Over-Civilization

Back in early September, Candace Owens interviewed her fiancé—now husband—George Farmer on her weekly PragerU podcast. They answered questions from viewers as a way for us to get acquainted with him.

Candace Owens and George Farmer
screenshot from here

There’s a segment where they’re talking about one of the things she learned from him, which was about hunting—he does big game hunting—and which has been fascinating for her. He was talking about the difference between what liberal Westerners think compared to the Africans, who benefit from the hunting. It keeps predators down. When it’s an animal such as an antelope, which is mainly what George has hunted, the village cuts up the meat to share. So they get income from the hunters, and they get the food. It’s in their interest to keep the animal populations healthy so this can continue.

The conversation goes on to talk about how out of touch with nature some people are—maybe particularly in New York and California. Candace Owens suggests they should, “Go out and see the lions. Pet them. Talk to them about their feelings. And see what happens.”

George Farmer then brings something to the conversation I’ve been thinking about since: “Let’s put it like this; they’re not having a debate about which bathroom to use in Africa. Right? Because, at the moment, it’s about survival.” And this leads to more on this and related subjects. I’ll just share some of the transcript here:

CO: We’re so over-privileged… We talk about this a lot, the idea of over-civilization, where your society has become so civilized that it starts going backwards, and you start treading just towards stupidity. Like if you’re debating bathroom signs, you are way too privileged—way too civilized, if you are even talking about bathroom signs.

I mean, go to Africa. This is like one of you and I—we’re really big on just watching clips on the internet and just cracking up for hours. The best clip, I mean, the one that never gets old, is this African reporter who’s breaking a story, and interviewing someone, because they cannot grasp the concept of being gay or being a lesbian.

GF: Oh, yeah, that’s brilliant.

CO: And the interviewer is, “Welcome here to the show,” and he’s got this woman who’s a lesbian. She’s a girl and she’s a lesbian, and he just turns around to her, and his question, in this African voice is, “Why are you gay?”

"Why are you Gay"
screenshot from here

[I looked for the video. I think this is it. Being interviewed is a transgender male—i.e., a female who presents as a male, who is attracted to females. The interviewer doesn’t understand the motivation for making such choices.] 

GF: It’s the supposition, something that we’ve talked about. You’re absolutely right, the word over-civilization is a great word.

I’ve been to the Far East as well. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been— This is making me sound edgy and trendy. I’m not, as you well know—but, I went to Bhutan, which is this kingdom in the middle of the Himalayas. It’s the last Himalayan kingdom. And it’s a Buddhist kingdom. It’s basically sealed off to the world. It’s very difficult to get into. And they perform a—they are part of a Buddhist theology which involves tantric Buddhism, which is a form of sexual Buddhism. And, this was about six years ago—seven years ago. And I said to them, I said, “What’s the feeling about the gay rights movement in this part of the world?” And they looked at me as if I was an alien. They had never even heard of this. And I said, “Well, you know, relationships between men, and relationships between women.” And they just said, “Well, he’s my friend. Please explain,” kind of thing. 

And it was just bizarre. Because it was a case where, we’ve got to a point in the Western world where the debate’s become self-fulfilling. We start talking about these issues that become issues. The issues develop their own issues, etc., etc.

I’ve written here on this blog[i] quite a bit about LGBT issues. But this idea that, in some parts of the world these issues don’t even come up was surprising to me. I’m wondering what the social research would show, if the question of LGBT issues occurring in a society focused on survival were asked, or in a society that had never had the idea brought in.

In J. D. Unwin’s research[ii], in which he showed the power of what he calls absolute monogamy on a society—using data on every society in history he had any social data on—he had a sort of throwaway comment about homosexuality. He didn’t research it, but it appeared to him that it was a phenomenon that shows up in a society that is in decay. By decay, he means a society that does not embrace absolute monogamy.

I don’t know if we could get the right question studied today. For one thing, so much of the world is connected that the Hollywood culture has affected all but very few pockets. And you’d have to be able to do the study without introducing the idea where it hadn’t previously been thought of.

There are countries where homosexuality is illegal, and those societies eliminate the issue by executing any instances of it. Nazi Germany did that. Iran does that. But we’ve assumed that instances pop up about as often as average—about 2% of the population—and just stay hidden when the consequences are so dire.

But those examples aren’t survival societies or even fully separate-from-the-outside-world societies. If these things appear naturally (nature, not nurture), you’d expect the same natural incidence regardless of circumstances.

If (and this is what George Farmer is suggesting, but not something I have data on) the incidence is near zero in a society focused on survival, that’s interesting. Even more interesting is the near incidence in a society that simply hasn’t had the idea introduced by the outside world. If these zero-incidence places do exist, that leaves causation to something other than nature. Which I think we knew the umpteenth time it turned out there’s no gay gene[iii], according to DNA mapping.

