Thinking and writing clearly is hard work. Mary Eberstadt is not afraid of that hard work. I greatly admire her penetration to the roots of the moral and intellectual decline of our world. She and her husband leave the rest of us in the dust! This human obviously thinks on a deeper and more profound level than
the problem is how are you going to convince people to believe in a religion which they simply don't believe in? All of the benefits of religion she mentions could potentially be provided by some other belief system, but that would take a long time to establish in the same way that Chistianity was established in European/western societies.
@@ario4795 Well even the people who claim to be christain dont really believe! Nothing good required religion lots of terrible horrific things have only been done because of religion, religion is a negative thing!
I do part-time work as a substitute teacher in a very progressive state in the U.S.A.; California. I've noticed that the lack of family units (one mom and one dad) has drastically changed the basic dynamics of a classroom. For instance, a 5 year old boy was hitting a 5 year old girl because he didn't get what he wanted. I pulled him aside, gave him a time out for 5 minutes, and then asked him if his daddy had taught him not to hit girls. The boy said, "My daddy left." 🙄🤯 I just threw my hands up at that point and instructed him to keep his hands to himself. Broken families create broken people. When the majority of people are broken, they come together and form idiotic progressions, such as "Idenity Politics."
@@ktwashere5637 The point is,most Fathers demonstrate kindness, co.passion and love towards their nothers. Which in turn shows the little boys to be gentle with girls without anything having to be said.
@ktwashere5637 it's not just about telling words, it's also seeing how the father treats mother as a model of how to behave. School also tells the words but without example/practice/witness, these things often don't register long tem, especially by small kids.
Very Timely Discussion; on Social stagnation in the world today, " how to interact with others, what to expect as consequences from deviance, when to stop a cycle or pattern of behavior, why repercussions are innate." Education is important when learning begins from Home and towards society. Respecting others, their choices, preferences. Men as much as Women have an enormous responsibility to Protect each other from harm or deviance. I couldn't agree with you more that we can't teach how to Think, but we can have Dialogues and Discussion topics that pertain to Today's changing world. Thank you Mary Eberstadt and Peter Kituri . 💜🕯💜🕯
A very evocative description of the societal challenge most of the world is expecting, not just the West. While she called for a revaluation and restoration of old institutions of family and religion adapted for the contemporary society. But she didn't reflect on the possible factors that may have contributed to the decline of credibility of these institutions, except the cultural ones. She identifies the sense loneliness and alienation as key symptoms, but she implied but didn't seem to stress on something that perhaps make humans distinct from other animals, the depth and persistence of man's search for meaning, not necessarily a particular and uniform meaning relevant for all, but the confidence and the capacities to pursue such a search. Viktor Frankl, a professional psychologist who survived the concentration camps showed through his personal experience and professional practices the power of this quest for meaning. Gandhi in the first half of the 20th century showed how the search for meaning could be scaled up through participative social movements that focussed on seeking freedom while cultivating a sense of empowerment through self restraint on the exercise of liberty. It could be that the current dominant cultural paradigms are fulfilling that latent quest for meaning, no matter how misguided and destructive some of those paradigms might be. For instance, the sexual revolution expanded the biological horizon and liberated people from some of the social constraints on sexual experimentation. Yet, from the dawn of civilizations there has been many efforts to expand personal liberties. At the same time enjoying the capacity to restrain from exercising those liberties, and feeling a sense of empowerment from that ability. Liberty to own a gun does not foreclose the prospect of freedom to not exercise the right to fire at the slightest pretext. In fact, it is the freedom to exercise restraint that makes the liberty that much more enriching. The same may apply to the sexual revolution as well. Thanks for a fruitful discussion that stimulated me to rethink.
Mary Eberstadt comes from the perspective of universal being grounded in the divine, the alpha and the omega, beginning and end. And the narcissistic hedonism and western race from love and responsibility for others is hardly a "freedom". Ya got some purging to do. I'd read Mary again. She is coherent.
10:50. You are so right that makes total sense that so many kids today are looking for answers to the question who am I because they have been deprived of it from the usual ways found in a family previously.
My mother had a 9th grade education, not unusual for her generation. When I was a young girl, late 1950s, I remember her complaining that a woman she knew had a job when she didn't need a job, and this woman was therefore taking a job away from a man who would need it to support a family. I can still hear the indignation in her voice. A few years later, she became a widow with 3 dependent children, two of them young. Women need education, jobs, and the ability to take care of herself. Hell with waiting for anyone else.
its so true. Women my age (GenX) saw our mothers give up their ambitions for their husbands only to see the husband then abandon the family and be left as the family breadwinner. I would never ever get myself into a position of relying on a man to take care of me.
Both my parents went to university and graduated, and both worked in their chosen field. It didn't stop my mum from having kids, in fact she had us early - she had to prolong her studies for a few years due to raising small children, but she graduated and worked in her profession nevertheless. But it was different times. Even when I was in my early 20-ties, it was still common to finish college with a ring on your finger, or at least shortly after. It's all a matter of attitude, and there's nothing inherently wrong with women's being educated and able to work, in fact it should be so. It doesn't have to prevent having a family, it's really a matter of attitude. I think it's really important, a great social and cultural progression, and something to be protected for women to be able to be educated and have open doors for a career. People forget that the past wasn't always so great as it seems in nostalgic imagination. And we can still have good values along with being educated.
While appreciating the support of men and rejection of pomo ideologies, I think that the sexual revolution was good for the cultivation in women of the capacity for positive, pleasurable -- even spiritual -- sexual experience. And as a result of that transformation, men, too, could find greater intimacy in the sexual act, including the realization that not every sexual encounter must culminate in orgasm. Of course, the 50s have been caricatured as a repressed, male dominated ("men on top") era, when the truth is as always somewhere in the middle, so one must take care not to represent a cultural era by its most simplistic and biased representations. 'Oh, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors' -- indeed. Still, the pill and sexual awakening did much to improve the quality and depth of sexual intimacy between partners and probably improved more than a few marriages in the process. Christianity had been a force of guilt and pollution rites where sex was concerned. Now, it isn't surprising to hear Christians celebrate the joy of sex from within sanctified partnerships.
