Know Your Place

When I was growing up I heard people say "know your place!", but like any number of things I heard growing up I have not heard the phrase for many years. Indeed as we are now always told about how equal we are, it really is counter to the revolution. Which is sad as the phrase had a point, more than one in fact.

This pretend equality is a burden that we all share. Everyone is our equal, the victim is no better than the criminal, for that is what equality means. But if everyone is equal then everyone is equally disposable. We are all interchangeable, we have no security in our jobs, in our relationships, we are treated as completely interchangeable. The truth is that people don't tell us to know our place because we no longer have a place. Once, not that long ago people did know their place, they really had a place they belonged to.

That is why Traditional Conservatives believe in social classes, we want people to have a place in life, to have some practical meaning in their life. But when no one has a place then what holds us together?

Liberalism says ideals keep us together, but only if we all accept the same ideals. Even then I seems that people are missing out on an important area of life. Nothing is permanent except the knowledge that nothing is secure. Because we have lost our place we are insecure and apprehensive. We become braggarts were every small success is trumpeted as the greatest that there has ever been. We seek to make a new place to belong, if we cannot belong because nothing is permanent then we need to create some security right here and now. In which we seek to gain comfort from our loss, but of course it is merely a substitute for the real thing. We want to belong, we want to know our place, we want to be important, we want to be needed.

When our ancestors lived in their small village they knew where they belonged, they knew their place within that community. They knew their importance and whether they were needed. But most of that has been lost to us. When people do not know their place they invent a place, they invent meaning and they try to make that important. But it's not, it is entirely artificial and people know that. They know that it has no real meaning, but what options do they have left to them?

So many social and mental health issues come down to people today not knowing their place. There is nothing to bind them to reality, because so often they are left to find their own way in the world. People are not equipped to do that, we need guidance, we need help and most importantly we need to know what direction we are heading in.

In the past people received these things and most people believed that your family was the direction you headed in. You married and had children, you created with your spouse, the future. But today if you tell people that you want to marry and start a family you are looked at as strange. Sure most people also want the same thing, but to actually say so out loud!

Most people know that in the current year that isn't really allowed, not forbidden but also not allowed. It's all about career and money now days, but that only provides part of the answer. You are not a complete person, but a damaged person, a person that doesn't know their place is of valuable. Such a person resents those who do have a place. Liberalism doesn't need to pass laws to destroy society they can allow that resentment to grow, on both sides, and then step in to solve the problem that they created.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
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