Imagine, you are a mother, you have children. They are little bits of yourself that in a majestically mysterious way continue your life and the life of mankind itself. This is the unbreakable law of existence. All other laws, regulations and expectations can perish. Culture, words, thought itself can fall by. But this law will remain. It will exist for as long as at least one man and one woman inhabit the world. Beware of breaking this law. Many things can be forgiven you but this one will not.
Volodymyr Vynnychenko, The Diary of a Snub-nosed Mephistopheles (1916)
35 responses to “Quote of the Day”
-
What would breaking this law mean? Being a bad mother? Not having children? Devaluing motherhood?
LikeLike
-
Going by the context, I say that breaking the law means breaking the cycle of continuing humanity. Laws come and go, both good and bad, civilizations rise and fall, both good and ill. None of it really matters in the end as long as children are born and humanity continues. It is when and I think the author specifically meant mothers due to the first line, decide they no longer want children, that everything comes to an end.
- – W
-
@
- – W
I think the author means women who are on a course towards childlessness, not mothers.
Women who have children experience that feeling of fierce determination to save and protect their offspring to the cost of their own life. It’s natural, and powerful, and the ultimate guarantee of the survival of the species.
At the moment however, at least in Western societies (yes, that includes Korea and Japan), we are fast moving towards civilisational death: many young and not so young women have no intention of having any children. If this trend reaches critical mass, survival of civilsation becomes unsustainable.
LikeLike
-
A Ukrainian in Canada reports on the language changes (original in Russian):
Husband, wife, boyfriends and girlfriends disappeared as a phenomenon, I heard those words literally a couple of times from the most mossy rednecks. All this completely replaced the word “Partner”.
There are no such expressions as “dog owner” or “cat owner”. There is a “dog parent”. With all the consequences. I just read yesterday that for the new generation a pet completely replaces a child, and now the language has already reflected it.
-
Young people don’t say “partner” unless they are gay. “Partner” is very middle aged. Even I’m too young to say “partner”. It’s the word of the 50+ crowd or gay couples that don’t choose to marry.
“Dog parent”, again, this is for the older crowd. Young people think it’s cringe.
Also, young people very much respect the difference between boyfriend/ girlfriend and fiance.
LikeLike
-
-
Hmmm, maybe. I’ve seen three distinct points of view countering that, and I can think of a fourth and fifth myself.
The first counterpoint I have heard was that most of the refusal to have children comes from a mix of the atheists and leftists. The point that was made is that the religious tend to still have kids even in poverty, and many kids at that. So in his point of view, most of “civilization” will die out, and the lands will be inherited by the religious.
The second counterpoint I have heard was from a retired intel guy. He was speaking on a podcast and was covering the various population declines. In his words, we are being deliberately hit with a fear campaign. As he said, yes the birthrate is down below replacement, but it will level out. I can’t remember his exact point, as this was a 2 hour podcast and only a small part of it.
The third point of view I have seen, is folks saying this is a plan to basically knock down western civilization, and make the survivors back into serfs once more. To wipe out huge chunks of people, and especially people who tend to produce thinkers and those who resist.
The forth counter point, which is one of mine is not a pleasant one. This will continue until men have enough. If things continue to fall apart, there is an increasing probability we will see a return to barbarism. At which point, there will be men who will start to believe that to fix some of the chaos, women’s freedom needs to end abruptly. (Note: before anyone starts to say that can never happen, there has been modern day examples in the middle east. The changes did not take decades, it took weeks to months.) Frankly I think at least part of this is likely to happen, as there has been many polls done showing that young women tend to vote heavily in favor of policies that are killing the country. At some point I feel it is very likely that there will be a backlash for that.
The fifth which is the one I believe, is that we are on the verge of the rapture. Surprisingly enough, there will actually be survivors after the Time of Jacob’s Troubles ends. There will be enough to have nations once more. I think what (and this is my opinion, not from the Bible) I think that we are seeing a death in the birthrate so that no children are born during that seven years. It is extremely likely that all under the age of accountability will be raptured out with us, and while there might be kids born in that period of tribulation, I suspect there wont be. (Again, my opinion, not from the Bible.) We will see new births in the Kingdom Age, that is in the Bible, and praise the Lord for it.
- – W
LikeLike
-
“there will be men who will start to believe that to fix some of the chaos, women’s freedom needs to end abruptly“
I do not have detailed statistics on US voting patterns by gender, but I was surprised to read that in France and Spain, two countries that I visit regularly, women overwhelmingly support left-wing, centrist and moderately conservative parties, in most cases the breakdown ratio is 70 to 30.
There is no question that if women did NOT have the vote such parties would not be in power, nor would their policies – no-fault divorce, abortion, free borders, fantasist green energy programs, liquid societies, deregulated Left-wing Capitalism – have any chance of being implemented.
