I live on the first story of an apartment building. Above me lives a lesbian couple. I know next to nothing about them. They’ve never bothered to introduce themselves. The few times I’ve knocked on their door, to give them a package they missed or something similarly menial, I’ve been treated in a rather cold and impersonal manner.
I see their last names and initials on the box beside mine when I check the mail. I occasionally pass them by chance in the hallways. Usually, they are heading out together with their small and unruly dog. From time to time, if I am playing bass heavy music, I’ll get a yell through the ceiling to turn it down. The walls in my apartment building are paper thin, but I’ve yet to see them come downstairs to address me directly.
Strangely, I’ve never really felt strongly enough about them, in anyway. To feel anything but indifference about them seems foreign. If I had to pin an emotion on it, I’d call it pity rather than hate. They are clearly an unhappy people.
I try to think about the path lead them to where they are now. The choices and circumstance that has brought them to that apartment above me. From the looks of it, they’ve been there for many years before I moved in last Spring. I try to see where they might be going, what drives them to act they way they do, and only draw blanks.
I see an incomplete life. I would not be the least bit surprised if I were to come back after 15 years (hopefully long after I’ve moved on), and find nothing of value. I see them still living in the same cramped apartment with another dog of similar stature and equally questionable manners. They’ve gotten older and fatter. The best change that has happened in their life is that they have a flatter, bigger TV.
Perhaps, this is the future for most modern young people. I can’t help but see it as a dead end. The lesbians are living the modern dream. They live in a big city. I’m sure they have unique jobs they can brag about to their friends. They are prolonging any semblance of a normal life for years to come. They are hip as they come by modern standards.
Their lifestyle has been put forth by modern society as something for young women to strive for. Their grandmothers had completely different hopes and aspirations for their lives. It’s had a profound affect on society as a whole. In the last 50 years, modernity has completely changed half of the population views success.
Convincing young women that their ancestors did not think women were important is one of the greatest lies of the modern age. The disasters that this mindset has wrought are unparalleled. It could not be farther from the truth. Any of ancient society that did not make full use of half of its citizens would have been easily outpaced by its rivals. Even the most war-like and masculine centered societies such as Sparta had a sacred place for their women.
Aristotle explains:
The old mythologer would seem to have been right in uniting Ares and Aphrodite, for all warlike races are prone to the love either of men or of women. This was exemplified among the Spartans in the days of their greatness; many things were managed by their women. But what difference does it make whether women rule, or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same.
– The Politics, Book II
Modern ideas on gender were never intended to free women. It’s effect has been the opposite. It has removed them from where they are needed the most. These changes have been disastrous for both men and women. In the best ancient societies, women played an equally essential role to men. If we ever wish to escape the desolation of modernity, good women will be an essential part of it as well.
NOVUS SÆCULUM OBSCURUM 