Speaking as a sailor, I'd say that we are definitely more like hyper-individualistic Pa Ingalls-style extremely cranky libertarian Scots-Irish border culture people. No "slightly" about it.
But seriously, American naval and merchant marine culture is definitely more suffused with Yankee customs and habits of mind than other American vocational subcultures are, due to where our technology and training were bred. There's a reason that there are four merchant marine academies in New England, and only one on the west coast and one on the Gulf coast.
I've long wondered how correct the popular characterization of Scots Irish border people as irredeemably contentious and divisive really is. It certainly seems true if one drives through the country side of east Tennessee, observing 10 different little country churches, each standing 500 yards down the farm road from one another; a "Primitive Baptist" church here, a "Hardshell Baptist" church there, a "Free Will Baptist" church there, reminding one of Freud's narcissism of small differences. One shudders to think of the breakups which precipitated each new building.
Yet, the US founding, with its many Yankee agitators, had its share of contentiousness. Straight up Englishmen had been bred for hundreds of years for regicide, revolt, and combat. The rebellion, or "revolution" as we labeled it, was almost inevitable. Some ornery Virginia blood helped it along, but the Yankees more than did their part.
Given where it's all gone, I certainly feel Mather heavily on some recent days... "What's better, to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or three thousand tyrants one mile away?"
My theory is that Scots Irish border people contumacy wasn't inevitably ingrained, but rather malignantized by the plantation geography which made man-stealing so much more of a temptation to them than to the Yankees. Not geographical determinism per se, but rather what to the unaided eye would seem an unhappy accident. But really, perhaps, a test of faith. "You say you have mastered the Bible over and above your brethren, you Presbyterians?" says the Lord. "Fine. Do you know the Law? Will you free your captives?" and sadly they failed, and to this day haven't quite recovered.
Thanks for this! I will look at Radiopaper though I suspect I need a one-in-one-out policy when it comes to social media platforms...
The fertility rate question is very interesting. My friends who have large families are all trad Catholics with traditional family setups, where the wife doesn't work and they are generally making an effort to buck the trend and being necessarily less consumerist etc. My secular friends are all either childless or have one or (at most) two children, and more gadgets.
What interests me is the communal element. The Amish and the Bruderhof seem wonderful to me but typical attempts to form "villages" in intentional ways seem fraught with problems. My wife grew up in a Catholic communal set-up where various families lived together, and it was not healthy at all. Places where lots of Catholic families congregate around e.g. a church with a regular Latin Mass seem to breed social hierarchies and pecking orders which are quite repellant to some of us.
I wonder if it's one of those things where you have to sort of aim off if you want to hit the target. We live in a 1960s housing estate, in a little terrace overlooking a green, and our children are able to play out on the green with the other children who live in our road under the vague supervision of the other parents, and that's a fine thing. But by doing that we are just piggy-backing on the habits and instincts of our working-class neighbours; the other middle-class couple on our road keep their one child inside when the other children are playing because the typical British middle class family is very private. This isn't an arrangement we have sought out, but it has sort of grown up around us serendipitously (and it's not without its downsides). Obviously it would be lovely if the other parents were all just like us, and the children were playing at being knights rather than superheroes while the parents discussed The Anchored Argosy with each other when not praying the rosary, but if we were to aim directly at making that happen I suspect it would quickly go a bit bad.
There are definitely ways to buck the trend, but tendencies can remain almost irresistible on the larger group level. Any meaningful reversal of the trends requires a stable equilibrium that works and comes naturally for ordinary people. Scaling reactions against the trends, for instance in intentional communities, are more challenging than they first seem and often open people up to a lot of problems. Often these problems were endemic and tolerated in more traditional societies (village life may look pretty to those looking at it from without, but can be far from idyllic for many trapped in it), or they found ways to manage them. However, it is especially challenging in a society where people taking such a route would need to find ways to hybridize traditional forms with modern ones.
