Hot Time in the State of Franklin

Once upon a time, there was a US state called Franklin that comprised East Tennessee and Western North Carolina's mountainous regions. There are some historic sites in Johnson City, Tennessee, if you are ever passing through there. 

Prior to 1796, Tennessee didn’t exist.  The population that existed at the time and that made up east Tennessee wanted to form a state. So in 1784, they wrote a constitution, elected a governor and began business affairs. They called their new found state, the State of Franklin.

The State of Franklin was an interesting little place.... In Franklin, they never used money. They created a complicated system of barter. They also banned ministers of the gospel and lawyers from public office in their constitution.

During this time, this part of Tennessee belonged to North Carolina. When the people from the State of Franklin proposed their new home to Congress, North Carolina fought against passing their proposal.

One day I hope to see Franklin restored, as that polity makes a lot more sense than lumping mountainous Western North Carolina with the more heavily urban down-east parts. 

Treating the State of Franklin as a geographic entity for the purpose of this post, it's had an interesting week.

Asheville saw a gunfight that left one man killed by another man's illegally concealed firearm, but which will see no charges forthcoming from the local police. 

The Blue Ridge Parkway was temporarily closed, and Federal investigators brought in to investigate an improvised incendiary device found at the Folk Art Center. 

Gatlinburg saw a car careen through its crowds, injuring six. This was feared to be an act of terrorism, similar to a famous one in Nice, France and a recent one in New Orleans; it proved to be a woman who had a cardiac while driving. She was the only fatality. 

An Anniversary of Liberty

Today is of course June 6th, famously the anniversary of D-Day; but June 4-7 is also the anniversary of the Battle of Midway, which Richard Fernandez ("Wretchard the Cat") has been celebrating this year. Each of these battles, two years apart, marked the beginning of the end for one of the Axis powers. 

All Americans know about and understand D-Day reasonably well, I believe; certainly in my generation that was true. Midway is less well-known. Perhaps sea battles are harder to visualize or convey. It was just as important. In the morning of June 4th, 1942 the Japanese Navy was the best remaining after the destruction of much of our fleet at Pearl Harbor, and many of its ships were best-in-class anyway. By the close of the battle the war had decisively turned against them. There were very tough fights ahead, but the direction of the war was clear from Midway.

There was a Douglas SBD Dauntless at the Udvar-Hazy center, which occasioned a brief recounting of the Battle of Midway from my son our tour guide. There were a few points he was hazy upon that I could fill in, but overall he at least of his generation understood it just fine. 

Two Japanese carriers were sunk by one pilot, Richard Halsey Best. The battle did not cost him his life, but bad air in his plane's recycling system cost him his career: he was medically retired the same year due to lung damage. He lived to this century and is buried at Arlington. 

Hillbilly Highway to Guitar Town

Another Attempt to Explain Young Men to Democrats

 

Yeah, you know, just keep doing what you're doing. You'll be fine.

One Pass at Explaining Young Men to Democrats

There's a lot of talk about Democrats' $20MM effort to try to understand how they lost young men so emphatically. At AVI's place yesterday, I quoted a section from the famous essay "The Personal is Political."

I think “apolitical” women are not in the movement for very good reasons, and as long as we say “you have to think like us and live like us to join the charmed circle,” we will fail. What I am trying to say is that there are things in the consciousness of “apolitical” women (I find them very political) that are as valid as any political consciousness we think we have. We should figure out why many women don’t want to do action. Maybe there is something wrong with the action or something wrong with why we are doing the action or maybe the analysis of why the action is necessary is not clear enough in our minds.

That approach worked really well. If they really want to win young men, they should try exactly the same approach with the same degree of seriousness. Maybe there is something wrong with the actions they are taking, or why they are doing those actions; or maybe they need to think more clearly about the whole project.

Because my son is in the right demographic, I happen to know quite a few young men. Here is what I hear from them.

1) They are angry that their educations were useless. Democrats control teachers unions and education bureaucracies everywhere. My son explained from middle school, with me to reinforce this, that he wanted to be an engineer and needed more math. The teachers and administrators explained that there was nothing they could do: he had to take the required literature and social studies courses. The high school offered pre-calculus and calculus classes, but to get to them you had to navigate a very tight path and somehow he could never get room in a schedule between the required courses. He ended up at least a year and probably two years behind in math from where he wanted to be. 

2) Meanwhile, those literature and social studies courses were heavy on indoctrination: diversity literature, 'geography' studies that focused on the lingering effects of slavery, history that taught important figures like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman but not others who weren't considered proper role models (as if history was about teaching role models rather than how the world became what it is today). They know the schooling they have had has been aimed at breaking their spirits and making them compliant, not empowering them to succeed. 