But we don’t know exactly what part of nurture (possibly combined with some personality trait or combination of traits we’re not sure of) is causal. If we knew that, could we prevent it? Or find a way to heal from it? (Assuming the person wants healing; I’m not suggesting anything by coercion or even pressure.)

I don’t think we’d want to voluntarily become a subsistence society focused on survival. There are way too many advantages to thriving economically and socially. But it would be interesting to know what it is about a survival-focused society that leaves no room for wondering about LGBT issues. If you’re going to survive—as a species—you need to reproduce. We know how that happens, and LGBT behaviors obviously do not get us there. As the African interviewer said on the video, “Why are you gay?” Why would you make a lifestyle choice that offers no chance of procreation?

Those who have these issues often do not feel like they have a choice. But if, under the surface, there are psychological issues combined with life experiences that lead to these LGBT issues—many of which could be described as failure to accept the body one is born into—then it would be a kindness to learn how to help[iv].

About the assertion of over-civilization: I don’t think it’s possible to have too much civilization. But, then, I am defining it a specific way here at the Spherical Model[v]. When Candace and George use the term over-civilization, I think they mean that we are disconnected from what is essential. We over-complicate and over-emotionalize all kinds of things that, if we had a better perspective, would simply not be issues. The fact that we never seem to face life-threatening issues—our privilege of being so safe—leads us to weaken, and decay, and invent problems that aren’t relevant to thriving.

I believe if we actually lived fully civilized lives, without the decay that so much of the sexual revolution has characterized, some or all of the symptoms of decay would stop afflicting us.

The simple but not easy solution is for a critical mass of society to honor God, life, family, truth, and property ownership. It’s what we find in the Ten Commandments. It’s still true.

---

[i] I compiled “The Defense of Marriage Collection” in 2013.  That’s a start, but these issues continue to come up regularly on this blog.

[ii] Joseph Daniel Unwin, Ph.D., “Sexual Regulations and Cultural Behavior," an address given to the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society in 1934, published in 1935 (Library of Congress No., HQ12.U52). I mentioned his work here and here.

[iii] I wrote about this in September, here. 

[iv] I’ve written here about the work of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Jr., who has developed what he calls reintegrative therapy, which is intended to deal with underlying issues from childhood that lead a person to dissociate from who they are, and to then heal that underlying issue. The therapy is to gain a person greater peace but has in cases led to decreased or apparently erased feelings of same-sex attraction. It is my supposition that reintegrative therapy is based on principles that could also help people with gender dysphoria, although I haven’t heard Dr. Nicolosi assert that.

[v] At the Spherical Model, I describe civilization this way:

   Families typically remain intact, and children are raised in loving homes, with caring parents who guide their education and training, dedicating somewhere between 18 and 25 years for that child to reach adulthood, and who then remain interested in their children’s success for the rest of their lives.

   Civilized people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor. Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear.

   There is a thriving free-enterprise economy. Poverty is meaningless; even though there will always be a lowest earning 10% defined as poor, in a civilized society these lowest earners have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing—and there’s the possibility of rising, or at least for future generations to rise.

   Creativity abounds; enlightening arts and literature exceed expectations. Architecture and infrastructure improve; innovation and invention are the rule.

   People feel free to choose their work, their home, their family practices, their friendships and associations. And they generally self-restrain before they infringe on the rights and freedoms of others. Where there are questions about those limits, laws are in place to help clarify boundaries of civilized behavior. When someone willingly infringes on the rights or safety of another, the law functions to protect that victim as well as society from further uncivilized behavior from the offender.

Religious Intolerance at the Townhall

I was blissfully unaware that the Democrat presidential candidates had a townhall on CNN last Thursday, focused on LGBT issues—which, in case you haven’t figured it out, means focused on religious discrimination. But Ben Shapiro did his job by suffering through it for the sake of Friday's podcast at The Daily Wire.

He’s not usually very emotional. Rational is really a good descriptor of his approach to things. But I think this got him as riled up as he gets. Because, when presidential candidates say they’re coming to take away your rights to your beliefs and to share those beliefs with your children—you don’t sit quietly and acquiesce.

Ben Shapiro, from Friday, October 11, 2019
screenshot from here

It started with Beto O’Rourke, who seems to be making a campaign of speaking aloud the things we all know Democrats intend, but that they keep quiet about so as not to wake up the voters. Here’s the question and his answer:

Moderator: Colleges. Churches. Charities. Should they lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage?

Beto: Yes. There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break, for anyone, any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us. And so, as president we’re going to make that a priority. And we’re going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow Americans.

Let’s clarify a few things. He’s talking about a lot of organizations. The university I went to, Brigham Young University; Hillsdale College, Liberty University, Baylor, Notre Dame—maybe a majority of private higher education. He’s also talking about taking away your right to attend the church you believe in—unless the church is willing to change its doctrines to suit President Beto. And any religion-affiliated charities—they should be shut down, because they're so evil.