The saddest thing about this is that women are NOT the main beneficiaries of such policies: it is “elite” men who have the most to gain from them. The losers are the vast majority of men and women whose only chance at log-term happiness lies in a well-regulated, family-based society with strong bonds between different generations bound together by a common culture, all things that are currently being undermined by the parties mentioned above.
LikeLike
-
“women’s freedom needs to end abruptly”
women’s freedom to do what?
I strongly recommend to follow every usage of the word “freedom” with this question. Just like “rights”, freedom is an empty signifier unless you clearly point to the meaning you invest in it.
LikeLike
-
Real freedom is to not have to abort any of your pregnancies and not have to end your marriage. That’s the highest freedom that exists but it’s very expensive. This is why proles are taught that the crap reality they have is freedom while the wealthy individuals who fleece them perceive such freedom as degrading.
LikeLike
-
I was using “freedom” as a catchall type phrase, but I could list some of the things that I feel would likely be curtailed if not ended in that event if you’d like. I just figured they would be kind of obvious, thus the catchall phrase as it were.
- – W
LikeLike
-
-
“This will continue until men have enough.” Enough of…not having the responsibilities that come with marriage and fatherhood? Single young men seem pretty happy with this, though the ones without gfs are unhappy about that. Even the overly online young guys I see who are eager to roll back women’s rights don’t seem particularly eager to shoulder more responsibility themselves, they want a gf who will have sex with them but not make demands of them. I’ve known a lot of women waiting on their boyfriend to propose, or even to just stop being a bum, I have known very few men in the reverse situation. Married women still seem more eager to have children than their husbands, which is incredible to me considering all the horrible stuff they have to go through.
This isn’t to dump everything on men; men and women are in a race to bottom here. Having responsibilities/being “tied down” is avoided more and more by men and women alike.
-
“The point that was made is that the religious tend to still have kids… the lands will be inherited by the religious.” The problem with this is that childless liberals find another way to make their mark on the world. The left absolutely dominates culture, it’s the air we all breathe, and inevitably many children with religious, conservative parents choose this broader culture over their upbringing. The stupid idea of “we can outbreed the left” needs to die. It’s never worked that way and it never will.
LikeLike
-
// civilisational death: many young and not so young women have no intention of having any children.
Blaming women or their ‘freedoms’ is easy cop-out.
Japan’s birth rate may be falling because there are fewer good opportunities for young people, and especially men, in the country’s economy. In a country where men are still widely expected to be breadwinners and support families
….
a larger trend that is global in nature: the rise of unsteady employment… about 40 percent of the Japanese workforce is “irregular,” … piece together temporary and part-time jobs with low salaries and no benefits.
Another aspect is what standard do we as a society set to justify having kids.
Previously, most people had children w/o thinking too much about it.
Today, a childless woman may start wondering whether feeling lonely and feeling the need to make a change in one’s life before it’s too late are OK reasons or not.
Whether it’s fine to have kids despite being in a not ideal situation one wants to imagine in one’s youth.
LikeLike
-
\ women’s freedom needs to end abruptly. (Note: before anyone starts to say that can never happen, there has been modern day examples in the middle east.
I thought “women’s freedom” refers not to abortion and divorce, but mainly to ability to get high education and a good job.
A financially and professionally successful woman won’t agree to “abrupt end” of any freedoms . W, just imagine limiting rich powerful men like that. Does it sound realistic?
Also, those freedoms are basic freedoms of all citizens in a democratic system. Don’t think you would want to move to Saudi Arabia or try recreating some Middle Eastern dictatorship in America.
\ many polls done showing that young women tend to vote heavily in favor of policies that are killing the country.
Lets do polls re voting patterns of extremely rich people next. 🙂 They influence policy much more than a usual citizen via different means.
Or how highly educated people tend to vote. 🙂
Young women are the easiest target, yes…
-
We are experiencing such a catastrophe with enrollments in higher education that I can absolutely guarantee nobody will have the slightest desire to exclude women. We are on the verge of repeating Gogol’s “dead souls” experiment, we are so desperate.
Nobody wants to curtail anybody’s freedom to do anything. To the contrary, it’s our own capacity to limit ourselves and resist the raging freedom that will guarantee us a decent economic state. Iron self-control and an indifference to freedom is what makes you money these days. Women and men would be well served to remember that the #1 thing separating a person from a higher income category is the capacity to self-regulate.
LikeLike
-
Seems like the population catching up to the fact that we’re overproducing elites (as defined by getting a college degree) and making different choices about what to do with their time and money.
LikeLike
-
-
For some women, the ability to get an abortion (which in some states happens to mean proper care for a miscarriage) or a no-fault divorce helps to get an education and a good job.
