At long last, proof that southerners are the only people who use correct words and pronounce them correctly!

I actually do have most of the southern affectations listed here. Some of them I didn’t know were even regional. Does nobody else know the difference between a highway and a freeway? Seriously?! And it’s definitely lawy-er, not “loyer.” What the heck?! (Unless you’ve been listening to too many Grisham audiobooks, in which case it’s “law-yah” PaJAMas? No, no.

Though it’s not on the map, I do hope that someday Nevada and Colorado will pronounce their home states correctly.

Here’s a related map that’s pretty cool. Though, I have to say, it doesn’t correspond with my impressions very much. Particularly of the south. The recordings are pretty interesting.

Friday a week ago, I’d had an unusually long day with Lain and she was unusually fussy. So when Clancy got home from work, I asked if she could take care of the little lady. She could, and I was off to the supply store just to get out of the house.

Around closing time, a conversation was struck up with one of the cashiers, who was off for the evening. She asked how my daughter was. I’d only then been able to place her as one of the counter girls who had gooed and gahed over the cute little bundle that is our daughter. I told her that Lain was good and that her mother was looking after her while I got a break. We talked a little bit about babies. She mentioned that she is still a little daddy’s girl.

This got me talking about how Clancy and I felt when we didn’t know whether Lain was going to be a boy or a girl. I’d said that though we officially had no preference but a healthy baby, I had leaned slightly towards wanting a boy while Clancy had leaned slightly in the other direction. I come from a family of boys, she comes from a family of girls, it was a matter of familiarity as much as anything else. On the whole, I explained, there were advantages either way. With a boy, there’d be someone to carry on the family name. Since I come from a family of boys, I’d have a better idea what to do with a son. Though boys and girls both play sports, one is conditioned to be more enthusiastic about sports and the other about other things.

On the other hand, I would go on, as with the counter girl herself, while a son is more likely to be a son until he marries, a daughter is more likely to be a daughter for life. Having a girl is, for me, more adventurous. Without thinking about it, I also commented that if Lain turned out to be a lesbian, it’d be easier for her to have children than for a gay son. I say “without thinking about it” because I’m in a red county of a red state. A western state, sure, but even so. Beyond that, despite the cigarette in her hand and the fact that she was 25 and unmarried, she was wearing a BYU jacket and gave off Mormon airs. I don’t typically like to so forcefully bring contentious politics into family chatter.

But… “Right on,” she replied. She grinned and added, “Plus, if she’s a lesbian, her kids might get your last name.”

Which I hadn’t even thought of!

One of the “gotchas” I’ve known critics of homosexuality to pull is “Would you want your child to be gay?” Because, after all, if there’s nothing wrong with being gay, there should be no problem there. Now, the perfectly correct answer to that is “I will love him or her no matter what she is.” But that’s sort of an evasion. As with the Boy vs. Girl, is there a preference? At all? And I could deny that there was, but historically I’ve had a little hope of straightness due to (if it’s a boy) reproduction and discrimination. Ultimately, for the same reason I hope that any son I have is over six feet tall, and any daughter I have is under six feet. I will love the child no matter what, but I do hope certain things for their sake. They’ll have a social deck stacked against them anyway by virtue of being the spawn of Clancy and myself.

One of the most amazing things over the last couple of years is how much that has changed. How much more accepted homosexuality is, and how much anti-gay sentiment is censured. I figured that this would happen, and BYU Girl didn’t surprise me as much as she might have in part because of her age and how young people see it differently. Generational waves, a compelling argument, and I did think this change would happen. But seeing it happen has made for a whole new experience. And I find, the confirmation of it makes me more genuinely less averse to the possibility that Lain, or her future younger siblings, might swing in the other direction. That the two really are tied together, and it’s not just the excuse that the asker of the question of the previous paragraph assumes it to be.

I’m not arguing that it has ceased to be an issue. Or even that it will when Lain comes of age. Being a lesbian would mean that large parts of the country would be infertile ground for her to set down roots. It’s unlikely that a lot of the religions preaching against homosexuality now will completely change their tune on the subject. But there will be a lot of places, even in the south and even in the west, where she would be able to live peaceably. Plenty of places for her own place to be.

And, if she has a son, he will be able to carry on the William Truman name.

