Why Modern Life Sucks

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BOOKS MENTIONED:
The Church and the Land by Fr. Vincent McNabb: https://amzn.to/48sDZA7
I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (Library of Southern Civilization) by by Susan V. Donaldson: https://amzn.to/49rMUD9

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Well hello all and welcome back to my channel we have lost power in the house today and I love it when that happens cuz all the machines cut off can’t have no washing machine can’t have no dishwasher running and uh it goes well with a topic that I want to talk about

Entitled why modern life sucks so it’s cold outside it’s actually sleeping outside and I got a fire going in the library and the way I want to talk about this subject is to read uh for you from the introduction to um father vinc mcnabs the church and the

Land this preface in this introduction is by Dr William fahe um he used to be the uh he worked at Christendom College in Front Row Virginia for a while and now I think he’s the president of Thomas Moore college and uh I think I’m saying that

Right f f f William F sounds good if he watches this he can correct me or somebody else knows how to pronounce it and you can tell me I’m not good with pronoun pronouncing certain names but uh why modern life sucks isn’t that a good title so father

Vincent McNab for those of you who don’t know was one of the um leading members of the Catholic land movement in England in the 1920s this this book I think was first written in 1920 or 1924 somewhere in there and uh there were since over the past 100

Years there’s really been three forces to that that have spoken out in important ways against the the the industrialism of the modern world the distributist primarily GK Chesterton and H A bellac in England and uh CS Lewis was also very much concerned with industrialism as was token but in the United States the

Southern agrarians or The Fugitive agrarians as they were known at the time uh who were also writing in the 1920s and published I’ll take my stand which is considered to be the southern agrarian Manifesto published that in 1930 November 1930 so there’s a lot of activity uh

During the in war period of the 20th century among people who are concerned about the uh nature of Excuse me while I poke my fire that are concerned about the nature of the consumer culture the modern industrialized culture to which we uh now have inherited many of us now

Don’t know what it’s like to live without a consumer culture but I want you to listen to the if I can read it with the sunlight we got left yeah uh I want to read to you some information from this introduction and so um Dr William fahe

Is is talking about why people should pay attention to uh father Vincent McNab why should you care and so I this is so beautiful I have not um read a description that really shows how ridiculous Modern Life is I I haven’t read anything this good in quite some

Time and by the way the third force is windberry so you have the distributist in England you have the southern agrarians then eventually in the 1960s up until now you have windberry in my mind those are the three great forces of uh alternative views of agrarian

Ideology over the past 100 years so um I’ll just read what has got to say here we use this to to talk about some things yet a reader may ask what really is the relevance of such thought today meaning agrarianism back to the land stuff even if we accept mcnab’s personal Holiness

Has not the science of economic so Advanced that we may understand and treat our social ills much more effectively than in Leo the 13th or Vincent mcnab’s day surely we do not have to worry about the industrialization of the workplace or the effects of factory life on the home

The foulness of a disrupted food system has passed away as have the dark satanic Mills of the western landscape food and material wealth are in abundance Classical liberalism has won the day surely no one would consider Father MC mcnab’s uh positions as either preent for his day or appropriate to our

Own as for homesteading and small crafts these have gone the way of the draft horse The Windmill and the Iron Forge well dear reader the fact that you have kept going after the last paragraph points to at least a whisper of hesitation over whether or not all is

Well modern man for all his climate control Comforts and toys still doubts that he has everything right let’s turn first to the workplace in mcnab’s day there was a cry to improve the Hideous conditions of the worker in certain areas Victory can be claimed though to what body or system we

Should Grant the law leaves is disputed certainly working conditions in many Western countries are improved on the other hand most of the so-called manufacturing work uh that McNab challenged so squarely has moved to the Southern Hemisphere and the Far East comfortably Beyond the Horizon of Suburbia do we really think that the

