Hello, welcome to the theology podcast. It's great to have you with us today and we are podcasting once again from flatbed pizza here in South Windsor, Connecticut. And we enjoy this place. It's a great atmosphere for us and we hope that you'll enjoy today's show. But anyway, the gang's all here. So when we introduced ourselves and then we'll get into the subject of the day when I'll go to my left. Okay? That doesn't mean I'm a leftist. I'm just sitting somebody has to beAre the most people story to left Chris? Let's be real. Yeah, once upon a time. I was I left this long long long time against right as most children are so and just before you know, before I introduce myself, there is very fine. Beer here and pizza as well. So I've right so just to throw that out there Tom Price. I'm a systematic Theologian and Christian ethicist and I do teach both and I inclined Sunshine Amy European historian professor of history at Central Connecticut State University and Senior fellow at the Colson Center for Christian worldview and I'm CR Wiley the senior pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Manchester and I'm the author of the household nor for the cosmos. Anyway today. We're going to be talking about someone who has been very influential in my thinking. It's my day. If you haven't you haven't figured that out and the the person I want to talk about is Robert Nisbet. Now the reason why I was prompted to think a little bit about nisbett and how he's influenced. What I've done is because I came across an article in Chronicles and I Chronicles is it's a great magazine that's been around for for a while and it's a it's a Paleo conservative publication and and as we get into this a little bit, maybe we'll be able to help our listeners understand. that a little about the different strands of conservatism because Nisbet is definitely a luminary in the world of paleo conservatism or social conservative thought intellectual thought now this bit was a giant in his time and produced a number of books that are really important, but the book that influenced me is a book entitled The Quest for community and it was a recently republished by Isi and it has an introduction by Russ too hot in the colonists over at the New York Times and so I bought it but I but I already had a copy from days gone by and I couldn't find it. So I bought this one. So I you know, and then I read it again and marked it all up. But this bit was a sociologist and the places he taught were pretty significant, you know, he was at Berkeley taught at Berkeley taught at Arizona then He was at Columbia and then he was the dean and vice Chancellor at the University of California Riverside. So this is a guy, you know, that no one could ignore because of the place that he occupied within the world of Sociology. But also in the world of sort of political and philosophy because he was kind of an old school kind of sociologist Emile. I know durkheim kind of person, you know or or you know other sociologists who didn't limit themselves to number crunching and statistics like a lot of the guys seem to you know want to do what it wants sort of limit themselves how they limit themselves today with their potentials to being scientists, you know what I mean? But so in this bit, you know as I noted request for community and he was a good buddy with Russell. Kirk now Russell Kirk is a fellow that was a very colorful person and he was famous for a book you in. He wrote entitled the conservative mind which came out I think in the early 50s and really put Russell Kirk on the map, but Kirk and Nisbet were like, I noted a couple of luminaries in the Paleo conservative world now to give folks a little bit of little bit of a of a framework for understanding what I mean by paleo conservatism when we think of conservatism most people would are what, you know, you might refer to what might be referred to as sort of knee-jerk conservatives Common Sense conservatives conservatives who watch Fox News people who just think how can anyone believe such nonsense when they hear progressives or marxists, you know say nonsense, you know, so so they're good folks, but they're more kind of operating from kind of an emotive and unreflective, you know Outlook now when you get into the sort of intellectual the intellectual sort of, you know, world of conservatism you discover that there are different camps or different sort of outlooks. So libertarianism, you know is an Outlook that you know is often associated with people like an r and so forth. And it's very individualistic. And so it's often materialistic and even atheistic but it's all about, you know, efficient economic systems and people pursuing their own goals and not being interfered with by the gut, you know by the government and there are a number of things about, you know, the things that Libertarians support that other conservatives support, but then there are also some important Divergence has then we could talk. Talk about you know, something get some folks refer to as Classical liberalism, which is a little odd to say that classical liberals or conservatives. But but when we think about Classical liberalism were essentially talking about people who were influenced by Enlightenment thinking and still sort of, you know, look at the individual list sort of the basis of the social order everything kind of boils down and and classical Liberals are people who often you know, lionize Certain rights, you know, this is kind of what Weds oftentimes Libertarians with this type of classical liberal. Right? Is this kind of Center on the individual right? Even though there's differences that kind of brings them without oftentimes knowing it into similar political territory. It's also worth noting that the American Founders were essentially classic liberals. That's right. So in the context Of American culture a liberal is a conservative. That's right. That's right. Yeah, you have to go back over to the content back to right across the pond. If you go across the pond to Europe, that's a liberal it there. This goes back to ideas of free market economics Smith Liberties of the individual all of those kinds of things which were part of the currency the intellectual currency in the enlightenment the late 18th century, right? So So yeah, that's a great in so, you know when we talk about classical we're talking about people like, you know, Adam Smith. We're talking about Thomas Jefferson or even Benjamin Franklin people that you know warm the hearts of many American conservatives and just kind of throw out there this little note these would maybe be on the same page with a traditional Christian in terms of the significance of a lot of Institutions that have gotten us to where we are but oftentimes a class Typical liberal in other ways would often undermine those very yes, so we will and that's exactly what Nisbet gets into. Yeah. So so what we mean by that is, you know, say a person