3) They can see the political system aims to reduce them to tax farms to fund benefits for others. All these scholarships go to others, especially to women but also various favored minority groups. For those who don't succeed with the scholarships, there is Section 8 housing and Aid to Families with Dependent Children and a host of other benefits, which will be paid for by the taxes levied on these young men. Though in principle these are gender-neutral, in practice women who have children with men they didn't marry or did but left get the children and access to the benefits (plus child support from the men). The Democratic-led education establishment is at once trying to suppress their accomplishment and lift other people over them economically and culturally, and the Democratic platform aims at using them as a source of funds all their lives.

4) Finally, these young men find that the young women they fancy -- as young men will -- have totally bought into all this ideological indoctrination and economic benefits package, which is entirely in their favor. When looking for mates they find women who defiantly express demands that they consent to all the ideology, and all the exploitation. The women like that they will be given a leg up in education and career, and if it doesn't work out they will have the back-up plan of government aid. The young men are being offered the duty of supporting these women and any children they generate, but without the benefits of necessarily getting to be the fathers of the children or the husbands in a family. They'll still have to pay for it. 

Even Marxists should be able to grasp the economic interest aspect of this set of complaints, since their ideology reduces everything to economics. The Democrats are losing men because they have constructed an ideology that economically disadvantages young men systematically. Rather than the ideological indoctrination making them submissive to this, it has instead created a kind of class consciousness: they know they're being oppressed, and they know whose fault these distortions are. They've been in that education system most of their lives. They are completely familiar with where all this is coming from. They are not fooled; in spite of best efforts, they are not fools. 

Ah, That Makes Sense

Babylon Bee: 

That explains why Maimonides went so far wrong; he never saw Smokey and the Bandit. 

Solipsism and Romance

An essay ponders a truth about literature in the age of AI: whatever meaning an author intended to convey, it is the reader who determines what is actually understood and accepted. Thus, readers have always been in some sense in charge of the meaning of the work regardless of the author. Why not just accept that AI will give them the ability to restructure the text accordingly? 

LLMs may well signal the end of the author, but this isn’t a loss to be lamented. In fact, these machines can be liberating: They free both writers and readers from the authoritarian control and influence of this thing we call the “author.”

By coincidence, the WSJ just published an article about the current state of literature, one that arises precisely from trying to give readers what they want. "What Hot Dragon-Riders and Fornicating Faeries Say About What Women Want Now: ‘Romantasy’ novels are booming when romance in general is in decline."

The “ACOTAR” series, for example, features a romance between a 19-year-old woman and a Fae, or faerie, lord who is around 500 years old (perhaps the age at which a male’s emotional maturity peaks). It is set in a timeless world where the main characters essentially sext each other all day via a magical telepathic bond.... “You always want to know what your partner is thinking,” she explained....

You really don't, but with AI there to rewrite the scene for you -- freeing you from the authoritarian designs of the author -- your partner can always be thinking the exact right thing. Only you can know what that is!

The sex in the genre’s bestselling books is fairly vanilla, but it’s explicit and heavy on female pleasure. Readers can expect a great deal of ornately described oral sex by male lovers... Yet one of the most talked about moments doesn’t involve an orgasm at all: It’s a tender bath scene in Yarros’s “Onyx Storm” in which Xaden, a heavily tattooed “shadow-wielder,” asks Violet, “May I wash your hair?”

Because these scenes always take a woman’s point of view, they are helping female readers reframe “how they understand their own pleasure... As a woman, you know how you want, personally, to be loved,” she said.

It is obvious that these fantasies are further divorcing people from the possibility of a real relationship with an actual human being by raising impossibilities of 'telepathic connection' with someone who is always thinking the right thing, or just wanting to do exactly what you want him to do without you having to tell him (or, therefore, to take responsibility for wanting it). 

The only remaining human connection is that with the author, another woman who shares the reader's basic desires but perhaps not in exactly the same way. The AI can strip that last part out, giving the reader perfect control over the world as if she were the only real person extant in the whole universe. 

I don't want to sound critical of the act of having fantasies, and the world would not be harmed if this whole genre of authors were replaced by automatons. How strange to find romance, of all places, the ground of this sort of solipsism! But as one of those interviewed explained, the real driver in this field is the desire to avoid rejection; one cannot be rejected if there is no one to reject you. So too the concern about consent: there is no danger of anything nonconsensual if there is no other will involved. 

