Keeping them down on the farm: turning back the clock on morality
In the comments section of yesterday’s post, there was a discussion about whether it’s possible to go back to an earlier time in which sexual mores were more restrictive.
I had written:
We can’t go back to the days of the three feet on the floor of the public rooms of the unisex dorms, much less the duenna.
Some people disagreed, and asked, why not? What’s stopping us?
I understand, of course, that you can try to re-institute some part or other of a sexual value system that was more prevalent in the past. And of course morality waxes and wanes and changes, sometimes more restrictive and sometimes less. But you cannot go back to the system itself. The context has irrevocably changed, and the values that arose organically from the first system are now part of another, sometimes grafted onto it forcibly and somewhat artificially by reformers in an effort to go back to an earlier—and supposedly better—time.
To use an analogy to something that’s admittedly very much more superficial, it’s a bit like the cyclical revival of certain fashion elements. After all, there are only a finite number of ways to wear hair, clothes, and jewelry. But each revival of a former style is always a variation on the original, never the thing itself. Bits and pieces are taken from the older style, but never the whole.
Not only that, but the context is different—for example, the fashion is worn ironically rather than seriously. So even though fashion may seem like a repeat, it is not.
One example of a change in fashion that has not been cyclical is the rigidity of the rules. Over time, there’s been a strong tendency for rules of fashion to become less obligatory and more optional, and then to practically disappear. The only rule that still appears to remain is that we wear clothing while in public. But those dictates of fashion that used to be so powerful, because they were embedded in a society that took them very seriously and enforced them with ostracism—how long a hem could be, what occasions dictate formal dress or allow casual, when to wear a hat to show respect, when must a lady wear gloves—all these things have fallen away and all that’s left is fashion itself; that is, conformity in order to seem trendy, rather than to seem proper.
For certain fashions, we can safely say they will never come back: the whalebone corset, for example, metaphorically analogous to those sexual dating mores I was describing in my rape post. Those rules and regulations about sexuality and dating were in turn embedded in a societal context that is gone; the genie is out of the bottle, the cat is out of the bag, the moving finger writes and having writ moves on.
It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that more restrictive sexual mores could once again come into play in our society, of course. But I’m at a loss to think exactly how it could happen, short of the imposition of some vast change in that society as a whole, and in how we think about freedom itself.
Even if it were to happen, however, it would not constitute a return to the society in which I was raised. Back then, the reasons for those sexual restrictions were seamlessly embedded in certain realities of the time, realities that are highly unlikely to return—for example, the relative difficulty of preventing pregnancy, the homogeneity of a society in which there was fairly uniform disapproval of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and therefore resultant shame in those who found themselves in that position, the comparatively tight control over the activities of the younger generation by the older, and sexual censorship in the media).
No, it would be a return to a different context. Details might look the same, just as the wide lapels of one era resemble the wide lapels of another. But the resemblance would only be superficial. After all, they’ve seen Paree.
[Here are the lyrics to the song, “How You Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm, After They’ve Seen Paree.”)
[ADDENDUM: In response to some of the comments here I ask, once again, how would a “going back” to the older rules occur? Would it be a spontaneous simultaneous recognition by scads of people that current mores are counterproductive, and a decision on their parts to act differently? Would it be through the mechanism of large numbers of people becoming strict adherents of religions advocating chastity? Would it be through the re-imposition of rules such as “three feet on the floor” by university administrations, who would have decided to once again take up the role of in loco parentis, and strict parentis at that? One can go on and on generating possibilities, but to me none of them look very likely (especially #3 of the above list; #2 seems the most likely to me), although of course they are not outside the realm of possibility.
In addition to the song I used for this thread (“How You Gonna Keep Them…”) I could have added the old nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty. Rules, once discarded, can take all the king’s horses and all the king’s men—and then some—to be put back together again and reintegrated in some meaningful way into a society that has changed.]
Your parallel is rather lame, Neo: moral norms can’t be meaningfully compared with fashions or culinary recipes. They are not arbitrary, not a subject of free choice and taste. There is no moral equivalence between different moral codes: some spell disaster, some lead to greatness, some – to mediocracy, and there is only one absolute and immutable categorical imperative (in Kantian sense). Humans are fallible, of course, and there are miriad of heresies, but only one truth. And we have deep in our hearts knowledge of this truth, we are born with it, and in some moments of history this truth became mandatory inner voice and overcomes all other considerations. This has happened many times and will happen again. I do not posess crystal ball to know when and where this will come; but I have absolute, unequivocal belief that this will happen, earlier or later. May be, even in my life. But things must get terribly wrong, really awfull, before large masses of modern hollow men became scary enough to return to their senses.
My recommendation would be for you to read a bit more history. In fact, sexual mores do change and can easily swing from loose to rigid within a generation. You might start with reading about England under Charles the first and under Cromwell. There are similar tales under French history. In fact, there is a theory called “long wave” that indicates that countries cycle to certain types of behavior depending on the economic cycles.