Working conditions at any of the meals and factories that provide our clothing our tools and raw materials are significantly different from the slums of Pittsburgh Birmingham or Dublin a century ago think about it now how much Ma in China stuff you have in your house what are the working conditions in those

Places where our made in China uh made overseas items are coming from even in the fluorescent glow of our Western cubicles the the workplace has significant problems the 31-hour work week achieved by the middle of the 20th century has been abandoned any mention of it is largely erased from our popular

History now let us for a moment travel to a modern North American home now get this you got to pay attention to this let us for a moment travel to a modern North American Home homward the happy Hunter of the free West rid usually usually alone for

Some 45 minutes or more in the great symbol of his Liberation the C how much time do you spend in a car going to work backwards and forwards every day though it cost him on average over $10,000 perom to maintain his machine and though it slays enough

People each year to be classified in epidemic life without two or three vehicles is now inconceivable now let us enter the modern home the home which is nearly a th000 square ft larger than that of our grandparents the home which his great-grandparents paid for for within a

Decade and which now if he bothers staying there for more than a few years takes a full 30 to pay for now let us sit with the Modern Man of the West at a mill if we sit at all and where is the family that is to

Say where is the other person who brings in the required second income and where are the one or perhaps two children quite possibly the fruit of the same Union quite possibly the fruit of the same Union but by no means guarantee anymore alas one and all are exercising

Their freedoms his spouse must work in her fluorescent cubicle a little later to reduce her stress the sign of her economic Liberation she must before returning home go to the great luminous glass block cave off to exercise on a never ending plastic conveyor while watching with two dozen other officially

Independent and liberated women the same cable news program prophesying wars and rumors of War the gym he’s talking about people going to a gym because they don’t have any other outlet for exercise the children eat alone but each apparently content as they are plugged into some virtual world where one may

Engage in such archaic activities as fighting with swords searching for Treasure warding off dark powers from a good Kingdom speaking with imaginary creatures and camping under a Starlit sky we thank the heavens that digital technology has made such youthful fun not only safe but possible this is all

Satire you’ve got to remember all satire but it shows how utterly ridiculous we have made Modern Life Food Food still unites the family that is to say no matter where or what you eat in the United States you and your loved ones will all be partaking in flavors created

In Laboratories from the same part of New Jersey the flame broed low fat burger picked up on the way back from arobics the country style chicken breast prepared just the way you like it in the microwave the tie takeout that the children wolf down as they learn more about an endangered

Rainforest from the tourism Channel all were produced along the same Corridor off the Jersey Turnpike near South Brunswick he just really is hammering into this this is of course a comical picture merely a satire every age has its difficulties does it not at least we are secure in

Ours yet we must admit though that when McNab warned that the family and the life of the family was imperal he was not wrong something as small and distant as industrial capitalism and something as near and menacing as canned food were anathema to Father McNab it would also

Have been anathema to most American Farm families at the time he was writing this and not to mention uh English farm families there were they were of the same Beast a dreadful Beast crouching to Devour the mother and child left undefended by the father whether by true

Choice or no women have been swept from the home and from the life that was dignified and was their own and men men have taken up the life of socioeconomic Nomads knowing no allegiance to work for work knows them not and slowly forgetting what Duty and paternal piety

Mean if this is in doubt let us turn again to our modern household our age now views as domesticated a woman who subscribes to an illustrated cooking magazine and prepares Brian B for the Precision of a German chemical engineer lost to the art of of cooking without a reference library pasta and

Sauce from a jar constitute a homecooked meal that we are momentarily satisfied with this state may be due to genuine advances in natural or organic food preparation or it may only be a condition response enabling us not to face social deficiencies I mean it just goes on and

On it it this this reading is showing us the sheer stupidity and ridiculousness of modern life we spend so much time trying to save time that we don’t have anything to do with the time when it’s saved except get on the screen there was a time when cooking

