I was reading on Substack the other day (an actual article, not merely doom scrolling notes) when I came upon the following quote:
(there is no conceivably realistic policy solution to allow a single-earner family to enjoy the same standard of living as a dual-earner one)
Now I have a pretty active imagination, so any sentence containing ‘no conceivable’ is red meat to me. I once criticised a famous linguistic statement that it was possible to combine words in a grammatically correct way but for the sentence to have no conceivable meaning. They used the example sentence:
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
And within a few seconds I not only had conceived a meaning, but it was a rather significant one.1 So my first reaction to this statement was that, I could jolly well conceive some. But the grammar of the sentence does not make ‘conceivable’ modify ‘policy solution’ but has ‘conceivably’ modifying ‘realistic’. So before we can get to some policy solutions, we have to deal with the word…
Realistic
I believe that there is a fatal problem that exists whenever we use the word ‘realistic’ in a social/political discussion. There is a very real and serious sense in which using the word ‘realistic’ is the equivalent of saying ‘won’t work’.
When the word ‘realistic’ is used as a measurement of how far a proposed solution is from what we are already doing’ it becomes an inverse measurement of the actual workability of the solution. When faced with a catastrophic social condition, we need to remember that ‘what we are doing’ is a direct cause of the catastrophic condition. A catastrophic condition that has built up over years cannot be fixed by a slight, acceptable, change in the status quo.
Self-Defeating Prophecy
The next problem with the concept of ‘realistic’ is that it sows the seeds of it sown destruction. It will be impossible to even have the discussion about how to change, massively change, a given social condition… to discuss implementing the radical changes needed if they are ruled out of the discussion… because they are radical.
If as soon as an idea percolates in your brain you ask yourself if half of the current population would be willing to adopt it tomorrow, then you have guaranteed failure. And the problem gets worse as it goes on longer, because your brain will retreat more and more from ideas that are currently ‘unpopular’.
The Unfortunate Window
There is a concept in political discussions called the ‘Overton Window’. This ‘window’ represents the acceptable discourse within a given social group. And this window changes over time. When I was a child even thinking the words ‘her penis’ would have been considered insane, and unspeakable. It is still insane, but it is no longer unspeakable.
Or take the matter of ‘gay marriage’. When I was young the words would have been seen as nonsensical: people knew what marriage was. Whereas nowadays if you try to say that two men can’t marry, you are called a bigot.
In a very important sense I believe that the word ‘realistic’ is a large factor in our current Overton window, at least for a lot of people. They live in the bizarre state of seeing a catastrophic problem, knowing that only radical solutions would work, but then dismissing any discussion of that radical solution as ‘not realistic’.
History Begs to Differ
There is another proverb, “As you have made your bed, so you must lie on it”; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make it again. We could restore the Heptarchy or the stage coaches if we chose. It might take some time to do, and it might be very inadvisable to do it; but certainly it is not impossible as bringing back last Friday is impossible. This is, as I say, the first freedom that I claim: the freedom to restore. I claim a right to propose as a solution the old patriarchal system of a Highland clan, if that should seem to eliminate the largest number of evils. It certainly would eliminate some evils; for instance, the unnatural sense of obeying cold and harsh strangers, mere bureaucrats and policemen. I claim the right to propose the complete independence of the small Greek or Italian towns, a sovereign city of Brixton or Brompton, if that seems the best way out of our troubles. It would be a way out of some of our troubles; we could not have in a small state, for instance, those enormous illusions about men or measures which are nourished by the great national or international newspapers. You could not persuade a city state that Mr. Beit was an Englishman, or Mr. Dillon a desperado, any more than you could persuade a Hampshire Village that the village drunkard was a teetotaller or the village idiot a statesman. Nevertheless, I do not as a fact propose that the Browns and the Smiths should be collected under separate tartans. Nor do I even propose that Clapham should declare its independence. I merely declare my independence. I merely claim my choice of all the tools in the universe; and I shall not admit that any of them are blunted merely because they have been used.
GK Chesterton
I would point out that history is on the other side of this argument. Time and again a movement is proposed that is ‘unrealistic’. The American Revolution, the modern state of Israel, the abolition of the British Slave Trade. How many times was Wilberforce told not that it was wrong to abolish slavery… but that it would never happen? It was… to coin a phrase… unrealistic.
But when we look at a problem such as Social Security, and the looming financial catastrophe (let alone the French pension system) we seem willing to slide into destruction because any fix that would actually fix is ‘unrealistic’. Because it isn’t how most people right now want to live their lives or eat their ice cream.
A lot of the argument in this article seems to be ‘certain modern people will find this argument offensive’. But that is the point! We are in our current crisis because modern people find the behaviours necessary for fixing it offensive.
