“I am not aware of that tradition, Mac. In fact, I think that you and your parents were just stealing from that home.” – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
I had Mennonite Flu last week, first a little horse, then a little buggy.
As I ended Friday’s post (LINK), I tossed out the idea – what if traditions were essentially just solutions to problems we forgot we even had?
They are. But modern life has eroded those traditions in many ways.
If I asked the question, “What is American culture?” how many people would answer with questions that described companies and brands? McDonalds™. The NFL©. Nike®. I could keep going on, but these aspects of American culture are all new – McDonalds® is everywhere now, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that it started expanding everywhere . . . like your mom.
Along with something else . . . what ever could that be?
In fact, the idea that most people are employees of someone else is fairly new, too. In 1880, almost 70% of Americans were in agriculture. Sure some didn’t own the farms and worked on farms for a wage, but farming has generally been an occupation run by families, owning and working the land.
Farmers, especially back then, were not a group of people who were dependent, it was a group of people who lived based on their own work. The “employment” model was used, certainly. Sailing ships and railroads and industry required it. But it was not the predominant model.
Neither was rent. Neither was the subscription model – about the only subscription many folks would have would be the newspaper and maybe a magazine or two. Neither was contact with the Federal government. In 1880, more than likely the only contact a citizen had with the Federal government was when the mail showed up. If you asked what the culture of America was then, the answers would have been fairly easy to guess: Freedom. Independence. The Constitution. Open skies, far horizons, amber waves of grain, and cooperation.
Cooperation? Certainly. The cities and towns that grew every ten miles or so were founded on people wanting to get together to create places of gathering. Places for churches. Places for schools. And, places for commerce and the optimistic growth of a nation.
Funny, the 2020 Chinese plans look like the 1880 American plans . . . .
Was there corruption? Yes, there were people and money, so certainly there was corruption.
But then, largely driven by technology (but also driven by changes from incorporating the large numbers of people emigrating from Europe) that culture changed. Farmers no longer had to feed the horses that moved so much of American commodities – now those were moved by a rail network and internal combustion engines. Also, those same engines allowed farmers to farm much more with lower input from individuals. Sons left farms for jobs at factories, or to go to universities to learn skills to get jobs.
Renting and mortgage became the norm. Companies (because of a Supreme Court decision) became forever, and became larger. Entire new industries were born that required employees.
The culture of America changed, too. Immediately after World War II, the culture moved to one of suburban living matched with jobs working for big corporations, sometimes in places far from family. In general, an attractive package was set up. Work 9 to 5, come home to a freshly made meal by the wife and have a round of catch in the front yard with the boy. Church on Sunday. Then repeat.
The Vatican won’t accept Visa® or Mastercard™. It’s a Paypal© State.
For some reason, this was sold as soulless, and resisted by the “spirituality” of the Lefties in the 1960s. Most of the rebellion was about weed, LSD, and sex, but at least part of it was about something where they actually had a point: the core of the nation was moving from businesses supporting people, to people supporting business.
How so?
Monthly phone bills, power bills, subscriptions to TV Guide®, rent or mortgage, insurance, and car payments became the norm. What was happening was that people were being incorporated as economic farms for banks and companies to harvest every month. Go, work, and be harvested. When you’re used up, you can rest until discarded as the world moved around you.
This was bad enough, because it took people out of the reason for the system, and made people into components of the system. But even more changes were soon to show up which would add to this and create our world today.
First, the birth control pill. The relationships between men and women had always been governed by one basic concept – one man can make many babies at a time, but one woman can only make one at a time. As such, even though men might have been the keymasters, women had to be the gatekeepers to sex. Women had to be choosey.
See, choosey.
Society had solved that problem through a pretty strict system of monogamy tied through both religious and social rules. If a girl got pregnant, there was an expectation that the boy would marry her, even if a shotgun was necessary to induce him to do the honorable thing.
Once married, the couple were strongly encouraged everywhere to keep the marriage going. There were real difficulties in breaking up a marriage – for instance, unless someone was at fault and the other party could prove it in court, a divorce could be contested and not granted. And what would the woman do, anyway? Who would want a woman with kids as a wife? And how would that woman support the kids if the man chose to not give them resources?
Those are powerful inducements to working out a fight rather than calling it all off, if you’re the woman. And women today file 80% of the divorces. Why? Fun and prizes!
And some say we should ignore the old values . . . .
Fault is no longer a requirement. So, for any or no reason a woman can opt out. Johnny, show her what she’s won! Child support, alimony, and, welfare!
Heck, with welfare, there’s no real reason to get married anymore. One of my high school teachers noted that she had a 16 year old student who wanted to get pregnant as soon as she could so she could, “get her own welfare check every month.”
This has led to significant consequences in the dating market in 2022. Many women spend their 20s having relatively anonymous sex with large numbers of men. Tinder® has been devastating for the dating market – see the graph below based on OK Cupid™ data – the “average” man rates the “average” woman as a 3 out of 5 stars.
Perfect! Good job, guys! You did it!
The way the “average” woman rates that “average” guy, however, means that only one guy out of six is rated as “above average”.
Houston, we have a problem. And it’s a doozy. Monogamy works when people sort each other out and your 4 marries a 4. Et cetera. What’s set up here, is that all the 5 star guys have it easy. Will a 5 star guy sleep with an average 2.5 star girl? Sure. Once, probably. When (if!) he gets married he’ll pick a 4 or higher, though.
Ohhh, my precious!
Thus, the average 2.5 star girl in her 20s has the experience of being acceptable to Chad 5 star. So, she expects to marry Chad 5 star, when in reality Chad 5 star has no intention of even remembering the average girl. So, until she’s 30, she holds out, and then reality catches up to her and she’s ready to settle for the 2.5 star guy, Settle Stan.
Wow – inspiring if you’re the 2.5 star guy. And, she’ll be much more likely to divorce Settle Stan, too. She’s really a widow to the fun times with Chad, and Stan will never, ever be good enough. Hopefully Stan makes money?
Well, you can see that James dodged a bullet . . .
But what about all of the Stans who never have a chance even at an awful relationship? The modern world has created a series of drugs to lull them gently onto that goodnight.
It takes a thick umbrella to keep out the light . . .
This is just one aspect of the sexual marketplace that has been devastating for the country. I’ll leave the rest consequences of the sexual revolution as a class exercise.
There are, of course, other consequences of the modern world and the ignoring of tradition on life, but I think this is certainly the most profound. Thankfully there won’t be any more consequences of a sexual revolution gone amok.