like Benjamin Franklin's no Benjamin Franklin will defend Christianity on utilitarian grounds. Not on its truth. You know, he won't say Jesus was actually the Christ or the Son of God. He'll say people who believe that tend to save their money, you know tend to do further grata. Case intend to work hard, you know, and so therefore attack really a certain religion is a positive. You know, it's a social good because it contributes to social stability and personal responsibility and those kinds of things but you know, you know, it's not necessarily true because it's just true. It's in a non it's useful. It's yeah. Yeah choose it's not uselessly true, which is a good thing as well see later. That's right. Now, you know in my experience most of the social conservative sort of knee-jerk or common sense conservatives that I know are actually conservative at a deeper level than Libertarians are classical liberals. But but they tend to gravitate toward libertarianism or Classical liberalism because that's all they know and that's and they are times to only be the expression that's on offer. Yeah. That's the only thing that they hear about and they know, you know, it's sort of like the the enemy of my enemy is my My friend, yeah kind of think. So those wackos who are protesting The Ant and the antifa people all that kind of stuff. I don't like those people and neither does an Ran So and ran must be great. Yes. This is you know, so but there is another strain or thread of conservative thought in the west that is referred to often as paleo conservatism or social conservatism and Russell Kirk who, you know wrote for National Review. You and was a pretty significant and a very colorful person by the way, he had a sword cane and they're talking about that kind of he never drove. Really. Yeah, in fact, he hated technology so much that when he discovered that his daughters had snuck a television into the house. He went to the tower in his house and threw it out the window. See see a lot of people don't get this. I mean, this is similar will talk to you know, we also tell that Roger Scruton a lot of people think of, you know conservatism. Is this weird type of ultra consumerist right indulgent exploiter of Nature and everything else when classically when we understand what it is to conserve and a real conservative and I'll save it as a Christian is someone who is conserving the goods of the created order not saying they don't need Redemption just talking about the the preservation of that which is has been given as gift one sees that there there is something that oftentimes has a semblance of what for example the counterculture and hippie movements pointed to a mat. Right? So you look more in continuity with with movements like that at some points and environment as well without turning it into an ideology or a new god. Well, yeah, it turns into a no for Paleo conservatives like ideology is the devil and we should probably spend a little time talking about that maybe the course of the show, but but this this Point you just made Tom brings to mind something that happened in Russell Kirk's life. That was kind of amusing. So Russell Kirk, he was a used he had a doctorate but he was a man of letters. He didn't you didn't actually teach in a car in a university setting or anything. He just felt that higher education has become industrialized. It's right. And so when any had the means the monetary, you know resources to kind of live independently like Roger Scruton, we're going to talk about a little later, but so but he He founded some journals Modern Age, you know the university Bookman did different things but he was invited to participate in debate in a debate over the environment and I think it was at some University and like Virginia isn't like and so he's responded as well. I'd be happy to do that. What am I? You know what side am I on and one of my for he said the what we're talking about the environment and you're against it and he said hold it because the environment I want to conserve the right now. We think about when we think about like Earth day, isn't it interesting that Earth day, which is this wacko sort of Earth First cult kind of thing has in the minds of many people that clip starboard a wasn't member Arbor Day was about planting trees and things like that, but it was a very conservative kind of outlook on the environment. But anyway, that kind of gets this but I do think that you're right Tom that that when We talked about paleo conservatives. There are certain ways in which paleo conservatives can actually relate to and have more in common with a certain kind of progressive. That's right particularly ones who are in favor of you know, the natural order or making sure that small communities are protected connectedness to Nature right agriculture. Yes craft, right? Yeah those definitely and so you could say that Vermont, you know, if you look at it one way is the most Progressive state in an another way. You could look at it and say it's the most socially conservative of our state's. Yeah. I think I'm doing good for now. Thanks. So now that probably sounds very weird to our to our audience. But let me give you an example of a way in which Vermont is actually peel you conservative in a way that some progressives would say cool. Billboards are illegal in Vermont. And there's one Walmart in the entire State hasn't been Walmart and wall. I can't even say that well mortifying. Yeah, so if you go to Vermont almost every town still has a general store. That's where you shop I think the word you were looking for as well mortification. Yes of the flesh. Now. What does all this have to do with Robert Nisbet? So what I'm going to do is just read a little bit from is bit. And I think we can just sort of Freewheel it here and react to the things that Nisbet says and I'm going to be reading from the Quest for Community now give a little bit of background on how this It has influenced me. Well, I mean, I mean, let me say what I'm going to say for a little later because at this point I want to just read a few selections, maybe two or three selections from the first chapter of the book the questor community and the and the title of the first chapter is the loss of community. So here's the first sentence in the first chapter quote one may paraphrase. Raise the famous words of Karl Marx and say that a spectre is haunting the modern mind the Specter of insecurity. Now, we know from The Communist Manifesto what Mark said is the Specter of Communism, but this is a sort of interesting inversion because if there was anybody who is the anti commie thinking guy it was Robert Nesbitt now now what news bed is getting at Is that if you know in the modern world, the individual is has had the traditional supports Stripped Away the supports of you know, a functional family supports of a healthy vibrant local community that the support of the of a church or a parish that actually did