The Garden Season Has Arrived Again!

And it's summer over here, like +28*C (no kidding).

I've been thinking of trying this:




Any idea if it works?

Loneliness Is The Direct Result Of Liberalism

 Even The Washington Post appears to agree. Your average bugman in the comments was in deep denial though.

On the right end of the ideological spectrum...classical liberalism celebrated the free market, which facilitated the radical expansion of choice. On the left, liberalism celebrated the civil right to personal choice and self-definition, along with the state that secured this right by enforcing the law. But both approaches basically converge into the same thing: a headlong and depersonalized pursuit of individual freedom and security that demands no concern for the wants and needs of others, or for society as a whole.

As liberalism has progressed, it has done so by ever more efficiently liberating each individual from “particular places, relationships, memberships, and even identities — unless they have been chosen, are worn lightly, and can be revised or abandoned at will.” In the process, it has scoured anything that could hold stable meaning and connection from our modern landscape — culture has been disintegrated, family bonds devalued, connections to the past cut off, an understanding of the common good all but disappeared... 

That’s the heart of it, really. Liberalism is loneliness. The state isn’t our sibling; the market won’t be our mate. And the more either the right or left’s solutions attempt to fill in the gaps — “more markets, for you to attempt to buy back what has been destroyed! More regulations, to protect you when you can’t!” — the more obvious it becomes that the entire concept is flawed. The institution of liberalism is caving in on itself, and we each individually feel the crush.

 

The Things We Lost

A couple of days ago I looked outside and saw two girls playing. Of course, there are always lots of kids playing outside in my neighbourhood yet something about them registered as strange in my mind. I looked again and realised what it was - both girls wore dresses, one in a bright peach colour, the other one white, and what is more, these were proper dresses with wide skirts and not some tight stretchy stuff.

Sure, little girls will often have dresses on, but those two were tweens. It brought back vague recollections from my childhood when it was considered quite normal for girls to dress like this in summer. I'm not that old, mind you, and yet it felt like a glimpse from a different world.

Yes, for the younger among us it's probably difficult to believe that there was a time when women and girls wore something else daily than boring denim uniforms. And in the current year...one gets shocked by seeing a girl in a bright dress...Sad, really. What do you think?

Housekeeping Basics

With Grandma Griffith:

The Problem Of Loneliness

So the Western governments are now talking about the loneliness problem. Before recent city council elections, various parties in my city came with suggestions on how to fight it. One of the brilliant ideas was to ensure that every elderly person gets a regular visit from a social worker. Which, of course, means that they can hire more social workers, who are all women.

Thus, we get a following situation: while the old folks' own daughters and granddaughters work, someone else's daughters and granddaughters are hired to pay them a friendly visit once a month or so. Does it sound like an efficient and sane solution? On the other hand, since the society at large has accepted daycare, why not payed friends from your city council?

The real problem with many Western countries is not "socialism" as too many conservatives are trying to tell us. It's not "capitalism", either. The problem lies in the fact that modern governments  demanded and got all the responsibilities (and authority which comes with it) which in the West had traditionally belonged to the family and the church.

In the beginning of the 20th century in the USA most married women and about 50% of unmarried women didn't have a job. While some were busy helping their husbands on the farm and caring for small children, many had lots of spare time which they used to visit and take care of extended family, create and maintain friendships and engage in volunteering and other activities which like glue, held the society together.

Now when the overwhelming majority of them work, the society is rapidly coming apart. People used to turn to their relatives in the times of need, now they have "emotional support animals" and soon also paid friends. In the meanwhile, children are malnourished and neglected, marriages fall apart, illegitimacy increases and suicide rates are climbing. Is this the law of unintended consequences at work, or was it by design? I honestly don't know and it's probably isn't important any more, either.

What is important, is to try and salvage what's left of the traditional society. Please, take some time to spend with your own parents, elderly relatives and neighbours who need support. Don't shut yourself from the world around you. Drinking tea with a widowed auntie is not a waste of time, it's taking care of your own, as teacheth the Scriptures. Social contacts are important, and if you invest time and effort into building a support network of family and friends, it will pay up in the end.

More On Living On One Income

Just a couple of thoughts on how to buy a house when you are planning to be a one income couple. Whatever happened to saving money beforehand? Instead of moving together and taking a huge mortgage, why can't young people stay with their parents longer and save their salaries for the down payment on the house? The law currently requires 10% of the price (I think, could be lower). Why not saving more?

Girls used to bring money into the family through dowry. Upper class girls got a sum from their parents, lower class girls often worked before marriage and saved up. Nowadays, they most probably will bring their student debts instead. With young men, it's not much better, unfortunately.

How much money is spent on clothes, vacations, video games and simply getting drunk in a bar regularly? All these things aren't cheap. I'd like especially to talk about the "vacations" some of these people are taking. They chiefly consist of going somewhere to Spain or thereabouts and spending nights in clubs where the entrance can cost anywhere from 50 euros and higher not counting the drinks; getting wasted, using drugs and hooking up. It's gone so bad some churches started organising missions to try and reach some of these vacation-goers.

I've also known guys who spent thousands of euros on the newest games. Again, as with everything, it's a free choice that you make. You can choose to practise thrift and live frugally and save or you can choose to blow it all up and take on a huge amount of debt for your dream home, to keep up with the Joneses. I'm not even going to point my finger at anyone. I'm just trying to show the alternative. Where's the will, there's a way:)

Children And Home Cooking

I watched a YouTube video once where a lady tried living one day as they did in the 1950s. One thing she claimed was that she did as much cleaning on this day as she used to do in a week.She didn't work outside home, mind you, though she evidently had some part-time jobs she did from home. An average woman working outside home will probably do the same amount of cleaning in a month, if ever.

Cleaning isn't the only thing that suffered when the traditional way of life was thrown into the trash. Cooking suffered even more. A lot of women, even those who don't work or work very part-time, hardly ever cook. As a contrast, I used to know a lady from Southern Europe who told me that while still in her own country, she had worked FULL TIME and still would come home and cook dinner. From fresh ingredients.

In countries like France and Italy, home cooking is a very important activity and they have a whole culture built around sharing food with family and friends. As a result, they have less obesity. After I'd been to Paris some years ago I got a reverse cultural shock coming back to my own country and noticing how fat overweight everyone was, including young people. After some time one gets accustomed to it, unfortunately, and simply stops noticing.

Yet, obesity is probably not the only consequence of surviving on a diet of French fries and soda as studies have been done linking fast food with poor academic performance and lower IQ in children:

Whether or not your child is putting on excess weight, it’s important to consider what a steady diet of processed food might do to his or her health—and IQ… One British study⁴ revealed that kids who ate a predominantly processed food diet at age three had lower IQ scores at age 8.5.

For each measured increase in processed foods, participants had a 1.67-point decrease in IQ. More recently, research published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics^5,6,7 warns that frequent fast food consumption may stunt your child’s academic performance.

A total of 11,740 students were included in the study. All were tested in math, reading, and science while in fifth and eighth grade. As fifth-graders, they also completed a food survey.

“Children who reported eating fastfood four times a week or more in the fifth grade showed lower test score gains in the eighth grade in all three subject areas by up to 20 percent.

Children who reported eating fast food just one to three times a week still lagged behind their non-fast food eating peers in one subject–math.”

When there is no one to keep home fires burning, people will get stupider. As the family goes, so goes the nation. Ours is going right off the cliff.