This was fascinating. Thank you for writing! To be grumpy, it sounds like Parsons' analysis is self-serving -- he is justifying, after the fact, the movement of political power away from decentralized, local business elites to centralized, credentialed managerial elites in DC and NY -- claiming it was inevitable when in fact it wasn't. Is that read unfair? What did he think about Goldwater?
“It seems like the responsibility-taking social strata has abdicated its domestic responsibility. Perhaps the social strata no longer exists.”
It exists the same place in always has in the American context, on the very local/granular level that men like Parsons fled and still do (although over time that set has shifted dramatically to the female).
It seems like Parsons is trying to ingratiate himself into the class he and other social strivers seek to make their own by justifying their half-assed efforts to function as the kind of Euro-aristocracy they aspire to, and the relief from status anxiety that likely drives the whole train.
Meanwhile the responsibility-taking strata has made itself absurd in its efforts to ameliorate its own status anxiety thru taking way too much responsibility (i.e. Promise Keepers) for all kinds of things outside their bailiwick leaving them to fail Odysseus-like at the first and foremost one: maintaining themselves as viable protectors of their families, communities, and traditions.
The "narcissism of small differences" -- Veblen noted that people envy/hate people just above/below their social strata, but are indifferent to those too far removed. So too, perhaps, with communism and American liberalism. (I tend to think of the former as "nationalist communism" while the latter is "globalist communism"; the latter won out since it was financialized.)
Another interesting strain in his thought is the bit on transitions and the heat they give off. People, groups, and movements all go through something akin to a phase transition when they're on the verge of epiphany or insanity -- when old verities (ways of organizing the moral universe) fall away, it is only natural that new possibilia are generated and then subjected to evolutionary pressure.
This was fascinating. Thank you for writing! To be grumpy, it sounds like Parsons' analysis is self-serving -- he is justifying, after the fact, the movement of political power away from decentralized, local business elites to centralized, credentialed managerial elites in DC and NY -- claiming it was inevitable when in fact it wasn't. Is that read unfair? What did he think about Goldwater?
“It seems like the responsibility-taking social strata has abdicated its domestic responsibility. Perhaps the social strata no longer exists.”
It exists the same place in always has in the American context, on the very local/granular level that men like Parsons fled and still do (although over time that set has shifted dramatically to the female).
It seems like Parsons is trying to ingratiate himself into the class he and other social strivers seek to make their own by justifying their half-assed efforts to function as the kind of Euro-aristocracy they aspire to, and the relief from status anxiety that likely drives the whole train.
Meanwhile the responsibility-taking strata has made itself absurd in its efforts to ameliorate its own status anxiety thru taking way too much responsibility (i.e. Promise Keepers) for all kinds of things outside their bailiwick leaving them to fail Odysseus-like at the first and foremost one: maintaining themselves as viable protectors of their families, communities, and traditions.
The "narcissism of small differences" -- Veblen noted that people envy/hate people just above/below their social strata, but are indifferent to those too far removed. So too, perhaps, with communism and American liberalism. (I tend to think of the former as "nationalist communism" while the latter is "globalist communism"; the latter won out since it was financialized.)
Another interesting strain in his thought is the bit on transitions and the heat they give off. People, groups, and movements all go through something akin to a phase transition when they're on the verge of epiphany or insanity -- when old verities (ways of organizing the moral universe) fall away, it is only natural that new possibilia are generated and then subjected to evolutionary pressure.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but Parsons’ “necessities” are more like a Canadian girlfriend.
In the time since his followers have taken on so many baby mammas family court about to bankrupt us all.
Great piece. In summary?
-you have been diagnosed with pathological “not-doing-your-bit”
-mcarthyites are crazy, because if they were rational they would hate Jews
One wonders what Parsons would think about the current grievance industry, or would he find them rational.
I agree that there is no one to take domestic responsibility, because there is no longer a “domestic” to care for