Daily Archives: February 12, 2012

Occupy? Meh.

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The great and good Bill Price has an excellent article about how women are complaining that they are losing jobs (as the state goes bankrupt) while men are getting the jobs that are going, because they are dirty, hard and dangerous. What women forget is that men have had to always do this. This is a testimony from Jim Rawles site, but it makes the point.

So how can I sum it up. a) If you desire a retreat property in your current state then keep your city job and move as far in the direction of your imaginary retreat as your finances and time considerations will allow you to commute. or b) If your state is likely to become a meat grinder after TSHTF then act now! Apply for jobs in another state, remembering the three D’s. Dirty, Dangerous or Dull. Take the pay cut if you have to. Maybe you can apply for jobs with a large store chain that will be willing to shuffle you to another store location as soon as you can make up a believable excuse for your move. In either case, once you’re an hour or so out of the nearest city (make it as small a city as possible) you can look for work locally. Then, once you’ve got that local work then you can move even farther out. BTW, just to be clear, “an hour out of the city” means an hour of travel beyond where the houses have given way to trees or pasture.

“But nobody out in the country will employ me”, I hear you say. That depends entirely on your outlook. As times get tougher out here in the country a lot of people are doing the opposite of what the average SurvivalBlog reader is trying to do. They’re moving to the city where they can find higher paying jobs! They don’t want to downsize their living arrangements so they’re going where the money is. That’s why half my weekends are spent at garage sales. There are jobs to be had out here but there’s a proviso: You have to want it more than the next guy! I got a job, partly by luck in coming across the advertisement just in time, but also because when I turned up for the interview they could tell just by looking at me that I was dead serious about my application. I wanted the job, and what’s more, I would work hard to keep it. Six months later my references now speak for themselves and in a place where everyone knows everyone else, references are everything.

If it comes down to it, it is just a job. It is not the great source of meaning for your life. The family counts more. This man has moved further than I have, but I’d rather live in Dunedin and be able to help my son learn the school play music than be in Auckland sitting in a car, or be in Australia away from him. The money, by the way, would be better in Auckland and much, much better in Australia.

At the moment, I have close relatives seriously ill. Some of the commentators here have been struggling with various afflictions. There are many who are laid off. The situation in Greece is worse, and Iran and Israel look at loggerheads. Salafists are killing Christians, and there are too many children homeless.

These things occupy the grown ups. But the feminists, who never grew up, instead are protesting about valentines day. Well they are making a few errors.

  1. Most men would be glad to dump the day. It is one continual test. We are expected to divine the wishes of women who feel they have demands on us. Lie in and tea in bed while I make breakfast for the kids and/or you have a quiet bath while we go to the park? Sure. Hand made cards from the kids? Great. Hallmark? Meh. In fact nausea.
  2. There are more important issues for women and no, I do not mean abortion. I do mean female genital mutilation, safe working conditions for manual labourers and high risk jobs, access to weapons (and safe, policed, streets) and a lack of barriers to training. Flexible employment and the ability to choose not to work (ie. houses that a family can afford to rent or buy on one average family, not two or three) when children are small would help.
  3. You cannot “occupy” a time. You can boycott it, but you cannot camp on it. It is not a place. Besides, most of us have to do things. Like work.

In short, the stupid young females who thought this up should take their energy and let some older, wiser women work out ways to apply that energy. Perhaps committing to a job, to a marriage, to a family… would give them a sense of perspective. For this movement comes out of the land of unicorn farts, not real life.

 

Poisoned gospel

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The gospel is very simple. But simple is difficult. There are a few things we stumble on: the concept of the incarnation (which leads dome to venerate Mary, and others to say that she is without sin), the Personhood of Jesus (which get some to say he was human, some to say he is a divine metaphor, and some to reject this as tawdry).

For the simplicity of the faith — which must be there, for even a child can thus come to faith, and there are no grandchildren of God, only children — does not hide the mystery.

1 Timothy 3:14-4:4

I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth. Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great: He was revealed in flesh, vindicated in spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory.

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.

I love the description Paul has of the mystery. This scholar, this rabbinical genius, could not fathom this. He could only praise God. Nor can we. We have models of this — they are called systematic theology, and they are needed. (Indeed, we have tested and re tested these through church history as peoples of faith have fallen into error).

But here we also get some ideas of what happens when the well of the gospel is poisoned by either error or by the pride of false leaders.

  • There is an emphasis on the occult and the esoteric. As our culture is obsessed with vampires, elves and the supernatural, so are we obsessed by spirituality. At best, we become Quietists and Pietists, sitting in holy huddles but not influencing the society around us. At worst, we again discover the Gnostic heresy, and fall away.
  • There is a move to use the world’s methods. Of power, of discipline, of morals. The church must be reformed by committee: the different roles for men and women must be abolished. We may beleive correctly, but we live as the world lives. We are now ineffective.
  • We become overly pious. We ban that which is good, and look down on those who fuck, drink or even eat. When these are good things, in their place. We move towards the ascetic false “spirituality” of the guru, or the arid philosophy of the stoic.  And we die out, for joy has left the building.