Note that, for the most part, these institutions do nothing to prevent LGBT people from associating with anyone else they choose and doing whatever they want. They aren’t taking away any rights; they’re just not offering any particular services that conflict with their beliefs. If you want a same-sex wedding, go to a church or reception facility down the road that caters to what you want.

But Beto is saying that the very holding of the idea he disagrees with is tantamount to disqualifying behavior. So, all churches, schools, and charities, regardless of their behavior toward LGBT people, must be punished.

But he’s saying just not rewarded by tax-exempt status; that’s not the same. Right? Let’s connect the dots. I’ll let Ben Shapiro do that.

Once you remove their tax-exempt status, and you say they don’t have tax-exempt status anymore, you treat them like a normal LLC. Well, if you have anti-discrimination laws in states like California, or if you’re the Democratic Party and you’re trying to pass the so-called Equality Act, which is really a way of cracking down on religious institutions and forcing people to abide by social rules that they don’t want to abide by (and in violation of the First Amendment—blatant violation of the First Amendment. The Founding Fathers are spinning so fast in their graves, they’re drilling directly to the core of the earth at this point). The fact is that the goal here would be to, then, kick these religious institutions from 501(c)3 tax-exempt status institutions into normal LLC territory and then declare that those LLCs are in violation of non-discrimination policies and shut them down as violative of law.

We’ve already seen them do this with Arlene’s Flowers in Washington State, where, if you are a florist who is religious and only will cater to weddings that are traditional, you’ll be shut down or fined. The same with photographers. We’ve seen it with Jack Phillips, the baker in Colorado. We’ve seen all of that. Again, we’ve seen the Democrats and the left do this.

They’re going to do that to your church. They’re going to remove tax-exempt status, and then they’re going to shut it down.

Beto O’Rourke wasn’t the only one letting long-held beliefs escape into the spoken word. Corey Booker helped with that. Here’s what he said:

Corey Booker at Thursday's CNN Town Hall
screenshot from here

Corey Booker: And so, for me, I cannot allow, as a leader, that people are going to use religion as a justification for discrimination. I could respect your religious freedoms but also protect people from discrimination. And, as I said in an earlier answer, I grew up in a household where my parents talked to me about how people used to use religion to justify the discrimination against African Americans

How sad for him that he grew up in a household that taught him lies. Religion is the reason slavery ended. Historically, did some slaveholders try to justify their behavior with religion—probably. But not successfully. Because God is no respecter of persons. And, we should add, ALL of those who held those beliefs were Democrats. Republicans—and a majority of religious people among them—gave their lives and treasure to put a stop to it.

It’s practically an aphorism today among those who seek power through tyranny, poverty, and savagery that “religion” is the evil thingin itself. Just like pagan kings in ancient times who set up their own religions—often making themselves the personification of god—as a means to control the beliefs, and thus the behavior, of their people.

Here’s Ben Shapiro’s not exactly calm response:

“I cannot allow”? Who the “F” are you, dude? You cannot allow? Guess what? That’s not your right.

My right is to act in ways that don’t harm anybody else. And if I choose to have an institution where I am going to elevate heterosexuality above homosexuality, that is not harming anyone else. You don’t have to participate in that institution. It’s a free country.

I mean, you have institutions where you don’t tolerate my religious beliefs. I don’t expect that when I walk into a mosque that suddenly they’re going to start practicing Judaism. I don’t expect that when I walk into an atheist meeting, they’re going to start keeping kosher. And I don’t expect that when I walk into the offices of the Human Rights Campaign, that they’re going to start handing out literature from Leviticus.

Why in the world would you not express the same degree of tolerance for people who disagree with you as people you agree with? If you are only tolerant of people who agree with you, this is a good indicator you are not a very tolerant person.

Religious freedoms—and, along with that, parental rights to the upbringing of their children—are at risk whenever there’s a chance of a tyrant gaining power.

Walt Heyer on the Candace Owens Show
October 13, 2019
screenshot from here

On a related issue, this Sunday Candace Owens talked with Walt Heyer. He’s been through a lot. In his 40s, he transitioned, including surgery and hormones, to live as a woman. The problem was, he always knew those outward changes didn’t actually change who he was. There were things he needed to address, from childhood, that had made him reject who he actually was and try to be something else. Eventual therapy led him to deal with those things. And he transitioned back, as much as that is possible, after seven years.

The original change cost him his family and his job. So to admit that was a huge mistake was very hard. If only he’d had the therapy he needed in the first place! It was after just the second visit that his doctor diagnosed him with gender dysphoria and told him the treatment was to transition through hormones and surgery. He barely knew him. He explored nothing about co-morbidity—other problems typically linked with transgender (and other LGB) issues.