Certainly there are two sides of the coin. If it were all bad, it wouldn't have become so wildly popular. Over time, however, people drifted increasingly away from ever wanting to bear children, from lasting and meaningful relationships, and most recently from the sexually dimorphic human body itself. In doing so they have lost some of what it meant to be human. In theory, perhaps the best of that culture could be preserved consistent with the liberties afforded by the pill, but that is not what is currently happening.
Another pressor for change in the 60s in the U.S. was the Vietnam War as well as the three political assassinations. I'm 70....our parents voted overwhelmingly for Nixon and therefore the continuance of an immoral war. That generation knew the horrors of war and sent us into that. We really disliked our own parents for that and began to question their value system. In addition, the people who stood up for us...the 2 Kennedys and Martin Luther King were destroyed right in front of our eyes. At Kent State University in Ohio, unarmed students were shot by the National Guard after a War protest...they had been ordered to retreat and AS THEY WERE RETREATING were shot by our own military. I was not a radical at all, but I can tell you that I'm STILL ashamed and furious over all of that. In America, at least, this was a huge source of young people's anger and rejection of our parents values. That should not be minimized. In America, at least, there was a large population of angry young people who thought they had been betrayed by their country and their parents. Nixon saw us as a generation of spoiled brats who wouldn't fight for their country. I remember a young man on the TV news saying, "At least tell us what we're giving up our lives FOR! "
Slave codes, black codes, Jim Crow, Chinese, exclusion act, Indian removal act, Japanese interment. All of these pre-date the 1960s in which she says identity politics began! None of these policies were written by black indigenous, Asian or Latinos, but all of them were conceived of, written, legislated, voted on, and enforced by white men. Not one person of color was involved in the creation of ANY of these laws, based racial identity, going back centuries. White men in this country, created identity politics in the founding documents. When they defined, in 1790, that a citizen is a “free white male. “In addition, further down the document, it listed indigenous people, as “savages” and Africans as “3/5 persons. “ This lady, who says she’s giving an historical account is NOT giving accurate history. She claims that identity politics founded by a group of black feminists, who wanted to separate themselves around victimization, for addressing the fact that black women stood with white women in solidarity in the 19th century with Susan B Anthony, and yet after white women got the right to vote, they abandoned black women. She would assert that identity politics was created out of loss and victimhood, but white men created identity politics out of mammon, greed, & white supremacy.
The extreme Leftists have learned well from the great German leader - keep the public talking constantly about their agenda - keep the media coverage, good or bad, going on a daily basis. "We want to be mentioned," he said.
It's all born of the Protestant interiority and begins explicitly in the explosion of publication of spiritual autobiographies, which also localize the encounter with God and the source of all authority in subjective gnosis to which even sola scriptura is always, in practice, submitted. That and the current manifestations are entirely the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit poured out on all flesh, and a rebuke to those who place the idols of mammon and tradition and the notion of religious law or magisterial authority -- which Jesus Christ died to abolish once and for all, to dissolve in an economic collective church that would displace all races, families and nations--above personal gnosis. We are here to know God in and selves in the collective material Body of God in which we live and move and have our Being. This woman and the Pharisees she represents are blindered to the Living God as anyone can be.
This is the 4th video watching Mary Eberstadt and she consistently neglects or avoids to contextualize the "radical feminists" of the Combahee River Collective as BLACK LESBIAN AMERICANS of the 70's who reject men for very valid and obvious reasons.
The odd thing is that with the fall in birth rates and the emergence of this cultural chaos state, we are collectively achieving the primary goal (or goals) of original Christianity. Christianity, as everyone should know, is opposed to the material world. Christ's message was revolutionary because he started promising life eternal to his followers (something that the learned and well-versed Rabbinical elders knew immediately to be a Devilish deception), a conceit that had not existed anywhere within Judaism originally (in my understanding). So this obsession with bearing children is actually not Christian at all if you want to talk hard and scriptural fact. Also, it is important for folks to grasp the idea that the United States is a corporation and that it cares for its citizens only as far as we can all be interchangeable economic units. There is no place for religion or ideology in such a consumer-obsessed country/corporation. Now, I do disagree that Christianity (Antisemitism) is a solution to anything. It is as child-like as these whiny teenagers who believe that older people are out to hurt their feelings. Yes, marriage is a high-functioning form of slavery (just as Orthodox Christianity is a genuine form of hatred against the body), but I do not agree with calling people who are following these outmoded beliefs as "haters." That is equally juvenile, and shows a distinctive lack of independent thought. Men, like or not, do not do well with monogamy. We all want the greatest number of women--either in our fantasies or in our reality. Women, ideally, are after the perfect guy (who doesn't exist and never has) to have kids with. So, humans should wish to be free (within the bounds of good sense, I mean), sleeping with whomever they like without guilt and without remorse or without worry or fear. Marriage, it seems to me, is the ideal trap for a man (who will ultimately get bored in the bedroom) and the ideal compromise for a woman (who will ultimately come to seek out an Alpha in due time) and the perfect setup for psychological reconditioning by way of church fathers (who may mean well, but only because they do not understand the occult purpose of Christian belief). And as for raising children...well, it simply isn't for anyone, Christian or non-Christian. The human race, much like motor vehicles, can also become exhausted and outmoded. To folks of my generation, having children simply isn't a high priority (in terms of American life, I mean). I had a lot of self-hatred within me while growing up, but I now believe that it was mostly due to the oppressive influence of the Baptist faith and not in spite of it. Not having strong fathers and mothers is a bad thing in one sense, but if we are always going to include the church (any church) in the argument as to how people and communities can remain strong, then we will forever remain lost anyhow. And the one thing that no one asked Eberstadt about here was the consistent influence of A.I. Folks, we are hearing towards humanity 2.0 whether any of us like this eventuality or not. Kids, if we choose to have them, will be damned to growing up in a world which will make them slaves to screens and technocratic influence. Bottom line: the emerging world is not one that is going to be tailored towards human beings. So, despite Eberstadt and her clique's unhappiness with the lack of Christian values, I would say that the Christian notion of "end times" is probably closer than most of us realize. Sad, but oh so true.