stuff Versailles leadership virtuously. It's all these things are gone in the modern world. Now, here's here's another or here's another quotation from the loss of community the first chapter of the Quest for Community quote. All of these words is, you know listed a set of of terms. So let me give you the list individual change progress reason and freedom. Okay, those were the words that he lists and he says all of these words reflect the temper of mind that found the essence of society to lie in the solid phase. Act of the discrete individual autonomous self-sufficing and stable and the essence of History to lie in the Progressive emancipation of the individual from the tyrannic torana trennis tyrannous. I should say tyrannous on to say tyrannosaurus, but I think most individuals want to be liberated from trying to say this is a real issue. Jurassic Park, sorry, sorry folks. Kills me. Anyway, let's go back go back to rubber news, but they're just been a number of people have done subscribers. Let me go back and read this again. Anyway, all of these words reflect the temper of mind that found the essence of society line the solid fact of the discrete individual autonomous self-sufficing and stable and the essence of History to lie in the Progressive emancipation of the individual from tyrannous and irrational status is handed down from the past. So, you know, for example, you know, what we do with now is you know, the patriarchy Key, which is essentially, you know the father who is representing the traditional understanding of the household in other words as a functional institution is now considered rather, you know, instead of being a benefactor instead of being essential someone who's in the way. Yeah Tom a problem. Yeah problem two children problem two women problem to homosexuals a prominent all these Of people if we can just get the patriarch out of the way, then these people will be free to Define themselves to be themselves. Now now there's a lot we could say about that, but that's that's one of the things he's getting at what I'm struck with here is the in part of this is just what I've been teaching today what one of the things I'm struck with here is that you know when you look at Metaphysics when you look at the the problem of universals, right which in a nutshell is the analogy I always use has leaves on a tree all the leaves are different but somehow we've got one word to describe the whole lot of them. Each of them is a leaf but no two of them are alike. So how do unite unite the particulars into the universal. What's the relationship between them and they're basically classically there are two approaches one of them starts with universal and goes to the particular the other goes with starts with the particular and goes to the university. Whistle either way, both are real. It's just the question of what's primary what when you get to Medieval nominalism, the universal is nothing more than a linguistic convention right now medieval nominalism. I'm going to disagree with a lot of people here medieval nominalism largely dies out, but there's a sort of new version of it that comes out and what strikes me is what he's describing. There is a nominalist way of Approaching Humanity interesting that there is no there are no real Universal. There's nothing that unites the particulars. They're all just a bunch of discrete things out there like leibnitz with his monads in him. So if you know all these things that are just sort of like like Adam social Adam's right a lot of the theological World followed that but what it did, is it embraced in a sense. I'm not saying full nominalism. It didn't criticize the lot of it. It did start to embrace something as we've talked about is sort of a pure nature but one of the things for them what held it together was sort of an arbitrary Act of deity. So a what we would call a voluntaristic view of God as sort of the commanding God or I'm who imposes arbitrarily not not because he's conforming to the nature of who God is but sort of his nature now is determined by the way Yaks imposes that form on thing. So in either case you have a very altered picture then than the world of universals that historic Christianity carved itself out in you have a new setting in which even even for a lot of Christians the individual in the particular starts to take on this heightened sense of almost everything and the kind of universal in that which holds things together the harmony if you will starts to be removed from the picture and if anything it's only conceived as arbitrary Right on one end or merely linguistic on another right ending on where you are whether you're Christian or not and that work to see and and where I go immediately is the relationship of the individual to the family. Yes. Where is what's primary what secondary it's actually a really tricky question. But what's the current thing love makes the family a family is a linguistic convention that we we use to designate whatever particular group we wanted to be. There is a there is a disconnect that has developed between the individual and the family so that family is not even acknowledged as anything real right? Well, that's that then what you know Russell Kirk and with Robert Nesbit we're doing was very much interested in sort of the tradition of of of the realists which was And that there is some kind of metaphysical basis. For human life that is instantiated in Social arrangements. So he's so people aren't really capable of living the way that is described here as discrete individuals that you know, you know, Tarzan, you know is fiction. That's right. It's not real it's real. Well what's real is that people, you know? I've been in relationship to other people from the start and that this is a business tremendously important and there's a whole thread or the tradition of thought, you know that we can trace all the way back to Plato through Aristotle and and even before that and it recognizes those there's an interesting thing because you know oftentimes I don't I don't think I contemplate this enough, but what what you get mimicked in in creation Genesis account is on the one hand. Everything all creation gets its everything from the Creator. It's absolute dependence. In other words there if I always tell my students the nothing that creation is not a little bit of something. It's the introduction of being entirely. Yeah. So everything we are everything we have everything is determined and defined by the Creator whether we like it or not and if we are not being self tough luck, it's a it's a gift all the way down. But then what you end up seeing is what gets mimicked in. Created order is a certain sense of dependencies that are analogous to that. What are that? Parental dependency? Yeah, relational dependencies dependencies on other aspects of creation and the amazing thing that we're not only dependent on the created in an absolute sense, but relatively we're