The Declining Female Happiness

Satan tempting Eve, by John Martin

There is a social phenomenon sociologists and their kind call “the paradox of declining female happiness.” This phenomenon was first noted by two researchers at the Wharton School studying 35 years of data from the General Social Survey. What they found was that during the time that women had increased access to education, career opportunities, and the contraceptives that made careers possible, there was a steady decline in the level of happiness reported by women. Those researchers tried not to draw any conclusions, but I think it is reasonable to explore the correlations.

Before going any further, I think it appropriate to speak directly to you, female reader. There is no question that you can do many things that men do. You can be doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. There is, however, question that you can do all those things as men do them. I did not say “better than” or “worse than,” I said “as.” There is further question as to whether you should do those things, even though you can.

One of the possible reasons for the decline in female happiness seems to lie in what G.K. Chesterton describes as “modern torture.” No one denies that women have been wronged before, but as Chesterton says, “I doubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the absurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive clerks at the same time.” A woman’s life was never easy, but at least she knew what she was to do with her life. She knew she was to be a wife, a mother, a cook, a teacher, a seamstress, a moral guide, a source of optimism for her pessimistic husband, a dose of realism for his irrational dreaming, and more. To paraphrase Chesterton, a woman was expected to be everything to a few people rather than one thing to many.

Even more, what others expected of her aligned with her natural tendencies. No little girl ever grew up dreaming of being a rich and powerful CEO; she grew up dreaming of her prince, with whom she would start a family. Now, however, little girls are told that they should not “settle” for marriage, a loving husband and father for their children, and a life of love and care for others; rather, they should become wealthy and successful. If she decides that a child might be nice along the way, she can simply go to the sperm store and inject it herself.

Our current situation is much like the story of the original sin. There is a great lie being spoken to insecure women and the timid and weak men stand aside, fearful that they might be hurt, or worse, offend someone. Instead of trying to be like God, in this case, woman is trying to be like man, because men have failed her and hurt her. We have lesbians because men failed to be loving and faithful men; we have gays because the men that were replaced by women decided to fill the void of femininity left by those women. What is to be done?

I greatly admire those women today who have the incredible strength to reject the lie that their work as wives and mothers is less than the work of female accountants, teachers, doctors, or lawyers. The work of the wife and mother is of infinitely more worth than any temporal work she may do. Her work as wife and mother is of divine and eternal importance. For that work to take place, she needs a man that stands for her, fights for her, and protects her from a diseased world. We not only need women to take the stand for themselves and reject the lie, but we need men who will take the stand for the women they love.

A Defense of Child-bearing

Frantisek Kupka, "The Beginning of Life"

Who has been blessed with those mysterious moments in which an infant for the first time toddles forward on her feet, unaided by any guiding hand or low object, in deep concentration upon the next step? In these moments especially do we not empathize most readily with the parents of this beautiful creature, and wish ourselves progenitors and recipients of this most wondrous gift that can only be divine? Love surges in our hearts, mysterious love without the need for rationale, mysterious love that gives birth to hope, hope that asserts the goodness of this new and curious life. 

Some say that a pregnant mother is irradiated with the burgeoning life within her, that her eyes are alight with the joy of expectation. We, as witnesses of this joy, must wonder how there may be any question as to the benefit of having children, of raising a healthy and numerous family. The more persons, we would say, the better. The greater number of human beings in society, the greater chance that society may grow to be great, not only in size but in quality. Saying “yes” to the possibility of children is the ultimate social act, the ultimate affirmation of the human community, and the ultimate renunciation of selfish interests. Yes, one should have children, if only because one must have children if history is to continue. We know by the very fact of mortality that the story we live is not our own. We prepare, well or poorly as the case may be, for those who come after.

The object, then, is to prepare well, and to prepare well first of all requires the existence of the reason for which we prepare: children themselves. As Pope John Paul II has said, “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” If we are to “plan for the future,” as we moderns so proudly declaim, we must not postpone or neglect the begetting of the stewards of the future. What use is a future without people? We are always speaking of the “avant-garde” in art or technology or politics as a state to be envied, and yet this obsession becomes insane when we are equally obsessed with maintaining an isolation and a lack of responsibility that contradicts this very attraction for newness by claiming it only for our moribund selves. Indeed, on a very rational level, whether or not we “like” children, humanity is nothing without reproduction. Children are the very proof that only love is eternal and we ourselves are ash.