Two Panes to the Window
As far as I can tell this window has two panes… representing the leaders and society. The second one, society, is what we normally think of. We ask ourselves ‘would enough people go for this?”. If we don’t think we can get 50% of the people to agree with a proposal right out of the box, we label it ‘unrealistic’.
That’s a devastating problem, but I think the first problem is the bigger one: could you get some leader to agitate for it? Let’s face it, Wilberforce, Churchill, and Nigel Farage spent a lot of time ‘in the wilderness’.2 It isn’t every leader willing to promote a wildly unpopular idea year after year. To never get invited to all the popular cocktail parties.
Ben Shapiro’s Wife
A dead thing can go with the stream, but
only a living thing can go against it.
GK Chesterton: The Everlasting Man
Let’s take a popular example: Ben Shapiro. I mean that Ben is popular, not the example. The example is probably offensive and unpopular.
I have heard Ben Shapiro boasting several times that his wife is a doctor. Here is a popular theoretically conservative, right wing, commentator boasting that his wife is a doctor. He wasn’t boasting what a great stay at home mother she was, how many children they had, what a great job of cooking she did… but that she was ‘highly educated’ and had a high class job outside the home. And let me ask you… is this an Overton Window problem?
The way I see it there are two possibilities:
Ben Shapiro is not actually conservative, at least in this area. He is some kind of mixed worldview character: that believes in some conservative ideas but rejects those which support natalism, family, etc.
He is a closet conservative. He has to prove his Overton Window bonafides by saying that he isn’t some antediluvian patriarch! He has a wife who works! And is highly educated and makes a lot of money helping people in a hospital!
Now I ask you to imagine what it would take for Ben Shapiro to publicly come over to the pro-natalist side. Well, that depends on why he is on the other side. But, either way, it would take… changing his mind.
But what does it mean for the pro-natalist and pro-family side that he keeps boasting that his wife is a doctor, or how many ‘conservative’ female senators and congresswomen we have? Our leaders are destroying our cause. Let us be very clear: we cannot have a pro-natalist society where the women are all competing for the important, educated, high class jobs. History is full of pro-natalist societies… and none of them did that to their women.
1964 Was a Disaster
The final fact which fixes this is a sufficiently plain one. Supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior. Two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
GK Chesterton
A major focus of the article I am responding to was the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in particular the idea that employment ‘discrimination’ should not only be allowed but should be normalised. And the reaction of the author was to completely misunderstand the entire question!
He states that if we start agitating for the end of the rules against employment discrimination, in particular the idea that it should be perfectly legal to prefer married men in employment, unmarried women will see this as… well, here are his words:
How many single women will become more open to conservative entreaties about the social and cultural benefits of marriage and family, or policies to support parenthood and childbearing, if they perceive them as little more than code for employment discrimination?
With his words ‘if they perceive them’ completely misses the point of breaking the window. We do not break the window to wave our hand over policy… but to argue for it. To argue for why it will work, convince society that the reasons it will work are good reasons, all toward leading toward the change.
Pretty much every major change in history has happened like that. The change was, on its face, bad for some or even all people. But someone started arguing for the change… not merely as a change, but explaining the reasons for the change, and how they fit into the change.
Some Broken Window Suggestions
I have already posted some very radical suggestions in the light of the demographic catastrophe, but here are a couple designed to test your Overton Window instincts. Want to slow the demographic death spiral?
End No-Fault Divorce. Make divorce messy, and extremely difficult. End alimony and child support and the presumption that the woman will get the kids.
End Abortion. Treat it like the murder that it is and execute everyone involved.
Go back to a rational and historical definition of marriage. Like, the kind that has a man and a woman, not a woman and her doorknob.
After that, change the tax law. Have the married, male head of a household with children pay no income tax. At all. Ever. Unmarried people and married women and couples without children will pay it all.
Conclusion
My conclusion is not so much a conclusion to this article, but the concept upon which it is based. It is this:
There exists a certain set of ideas, principles, values, traditions and the like which are indispensable to a pro-natal society.
All of these, at their root, are instinctive to the human race or, more accurately, they were written on the hearts of man by God.
Sin, and societies built on sin, can work against the knowledge and belief of these ideas, contradict those principles, denigrate the values, and destroy the traditions.
In order to return to a pro-natal society it will be necessary to face modern society directly, and clearly state that it is wrong. That it is evil. That it is destructive. That it will not stand.
The doctor faced with an obese patient is presented with a dilemma. They can give advise which will be very unpopular… but which might save the patient’s life. Or they can give popular, reasonable, or even ‘realistic’ advice… that will end up killing their patient.
In the end, advice which will not work is not ‘realistic’. However easy it is to conceive.
