Gaashk
17d ago
Patriarchy, gender norms, media restrictions, simplicity, social competition predicated on virtue, increased exposure to nature and an emphasis on tradition can all be emulated
What if those aren't really what make the Amish special, and you've invested all that energy, but your daughter turns out to be Aella, or the lady who wrote Quivering Daughters, or Samantha? It's not like traditional, strict, "umbrella of protection" patriarchal Protestantism has not been tried recently.
Gaashk
17d ago
Probably that it's not super relevant to other groups, like noticing that Bhutan is doing well on some indicators. It's not like either joining the Amish or replicating their community structure is a real possibility for most people at this point.
Gaashk
19d ago
- Pick up the kids and drive them home
- Make something for dinner, or talk to my husband while he makes something
- Eat the dinner
- If the weather is nice, look around the yard. Otherwise, read online message boards and talk informally with family who are also watching or reading things.
- Put the children to bed.
- Have alone time -- write, read, meditate. I am very much an introvert.
Theoretically, I would also like to paint, but I never actually have enough energy after working, so I suppose I should just accept that I paint during the summer, when I'm on break.
Gaashk
20d ago
All I saw of it was Self Made Human casting shade on Pakistan, the title didn't make it very appealing to actually click through.
During the times when I did have a good social life, I participated in a lot of church activities.
Right now, I'm a bit overwhelmed with young children, a gestating baby, a full time job, on Saturdays we go on a family outing and possibly shopping, maybe see another family we're friends with; on Sundays we're mostly tired. Now it's spring, and the weather is finally warm, so we've started getting the yard in order a bit, and should work on some brush cutting and assembling a swing set someone gave us. Sometime we'll probably have enough energy to go back to church; I like the people well enough, there are soup suppers, ladies teas and what not going on that I could participate in.
Edit: Something else that occurs to me is that many of the good social situations I've found myself in have behind them a full time pastor, his wife, perhaps a deacon or other designated minister, and several organizationally capable women who do not have young children or a full time job (perhaps retired or a former housewife without much of a job). The ladies tea I could attend is run by an older but not yet elderly woman with grown children, who makes a dozen beautiful tea foods every month for fellowship purposes. Or educational settings with actual staff getting food for ongoing get-togethers that keep going as the student population changes.
People have noted before that these roles are undervalued in most modern communities. People mostly won't tith to support full time ministers, the "two income trap" will force women to work full time outside the home, and everyone will come home to reheat a frozen meal together, so there's less social infrastructure in place for anyone else to participate in.
Gaashk
21d ago
I'm not sure that I've noticed more anger than in other internet discussion spaces. There's more anger on my local Nextdoor about the proper prosocial speed to go in relation to the speed limit than most Motte threads.
Are you thinking of anything in particular?
Gaashk
22d ago
Maybe that's why I didn't really care for it. I already prefer very low stimulation, and things like meditation sitting alone in the dark.
Gaashk
22d ago
I got involved in an argument on the Nextdoor platform with someone who's working on opening a cannabis and dog gift shop in our very small local shopping area, that currently only has three things in it, despite the nearest town (6 min drive) already having about 8 dispensaries. Mostly, I want an ordinance saying they can't have giant green flags in an otherwise beige setting, huge leaves on their signs, and other attention grabbing street side signage. My opinions aren't very strong on the substance itself, other than I tried it a couple of times and it did nothing for me. I don't care for getting drunk, either, but drink a cocktail occasionally for the aesthetic presentation.
Gaashk
22d ago
Interesting, I hadn't really thought about it. I asked my husband, and he is but doesn't mind it. Our religious tradition goes both ways, with no particular opinion on the matter. We'll consider.
Gaashk
23d ago
Something I just realized reading this is that while I'd love to host sometime, and think we would be a really good host family when the kids are older (we would take them to all the local archeological sites! To the historic plaza! To the pig slaughtering contest!), and have enough space, with an enormous spare room just sitting there, we will not have enough vehicle space, until the oldest is driving herself and can afford her own car, at which point it will probably be too late.
I've stayed as a young adult with a host family in the Republic of Georgia, and liked it a lot, but they have cheap van transportation, so I went off and made my own friends, and met up with them myself.
Gaashk
23d ago
Plausibly, if my personality is that unstable, my tastes in archiving old things will also change. I'll go through a minimalist phase, throw everything out, then go through a nostalgic phase and regret it.
Gaashk
23d ago
The program in question appears to be one week in June (several Juneteenth references and they each have a one week itinerary), so probably schools are only involved because they already have staff and connections in place. It's likely free to advertise at schools, vs elsewhere they would need paid advertising.
Gaashk
23d ago
Huh, it does look like they aren't too bad. I haven't flown for several years, because the last couple times I tried looking it up, the flights were pretty expensive, and I just gave up.