One of the ideas making its rounds around Washington (again) is a new stimulus package dedicated towards improving infrastructure. Taking this opportunity of high unemployment to rebuild and expand roads, public hospitals, schools, and so on. As is often the case, it seems to me that the devil is in the details with something like this, though it’s one of the less objectionable ideas I’ve heard. One of the things I’ve noticed in small-city and small-town America, though, is the building of grand new things without much regard for what happens to the old.

In Colosse, near the Capitol district, is an old football stadium that nobody has used for years. For various reasons, it has a real soft spot in the heart of Colosseans everywhere and so nobody will state the obvious, that it needs to be torn down. Instead, idea after idea comes up about how it can be converted into something, but idea after idea is shot down. If they wanted to create a new superstar convention center, they could simply build a new one for less money than converting a stadium into a convention center would cost. No conversion necessary.

In Beck County, Deseret, where I lived for a couple of years, they were working on building a new hospital. Or rather, combining the two existing hospitals into one huge one by expanding one of the two campuses. One of the big questions, though, was what happens to the old hospital? It was a question that few actually asked. There was the assumption, I think, that Beck State University would ultimately buy it because it was right across the street from the campus that had an expanding student body. But somewhere along the way the university determined that it didn’t have the money. I don’t know what ever happened with any of that as we left the state and I think the last time we went back the “old” hospital was still in use. I was always more impressed with it than I was the new (to-be-expanded) facility. The former was on a hill and had some great views out of the building. The latter was on the top of a hill, which was cool, but was laid out pretty flat like a giant high school. Obviously, these are not the things on which decisions should be made, but I thought it a real shame that such a nice looking building might be demolished to make room for… what, exactly?

There are a couple of cases going on in Callie, Arapaho, where I now live. First is another hospital that they’re building down the street from the old. I’ve been reading the Callie Register week in and week out and nothing has been mentioned about what’s going to happen with the old facilities. As far as buildings go, it’s not as impressive as the hospital in Deseret and I guess it wouldn’t be a big deal if it went down. Hard to imagine anything else happening to it given the excess real estate available other than it sitting dormant, as is the case with a couple of old grain factories (at least that’s what I think they are) in town. There’s an old warehouse that for a while was a night club of sorts that is being torn down.

And last on this list is the old elementary school, which was replaced when a new one was built a little while back. Right now it’s serving as a Head Start center, though that requires only a portion of the building and everyone seems to be scratching their heads about what to do with it. The local conservative letter-writer to the Register suggests that it needs to be sold cause the government doesn’t need it and the government should be cut… but sold to whom?

Meanwhile, new stuff is regularly being built. There seems to be something sad about the constant need to build new things. We have a real attraction to new. Back home, there was Phillippi High School, which was considered by most to be the dregs of a school compared to South Phillippi and East Phillippi, the district’s other two high schools. They tore down PHS and rebuilt everything on the same grounds, and despite having the same lackluster teachers, the same lower-class student body, and the same everything else… suddenly everyone in the Phillippi district was petitioning to transfer into the new (old) school. To some, I guess, it really is as if the date of construction is what really matters. It’s been a decade now since all of that happened and as I hear it nobody is anxious to have their kids go to that school anymore.

I guess there’s something a little sad to me about out with the old and in with the new. Is it really so impossible to retrofit older buildings with better amenities? (easier, one would imagine, than converting a football stadium into a convention center)? Out here in Arapaho the land is so cheap that I guess it always makes sense to just build something new rather than take advantage of real estate that has already been built. In Beck County there were always new hotels being build, meanwhile a really cool and historic hotel downtown, the Fritz was vacant. The people wringed their hands about this historic place just kind of going to pot, but when people would come to Fort Beck for this reason or that, they would always make reservations with the chains and the chains always had their own building models in mind and with real estate being so affordable they could just build a new one on the outskirts of town. Nobody who wasn’t already in town knew how cool The Fritz is in comparison. If they care, which they might not since most hotel rooms are about a place to land your head at night.