Especially with the AI to rewrite the scenes as many times as it takes to get it just right for you, whatever it says will be just what you wanted, at least at that moment. When you change your mind, you can have it rewrite again, or just start over without consequences for abandoning an existing relationship. 

Is this literature? It might be an opportunity to explore your own inner landscape, as if we were much in need of more opportunities for that. 

Nicomachean Ethics I.5

Let us, however, resume our discussion from the point at which we digressed. To judge from the lives that men lead, most men, and men of the most vulgar type, seem (not without some ground) to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure; which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment. For there are, we may say, three prominent types of life- that just mentioned, the political, and thirdly the contemplative life. Now the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts, but they get some ground for their view from the fact that many of those in high places share the tastes of Sardanapallus. A consideration of the prominent types of life shows that people of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is, roughly speaking, the end of the political life. But it seems too superficial to be what we are looking for, since it is thought to depend on those who bestow honour rather than on him who receives it, but the good we divine to be something proper to a man and not easily taken from him. Further, men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their goodness; at least it is by men of practical wisdom that they seek to be honoured, and among those who know them, and on the ground of their virtue; clearly, then, according to them, at any rate, virtue is better. And perhaps one might even suppose this to be, rather than honour, the end of the political life. But even this appears somewhat incomplete; for possession of virtue seems actually compatible with being asleep, or with lifelong inactivity, and, further, with the greatest sufferings and misfortunes; but a man who was living so no one would call happy, unless he were maintaining a thesis at all costs. But enough of this; for the subject has been sufficiently treated even in the current discussions. Third comes the contemplative life, which we shall consider later.

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else. And so one might rather take the aforenamed objects to be ends; for they are loved for themselves. But it is evident that not even these are ends; yet many arguments have been thrown away in support of them. Let us leave this subject, then.

This is a further consideration of the Opinions of the Wise on the subject of 'what is happiness?' Of surprisingly contemporary import is Sardanapallus, who is not especially famous today but was a legend in Aristotle's time. Maybe literally: we don't know that he really existed, and there are some reasons to doubt it. "Diodorus says that Sardanapalus, son of Anakyndaraxes, exceeded all previous rulers in sloth and luxury. He spent his whole life in self-indulgence. He dressed in women's clothes and wore make-up. He had many concubines, female and male. He wrote his own epitaph, which stated that physical gratification is the only purpose of life." That gives you the spirit of the thing Aristotle is criticizing, which we more regularly call hedonism. The life of physical pleasure is not taken seriously as a candidate for happiness, even though 'many in high places' like it. 

Honor, however, is considered a serious candidate. Remembering the importance of a proper upbringing to discussing this, Aristotle notes that "people of superior refinement and active disposition" consider honor to be the end of ethics. Aristotle doesn't quite agree, for two reasons. First, some good men pursue honor to be assured of their goodness, and therefore they must really be seeking goodness (virtue) primarily. 

Second, having honors bestowed upon you by others puts the power and agency in the hand of the others; Aristotle thinks you should seek an end for ethics that is in your own power. 

The mere possession of virtue, meanwhile, doesn't succeed because merely being virtuous is compatible with not doing anything virtuous. You would have been brave had you gone to war or to sea; but you didn't, so your virtue doesn't really come to anything. It is bootless, and therefore inadequate as the ground of a happy life.

We will discover that honor is actually of fundamental importance to ethics and the definition of happiness Aristotle prefers. However, it will prove to be a divining rod to identifying what is best rather than the actual end (telos) of the ethical project. We will get there when we reach the discussion of magnanimity. 

Wealth is pursued never for its own sake, but always for something else, and thus it cannot be the proper end of ethics either. Because you need wealth for these other things, which are more necessary than the wealth itself, the pursuit of wealth is a kind of compulsion -- and it is not a happy life to be always acting under compulsion. Even the things you pursue wealth in order to obtain are not, because these things are also wanted as means to some further end. 

None of these candidates succeed. Even the Wise, and those with good upbringings and who have lived good lives, have not given us the correct answer. (This is quite usual for Aristotle's review of Wise opinion, which usually has failed in a similar way; otherwise, why would he be constructing a new inquiry?)

Nicomachean Ethics I.4

For ease, I am using the W.D. Ross translation that is available on the sidebar (also here). It is not the very best translation. Terence Irwin did a good one about thirty years ago, although it's more difficult to use in some respects because he chose some terms of art (which he then helpfully defines and explains in a glossary). A serious student should probably read more than one and compare them, which we will not be doing here except perhaps in passing. A very serious student should study the Greek well enough to at least engage with the most central concepts. We may do some of that here, as we did with Xenophon etc. 

