conducted under the beady eyes of parents and marriages were sanctioned or vetoed by parents. Marriages which were not approved did not happen and the couple had no choice but to split or elope. Care and guidance was given to the selection of marriage partners with the essential criteria being compatibility. Often parental pressure was considerable. This was abandoned in the 1960s with disastrous consequences. Women now go to bars, meet men they know nothing about, and before long they are applying for a marriage licence or living with them. Parents have given up vetting partners and allow their offspring to marry anyone in the name of romance. The Royal family have even given up maintaining their tradititions. Our own Prince William and future king is shacked up with the niece of a man who lives in a house called La Maison Bang Bang (House of Sex) from where he deals drugs and arranges prostitutes.If the marriage goes ahead, our Queen will be related to a drug dealer and pimp. One must ask if she intends to have him detained at her pleasure. The Queen of Norway has an adopted illegitimate grandson whose natural father is in prison on drugs charges, by vitue of her son’s marriage to a waitress.
 
Hollywood has brainwashed millions of Americans and Brits into putting too much emphasis on romantic love and lust. Judgment about a partner’s suitability to build a marriage has been suspended. This is why the divorce rate is so high and why royalty and criminals get to be related. I think that an arranged marriage system is required in the West so that people can select suitable partners and rebuild the family tradition. The current method does not work. The free-for-all that allows anyone to marry anyone, regardless of parental approval or tradition, is destroying family tradition, pushing up divorce rates and creating massive social instability.

Karen from England writes in regard to Why We Must Discriminate:

Men’s jobs are no longer secure as a consequence of globalisation, economic collapse and recession. Therefore women cannot rely on men as providers. This leaves many women with no option but to pursue careers and develop their own financial independence which provides them with a security net in the event of things going wrong. I think that family life and the issue of women’s roles cannot be resolved without major changes in society as a whole. Essentially that means reversing the cultural revolution and the process of globalisation.

Laura writes:

Karen makes an important point. The decline in the ability of men to support families is not due simply to the entry of women into the workforce. It is also due to globalization and excessive immigration. Families through working ever harder and thus destroying their own foundations have covered up and borne the brunt of the self-inflicted weakening of the economies of the West.

The answer to this problem is not for families to continue to destroy themselves. The answer is not for the majority of women to be both breadwinners and breadmakers. The solution lies in the rebirth of economic nationalism. “We are not a commonwealth of consumers,” Patrick Buchanan has said, but a nation of builders and producers, industrialists and farmers, information specialists and engineers. The American economy is a vast leviathan, potentially far more self-sufficient than we have allowed it to become, and the British economy is not to serve the world, but itself first.

The discussion over my article Why We Must Discriminate continues. I am accused of “utter nonsense” in saying that the work lives of women interfere with family life and the stability of marriage.

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Alexis de Tocqueville was a social prophet of the highest order. We ignore his acute descriptions of American society at our peril. Here is Tocqueville on women in America:

Thus the Americans do not think that man and woman have either the duty or the right to perform the same offices, but they show an equal regard for both their respective parts; and though their lot is different, they consider both of them as beings of equal value.  They do not give to the courage of woman the same form or the same direction as to that of man; but they never doubt her courage: and if they hold that man and his partner ought not always to exercise their intellect and understanding in the same manner, they at least believe the understanding of the one to be as sound as that of the other, and her intellect to be as clear.  Thus, then, whilst they have allowed the social inferiority of woman to subsist, they have done all they could to raise her morally and intellectually to the level of man; and in this respect they appear to me to have excellently understood the true principle of democratic improvement.  As for myself, I do not hesitate to avow that, although the women of the United States are confined within the narrow circle of domestic life, and their situation is in some respects one of extreme dependence, I have nowhere seen woman occupying a loftier position; and if I were asked, now that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply – to the superiority of their women.  [emphasis added]

 

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I have never lived in the Kingdom of Domestic Perfection, but I’ve caught glimpses of it. Peering through its gleaming gates, I’ve seen its highways and well-lit interiors. Perhaps you already live there and know all about it. Then I don’t need to tell you that the skies are a consistent blue and it almost never rains. Except when rain is forecast.

In the Kingdom, people are strong and industrious. Even in the car or at a desk, they are as healthy and vital as oxen at the plough. If intelligence is the steady application of the mental forces toward a tangible goal, they are highly intelligent.

In Perfection, the stream of consciousness is no longer a stream. It’s more like the regulated flow from an engineered dam. And, people are grateful for that. No child is born without a reason. No life is continued without a reason. No love is given and no love received without a reason.

Everyone is perfectly equal, as in 1 + 1 = 2 and 15 = 15. The men and women differ only in anatomical respects. The women enjoy football and the men cook. They cook dinner with like aeronautical engineers preparing for a test flight.

The children are equal to adults in all essential ways, although it’s true they have physical inadequacies for a few short years. Before long, they make their own food and cure themselves when sick. They are content to sit quietly with an interactive device.

Old age is nice in Perfection. The grandparents die on their own when the time comes.

The very best thing about the Kingdom is its machine-like efficiency. The homes, large and roomy, are immaculate and frequently empty. The closets are full. The kitchen countertops are spotless and the beds are always made. The dogs sleep during the day.

Serious disputes are settled by the Kingdom’s chief institution, the House of Legal Perfection, where everything is decided according to the Rule of Maximum Individual Fulfillment (MIF), the kingdom’s guiding document. MIF is happiness. MIF is perfection.

The other main institutions are the House of Physical and Mental Perfection, for cures and prescriptions; the House of Educational Perfection, where children spend six days a week 11 months a year; and the Perfection Emporium, a vast complex of entertainment and shopping establishments that exceeds the imagination in its multi-faceted splendor.

To tell you the truth, that’s all I know of Perfection.  Follow that bridge at the bottom of the hill. Cross the railway bed and enter the valley. That’s where I live, the Kingdom of Domestic Absurdity.

Viewed from above, the streets show scattered steeples, smokestacks, spires, and various signs of architectural experimentation. Absurdity is profoundly vegetative and profoundly mineral. The people are quasi-agricultural – out of necessity and preference – and they are compulsive builders. Stones are their preferred medium. Stalks and pods, vines and limbs, creepers and primeval shrubbery – a maze of growth exists in every season. The welcome mat outside each door is muddy. Rakes and hoes are propped against the walls.

There is always someone at home in Absurdity. Rarely does a day pass without some disagreement, but there is no House of Legal Perfection and disputes end in forgiveness. Frugality is a way of life, both a communal art form and a rigorous discipline. The Absurd Casserole takes three hours and 45 minutes to make from start to finish. The men rarely cook it and most have no idea how to put it together.

There is no equality in Absurdity. In fact, the word is rarely employed in reference to people. The men are unequal to the women and the women are unequal to the men. The children, who outnumber adults by roughly three to one, are the most unequal of all.

No child is ever alone. Grandparents resign themselves to unpredictability, noise and visitors. The maiden aunts are besieged. In the whole kingdom, they are the most adored, their love reciprocated by those whom they spoil.

Tragically, there are few toys. Children play with rocks (a fact often repeated in Perfection). They visit the maiden aunts and jump off walls. They are forced to play for long and uninterrupted hours outside. Their games are frequently altered through improvisation and dispute.

There is no House of Educational Perfection, but there are small schools, including some which convene for only one day a year. The most important building in the Kingdom is the Chapel.

One of the salient features of Absurdity is the honor given to the act of reflection. In Absurdity, the tributaries and rivulets of thought are protected. They flow into the wide, bottomless gulf of treasured communal ideals.

Here, people try in vain to keep the mind forever running toward a fixed destination. The circuitous path across a meadow, a trail through the woods, the rocky descent down a steep ravine: these beckon and the mind follows. It yearns to wander. Memory holds a special place, possibly because death and illness are a constant or possibly because memories are often more true.

Here there is no Rule of Maximum Individual Fulfillment. But, there is  what the people of Perfection consider a savage and primitive notion of human love. Love is believed to have almost mechanical properties. It propels people through and beyond time. In Absurdity, to love another person –  or two or three or four people –  is often no more complicated than to accompany them through time.  Love means synchrony.

Every present action is believed to extend both into the distant past and the far-off future.

The home in Absurdity is a miniature republic, a metaphysical project, as well as the most practical and essential enterprise on earth.

No home is permitted the Right of Dissolution, a sacred principle in nearby Perfection. This right does not hold in Absurdity because each home is considered a repository of ancestral memory. In Absurdity, people are often rediscovering the old, as they say, while in Perfection there’s much talk of the “courage to be new.” Once I saw this crude homemade poem tacked to a bulletin board at The Thinkery, and I think it is characteristic of Absurdity:

My thoughts embark in the silent sound.
They hoist their sails to go round and round.
They trawl by day,
Cast lines at night,
Baiting and awaiting
What they’ve already found.

Wisdom is abundant and free in this world. But, it’s rarely just given. It holds its hand out as you’re precariously dangling from the ledge.