I think you mean this with the best of intentions, but all that comes to mind right now are Romania’s population expansion, China’s population control, Germany’s population sculpting and the U.S.'s genocide of Native Americans.
But I have in mind voluntary reduction, not being compulsive about reproduction. Choosing to contribute to a more balanced mix of species rather than seeking to maximize human population. If one identifies with the biome rather than just ones particular species, then real well being requires diversity. Monocultures are fragile.
I’ve contributed genetically to no new human beings and I feel absolutely good about that. I wish more people could.
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Agreed.
I also wish more people could feel satisfied with OTHER people not contributing genetically to the pool. That a woman’s, specifically a Christian woman’s, highest duty need not be achieved via her womb, for example.
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Amen, hallelujah!
An artifact of tribalism?
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Especially in retrospect. 
- My Wife and I have done our part: we’re child-free as in “by choice”. A niece-in-law and nephew are childless, as in “not by choice”. Guess what question we all hate in common? We cringe at “Do you have children? But the topper is “Why not?” I can always say: With nephews and nieces, we could send them home. When the kids are yours, they are home.” My niece is already frowning at the first question, she manages to restrain herself at the second. Want to see someone become an emotional mess in one second, ask a lady I know "Do you have children? She’ll before your eyes, She had a involuntary hysterectomy before she could reproduce, if she ever could have, then her husband died Jan 2012 at the age of 65.
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Well the two of you are ahead of us in that my wife had a six year old already when we met. He is 47 now. Since her ex had him a couple days a week we were full time parenting with a sort of weekend break. He has no interest in having kids himself. Like you we have a niece and nephew who are our pseudo grandkids. We also have a dog but we don’t dress her up or anything …
I’m happy for people who really want and nurture their kids. Someone needs to do it. But anyone with any ambivalence could make a contribution to balancing the rest of creation instead.
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- Ever been asked if you have children? then asked, by the same person, “Why not?” Then had to listen to a 30 minute tale about what monster her son had become an how her husband had to given the mouthy son a beating when he cane home from work? I have and that’s when I said: Not my bag.
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No I don’t think so. But then I don’t run in any Christian circles in RL but I bet you do. It does seem to be cultural and since there is so much virtue signaling going on, it will probably continue to come up. Here is your chance to spread the word about preserving God’s creation in the proportions He intended. Or?
Whew, when people do it with resentment and want props for soldiering on … that is tough.
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- LOL! Maybe, maybe not. I and woman who asked me were employees working for the Internal Revenue Service and wwerehaving a brief conversation before I went home for the evening.
Thanks but I don’t “hang around” Christians day or night, and when I visit my Louisville nephews and nieces, they’re all atheists. Closest I get to a self-acknowledged Christian is if and when I go north and see a brother, which I do as infrequently as possible, because they live in Trump country.
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I agree, and there are aspects of the Narnia series, but more obviously in LOTR, that made me stumble, especially on realising that a Christian ethic was behind it all, with Lewis writing an allegorical fable of the biblical narrative, and despite Tolkien’s dislike of allegory, LOTR has been taken to be allegorical in some ways anyway. Of course, both probably shared a belief of what Lewis wrote, that “War creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.”
In the appendices to “The Lord of the Rings,” there is some information about the weather in the Shire. For instance, it mentions that the Shire had a temperate climate, and winters were often mild. While it doesn’t go into great detail about specific weather events like snowstorms, it does convey an overall sense of the Shire as a comfortable and familiar agricultural landscape with a stable climate, just as in England it is generally moderate, with mild temperatures, and it is known for its green landscapes and agricultural activities. Having lived in the southwest of England, I can confirm this.
Concerning agrarian societies, in England, it was essentially a question of who your Lord was (literally a landlord) and how he treated you. The biggest problem was that most of the land was his, and so was its produce. He could make your life hell or pleasant. Freemen were often able to build what is known as a cottage industry, small-scale, decentralised manufacturing or handicraft businesses that were usually operated out of people’s homes or small workshops, typically involving family members or a small number of workers. These industries were prevalent before the Industrial Revolution and the rise of large-scale factory-based production. Cottage industries played a crucial role in the economic structure of many societies, providing a means of livelihood for individuals and families.