dependent on this whole right? And so that is what this is kind of onto well definitely. Yeah, and you know to sort of fill our folks in on sort of how this, you know kind of ties into witness, but It is up to Nesbitt is just got leid to summarize, you know, sort of the essence of his thought it best. I can basically it's this the individualism that we you know, lionize and champion in the west right now strips away all of the traditional supports historically, you know that have been relied upon to take care of just letting a number of things not only psychological needs, but just Everyday physical needs that people have some day. I'm going to be an old man and I'm going to need but some people think I'm an old man already. But someday I'm going to need more help than I already need just to get through the day. So with that in mind, what is Classical liberalism have to offer the sort of the facts on the ground. Well, this is it a state the state has to fill in and and you know for all of the stuff that the state has to help to strip away or very very expensive corporate. That's right. One of them said it's done in a mechanical way. So so it would paleo conservatives, you know are advocating is is a you know, they're what they're saying is that we have these organic systems that occur naturally. I know families and local communities and do that. Tada and yeah, they yeah and yes, they do make demands on us because the only way that those systems can work as ever if everybody pulls their own weight and it does things for each other. So, you know an example would be you know, if you know an infant is utterly dependent upon his his or her parents then they take care of you know the child when the child is cute and small independent and later in life that child Returns. The favor is Duty bound. Bound to care for his parents in their old age in the inner furmity when they kind of return to infancy themselves in certain respects, which is something I recall. Is it even as a kid? I mean, you know, I'm old enough to have been across that threshold. I'll never forget as a as a child. I was lived in Massachusetts at the time instead it was born and I remember we had some friends top of the street and one morning their parents were going to take us to school for that day. I remember going into the house. They're elderly grandmother in her 90s was they're being cared for it to him take care of in that context and I just always remember thinking to myself. This is very interesting. I hadn't had the experience at the time. I my grandmother was not quite at that age where she she had the kind of moved to caregiving but it was one of the my first introductions to the way in which there was this kind of I was used to my parents taking care of me, but I consciously was aware now this family was taken care of right of An elder Elder parent and in so it showed me this connectedness very young. Right and if that wasn't the case who would pick up the slack it's right that the government would have to pick up the slack or you know, or, you know, perhaps some other institution, you know, when we think about the early church there was you know, obviously, you know the call to care for widows. But again, we're not talking about the state. Yeah, we're talking about communities. Which have faced, you know where people have face-to-face interactions. Yeah. So what Nesbitt is saying is just just the quicker you're bringing in the church is a really interesting one as well because the great heresy of America is individualism, right so it can be just me and Jesus. That's I don't need the church. I don't have to go to the church. The church is a collection of autonomous saved individuals. Yeah, rather than anybody. Body with its own identity and integrity. Right? Right. Yeah that that that issue of you know, what we theology call the ontology of the ontology of the church is a huge issue. I mean, what is what is it that defined finds the being of the church and when you have scripture language, like can the hands say to the arm, you know, I don't need you and similarly all the way down to to the organic which I think it's very much rooted in. You have this very deep connection between the way in which. All of creation has this harmonious working that is for the full development and spiritual fullness ultimately of every every particular thing of that creation. So so the the particular in the individual that the modern is so obsessed with has its completion within this whole when it tries to become an end in and of itself, you know, but you know when you seek, you know, What is it what it was the famous biblical? I'm you know, when you when you seek your own Pursuits you end up dying, but where you actually seek the kingdom you find your fulfillment right? Very similar within oh, yeah created hole which I think demonstrates that the temptation to kind of just be autonomous goes a long way that well it goes back to the beginning. Yeah, you know, that's right, you know, so so nisbet's great fear was socialism, you know, he was a student of Alexis de tocqueville. you know and the idea, you know the TOEFL, you know back in the early 19th century tocqueville when he came over to the United States from France and wrote his famous book, you know, he predicted that this is a sort of tutelary and beloved benevolent sort of apparatus the you know, the state would take over more and more of the of the functions of a healthy local sort of community or society and Essentially become a kind of benevolent mother who would just never lets anybody grow up, you know, what a state like that wants is infants, you know to just be utterly dependent upon it. Yes and socialism is essentially that it's all about you know, where you in fact, I remember when I was in Harvard Divinity School. I remember I completely blew the minds of my interlocutor is there and and offended number of them. I said, you know what you guys are all about is you You want to you want to exchange substantive freedoms? And where's the freedom to be responsible for yourself and your actions for petty freedoms so that you can screw whatever you want to screw in other words sexual Freedom. You just want you to have this libertine lifestyle without consequences and you want the government to come in to mop up after you yeah, take care of all your mess as well as criminalizing any criticism of your behavior. That's The right? Yeah, so, of course, they were all tremendously offended but actually weren't able to respond. Yeah, they never do the deal is that they're going for is unlimited Freedom by which they mean sexual Freedom enforced by rigid governmental sanctions. Yeah, and that's the end that and think about that. Oh, yeah, but that's but that's actually the inevitable sort of outworking of this kind of Understanding of things so Nesbitt would say and I know this little fat offend some of some of our you know, knee-jerk, you know