Sewing and all the domestic Arts were natural and Vocational expressions of Womanhood mothers did these things because their love for family called forth beauty and care thankfully there is still affection and with affection the desire to restore the home if only some clear path can be shown man having longer uh been callous

And longer disenfranchised from his own art seems happier than modern women the pressure of being Soul bread winner is gone a work less year know again we collide with our Illusions let us Harden ourselves to the probable sting that comes to most men when they contemplate that our economic

System blocks them from being the economic sustainer of the family The Joint worker household is not in exercise and freedom but in necessity for most the two cars and a half ton truck the 2500 square foot house the clothing the gadgets the vacations all require two incomes we are surfect with what McNab

Called secondary wealth to the point that we are rarely enjoying what is primary such as health and the food and the shelter necessary for our station and Life to what end are men Fierce providers their jobs and Lifestyles long insulate them from the experience of husbandry paternal sacrifice their co-worker spouses are

Not in any real sense dependent socially or even economically or rather the dependency too often becomes a kind of contractual benefit in a rabidly materialistic world what they Supply for their children they know in their hearts is ephemeral junk to be replaced at the next birthday or special occasion by yet

More plastic and electric gadgetry I still feel the same way every time Christmas rolls around everybody goes out and buys all this plastic crap and puts under a Christmas tree it’s ephemeral junk it teaches children nothing you buy people screen you put kids that are three and four years old

On a computer screen or on a little tablet and and you teach them how to run a cell phone but they don’t know how to cook anything or split wood or grow a garden or feed chickens or take care of any kind of animal by the time they’re

10 years old I had a good farmer friend of mine in Alabama told me one time that when his grandchildren all turned 12 years old all his granddaughters that is he gave them a frying pan he said that was the best gift he could ever gave him was a frying

Pan that may s sexist to some folks but uh I stand with my former friend from Alabama for a small group doit your sales shops allow some expression of craft to emerge from the eviscerated life of a white collar worker one could also mention camping in certain Sports as activities that still

Remind the male worker of his masculine flesh and senu yet these activities engage in by an Ever decreasing number of the population are again done as hobbies and stress relievers they do not constitute part of a natural cycle of life nor are they done as part of a process of

Enhancing and creating primary wealth instead Modern Men drink deeply of nostalgia man he’s got it going on ha this domestic scene fixed some somewhere between satire and tragedy fixed somewhere between satire and tragedy that’s exactly right it’s ridiculous and sad at the same time the way we live in the modern world

Sucks it is sad and and ridiculous simultaneously let it arouse us it is something after all with which to make a start Traditions May yet be restored precisely because human nature is enduring at moments of Crisis Clarity can come forth in heroism and sacrifice be readily observed a natural life with sane and

Regular rhythms is not the product of constant crisis tempered by crisis yes but a healthy organism seeking seeks equipoise and peace listen to this a natural life is the product of a small healthy Community grounded in the common traditional and religious life of the West Western Civilization

Christendom then he gets into a larger discussion of Catholicism and uh the nature of the the again the ridiculous nature of how we’ve allowed Christianity to devolve in our in our modern world now that is similar to uh now that that is a a description of the

The the way we live now which is not that was written several years ago but it’s not far off from the way it is now uh even though people largely are able to work from home now ever since covid we still do not use the time at home to

Produce food for our own table to be more responsible for our everyday things now this is Andrew lle from 1930 his essay and I’ll take my stand Andrew Lidle uh was from I think he was uh born in north Alabama if I’m not mistaken but he spent the majority

Of his life in Tennessee particularly on around mon Eagle Mountain which is off I24 going from Chattanooga to Nashville but this is he’s describing I’m not going to read the whole thing but this is this is 1930 nearly 100 years ago Lal is describing what uh life

Everyday life on a Southern Farm would have looked like in the 1920s and really this would have been late 19th century early 20th century and he’s Des describing what is at danger of being lost 50 years after he published this in the 1980s lle wrote a a separate essay which

