Author Topic: Should MEN work away from home 8 hours a day? (Read 6239 times)

B from A · « **Reply #15 on:** May 28, 2014, 09:26:26 AM »

Quote from: B from A

Quote from: TraditionalistThomas

Unfortunately many people look to the pre-industrial era with some sort of nostalgia and romanticism. Almost like a Disney film. Easy, "simpler" times. Nothing could be further from the truth. Life was extremely tough and difficult. People died in their 30s. If you are reading this now you are probably relaxing on a comfortable office chair. No such luxuries back then. Back breaking work from dawn to dusk.

Haven't read the original article nor all the posts in the thread, so forgive me if it was answered. But did the author or anyone else say they were "Easy, 'simpler' times"?
:confused1:

Quote
So in a way I do agree that we can't try to live in the past or build up unrealistic visions for the future, however I think we can still take an objective look at how the changes have affected family life and whether those changes are for the better or worse in the long run. Once we think about that, then we can turn our eyes to today and living in today's world but trying not to make today's mistakes.

There will always be many who cannot escape the rat race, it's so engrained in our society, but if they are able to take an objective look at it, they will be more able to offset those effects in other ways.

Well said.

oops! Sorry; when I said:

Quote

Another question, from a Catholic standpoint, is "extremely tough & difficult" with "back breaking work from dawn to dusk" necessarily a better way to save your soul than in "luxury" & "relaxing on a comfortable office chair"?

I meant to say:

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Another question, from a Catholic standpoint, is "luxury" & "relaxing on a comfortable office chair" necessarily a better way to save your soul than "extremely tough & difficult" with "back breaking work from dawn to dusk"?

Cantarella · « **Reply #16 on:** May 28, 2014, 10:22:52 AM »

Only as long as the man is able to keep intact his role as masculine protector, family privider, and responsible father. As for the provider part, this is only possible for those with successful home businesses and farmers.

Not everyone is fit for rural life and not all men will be able to provide or strive in a rural environment. There are families that are better off in the cities for a variety of reasons. There are certain careers that will require men to be far from home and that is OK. Women place is at home. Men place is not (unless he happens to be a farmer or home business owner which are few). There is an idealization of the " old good times and return to land " that taken to an extreme just seems naive and unrealistic. As a matter of fact, true Catholics are very much needed in the cities, out there in the world, (bur not of it) instead of isolated in the country leaving the whole society in the hands of the enemy.

We need Catholic men in the cities out there in the world. We need Catholic lawers, programmers, doctors, architects, economists, politicians, etc etc etc which an exclusive rural setting on does not permit. We are in desperate need of this in order to really restore Christendom.

Geremia · « **Reply #17 on:** May 28, 2014, 11:48:53 AM »

Quote from: Cantarella

We need Catholic lawers, programmers, doctors, architects, economists, politicians, etc etc etc which an exclusive rural setting on does not permit.

Programmers can work from home.

Matthew · « **Reply #18 on:** May 28, 2014, 01:05:04 PM »

Quote from: Cantarella

Only as long as the man is able to keep intact his role as masculine protector, family privider, and responsible father. As for the provider part, this is only possible for those with successful home businesses and farmers.

Not everyone is fit for rural life and not all men will be able to provide or strive in a rural environment. There are families that are better off in the cities for a variety of reasons. There are certain careers that will require men to be far from home and that is OK. Women place is at home. Men place is not (unless he happens to be a farmer or home business owner which are few). There is an idealization of the " old good times and return to land " that taken to an extreme just seems naive and unrealistic. As a matter of fact, true Catholics are very much needed in the cities, out there in the world, (bur not of it) instead of isolated in the country leaving the whole society in the hands of the enemy.

We need Catholic men in the cities out there in the world. We need Catholic lawers, programmers, doctors, architects, economists, politicians, etc etc etc which an exclusive rural setting on does not permit. We are in desperate need of this in order to really restore Christendom.

The problem is that cities have become entirely too big. Just like government has become too big.

The concept of men living together is fine. But it should be more of a VILLAGE or TOWN, not a METROPOLIS. A metropolis is not natural. Such entities only came into being in the past 100 years with the rise of the automobile.

When government becomes a distant, faceless entity, it has become too large. In the olden days a king would have GOVERNORS in each of the local provinces. You'd have a direct representative from the king, as it were.

wallflower · « **Reply #19 on:** May 28, 2014, 01:26:10 PM »

Quote from: Geremia

Quote from: Cantarella
We need Catholic lawers, programmers, doctors, architects, economists, politicians, etc etc etc which an exclusive rural setting on does not permit.
Programmers can work from home.