Let us resume our inquiry and state, in view of the fact that all knowledge and every pursuit aims at some good, what it is that we say political science aims at and what is the highest of all goods achievable by action. Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise. For the former think it is some plain and obvious thing, like pleasure, wealth, or honour; they differ, however, from one another- and often even the same man identifies it with different things, with health when he is ill, with wealth when he is poor; but, conscious of their ignorance, they admire those who proclaim some great ideal that is above their comprehension. Now some thought that apart from these many goods there is another which is self-subsistent and causes the goodness of all these as well. To examine all the opinions that have been held were perhaps somewhat fruitless; enough to examine those that are most prevalent or that seem to be arguable.

Let us not fail to notice, however, that there is a difference between arguments from and those to the first principles. For Plato, too, was right in raising this question and asking, as he used to do, 'are we on the way from or to the first principles?' There is a difference, as there is in a race-course between the course from the judges to the turning-point and the way back. For, while we must begin with what is known, things are objects of knowledge in two senses- some to us, some without qualification. Presumably, then, we must begin with things known to us. Hence any one who is to listen intelligently to lectures about what is noble and just, and generally, about the subjects of political science must have been brought up in good habits.* For the fact is the starting-point, and if this is sufficiently plain to him, he will not at the start need the reason as well; and the man who has been well brought up has or can easily get starting points. And as for him who neither has nor can get them, let him hear the words of Hesiod:

Far best is he who knows all things himself;

Good, he that hearkens when men counsel right;

But he who neither knows, nor lays to heart

Another's wisdom, is a useless wight.

This 'resuming our inquiry' or 'beginning again' is something that Aristotle likes to do. In Physics I, he lays out a whole system for thinking about how motion is possible and explicable, only to reject it as inadequate and start again with a new approach in Physics II. Yet the inquiry in the first book was worthwhile; without it, you would not have noticed or understood the things that were necessary to the second start. 

Here we are not setting aside the first three parts of the book, but rather framing them as similarly necessary prefaces for the inquiry that can now begin in earnest. You really needed all three of those prefaces to understand what follows. 

Another thing that Aristotle likes to do in the beginning of his inquiries is to give us an account of the opinions of the Wise. This often includes poetics, as here. Sometimes we are told the names of people who held the various opinions, and sometimes not. What he is good about is giving an account of the field he is entering as it stands at the time of his entry. We know what has been thought so far; he will then tell us briefly what is wrong with it, and then begin to try to resolve the problems identified with the existing Wise opinion.

So here we get the first real problem of the Ethics: the Wise say that happiness is the goal of both ethics and political science.** However, they disagree about what 'happiness' entails. So before we can go very far, we have to determine what this happiness is that we are aiming at as our target. 

* Here is an opportunity to engage with one of my own teachers, Professor Iakovos Vasiliou, currently at CUNY. When I knew him he was a young man starting out as a professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta (which, I notice, his biography no longer mentions). He wrote an early paper on the role of the good upbringing that Aristotle mentions in passing here that is a good introduction to the world of students that Aristotle was engaging himself, and to the Greek culture of the time. You should be able to access the text as an independent researcher, if you wish; you can also try Academia.com if JSTOR didn't work for you. 

** It is important to grasp that Aristotle intends these two sciences to have the same end because they are meant to be aligned with each other. A 'science' in ancient Greece is not a modern science, because there was no scientific method like ours; it is, rather, a unified field of study. Ethics is the science of proper behavior for a human being, which is -- we have just learned -- pointed at maximizing human happiness (however that ends up being defined). Political Science is the science of organizing a community of human beings in such a way that they can all best pursue their individual goods, i.e., that very same happiness that is the end of ethics. Politics is supposed to grow out of ethics in this way, and a good politics can be judged from a bad one by whether and to what degree it supports the end of their ethics for the people of the community. 

Nicomachean Ethics I.3

This section is one of the most important parts of the EN to grasp in order to understand the project. I've written about this short section many times in the past. This is where Aristotle grounds his ethical project in reality, in the strongest terms we will ever get until the American pragmatist movement of the 20th century. What makes something a virtue is that it works. 

He wants to be clear from the beginning that he means that a thing works for the most part. Luck and chance can interfere with anything in the real world. It is the mark of a wise man to understand that ethics doesn't admit of logical proofs -- poor Kant -- but of probabilistic arguments based on real-world empirical observation. 

If you don't get this part right you will be out to sea for the rest of the work. 

Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.

Emphasis added. This is not going to be a list of rules; it is not going to be a list of moral principles, even. It is certainly not going to try to be a deduction from logic. We are talking about developing a state of character that is fit for the world you live in. We judge whether a thing is a virtue by whether or not it works, making due allowances for the chance and fate that are also part of the world.