We are one of the wealthiest nations in the world, if not the outright wealthiest. I guess it’s a biproduct of this that we can always afford to build new rather than make do with the old. Of course, we’re also not as wealthy a country as we sometimes think (think our national debt and lack of personal savings and banking industry vulnerability). It’s not unlike with cars, which I will comment on soon. Of course, sometimes it just is the case that the latter is cheaper than the former. Made moreso the case by all of the building requirements that these old structures would need to be retrofitted with if they were to be reopened. I was thinking of this the other day in Redstone when I was admiring a duplex is pretty awful shape that obviously hadn’t been lived in for quite some time. I don’t even know if such a building could be moved into and the costs of renovation probably would exceed the costs of tearing it down and building something new.

Living in the world of technology, it’s something that I can appreciate to some degree. A laptop breaks down, if you add together the amount of money it would take to find replacement parts and the time it would take and how much my time is worth… I can get a new laptop for much cheaper. Of course, technology always gets cheaper and better. I don’t know how much Moore’s Law applies to construction.

The fact that we spend more on health care than anyone else for less remarkable results is the subject of much discussion and recrimination. There are some things where our health care really does excel or stand out. One thing that amazes foreign doctors that come here is how much nicer our facilities are. As much like a hotel as a hospital. Whether this is a great use of our health care dollars or not I cannot really say.

Princeton alum Susan Patton garnered some publicity by writing a letter to the Daily Princetonian suggesting that the women attending the school take the opportunity to find a mate there:

A few weeks ago, I attended the Women and Leadership conference on campus that featured a conversation between President Shirley Tilghman and Wilson School professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, and I participated in the breakout session afterward that allowed current undergraduate women to speak informally with older and presumably wiser alumnae. I attended the event with my best friend since our freshman year in 1973. You girls glazed over at preliminary comments about our professional accomplishments and the importance of networking. Then the conversation shifted in tone and interest level when one of you asked how have Kendall and I sustained a friendship for 40 years. You asked if we were ever jealous of each other. You asked about the value of our friendship, about our husbands and children. Clearly, you don’t want any more career advice. At your core, you know that there are other things that you need that nobody is addressing. A lifelong friend is one of them. Finding the right man to marry is another.

The reaction and pushback was swift, to say the least. Princeton alum Maureen O’Connor calls the advice sexist (“pushing women — and women alone — to define themselves by their spouses and to make life choices according to an outmoded understanding of romantic attraction”) elitist (“this embarrassing window into how Ivy Leaguers talk to each other should be as cringe-inducing to modern audiences as Patton’s take on gender relations is”) and Nina Bahadur also offers a plethora of criticisms of varying quality.

I can understand at least some of the objections. That this advice seems so frequently geared towards women (by a woman with two sons, in this case) has to be grating to women who resent the notion that mate-seeking is of primary or greater importance to women than to men. There is, of course, a rationale behind this view. My own experience aside, women are more likely to rely on her husband for income than vice-versa. And Bahadur’s protestations aside, women complain quite regularly that men do not place sufficient emphasis on intelligence or even look at intelligence as a negative value, which (to me) has the implication that they would value intelligence. Both of these things, are part-and-parcel to precisely what a lot of women view as being wrong with the world, however, and I can understand the reluctance to chart a course accepting a status quo you want to see changed as a given. So the pushback here is, at least to some degree, understandable.

Is it productive? Is Patton right? That, I don’t know.

Someone else pointed to this Atlantic article on the virtues of getting married later in life. It’s looking primarily (though not solely) at income. Which is one metric. It also discusses divorce rates.

Some of this can be chalked up to simple self-selection, though. Which is to say, when getting married later is “the responsible thing” that’s what responsible people are going to be doing, regardless of the merits. If wearing puce every day is “the responsible thing to do” then people who wear puce every day will show better results than people who don’t. Further, getting married later (and finishing college, which the article also focuses on) are indicative of longer time horizons and greater impulse control, which are both conducive to higher earnings.

At the same time, marriage can very much complicate the natural progression of a woman’s (or man’s) career. I had to put my career aside for my wife’s, but I didn’t have to put my college career aside because I’d already graduated by the time we met. There is nothing to stop a group of people from going to college together, but it requires some givens that aren’t always there. In my wife’s case and my own, we didn’t graduate at the same time and she went to medical school a distance away from where she completed undergrad. Would I have had to transfer? Would she have had to forego medical school? Given that Patton specifically exhorts underclassmen girls to date the range, that will inevitably lead to different graduation points. Sacrifices have to be made that don’t have to be made under the post-collegiate progression. At that point, you’re simply looking at situations involving career sacrifices, which are much easier to rebound from than dropping out from college or needless transfers.