The French spirit of this age, the spirit of ethnic extinction, is one that upraises the image of the unbound self, free and unfettered by worldly ties or the demands of relationships. The mobility to do as one pleases is prized above all else. “This existence, this here and now,” the modern Frenchman might say, “is the great thing, the only occupation worth intellectual or spiritual involvement.” And yet, by agreeing with the Frenchman, we would most ardently disagree. The idolization of the independent self above all else is the same as the hatred of the self above all else, for the self is nothingness without relationship to others, divine or human. The self asserts nothing if it does not assert the perfection of itself, which lies – unexpectedly to some – in the engendering and nurturing of new life like oneself, an infinite affirmation of self-worth. Imagine the great pain and emptiness felt by Hannah as she wept and prayed in the temple, mourned her childlessness in abject loneliness in the darkened tent, swept her garments about her to cover the shame of being known, facelessness being better than barrenness. How she wept and prayed, a woman beginning to wrinkle with age – but what did the purity of desire gain her, all her attentions devoted in ecstasy toward a possible and improbable new life to give hers meaning: reward. Reward in another heartbeat to join her own in the acclamation, the drumbeat and song of life's praise.

We take the ability to procreate for granted, as if this seemingly ubiquitous biological ability we must necessarily also possess. Would it not be a terrible shame if those who now artificially postpone the possibility of children until they have reached what they deem as the appropriate time find themselves, when that time arrives, to be incapable of the greatest blessing afforded us in our briefness upon this earth? Is this awesome blessing, then, not to be pursued with passion and dear effort? Are we not to bend all our will upon the attainment of this treasure that ratifies the very proposition that life is worth living? Are we not to be exceedingly grateful if we are able in the requirements of circumstance to conceive and bear a child? Indeed, we must be and we must do, for as we believe there is a soul, children are a gift from the Divine, and therefore sacred from their conception, and what is sacred must be sought without ceasing.

Flamme, Citron, Fear of Death

Flame and Citron (2008) (or Flammen og Citronen, if you prefer) is a film about 2 Danish Resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe.

In the main, they are sent on assassination missions, eliminating prominent Danish Nazi collaborators -- mostly military figures. When a female Nazi is involved, Flamme must clean up after Citronen's failure of emotional resolve. Hard times.

Viewing the film, few of us would even wince at the death of a Nazi colonel or SS officer. Most of us would sit still, applying a grim sense of justice to the scene, happy that an enemy to humanity had been neutralized.

We do not fault Flammen and Citronen. We do not fault Flammen for his anger, his frightful impetuousness, his coldness of execution, for he sacrifices his more human capacities for the sake of others, for the sake of those who suffer. Even for an uncertain future, he sacrifices sweetness and light for blood and death and danger.

We do not fault Citronen. His wife and child are poor and hungry, but we only reproach him a little. Indeed, his wife takes up with another man because Citronen is never home, always away in hiding or on the warpath. But he is noble enough to say, "Take care of my wife and child."

Why do they fight? Why kill? We all know. We have heard the stories, seen the dream-like horrors. We do not forget. We have hated the Nazis in our turn. We do not forget. We have seen the tortured, corpse-like human bodies shuffling in the cold. We have seen the corpses. We do not forget.

Those who survive hold on to the flame, the torch of indignation, of sorrow, of love, of despair, of newfound hope, of wisdom hard-won. We have heard them. We have listened attentively. We do not forget.


We forget.


There is a deeper horror that even as I write surfaces once more, insidious, in our minds.

And how do we meet this horror? With swift relentless unfailing justice toward a real and present monstrosity? Or with diplomacy and statecraft. Do we treat with hell?

We treat with hell.


We forget.


We have swallowed the lie that words can win the day. I believe they can. But someone must be listening.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was willing to be arrested, abused, killed for the cause of a better life for African Americans -- not for their lives en masse, but for equal rights as citizens. Not for clothing, not for food, not for water, not for shelter, not for life and breath -- for equal rights as citizens.

Our glorious generation has achieved a complacent sidewalk counselorship. Yes, we are those on the sidelines who watch and say a few words, impotently waving our signs, hiding behind a false piety that says "Prayer is all you need!" without proaction. We treat with hell.

We say that "We are the pro-life generation!" with cries and shouts and smiles and free concerts in Washington, D.C.. But we care only -- really -- for our own lives. We are pro-life in that regard. Our rationalizations are petty and false. We say that we act in this way in the name of "compassion" and "charity," that we are the "peaceful" demonstrators amongst the carnage.

When compassion means sloth, when charity equates to a failure of love in a failure to act for the prevention of murder (and thus the salvation of the would-be murderer), there is no peace. When the mills grind day after day as we plod -- we asses, we dumb chattel -- along the sideline begging our betters -- yes! for they are cold, and we are lukewarm -- to please obey natural and divine law, there can be no peace. There is no peace. There is no peace. There is no peace.

And to pretend to Culture in such a world?!

If the wars are not fought -- if we do not at least stand firm in peaceful civil disobedience: blocking entries, closing down buildings with whatever measures necessary -- then there will be nothing left when the self-loathing of the West has wreaked its havoc upon the last child in the womb (or out).