But I’m at a loss to think exactly how it could happen, short of the imposition of some vast change in that society as a whole, and in how we think about freedom itself.
I don’t doubt that it will happen. Think of what has changed in the last 50 years: racial and sexual discrimination are taboo, as is smoking. Anti-Americanism (including in America) and homosexuality are chic. Business went from fashionable in the 50s to very much out of fashion in the 60s and 70s, then back into fashion in the 80s, and now is going back out of fashion. Each of these changes was virtually inconceivable until it actually happened.
So I don’t doubt that sexual mores will change. The timing and the mechanism are less clear. A religious revival, perhaps, or organized feminism will evolve from a thinly-veiled front for lesbianism into a force for normal women. (For example, feminist attacks on rappers could eventually mobilize black women to reject the “bitch/ho” dichotomy instead of acceding to it; black men might react by making a show of their respect for the “sisters,” thereby ultimately making that as chic in society as a whole as cargo pants.)
Or, another dreaded disease may arise, except this one attacks Western heterosexuals (in reality this time, not just in self-serving homosexual propaganda).
Or people may just simply tire of the present culture, which is apparently more or less what happened post-Eisenhower, and want to live differently for a while.
In any case, something will knock the current mores on the head. That’s a given.
moral norms can’t be meaningfully compared with fashions or culinary recipes.
Why not. The process is easily identifiable with such things historical cycles and human behavior. Can we ever get back to before Adam and Eve with the Tree of Knowledge? If so, what’s Christ doing here?
There is no moral equivalence between different moral codes
neo’s not talking about ethics, she is talking about epistemology, and in a greater sense, metaphysics.
***
You must certainly get that old familiar feeling, Neo, about having to explain yourself over and over again.
Do people actually believe Neo is saying things won’t change?
Going forward in time is fundamentally different from going backwards in time. Why do so many people cling to the belief that change equals reversal? That if you say people cannot back, it also must mean they cannot go forward?
I think there’s a fundamental human desire for utopia. For Golden Ages and care free days. When in the abstract and when backed by say the Left and nihilists, this desire is perverted into destructive energies that cannot sustain human progress.
There seems to be a sense that things were better back in the olden days, in one respect or another. This seems too nostalgic to be of benefit, to me. Because categorically, things weren’t better in the olden days. Any olden days. Since technically, to believe that the olden days were better, one would have to believe that human progress had regressed since those times. But in point of fact, people who want to go back, are themselves regressing human progress backwards. How can you go back and call it progress? You can’t, that would be a desire to regress, not progress.
From a historical perspective, can someone explain how the infamous license of the Regency period turned into the famously strict Victorian mores?
Well, I guess not too many people agree with me. One more clarification attempted, and then I’ll give it a rest:
(1) The analogy with fashion was not meant to be anything other than a metaphorical one. I’m well aware there’s a huge difference.
(2) I’m also aware that there’s a swing back and forth between licentiousness and openness in societies, as I think I tried to point out. The point I was trying to make is that each swing only resembles the other superficially. One doesn’t really go back to anything like a prior state, because the context is so different. And, with the changes in mass communication that our age represents, I’m not so sure such swings are likely to happen anymore, short of some very massive changes in the basic underpinnings and presumptions of our entire society.
Neo,
I think you’re right that we won’t go back to where we were. Perhaps though there could be an awakening from an almost drunken pursuit of faux freedoms. Perhaps people will realize that you-can-have-it-all was a hoax and that true freedom comes from making considered choices and accepting the consequences.
But you cannot go back to the system itself
What does that mean? That you can’t go back in time is a triviality, but that doesn’t mean that the accepted modes of moral behaviour can’t change drastically. What we have now is the result of popular psychology and left thinking, but it is not in any sense science or fact based, rather it is based on made up mythologies like Coming of Age in Samoa, a debunked work that is still in College syllabi. Because current ideas of morality are just intellectual fashions, I think that when the leftward swing finally dies, which looks pretty inevitable at this point, fashion may once again change drastically.
There are examples from the not so ancient past of such changes. In England there was the change from the Regency period to the Victorian era. In American history, there was second Great Awakening that produced the Abolitionists, and the third Great Awakening a generation after the Civil War. My grandfather was born in 1868 and was part of the third Awakening. He saw himself not only as a servant of God, but as combatting the coarsening of society that followed the war. The third Awakening was associated with civil rights, women’s suffrage, and the temperance movement, and lasted right up into the forties. Will there be another awakening? I know the future no better than the next man, but it is certainly possible.
Who’s talked about going back in time, neo? Not what any one of us who disagree with you/Ymar wrote. Such attributions are usually generated by journalists and talking heads of a certain persuasion, not the neo I read and respect. Simply trying to recover some morality in sexual affairs is all we seek. And if we’re descending into social entropy, Ymar, why bother about anything at all? Soon you’d have us all be little bits in Brownian motion…..No morality there, none.