My more conservative soul, however, is at least somewhat sympathetic to where Patton is coming from. She is absolutely right that nowhere after college will you be surrounded by such good opportunity. There is almost something cruel about the post-collegiate progression in that respect. It becomes really hard to meet people after college. Especially if you’re not the outgoing type. And, ahem, especially if you’re a guy who works in IT. There is Internet dating and the like, but my success with that was always limited. The Internet (as with BBSes before it) was helpful in meeting the people I did, but the big hits of my life (Julie, Evangeline, Clancy) did not involve online dating sites (as such).

And there are times I really question the wisdom of the status quo. I was not really ready to get married until sometime after I graduated from college. Had I married the girl I was with when I was in college, I’d be divorced or miserable now. It’s impossible to separate that, though, from the society from which I come. If getting married when you’re twenty were common, it would have changed a lot of dynamics. The self-selection issue wouldn’t be there. The “Am I missing something by settling down so young?” questions would cut less deeply, and so on. When social institutions support early marriage, such as in Utah, divorce rates are not appreciably different than elsewhere. The Mormon timeline seems to demonstrate that there is another way. Of course, the Utah experience is not something that non-Mormon (or non-religious, anyway) women are likely to want to embrace. Apropos the above, Utahn women attend and graduate college at lower rates than women nationally (though they graduate at higher rates than men).

Conservative commentator Jonathan Last is making the argument in his new book (that I have not yet read) that we have a “fertility gap” between the number of kids that people are having and the number of kids they want to have. Which means that, not only are people having fewer kids than Ross Douthat might prefer, but they’re having fewer kids than they want. Late marriage plays a role in this. As does the social structure that so often encourages it. Clancy and I kind of wanted three if we had any, but due to biology and age we’re likely two-and-done. In a social structure where getting married younger was a norm, that might be different. This is a cost of the post-collegiate progression and one that Patton’s advice – if widely accepted – might mitigate.

The other criticism of Patton’s piece is the (alleged) snobbery. From a personal standpoint, though, her suggestion is probably sound. People from Princeton don’t need to marry people who went to Princeton, but they’re probably going to want to marry people of a similar background more often than not (yes, even the men). People who went to college are generally going to be looking for the same thing, and people who went to ubercollege… ditto. Though on a personal or individual level, this is sound, it would potentially exacerbate class divides with assortive mating. Which means that it might not be as good a thing for society as a whole. What effect it would have, given that assortive mating is already occurring, is unclear.

Patton defends her original letter (and speech) here and here.

A college professor mine once made the case that an early mistake that our country made was giving statehood away so freely. It would have been better, he reasoned, if statehood had been something earned and not given. He said that he went back and forth as to whether we should have stuck with the thirteen colonies, or maybe given statehood to the original thirteen and various states along other waterways. His model was that there would be states and territories within the continental US. He went on to argue that in addition to all of this, access to the states would be restricted to only the best and brightest of those raised in the territories.

“But why should the territories be places for second-class citizens?” we all asked (or maybe he asked knowing that we wanted to). He suggested a couple things. First, tough luck. It would no more be the responsibility of the states to allow someone from Kansas in than it is for Kansas to allow someone from Mexico in. Alternately, he suggested that it would leave the territories greater latitude to develop themselves. With enough of a push in the rugged and deregulated environment, people would start moving out of the states and into the territories. Which, once that happens, you make it a state in order to stop the bleeding. That would be how statehood would be earned.

As with a lot of things the professor said, this was met with howls at the whole inequality and just UnAmericanness of it. He then put up a map that he’d been keeping hidden throughout this entire discussion, delineating the comparative economic power disparities between regions. His entire plan, he explained, would only be the formalization of America as it currently exists and is headed towards. The best and brightest are pulled towards the coasts. Those that can’t cut the mustard and won’t be servants move to places like Colorado and eventually places like Colorado become “real” states, which he said was imminent. By “real states” he essentially meant blue states (though the term did not exist yet). States that are no longer laughed at in polite company. Colorado was almost there, Nevada would be there within a decade. Texas and Arizona would take a little longer, but eventually they will get enough of the coastal types (and Mexicans) to push them over. Then they’d be real states, too. The newcomers would pass all sorts of land regulations that would make the cities more expensive. The undesirables would start being priced out. They’d become places of affluent Americans, high-quality immigrants, their servants, and a few legacy admits.