Since transitioning back, he has been outspoken, and has created a ministry to help those who have transitioned and find no solution to their problems there.

His issues started very young, when a grandmother used to dress him up, and keep it their secret; and she would tell him how cute he was, and give him affirmation for pretending he was a girl. When his parents found out, they discontinued contact with that grandmother. But an uncle sexually abused him, and his parents didn’t believe him. So he came to believe both that there were things he couldn’t tell adults, and that there was something wrong with who he was.

That experience is not uncommon among people with gender dysphoria. An idea gets planted very early. If talked through, or even left alone, often the mistaken idea gets resolved and the person goes on to lead a normal life. But the transgender activists today seek to intervene, even against parents’ wishes, and castrate and mutilate the prepubescent child, making them forever unable to live a normal life.

Here’s what Heyer says about our children and schools:

When you begin to introduce these ideas that you can change your gender, change your sex, you begin the early sexualization of children, which is abhorrent. It shouldn’t be done, and it shouldn’t be allowed.

We’re interfering with their natural development. These are children that are exploring every opportunity and trusting adults to guide them and to nurture them properly. But introducing all of this sexuality, and all of these things at such an early age, is very disturbing.

Today I work with hundreds of people who’ve been through this. And what I’m seeing is, up to 50% of them have been sexually abused. And so, sexual abuse is kind of a common issue that happens with this ideology.

A healthy psychological society is built on families. And kids are the core of the next generation. And if we’re ripping our kids apart in school with this ideology, we’re ruining even the next generation. And this is why it’s so critical to address this issue.

We should not be teaching children in school that they can change genders. It’s not a vending machine for genders. This is a critical issue that needs to be removed from the school. LGBT material doesn’t need to be in our public schools. Reading, writing, arithmetic is what we need in our schools, not LGBT agenda stuff.

You can’t give in on one uncompromisable issue and expect that the others won’t follow.

We are in a culture war. While we’re set up to allow a great deal of difference of opinion in our society, the intolerant side has to be prevented from gaining power over us—because they do not allow dissent.

Those of us who honor God, life, and family (and we could add the other two: truth and property ownership) are heretics in the religious worldview of Corey Booker and Beto O’Rourke—and all the other Democrat presidential candidates, none of whom would dare to disagree. That means we have an obligation to ourselves, our children, and civilization as we know it to keep these intolerant religious bigots out of power.

We're All Religious

Michael Knowles, of The Daily Wire, spoke at a YAF event at George Washington University Wednesday. During the Q&A, he answered a question about social degeneracy and religion. This was his answer:

Michael Knowles speaking at YAF event
at George Washington University, October 2, 2019
screenshot from here

Conservatives need to talk, not just about policies and economic issues, but about culture. And not just about culture, but about religion, because, there was a famous cardinal who said, “At bottom, all political disagreements are theological disagreements.” St. Andrew Breitbart, the patron saint of Hollywood conservatives said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” And cult and culture are related words. What the culture worships defines that culture.

Nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, says, “Aaahhh! We’ve got to lower the top marginal tax rate by 0.2%. We have to! And then we’ll have a country.” But no one cares about that. I like low taxes as much as the next guy, but that is not motivating to people.

Because, ultimately, we are religious beings. We long for religion. And everybody’s got to serve somebody. So, when the left abandons traditional religion, they don’t just become materialists; they become weird cultist materialists.

Just last week you had children taking off school for multiple days at a time to protest the weather or something. And it was being organized by the government, so I don’t even know what they were protesting. They were all on the same side.

Bernie Sanders came out and said that we need to sacrifice our children to the climate gods. We need to stop global warming by not having children anymore.

You hear this on— NBC News came out and created a climate confessional. Very Catholic; I kind of like that. But it’s like the opposite of Catholic, because they’re worshipping the creation, rather than the creator.

The rot begins at that level—at the religious level. You will not have an irreligious America that’s successful. John Adams put it very well. He said the country is built for a moral and religious people. It is not fit to the governance of anybody else. Moral and religious, because morality doesn’t just float in the air. It has a shape. It has form. It looks like something. And, if you are not going to enact that, if you are not going to deal in metaphysical reality, then you are going to find yourself very very confused. Not without religion, but with a very very strange looking religion, where you are clamoring and screaming at the sky for it to stop being so sunny everyday.

I’m considering that idea, near the beginning, about political disagreements being theological disagreements. This may be true, even when people who disagree aren’t aware of their religious premises.

Let’s take a look at a historical example: slavery. The anti-slavery movement took root among people who came to believe it was morally wrong. What kind of people think about the morality of something that had been legal and practiced in most societies for millennia? People who believed some basic things: human beings are divinely created by God. God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34, Galatians 3:28). God grants us certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, the right to property ownership, and the choice to choose how to pursue our life’s work. Such people can see that taking the liberty of another person and using it for your own enrichment is morally wrong.