We fear death. We do not see it, and so we avoid its screeching call for justice. We avoid. We wimper.


There is no peace. There is no peace. Awaken.





Addendum: I do not advocate the murder of abortionists.

Fiction: "Cry to the World"

Jean Paul Lemieux, "Young Man"

I have a found a new pleasure of walking out of doors onto a balcony and peering into the treeline and the skies. 

There's a taste for it, to be sure – standing alone, leaning on a 2x4 rail painted white, identical to those above, right, below, left. But what I see is the world preparing just outside a wall, and in secret and by degrees it seethes in past all boundaries, nearly benign, but really with the sad love of inevitability.

Once I came out upon such a balcony in such a mood and leaned over the rail – my ribcage hooked over uncomfortably, my arms folded – and it happened that I heard the sound – at such an hour on a Saturday – of a door calmly opened and closed, the cheap blinds clacking upon the glass below.

A young man not a year older or younger did as I do, and, unnaturally as I, lit a cigarette held in fingers poised as he might imagine one well-practiced in the art might do. But I knew he was sincere. I know he was sincere at least in trying. He carried on the act in company with himself and at last sat down and sighed.

I thought at once we should sit inside by a lamp burning all night long and talk of things only we should talk of, a special blessing of particularity shared between us. He must have heard me shuffling because he was at his rail again, staring unforgivingly upward. And our eyes met, and because they fixed upon the real and demanding continuity between us, I saw in those eyes vitriol, and I knew he would never pardon me for breaking into a world I thought my own.

I have since awakened from that dream and hope no more for a friend.



Written by Ross J. McKnight
Edited by Christopher Hamilton

The "Sea Peoples": American Philistinism

Edgar Degas, "David and Goliath"

"Philistine" is a lovely pejorative that has unfortunately gone out of fashion -- or at least out of the common ken.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "philistine" is "3. ... An uneducated or unenlightened person; one perceived to be indifferent or hostile to art or culture, or whose interests and tastes are commonplace or material; a person who is not a connoisseur."

Perhaps the very reason for the mysterious disappearance of such a germane descriptor is that we are so inundated with Philistia that we cannot see it, like a fish in the sea. Only a Noah will float.

One has only to review the "reviews" of Terrence Malick's To the Wonder to discover the inane blatherings of our very own American philistian moviegoers, who apparently equivocate between animal stimulus and good art. Take, for instance, this particular jewel presented graciously to the Amazon passer-by's innocent perusal. Please try to read this comment in its entirety, considering it a spiritual exercise in order to "know thy enemy":

"I'm educated, I went to college. I can appreciate works of 'art' and I have done. However, to watch this movie is to waste time and money on a kaleidoscope of someone else's brain vomit. If I hadn't read the synopsis, I very seriously doubt I would have had a clue what this movie was about. Scattered images and very little dialogue thrown together in a pathetic attempt to seem 'arty' [sic] when, in fact, it comes off as very contrived and forced. When filmmakers come up with this tripe, I can only imagine that they have simply forgotten the 'point' which is to entertain the viewer. I was not entertained. Only shallow people attempting to exhibit nonexistent depth are even going to pretend they enjoyed this viewing experience. However, if you marvel at seeing wonderful actors spin around in the sun and actually NOT act (or even speak audibly); if you enjoy watching a movie presented very similarly to a dream I had last night; or, if you are out to impress that cute blond in your liberal arts classes by feigning intellectualism -- then by all means, go for it."

Thank you, Kellie from Miami. You were very entertaining. I feel less shallow now. "Are you not entertained?," says Maximus. I was entertained. Are you entertained?

That the idea of the beautiful in a piece of artwork and the idea of entertainment held by many Americans are not synonymous, I think you will agree, but in the interest of culture I will provide some delineations. In doing so, I accept the risk of appearing to be one of those "shallow people attempting to exhibit nonexistent depth." ;)

Entertainment. When we seek entertainment, we are usually relying upon someone else's effort to make us laugh, smile, gaze in wonderment, recoil in mock horror. In so doing, we are asking that person or other entity to satisfy our expectations, to fulfill our pre-conceived notions of what will make us happy or afford us some distraction from the weariness of life. Entertainment never transcends the sphere of the immanent.

Ms. Kellie from Miami seeks the same. She would very much like to have all of her instinctual desires recognized and catered to by the filmmaker. She refuses to be brought out of herself in order to encounter a mode of experience that is superior to her own. No. That would make her uncomfortable, and we cannot have "educated" people being made to feel uncomfortable, especially if they have attended "college" and thus understand how to appreciate "'arty'" things.

Sorry, Kellie. Art is ecstasy.