I was reminded of this lecture when I read Virginia Postrel’s post on a growing disconnect:

As I have argued elsewhere, there are two competing models of successful American cities. One encourages a growing population, fosters a middle-class, family-centered lifestyle, and liberally permits new housing. It used to be the norm nationally, and it still predominates in the South and Southwest. The other favors long-term residents, attracts highly productive, work-driven people, focuses on aesthetic amenities, and makes it difficult to build. It prevails on the West Coast, in the Northeast and in picturesque cities such as Boulder, Colorado and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The first model spurs income convergence, the second spurs economic segregation. Both create cities that people find desirable to live in, but they attract different sorts of residents.

This segregation has social and political consequences, as it shapes perceptions — and misperceptions — of one’s fellow citizens and “normal” American life. It also has direct and indirect economic effects. “It’s a definite productivity loss,” Shoag says. “If there weren’t restrictions and you could build everywhere, it would be productive for people to move. You do make more as a waiter in LA than you do in Ohio. Preventing people from having that opportunity to move to these high-income places, making it so expensive to live there, is a loss.” That’s true not only for less-educated workers but for lower earners of all sorts, including the artists and writers who traditionally made places like New York, Los Angeles and Santa Fe cultural centers.

A lot of The Professor’s lectures were rather oblique in nature. I have my doubts that he actually supported the model that he was ostensibly supporting (just like I think he was trying to make a different point when he suggested that immigration policy be dictated by a reality TV show involving paintguns). He also framed the policies as being more deliberate than they are (I think). However, one thing I have noticed is a disconnect on the importance of affordable living. The degree to which red states are sponsored by a lower cost of living, and blue states are sponsored by a higher cost of living, is striking. Cause-effect is muddled, but it’s really one of the less discussed aspects of the red/blue divide. We discuss city versus country, but not what makes Boise different from Portland (Maine), or Phoenix and Santa Fe.

In this post, liberal does not mean “of the contemporary American left” and conservative does not mean “of the contemporary American right” though there is at least some overlap (in other cases, they are in opposition).

I was born, I think, something of a liberal soul. I was unusually creative even as a little sprite. I was the kid who looked at all the rules and asked “why?” even more than most other kids. This continued into adolescence. There’s nothing remarkably unusual about this. Young people questioning authority is hardly an unusual concept. I was ahead of some of my peers, and behind others.

The “behind others” may, as much of anything, have had little to do with my soul, however. Rather, I was raised in a rather conservative environment. Not religious-fundamentalist. Not even Republican – though I assumed my parents were Republicans for the longest time. Rather, a household of anti-entitlement, a little skepticism towards charity, and where rules we couldn’t understand were still rules (not just parental authority rules). My parents weren’t actually all that strict, compared to a lot of people I knew, but there was an atmosphere. They used soft influence more than threats when it came to my hair getting too long, for instance, or friends of which they disapproved.

In high school, I started making friends with a fair number of counter-culture types. They were people I bonded with, even though they had pink hair and nose-rings while I had a traditional haircut and wore button shirts. They did things it would never have occurred to me to do. I had parents that would push back when my hair started coming over my ears. They never lectured me against drugs, but rather raised me in an atmosphere where they were unthinkable.

What turned me away from liberalism, to at least some degree, is the realization that their system was right far more than it was wrong. I couldn’t live within the parameters of their world. It was never in my liberal soul to do so. But their system pulled me back from so many mistakes it was ridiculous. When my soul’s ideology ran up against theirs, they usually won. Sometimes in the form of preventing from doing something that was a mistake. Often in the form of having made a mistake by not letting their voice in my head prevent me from doing them.

Myself at seventeen and myself at nearly twice that age would not recognize one another. They would not get along remarkably well.

“What do you mean I should cut my hair? You sound just like my parents.”