Most men end up being celibate when monogamy isn’t the societal norm. They simply aren’t attractive enough based on shallow metrics to attract multiple female sexual partners. So most of those men lose out and have little or no sex at all when committed relationships are thrown out as a cultural norm.
@@katiez688 I can see that point for sure. It seems practical. I happen to be someone who believes that the brainwashing of church and the mass media can have serious deleterious effects upon the mind over time, but I see what you are saying. I'm not sure if it is the idea that men aren't attractive enough or whether it is the idea that some just don't meet enough women to build up a working network.
Mary is wrong about tobacco smoking. The reason society has come down so hard on things that harm the body is because of secularisation. The body, and this life are the only things that are held sacred. It's about promoting behaviours that maximise wellbeing and longevity and discouraging, and even prohibiting, behaviours that threaten it; and this is done not by the notion of the body being sacred in the Christian sense, that it is the temple of the Holy Spirit, but that once it dies, it's the end of the show.
American intellectuals miss the point so badly. They fail to see that the notion of libertarian freedom is incompatible with the Christian notion of servitude, self denial, and responsibility. The founding fathers of America were wrong in their philosophy, and it slowly lead to the disintegration of family, society and religion. It has had a worse effect on society than communism, which is why, even though the Soviet Union was an oppressive regime, it was nowhere near as debauched as America became as a result of the notion of personal freedom. When personal freedom is the highest value, morality is a prison and servitude is the greatest sin.
I agree with most of what she says, however I don't think that the decline of Christianity or religion is a bad thing because it shows that people can critically think for themselves. Plus there are other philosophies that makes more sense than compared to religion in regards to morality and certainly there are better philosophies than post modernism. Christianity unfortunately don't seem to provide a good reason to believe, using that 'faith' argument is not really valid because it ultimately leads to blind obedience into something that hasn't yet to be proven. As much there is bad blood on communism and fascism etc, Christianity isn't immune from that as well. Plus majority of Christians don't even understand or even read the bible nor do they realize that it is filled with contradictions. As far as identity politics from the postmodern lefties are concerned, I would say that christian conservatives are playing identity politics too through their christian identity. The only difference is...they can't really explain what is 'god' but will believe based on 'faith' anyways. And the postmodern lefties will just believe in whatever social construct they hold because it's their 'lived experience' but won't explain what that means or even prove if their social constructs are actually true. Both parties are stuck in blind belief which they hold 'faith' in which usually leads to apophenia. Neither party can accept objective reality....that's the one common thing they have between each other.
Identity Politics happens across the political spectrum. The only people I don't trust are those who claim identity doesn't or should matter, or can ever be completely separated from politics. Identity is clearly very important to humans (always has been) and so naturally will manifest itself politically.
I can only assume you have a protestant background with the arrational view of faith as believing in blindness without evidence. This is simply the fallout from the Reformation where Luther , much to his surprise, removed ..with the help of German princes.... Christians from Christ in the sacraments he instituted in the church. And Catholicism introduced the genius of western philosophical realism...not blind faith .. into the world as well as natural law which incidentally sits at the foundation of the US Constitution. It is the only radically reasonable and coherent worldview on the planet. And by the way I, as a Catholic am a classic liberal as is Dr Jordan Peterson incidentally, and affirm the rights and responsibilities of rational free willed moral agents. You very much need to read some coherent philosophical foundations or your mind will wander and float disconnected from reason. God, incidentally... IS REASON. Here's a very good book for grasping reality as former atheist Philosopher Ed Feser discovered while trying to show how foolish Christianity was to students. He found out what they had actually argued. He's now a major voice in favor of the way, the truth and the life. Good luck... not that there is any such thing as "luck" as Socrates showed. www.amazon.ca/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314525
I don't think you get the salutary role religion plays in society. Think for themselves? Yes, and crucially, no. Yes humans can theoretically think for themselves, but do you think a cohesive society can sustain itself over time on that basis? The conservative argument, with which I agree, is that thinking for oneself places too much of a burden on a population. Societies need customs, traditions, meaning imbued rituals, guideposts, ways of doing things that work and model and are passed down from generation to generation. We do a huge disservice to a generation by removing all of these 'irrational' claims and telling them to 'think for themselves'. Leaving each individual to freely reinvent every wheel that comes along is, I suggest, extremely cruel. The big contribution that religion brings, not just Christian religion, is the the understanding that 'truth' is an objective and transcendent thing, and in that it agrees with the Western enlightenment tradition and scientific enterprise. God or no god, we are part of something larger than ourselves. Identity politics, on the other hand, totally subverts that basic epistemology, and says the only 'truth' is in the subjective assertions of the 'self'. Religion, at least, offers answers to the question of 'who am I' that can place a person in a genuine and shared community, which identity politics cannot. It can only lead to social chaos.