We do not need to look as much as the words as the practices and habits that our congregations have to see where the gospel has been poisoned. And on that, I am off to Kirk.

Poisoned visions.

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I was going to edit and comment on What BF wrote yesterday, as it was an allusion to men being the fish with the bicycle. SHe reminds us that if the economy disintegrates, and the vision of a people fail, then the people perish. I’m juxtaposing this with a photo La Leche wanted banned. Piri Weepu, and all black, was making an anti smoking public health promotion. In part of this, he was filmed bottle feeding his daughter.

Not good enough says the Milk Maidens: the daughter should have been attached to a Breast. Twits. Any image of men caring, strongly, for their children, is worthwhile. Besides, I don’t care if the bottle had formula or expressed milk. That is between Piri and his wife. What is clear is that he cares for his child.

[Speaking as a mixed-race Japanese-Italian woman] Japan is chauvinistic patriarchal high-pressure society suffering from a two decade long crashed economy. Japanese salarymen are delaying marriage because they are deeply ashamed of their inability to support a family. Japanese women really can’t climb the corporate ladder, so it has nothing to do with Japanese women delaying marriage to pursue a career. Nor does it have to do with Japanese women “riding the carousel” until their 30′s. Good luck being a whore in a shame-based society [they exist, but they're highly frowned upon]. & don’t even think about divorcing in a shame based society – it’s social and career suicide. Or just regular suicide; the stigma associated with divorce often drives Japanese divorcees to jump in front of trains: http://journals2.scholarsportal.info/details.xqy?uri=/10535357/v40i0006/723_sdosij.xml

A good example of Japan’s attitude towards divorce is found in the first season of “Digimon”. Two of the main characters were children of divorce. Their mother was a journalist who left their father, a television producer, to focus on her career. The father is depicted as being depressed man devastated by the destruction of his family, while the mother is depicted as a selfish individual. The youngest brother is convinced his parents will get back together [spoiler: they don't], while the older brother resents his mother for abandoning the family. Their struggle to cope with their parents divorce is a significant plot-point.

Back to single Japanese men: if the economy ever improves, I suspect things will get better. Also, there really isn’t much of a stigma for middle-aged Japanese men dating younger women; so if a 40 year old Japanese man suddenly loses his asexuality – he could always go find a young 20-something to marry. & concerning low birthrates: there’s a recent trend [started by pop-stars] called “Yanmama” that portrays young [married] mothers as “stylish”. So there’s some hope. I wouldn’t mind being a stylish young mom like Kumi Koda [amusing fact: Kumi got blacklisted for a short time in 2008, because she told a music executive's middle-aged wife to have babies before her womb dries up from "oldness"].

Well, yes, Japan is Japan. Been there, and since I’m more orientated towards the Middle Kingdom (my children are half Chinese) I found it doubly weird. I understand shame based cultures: but Japan is a peculiar refinement of this. Liked the hot coffee from vending machines, dislked the tent cities full of homeless. (was there about 2003). I think you are correct that Japan has had a two year long depression and that has mattered, but so has the change in society. Over here, Girls don’t want to breed until their womb has oldness, nut quite early sex is tolerated (age of consent is 16). You don’t want to know about the abortion rate. And sensitive, caring (non thug, geek) boys… qualities I want in my sons… are not trying.

But I sit at home and blog as well. I don’t go to the bars and pick people up,,and I never have. I’m not a player: in our society this means I live like a monk for years at a time.

It is not just a Japanese problem.

There have been three visions of Japan. The first was a feudal country of the pure, with the emperor as a descendant of the sun, and the ruling done by a shogun. This did not survive the black fleet and the Meiji revolution. The second was of an Asian Prussia (the school uniforms, for instance, were based on the gymnasium. This did not survive Hiroshima. The third was as a Asian Germany: the maker of finely polished industrial and consumer products for the world. This consumed three generations, and was destroyed by a property crash and the move to manufacture in cheaper climes, from Georgia (Toyota) to China, Vietnam and Malaysia — Like Germany, Japan only makes its most precise products at home now.

The vision of Japan is broken. The emperor can no longer lead, the corporations are struggling, and the Koreans are doing to Japan what Japan did to Germany. And the west is heading the same way as our old vision — that we were a city on a hill, a light for the nations, and our role was to distribute the fruits of our labour from railways to vaccinations throughout the world — is being poisoned by postmodern relativism and strangled by multiple petty regulations.

Like Japan, we could have a two decade period of deleveraging, depression and social disintegration. The warning signs are there. But we are instead told (by the very elite that now denies the old ideas that led to them having privilege) to worry about that which we cannot fix, instead of doing what we can.