One of the points I hope people take from that reflection is that the trade-offs would be very significant. There are reasons we have gone the way that we have. We need to find a new equilibrium, but this can't simply be a matter of going back.
Cuauhtémoc was a tragedy. The school tall ships are glorious; they have plenty of student labor to keep them Bristol fashion. I've not made it to many big events, but was able to catch Sagres, Portugal's school ship, many years ago in Bermuda during a port call. Had a beer with the cadets in the saloon. As a post-OPA 90 American sailor, it was a rare treat to have a drink on a ship; American ships were dry after the Exxon Valdez. But, it was Portugal after all...
My own beloved square rigger, a volunteer crew vessel, managed 42 years of restored service without a fatality but sadly a volunteer fell from a mast and died in 2022. We were proud of our safety record and shattered to lose a colleague. Risk is hard to manage... but all worthwhile things inevitably entail it.
And lastly, (or firstly?) new covenant liberty is material in space and time, in addition to all of the figurative or spiritual modes of it. Christ pronounced that the promised liberty to captives was fulfilled in the hearing of the Nazareth synagogue. It was a profound kingdom benchmark in history.
We moderns struggle to interpret this freedom for captives materially, because we live in an age of mass incarceration and a crony capitalist system which metastasizes it. In our age it is difficult to conceive of a legal system without jail as a punishment.
Yet, even a cursory glance at Torah reveals no jails. Not a single civil crime invoked incarceration as the penalty. All crimes invoked restitution, from the smallest debt trespass, to the trespass of blood for blood. If any holding of man was done under Torah, it was merely for purposes of making the accused available for trial. From this foundational Hebraic pillar of justice we get our western concept of right to a speedy trial.
The most spectacular biblical fulfillment of Christ's Nazareth pronouncement happened not long after his ascension... the earthquake which he sent to liberate Paul and Silas, which they, in turn, leveraged not only for their own immediate freedom, but to show the jailer God's mercy.
Speaking as a sailor, I'd say that we are definitely more like hyper-individualistic Pa Ingalls-style extremely cranky libertarian Scots-Irish border culture people. No "slightly" about it.
But seriously, American naval and merchant marine culture is definitely more suffused with Yankee customs and habits of mind than other American vocational subcultures are, due to where our technology and training were bred. There's a reason that there are four merchant marine academies in New England, and only one on the west coast and one on the Gulf coast.
I've long wondered how correct the popular characterization of Scots Irish border people as irredeemably contentious and divisive really is. It certainly seems true if one drives through the country side of east Tennessee, observing 10 different little country churches, each standing 500 yards down the farm road from one another; a "Primitive Baptist" church here, a "Hardshell Baptist" church there, a "Free Will Baptist" church there, reminding one of Freud's narcissism of small differences. One shudders to think of the breakups which precipitated each new building.
Yet, the US founding, with its many Yankee agitators, had its share of contentiousness. Straight up Englishmen had been bred for hundreds of years for regicide, revolt, and combat. The rebellion, or "revolution" as we labeled it, was almost inevitable. Some ornery Virginia blood helped it along, but the Yankees more than did their part.
Given where it's all gone, I certainly feel Mather heavily on some recent days... "What's better, to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or three thousand tyrants one mile away?"
My theory is that Scots Irish border people contumacy wasn't inevitably ingrained, but rather malignantized by the plantation geography which made man-stealing so much more of a temptation to them than to the Yankees. Not geographical determinism per se, but rather what to the unaided eye would seem an unhappy accident. But really, perhaps, a test of faith. "You say you have mastered the Bible over and above your brethren, you Presbyterians?" says the Lord. "Fine. Do you know the Law? Will you free your captives?" and sadly they failed, and to this day haven't quite recovered.
Thanks for this! I will look at Radiopaper though I suspect I need a one-in-one-out policy when it comes to social media platforms...