Was a reflection on the southern agrarian movement 50 years after it started and what he concluded in the 1980s remember this is 40 years ago now is that we failed the people who thought that the old rural way of life the old country oldfashioned way of life the

People who thought that it would never go away that it would always be around they were fooled they were shocked by the time we get into the few decades after the second world war and discovered that consumerism and Industrial capitalism completely plows under the small farm world that lle is describing here in

1930 I’ll just select a couple of random paragraphs the kitchen leads out to the back L-shaped porch upon its banister or if there is no banister upon the wash table a bucket of water in its gourd a tin pan soap and towel wait to serve the

Morning toilet the towel will hang on a folding rack fixed to the wall this rack may also serve long strings of red peppers drying in the air a bell post Rises up near the kitchen to ring the boys in from the field at dinner time and this would be 12:00 noon this is

Another uh thing that has become completely destroyed dinner is at 12:00 noon supper time is in the evening dinner is at 12: supper’s in the evening I can’t tell you to amount of times that I have confused people even in our own part of the world you say dinner they

Think you’re supposed to be talking about the evening meal it is the midday meal in the back behind the kitchen is the smok house and several ouses iron kettles for washing tilt to one side in the ashes of an old fire some distance away an ash Hopper made from a hall log

No longer in use lies up against the buggy house having gone the way of the kitchen fireplace the life for soap and comedy making is now bought in town Before Dawn the roosters and the farmer feel the tremendous silence chilling and filling the gap between

Night and day he gets up makes the fires and Rings the rising Bell he could arouse the family with his voice but it has been the custom to ring the bell so every morning it sounds out taking its place among the other bells in the neighborhood each according to

His nature gets up and prepares for the day the wife has long been in the kitchen uh when the boys go to the barn some of the girls help her while the farmer plans the morning work and calls out directions then he talks about the importance of the milk cow on the old

Farmstead oh yes industrialism gives an electric refrigerator bottled milk and dairy butter it takes a few minutes to remove it from the ice to the table while The Agrarian process has taken several hours and is spread out over two or three days industrialism saves time this is is so important industrialism

Saves time but what is to be done with this time the milkmaid can’t go to the movies read the sign boards and go play bridge all the time in the moderate circumstances of this family deprived of her place in the home economy she will be exiled to the town to clerk all day

If the income of the family can afford it she remains idle and therefore miserable oh so beautiful oh this is so good and he continues he continues he talks about the daily diet that people had um oh it’s just beautiful anyway I The Agrarian South okay here we go The

Agrarian South therefore whose culture was impoverished but not destroyed by the war meaning the Civil War the great unpleasantness the war of Northern arrogance and its aftermath should dread industrialism like a pising snake for the South long since finished its pioneering it can only do violence to its provincial life when it allows

Itself to be forced into the aggressive State of Mind of an earlier period and L goes on eventually and he has a very famous quote where he says a farm is not a place to grow wealthy it’s a place to grow corn and so it’s just ridiculous if you

Just sit around and think about how stupid modern society has become we spend so much money on junk that doesn’t matter and then we have time and we don’t know what to do with it we sit around and Fiddle with our hands people need front porches again people don’t

Sit on front porches and talk to one another they don’t talk to their neighbors we live in these isolated little atomistic individualistic uh homes where we don’t know what’s happening outside of the Four Walls of our house and part of that has to do with the fact that modern life

Itself sucks and we don’t want to know what’s going outside the four walls of our house but I think there is still a chance where differences can be made and it can be made at home uh and simply by people learning to be more responsible for their everyday things the small

Little everyday things anyway I’ve already talked enough we’ll continue this conversation next time but for the time being I’m going to go figure out uh uh if I can help the wife with anything because we lost power I may need to go see what in the world I can do to help

Her but uh tune in next time this is a conversation we’re going to continue and and I’m just going to keep talking about it as long as you keep listening this is Alan harlson thank you for stopping by