I can only assume that your religious experience or reading only includes protestant sola scriptura sources. Catholics are the ones who introduced reason into the world by appreciating Socrates, Plato Aristotle and natural law reasoning including I might add, sound arguments that demonstrate the existence of God from reason and evidence alone. Those arguments , existing since before Plato have never been refuted although there have been some pretty entertaining failures like Hume's self refuting Fork Rule .. which breaks Hume's self refuting Fork Rule. And you will have no success refuting former atheist materialist professor, philosopher Ed Feser who gives a quick version of the argument I'll post. And it hasn't apparently occurred to you that if there is no transcendent God who literally IS BEING itself, and therefor REASON, then human reasoning has no rational foundation. I've studied the history of western philosophy and the arguments for theism and natural law which were developed in the Catholic universities by your ancestors and which for instance comprise the US foundation for its constitution in natural rights. Your view is very common, typical, but it frankly shows an utter unfamiliarity with even the subject matter, rather like atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell, an atheist fave. He did not even know the first line of the classical proof of the existence of God which is not "Everything has a cause", which leads to the question "So what caused God then", But rather "Everything that comes into existence has a cause." Such ignorance on such a question is unforgivable... like the illiterate Dawkins , Dennett et al, and rather disgusting to behold. In any case, for at least your self respect , you should be able to refute or at least be able to identify something other than fideistic protestant fundamentalism and to be able to engage at the level of reason about the nature of causality. Sorry if I'm a little bruising here, but I find such frank naivete and philosophical ignorance pretty galling and very disrespectful to the greatest minds in human intellectual endeavor , like Aquinas. Your ancestors back then were probably Catholics so .. having free will.. which cannot be coherently denied.. they no doubt are having a little 'chuckle over this and wishing you well. You might well be on the verge of the most amazing intellectual adventure of your entire life and find answers to the very deepest of issues that will resonate deeply with your every best wish and hope. Along with rigorous thought that you didn't even know existed. For a real laugh catch Bertrand Russells world famous BBC debate on the existenc of God with history of philosophy Phd and Jesuit priest , Frederick Coppleston. Note that Russell feels he has to deny the existence of the universe to follow his logic. He later denies causation until something caused him to reconsider... and denied the existence of Bertrand Russell. you can't make this stuff up. So here are some links that can turn the lights on in life and the cosmos and the meaning of meaning. All in robustly argued positions from reason and evidence, not religion. Cheers . Forgive any impatience I manifested here. I find it so boring and tiring. Prof Ed Feser .A proof of the existence of God from reason. ua-cam.com/video/Z5PjiS1MJM8/v-deo.html Prof. Feser responds to the illiterate new atheists who are even less educated than the old ones. www.amazon.ca/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314525 The famous BBC debate... the accents are awkward... ua-cam.com/video/gdoVwHesSHk/v-deo.html
I disagree that Identity Politics is new or unusual, and I'm not sure why anyone would think it is, looking at history. Humans have always been tribal (and probably always will be). After all, what is the Bible if not stories of tribal conflict between identity groups? Only Liberals (in the classical sense) seem puzzled by it, perhaps because they wrongly assumed humans would all exclusively embrace radical individualism.
Yes humans have always been tribal, and historically speaking there have been many wars that displays that. Regarding your point on radical individualism, I could argue that socialists would also wrongly assumed humans to be radically collective.
@@MrMattias87 _"I could argue that socialists would also wrongly assumed humans to be radically collective."_ And I'd agree. Both Communism and Liberalism are wrong about Human Nature. Conservatives should always aim to carefully balance the needs and interests of the collective with those of the individual, rather than favor one to the detriment of the other.
You're missing the point about "identity" politics. Of course we are tribal as Harvard's Heinrech shows as the west broke from clan tribalism with the Catholic proscribing of cousin marriage and incest. The invented term of "gender" as identity is insanity and anti-human to the core, necessarily imposing tyranny as all perversions must. The western mind is floating on a sea of garbage.
Well-meaning, but futile. Identity Politics is inevitable in diverse, Liberal societies. If you want an absence of Identity Politics you need either an absence of diversity or an absence of Liberalism. Liberals at CIS aren't ready to swallow this bitter pill.
"Identity Politics is inevitable in diverse, Liberal societies" Uh huh, and look what's happening now....instead of achieving an equal society it's created a divided society. "If you want an absence of Identity Politics you need either an absence of diversity or an absence of Liberalism." Why an absence?...what's that's going to achieve?..... absence of society?. You may as well do that to put everyone out of their misery. "Liberals at CIS aren't ready to swallow this bitter pill" Hmmmm....and yet the postmodern lefties can't swallow anything at all because it's offends them.....the truth hurts them too much.
@Nikos Antikythera Realism isn't cynicism. You can't do away with Identity Politics without either removing Liberalism or diversity, neither of which are very likely to happen (although Liberalism is more likely to disappear than diversity). Christianity is dying in Western countries and it isn't coming back. Eberstadt as good as admits this when she concludes her speech by saying ID-Pol won't go away unless the root causes - of which she identifies the decline of religion as a major factor - can be reversed.
The only authentic liberalism , and the one I espouse as simple sanity as does Mary Eberstadt, is precisely the rational free willed natural law understanding she promotes. You don't even get what identity politics is.
I agree. The end result will need to be a very tightly-controlled society (which the digital web easily can accomplish already), and so the liberalism will be going away long before all the various cultures morph or get along.
Thinking and writing clearly is hard work. Mary Eberstadt is not afraid of that hard work. I greatly admire her penetration to the roots of the moral and intellectual decline of our world. She and her husband leave the rest of us in the dust!
This human obviously thinks on a deeper and more profound level than
the problem is how are you going to convince people to believe in a religion which they simply don't believe in? All of the benefits of religion she mentions could potentially be provided by some other belief system, but that would take a long time to establish in the same way that Chistianity was established in European/western societies.
@@ario4795 Well even the people who claim to be christain dont really believe!
Nothing good required religion lots of terrible horrific things have only been done because of religion, religion is a negative thing!
