I used to quietly but arrogantly resent other people's reluctance to have children. This is a line that will tire you out. It certainly has an effect on me.
Our society's precipitous decline in birth rates (clearly depicted as an unstable top-heavy, inverted pyramid) and its potential consequences are unsettling.
Sometimes it seems better to remain pessimistic than to face the enormous responsibility of raising the children you have brought into your life.
Who will run all the vital functions of a developed society? Who will care for the elderly?
Who will preserve our Western traditions and unspoken moral codes before waves of immigrants arrive from high-birth-rate societies who have no desire to assimilate or interest in becoming productive citizens?
Who will save us from ourselves?
Cleaning the room
I was a college junior when I discovered Jordan Peterson in 2015. By that time, the increasing leftism on campus had begun to grate on even my standard liberal conscience.
I didn’t like the fact that university officials had started sending out surveys asking how they could better respond to a social epidemic, a queer minority that is almost universally rejected by the student body at large, and asking me to use their pronouns.
There was one guy who was wearing a dress. I was alone with him in the bathroom once, and as soon as he realized we were alone he left. It made the hairs on my neck stand up.
Peterson's now infamous exhortation to “clean your room” resonated with me, too: He urged students who were overly concerned with the state of the world — be it the impending climate collapse or their classmates' “transphobic” use of standard English — to shift their attention to more pressing personal responsibilities.
First, he said, embody order in all the little ways. If you can't handle the little things, there's no way you'll be able to handle the big things that are currently overwhelming you. The message was simple (our mothers had been telling us similar things for years), yet revolutionary. For those who were willing to listen, it was liberating.
New Ghosts
And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
The feeling of freedom didn't last long. Although I no longer feared the liberal menace of my time, another ghost began to haunt me. Enamored by my newfound “anti-establishment” stance, I didn't realize I'd simply traded one distraction for another. I was certainly a very different person to the misguided student activist Peterson humiliated in his famous YouTube video.
This habit of thinking of viewing every political debate in the most totalitarian, civilization-threatening light possible is hard to break, especially given my flair for the dramatic.
Until now, I've managed to confine my political despair to my online interactions. But lately, I've noticed it seeping into my real life. Despair disturbs me. When I open X first thing in the morning, the day is doomed. Am I addicted to letting myself get upset? Is this the way to live?
“There's a lot to love”
Wordsworth's “happy warrior character” comes to mind.
—Though he was thus endowed with sensations,
Ability to withstand storms and turbulence,
The soul that is inclined to the prejudices of the master is still
For domestic joys and tranquil scenes.
Sweet image! Wherever he is,
In his heart, such loyalty
Approval is his beloved passion.
He has so much to love that it makes him even braver.
Can we maintain a sense of purpose as a civilization without drowning in dire images of the future we are trying so hard to avoid?
What optimism requires
We can and we must, and in fact this is the essential ingredient of the character of a happy warrior: hope without fear, courage without anger, purpose without despair.
The collapse may still be imminent, however we imagine it. My concerns remain valid. For example, the denial of basic reality that lies at the heart of transgender thought remains dangerous.
But I can acknowledge this truth without feeling overwhelmed: Our family recently moved to Budapest from suburban South Carolina and it presented some expected challenges as well as some unexpected ones.
At times, wallowing in pessimism seems preferable to facing the enormous responsibility of raising children I have given birth to, and I find myself as tempted by this negative escapism as I was when I was a liberal.
Optimism requires something far more tedious and laborious. Here, as in so many parts of life, what Wordsworth calls “fidelity” makes all the difference. The “domestic joys and tranquil scenes” of family life are not a distraction from the greater battle, but the very foundations of a civilization worth defending.