“Listen, kid. You’re a freak. Don’t try to deny it. We both know you are. There are some ways that you will never be able to conform to society. But your hair? That’s one way where you can. Cut your damn hair.”

The conservatism was an anchor. Since I could never walk the straight line, it always prevented me from straying too far from it. It prevented me from being too much a victim of what I have come to see as my own poor internal judgment. My own tendency to want to knock down boundaries simply because I do not immediately see why they are there. To accept the wisdom of my surroundings, even if the actual wisdom of it all eluded me. Not forcing me to follow all rules without question, but nonetheless forcing me to come up with a strong affirmative argument any time I wanted to break them.

My parents, as it turned out, were never as conservative as I thought. My father was a district delegate for Barack Obama. My mother, another liberal soul who was mugged by reality, would tell me not to do what she would have wanted to do and, in some cases, what she did. She told me I had to go to college, though half-expected me to flunk out and was fully prepared to love and embrace me anyway. She had some strong ideas on who I would marry, and it wasn’t who she thought I would marry (Clancy is somewhere in between – she’s thrilled) and she was fully prepared to love and embrace me anyway. The ways in which they made clear they would never support me, they would have supported me in the end (within reason).

They presented me with an illusory world of conformity that, the older I have gotten, the more I realized never fully existed in the Truman household. They bucked the system in more ways than I ever realized. Like me, they had their own tendencies that were at odds with their environment. Like me, they conformed where they could, but did not where it wasn’t in them to do so (though, with them, it was more a matter of socioeconomic class than internal ideology).

Sometimes I think it is the conflict between my nature and my nurture that leaves me so… conflicted… about so many things. In politics it gets more complicated still (my conservative nurture leading me to Democratic sympathies, and vice-versa), but the squishiness you see before you stretches to many things beyond who I should vote for and which political positions I support. They go to which job I should take, who I dated, and my feelings about where I went to school and what I majored in. The natural inclination that the system should never stand in the way of who you are and the life you want to lead, and the nurtural inclination that the system exists for a reason.

In a recent linky-post, I mentioned a study that suggests that skeptics of global warming are actually more scientifically knowledgeable than believers:

Some righties are getting a real kick out of a new study suggesting that global warming skeptics have more scientific and numeric literacy than its believers. Since that was clearly not the results that the study’s founders had hoped to find, that’s icing on the cake. Seriously, I don’t consider it particularly relevant. I don’t consider it surprising. I consider it funny as hell.

At some point I will write my magnum opus on this, but some things can’t wait.

What the study actually found was not that there was a strong correlation on skepticism and scientific knowledge, but actually that the more knowledgeable someone was, the more polarized they were:

We conducted a study to test this account and found no support for it. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest.

This makes nothing less than complete sense to me. Studies have shown that both Republicans and Democrats tend to be smarter and more knowledgeable than independents. The more intelligent and knowledgeable, the more extreme. This is a little foreign to me, personally, because the more I read and consume, the less certain I become about anything.

In another way, however, it makes perfect sense. We do not consume information objectively. When we sort out data and turn it into information, we often do so with an endgame in mind. Rather than increased intellectual firepower and knowledge resulting in a greater objective understanding of anything, it merely results in the ability sort information to confirm our existing biases. It allows us to rationalize or contradict inconvenient information, and to make more sense of and expound upon affirming information.

In the case of global warming, people assign scientific concepts they know or have heard about (a glass of icewater not overflowing when the ice melts) in misapplied ways towards global warming (doesn’t apply because ice will be falling off actual land and into the water).

The cause-effect here can be circular. The mind tries to find order in all of the chaotic information in processes. Intelligent minds are more capable of this than not. And so as more information comes in, it’s sorted to fit a particular pattern. On the other side, people with a particular passion tend to seek out more information on something. There are anti-evolution people who know far, far more about the theory of evolution than I ever will – and they sought it out with a particular conclusion in mind. The same applies to anti-vaccination people, who know a lot more about vaccinations than anybody but researchers, doctors, and activists on the other side. More information sought, more information processed, more righteousness accumulated.

Over the past few years, I have known people who have gone from unreasonably right to unreasonably left. They were intelligent before, and they are intelligent now. All that was required was a massive re-sorting of data.