It is a combination of agriculture and cottage industry that seems to be the basis of life in the Shire and portrays the ideal that Frodo and Sam are keen to protect and drives them on. Interestingly, conservationists have spoken about how returning to this kind of society would help make agriculture sustainable because industrialised farming is ruining the soil, and there is little to ensure that crops can still be abundant in the future. The employment of pesticides and fertilizers is also getting into the water supply and reaching chronic levels.
We also have to see how the population explosion was not yet apparent to Tolkien or Lewis, which is also a challenge to an agrarian society, nor were the prices that farmers could charge in competition with international agricultural giants. It was a system that was roughly balanced, as long as the landlord didn’t intervene and cause problems, or the king didn’t go to war. Natural catastrophes are, of course, a challenge even to modern society – today perhaps more, because everything is so finely tuned, that a disruption of delivery chains can mean no produce in the shops.
I think we are in the same place, and I just wanted to point out the British perspective at the end of the 19th century.
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Thanks, Rob.
Still more jaded than you on the matter, I think. I’m a knitter and have read a fair amount on the history of knitting and knitting “industry.” England, Ireland and Scotland are all important in it, particularly in regard to cottage knitting industries, which involved maximum price controls, mercantilism (forced trade) and the “truck system” (underpayment in basic goods, not currancy). All of these were highly problematic in a time when handwork was labor intensive and slow, and produced by people who had absolutely no leisure. Women favored small knitgoods, for example, because they could carry them in their skirt pocket, and knit while they walked home, hauling an enormous basket of peat on their backs, or in their “break” waiting for the next load of fish to gut.
Knitting on the go allowed for better lighting as well at a time when the average person, that is: poor, could not afford the window tax, which would allow free, natural light in the home during the daylight hours. Even a hole in the wall with a flap was considered a “window” and was, therefore, taxed.
Pre-industrial life for them was grueling.
As far as allegorized readings of LotR, I’m aware of them, but don’t make much of them. It’s why “the war” reading was so illuminating. Suddenly, so much more of the story made sense. Some of the things that come to mind:
The role of “the little guy”–it’s essential that he does his part, even if no one else sees it.
No one knows until the outcome, how important any particular role will have been. So, do your part now.
Humble leaders recognize their own flaws and their subordinates’ virtues; they work with both; these are the men who can become great.
In contrast to the horror of war and the terror of being pursued by enemies, the protection concealment of any kind is palacial. A hard bed on a safe forest floor next to a stream with enough old bread and a handfull of fresh berries is an incredible luxury.
Safety must be protected.
Few people are aware of the work and danger that is required to protect a free society.
Even women (one or two) can be part of saving the world.
Etc.
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I won’t go into everything, but industrial life wasn’t much better, and after destroying the cottage industries, the industry became the primary source of income. The Industrial Revolution saw thousands of women enter the workplace alongside men – but it was far from emancipatory. Before industrialisation, the household would have been the centre of production and women’s work was confined mainly to the domestic sphere, but no less physical. Tasks such as fetching water and tending livestock would have kept women as busy as clothing and feeding a family, while many also took other work into their home such as hand-spinning or weaving. The cottage industry, as it was called, didn’t entirely end with large-scale manufacturing, but the advent of machinery had an irreversible impact on women’s lives.
As machines replaced individual labour and burgeoning industries needed coal, women became part of the growing working classes that laboured in mines and mills. In the late 18th century, many families would seek employment together, with husband, wife and children all working at the same factory or pit … women were seen as less physically strong and skilled than men and were paid less. Many employers were quick to exploit this cheaper option, and soon, tasks such as printing and working at spinning machines that didn’t require as much strength and were easy to learn, became seen as ‘women’s labour’.