It took a religious people to recognize the divinity of human life, to raise awareness in a society that had accepted it as just the way the world always was, and then root it out.

That was a big task. And it took a good long time, which included a civil war here in America. But that society-wide repentance did happen. While slavery still may exist in the world, civilized people the world over all agree that it is morally wrong, and we must work to root it out.

There’s another divide now: abortion. The more we learn medically and scientifically, the more obvious it becomes that abortion is the killing of a human life. Looking at it morally, it appears to be a sacrifice to the religious belief that sex is a good, and a right, and should not have a negative consequence such as pregnancy. That’s not a Christian view. But it is religious—as Knowles calls it some “weird cultist” type of religion. This view actually sees killing a baby up to (and sometimes including shortly after) birth as a holy right (rite?), so moral that they require support of it by all of society through taxpayer money. It’s also political in our day.

Look at the religion of our founders. Sex outside of marriage was considered immoral. Sinning in that way, resulting in a pregnancy, was to be compensated for through marriage, since the important thing was to correct for the sin, for the sake of the new life coming from it. Killing the baby to cover up the sin was seen as abominable. That view was so long-standing that it is part of the Hippocratic oath, dating to about 275 AD Greece—not a Christian land, but you don’t get civilization without living the laws of civilization.

As a reminder, what are the principles necessary for civilization? You need a particular type of religious people—for the reasons I’m talking about today—who recognize God the Creator as the arbiter of good, to whom we are accountable, and from whom we are given our human rights. Such religious people need at least these five things: they honor God, life, family, truth, and property rights. As we’ve said here before, that is a summary of the Ten Commandments. And we emphasize the need for strong families—ideally a married husband and wife raising their own children in love and righteousness—in order to pass along the principles of civilization from one generation to another.

People can’t progress to being beyond a need for sexual morality, or beyond property rights. But many societies have decayed, or regressed, into sexual immorality and theft. Putting a government imprimatur on those things—or even government mandate for them—does not magically make them moral, good, or righteous. They lead inevitably to poverty and savagery.

So what we need is a moral revival—away from the pagan, selfish, prideful, life-sacrificing, liberty-depriving religion, and back to honoring God our Creator and right-giver, and therefore also honoring life, family, truth, and property ownership.

The question then becomes, how? Slowly, incrementally? Or fast, cataclysmically?

David Barton
screenshot from here

David Barton, at Wallbuilders, did a Facebook live this week (October 1), laying out the case for incremental progress in the right direction. He used the analogy of a football team, making relatively small progress down the field. From time to time they might make a long pass, but if they attempted the long pass every play, they’d probably be denied the progress they really want. He pointed out how slavery might have ended sooner if an incremental approach had been accepted at a certain point, but abolitionists insisted on all or nothing, and so the small step wasn't taken, and it was decades and war later before slavery was abolished.

I waiver between accepting small steps and wanting large leaps. We can celebrate small wins for civilization. But when we’re still wading in the muck of southern hemisphere tyranny and savagery, it’s hard to be patient enough to work our way up out of the swamp.

But the hopeful point is, social evils as long-standing as slavery can be overcome by a repentant people seeking to live the principles of civilization.

In my son’s elementary school, many years ago, the teachers used to give out awards—small things, such as a pencil, bearing the message “caught doing good.” It was an opportunity to interact with the kids when they were behaving in a way the teachers wanted to reinforce, and give them the idea that authority wasn’t always just looking for their mistakes. So, I’m in favor of catching people doing good.

Memorial Service for Sandeep Dhaliwal
screenshot from here

The outpouring of love in our local community for an officer, shot in the line of duty, was heartwarming. The incident happened just a few miles from our house. And the funeral yesterday was just a few miles further west. The love for this man, Sandeep Dhaliwal—and for his police brothers and sisters, and for the people of his religion (he was Sikh)—seemed unanimous.

Another heartwarming moment followed the upsetting trial of an officer who killed an innocent civilian when she entered the wrong apartment and thought she was facing an intruder. In the sentencing phase, the brother of the victim showed a sincere example of forgiveness, and asked if he could hug the convicted officer. She was found guilty and was sentenced to ten years, which is perhaps what society needed to do. But the brother—he was able to let go of the hurt and anger and see a contrite woman who had ruined her own life as well as his brother’s, and his compassion for her will be the most memorable part of that trial.

While both of these stories had people of various races and religions, these differences weren’t part of the story. Politics wasn’t part of the stories. Human love and decency were the important details.

If we keep finding the good, and refusing to accept the evil, maybe we can make incremental yardage toward the interrelated goals of freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

Civilization Values, Part VIII: Marriage

This is the final part in the series on the values requisite for civilization. For the first seven parts, here are the links.