conservatives some of our remaining listeners. That's right. It says is this is where Thomas Jefferson takes you yeah, in other words. This is a this is the natural outworking of this kind of Classical liberalism. So what would Nesbitt would like us to do is recover? Institutions that we are, you know casting aside because their oppressive. Yeah now that's not to say that, you know, the institutions that you know, we've relied on in the past can't go bad. I mean churches go bad church leaders can go bad father's can be bad mothers could determine we all know that yeah, but let me let me Jump Ahead a little bit in this book and he gets into this. This is a chapter entitled the problem of community and he's a Dressing this very this very thing so here he says but the decline of effective meaning and what he's getting at here. Is he saying that you really can't have you no meaning without institutions and that so that's kind of the background here. Now, I don't think many modern people think that way at all. I think that people think that we just make up meanings and institutions get in the way I think in a weird way. I don't want to go off on this but I think in a weird way if it can Stein was trying to Recover something of that interesting that this this associate this social meaning the institutional meaning. Yeah is what GE GE rep sense to the reference and I think that this bit yes, you will see that here. So Tristan he says but the decline of effective meaning is itself a part of a more fundamental change in the role of such groups as the family and the local community at bottom social organization is a pattern of institution institutional functions into it. Which we are woven. We numerous psychological threads of meaning loyalty and interdependence. The Contemporary sense of alienation is most directly perhaps a problem of symbols and meanings and it is also a problem of in the institutional functions of the relationships that ordinarily communicate integration and purpose to individuals and that's a lot that's a pretty difficult sentence, but he goes on to explain what he's getting at and any society the concrete And devotions of individuals tend to become directed toward the association's and patterns of leadership that in the long run had the greatest perceptible significance in the maintenance of life. Now, I'm going to stop here and just interject today. Most people don't even know who their local representative is, you know at the Town level or at the state level, but everybody is completely obsessed with Trump. That's right. So What does that say that that says that we don't really believe that local institutions or even at the state level, you know that those folks are really doing anything terribly important. The thing that really is important is the federal government and who's running it and it's interesting in Connecticut. It's not so much that the governor isn't doing terrible anything terribly important. It's he's doing things that are terrible. That's Connecticut. You know what you're talking about. I was speaking one of the institutions I teach yet locally and I had one of the Catholic Worker movement guys. Come on. Yeah, we know there he left wing. Yeah, orbis book sorbus books guys, but one of the interesting things he did say and this is what I always say is that that actually historic classical whether it be Christian or conservative oftentimes as facilities with certain things these people say he said exactly the same thing. He said everyone's obsessed with the the big symbol. They don't realize that it's the particular in the local that is where all the shifting and shaping happens. Yeah, and so, you know, they maybe they've learned that to experience because nothing's moved with their ideals other but if you notice I mean, I've noticed legislation passed here where I only heard about it on the radio and I never heard about it anywhere else and it was already when it was being passed and it wasn't for the good of anyone. Yeah, but that's because those people who recognize that the pressure is Here in the particular. Well, this is why Kayla conservatives are kind of funky because I've known several paleo conservatives who don't drive. Yeah. They just you know what the interesting thing. Is that other thing no kidding. He told the classes. They don't need a car. Yeah, here is a leftist Catholic social worker. He's convincing the youth they don't need to have an automobile. Yeah. Well, I have a friend who's about as far right as you could possibly get. Yeah named David Trimble hee hee. He's he lives the in downtown Boston precisely because he doesn't want to have to drive drunk and and Russell Kirk didn't drive Ray Bradbury didn't drive the famous science fiction writers wrote Fahrenheit. What's funny about driving Obsession on both sides, but what they're saying is in a sense is that you know, the ambulatory the peripatetic. Yeah that that the fact that human scale matters. Yeah that you know what we're able to sort of Understand at a sort of intuitive and sort of experiential level is limited interesting. Yeah, and it's interesting Roger Scruton will talk about often a lot of the significant Architects that have done the best work in terms of building Community is wrapped around creating as thetic communities on the human scale. Yeah human skill I think is a very important that both the physical and the institutional level the interesting thing about this I find myself thinking about my time in Europe. And in this sense London for example is not built on a human scale is right. It is just simply too big. I mean, yeah anybody who's been there Paris is built on a human skin interest Paris is a city that is made for walking. Yes. Yeah, and so a certain parts of Boston Are Made For Walkin. Yeah, but when you get to the newer part They're not. Yeah the further away you get from Beacon Hill the the less, you know sort of pedestrian friend really kind of friendly gets. Well. Let me read you another part another paragraph here another few lines from the problem community in the Quest for Community by Ribbit missed it. He says quote our present crisis lies in the fact that whereas small traditional associations founded upon kinship Faith or locality are still expected to communicate to individuals the principal moral and psychological. A logical gratifications of society they have manifestly become detached from positions of functional relevance to the larger economic and political decisions of our society. I think I'll have a Conehead. That's the Stout. No, that sucks. Yeah, I have another code right? So he goes on to say family local community church and the whole network of inference in formal interpersonal relationships that have ceased have ceased to play a determining rule in our institutional systems of mutual Aid welfare education Recreation and economic production and distribution yet despite the loss of these manifest