Cultivation

A garden is an excellent metaphor for civilization. A garden is a thing of nature, and most of us gardeners are nature lovers. At the same time, a garden goes beyond nature; it is a harnessing of natural energy to dramatically enhance nature's fruitfulness and loveliness. In harmony with nature, the garden moves beyond mere nature.

In a similar way, let no one deny that man is a natural being, an animal with all the drives, instincts, and appetites thereof. But the basis of civilization is man moving beyond mere animal nature. In harmony with his animal nature and with his unique nature as a rational and spiritual being, civilized man seeks to harness his natural energy in a controlled and orderly manner.

Unfettered nature is not a garden. Unfettered nature is a random mixture of wild plants and animals. Left untended, a garden will easily revert to such a wild and unordered randomness, the weeds and vermin moving in and obliterating the order and fruitfulness. A garden takes hard work and constant vigilance; a weed patch requires no effort.

To be sure, there is beauty and life outside the garden fence, and the gardener might be tempted to wonder if his labor is worthwhile. Does it really make much difference? A casual observer might even accuse the gardener of being a control freak, of engaging in repression and manipulation. Indeed, from some plants' perspective, the gardener would be have to be regarded as a violent killer, spending much of his energy in uprooting or digging up the plants he doesn't like. So, it would seem that the more liberal and caring approach would be to cease such mean-spirited oppression, and instead allow full rein to the uninhibited forces of nature. Relax, let the forces of nature flow freely, and celebrate the increasing diversity and freedom that would result.

But time is the proof. In April, the garden looks rather barren compared to the wild meadow. By mid-July, the superior fruitfulness of the garden is apparent. And later still, when the bitter winds of January howl outside the door, the gardener's well-stocked larder and root cellar remove all doubts about the garden's worth.

My point is, of course, that our culture's moral demise, its 'Slouching Towards Gomorrah', is a very effortless movement, and may even appear quite attractive, but will prove fruitless and barren in the end.

Folding table

Over a month now since any comments have been added to the 'Roundtable' piece below, so I guess that particular discussion has petered out, and I will now remove the sidebar invitation. (But feel free to continue to comment on that or any other article in this blog.)

Thanks to 'Summerfields' and 'Deepwoods Mike' for your comments in the Roundtable. I was hoping for more of a sharp exchange, a real roundtable, and so was sorry that no one of opposing viewpoint expressed any comments. Especially disappointed that no Herald staff responded to my specific invitation for them to explain their policy (cf. our email of June 8).

That policy continues to mystify me. Week after week, the Herald pays money for the dissident comments of Father McBrien, ostensibly in the interest of a broad-minded freedom of thought. But the Herald will not contract with true Catholic writers, and will only print a single comment by any one reader, with no opportunity for clarification or rebuttal. Their support for freedom of thought would seem to be rather one-sided.

Sign 'Stop CEDAW' petition

Related to the previous post, I would like to invite anyone interested to sign another online petition. This one is to urge our Senators to not ratify the CEDAW treaty. This U.N. treaty is ostensibly designed to protect women's rights, and may have innocuously begun thus. But it has now become the means by which U.N. thugs pressure member nations to legalize abortion, same-sex marriage, even prostitution.

Read more about at it this C-Fam webpage, and sign the petition there. It only takes a moment.

Thanatos - 2

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is the official U.N. facility for seeking to reduce human fertility worldwide. This means pressure on developing nations to legalize abortion (of course), and also entails incentives for sterilization programs, often coercive ones.

The latest "Friday Fax" from C-Fam details how most of the funding for UNFPA is coming, interestingly, from rich nations whose own population decline is an obvious problem for their future prosperity. The current manifestation of Thanatos, then, is apparently quite evangelical. The same folks who are bent upon their own extinction want to proactively spread their neurosis.

It would appear from this same C-Fam report that the United States is a sort of battleground nation in all this. Under The Bush Administration and the Kemp-Kasten amendment, the United States is currently witholding funds for UNFPA, while Democrats want to reinstate funding.

Patriarchy - 2

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse.
  - Malachi 4:5,6 [RSV]

This was the reading for morning prayer this past Sunday, the Solemnity of the birth of John the Baptist. The scriptural reference to fathers and their children caught my attention, coming just one week after Fathers' Day. One week, also, after my last post on Patriarchy, which I might synopsize as follows: The best indicator of whether or not a particular human society is civilized is to ask whether or not men know their children, and children know their father.

Uncritical adoption of egalitarian and feminist ideals is feminizing our culture, often preventing fathers from acting like fathers (like men), and then despising them for being irresponsible. The more radical feminists openly deride fatherhood as useless or obsolete. Thus we droop slowly into savagery.

Looks like it's high time for the promised Elijah to come and turn us from our collective stupor.

Patriarchy

Patriarchy, the word and the concept, has gotten bad press in the past few decades. And that's a shame, because patriarchy, a.k.a. fatherhood, is perhaps the key element of civilized society.

The mother-child bond is irrefutably primary, dictated by nature, by biology. In a completely natural (i.e. savage) society, the one stable relationship would be the one between mother and child. As social beings, humans would still congregate and form other, lesser relationships (when I hear "it takes a village to raise a child", I picture a circle of grass huts occupied by women and children, with the men off in the bush), but motherhood is primary.

Fatherhood is a bit more tenuous. It requires two steps that go beyond biology: 1) the bonding of the woman to one man, and 2) the acceptance of that bond by the man, the decision to shoulder responsibility. When the woman thus 'belongs' to the man, he can know that her children belong to him as well. Thus he will be motivated to care for the children whom he now knows as his own. Further, he will be motivated to care for his wife. And, thirdly, other men become his partners in this patriarchal arrangement, rather than sexual rivals. And all that makes civilization possible.

In simple terms, civilization consists of the domestication of men, the protection of women, and the nurturing of children in stable homes. And the early feminists were correct: this structure is patriarchal. Only by putting fathers in charge is it going to happen.

Put another way: Without fathers there would be no families (there would only be 'villages'). Without families, there would be no real civilization.

Global Warming - 2

This time I will quote someone else (who, in turn, quotes another), as a better appraisal of the Global Warming question. The outer quote is from Mick Eugene Hunt of G.A.P. (Genocide Awareness Project), and a fellow blogger:

We need rain. The weather is uncanny. Early heat wave, late freeze and now a drought. Global Warming? I don't know; it could be. Are we causing Global Warming? Maybe yes, maybe no, but if yes, not the way the GW crowd thinks. I have shared this passage before, but it bears repeating.

There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying.
  - Hosea 4:1b-3 [NIV]