Afterward
Psalm 128
A Song of degrees.
Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways.
For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands:
happy shalt thou be, and
it shall be well with thee.
Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house:
thy children like olive plants round about thy table.
Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the LORD.
The LORD shall bless thee out of Zion: and
thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life.
Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children, and peace upon Israel.
The discerning reader might notice that for most of this article I have completely failed to even mention the ‘standard of living’ issue. The highly discerning reader might have read between the lines and understood the underlying message, but for everyone else I will be very clear. The kind of ‘standard of living’ that the natalist, the Christian, indeed any person who aspires to the good and the beautiful should be aspiring to is… children.
So how does the single income family have a higher standard of living than a dual income family? They have more children. There may be things, I propose some of them, that would help in the purely economic sense. But a true ‘standard of living’ treats children as an infinitely higher ‘standard’ than anything else. A Godly marriage, a houseful of children: these things are not produced by two incomes.
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Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!
Being ‘restacked’ and mentioned in ‘notes’ is very important for lesser-known stacks so… feel free! I’m semi-retired and write as a ministry (and for fun) so you don’t need to feel guilty you aren’t paying for anything, but if you enjoy my writing (even if you dramatically disagree with it), then restack, please! Or mention me in one of your own posts.
If I don’t write you back it is almost certain that I didn’t see it, so please feel free to comment and link to your post. Or if you just think I would be interested in your post!
If you get lost, check out my ‘Table of Contents’ which I try to keep up to date.
Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von
Link
Depopulation Solutions
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10 AUGUST 2023
John Carter published an article entitled Depopulocalypse III – From SINK to FLOAT. In it, he was talking about solutions for the depopulation crisis. It was behind a paywall but has since come out. I recommend you read the article and the entire series. His solutions are interesting and cover a wide range of issues.
The Modern Problem with Math
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19 OCTOBER 2023
Reading modern fiction, especially science-fiction, but also a lot of fantasy, will lead one to believe that modern people are incapable of doing math. They seem incapable of seeing that while one plus one may equal two, two cannot remain two in most circumstances.
The Math of Fertility
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17 SEPTEMBER 2024
If a society were to try to recover from a demographic cliff, what would the math be like? Well, one thing for sure is that it wouldn’t merely be a matter of going back to old trends. Old trends worked for old trends, they won’t work to correct new trends.
MPAP
·
29 MAY
I had Copilot write up an idea that I had. After a few iterations, this is what it came up with. Keeping in mind the weakness of AI writing… what do you think of this idea?
No Kids Allowed
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24 SEPTEMBER 2024
Sometimes when people begin to speak about increasing fertility, attempting to get us off the demographic cliff we are on, the issue of ‘daycare’ comes up. I would like to propose the opposite solution. I would like to eliminate ‘no kids allowed’.
Lots of Kids
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14 DECEMBER 2024
I have commented on several notes here on Substack recently. Each of them proports to list the qualities of a Godly man, or somesuch. The lists had some interesting things in them (although many of them seemed to be lacking Scriptural backing) but they frequently left out marriage, left out having children or…
Blessings of the Breasts and the Womb
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14 DECEMBER 2023
Intro So, J.S. Kasimir has posted a response in the ‘Inevitability of Patriarchy’ letter exchange. I definitely advise you to read it. As I read it, it is about 1/3 dealing with the issue, and 2/3 combination wishful thinking and hope for the future.
The Scriptures vs Natural Family Planning
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29 AUGUST 2024
A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.
The Inevitability of Patriarchy
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7 DECEMBER 2023
Intro and Question
INCHEL
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11 OCTOBER 2023
From time to time, the internet is awash with discussions of men said to be ‘INCEL’: men who are involuntarily celibate (ie who would wish to have sex, but are not doing so for reasons they consider beyond their control). The definition and the discussion, range wildly from that point, but I would like to put forward another word for another group. The …
Virginity, Chastity and Children
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25 JANUARY 2024
One of the biggest differences between a natalist and an anti-natalist culture has to do with what one might call ‘stages of life’. There are several different ways to talk about these stages, but the most significant for our purposes might be the divide between virginity and chastity.
Single Income Lots of Kids
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9 NOVEMBER 2023
The internet is awash with acronyms for social groups, especially modern social groups. You have ‘INCEL’, which at its core stands for ‘involuntarily celibate’; and usually refers to a young man who wishes to date, marry, have sex etc but cannot manage it. You have ‘INCHEL’, which I made up for a group that is less well-known but very real: young women …
In quick translation: “Ideas held by the environmentalist parties in Europe may seem unimportant and not politically valued right now, but their emergence is eminent, and destructive.”
There is a famous book about Churchill called ‘The Wilderness Years’.