institutional functions. Yes, and the failure of most of these groups to develop any new institutional functions. We continue to expect them to perform adequately the implicit psychological or symbolic functions in the life of the individual now that that's a mouthful but let me just sort of play. It's sort of, you know, sort of a break it down for for for folks. So what he's saying is we still expect family to provide a lot of meaning in our lives. But we don't expect family to do anything. So in other words, we want family to be a warm emotional sort of Safe Haven, you know a Haven in a heartless world. That was a book that Christopher lash wrote. He expressly can, you know, criticizing the tendency of modern people to think about households in that sort of sentimental way but in and yet we don't even eat dinner together, that's right. We don't eat dinner together and but you know as No, because we've talked about it many times, you know, the pre-modern household did everything it was education. It was health care. It was occasional training. It was productive Enterprise. It did everything. So in a situation like that in a household where you're actually, you know, relying on the household to survive the patriarchy is hugely important and respected and obeyed because to to not obey and not respect is Death literally death and and I think that you know, I mean I you know, I don't want to take it fully in this direction, but I think part of the economic strain that most families put themselves under and then end up becoming servants to our results of the fact that all these things have been handed over. Oh, yeah, two Alternatives that that basically take the the group the Revenant. Thank you. They take the revenue that People have and they offer such a minimal answer to those things that a household traditionally our family and the community could have actually handled in a much more comprehensive and significant way and so they're handing over all of that to someone who not only is taking everything they basically have but giving him something very minimal in return for its a false security what you think about for example the costs. Yeah that you know, we that are that you are. You experiencer you pay and when you put your you know, your parents into a nursing home. Oh, yeah, I know that sometimes because of the medical requirements the person needs access to the kinds of things that only a nursing on provide but it was prior to that you were talking about tens of thousands of dollars, even on a monthly basis then people that have to pay for the services that but if you just brought the guy home or The woman home and you know, there were people who are caring for this elderly person in the household you would actually have you know, the human connection and you would have obviously kind of a subsistence economy wouldn't be handing over dollars. Well even accused in that human connection played a lot of people don't realize the significance of it. For example, you know, I just I had some teeth work done. My insurance will pay 80% of certain things. I have to pay out of pocket the rest. All right an astronomical amount of money for something that really is about a 15 minute. Yeah giant course, you got to have the tools to take but what happens is it's so flooded with all these other things protecting, you know, you know protecting insurances and I'm all of these things and of course the upside is it protects the patient to the downside is what used to be Provided by the mere care for someone else within a community. It's now have to be has to be basically paid for every time you've got something done. So whereas in a community that was close-knit organically between families Community Church and the like that care was more natural. It was more organic. So therefore you didn't have to have a special set of insurances and protections in place that that that malpractice was going to take. Yeah, right. They were going to do the best they could for you. Because they were going to do the best thing they could for you and the value system was connected to that. Now. You don't know. I mean, are you just a number merely? Do you need that root? Canal? I don't know. I'm not someone you know, I don't I don't know. I don't know if I did right and so you have all these extra costs get flooded into what normally and and could be dealt with in a much a much more humane way for everyone involved in much. So if I were to summarize Nisbet, Andy and Beyond Is bit the larger paleo conservative tradition the more you stress the lip that sort of the sort of the freedom of the individual and in a moral sense. That's that's an important thing to you know to make that qualification in a moral sense. So that a person can make choices without sort of having to consider the consequences or having or having to consider the people that are affected the more of that kind of Freedom that kind of protect libertine freedom is celebrated though. The Paradox is the larger the state must become. Yeah to support people who live that way because there's no way that human beings can live the way the ideal says they are not Gods. That's right. And this is the whole point of Civil Society the idea that there ought to be intermediate institutions between the individual and the state. It's the whole point of Kuiper's Right sphere sovereignty all of these things disappear. When you move into this kind of thing. I'm glad you brought up Caper because within you know Christian, it's sort of the larger Christian tradition. There are essentially two strands of thought that recognizes and deal with this and they are in the subsidiarity and you sort of the philosophy of subsidiarity that we see within Catholicism and the within the reformed tradition steer sovereignty that we see with kite. Upper but your typical sort of mainstream megachurch Evangelical is completely clueless right completely closed get to it Terry and but let me give another example we talked about the family. Yeah. What about your town? Right? Okay, so think about it what real connection challenge to listeners? What real connection do you have to your town? Right? What does the test is, you know when I think about it? What are the things that bring it down together? Well, maybe High School football naked right? Right pleasure of Pennsylvania. Definitely in some of us kind of some of the ones like me who didn't play football but played clarinet. Maybe it's the band but but aside from that, what is the town right? What identity does it have or if you're in an urban community? What how about your neighborhood right as your neighborhood how it used to be that these things were Everybody knew each other. Yep, everybody watch out for each other everybody that helped with each other's kids everybody knew when there was a problem and work to solve the problem together. I mean this isn't this isn't I'm not trying to paint some sort of idealized