[Nanook is talking with Father Vincent]

Birth control is a key to modern social change

“Things are about to change drastically. The invention of BIRTH CONTROL will change EVERYTHING.”

“I think I need to slow you down a little here. You’re right. All of this is really foreign to me. I’ve never thought about any of it. Of course, why should I. I’m nowhere near even thinking about a family yet.”

“Single sentence logic, Nanook! Sure, you aren’t ready to have a family. But what about the 10 Commandments? What about the Seven Deadly Sins? What about how humans live their lives. It’s all tied together. So, you’d better start thinking about it. There’s a crisis of major proportions about to unfold in the world.”

“And all of this is due to the invention of Birth Control?”

“CORRECT! Of course, I don’t mean absolutely everything. But so much will change, that not to fully understand the impact of birth control will throw society on its head.”

Birth control destroyed fraternal groups

“OK. So give me some examples of what changes you think are going to occur because of Birth Control.”

“Before birth control, people still wanted to limit the number of children in a family. This would lead to a lot of sexual stress in relationships. The sex drive in humans is EASIER to control if it is totally shut down and sexual energy is routed into other channels. To deal with this, society evolved the practice of GAMES and MEN’S SOCIAL CLUBS. Marriage was largely a legal arrangement where men worked, brought home the paycheck, and went out to the club.

Birth control will NOW change all of this. Both men and women will have higher expectations for sex in the relationship. This will lead to a higher expectation for male-female companionship in the marriage. That will bring higher emotional stress into the relationship as men and women actually try to communicate with each other. The result will be a disaster. Marriages will break down and the outside social structures built on games and social clubs will also break down. The world has no idea where it is going.

Birth control will bring women into the labor pool

Once women are able to control the number and timing of their children, they will force many social changes. Some of these are: smaller families, more women with jobs, more women in traditional male occupations like doctors and lawyers, and more women in leadership positions. Since the responsibilities for raising children will end sooner, and life spans are growing longer, the workplace will fill with middle and older age women. These women will then have a financial foundation of their own, allowing them to more easily break out of marriages.”

“Wow. These are big changes. And I think we already see how disruptive to society they will be with the Women’s Lib movement. So now what?”

Social leaders will deny the changes

“Now what? I told you, we’re on the verge of a catastrophe that can turn our society on its head. Why? Because even when all the unwritten rules about sex change, even when it becomes widely talked about in everyday media, the formal, institutional messages being fed to society will not change from the traditional rules. The so called LIARSHIP, oops, I mean ‘leadership’ of our society will still be preaching the old messages.

I’m pretty sure you were brought up largely by the old rules. So you will try to deal with the ‘modern culture of women’ with a brain full of OLD RULES. HELLO! How can this NOT tear your insides out?

The old world was run by the DOUBLE STANDARD. In the old world, look how your interaction with women would go. You would expect them to “fear” each other as rivals. You would expect both males and females to close their eyes to clandestine sexual relationships, even those that involved marriage. Men would be expected to fulfill their needs secretly while no one acknowledged that anything is going on. Women would be expected to “give in” to men and keep it a secret. Like in the Scarlet Letter, if a woman overstepped her boundaries, she would exposed and be labeled an ‘adulteress’. Her husband would divorce her and she would be stoned to death. She would be severely chastised by the community for ‘failing to provide adequate sexual relief for her husband’. The man’s role in this would just be ignored. In return for playing this game, the ‘marriage’ would be upheld and the woman would be ‘safe’. Do you want to play this game?”

“Well, actually, I didn’t know anything about this game. I was just planning on looking for a simple, quiet, conventional old ‘down on the farm’ type marriage.”

“Guess what? Sorry! You don’t have any choice in the matter. That game is GONE. BUT, DAMN IT, THE RULES OF THAT GAME ARE STILL GOING TO BE PUSHED DOWN OUR THROATS. Those rules will still be floating around inside YOUR head. And when you try to turn your mental models into action, with all the single sentence prescriptions, you’re going to think you’re in a washing machine. If you want to keep the pain and suffering away, you need to develop a very new set of rules. They must not have the built in denial and distortion mechanisms which deny human male animal needs and the new possibilities for female empowerment.”

“Whoa! This is surely NOT what I expected to encounter on my adventure in Alaska. I sure didn’t prepare by bringing ten pounds of aspirin!”

“See! You didn’t believe me when I told you Lust was a huge problem. And we haven’t yet talked about what it might mean to commit, quote, ‘adultery’ in one’s heart?”

“OK. OK. I give up. Here we go again with freewill and not-taking-any-action sins! HELP! Send me back to the safety and security of the good ol’ U. S. of A.”

At that point I thought Father V was going to start crying with hysterics. I thought, if Santa Clause, beard trimmed for the summer, ever got into a laughing spell, this is what it might look like.

“NANOOK! You’ve got it backwards. It’s the good ol’ U. S. of A. that isn’t the good ol’ U. S. of A anymore. And you can never go back to the good ol’ U. S. of A. Those people who told you that history always repeats itself – they’re LIARS! Add them to the list. Society has changed forever. Coming here is like climbing the mountain to find your guru. Let the ADVENTURE continue.”

“Oh, what a headache!”

Fraternal organizations – need to rebuild

“As I discussed with you, with the appearance of birth control, the fraternal organizations in our society will break down. These organizations played a strong role as extended family during the time when industrialization first pulled people out of the blood-line extended families. In the new society, there will be a new need for them. Their role will be to support personal development, outside the child focused extended family, along the lines of hobby interests.”