The fertility rate question is very interesting. My friends who have large families are all trad Catholics with traditional family setups, where the wife doesn't work and they are generally making an effort to buck the trend and being necessarily less consumerist etc. My secular friends are all either childless or have one or (at most) two children, and more gadgets.
What interests me is the communal element. The Amish and the Bruderhof seem wonderful to me but typical attempts to form "villages" in intentional ways seem fraught with problems. My wife grew up in a Catholic communal set-up where various families lived together, and it was not healthy at all. Places where lots of Catholic families congregate around e.g. a church with a regular Latin Mass seem to breed social hierarchies and pecking orders which are quite repellant to some of us.
I wonder if it's one of those things where you have to sort of aim off if you want to hit the target. We live in a 1960s housing estate, in a little terrace overlooking a green, and our children are able to play out on the green with the other children who live in our road under the vague supervision of the other parents, and that's a fine thing. But by doing that we are just piggy-backing on the habits and instincts of our working-class neighbours; the other middle-class couple on our road keep their one child inside when the other children are playing because the typical British middle class family is very private. This isn't an arrangement we have sought out, but it has sort of grown up around us serendipitously (and it's not without its downsides). Obviously it would be lovely if the other parents were all just like us, and the children were playing at being knights rather than superheroes while the parents discussed The Anchored Argosy with each other when not praying the rosary, but if we were to aim directly at making that happen I suspect it would quickly go a bit bad.
There are definitely ways to buck the trend, but tendencies can remain almost irresistible on the larger group level. Any meaningful reversal of the trends requires a stable equilibrium that works and comes naturally for ordinary people. Scaling reactions against the trends, for instance in intentional communities, are more challenging than they first seem and often open people up to a lot of problems. Often these problems were endemic and tolerated in more traditional societies (village life may look pretty to those looking at it from without, but can be far from idyllic for many trapped in it), or they found ways to manage them. However, it is especially challenging in a society where people taking such a route would need to find ways to hybridize traditional forms with modern ones.
One of the points I hope people take from that reflection is that the trade-offs would be very significant. There are reasons we have gone the way that we have. We need to find a new equilibrium, but this can't simply be a matter of going back.
Cuauhtémoc was a tragedy. The school tall ships are glorious; they have plenty of student labor to keep them Bristol fashion. I've not made it to many big events, but was able to catch Sagres, Portugal's school ship, many years ago in Bermuda during a port call. Had a beer with the cadets in the saloon. As a post-OPA 90 American sailor, it was a rare treat to have a drink on a ship; American ships were dry after the Exxon Valdez. But, it was Portugal after all...
My own beloved square rigger, a volunteer crew vessel, managed 42 years of restored service without a fatality but sadly a volunteer fell from a mast and died in 2022. We were proud of our safety record and shattered to lose a colleague. Risk is hard to manage... but all worthwhile things inevitably entail it.
And lastly, (or firstly?) new covenant liberty is material in space and time, in addition to all of the figurative or spiritual modes of it. Christ pronounced that the promised liberty to captives was fulfilled in the hearing of the Nazareth synagogue. It was a profound kingdom benchmark in history.
We moderns struggle to interpret this freedom for captives materially, because we live in an age of mass incarceration and a crony capitalist system which metastasizes it. In our age it is difficult to conceive of a legal system without jail as a punishment.
Yet, even a cursory glance at Torah reveals no jails. Not a single civil crime invoked incarceration as the penalty. All crimes invoked restitution, from the smallest debt trespass, to the trespass of blood for blood. If any holding of man was done under Torah, it was merely for purposes of making the accused available for trial. From this foundational Hebraic pillar of justice we get our western concept of right to a speedy trial.
The most spectacular biblical fulfillment of Christ's Nazareth pronouncement happened not long after his ascension... the earthquake which he sent to liberate Paul and Silas, which they, in turn, leveraged not only for their own immediate freedom, but to show the jailer God's mercy.