past but this was the reality of how these things worked. Right? And you know, I actually wrote something for the Boston Herald years ago on this very theme is entitled amateur police are quickly disappearing and it was basically this idea that you know you And in the old neighborhood, you know, you had that that fussy and nosy woman who spent all her time at the window watching the kids on the street. So probably that woman was despised or at least feared by the kids by the kids, but think she was actually appreciated by the other mothers because she would probably get on the phone and say, you know Johnny, I just saw him. Yeah do this kind of thing so so but this is the thing about community. When it's really working in the way it should and that is if there are irritants and I suspect that some of the people who don't want to go back to that world are our people who don't understand that we can't have a world without irritants that there's always going to be something. So the question is what's lost and what's gained who's the one we end up, you know, when we lose that and we lose the the tight-knit neighborhood where everybody kind of knows everybody and there's a you can let your Could you just open the door the front of your your Brownstone and you know a little Bobby can run out into the street and play for hours and you're not have thinking about them. We've lost that and we instead we've replaced it with helicopter parenting where a parent which is Merced which is once again an atomized. Yeah individualistic way of looking at things which well, it's a complete breakdown of all of these kinds of values that used to be taken for granted. Yeah, I would jump on my bike when I was a kid. I imagine something similar for you Glen you Tom and I was gone. Yeah, he's just gone till the evening today by my thing was the street light came on at six o'clock in the evening. That was time to come up. Yeah. Yeah that is you know, it was funny. You know, like I remember Mike one time. I was like, maybe six and my mother was Kind of freaking out because I decided that six years old that you know, I didn't want to go the way to school that would require me to like, you know, stay in the lines of the crosswalks and then I just cut through people's backyards you had your way. Yeah kind of okay and but you know, even with that, you know, I was I was just I just, you know, we talked about free-range child. I might childhood was like like the Serengeti baby. Yeah, and I was just out there and I had a very conservative home but part of that was balanced by that a very similar thing a gave us that kind of confidence and space to kind of pursue life at a very young age in ways that not even conceivable now. Yeah, I mean we've got which and I think it's because we had a we had a way of thinking about Freedom. Yeah, and it's a sort of a To do that we had inherited a way of thinking about Freedom that was sort of bound up with responsibility. Yeah. Yeah and also in and sort of compatible with Community. Yeah. Yeah. Now today we don't think that either responsibility or Community are helpful. In fact, we think of those things as hindrances to our expression and that's what's hurt. I mean I evaluate with goes on. I mean, I have teenage a teenager and They evaluate how discombobulated they are with with life. And a lot of it is because these these nets aren't there and these things that were you know, I remember Rowan Williams was called them kind of lost icons. I think it was a good time. He's per amp social parameters that gave us a sense of where the limit is and what can be transcended what can't be and so they were guidelines guidepost signpost. If you will they're gone for them. The family has been is taken away. The community has been taken several the whole burden. Placed on the individual to realize everything their identity their sexual. I mean everything is now go put on them and they're bearing a burden that is not meant for the individual to bear. It's meant for the whole and that's what when it gets ripped out of the hole. Then it comes something that I think is why we have identity politics. That's right people submerge themselves in these sort of crazy. Yeah things. Yeah, and and the real oppression is that Yeah, it said that the left Vision that kind of the vision that kind or you know, it's common It's a combination. I don't just want to blame it on the ledge kind of the whole modernist version. Yeah, that place is the the the autocratic Freedom or out there is another term for it autonomous for the yeah autonomous and and it was something that kind of basically puts the whole burden on the individual it creates this whole thing this monster. And and it is it's you know it in there isn't anything to celebrate in that when people talk about freedom of the individual to pursue whatever they want. That's not a good thing. No. Yeah, and that's exactly what with Nisbet was was concerned with and you know the opening sentence of the book, you know insecurity. Yeah and what loud Classical liberalism to kind of flourish in and do its thing is because it was trying to actually balance. Lance some space for the individual that was a good thing, but it was trying to balance that with what it inherited from the kind of moral order the families the social structure even christened them in a in a very interesting way with still framing shirt. The judeo Christian worldview was still shaping it. So so for a lot of people, you know, the whole goal is just to get back to a culture that has the judeo Christian worldview, but really that isn't that isn't Enough because it doesn't it doesn't deal with the anthropology that's been fun covid basically thrown at us with with the enlightenment. All right. Let me let me just wrap up this upper kind of getting to the point where we can wrap the show up when I think about you know, my work, you know the stuff I've done on the productive household and you know, my books, you know man of the house and you know household work for the cosmos when I think about you know, what were the Where were the the influences intellectually that help me or informed that the this project that I haven't been involved with? Nisbet's one of these guys and and and this particular passage. I'm about to read was was seminal for me in this respect. It was one of those passages that you know, I'm sure you've had similar experiences where you like. Wow. Yeah, my whole my whole way of thinking is just been transformed this this Passages it. So here it is. We are told by certain psychologists and sociologists with that with its loss of economic legal functions. The family has been freed from all that is basically irrelevant to its real nature that the true function of the family the cultivation of affection the shaping of personality and above all the manufacture of adjustment. Is now in a position to flourish illimitably to the greater glory of man and