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Show notes
The Children of Men by P.D. James (book, and free audio version)
Haley Stewart, “How My Kids Didn’t Ruin Mass”
C.S. Lewis wrote of himself: “I myself do not enjoy the society of small children… [but] I recognize this as a defect within myself — just as a man may have to recognize that he is tone deaf or color blind” (The Abolition of Man)
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3)
Melissa S. Kearney, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind. See her recent interview on Triggernometry.
On women not having any experiences with babies, Mary Eberstadt. Here’s her interview on Modern Wisdom.
Lenore Skenazy, “How Phones Are Making Parents the Anxious Generation”
“Why are we sending 11-year-olds to Olympics?” (NYTimes)
The phrase “I am FOR my children” as opposed to asking “What are children for?” is an insight Acton picked up from those quirky pro-natalists Malcom and Simone Collins (see their podcast Based Camp).
Watch Midlife Stockman mow on YouTube
Niccolo Soldo’s series on HIV is largely paywalled, but the readable part of this gives the gist:
The earlier entries in this series delved into how the gay rights movement created the conditions for gay liberation and ushered in a ‘golden age’ for gays in the USA during the 1970s. As the homosexual act was central to the identity of these rights-seeking gays, and especially because men are men (always ‘up for it’), having gay sex was in itself an act of political liberation. They were finally ‘free’. Catching an STD was a badge of honour for many of these young men (as we saw in an earlier entry), one that was easily fixed by a shot from a “clap doctor”. Little harm, no foul. It was a small price to pay for the freedom that they were finally able to fully enjoy.
It took two years (1979-81) for the medical establishment to realize that something had gone horribly wrong; healthy and young gay men were dying for unknown reasons, often from exotic diseases traditionally seen in tiny numbers that only affected old men. As medical specialists and tuned-in gays learned more about what was happening in the gay community, they quickly began to realize that something deadly was being spread through gay sex acts. It was this dawning realization that brought politics back with a bang into these same communities. If the act around which they defined their own identity and which they fought to secure rights to protect it was the cause of this deadly disease, what did it say about their entire movement and the efforts that they put into it? What did it say about being gay? For many Christians, it was another example of “the wages of sin is death”.
Abusus non tollit usum: Abuse does not abrogate proper use (or, the misuse of something is no argument against its proper use)
Begotten or Made? by Oliver O’Donovan, a book on human procreation and medical technique
Nordic cultures eliminate Down syndrome through prenatal testing and selective abortion
Dawkins on cultural Christianity, “Famous Atheist Richard Dawkins Says He Considers Himself a ‘Cultural Christian’” (and loves Christmas carols)
Our episode on Lady Chatterley’s Lover
“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” (1 Corinthians 1:27)
NYT article on the replacement of relationships with robots: “For Older People Who Are Lonely, Is the Solution a Robot Friend?”
Also, AI “friends” (totally creepy!)
During editing, came across this: now Gen Z is anxious about even the most basic human encounters.
Jared Diamond, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition”
Quotes
Western science has been our god
In this quote, Theo is describing what it did to humanity’s collective psyche to encounter a problem that couldn’t be fixed with science and technology.
We are outraged and demoralized less by the impending end of our species, less even by our inability to prevent it, than by our failure to discover the cause. Western science and Western medicine haven't prepared us for the magnitude and humiliation of this ultimate failure.
There have been many diseases which have been difficult to diagnose or cure and one which almost depopulated two continents before it spent itself. But we have always in the end been able to explain why. We have given names to the viruses and germs which, even today, take possession of us, much to our chagrin since it seems a personal affront that they should still assail us, like old enemies who keep up the skirmish and bring down the occasional victim when their victory is assured. Western science has been our god. In the variety of its power it has preserved, comforted, healed, warmed, fed and entertained us and we have felt free to criticize and occasionally reject it as men have always rejected their gods, but in the knowledge that, despite our apostasy, this deity, our creature and our slave, would still provide for us; the anaesthetic for the pain, the spare heart, the new lung, the antibiotic, the moving wheels and the moving pictures. The light will always come on when we press the switch and if it doesn't we can find out why…
I share the universal disillusionment of those whose god has died… We have had twenty-five years and we no longer even expect to succeed. Like a lecherous stud suddenly stricken with impotence, we are humiliated at the very heart of our faith in ourselves. For all our knowledge, our intelligence, our power, we can no longer do what the animals do without thought. No wonder we both worship and resent them. (5-6)
Begotten or Made? (Oliver O’Donovan)
Christians should at this juncture confess their faith in the natural order as the good creation of God. To do this is to acknowledge that there are limits to the employment of technique and limits to the appropriateness of our “making.” These limits will not be taught us by compassion, but only by the understanding of what God has made, and by a discovery that it is complete, whole and satisfying. We must learn again the original meaning of that great symbolic observance of Old Testament faith, the sabbath, on which we lay aside our making and acting and doing in order to celebrate the completeness and integrity of God's making and acting and doing, in the light of which we can dare to undertake another week of work. Technique, too, must have its sabbath rest.
Washing down nihilism with a bottle of claret
In this quote, Theo’s old college professor Jasper is describing his reaction to not being able to have children of his own, and to the phenomenon of Omega in general.
It doesn't worry me particularly. I'm not saying I hadn't a moment of regret when I first knew Hilda was barren; the genes asserting their atavistic imperatives, I suppose. On the whole I'm glad; you can't mourn for unborn grandchildren when there never was a hope of them. This planet is doomed anyway. Eventually the sun will explode or cool and one small insignificant particle of the universe will disappear with only a tremble. If man is doomed to perish, then universal infertility is as painless a way as any. And there are, after all, personal compensations. For the last sixty years we have sycophantically pandered to the most ignorant, the most criminal and the most selfish section of society.
Now, for the rest of our lives, we're going to be spared the intrusive barbarism of the young, their noise, their pounding, repetitive, computer-produced so-called music, their violence, their egotism disguised as idealism. My God, we might even succeed in getting rid of Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed. I intend that my life shall be comfortable, and, when it no longer is, then I shall wash down my final pill with a bottle of claret. (44-45)
On being for our children