Necessity

 I have an old Walther League ring that is basically a permanent fixture om my right hand. My great grandfather was very into walther league, or so the family stories go. This is not his ring. I wish I had it, and hope that some other son of the extended family wears it from time to time.

The ring is beautiful, but that is not the main reason that I bought it. I bought it partly because I had become troubled by the problem of loneliness, and I had looked back to see if there was anything we could draw from our grandparents to help with our present evils.

The real driving reason to buy it was that it was going for less than the melt value, and it seemed to me the boomer smelters have given enough of the artifacts of our traditions to the fire.

The epidemic of loneliness and the boomers/greatest generation melting down traditions to make new forms have the same root, in my mind. Both find their root in a loss of necessity.

I've long held the conjecture that the loss of our traditions is tied to the loss of immediate consequences of deviating from them. It turns out that many of our traditions and mores were actually fine tuned social technology that helped people to survive together in times where the margins were razor thin.

I think that if the souls that lived in the 1800s could look at us today, they would almost certainly conclude that we lived in a post scarcity society. They would be shocked by the amount of clothes in our closets, the plentitude and quality of our food, and that precious few of our children get taken by illness.

Strict codes of conduct, ostracism of shirkers, and the assumption of shared responsibility for the people around you are  necessary when everyone is one bad harvest from hunger.

In the same way, the sexual revolution was only possible because we became rich. The consequences of needing to raise a child alone still exist, but women in that position are no longer facing nearly the same level of hardship as before, and men who subject women to raising a child alone do not have their consciences pricked in the same way, when society is rich and the state can step in to make sure their child is provided for. Not to mention the ready abundance of contraceptives, etc.

But that is still a harder life for the mother. And it is a less rich life for those children. The home is broken before they ever come into the world. Now, I know that there are still plenty of broken homes where both mom and dad are present, but loss of father or mother lowers the ceiling. It is not as good as it could be, but because we live in such wealth, such license, society does not find it intolerable. Society does not find it grounds for stigma against the father, who is clearly shirking his half of the bargain.

Morality is social techology, revealed to men by scripture, and written on our hearts in form of conscience, because God knows what is good, and he wants it for us.

It is only recently, thanks to Dave, that I had a puzzle piece click into place about loneliness.

He said the loneliness epidemic was because of the luxury/plenty of our lives, and now that I have heard him say it I cannot see why I was blind to it before.

I'll steal his example, which ties right in with my "mores are social technology" yarn. CFW Walther did not need to go to the Gym, because he worked on his farm, and thus was fit by default. In the same way, he did not need to seek out community, because the reality was that he was dependent on his neighbors, and they were dependent on him, because they needed one another in a way we don't anymore.

You can sit in your apartment and doomscroll twitter, work from a remote work station, have plenty to eat, enough money to pay people to fix your stuff, 7 streaming subscriptions, and more than enough time to post on reddit about how hard it is to meet people.

People used to meet, because they used to need to meet. The economics of necessity forced people together.

I think this phenomenon has been grossly excaerbated by the American pride in and emphasis on individuality. We feel like it is to trespass against the personhood of another to ask them to help us. Who are we to create an obligation for another person?? That is basically slavery, and even telling us 'no' will be emotional labor for the other person.

Don't be silly. By refusing to share your burdens you are robbing your brothers and sisters in Christ of the opportunity to do a good work for you. I admit to being a little bit of a hypocrite here, as I'm always the first to feel guilty about 'foisting my work onto other people', but this is not the way I should be looking at it. I should be better about admitting that I cannot and should not try to do everything alone, when I have brothers of greater capacity who never seem guilty about asking me for help.

Also, I always love the chance to work with them. To work together to do something good, and to enjoy their company as we work together. Those are great days. The best kinds of days. The satisfaction and the brotherhood that flows from it.

So here is the point; the necessity is still there.

The social technology of our elders is still necessary to live the good life. The life of working together, of opening ourselves to being responsible for, and being answerable to, one another is necessary for the good life. The good life is not just one with a full belly. The good life is one full of people you can depend on, and who know they can depend on you.