Semi-Random Musings (35)

From the department of “It’s All Been Done Before”, my ongoing trek through the last several thousand years of humanity’s follies continues with the first volume of the Cambridge Medieval History, which takes us from Constantine through the twelfth century.

Constantine is most notable for “converting” and subsequently making Christianity the official religion of the then-declining Roman Empire. This act led to a few moral reforms for those who lived at that time. (The newly empowered state religion frowned, for instance, on the cruelties of the Roman amphitheatre, crucifixion and the widespread practice of exposing unwanted infants, especially girls.)

It also compromised the church in ways we are still dealing with today.

Under Constantine, however, politics went on as usual. Prof. C.W. Previté-Orton writes about bureaucracy in the late Roman Empire:

“The Master of the Offices was head of the secretariat with its manifold duties. Under him were the central scrinia headed by their magistri, which dealt with all documents, but he also commanded the imperial guards and controlled the arsenals. Perhaps his most formidable charge was that of the agentes in rebus, the imperial secret service. These multitudinous and ubiquitous official spies superintended the imperial postal service, conveyed official commands, and reported real or imaginary delinquencies of all and sundry. They were worse than the abuses they were supposed to prevent; their corruption was notorious, and they added to the ills and oppression of the Empire.”

So then, 1700 years ago, long before cancel culture or the Deep State, there was … cancel culture and the Deep State. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

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Reading history, whether secular or biblical, always reminds me that even though man continues to develop technologically in leaps and bounds, his basic moral issues remain entirely unchanged. For me, it’s an ongoing reminder that we live in a fallen world, not an evolving one. Apart from Christ, humanity is degenerating. No amount of increased data can take sin out of the sinner. It’s not information we need more of. Technology only enables us to do worse things to one another more efficiently on a larger scale. So Genesis accounts for the reality on the ground much better than any supposedly-scientific theory.

It’s notable that this tendency toward evil has not changed significantly in the last 2,000 years even though Western society has successfully spread Christendom throughout a significant portion of the world, and politicized it to boot. But the “Christianized” society of my youth did not make unbelievers better people at the core, the evidence being the ease with which the Left has entirely dismantled it. No, putting a premium on the appearance of morality simply drove men’s natural impulses underground.

The glacial process of reforming society — assuming we are actually making progress at all and not going backwards as I suspect — has attentive postmillennialists relegating any expectation of Christ’s return to the far-flung future. One recently wrote, “When the world is successfully evangelized, and billions of people are saved, and that goes on century after century, we will be able to say, comparatively, that the whole world was saved.”

“Century after century”? If the last 2,000 years have not even moved the needle on moral and social reform, exactly how long do postmillennialists expect they need? One wonders when the cognitive dissonance between eschatology and observation will start to register.

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I watched yet another YouTube short the other day in which a highly educated single woman bemoaned the lack of available high quality men. The problem, she said, is that men fear competency in women.

That gets us precisely wrong. Men adore competent women. They make great secretaries, assistants, wives and even landladies. To be able to put some important aspect of my life in the hands of a competent woman and walk away knowing it will get done right without exchanging another word is one of the best feelings a hard-working, productive man will ever know. I would rather work with competent women than men any day. Ninety percent of them have no ego issues.

No, what men dislike in women is not competence but disagreeability. (I’m using “disagreeable” in the Jordan Peterson sense, not meaning actively hostile, but unconcerned about your approval and not afraid to show it.) Men are instinctively uninterested in partnering up with women who have their own agendas in life. Highly educated women have a reputation for well-developed opinions and the compulsion to share them at the drop of a hat, whether or not they have a receptive audience. We can argue about which is chicken and which is egg. Do disagreeable women go out and get over-educated, or does the process of higher education bring out a woman’s competitive side? It may be a little bit of both.

Either way, men have enough disagreeability in our lives just dealing with each other in the workplace, at church and in the public square. We haven’t the slightest interest in going home in combat mode. At home, we like peace. The value of a quiet, supportive home environment cannot be overstated. As a result, we tend to leave “strong women” with their own ideas and agendas to their own devices, not out of fear, but simply out of common sense. They are not going our way, so we wish them well and carry on. May they enjoy their cats just as I enjoy mine.

Perhaps it’s the influence of social media, but many women today find the notion of declining to voice every thought that enters their heads counterintuitive and a bit insulting. Both the Bible and experience suggest choosing discretion over self expression makes for better outcomes. The wisdom literature of scripture makes this case repeatedly. “A wife’s quarreling is a continual dripping of rain.” “It is better to live in the corner of a housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.” “It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.” Even the epistles hint that discretion is a much more effective means of getting a wife what she wants than confrontation. 1 Samuel commends Abigail for her discernment. She had a very difficult, confrontational husband to deal with, and she learned to navigate the relationship effectively by not going toe-to-toe with him, especially when he was blowing off steam with a drink.

These are not misogynistic scriptures. They simply observe and reflect reality. High quality, competent men able to earn a decent living for their families don’t put a premium on a woman’s education or career trajectory when looking for a prospective partner. They will opt for agreeability every single time. Even disagreeable men have little difficulty pairing up so long as they are able to provide. Self-perceived lower status men are another story; they’ll put up with all kinds of abuse just to land a wife. Unsurprisingly, highly educated women are not looking for men of that sort. Is any of this fair or equal? Probably not. But the marriage market accurately reflects both male and female preferences. Nobody absolutely has to get married.

Now, there are feminine qualities for which men will trade off a little prospective peace, among them physical attractiveness, youth, sexual innocence and in some cases competence, especially domestic competence. What’s not anywhere on that list is education. Christian parents who put their daughter through seven years of higher education are definitely enhancing her independence and earning prospects, but they are doing so at the risk of diminishing or extinguishing the qualities that make her most marriageable.