Yes, a rural setting doesn't exclude any of those professions. I don't know what others imagine when they speak of "rural" but it doesn't involve taking flight to the hills and never interacting with other people. There are always small towns and mid-size to large cities nearby. I am not against cities per se. It's more about their size and orientation now. The average cities of yesterday were the sizes of what, a large town or a small city now? That's still room to be human.

It's funny, they've "discovered" that horticulture is therapeutic. All those things people used to do either for a living or at least to provide in part for their families are now "luxuries", hobbies, therapeutic, relaxing: hunting, fishing, gardening, tending animals, sewing, cooking etc... There's something about those activities that is good for the soul. Even though they can be hard work they are also soothing compared to florescent lights, desks and factories.

And...they can be done as families. Not only can they be enjoyed as families but knowledge and skills can be passed down and there's interaction between parents and children. It's a very different scene from everyone splitting up at 8 AM and reuniting at 5 PM, having spent the bulk of their days (which add up to the bulk of their lives) with everybody but each other.

Don't forget that when discussing family in a Catholic setting, the ideal would include a whole lot of extended family around as well. In our own family, by the time we add up everyone's individual talents, we can provide pretty well for ourselves. That's not in view of being isolated but in view of strengthening our own family unit. If we don't look out for ourselves, who else will?

wallflower · « **Reply #20 on:** May 28, 2014, 01:29:58 PM »

Quote

I meant to say:

Quote
Another question, from a Catholic standpoint, is "luxury" & "relaxing on a comfortable office chair" necessarily a better way to save your soul than "extremely tough & difficult" with "back breaking work from dawn to dusk"?

That's a good point. Food for thought.

shin · « **Reply #21 on:** May 28, 2014, 01:48:30 PM »

Hmm? I thought it was too much sitting that was killing everybody lately? :farmer:

Matthew · « **Reply #22 on:** May 28, 2014, 02:04:36 PM »

Quote from: wallflower

Quote from: Geremia
Quote from: Cantarella
We need Catholic lawers, programmers, doctors, architects, economists, politicians, etc etc etc which an exclusive rural setting on does not permit.
Programmers can work from home.

Yes, a rural setting doesn't exclude any of those professions. I don't know what others imagine when they speak of "rural" but it doesn't involve taking flight to the hills and never interacting with other people. There are always small towns and mid-size to large cities nearby. I am not against cities per se. It's more about their size and orientation now. The average cities of yesterday were the sizes of what, a large town or a small city now? That's still room to be human.

It's funny, they've "discovered" that horticulture is therapeutic. All those things people used to do either for a living or at least to provide in part for their families are now "luxuries", hobbies, therapeutic, relaxing: hunting, fishing, gardening, tending animals, sewing, cooking etc... There's something about those activities that is good for the soul. Even though they can be hard work they are also soothing compared to florescent lights, desks and factories.

And...they can be done as families. Not only can they be enjoyed as families but knowledge and skills can be passed down and there's interaction between parents and children. It's a very different scene from everyone splitting up at 8 AM and reuniting at 5 PM, having spent the bulk of their days (which add up to the bulk of their lives) with everybody but each other.

Don't forget that when discussing family in a Catholic setting, the ideal would include a whole lot of extended family around as well. In our own family, by the time we add up everyone's individual talents, we can provide pretty well for ourselves. That's not in view of being isolated but in view of strengthening our own family unit. If we don't look out for ourselves, who else will?

Wow, that's a lot of substance in a relatively short post.

You brought up about 4 or 5 very important points, each of which could be elaborated into a full computer screen-sized post.

Very well said!

wallflower · « **Reply #23 on:** May 28, 2014, 04:10:49 PM »

Thank you! I was hoping I wasn't going off on too many tangents.

Nadir · « **Reply #24 on:** May 28, 2014, 05:12:53 PM »

Quote from: wallflower

Thank you! I was hoping I wasn't going off on too many tangents.

Not at all! For me you are the star of this show, with BfromA as a great sidekick.

By the way, I do believe that farming never killed anyone but only made them stronger in mind and body.