Society in a highly popular statement. We are told that the family has progressed from an institution to companionship. Okay, so now but he goes on to say but as or Ortega, it cassette are cassette. I don't know how to pronounce that name. It's written quote people do not live together merely to be together they live together to do. Something together. That was that's what hit me like a ton of bricks to suppose that the present family or any other group can perpetually vitalize itself through some indwelling affectional tie and the absence of concrete perceived functions. It's like supposing that the comrade comrade Lee or the comradeship and the ties of mutual Aid which grew up incidentally in a military unit. Well long Outlast the condition in which war is plainly and erecta irrevocably banished. Applied to the family the argument suggests that affection and personality cultivation can somehow exist in a social vacuum unsupported by the determining goals and ideals of Economic and political Society. But in hard fact, no social group will long survive The Disappearance of its Chief reasons for being and these reasons are not primarily biological but institutional unless knew it institutional functions are performed by a group Family Trade union or church. It's psychological influence will become minimal. This is why I think that people don't grieve like they used to grieve you and the old days people would agree for weeks because when the father died it was bad, I mean really bad it changed everything and Not just a father and a member of the household is doing functions and every day you're confronted with those functions that somebody else now has to step up and do and you are reminded again of the loss. That's right. And you probably felt gratitude at a deeper level, you know for what they did when they were alive. He'd say. Wow. I didn't know that Dad did that to wow, we relied on him for so much well, and it's interesting. I mean I came at a very transitional time to I mean, I kind of grew up 70s 80s and on the one hand. I had very traditional in terms of what this country thinks of traditional family. My dad was very hard worker up until College. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and so a lot of functionality there, but there was never I mean we had chores to do there was never really a lot more mean. It was very much our world and there was a lot of imagination development we read Ed pursued a lot of things there's a lot of structure for that. We played a lot of creative freedom but on the other hand, I think the seeds of autonomy where rooted there too because it had already part of a shifted world and that really started to show itself right around adolescence. And I think that was the time at which that generation kind of gave us space rather than helicopter. And now it's probably the opposite right and like I said, I don't know if fully how to evaluate it I am what I am because of that and they were you know, and there are things there but yet I don't think it's the same as a kid today. For example that it's sort of 1819. They don't have what I had still a more solid social structure that defined which way you aimed your actions, right and you're in your dispositions and so they don't know what to do. I still knew what to do even though and I think that's that was the advantage of that transition. Phases there was still there was still a lot of structure there. It's not there anymore than that. I'm aware of we're very thinly yeah, it's so it's so interrupted by technology and yeah, just the hectic sort of case of life and that's kind of--yeah the utilitarianism and and then just this the kind of that, you know, childhood and Adolescence isn't about cultivation or it's only about cultivation towards social engineering in the Left that isn't about well. Yeah, Tony Tony Iceland gets into that all the time. Nice. Yeah, you know we should wrap it up now. I think we've gone about as long as you should go anything you want to say if you conclude Glenn. Yeah. I'm intrigued by this side. This is my first really significant encounter with Nisbet this notion of community or family or church or something as an entity that is more than It's utilitarian that has its own independent existence under God. These kinds of ideas. I think are really powerful and I think that they're really important. I'd really like to pursue this some more in connection with the church. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I think similarly. I mean, I think our doctrine of creation especially Genesis and what you're dealing with their as we talked about in previous episodes compliments this a lot. This is sort of a fleshing out of that. I don't know Nesbitt Allah but a death only want to kind of pursue it more and he also is a he was also very suspicious of Socialism or communism. She saw a sort of perverted forms of what he was up to. So that would definitely be worth I think even visiting again. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He definitely saw those as a sort of a mechanistic sort of replacement for the organic the God and given. No. Anyway. Well, let obvious wrap it up like that. But so thanks a lot for listening theology podcast we Really appreciate your support. We've got you know, I know a lot of folks out there who listen to us each each episode and and the number of folks have reviewed. Our shows are our podcast on iTunes. We appreciate that and other folks, you know contribute to offset any expenses of this show. We appreciate you for doing that. But anyway, thanks again for listening to One More episode with of the theology podcast by final.
In today's show Chris introduces Glenn and Tom to the work of sociologist and paleo-conservative Robert Nisbet. Nisbet was a sociologist and professor at Columbia, and his work reflects a time when sociologists were liberally educated and could draw on the thinking of the likes of Alexis de Tocqueville and Edmund Burke as well as classical philosophy and theology. Nisbet's best known work, The Quest for Community had a strong influence on Chris's thinking. It is particularly evident in Chris's book, Man of the House. During the course of the conversation the Pugsters discuss the various schools of thought that are often thrown together under the label "conservatism": libertarianism, classical liberalism, and paleo-conservatism. Seeing as most listeners are unfamiliar with the last of these labels, and that it is also the school of thought Chris, Tom, and Glenn most strongly identify with, they spend some time defining each while explaining why paleo-conservatism is actually genuine conservatism. Here are some helpful links for further study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nisbet, The Quest for Community, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoconservatism    ---   Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-theology-pugcast/support 