·         Part I: Life

·         Part II: Truth

·         Part III: Property Ownership

·         Part IV: God and Freedom of Religion

·         Part V: Civilizing Religion

·         Part VI: Repenting as a Civilization

·         Part VII: FamilyPerpetuates Civilization 

If we start with the values of honoring God, life, truth, and property ownership, family is how we teach and pass along those values. So we need to value family as well. The term “family values” has been tossed around for several decades, but for our purposes we need a more specific definition of what it means to value family. What is family?

As we’ve said, family is the basic unit of civilization. An individual is a unit even smaller, but it isn’t a unit of civilization—because society by definition requires at least two people to associate with one another. And civilization is a particular—good—kind of society. The fundamental relationship leading to civilization and its perpetuation, then, is family. We talked in Part VII about how well family does that.

Today we’ll talk about the relationship that founds a family.

This is not to say that individuals, unmarried people, grandparents helping raise children, foster care situations, and various other-than-the-ideal family structures don’t contribute. If the individuals in these other situations lead intentionally civilized lives, they do contribute to civilization. But the essential relationship—because it means a mother and a father raising their children to be civilized for the next generation—is a married man and woman. And what is essential for this relationship is complete fidelity and permanence.

There’s huge societal upheaval today trying to declare that other relationships are as deserving. But if any other relationship is designed not to produce children, does not require complete fidelity, and is not permanent, it does not offer society what marriage provides.

The section on marriage and fidelity in the Spherical Model website article “Family Is the Basic Unit of Civilization” is long. There’s a large section on why sex outside of marriage is always uncivilized. If there’s something our current society needs to learn, it is that. So here’s a portion of that.

______________

Sex Outside of Marriage Is Always Wrong

This is such a simple concept, and so many problems would be settled if people would believe it. It’s an essential of civilization. Every time a society attempts to “progress” or “evolve” beyond the old-fashioned notion of virtue, it slides into decay. Every time. This decay happens so frequently and is currently so widespread that the need for virtue must not still be self-evident. So we might as well spell out the reasons.

Human Children Take Time and Consistency to Bring to Adulthood

image from here

Human children grow slowly. It takes close upon two decades to get them from birth to functioning on their own, capable of supporting themselves, reproducing, and raising a civilized next generation. It requires consistency and care from someone with a stake in the child’s success. It takes a pair of parents, providing both male and female role models and ways of nurturing.

The best (really, the only) way to plan for children to be raised by the same two (one male, one female) parents throughout their growing up life is for those two parents to be permanently bonded to each other. To be married. (See Why Marriage Matters.[i]) Marriage isn’t as ephemeral as just a declaration of love between two lovers; it is a commitment to each other and to the entire society that they will stay together for life. This commitment establishes a family, the most basic unit of civilization. There isn’t any way to break up a family that doesn’t harm civilization. Therefore, there isn’t any possible way for sex outside of marriage to be acceptable behavior without harming civilization. Without the attitude of its sacredness, it is impossible to maintain virtue (chastity). And without virtue, families are always harmed.

Look, for instance, at what happens when two young people, believing they are in love, give in to sex. They have just admitted to each other that they value their own desires over the needs of the society they live in. They are both lessened for that selfishness. But what if they recognize that, though what they did was wrong, they could marry and move on? Yes, they could alter their course—what religious societies call repentance, change their thoughts and actions for the future. And if it is true that they love each other, they could go forward making a happy home, with very little harm to society. So, while society wouldn’t condone the mistake, it can easily forgive.

What if the couple decides not to marry? What if they realize they were just young and foolish, and gave in to selfish desires? They could stop, and go their separate ways. Again, it would be possible to repent—change their thoughts and actions for the future—without society being very much degraded for their temporary lapse. Because society never approved. Nor did they require society to grant approval. They realigned themselves with civilization’s requirements following their lapse.

What if a pregnancy resulted from their foolish episode? If they have any hope that they actually can love each other, then they can marry quickly, because forming a family in which to raise their offspring is the highest priority (a much higher priority than the honor of a big wedding celebrated by all their friends). Even if they’re too young to know how to establish and maintain a healthy family, the society around them—their parents, their church, their friends, counselors—can give them guidance and assistance as they finish maturing. It makes the beginning of their family more difficult than a more reasoned, more mature decision, but with effort and help they can succeed in sustaining, rather than degrading, civilization. So, again, while society doesn’t condone the sex outside of marriage, it can forgive without being decayed.

If the couple find themselves in the very sad situation of being pregnant while also realizing they are incompatible, then, again, the highest priority is the need for a family for the child. There can be no civilized focus other than that child whom their behavior brought to life. A child needs, and is entitled to, a loving two-parent family. The two young people should do everything within their power to make sure the child gets this entitlement. This is a much greater concern than whether they themselves love the child and want to be near him/her.