Despite the disparity in pay, the conditions in many factories were no less dangerous for women. They could work as many as 80 hours in a week, were offered few breaks, and often served inedible food. In 1832, 23-year-old Elizabeth Bentley was interviewed by a parliamentary investigation into conditions for textile workers. She described working in the card room of a flax mill near Leeds. “It was so dusty, the dust got up my lungs, and the work was so hard… I got so bad in health, that when I pulled the baskets down, I pulled my bones out of their places."
Tolkien referred to himself as a “Hobbit in all but size” and served in the war alongside others, and yes, the military does teach you that it’s essential that each does his job, even if no one else sees it. When I was in the army, my ego was initially offended by this concept, but in the chaos of battle, many individual egos deciding they knew what was best only prolonged the chaos and cost lives. Later, when nursing, I realised how dependent one is on the fact that each nurse does their job, and it was only when someone didn’t that it showed up in the patient’s health. There wasn’t someone there praising the job done on each patient. We each had at least eight patients requiring complete care so that they were at the breakfast table before 10 am. As ward leader and later as a nursing manager, I relied on the professional ethics of each staff member.
Equally, in a joint effort, whatever it is, each is designated a role that they must fulfil. We can talk about who has the best job or get on with it. I tried to designate fairly as a leader, but sometimes, the staff had to grin and bear it. I often called my staff my heroes because we were sometimes so physically and emotionally exhausted, that some of my staff cried, and I wished I could so that I could have found an emotional release.
My leadership was based on the understanding that I was no better than my staff; I only had a different role to play with different responsibilities. I had flaws just like anyone else and employed staff according to their abilities (or virtues). That way, we gained a reputation that gave me a lot of praise, but I always pointed to my staff, without whom I could not have achieved anything. Is that being humble?
I think that hard times do make you appreciate the basics of life. In the middle of a military manoeuvre, exhausted and famished as I was in the pouring rain, I ate the rations I had uncooked and found them delicious – which today I wouldn’t touch without being cooked. What I’m trying to show is that even in the modern age, and even if we are not out in all weathers fighting for our lives, we need the principles that Tolkien portrayed in LOTR.
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I suspect that the following excerpt will take the thread on a bit of a detour, but it may somewhat fit considering the earlier mention of the Industrial Revolution. Hopefully it won’t cause too much of a stir. I’m currently halfway through Main Currents of Marxism by the late Leszek Kolakowski. The author is himself a worthy subject of inquiry – an avowed Marxist academic under communist rule in Poland in his earlier years, he found himself expelled from the party on charges of revisionism and ultimately became an outspoken conservative critic of communism and totalitarianism. The first book of this three-volume work is a staggeringly comprehensive survey of the development of Marxist thought. The following passage is taken from a chapter titled “The Discovery of the Proletariat” and concerns the years 1843 to 1844 (italicized emphasis mine):
It is noteworthy that the idea of the proletariat’s special mission as a class which cannot liberate itself without thereby liberating society as a whole makes its first appearance in Marx’s thought as a philosophical deduction rather than a product of observation. When Marx first wrote his Introduction he had seen very little of the actual workers’ movement; yet the principle he formulated at this time remained the foundation of his social philosophy. He also formulated at this early stage the idea of socialism, not as the replacement of one type of political life by another but as the abolition of politics altogether. In articles published in the Paris journal Voorwärts in the summer of 1844 he declared that there could not be a social revolution with a political soul, but there could be a political revolution with a social soul. Revolution as such was a political act, and there could be no socialism until the old order was overthrown; but ‘When the organization of socialism begins and when its true purpose and soul are brought to the forefront, then socialism will cast off its political integument.’
It should be observed that from start to finish Marx’s socialist programme did not, as his opponents have often claimed, involve the extinction of individuality or a general leveling for the sake of the ‘universal good’. This conception of socialism was indeed characteristic of many primitive communist doctrines; it can be found in the utopias of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, influenced as they are by the traditions of monastic communism, and in socialist works of the 1840s. To Marx, on the other hand, socialism represented the full emancipation of the individual by the destruction of the web of mystification which turned community life into a world of estrangement presided over by an alienated bureaucracy. Marx’s ideal was that every man should be fully aware of his own character as a social being, but should also, for this very reason, be capable of developing his personal aptitudes in all their fullness and variety. There was no question of the individual being reduced to a universal species-being; what Marx desired to see was a community in which the sources of antagonism among individuals were done away with. This antagonism sprang, in his view, from the mutual isolation that is bound to arise when political life is divorced from civil society, while the institution of private property means that people can only assert their own individuality in opposition to others.
