08-24-2018, 10:29 AM
The best defense of tradition is that it more readily fits human nature than does daring innovation.
I am tempted to believe that women developed unease about their roles when they started to compare themselves to the spectacular successes among themselves. When learned women were largely confined to the professional 'ghettos' of teaching, social work, nursing, scientific research, and secretarial work they had few glaring successes to create envy. Women truly dedicated to a career rarely 'won men'. Now that women can become accountants, engineers, physicians, attorneys, and political leaders they get on their own the inequality that men experience.
But this isn't the whole story. Inequality has been intensifying. Part reflects the monopolization of American industry, and the rise of bureaucratic elites within such industry to protect monopolistic profits whence comes their gravy train. Small business has become less a reality in America as the giant corporations gobble up what used to be small-scale banks, retailers, and fast-food eateries. 'Consolidation' of farms imply that the small family farms are being swallowed up into bigger farms.
We have been moving around more, and we don't get to put down roots. Maybe the miserable hick town in which I live would not be so miserable to me now had I not lived in other places and had instead dedicated myself to developing the subtle relationships that make small-town life meaningful. Eventually the music stops in "musical chairs" and we get stuck where we do not want to be.
Someone always finds a way in which to get our disposable income, some more respected than others. The town in which I live has plenty of fine old Victorian houses, yet people with new money commission the building of dreadful McMansions, edifices without historical justification (elements of medieval castles do not belong in a country that never had them). Who needs multiple roof lines? Who needs a turret? Is there anything less useful than an atrium? These places have incredibly-bland color schemes, and they are more showy than private. Just imagine being a child in one of those -- lots of space, yet utterly lonely.
I am tempted to believe that women developed unease about their roles when they started to compare themselves to the spectacular successes among themselves. When learned women were largely confined to the professional 'ghettos' of teaching, social work, nursing, scientific research, and secretarial work they had few glaring successes to create envy. Women truly dedicated to a career rarely 'won men'. Now that women can become accountants, engineers, physicians, attorneys, and political leaders they get on their own the inequality that men experience.
But this isn't the whole story. Inequality has been intensifying. Part reflects the monopolization of American industry, and the rise of bureaucratic elites within such industry to protect monopolistic profits whence comes their gravy train. Small business has become less a reality in America as the giant corporations gobble up what used to be small-scale banks, retailers, and fast-food eateries. 'Consolidation' of farms imply that the small family farms are being swallowed up into bigger farms.
We have been moving around more, and we don't get to put down roots. Maybe the miserable hick town in which I live would not be so miserable to me now had I not lived in other places and had instead dedicated myself to developing the subtle relationships that make small-town life meaningful. Eventually the music stops in "musical chairs" and we get stuck where we do not want to be.
Someone always finds a way in which to get our disposable income, some more respected than others. The town in which I live has plenty of fine old Victorian houses, yet people with new money commission the building of dreadful McMansions, edifices without historical justification (elements of medieval castles do not belong in a country that never had them). Who needs multiple roof lines? Who needs a turret? Is there anything less useful than an atrium? These places have incredibly-bland color schemes, and they are more showy than private. Just imagine being a child in one of those -- lots of space, yet utterly lonely.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.