I agree that the ability for women to get those two things is necessary. I also think they’re a bare minimum. There are very few countries in the world that expressly deny women education (Afghanistan comes to mind).
LikeLike
-
The need to get an abortion already shows that a woman is low-status, not valued, an object, not fully a person. There are women whose every pregnancy is a wonderful gift. And there are other women.
We often pretend that this difference doesn’t exist but it does and it’s enormous.
I support abortion rights but I have to be honest and say that there’s no scenario under which I would have needed to exercise such a right myself. My role in life was always very different.
LikeLike
-
I am not speaking about myself either. I was thinking of an acquaintance who got an abortion in high school. I wouldn’t say she was lower-status, unhappy, or worse in some way than the girls who had babies at graduation.
So no, I’m not going to separate the women into the good ones and the “low-status” ones when it comes to their reproductive choices.
LikeLike
-
-
“Real freedom is to not have to abort any of your pregnancies and not have to end your marriage. That’s the highest freedom that exists but it’s very expensive. This is why proles are taught that the crap reality they have is freedom while the wealthy individuals who fleece them perceive such freedom as degrading.”
So real freedom is having perfect luck?
LikeLike
-
And not making any mistakes.
LikeLike
-
I’ve made more mistakes than a regular person, and I say it openly. But that didn’t change the fact that I have the means to cushion my marriage in protective and not cheap means that make it more resilient.
When I didn’t have such means, I did get divorced (at the age of 22, if there are new people who didn’t know).
If we exclude celebrities, the higher the income, the more stable is a marriage. There are many reasons for that, including the self-regulation that is crucial to get the good income in the first place. But also psychological support, vacations, housework help, etc etc etc.
“Freedom” to get divorced is freedom to destroy your economic standing. Some freedom that is. Ruin yourself economically and you’ll be free. We are being sold such a bill of goods, and we keep buying into it to our own detriment.
LikeLike
-
-
\ So real freedom is having perfect luck?
It’s having sufficient money to afford raising this child w/o descending into abject poverty.
Being well-off also helps to preserve marriages: significantly less pressures on the couple to begin with, more funds for counselling, romantic trips to rest and rekindle passion, etc.
Clarissa, have I understood this correctly?
LikeLike
-
Don’t forget the ending the marriage part. People make bad choices when they’re young, or emotionally affected (after a parent or both have died, for example), or just because they’re human.
LikeLike
-
A failure of a marriage is never about “choosing the wrong person.” Let’s move away from the neoliberal rhetoric of “choices”. People aren’t goods we buy at the store.
LikeLike
-
Wtf? If my daughter, God forbid, makes a spontaneous decision to marry an asshole and then deeply regrets that choice, I want her to be able to fix that mistake and discard him like a used tissue.
LikeLike
-
It really doesn’t work that way, though. There’s no divorce where an angel leaves a demon. The fault is always equal. Besides, if it somehow got all the way to marriage, what are the chances that the husband a assholery wasn’t desired and encouraged by the wife?
LikeLike
-
I understand that your daughter is quite young and that she is perfect, will never make any mistakes, and will have perfect luck.
Mine is human. She’s not an angel. I still want her to be able to leave a marriage easily if she needs to.
When you say “the fault is always equal”, you must surely mean the decision to marry.
LikeLike
-
Gosh, enough with this luck thing. Let’s leave our daughters in peace, too, and talk about our own experience. I got married at 19 (against my will) and divorced at 22. I’m speaking from personal experience that this had nothing to do with luck. Or freedom. Or choice. Or any of those platitudes. I am strongly convinced that it never does. My ex-husband and I both failed equally. And it’s always like that. I’ve never seen an exception. It’s only because I understood that, I now have a wonderful marriage.
LikeLike
-
-
-
-
-
I’m not sure we can refer to it as luck. It’s more of a social class / wealth thing. But in the sense that IQ is, to a large degree, the result of a genetic draw and IQ is highly predictive of social class / wealth, then I guess we could formulate it as luck. But then everything in life can be reduced to this aspect.
LikeLike
-
For intelligent species, life is a matter of the cards you’re dealt and what you do with them.
LikeLike
-
Also, how the fuck is what parents you’re born to not luck?
LikeLike
-
I was born into extraordinary family dysfunction. But also I inherited the Ashkenazi Jewish IQ from my father. It’s hard to say which part of the package – not just for me but for everybody – is good or bad luck.
For instance, you’d say it’s bad luck I reached adulthood during the bandit wars of the post-Soviet 1990s. But I consider myself deeply fortunate compared to the Americans who had calm and opulent nineties. They are soft as a result and fold easily. So who knows what’s luck and what isn’t?
LikeLike
-
Every circumstance of your birth is luck. By which I mean pure chance. And, of course, some will be good luck and some bad.
LikeLike
-
-
-
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment