THE CURSE OF PURITANISM
The french and catholic side of my family, which is fairly large, seems to have done fairly well leading upper working and lower middle class lives, with a sprinkling of professionals across the full spectrum. I wasn’t thrilled around them as a kid because the culture gap between my (unconscious) aristocratic value system from my father’s side of the family was just too large – and many of them still spoke french or accented french.
My father’s side of the family, which is excessively puritan, seems to have produced a whole host of alcoholics and drug users. (I’m including myself in the ‘problem’ set – although I seem to have made something of myself anyway).
My sisters and I, very conscious of what alcohol had done, don’t self medicate ‘the autism’. My sister Jean and I, much like our grandmother, have developed a cheerful stoicism instead. My sister does not require ‘chemical assistance’ like I do, and I’ve learned a lot living with her about how she (and I maybe should have) handled it through life simplification and self discipline. My daughter has taken the same route. Unfortunately, I was far too competitive to choose the simple life until I realized the cost to my health.
Is it that simple: that our protestant mythos is actually harmful to our happiness, just as it has been harmful to our civilization? Has the empiricism and abandonment of the church been right, but the protestant work ethic a mistake?
I noticed the same thing in Ukraine. The traditional families had fewer commercial achievements, but generally more stable offspring and as long as they could avoid drinking too much (which tends to be caused in russia by the military culture), they seem much more functional – more like our italian families here in the Northeast (the northeast is now dominated by sicilian / southern italian / and irish culture, just like the south is dominated by the scotts irish gene pool. i think the only anglo gene pools left of any purity are in Utah and New Hampshire.
The germans did it right as well. They still remain a familial and provincial people despite their productivity. Why? They are the only people (west germans) to preserve both stoicism and the family, and ‘the oath’(piety and humilty), and martial duty.
Those are the requirements for western civilization. The problem is the germans themselves do not understand them scientifically, only spiritually. And that the postwar period has destroyed their aristocracy and opened them up to an over reaction to the nazi era – an era that was CREATED BY anglo puritanism.
And you see, that is the difference between the sickness of anglo germanic puritanism, and the perfection of our ancient stoicism. Puritanism breeds virtue signaling. It did. Everywhere. And it was this virtue signaling that destroyed western civilization through the english, french and jewish lines.
The germans almost saved us with a second scientific revolution. A scientific revolution that america was the beneficiary of, not the creator of.
The question is whether we few, we happy few, can save the germans from themselves.
And then the germans will save the rest.