From the outset, then, Marx’s criticism of existing society makes sense only in the context of his vision of a new world in which the social significance of each individual’s life is directly evident to him, but individuality is not diluted into colourless uniformity. This presupposes that there can be a perfect identity between collective and individual interests, and that private, ‘egoistic’ motives can be eliminated in favour of a sense of absolute community with the ‘whole’. Marx held that a society from which all sources of conflict, aggression and evil have been thus extirpated was not only thinkable, but was historically imminent.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in the subject. Kolakowski traces the roots of Marxism from Hegel through Kant, Spinoza, Augustine, Plotinus and countless others. Kolakowski’s breadth of knowledge in this field is undeniable, and the translation into English by P.S. Falla is superb.
(Disclaimer: I, myself, am not a Marxist. I am sharing this simply because I find the soteriology and eschatology embedded within Marxism to be fascinating.)
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Erich Fromm also gave other perspectives of philosophical Marxism in To Have Or To Be in the 1980s, which showed how sources of antagonism among individuals are primarily a question of attitude, and other examples in the book besides Marx were Buddha and Jesus. He showed that if To Have is primary in people’s lives, rather than To Be, human beings do not reach their potential.
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Sounds like a fascinating look at Marxian thinking. Thanks.
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That sounds fascinating, too! Thanks, Rob. The title alone is valuable.
A Hobbit, A Wardrobe and A Great War is interesting enough but not much to feed the soul. So I picked up a book I haven’t looked at in ages, a book of poetry chosen, translated and introduced by Robert Bly who I met at an conference in San Francisco not long after this came out in 1980: News Of The Universe: poems of two-fold consciousness. It is divided into six parts: poetry on the Old Position; The Attack On The Old Position: Part III Poems of Twofold Consciousness, Early Twentieth Century; Part IV Poems of Twofold Consciousness 1945 - 1979; Part V, The Object Poem; and Part VI Leaving The House.
This first two -both from Part 1- include one untitled by Friedrich Holderlin (1798) and translated like all of the ones not originally written in English, translated by Bly and one by William Blake. It makes me think of the objections that are brought against the Pharisees but also charged by Penner of many believers in his book I read here at @Kendel’s encouragement which was largely inspired by Soren Kierkegaard.
I'm sick of you hypocrites babbling about gods!
Rationality is what you have, you don't believe
In Helios, nor the sea being, nor the thunder being;
And the earth is a corpse, so why thank her?
As for you gods, be calm! You are decorations in their poems,
Even though the energy has drained out of your names.
And, Mother of Nature, if a word with immense
energy is needed, people remember yours.
All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors:
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & Vis a Soul.
2. That Energy, call’d Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call’d Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True:
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
(1793) from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
This last one made me think of one of the excerpts from Berry’s Jaber Crow which I shared about a year ago which expresses a similar ambivalence about attributing all good to the soul and all evil to the body but from a Christian perspective. (I have no idea what Blake’s religious affiliation may have been but he seems like no Christian I have met.)
From Wendell Berry’s Jaber Crow
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Mark, It’s been a tiring day. Well, school year. I wish I had more time and brain power to read and engage with your posts. And to read more poetry too, You are a real poetry-reading-enabler! I appreciate it!
Blake was an unusual guy. He used a lot of Christian vocabulary and sources but in very original ways. Orthodoxy was not a concern for him.
I like your point about the problem of dualism, and even in reformed/presby churches, this is a concern that I had not heard expressed much before. Embodied life with a complete person is emphasized and the implications of living life in a body, which is good, because that is how it was made.
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