I do part-time work as a substitute teacher in a very progressive state in the U.S.A.; California. I've noticed that the lack of family units (one mom and one dad) has drastically changed the basic dynamics of a classroom. For instance, a 5 year old boy was hitting a 5 year old girl because he didn't get what he wanted. I pulled him aside, gave him a time out for 5 minutes, and then asked him if his daddy had taught him not to hit girls. The boy said, "My daddy left." 🙄🤯 I just threw my hands up at that point and instructed him to keep his hands to himself.
Broken families create broken people. When the majority of people are broken, they come together and form idiotic progressions, such as "Idenity Politics."
not sure why his mother couldn't have taught him to not hit girls. or to not hit anyone?
@@ktwashere5637 The point is,most Fathers demonstrate kindness, co.passion and love towards their nothers. Which in turn shows the little boys to be gentle with girls without anything having to be said.
@ktwashere5637 it's not just about telling words, it's also seeing how the father treats mother as a model of how to behave. School also tells the words but without example/practice/witness, these things often don't register long tem, especially by small kids.
@@joane24 Yes, I know. I have taken many childhood psychology classes in my day.
@@Leo-mr1qz I can imagine since you're a teacher, that was to another commenter.
Mary Eberstadt is absolutely right on target about this issue raised by radical people in higher education and woke corporate people.
Very Timely Discussion; on Social stagnation in the world today, " how to interact with others, what to expect as consequences from deviance, when to stop a cycle or pattern of behavior, why repercussions are innate." Education is important when learning begins from Home and towards society. Respecting others, their choices, preferences. Men as much as Women have an enormous responsibility to Protect each other from harm or deviance. I couldn't agree with you more that we can't teach how to Think, but we can have Dialogues and Discussion topics that pertain to Today's changing world. Thank you Mary Eberstadt and Peter Kituri . 💜🕯💜🕯
A very evocative description of the societal challenge most of the world is expecting, not just the West. While she called for a revaluation and restoration of old institutions of family and religion adapted for the contemporary society. But she didn't reflect on the possible factors that may have contributed to the decline of credibility of these institutions, except the cultural ones. She identifies the sense loneliness and alienation as key symptoms, but she implied but didn't seem to stress on something that perhaps make humans distinct from other animals, the depth and persistence of man's search for meaning, not necessarily a particular and uniform meaning relevant for all, but the confidence and the capacities to pursue such a search.
Viktor Frankl, a professional psychologist who survived the concentration camps showed through his personal experience and professional practices the power of this quest for meaning. Gandhi in the first half of the 20th century showed how the search for meaning could be scaled up through participative social movements that focussed on seeking freedom while cultivating a sense of empowerment through self restraint on the exercise of liberty.
It could be that the current dominant cultural paradigms are fulfilling that latent quest for meaning, no matter how misguided and destructive some of those paradigms might be.
For instance, the sexual revolution expanded the biological horizon and liberated people from some of the social constraints on sexual experimentation. Yet, from the dawn of civilizations there has been many efforts to expand personal liberties. At the same time enjoying the capacity to restrain from exercising those liberties, and feeling a sense of empowerment from that ability.
Liberty to own a gun does not foreclose the prospect of freedom to not exercise the right to fire at the slightest pretext. In fact, it is the freedom to exercise restraint that makes the liberty that much more enriching. The same may apply to the sexual revolution as well.
Thanks for a fruitful discussion that stimulated me to rethink.
Mary Eberstadt comes from the perspective of universal being grounded in the divine, the alpha and the omega, beginning and end. And the narcissistic hedonism and western race from love and responsibility for others is hardly a "freedom". Ya got some purging to do. I'd read Mary again. She is coherent.
10:50. You are so right that makes total sense that so many kids today are looking for answers to the question who am I because they have been deprived of it from the usual ways found in a family previously.
Mrs. Eberstadt’s conclusions seem unique and accurate and poignant.
When I hear the words radical and radically used so many times, my sense of skepticism about the message increases.
Sometimes we have to call it what it is. It’s unfortunate. You are overwhelmed by that.
My mother had a 9th grade education, not unusual for her generation. When I was a young girl, late 1950s, I remember her complaining that a woman she knew had a job when she didn't need a job, and this woman was therefore taking a job away from a man who would need it to support a family. I can still hear the indignation in her voice. A few years later, she became a widow with 3 dependent children, two of them young.
Women need education, jobs, and the ability to take care of herself. Hell with waiting for anyone else.
its so true. Women my age (GenX) saw our mothers give up their ambitions for their husbands only to see the husband then abandon the family and be left as the family breadwinner. I would never ever get myself into a position of relying on a man to take care of me.
Both my parents went to university and graduated, and both worked in their chosen field. It didn't stop my mum from having kids, in fact she had us early - she had to prolong her studies for a few years due to raising small children, but she graduated and worked in her profession nevertheless. But it was different times. Even when I was in my early 20-ties, it was still common to finish college with a ring on your finger, or at least shortly after. It's all a matter of attitude, and there's nothing inherently wrong with women's being educated and able to work, in fact it should be so. It doesn't have to prevent having a family, it's really a matter of attitude.
I think it's really important, a great social and cultural progression, and something to be protected for women to be able to be educated and have open doors for a career. People forget that the past wasn't always so great as it seems in nostalgic imagination. And we can still have good values along with being educated.
“There is a great disturbance in the Force.”
The only taboo identity is "wage earner".
its illegal to say 'white lives matter' in some parts of the UK, **** off paul, lol
Or how about better productive worker
While appreciating the support of men and rejection of pomo ideologies, I think that the sexual revolution was good for the cultivation in women of the capacity for positive, pleasurable -- even spiritual -- sexual experience. And as a result of that transformation, men, too, could find greater intimacy in the sexual act, including the realization that not every sexual encounter must culminate in orgasm. Of course, the 50s have been caricatured as a repressed, male dominated ("men on top") era, when the truth is as always somewhere in the middle, so one must take care not to represent a cultural era by its most simplistic and biased representations. 'Oh, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors' -- indeed. Still, the pill and sexual awakening did much to improve the quality and depth of sexual intimacy between partners and probably improved more than a few marriages in the process. Christianity had been a force of guilt and pollution rites where sex was concerned. Now, it isn't surprising to hear Christians celebrate the joy of sex from within sanctified partnerships.