[Note: I am not advocating here that some distant government entity step in and make these difficult decisions and insist that the child be adopted out. I am advising that, for the sake of society, the child’s welfare must be of greater importance than what the foolish accidental parents may want. There should be pressure from society—again, from their family, their church, their friends and mentors—to help these young people see society’s need for them to value the child. Societal pressure and expectation, even shame, coming from a truly civilized society, is much more likely to bring about the best choices following mistakes than rigidly written laws could do. But laws should make it possible for society to be supported in the pressure.]

Let’s assume that, if these two people are at all susceptible to civilizing influence, then they want for their child what every child is entitled to. If they themselves cannot provide the child’s family, then adoption is the most likely way to provide it. The least that can be expected from the young mother is to bring the child to term and then give the baby to a loving two-parent family, being willing to grieve at her own loss of the child because the child gains so much. That’s a lot to expect of an immature young woman, but civilization requires that it be expected.

The young man absolutely should be held accountable. (This has historically been a major failing of many attempts at civilization.) Society should decide how. My personal belief is that, if marrying the young mother was not what he could do, then he should, for the next 18 years at least, provide support, possibly a trust for the child’s college or other needs, taken out of everything he earns until that child is an adult. This should be done even though the adopting family is expected to be able to provide; it is necessary for the sake of civilization that the young man be held responsible. And the young biological father should have no expectation of visitation; he gave up that right by giving up the opportunity to be the father in a marriage with the mother. Sexual indiscretion does not entitle a male to being honored as a father; he has to actually be one, in partnership with the mother, to earn that. Individual communities may find other solutions, but civilization requires that the father be held accountable for his actions.

Adoption should never be seen as the mother not loving the child enough. It should be seen as the positive, probable, expected course for such a situation—without prolonged stigma to the mother, and certainly without stigma to the child. As long as both biological parents provide for the child’s needs, society can forgive without civilization being decayed.

Adoption family, image from here

I believe that, in a truly civilized society, there will never be insufficient families willing to adopt. Children are too highly valued, and fertility problems come up frequently in nature. [Note: Undervaluing children and celebrating or causing infertility to avoid inconveniencing adults who choose to be sexually active without forming a family are two signs of a decaying society. The documentary Demographic Winter is a good source.[ii]] But, hypothetically, if the young mother were unable to place her baby in an adopting family, she could, if her parents stepped in to assist, raise the child at home. This is, self-evidently, less valuable to civilization. There’s a child without both parents, and the mother’s choices caused that to happen. So her folly can never be condoned. But it can be forgiven, because civilization, no matter how far advanced, is made up of imperfect human beings. The way society sees the situation is what affects whether society is decayed by it. And if this type of situation were rare (which it would tend to be if there were serious stigma against it), then society could absorb the difficulty for the individual child. While maintaining that adoption should be the usual choice, I believe civilized society can allow the young mother to get her own answer through prayer about whether she should keep her child.

There’s more. I’ve written more about this issue than just about any other. Refer to “Defense of Marriage Collection,” from July 2013. http://sphericalmodel.blogspot.com/2013/07/defense-of-marriage-collection.html  I’ve now written six more years of posts. Many of these appear to relate to LGBT issues, but to me this is always about defending real marriage in an effort to build civilization and repair its decay. Here are a few additional posts I believe are worth checking out:

·         Family Proclaiming, April 9, 2015

·         Millennia of Marriage, May 7, 2015

·         Another Nail, February 20, 2017

·         Surprise at Old News, August 10, 2017

·         Family Isn’t Extinct, October 12, 2017

·         Normalizing Has Already Gone Too Far, August 2, 2018

·         Stop Throwing Out the Baby, May 23, 2019

That’s it for this series on civilization values. In summary, civilization requires that we value God, life, family, truth, and property ownership—which, coincidentally, summarizes the Ten Commandments. It’s been good guidance for a very long time, and it works every time it’s tried. Simple, not easy, but worth trying from the family level on up.

---

[i] Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-one Conclusions from the Social Sciences, © 2002 Institute for American Values.

[ii] Demographic Winter, video available at www.demographicwinter.com. See also the follow-up, Demographic Bomb.

Civilization Values, Part VII: Family Perpetuates Civilization

Family is the basic unit of civilization. That's our starting premise.

What did we do on our summer vacation?
Hung out with grandkids.

We’re in a series on the values of civilization, which are to value God, life, family, truth, and property ownership. The earlier parts of this series include:

·         Part I: Life

·         Part II: Truth

·         Part III: Property Ownership

·         Part IV: God and Freedom of Religion

·         Part V: Civilizing Religion

·         Part VI: Repenting as a Civilization

Today we begin talking about family.

