In the first, the author links the current economic downturn, induced by over-consumption financed by easy credit, to the more systemic social condition pervading Western societies, namely falling birthrates and longer life expectancies. The political upshot of a demographic bulge of older people is that the welfare states of the US and Europe were built in an era of exploding birth rates where the expanding working industrial base could sustain income redistribution to a minority age cohort: “a growing nation is the greatest Ponzi scheme ever contrived.” The pie was always expanding, so American conservative-liberals could vote for economic policies predicated on perpetual growth and could battle progressive’s equity arguments for redistribution on the basis that it would kill the goose laying the golden eggs… and as long as the golden eggs were churning out, you didn’t have to fuss as much with redistribution, because the important thing was equal opportunity to the eggs.
In the second, the author describes the rising phenomenon of “emerging adulthood” in The 20-Somethings, an age cohort increasingly defined by their alternating through professional, educational, relational, and spiritual “options” and delaying the traditional definitions of adulthood (long-term job placement, marriage, and children). Development psychologists are debating whether Emerging Adulthood is a true developmental stage (and thus universal) or merely a self-indulgent luxury for Western kids supported by their obliging Boomer parents.
The reality described by both articles is a shared one: the delay of family formation with the consequent delay of/and smaller number of children, the delay of professional careers and consequent delay in wealth accumulation and savings, and the two-way causal street between economics and social/cultural behavior. Social conservatives need to grasp and articulate the connection between their vision of adulthood and family formation and an economic culture of families as a locus of wealth-creation, intergenerational saving, and an appropriate launching point for individual risk taking (because strong, large families provide a safety net).
I think the part about Dr. Fay’s is especially enlightening. As avid fans of the show have by now noticed, though only two episodes into the season, Mad Men has taken a darker turn. This is largely because Don Draper has taken a darker turn. He’s lost his mojo.
Amid all of this, Dr. Fay manages to identify with Don. Wolcott writes,
She tells Don that they [are] working towards the same ends–to resolve every person’s deepest conflict. Which is? Don asks. “It all comes down to what I want versus what’s expected of me.” A Zen arrow straight to the Lucky Strikes bullseye above Don’s heart. The only difference between them is that Don has reached this insight through individual penetration of his own shadow self and stealth life whereas Dr. Fay has done it through research and stats, and such quantification threatens Don’s voodoo, his brainwave mystique.
And that is it, isn’t it? Don Draper can see the same things naturally that she needs studies to see because he is a self-made man. Literally. He understands how to speak to the beating heart of post-WWII American Culture because he invented it within himself–self-invention being the essence of consumerist culture. So who better to get people to develop attachments to products than someone who single-handedly constructed their own identity?
As many have probably heard, a federal district court judge recently found the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. His opinions are here (1) and here (2).
Below the fold is the liturgy my fiancee and I will be using at our wedding in August. The service is the 1662 solemnization of matrimony with the 1928 liturgy for holy communion inserted.
“There is simply a growing recognition that Greece has got to default,” banking analyst Dick Bove told CNBC.com. “The riots in the streets showed the decision to repay the debt was not going to be made by the people in Germany, France and Switzerland—it’s going to be made by people in Greece and they’re not going to repay it.”
Think the American people will decide differently when we inevitably face the same choice? I hope we really consider the utility of chopsticks before we say, “Come ‘n get it.”
The Roman Church is very quick to protest that clergy sex abuse is not limited to their domain, and this is true, but when one compares the way that it has handled the issue to the way it is handled by other denominations, their protestations ring mighty hollow.
A singular case in point happened a number of years ago in a small town in Massachusetts. The rector of the Episcopal Church was accused of having had a sexual relationship with a 14 year old boy more than thirty years prior when the priest was serving at another parish in another state. The relationship appears to have been at least quasi-consensual (although one could argue, convincingly in my view, that a fully consensual relationship between a grown man, particularly one as influential as a priest, and an adolescent is not possible).
The priest, when confronted with the accusation, admitted that the relationship had taken place, and the Diocese of Massachusetts removed him, not only from his position as parish rector, but also from the Episcopal priesthood, THAT VERY DAY.
Even though the relationship had taken place a long time before, and even though the priest was almost universally beloved in his community and very effective at his calling, the church, understanding that in cases like these the issue is not sex but abuse of power, determined quite rightly that there should be no statute of limitations and that zero tolerance must be demonstrated.
I always think of this when I read about clergy sex abuse cases going on for five, ten, a dozen years. With regard to the people who exist within its hierarchy, the Roman church’s power is absolute. It could remove these men with the same dispatch that the Episcopal church showed if it wanted to. It doesn’t want to.
(CC) 2010