Certainly there are two sides of the coin. If it were all bad, it wouldn't have become so wildly popular. Over time, however, people drifted increasingly away from ever wanting to bear children, from lasting and meaningful relationships, and most recently from the sexually dimorphic human body itself. In doing so they have lost some of what it meant to be human. In theory, perhaps the best of that culture could be preserved consistent with the liberties afforded by the pill, but that is not what is currently happening.
Another pressor for change in the 60s in the U.S. was the Vietnam War as well as the three political assassinations. I'm 70....our parents voted overwhelmingly for Nixon and therefore the continuance of an immoral war. That generation knew the horrors of war and sent us into that. We really disliked our own parents for that and began to question their value system. In addition, the people who stood up for us...the 2 Kennedys and Martin Luther King were destroyed right in front of our eyes. At Kent State University in Ohio, unarmed students were shot by the National Guard after a War protest...they had been ordered to retreat and AS THEY WERE RETREATING were shot by our own military.
I was not a radical at all, but I can tell you that I'm STILL ashamed and furious over all of that. In America, at least, this was a huge source of young people's anger and rejection of our parents values. That should not be minimized. In America, at least, there was a large population of angry young people who thought they had been betrayed by their country and their parents.
Nixon saw us as a generation of spoiled brats who wouldn't fight for their country. I remember a young man on the TV news saying, "At least tell us what we're giving up our lives FOR! "
Very interesting.
Slave codes, black codes, Jim Crow, Chinese, exclusion act, Indian removal act, Japanese interment. All of these pre-date the 1960s in which she says identity politics began! None of these policies were written by black indigenous, Asian or Latinos, but all of them were conceived of, written, legislated, voted on, and enforced by white men. Not one person of color was involved in the creation of ANY of these laws, based racial identity, going back centuries. White men in this country, created identity politics in the founding documents. When they defined, in 1790, that a citizen is a “free white male. “In addition, further down the document, it listed indigenous people, as “savages” and Africans as “3/5 persons. “ This lady, who says she’s giving an historical account is NOT giving accurate history. She claims that identity politics founded by a group of black feminists, who wanted to separate themselves around victimization, for addressing the fact that black women stood with white women in solidarity in the 19th century with Susan B Anthony, and yet after white women got the right to vote, they abandoned black women. She would assert that identity politics was created out of loss and victimhood, but white men created identity politics out of mammon, greed, & white supremacy.
The extreme Leftists have learned well from the great German leader - keep the public talking constantly about their agenda - keep the media coverage, good or bad, going on a daily basis. "We want to be mentioned," he said.
It's all born of the Protestant interiority and begins explicitly in the explosion of publication of spiritual autobiographies, which also localize the encounter with God and the source of all authority in subjective gnosis to which even sola scriptura is always, in practice, submitted. That and the current manifestations are entirely the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit poured out on all flesh, and a rebuke to those who place the idols of mammon and tradition and the notion of religious law or magisterial authority -- which Jesus Christ died to abolish once and for all, to dissolve in an economic collective church that would displace all races, families and nations--above personal gnosis. We are here to know God in and selves in the collective material Body of God in which we live and move and have our Being.
This woman and the Pharisees she represents are blindered to the Living God as anyone can be.
This is the 4th video watching Mary Eberstadt and she consistently neglects or avoids to contextualize the "radical feminists" of the Combahee River Collective as BLACK LESBIAN AMERICANS of the 70's who reject men for very valid and obvious reasons.
READ YOUR history & herstory dears and dudes
This woman is more tone-deaf than Tyra Banks....Mary, speak with a black lesbian for at least an hour and get back to me.
See Bishop Robert Barron on UA-cam.
We lost it in WW2 when they killed millions of us!!
Me thinketh when a so called civilized society starts to., blur the lines between.........love and sex!@!?😝😝🤪😉
The odd thing is that with the fall in birth rates and the emergence of this cultural chaos state, we are collectively achieving the primary goal (or goals) of original Christianity. Christianity, as everyone should know, is opposed to the material world. Christ's message was revolutionary because he started promising life eternal to his followers (something that the learned and well-versed Rabbinical elders knew immediately to be a Devilish deception), a conceit that had not existed anywhere within Judaism originally (in my understanding). So this obsession with bearing children is actually not Christian at all if you want to talk hard and scriptural fact.
Also, it is important for folks to grasp the idea that the United States is a corporation and that it cares for its citizens only as far as we can all be interchangeable economic units. There is no place for religion or ideology in such a consumer-obsessed country/corporation.
Now, I do disagree that Christianity (Antisemitism) is a solution to anything. It is as child-like as these whiny teenagers who believe that older people are out to hurt their feelings. Yes, marriage is a high-functioning form of slavery (just as Orthodox Christianity is a genuine form of hatred against the body), but I do not agree with calling people who are following these outmoded beliefs as "haters." That is equally juvenile, and shows a distinctive lack of independent thought.
Men, like or not, do not do well with monogamy. We all want the greatest number of women--either in our fantasies or in our reality. Women, ideally, are after the perfect guy (who doesn't exist and never has) to have kids with. So, humans should wish to be free (within the bounds of good sense, I mean), sleeping with whomever they like without guilt and without remorse or without worry or fear. Marriage, it seems to me, is the ideal trap for a man (who will ultimately get bored in the bedroom) and the ideal compromise for a woman (who will ultimately come to seek out an Alpha in due time) and the perfect setup for psychological reconditioning by way of church fathers (who may mean well, but only because they do not understand the occult purpose of Christian belief).