God and family are taking larger places than the others, simply because they are the values undergirding all. Our rights either come from God—they do—or they are extended by earthly government and repealed at will by government. If you’re subject to the whims of government, whose views and powers change according to the opinion of whoever has power, you’re under tyranny. But if you have rights granted by God, government’s role is either to protect them or use unrighteous dominion to try to deprive human beings of those God-given rights.

Next to God in importance is family, because this basic unit of society is how we transfer all the values from generation to generation.

The first six parts of this series drew from the Spherical Model website article "Civilization vs. Savagery." Family is big enough to have its own separate article, “Family Is the Basic Unit of Civilization.”

Today we’ll cover the basic introduction, which is why family is important. It’s both a micro-civilization in itself, when it’s fully functional, and it’s a way to perpetuate civilization. And then, more on family values in the next post.

__________________________

Civilized societies value family as the most important and basic unit of governance. Alternatively, a hallmark of totalitarian regimes, which are savage, is the replacement of the family with the state. Totalitarianism resents loyalty to any societal unit other than itself. And it is this absolute weakness that will always prevent a totalitarian state from offering true Civilization as you’d find it in a free strong-family society.

This is particularly important to know for people living in a sub-civilized society. As long as families are allowed to live among themselves (children are under the care of their own parents), it is possible to have a civilized society that is just one family in size. Then, if that family can find additional similarly civilized families to associate with, their society grows. If it could grow to the size of a village or township, all the better. The goal of the founding fathers was to have that civilization spread through the United States (and if that experiment worked, have other sovereign states adopt the plan). But a family doesn’t have to wait until the world changes; the family can live the laws of civilization and enjoy many of the benefits, at least within the walls of the home.

Families have the responsibility to safeguard women and children for the greatest benefit of both current and future generations. Families provide food, shelter, clothing, education, spiritual guidance, and training in how to live a civilized life in a civilized society. Elderly are honored for their wisdom. Youth are honored for their potential. Women are honored for giving and nurturing life, among their other abilities. Men are honored for providing and protecting, among their other abilities. Families are the main economic force, as well as the very means whereby civilization can perpetuate. Civilized societies therefore protect The Family as sacred.

Mr. Spherical Model, has been doing dad work
for more than three decades so far

A hallmark of civilized society is the importance of marriage as the only acceptable place for sexual relations. Every society that decides to try devaluing fidelity in marriage eventually (and often quickly) sinks into decadence. Sex within marriage not only provides offspring, it cements the bond between the two parents, so that the child will grow in a home of love and protection and guidance. No other situation is even remotely as beneficial for a child.

Humans being mortal, there will be incidents where some children will be raised without both parents. Ideally, there should never be divorce (a necessary evil in response to decidedly uncivilized behavior). But there will be death, which is inevitable. Nevertheless, in a healthy, peaceful society the abundance of intact, healthy families can help compensate for the few homes that don’t have the child’s two living parents.

It is probably possible to quantify what percentage constitutes a critical mass of functional families that can compensate for a smaller percentage of problem homes without an undue toll on civilization. But, in general, the more family health, the more civilized the society.

Over the years, on the blog, I covered some of the benefits of fathers and mothers, and families, often close to Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, plus a few other times. It has added up.

·       Honoring Fathers, June 17, 2011

·       Building Better Families, June 20, 2011 

·       Dad Rules, June 18, 2012 

·       Fathers, June 15, 2014 

This little guy is about to turn seven already.

·       Being a Dad, June 22, 2015 

·       Depend on Dad, June 27, 2016 

·       Mother Joy, May 8, 2014 

·       The Good Part, May 8, 2013 

·       Home Making, May 6, 2013 

·       The Motherhood Study, May 6, 2011 

·       Another Word about Life, January 30, 2013 

·       Family Superpower, July 29, 2013 

·       That Decision Mothers Make, November 3, 2014 

·       Motherless Princesses, June 17, 2013 

Just to sum up today, here’s a quote for fathers and one for mothers:

Imagine a world in which every lonely, confused adult going down the wrong road had had a dad that filled the role—maybe not perfectly, but with love, tenderness, and an unending will for the child’s life to go well. Not all the world’s problems would be solved; people still have free will, so some will just choose badly. But so many more will know what a good choice looks like. The holes in so many children’s hearts would be filled, and ready to pass that love along.

—(quoting myself from “Being a Dad.”)

If you were the grand designer, and you wanted to place certain people in charge of protecting, preserving, and passing along the ideas of civilization, for the happiness and well-being of all, you would design individuals with passion, who would pass along those ideas out of love to their young charges, believing that happiness in the present and future for those young charges was more important than any personal concerns. You couldn’t hire such caregivers. You couldn’t assign an institution to do it. You would have to create—mothers. Indeed, that is what the Grand Designer did.

—(quoting myself from “The Motherhood Study.”)