Compelling. Declining birth rates it turns out are not so much about the choices women make as it is about the socioeconomic context in which those deCompelling. Declining birth rates it turns out are not so much about the choices women make as it is about the socioeconomic context in which those decisions are made.
The author writes about how before the American Revolution there was a greater sense of community that made it possible for children to live amid large extended families. This made it easier on biological parents while allowing those with no children a chance to mother.
But we lost this strength largely because of the myth of frontier individualism. We pulled away from community. So caregiving shrank to the size of today's nuclear family. Many today still view the nuclear family as the epitome of family. In truth, the author writes, the nuclear family actually represents a diminishment of the outsize child rearing capacities of far larger, now no longer extant community-based extended families.
With those extended families no longer in existence, the author believes we have to support women by way of government programs. The European Community already does some of these things. The failure of the U.S. Congress to extend the Child Tax Credit is a good example of our own national failure to do so.
"The child tax credit (CTC) was a monthly payment of $250 or $300 per child that was given to eligible families in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act. . . According to research by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, the CTC lifted 2.9 million children out of poverty in 2021, reducing the child poverty rate from 9.7% to 5.2%. . . [Conversely] without the CTC [when Congress failed to renew it] the child poverty rate rose sharply to 12.4% in 2022, an increase of 41% from December 2021 to January 2022. This means that 3.7 million more children fell below the poverty line." (Source: Conversation with Bing, 1/10/2024)
Add to this example our lack of daycare, Medicare cuts, food stamp cuts, school lunch programs cuts, afterschool programs cuts, etc. — and you begin to glimpse why the decision not to have children is being made by so many women. I pulled the following quote from today's NYT: "Note that more than eight million children will be left out of a new federal food assistance program for needy families . . . because they live in one of the 15 states [whose] governors . . . refuse to participate."
There is simply no support system such as existed when large, extended families were prominent. Right now we have only NGOs or states to provide relief. But as the author says.
"Over the past two centuries . . . we jettisoned expansive ideas of kinship, isolated parents, disinvested from communities, and replaced community care with a kind of care that individuals have to pay for. . . . [But] that's not to say we couldn't rebuild systems of community support if we wanted to, or that we lack examples of how we might do it." (p. 70)...more
Part 1 is engaging but a little dull. Part 2, which is the so-called simple astrological experiment Jung conducted to test his theory, is all statistiPart 1 is engaging but a little dull. Part 2, which is the so-called simple astrological experiment Jung conducted to test his theory, is all statistical math and thus incomprehensible to me. But Parts 3 and 4, addressing similarities between Synchronicity and certain aspects of the world as explained in Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, not to mention parallels with Virgil, Agrippa, Synesius, Kepler, Hippocrates and Schopenhauer, alone repays one’s interest....more
These subtle, fascinating case studies are psychoanalysis condensed. They run about 6 or so pages each. Everything inessential has been stripped away.These subtle, fascinating case studies are psychoanalysis condensed. They run about 6 or so pages each. Everything inessential has been stripped away. We get the problem, the diagnosis, and the resolution or its semblance very quickly. There's the nine year old with autism whose hyper-acting out includes spitting in his analyst's [the author's] face five times a week for a year and a half. How far can one's compassion go? Or the HIV-positive patient who can do little more than sleep during his sessions. When the author presents his case at a conference, an American doctor asks: "Why are you wasting your time with this patient? He's going to die. Why not help someone who's got a future." The author is outraged. And as it turns out, the protease-inhibitors arrive in time and the patient lives for many years, is in fact still alive at the time the book is published. The essays are so lean, so fleet of foot and this is somehow connected – this brevity, this concision – to their ability to move us. I cannot recommend this slim volume highly enough. It's a near miraculous feat of writing....more
Fascinating. Life on another planet, virtually. So different is it from the Earth most of us know. Unsummarizable. And to think the author was 13 whenFascinating. Life on another planet, virtually. So different is it from the Earth most of us know. Unsummarizable. And to think the author was 13 when he wrote it....more
Oliver Sacks mentions this work in his book Hallucinations for its depiction of groups experiencing mass delusions. I do not know if Arthur Miller reaOliver Sacks mentions this work in his book Hallucinations for its depiction of groups experiencing mass delusions. I do not know if Arthur Miller read this when working on his play The Crucible, but I wouldn’t be surprised....more
I have completed the entire Sacks's oeuvre, with the single exception of Seeing Voices. Oliver Sacks has been one of those life altering writers for mI have completed the entire Sacks's oeuvre, with the single exception of Seeing Voices. Oliver Sacks has been one of those life altering writers for me. He has changed the way I see the world. The great revelation with this volume for me was just how commonplace hallucinations are. There are myriad reasons why the brain might produce them: sensory deprivation, disease, drugs, etc.—many of them surprisingly benign. Fascinating and highly recommended.
Robert Bly has this wonderful Jungian lens through which he sees the world. Here he is discussing the subconscious mind, which he represents with the Robert Bly has this wonderful Jungian lens through which he sees the world. Here he is discussing the subconscious mind, which he represents with the metaphor of the shadow. The book is distilled from three or four poetry readings he gave in the 1970s. He wants us to be in touch with our dark side, meaning the subconcious. The metaphor of the shadow he sees is also a bag in which we are forced to put every personal attribute not desired by our parents, who want us to be only "nice." Yet we are essentially wild animals at heart. What should we do with all that anger, rage, sexuality, creativity, whatever, that we've been forced to suppress? Well, when we get to about 35 or 40, Bly says, we have to start taking things out of the bag. Unless we take them out, unless we address them, we will become damaged. Please don't read this book if you've never had a psychology course or have not familiarized yourself with psychological concepts through reading, esp. Jungian ones. Those without such a background are likely to see Bly as little more than a raving lunatic. He is not. What I found fascinating (again) was how very discursive Bly's thought process is. He's been thinking in Jungian terms for so long that his analysis, essentially cultural analysis, psychohistory, can be a little dense at times. This is one of those books that you have to absorb over time, reflect upon, pick up again, and re-read. Fortunately it's only 81 pages long....more
Meh. While well-written this is a trifle boring, staid. I thought I was in for something outlandish. Nope. The observations here seem quite routine. IMeh. While well-written this is a trifle boring, staid. I thought I was in for something outlandish. Nope. The observations here seem quite routine. I've personally had hallucinations that were much richer and complex than those described here. I do want to read Huxley's The Doors of Perception soon. You may also wish to read Dr. Oliver Sacks' Hallucinations, which is quite wonderful....more
Loading...