Culture. When we seek culture (and I am referring to the Arnoldian scheme when I say "culture" -- see the final paragraph of "Violence and Cinema"), we are seeking something beyond ourselves. We are seeking something we have not attained, and in this seeking we accept that we must toil with difficult ideas, with difficult perspectives that will at first confuse us when they seek to liberate us from the animal and the mundane.

To take up the banner of Culture is similar to the Christian ideal of taking up the cross. It is a way of intellectual perfection that always looks for the more potently significant in life, even at the expense of the comfort and pleasure of an easy romance or a gratuitous battle sequence. In truth, the way of Culture is the way of the spiritual, of understanding the world and oneself as realities infused with spiritual magnitude, and of seeking to understand the meaning of that magnitude. The way of Culture, of perfection, is infinite, as humankind is infinite.

Thus, to the "'point.'" To be a philistine is to pin down, to ground, to crush things into a swallowable morsel for one's disposal. Yes, to be a philistine is to be a consumer both of products and of ideas -- to dispense with them, to put them in their place so that whatever small-minded existence one possesses may continue without disturbance.

(The idea of philistinism is thus easily pinned down -- it hardly wriggles -- while the ideas expressed variously in such a film as To the Wonder are not so easily placed, nor should they be.)

I dare say Ms. Kellie from Miami has put Malick in his place. For her, the eminent filmmaker with a long and fascinating career as an artist offers the world nothing but "brain vomit."

The person of Culture disagrees.

He can see for her the waves of the Florida sound begin to rise in tumultuous clamor, washing further and further their dross upon the shore. They will take her up with the zombies that dash toward the sealed ark, and she will float for awhile in a hell of thrashing bodies and silted water until she sinks, unaware like a fish in its sea.

But then again, she is a person ... with the sort of infinite potential displayed by Malick in his exploration of human capacities. She can change, though she be Delilah of the Sea Peoples.

Relativism: The Scourge of the West

Relativism is, surely, a loaded term in the West today. Generally, when spoken, the word carries a negative connotation; even those who believe in some strain of relativism do not like the label. I find this topic interesting largely because of the way the phenomenon of relativism has seized western culture, while relativism as a philosophy has experienced a less than robust life. Up until the last couple of centuries, serious minded thinkers viewed relativistic thought as a nonviable way to understand and describe reality. With modern science and the spreading compartmentalization of knowledge, and modern philosophy and its replacing of God with the self, relativism began its forceful and flattening march on western culture.

One might look around now and easily find at least a couple manifestations of relativism – the one, paralyzing, the other, emboldening. Before continuing, let us have a general definition of relativism from which to build our discussion: the idea that any truth or knowledge is relative to a specified framework (i.e. culture, history, society). Of the two manifestations, the former follows very closely the definition above. The relativist of this manner may be a somewhat thoughtful person. Seeing the irrefutable fact that different peoples in different times and places have formed varying beliefs and behaviors, the relativist concludes that his judgments about other cultures or societies or the good or ill therein are nullified by the fact that all he believes is relative to his own time and place. There may be knowable truths, and judgments that follow, within his specific framework, but he does not believe that “his truth” applies to those outside his framework, thus he is paralyzed and unable to act. As one narrows the appropriate realm of human reason, one widens the chasm between himself and truth.

The second manifestation of relativism magnifies the narrowing effect seen above, for the framework in which one is locked is no longer one’s culture, society, or position in history but one’s self. The threat of this relativism is far more than the frustrating experiences of hearing someone say, “Well, that’s just your opinion.” If we take the proportionality statement above, this second kind of relativism creates even more separation from the truth, and therefore, is more dangerous than the first. With all things relative to the self, the self becomes radically independent, disconnected from others and society.

It should be clear why this phenomenon of relativism continues to spread and take hold: it is easy, convenient, requiring only a weak mind, and a weaker will. This kind of relativism is what Joseph Ratzinger once called “a dictatorship of relativism.”¹ With nothing definite, there is nothing demanded, and so this relativism brings forth an illusion of freedom while in reality, the independent and distorted self turns inward and becomes enslaved to its own desires.

We find ourselves under this “dictatorship of relativism” today – the battle for men’s souls rages. As man narrows his horizon and moves further from the truth, the question of what is to be done becomes more difficult still. One answer, one hope, is beauty. Somehow, the relativist must experience ecstasy, must come out of himself. The artist, then, is charged with the highest of tasks: making men free. Beauty has the power to awaken in man new desires, to turn his gaze upward towards heavenly things, to crack his hardened heart so that the light of truth might begin to shine through. In his unique relationship to the Beautiful, the artist plays a central role in broadening the narrow vision of the relativist. The relativists are correct that we all live, think, and interact within a specified framework – how small have you made yours?