And as for raising children...well, it simply isn't for anyone, Christian or non-Christian. The human race, much like motor vehicles, can also become exhausted and outmoded. To folks of my generation, having children simply isn't a high priority (in terms of American life, I mean). I had a lot of self-hatred within me while growing up, but I now believe that it was mostly due to the oppressive influence of the Baptist faith and not in spite of it. Not having strong fathers and mothers is a bad thing in one sense, but if we are always going to include the church (any church) in the argument as to how people and communities can remain strong, then we will forever remain lost anyhow.
And the one thing that no one asked Eberstadt about here was the consistent influence of A.I. Folks, we are hearing towards humanity 2.0 whether any of us like this eventuality or not. Kids, if we choose to have them, will be damned to growing up in a world which will make them slaves to screens and technocratic influence.
Bottom line: the emerging world is not one that is going to be tailored towards human beings. So, despite Eberstadt and her clique's unhappiness with the lack of Christian values, I would say that the Christian notion of "end times" is probably closer than most of us realize. Sad, but oh so true.
Most men end up being celibate when monogamy isn’t the societal norm. They simply aren’t attractive enough based on shallow metrics to attract multiple female sexual partners. So most of those men lose out and have little or no sex at all when committed relationships are thrown out as a cultural norm.
@@katiez688 I can see that point for sure. It seems practical. I happen to be someone who believes that the brainwashing of church and the mass media can have serious deleterious effects upon the mind over time, but I see what you are saying.
I'm not sure if it is the idea that men aren't attractive enough or whether it is the idea that some just don't meet enough women to build up a working network.
Mary is wrong about tobacco smoking.
The reason society has come down so hard on things that harm the body is because of secularisation. The body, and this life are the only things that are held sacred.
It's about promoting behaviours that maximise wellbeing and longevity and discouraging, and even prohibiting, behaviours that threaten it; and this is done not by the notion of the body being sacred in the Christian sense, that it is the temple of the Holy Spirit, but that once it dies, it's the end of the show.
American intellectuals miss the point so badly.
They fail to see that the notion of libertarian freedom is incompatible with the Christian notion of servitude, self denial, and responsibility.
The founding fathers of America were wrong in their philosophy, and it slowly lead to the disintegration of family, society and religion.
It has had a worse effect on society than communism, which is why, even though the Soviet Union was an oppressive regime, it was nowhere near as debauched as America became as a result of the notion of personal freedom.
When personal freedom is the highest value, morality is a prison and servitude is the greatest sin.
@GardenMonk Well, you sure told me oh enlightened one. I won't argue with someone who is so far up their ass they miss the point entirely.
I agree with most of what she says, however I don't think that the decline of Christianity or religion is a bad thing because it shows that people can critically think for themselves. Plus there are other philosophies that makes more sense than compared to religion in regards to morality and certainly there are better philosophies than post modernism. Christianity unfortunately don't seem to provide a good reason to believe, using that 'faith' argument is not really valid because it ultimately leads to blind obedience into something that hasn't yet to be proven. As much there is bad blood on communism and fascism etc, Christianity isn't immune from that as well. Plus majority of Christians don't even understand or even read the bible nor do they realize that it is filled with contradictions.
As far as identity politics from the postmodern lefties are concerned, I would say that christian conservatives are playing identity politics too through their christian identity. The only difference is...they can't really explain what is 'god' but will believe based on 'faith' anyways. And the postmodern lefties will just believe in whatever social construct they hold because it's their 'lived experience' but won't explain what that means or even prove if their social constructs are actually true. Both parties are stuck in blind belief which they hold 'faith' in which usually leads to apophenia. Neither party can accept objective reality....that's the one common thing they have between each other.
Identity Politics happens across the political spectrum. The only people I don't trust are those who claim identity doesn't or should matter, or can ever be completely separated from politics. Identity is clearly very important to humans (always has been) and so naturally will manifest itself politically.
I can only assume you have a protestant background with the arrational view of faith as believing in blindness without evidence. This is simply the fallout from the Reformation where Luther , much to his surprise, removed ..with the help of German princes.... Christians from Christ in the sacraments he instituted in the church.
And Catholicism introduced the genius of western philosophical realism...not blind faith .. into the world as well as natural law which incidentally sits at the foundation of the US Constitution.
It is the only radically reasonable and coherent worldview on the planet.
And by the way I, as a Catholic am a classic liberal as is Dr Jordan Peterson incidentally, and affirm the rights and responsibilities of rational free willed moral agents.
You very much need to read some coherent philosophical foundations or your mind will wander and float disconnected from reason. God, incidentally... IS REASON.
Here's a very good book for grasping reality as former atheist Philosopher Ed Feser discovered while trying to show how foolish Christianity was to students. He found out what they had actually argued. He's now a major voice in favor of the way, the truth and the life. Good luck... not that there is any such thing as "luck" as Socrates showed.
www.amazon.ca/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314525
I don't think you get the salutary role religion plays in society. Think for themselves? Yes, and crucially, no. Yes humans can theoretically think for themselves, but do you think a cohesive society can sustain itself over time on that basis? The conservative argument, with which I agree, is that thinking for oneself places too much of a burden on a population. Societies need customs, traditions, meaning imbued rituals, guideposts, ways of doing things that work and model and are passed down from generation to generation. We do a huge disservice to a generation by removing all of these 'irrational' claims and telling them to 'think for themselves'. Leaving each individual to freely reinvent every wheel that comes along is, I suggest, extremely cruel.
The big contribution that religion brings, not just Christian religion, is the the understanding that 'truth' is an objective and transcendent thing, and in that it agrees with the Western enlightenment tradition and scientific enterprise. God or no god, we are part of something larger than ourselves. Identity politics, on the other hand, totally subverts that basic epistemology, and says the only 'truth' is in the subjective assertions of the 'self'. Religion, at least, offers answers to the question of 'who am I' that can place a person in a genuine and shared community, which identity politics cannot. It can only lead to social chaos.