Catholic writer Kyle Cupp writes about the difficulties of the anti-contraception argument:

Opponents of contraception face seemingly insurmountable obstacles, not the least of which is their position’s antagonism toward today’s common sense view of sexual morality. Opposition toward contraception is not common; acceptance of it as a personal and social good is. A few voices cry out in the wilderness, but they are just that: a few, and, by today’s standards, uncivilized. {…}

Opponents of contraception cannot easily dismiss its judgments or wave them away as products of a perverse age. The proposition that today’s common sense view of sexual morality is perverse requires careful demonstration. Noting the correlation between widespread use of contraceptives with other social ills does not suffice. Even if one could prove a causal relationship between common acceptance of contraception and, say, the rise of cohabitation, one would still have to show that this growing acceptance of cohabitation is also a sign of corruption.

There is something to be said for not bending with the times. Manytimes, the people telling you how you need to bend with the times… well, don’t have your best interest at heart. They are not interested in your church’s survival so much as that you get out of their way.

Having said that, a church’s perishoners do need clues on how to reconcile their membership in the church with the modern world. And on this, the church has failed. Most have, but few so spectacularly on this particular issue.

Now, most churches have a prohibition on premarital sex. But the reconciliation, such as it is, is to say “Well, we can’t stop you from doing it, but don’t talk about doing it, and say with us that you shouldn’t do it.” The RCC takes it a step further, by essentially saying “We can’t stop you from doing it, but we will double up on the sinfulness of it by not allowing you to take comparatively common-sense measures to protect yourself from adverse consequences.

Most of the time, the result of this is that Catholics are among the most talkative people about their sexual sins than any other group I know. And they use contraception. And they talk about that, too.

What’s missing from all of this is exactly what the Church (and most churches) do want you to do. The focus on don’t makes sense in light of certain things, but it leaves certain logistical questions unanswered. Namely, if people are supposed to wait until marriage, and they’re not marrying until they’re 30, how realistic is this expectation?

The only church I have ever seen really tackle this problem is the LDS Church, and they have planted a flag on not waiting until you’re 30. Not just by saying “Don’t wait until you’re 30” but also by actively trying to hook their youngsters up. The basic Mormon timeline, as best as I can tell, is that boys go to K-12, go on a mission for two years, then they’re 20 and the girls graduating high school are 18 and… there you go. It’s not arranged marriages and they want you to find the right person, but the order of the day is “get moving.”

If churches really want less premarital sex, and to get rid of the 20’s sex culture, they they need to work harder to prevent it from happening. Rather than wagging their finger over the fact that it is happening. Don’t tell me that they can’t do this because the Church doesn’t want to mettle.

Rather, I think they don’t want to do it because it’s politically difficult. Even among conservatives in the US, marrying in your early twenties is rather strongly discouraged for logistical reasons. Particularly among the middle class and upper middies whose money they often need and who don’t want the church telling them they need to marry that kid with the ear-ring that their daughter just swears she’s in love with. In an odd way, it’s here they’ve chosen to bend. Not against church doctrine, but against the inevitable results of failing to do so – the results running against church doctrine. Maybe that’s a crucial distinction, but it does come across as a somewhat disingenuous one.

Now, doing so would probably be a losing battle. The Mormons themselves seem to be losing their grip, with fewer boys going on missions and the prescribed timeline being disrupted. But the Mormons have advantages (an insular entertainment culture, 1.3 states they dominate, and so on). But it’s no less crazy than asking kids to wait for sex until they’re 30.

Of course, on the contraception discussion, this only tackles one part. Once married, the Church’s path is clear. Keep having kids. Clear, but ignored. But at least they went down swinging.

Alameida writes:

Occasionally a well-meaning friend will look at my bedside table and say, “wow, you’re taking so much medicine! Maybe you’d feel better if you just stopped taking so much! I’d feel bad if I was taking all those pills.”

I’m going to talk slowly, but here’s the thing: people take medicine because they’re sick. Why on God’s green earth would you imagine I am so stupid as not to have tried not taking medicine? The “not taking medicine” state is the very state in which I ever came to the doctor about a given problem, as a little thinking would make clear. “Oh, but maybe that’s gone now and you should stop taking them again!” You know what? I tried that too! Again, not a complete moron over here.

