The Russian custom of matchmaking was regarded as something outrageous and was laughed at by everyone, the princess included. But how a girl was to get married or be given in marriage, no one knew. Everyone with whom the princess happened to discuss it told her one and the same thing: ‘Good gracious, in our day it’s time to abandon this antiquity. It’s young people who get married, not their parents; that means the young people should be left to arrange it as they can.’ It was fine for those who had no daughters to talk that way; but the princess understood that in making friends her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who would not want to marry or who was not right as a husband.
- Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition pg 45
While musing on the Telos of a Polis, and our two topics discussed so far - that we’re founding a Polis around Religion and in doing so starting an Ethnicity… I pondered some of what that meant. Both in theory, and in what I’ve seen in my own experience.
But, in the post in between those two, So You Found A Place To Start, I want to do a “Two steps forward, One step backward” deal for those that have read it. Pinky promise that it wasn’t intentional.
When you’re founding a Polis whose binding premise is Religion, with a generational outlook in mind, that is binding disparate peoples of what is literally mutt backgrounds of what is likely to be an overall mix of Middle European descent, with some Latin American most likely, an occasional Asian or Middle Eastern, and a few African Americans. Mix and Match depending on what part of the country, Urban vs Rural, etc.
Anyways, what is the most important question to that fledgling Polis?
Is it…. How well people get along?
Eh… not really.
Is it… If everyone agrees completely on every article of Faith?
Hard no.
It is how the people in the Polity are raising their children, according to a unified conception of what they believe their Faith tells them.
Basically, adults have socialized and learned over the years how to get along with each other in disagreements in all kinds of matters.
What they have not learned how to do, or do rather poorly, is disagree over how to treat children, when children really are raised by both family and the village in union.
You can’t exactly say, “I don’t have TV’s or video games in my home, so you cannot show my little Johnny TV shows while babysitting him.” when they’re doing you a favor by watching him at all. Nor can you shut out the influences of those TV shows and the Empire propaganda if that’s what you’re concerned about.
Those children are the ones that are going to play with your children.
Go on adventures with your children.
Get into trouble with,
Break bones with,
Play with dolls with,
Chase animals with,
Look at stars with,
Chase girls with,
Giggle at boys with,
Become teens with,
Go to the altar with,
Make babies with,
Or become Priests or Nuns with,
Do business with,
Grow old with,
Pass on stories and the Faith with,
The children you meet today. In the families you meet today.
This is the same if you’re a grandparent, trying to get a son or daughter’s family to buy in to this idea. They will have to approve not only of the idea, but of the children and families in the locale in which they’ll be moving to.
My experience, anecdotally, is that those families that are in my fledgling Polis for the wrong reasons simply move away. The children leave, then the parents, and the house is sold to a new family to cycle through again. It’s a rural place, so we get “Libertarian Catholics” escaping the failing Empire, or those here for one of the small businesses, and they always move. Life is too hard to be rural unless you mean it, as
points out with his “Haves” trying to convince Have-nots for all the wrong reasons.And, like he points out, the hardest part of the Polis will be that first Generation’s goal of marriage within the Polis - courtship, dating, marriage - however the children want to pursue each other within the bounds given and the adults guide the young within the structures they set. I’m glad my children are as young as they are, and I get to let the teens of my Polis figure out the courtship stuff now, so that hopefully there is more of a structure in place in ten years by the time I have to deal with it.
So, don’t choose a Polis without solid beliefs that families are willing to sacrifice for enough that they’re doing the hard things to raise children. That they live according to the belief structure they preach. As far as I can tell, as a father of 5 going on 6, there’s nothing harder. The children let you know when you’re being a hypocrite when young.
Be gentle with the families you meet though. Look at a community over all, rather than one or two individual families. Me and my wife have seen wonderful growth - everyone is on a journey, and some of the holiest families are the ones we were most critical of, and now we are humbled in our hasty opinions. Keep in mind your own journey that has brought you here, where you’re reading, critical of your own society, your government. What have you done to be the change you want to be? So, be humble. Talk to them. See where they’re at, how the community has grown and changed, where they think it will go. What their dreams are.
I have seen people literally tour different places before they move. I encourage that, if you are serious about this and considering moving. We get visitors all the time to our area, and they talk of visiting other areas as well.
Consider both Urban and Rural environments. I consider Rural to be better in a falling Empire. I think the reasons are obvious as the three basics - Shelter, Food, Water - are easier to secure for yourself and a community, as well as building a Polis outside of Empire’s direct, easy flailing as it falls. But, I know friends and people I hold dear that I couldn’t convince to leave an Urban environment.
Either way though, remember….
Noble born Anna Karenina, Kitty, and the peasant Faleena in the song….
All would have benefitted from a Polis that had had strong morals and traditions tied to marriage and ethnicity.
It is the only way I see forward to make a lasting Polity.
‘What have you done? Here’s what: in the first place, you lure a suitor, and all Moscow is going to be talking, and with reason. If you give soirees, invite everybody, and not some chosen little suitors. Invite all those twits’ (so the prince called the young men of Moscow), ‘invite a pianist and let them dance, but not like tonight - suitors and match-making. It’s loathsome, loathsome to look at, and you’ve succeeded, you’ve turned the silly girl’s head. Levin is a thousand times the better man. And this little fop from Petersburg -they’re mad by machine, they’re all the same sort, and all trash. Even if he was a prince of the blood, my daughter doesn’t need anybody!’
- Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina Penguin Classic Deluxe Edition pg 55
Agree! We thought we were moving to a place with a strong religious center that would provide a community in which to raise our kids. Made multiple visits. Moved across the country.
We were dead wrong. Two suggestions for those considering doing the same thing:
1) Ask the awkward questions of multiple different people. We assumed too much and our guide was a liar. Had we asked a simple question to two different people, we would have known what we were getting into.
2) When people tell you something, take their actual words at face value. Don't assume they mean X. Listen to the actual words- they were spoken for a reason.
I am in the process of touring different options now, and something I would advise most Protestants is to actually visit the church you plan on making the center of the polis. Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims usually have such built in traditions that it is not necessary for them, but Protestant churches, even in the same denomination, can end up vastly different. This is possibly the most important factor with your choice.