When I was single it was more expensive to fly, and then stay, in a major American city and do anything interesting there than to fly and stay in Southern Europe and wander around on public transportation, on account of hotel/hostel, ticket, food, etc costs, but I should probably do the math again sometime now that I have kids. I remember spending about as much going on organized trips to DC and Syria, but then in Syria we were staying in church sponsored accommodations, which I both liked better and cost less.
Gaashk
23d ago
If they’re at a regional hub like Dallas. It gets harder and more expensive pretty fast from smaller airports.
Gaashk
24d ago
I recently saw an item in my newfeed about The American Exchange Project
That looks fun and interesting, but very short. At only a week, it seems unlikely much exchanging will be going on, aside from generic high school acquaintance making. I looked at a town I'm familiar with, and all the choices look... fine... but very clearly vacation based.
Gaashk
24d ago
Congratulations!
Most of my ancestors are from Scotland, which is why myself and all my relatives sunburn absurdly easily everywhere else.
Gaashk
24d ago
The people I knew in Chicago did. But they or their parents are working class and close to the neighborhoods in question. The Irish, Polish, Black, and city worker neighborhoods know. They're mostly people who had to keep working in person through the riots and Covid. I don't have a good understanding of the wealthier neighborhoods. I've also know people who are intergenerational middle class and talk a lot about systemic injustice for work and status, but are weirdly racist in person.
The people I knew in Minnesota didn't talk about what happened in front of me at all, and just hiked or fished alone all through the Spring and Summer of Covid/Floyd.
Gaashk
24d ago
That isn't very surprising, it's basically the impression I got from the Chicago news, though I wouldn't usually use the phrase "mass shootings" for "got in a feud and shot up the place" or "gang based violence killing several people." The people of the Northern Migration cities basically know it's black-on-black crime, in neighborhoods that have been hard to police forever, back to mafia violence and unsuccessful prohibition, and likely before.
I'm willing to believe the Minnesotans were genuinely shocked, they actually believe in restorative justice and sending troubled teens to spend more time in lakeside centers to smell the pines, and urban decay seems pretty new to them.
But, yeah, it's a trope that it's uncouth to mention when shooters are black.
Gaashk
26d ago
There's plenty of overlap with Orthodox Christianity, more than Protestantism, but much of its sphere of influence was forcibly conquered by Islam, then ground down over centuries.
So Muslims are more warlike, sure. I guess complicated by all the equally warlike Slavs taking up "Third Rome" rhetoric and putting a pretty hard stop to expansion Northward. It does seem probable that, ultimately, any civilization that doesn't want to be ruled by Islam has to physically fight it off.
Gaashk
29d ago
I'm ambivalent, I just tend not to feel excitement over babies in general. I want the children in the long run, but many of the parts I don't like are front loaded.
Gaashk
29d ago
I went in for an ultrasound, and baby #3 is looking good as far as they can tell, and is a boy.
People keep asking if I'm excited, and I just look awkward, because I don't feel excited, but think it's probably the right thing to do, and that I will probably be glad to have a son later on, I hope. Nurses keep having me take depression questionnaires as a matter of course (I am not and have never been clinically depressed, but half the symptoms overlap with pregnancy, they also strongly overlap with sleep deprivation such as just after giving birth, and they like to give it to pregnant and postpartum women multiple times. I give some credence to Abigail Shrier's observation that the medical establishment likes to give depression screenings out too much, and get people who are just feeling neutral but going through physical changes to second guess that). There are no parenting questionnaires, but I can sign up to enroll in a baby brain study if I want. I feel like some of this is related to the current fertility problem.
Gaashk
30d ago
If it's in a house, the person who does the most laundry should clean it when it makes the most sense to them. If the lint builds up in the duct, the person who has cleaned the lint the least has to pull it out and fix the problem. In most households, this will loosely map onto the wife cleaning the lint and the husband cleaning/fixing the dryer itself.
If it's a laundromat, it makes more sense to clean it before, since you know nothing about whoever just used it.
Gaashk
1mo ago
On the one hand, that sounds plausible.
On the other hand, for instance, Kosovo has continued living in large multi-generational families through hundreds of years of poverty and war, and still has heavy family involvement in marriages. Kosovo's TFR. Every Western and Asian country I've looked at has been something like that, whether they had a teenage pregnancy campaign or not.
My understanding of the progressive position is that it isn't necessarily the case that the same social constraints will make different groups happy, hence the stuff about "white culture" like following strict schedules and reading a lot or whatever the things were, and that it isn't necessarily a good idea to pick the most stable happiness producing white Christian social system and try to get everyone else to progress towards it. Hence, tossed salad theory replacing melting pot theory.
That doesn't seem completely unlikely. I'm basically willing to believe that different groups have slightly differentiated teloi. I realize that isn't necessarily compatible with Disparate Impact, but I would also strongly prefer a telos oriented way of thinking about social groups to an Equity based one. Everyone knows it's silly to ask why Amish aren't producing their fair share of programmers, and I would prefer a world where we talked less about demographically proportionate FAANG jobs, and more about who the best adjusted, happiest, best liked members of a given group are, and how to get more of that.
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