Unfortunately, unless we do go back—at least to the extent of trying to create stable families that nurture those who belong to them, instead of seeing them as obstacles to self-fulfillment—I really don’t see much hope for our society in the long run.
There are too many young mothers having children with serial live-in “boyfriends” (always hoping the boyfriends will marry them, which never happens); too many broken homes, ex-thises and former whatevers, and all of them fighting over who gets the lion’s share of the money in the household, and which kids are going to the family’s “real” kids, and which ones can be considered “discards”; too many lonely singles who’ve simply given up, and are investing all their energies in weird hobbies, weirder religions and their cats; too many abusive males who see women as simply providers of sex and housework, and who feel no sense of responsibility towards anyone, and too many kids growing up without fathers.
Our society can’t continue this way. Either it will collapse, or it will find, or invent, some sort of morality it can follow. Certainly just letting things muddle on as they are now is no solution. The government really can’t be Dad/provider for generations of fatherless, rootless kids, and very few people seem to be really happy withe the current sexual anarchy.
Maybe “going back” is the wrong turn of phrase. Maybe “tighten up” would better suit the occasion.
No, we can’t “go back” to the 50s, where some young girls panicked, thinking they were hemorrhaging to death when they hit puberty. Or to the idea that women ought to be pure while men can play around.
But I can see people turning toward a different type of caution. For example, my brother, who has two young daughters, makes sure that when their friends are over to play, there’s another adult present (his wife) so that he cannot be accused of inappropriate behavior with the neighbor kids. He would never be guilty of such a thing, but given how awful false allegations are, he’d rather practice propriety rather than risk the accusation.
Furthermore, women might realize that “friends with benefits” benefits only the guy, that the effects of oxytocin can’t be ignored, and that teen sex isn’t such a good idea. Or men might decide not to get into a compromising situation to prevent a false allegation, not because of what the neighbors might think.
Frankly, I’d much prefer the 50’s (I didn’t know any girl at that time who thought she was bleeding to death, simply because she was menstruating) to this era, with widespread, unwed motherhood, brutal child abuse, kiddie porn and widespread suspecion of all adults as child molesters.
(Anyway, the 50’s weren’t as innocent as they’re portrayed. That’s actually something of a 60’s urban legend; they seem to be confusing the 50’s with the Victorian era.)
And if we’re descending into social entropy, Ymar, why bother about anything at all?
What are you, an anarchist, Tom? I think it should be obvious why people bother living if their inevitable fate is death. If you don’t know why… that’s not my problem. It’s not, “if entropy occurs” all the time. It does, you just have to deal with it as every living creature has to deal with death through their choices. Trying to deny that the problem exists, doesn’t really make for good choices, Tom.
Who’s talked about going back in time, neo? Not what any one of us who disagree with you/Ymar wrote.
The general timeline is that Neo started talking about her point, not replying to anyone of ya’ll. Then when people kept talking as if Neo meant you can’t go forward and saying this means you can go back, Neo tried to clarify her point about what she meant. People kept playing semantic games combining nostalgia with what they wanted for the future, but talking about it in the past tense. As in, looking back and going back.
Neo’s original point was that you can’t go back in time, but because people are hardheaded, they kept reading what they wanted to see or feared, not what was actually there, Tom. Who exactly am I refering to, one might ask. Well, how about you, Tom, as one convenient example.
And your “We can’t go back” conclusion symbolizes our largest societal problem: accepting error and erroneous outcomes as fait accompli. Recall the classic Edmund Burke statement on the triumph of Evil. When we are manifestly and obviously wrong we must “Go back”.-Tom
Really, Neo’s we can’t go back in time conclusion symbolized a large societal problem about how to act towards the future… You need to pay attention to your problems, because they aren’t mine or Neo’s problems. Maybe if you recognize how problematic your arguments are, you can go back and fix them.
Tom Says:
April 15th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
I’m disappointed with Ymar’s and Neo’s misapplication of the Second Law of thermodynamics to our subject today.
You can start with your inability to accept that entropy increases and does not in aggregate decrease in this universe, Tom. You may not like it, but that doesn’t mean you can refuse to accept it.
In the end, you first have to get the metaphysics of reality more or less correct first, before you can start crafting up some kind of ethics system.
“In the end, you first have to get the metaphysics of reality more or less correct first, before you can start crafting up some kind of ethics system.”
Spoken like a true 17-year-old. Do you even know what words like “epistemology” or “metaphysics” mean? For the latter, I recommend Heidegger’s “Introduction to Metaphysics” in which he deconstructs, in the Derridaian sense, the question “Warum ist é¼berhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts?” or “why is there something, rather than nothing?”
I am also highly entertained by the juxtaposition of this thread, and its condemnation of increasing personal freedom, with the following thread, with its absolute defense of the right to gun ownership. Apparently, the right to own a gun = good; the right to choose what to do with your body = bad, unless it involves transfats, in which case then it’s good. You people are a riot.