I am myself somewhat medicine-resistant. Not in the biological sense (that I have a tolerance), but in the temperamental. I twisted my back something irksome, and though I vaguely know I would feel better if I took some Alieve, I still haven’t done so. I have the vague feeling that medication is something to be avoided except when you really need it. I don’t take a real position on our “over-medicated society” (except perhaps as it pertains to antibiotics), though a lot of people do.

There is, however, a difference between saying “There are too many people on ADHD meds” and suggesting, to someone you don’t know really well, that they shouldn’t be taking whatever meds. This isn’t an appeal on the basis of “don’t judge me if you haven’t walked in my shoes” but rather an appeal to not personal judgments on relatively limited information. I had a… friend named Sally on anti-depression medication. Sometimes she would go off them. I could tell when she had. She would become erratic. She would become paranoid. She would, all of the sudden, be really bitter. Even on her meds, there was always a Good Sally and a Bad Sally. Off the meds, Good Sally would go to hibernation. There are other people I have known really well who talk about going back on meds where I think “This is less an inflammation of your depression and more just being sad and/or bored.” Sometimes I’ve been right (the medication didn’t help) and sometimes I’ve been wrong (it did). In the event that I was right, comparatively little was lost, in my view. In the event that I was wrong, I would have (if I’d said anything) told them not to do something that genuinely helped. It’s easy for me to say that they should grin and bear it.

This all ties into my original Unsolicited Advice.

Moving from the general (too many people taking medication, too many people going to law school) to the specific and universal (someone taking medication should consider stopping, don’t ever go to law school except under the circumstances I outline) is not just offensive to some, but often counterproductive. The better part is listening. And, if not directing (and definitely not directing), informing (“a lot of people think that going to Southeast State Law School will get them a good career. Sometimes it might, but a lot of those people are going to be very disappointed.”) A degree of humility is warranted, when you’re making guesses at someone else’s life.

In a previous linky-post, I pointed to the odd confederate subculture in Sweden. Dr. Phi responded:

As much as it warms my heart to see Swedes waving the Stars and Bars, I sincerely doubt they have a full understanding of, let alone embrace, its full cultural context as understood in America by either its supporters or its detractors.

This is absolutely right.

There was an episode of Daria wherein Daria’s friend Jane started dating a guy who was into swing dress and mores. One doubts that this character really wanted to live in the swing era (despite some protestations that they “had class” and such). Though technically it was an American style of dress (Mostly? I think?), the past is a foreign country, as they say. The further away you are removed from something, the easier it is to take a more superficial look at something. You can talk about how, during the swing era, they had class, without talking about how various segments of the population was treated. It’s more easy to imagine a way that things are – or were – without being confronted with some of the uglier details.

We do this all the time with pirates. There have been various attempts to dignify who the pirates were and whatnot, but mostly we don’t really think about it. We think about the way that we would have them speak, maybe the freedom of life at the sea, and in essence invent our own context for it.

Being from the South, the use of Confederate symbology has a much more specific meaning and context. Now, this meaning varies from person to person. Phi says that the Swedes don’t have the full cultural context, but to be honest not even Americans agree. If the flag meant what its detractors say it means, very few people would want to be associated with it. If it meant what its supporters say it does, there’d be a lot less in the way of objections. But though it means different things to different people, southerners know – or ought to know – more precisely how it is going to be received. Swedes, really, have no reason to care. They are unlikely to ever be confronted with someone who believes in means slavery (or a proto-nation built on slavery), Jim Crow, and so on. Just as Internet geeks have no reason to be concerned about old-timey pirates (they’re not impersonating the Somali ones, after all).

I don’t actually know Swedish culture very well, so it may well be the case that these folks are what we would consider white supremacists. It could actually represent a sort of anti-Americanism (chosing the symbols of a subculture that was at war with Washington, literally and figuratively). It’s difficult to say. But, even to the extent that this is true, it’s all still rooted in abstract notions and vagueries. Picking the parts of the culture and deciding that exemplifies the culture.

By modern standards, the lifestyles of neither the Athenians or the Spartans is something we would be remotely comfortable with. But we pick sides anyway. We conceptualize what they are really about. It’s easy to do because it means less to us than America’s Civil Rights struggles mean to Swedes.