How did we reach the point where we both sanction suicide among the old and yet go to extraordinary lengths to extend their lives? We got here by losing sight of what life is. Roughly 60,000 Americans in their eighties now have open-heart surgery every year, according to a recent study, as reported in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer. And, more than a thousand in their nineties do. Those surgeries cost Medicare $40,000 to $60,000 each. Medicare will be bankrupt in seven years. And, the number of people in their eighties and nineties is rapidly increasing. Americans appear to believe death is okay if you're dying of hopelessness and despair. Death isn't okay if you're dying from ordinary physical decline.

No advanced civilization has been sustained without barbers. The more the better. There are few things more beautiful or emblematic of strength and order than a man’s neck, freshly-shaven. Some societies have found long hair in men attractive and masculine. These societies have disappeared, as well they should have.

The barber closest to where I live is a nice, but messy person. He sweeps all the day’s hair into a hole in his floor. The hair rains down into the basement, where he leaves it accumulating in a massive hill of human locks. I once took my son down to the basement so that he could use the restroom. We both almost fainted in disgust. The hill was illuminated with the ghostly light shining from the hole above.

For this reason, and out of thrift, I have long been my husband’s barber. I have cut his hair for about fifteen years. I have a few rules. One, I don’t talk sports. Most men enjoy mulling over the latest scores while getting their heads shorn. Tough luck.

I also reserve the right to break out in laughter. There’s a reason why there are barbers. It does take some skill and training. Worse comes to worse, my husband can wear a baseball cap for a few days. Don’t misunderstand me. I take the job seriously. What woman wants her husband to appear with unintentional corn rows?

“Thanks,” my husband said recently after a hair cut. “It needs to be done.” He was quoting Richard Nixon. In his famous conversaton with John Dean, Nixon spoke of the need to use the FBI and IRS against political enemies.

“Oh, what an exciting prospect,” said Dean.

“Thanks,” said Nixon.  “It needs to be done.”

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  Artists give up everything - money, security, normalcy - for their art. Why do they do it? Lech is an Abstract Expressionist painter and a friend of mine. He once explained to me the reason why he has devoted his entire life to art. "I love the smell of paint,"  he said. "I can never get enough of it."    

  Bessie Huey was a fixture of the working-class Pennsylvania neighborhood where my husband spent his childhood. Bessie used to show up now and then at my husband's house, which was filled with children, boarders, relatives, cats, and dogs. Boo, hoo. Boo, hoo, Bessie would cry. I saw you all sitting around the table last night and it was so beautiful. It was so beautiful it made me cry. Bessie once called the police to her home with a report of domestic violence. She claimed her husband, who weighed 90 pounds and was incapacitated by illness, was beating her. Bessie was a large woman, about 200 pounds, and strong. No report was ever filed. Bessie, who favored tent-like dresses on her ample frame, appeared to idolize both domestic health and domestic un-health. Bessie was an eccentric. Healthy neighborhoods include eccentrics. It's the sterile, unbalanced place that does not. My husband grew up in a normal place, with children playing in the streets, mothers at home, couples yelling at each other instead of divorcing, and taverns filled with men at night. It was a normal place, not a perfect one. A big reason why it was normal was that it had a healthy economy. There were plenty of factories and plenty of jobs. That town is gone. Much of America is gone. It's disappeared because Americans have decided they don't need an industrial economy. America has given away its factories to the world. The whole stunning transformation of the…

  Does a child need both a mother and father in his life? Many people today say, 'Not quite.' I was trying yesterday to explain to a friend who is a passionate supporter of same-sex marriage why the answer is yes, but the reasons are so abstract as to be almost unreachable. Many common sense truths, what C.S. Lewis called the Tao of living, are like that. They lie partly beyond our ken. Then I came across this excellent quote by Felix Adler, author of an early 20th century book, Marriage and Divorce. He said: "The child needs father and mother; but it does not need them only as some think, alternately, now the father's influence and then the mother's or in some things the father's influence and in other things the mother's. The child needs the father's masculine influence and the mother's feminine influence always together, the two streams uniting to pour their fructifying influence through the child's life into the life of humanity."  

In this entry, Rose, a “conservative lesbian,” responds to the charge in the previous post that she is self-glorifying and guilty of idealizing woman love. Among her most interesting comments is this: “Eccentrics need a stable society in which to be eccentrics.”

Rose writes, initially quoting the female commenter Kidist Asrat Paulos:

“In a way, she is saying that there is no non-romantic, Platonic (or otherwise) relationship possible between women. She doesn’t say this explicitly, but I have a feeling she believes this.”

I, in fact, do not believe this, and rather agree with what Heather Elizabeth Peterson writes in “Romantic Friendship: Not Just a Code Word for Gay” and “The Misguided Search for ‘Homoeroticism’ A Plea for Research on Friendship.” As you’ve stated, the sexualization of our culture has helped destroy the possibility of nonsexual closeness. A modern Wordsworth would hide the extent of his love for his sister for fear of accusations (as I have read about William and Dorothy) that his regard was incestuous.

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The following is a critique of the widely prevalent notion that the ideal life for a woman is one of “balance,” the judicious mixing of career and home. I call this the “Balance Myth,” one of the central ideas of mainstream feminism.
 
On the face of it, “third-wave feminism,” as it is known, seems reasonable,  an appealing counterpart to middle class virtue. In fact, it normalizes the radical tenets of feminism. Thanks to the Balance Myth, the casual neglect of children, marriage and home are now mainstream phenomena. This seemingly harmless idea wears a soft and pleasing exterior. But, it offends exactly what it purports to uphold: the intelligence of women and their innate desire for meaningful work.

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  This article in today's New York Times states an amazing fact. Apparently, female artistic directors and literary agents have a tendency to discriminate against female playwrights. Are women naturally more competitive with other women? If so, the more women in positions of influence the harder time women trying to break in will have. In other words, the idea that women will be kinder to women is false. Or do women agents, sick and tired of the feminist claptrap that lands on their desks, secretly wish to purge the field of all women? Whatever the answer, the solution is this: Feel sorry for women. Here's another question: Is it possible for artistic endeavour to survive in a world where people are charting its progress?

Kristor writes in response to my comment about the need for praise:

I wouldn’t worry too much about getting attached to compliments. Let them register. After all, their ultimate effect in a basically duteous person will be to raise the bar you set yourself to hurdle every day. Am I right? Plus you’ll never give yourself credit for them anyway, never leave them on the plus side of your personal balance sheet. Right? You’ll say, “Oh, it wasn’t me; all I did was interfere with the Lord less than usual.”
 
What counts, what makes the difference, indeed all the difference in the world, is the direction of one’s ultimate orientation. For those who are oriented horizontally, along the plane of the mundane, the world’s effects will affect them by pushing them about therein, to no ultimate relief. For those whose orientation is even a little bit angled up toward Christ’s pure orthogonal to the mundane, the world’s effects will affect them by pushing them about in the world and pushing them up a bit on their diagonal. The closer we approximate to Christ’s orthogony to the world, the more profound this effect, and the more delightful it will be. At the apotheosis, we will see that every worldly experience is radiant with uncreate light; we will enjoy creation as God does. 
 
A purely worldly person, if such there be, refers everything to the world, and is entirely entrapped. Such perhaps is the fate of say Richard Dawkins; it is the Hell C.S. Lewis describes in The Great Divorce, a shadow world of deficient actuality. But almost no one I think is purely worldly; almost all of us want to get out of this shadow world, and into the high bright solid light at the top of the mountain, where our world is no longer obscured, but able at last to be fully itself.
 
I can’t figure out whether Numenius thinks we should be on the peak looking at the boat, or vice versa. Either way, one would be far from the hurry, noise and commerce of the shore. Having spent a lot of time in both situations – wave-tossed and perched on high scarps – I can say with confidence that both are fit places to open and cleanse the doors of perception.

Laura writes:

Yes, Numenius was unclear. I think whatever he meant it involved extreme isolation.

On the subject of compliments, I come from a long Irish tradition of treating them with embarrassment or sarcasm. According to this worldview, which is genetically transmitted, it is presumptuous to see any truth in them. They must be doled out and received sparingly for fear of creating an even minimally self-supporting ego. For instance, if someone tells you have made a great meal or they like what you are wearing, you just sort of shrug your shoulders and grimace. That means, “Gee, thanks!”

I think there are some who are purely worldy in their waking hours. Only at night, in their sleep, do they escape what you call “the shadow world of deficient actuality.”

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  O, vegetative June, Fragrant opiates, Milky pharmaceuticals. O, ruffled doctor, Tend your emerald clinic, Your lab coat askew, Your hair disgraced with tendrils. Dispense your prescriptions. Drug and deceive. Only lengthen this appointment. I cannot hold you close enough.

Pore through history and you'll find no record of it. Energy, initiative, will, ideas, conflict – these seem to be the decisive factors in human affairs. Gentleness is an inconspicuous and private thing. It’s hard to describe exactly what you've received when you've been its beneficiary. One wouldn’t want to live in a world governed by gentleness, but to live in a world short of it would be like living in a city without trees. Gentleness is especially feminine. A woman who has never expressed at least some of her powers of tenderness has not fully lived. It’s as if she had never walked. Gentleness, which I myself have by no means mastered, is both inborn and acquired. It can be unlearned and erased. If one lives in a culture that prizes only assertiveness and energy, one may lose the essential thing. Gentleness is low-wattage. With a surge of power, its filaments break. Some people go to therapists in search of lost gentleness, either the ability to receive or to give it. Gentleness is not simply soothing. It’s mental thing as well, a form of understanding and higher awareness with its own golden mean. Properly attuned, its objective is the buried truth. Improperly attuned, it becomes bothersome, meddling, sentimental, and indulgent. Behind the achievements of civilization – the masterpieces, the monuments, the battles, the great works of thought – the hidden influence of the right sort of gentleness lives. It's unrecorded. It's received public acclaim…

  Perhaps you live in a normal neighborhood. Maybe you reside in a peaceful corner of America where people still make eye contact, wave hello and share meals during a crisis. If you do, cherish what you have. I was talking to an elderly woman in her mid-eighties not long ago, a person who has lived in the same house in a pleasant suburban neighborhood for more than 50 years. “You must know lots of people on your street,” I said. She is a gracious and uncomplaining person. But, she looked at me and said, “I don’t know them at all. If I fell down in the driveway, they wouldn’t come and help me up.” Life is not a bed of roses, it’s true, and people have important things to do. But, something inside me rebels at the thought of an old person ignored. I can’t adjust to the idea. I like to think that if there were a few women at home, this would not have been true for this widow. Neighborhoods thrive on trust, common habits and time. A non-neighborhood is a place where people may still possess common habits and trust but lack the time to forge connections. The anti-neighborhood is different. There, people have lost the social instincts. Autism becomes collective. When people receive a basic level of social stimulation from television, it cuts into the desire for simple interactions. But, after a while, it can rob them of all…

  When the Vitalist stage of social decline sets in, money is no longer the ultimate status symbol. Energy is. To the most dynamic goes the prize. Illness and dying are notoriously non-energetic conditions. Hence the growing intolerance for what was once considered fairly normal - the slow and painful death. Suicide becomes "an end-of-life decision." Here's the sad story of Rona Zelniker, who joined the growing ranks of suicides last March. When she was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 60, she prepared for her self-termination with the can-do energy and efficiency of someone embarking on a trip or new job. According to the account in The Philadelphia Inquirer, she cleaned out her condo,  put it up for sale, and bought a biodegradable plastic urn for her ashes, which she placed on the kitchen counter. Her son asked for a bereavement leave from his job - before she died. It seemed that Zelniker was completely undone by the prospect of a difficult and prolonged illness, as if she had never mentally prepared for the possibility. Apparently, one can lead a full and energetic life for six decades, but escape some of the brute facts of existence.  Guy Waterman, the famous White Mountain climber and author, was 67 in 2000. He was so defeated by the possibility of not being able to climb anymore that he ascended Mount Lafayette in February and deliberately froze to death. Here was a man steeled for the worst travails on the trail, but not the simple inevitability of age and his own physical decline. Zelniker's children spoke favorably of her decision, critical only…

It is not so absurd to say, as another television star once did, that Oprah Winfrey is “one of the most important political figures of our time.”  Here is an immensely powerful woman who is in the deadly serious business of remaking America, one heart at a time.  Read on for the second part of a four-part essay on the Oprah-ization of America.

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People say the domestic life is narrow and stultifying, a prison for the intellect. Feminists have long made this claim. I guess you could say that’s true, but only if you think human history is boring, the laws of nature are boring, love is boring, birth is boring, children are boring, personality is boring, the mind is boring, morality is boring, death is boring, male and female are boring, sex is boring, illness is boring, kisses are boring, prayers are boring, literature is boring, philosophy is boring, poetry is boring, God is boring, the seasons are boring, music is boring, trees are boring, sunlight is boring, the stars are boring, snow is boring, dew is boring. If all this is true, the home is not what it appears: a fount of ideas and truths, a university and a museum, a laboratory for the curious, a gallery of all that is human. If the home is boring, life itself is a desert.  

Kristor writes about the foregoing entry:

With respect to dust, I am with Democritus. If anything made of dust is to be alive to its world, then in some way the dust of which it is made must do likewise. Not in the same way, of course; things are alike, but not wholly alike, or they wouldn’t be discrete.

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