As for they died in their 30's, that is nonsense. You usually find that men who died young in the "good old days" died as a result of mining accidents and such, while (I would guess that) today men who die young in farming die from accidents involving mechanisation or as a result of poisonings etc.

ggreg · « **Reply #25 on:** May 28, 2014, 07:55:18 PM »

We barely remember the names of some of these diseases today, but they were once the most dreaded words in the English language: consumption (tuberculosis), pleurisy (swelling), putrid fever (typhus), quinsy (tonsillitis), and iliac passion (a particularly violent gastrointestinal disorder). Life expectancy has doubled in just the past several generations, and that’s largely because public health efforts and modern medicine have vanquished the diseases of the past.

Just think of the medical requirements you have had in you life and whether you would have you limbs and digits and all of you senses if it were not for healthcare, clean water, sewage systems and antibiotics.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/modern-treatments/amputation2.htm

shin · « **Reply #26 on:** May 29, 2014, 02:44:35 PM »

It makes me wonder if there were some good way to limit or prevent cities from developing.

There are planned communities of course..

Matthew · « **Reply #27 on:** May 29, 2014, 02:51:26 PM »

Quote from: shin

It makes me wonder if there were some good way to limit or prevent cities from developing.

There are planned communities of course..

Without industrialization and abundant, cheap oil & coal a city the size of Chicago wouldn't be feasible.

Look at the population history of Chicago:

year   rank   population

1840      92      4470
1850      24      29963
1860      9      112172
1870      5      298977
1880      4      503185
1890      2      1099850
1900      2      1698575
1910      2      2185283
1920      2      2701705
1930      2      3376438
1940      2      3396808
1950      2      3620962
1960      2      3550404
1970      2      3366957
1980      2      3005072
1990      3      2783726

Matthew · « **Reply #28 on:** May 29, 2014, 02:53:52 PM »

Quote from: ggreg

We barely remember the names of some of these diseases today, but they were once the most dreaded words in the English language: consumption (tuberculosis), pleurisy (swelling), putrid fever (typhus), quinsy (tonsillitis), and iliac passion (a particularly violent gastrointestinal disorder). Life expectancy has doubled in just the past several generations, and that’s largely because public health efforts and modern medicine have vanquished the diseases of the past.

Just think of the medical requirements you have had in you life and whether you would have you limbs and digits and all of you senses if it were not for healthcare, clean water, sewage systems and antibiotics.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/modern-treatments/amputation2.htm

The problem, ggreg, is that human beings can't by their own power vanquish suffering and death. Those are punishments due to Original Sin and God will not allow us to create a heaven on earth.

Indeed, the modern world has contributed plenty to human suffering, easily adding as much as it has taken away.

Fluoride, vaccinations, mercury, asbestos, smog, GMO food, depleted uranium, cell phone radiation, high-voltage electromagnetic radiation, countless pollutants and toxic waste coming from industry...

Even man's so-called advances in things like Agriculture actually turn out to be backwards steps that are (for instance) creating thousands of acres of desert all around the world on a yearly basis.

Sure those old diseases sound bad -- but so do all the other ways to die :)

Instead of children getting horrible diseases like Polio and dying from things like Influenza, we have children dying from Cancer and getting destroyed by Autism. How is that any better or worse?

Ladislaus · « **Reply #29 on:** May 29, 2014, 03:23:49 PM »

Yes, but what to do about it? Unfortunately, most of us have no choice.

But I think that we're MISSING the REAL problem. Even when men were close to home, they were still engaged in their work for hours at a time.

Here's the real problem IMO. Destruction of the extended families living under one roof or on adjacent properties and their replacement with the "atomic family".

Grandparents live on their own instead of being around to impart their wisdom to their grandchildren. Brothers and sisters move apart and all live in separate homes. Cousins see one another maybe once or twice a year at a "family get-together" or "family reunion" (why were they separated in the first place?). You lose a major social dynamic by just having the father+mother+kids isolated in a single suburban dwelling. Then father goes to work and leave mother+kids isolated. Then kids go to school and do various after-school activities, and mother gets isolated by herself in the home. I've seen larger rural families in Amish country where the extended families live on either adjacent pieces of property and so interact all the time or else the grandparents live under the same roof. There's an amazing, exciting, interesting social dynamic there that's completely blown away by the atomic family garbage.

I've tried to get my brothers and my sister to go in for some adjacent land, but none of them want anything to do with it. So each family has its two cars, each has its yard equipment that gets used once a week at each home ... and that's just to talk about the material waste of not being able to share things, and being too far apart to help one another out in a pinch, and too far apart for the cousins to be able to interract with one another. I see how much the children change for the better when we have these get-togethers several times a year and wonder why it can't be like that all the time. But my dolt family members are just too brainwashed by the modern lifestyles that they don't see it.