I can only assume that your religious experience or reading only includes protestant sola scriptura sources. Catholics are the ones who introduced reason into the world by appreciating Socrates, Plato Aristotle and natural law reasoning including I might add, sound arguments that demonstrate the existence of God from reason and evidence alone.
Those arguments , existing since before Plato have never been refuted although there have been some pretty entertaining failures like Hume's self refuting Fork Rule .. which breaks Hume's self refuting Fork Rule.
And you will have no success refuting former atheist materialist professor, philosopher Ed Feser who gives a quick version of the argument I'll post.
And it hasn't apparently occurred to you that if there is no transcendent God who literally IS BEING itself, and therefor REASON, then human reasoning has no rational foundation.
I've studied the history of western philosophy and the arguments for theism and natural law which were developed in the Catholic universities by your ancestors and which for instance comprise the US foundation for its constitution in natural rights.
Your view is very common, typical, but it frankly shows an utter unfamiliarity with even the subject matter, rather like atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell, an atheist fave.
He did not even know the first line of the classical proof of the existence of God which is not "Everything has a cause", which leads to the question "So what caused God then", But rather "Everything that comes into existence has a cause."
Such ignorance on such a question is unforgivable... like the illiterate Dawkins , Dennett et al, and rather disgusting to behold.
In any case, for at least your self respect , you should be able to refute or at least be able to identify something other than fideistic protestant fundamentalism and to be able to engage at the level of reason about the nature of causality.
Sorry if I'm a little bruising here, but I find such frank naivete and philosophical ignorance pretty galling and very disrespectful to the greatest minds in human intellectual endeavor , like Aquinas.
Your ancestors back then were probably Catholics so .. having free will.. which cannot be coherently denied.. they no doubt are having a little 'chuckle over this and wishing you well.
You might well be on the verge of the most amazing intellectual adventure of your entire life and find answers to the very deepest of issues that will resonate deeply with your every best wish and hope. Along with rigorous thought that you didn't even know existed.
For a real laugh catch Bertrand Russells world famous BBC debate on the existenc of God with history of philosophy Phd and Jesuit priest , Frederick Coppleston.
Note that Russell feels he has to deny the existence of the universe to follow his logic. He later denies causation until something caused him to reconsider... and denied the existence of Bertrand Russell. you can't make this stuff up.
So here are some links that can turn the lights on in life and the cosmos and the meaning of meaning. All in robustly argued positions from reason and evidence, not religion.
Cheers . Forgive any impatience I manifested here. I find it so boring and tiring.
Prof Ed Feser .A proof of the existence of God from reason. ua-cam.com/video/Z5PjiS1MJM8/v-deo.html
Prof. Feser responds to the illiterate new atheists who are even less educated than the old ones.
www.amazon.ca/Last-Superstition-Refutation-New-Atheism/dp/1587314525
The famous BBC debate... the accents are awkward... ua-cam.com/video/gdoVwHesSHk/v-deo.html
I disagree that Identity Politics is new or unusual, and I'm not sure why anyone would think it is, looking at history. Humans have always been tribal (and probably always will be). After all, what is the Bible if not stories of tribal conflict between identity groups? Only Liberals (in the classical sense) seem puzzled by it, perhaps because they wrongly assumed humans would all exclusively embrace radical individualism.
Yes humans have always been tribal, and historically speaking there have been many wars that displays that. Regarding your point on radical individualism, I could argue that socialists would also wrongly assumed humans to be radically collective.
@@MrMattias87 _"I could argue that socialists would also wrongly assumed humans to be radically collective."_
And I'd agree. Both Communism and Liberalism are wrong about Human Nature. Conservatives should always aim to carefully balance the needs and interests of the collective with those of the individual, rather than favor one to the detriment of the other.
You're missing the point about "identity" politics. Of course we are tribal as Harvard's Heinrech shows as the west broke from clan tribalism with the Catholic proscribing of cousin marriage and incest.
The invented term of "gender" as identity is insanity and anti-human to the core, necessarily imposing tyranny as all perversions must.
The western mind is floating on a sea of garbage.
Well-meaning, but futile. Identity Politics is inevitable in diverse, Liberal societies. If you want an absence of Identity Politics you need either an absence of diversity or an absence of Liberalism. Liberals at CIS aren't ready to swallow this bitter pill.
"Identity Politics is inevitable in diverse, Liberal societies"
Uh huh, and look what's happening now....instead of achieving an equal society it's created a divided society.
"If you want an absence of Identity Politics you need either an absence of diversity or an absence of Liberalism."
Why an absence?...what's that's going to achieve?..... absence of society?. You may as well do that to put everyone out of their misery.
"Liberals at CIS aren't ready to swallow this bitter pill"
Hmmmm....and yet the postmodern lefties can't swallow anything at all because it's offends them.....the truth hurts them too much.
@Nikos Antikythera Realism isn't cynicism. You can't do away with Identity Politics without either removing Liberalism or diversity, neither of which are very likely to happen (although Liberalism is more likely to disappear than diversity). Christianity is dying in Western countries and it isn't coming back. Eberstadt as good as admits this when she concludes her speech by saying ID-Pol won't go away unless the root causes - of which she identifies the decline of religion as a major factor - can be reversed.
The only authentic liberalism , and the one I espouse as simple sanity as does Mary Eberstadt, is precisely the rational free willed natural law understanding she promotes.
You don't even get what identity politics is.
I agree. The end result will need to be a very tightly-controlled society (which the digital web easily can accomplish already), and so the liberalism will be going away long before all the various cultures morph or get along.
There is no God and we are moving into a post god world..........