Who judges? Not every man equally.   

Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general. Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit.

These remarks about the student, the sort of treatment to be expected, and the purpose of the inquiry, may be taken as our preface.

It will turn out to be that the virtuous man is the best judge of virtue, for his education is complete. The man who is courageous is a good judge of courage; the man who is just in his treatment of others is a good judge of justice. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but both justice and the virtue he calls magnanimity have a claim to be 'complete virtue,' such that a truly just or magnanimous man can be said to have received an all-round education in virtue and to be a good judge in general. They differ in a key aspect, however, which we will discuss when we get there. 

Nicomachean Ethics, I.2

If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric; now, since politics uses the rest of the sciences, and since, again, it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of this science must include those of the others, so that this end must be the good for man. For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. These, then, are the ends at which our inquiry aims, since it is political science, in one sense of that term.

This section is a great example of why it's important to take the introduction slowly. There is a whole lot going on in this short piece of writing, which I have quoted in full.

Aristotle sets aside infinite regress as a possibility. This is more fully argued elsewhere, but it is of great importance -- it is indeed crucial for theology because it proves the existence of God, as Avicenna spells out in his metaphysics. Briefly, you exist obviously; where did you get existence? You got it from your parents, who already existed. Thus, we inherit existence from something that already exists. Avicenna has two arguments, which he inherited from the Greeks, about why this cannot work as an infinite regress. There has to be something that really exists to found the existence of everything else, something that exists necessarily rather than accidentally: and that, Avicenna says, is God. 

For us in this work, we aren't looking for God. We are, however, also needing to ground our desires. Maybe you desire a promotion at work; why? Perhaps because it comes with more money or greater respect, or both; why do you want those things? Perhaps because they could better allow you to attract a mate; why do you want that? Perhaps because.... if this goes on forever, Aristotle is saying, you won't ultimately really want anything at all. But you do want things. Thus, some things need to be desired for themselves. 

There's a lot more we won't get here about how we determine what those things are, and which ones are more valuable. In the Rhetoric, for example, we will learn that when incomparable things are being weighted against each other -- should I prefer this meal, or that victory at war? -- honor provides the common ground for valuation. This is an important concept to the EN (Nicomachean Ethics, for reasons pertaining to Latin, is shortened to EN) that isn't explicit in the EN. When good men sit together and talk about what is most worthy of honor, that is when they find they can in fact compare what seem to be incomparable things. Apples and oranges are comparable in terms of the price assigned to them, but all things are comparable in terms of what degree of honor they merit. The victory is obviously worth more than the meal, even if you are very hungry.

Also in this section we learn that politics is a kind of extension of ethics. This is not obvious, but it is central to Aristotle's approach. Ethics is about how to live well as a human being; politics is about how to structure a society that supports the best kind of life. The value of doing this becomes apparent as we consider the human condition. It is possible to live well in conditions of oppression or tyranny; perhaps some of the very highest things can only be achieved given the opportunity to resist tyranny. (Perhaps that is why very comfortable Americans tend to describe relatively tame matters as tyrannical: they are striving for the greatness that comes from bravely resisting tyranny.) To have a society that is structured to support the good life, though, makes everyone's life better and the best life easier to obtain for everyone. We should want that.

We still have a lot of problems, but the goal is shaping up. In ethics we are trying to shape a life that attains the best qualities that a good person ought to desire in himself or herself; and in politics, therefore, we should be aiming at a society that supports that goal for its citizens. That's what we do want, and it is what we ought to want. 

Arms & White Samite: A Podcast

The interview with me on the subject of my Arthurian book that I mentioned a few days ago is now posted. 

The book, Arms & White Samite, is available free as an etext from the Signum Collaboratory.

Therapy Culture and Childlessness

This article in the NYT gets at something I have long believed: therapy culture has significant costs, here to include childlessness.

[I]t still seems increasingly likely that millennials will have the highest rate of childlessness of any generational cohort in American history.

There are plenty of plausible explanations for the trend.... I suspect there’s some truth in all of these explanations. But I think there’s another reason, too, one that’s often been overlooked. Over the past few decades, Americans have redefined “harm,” “abuse,” “neglect” and “trauma,” expanding those categories to include emotional and relational struggles that were previously considered unavoidable parts of life. Adult children seem increasingly likely to publicly, even righteously, cut off contact with a parent, sometimes citing emotional, physical or sexual abuse they experienced in childhood and sometimes things like clashing values, parental toxicity or feeling misunderstood or unsupported.

This cultural shift has contributed to a new, nearly impossible standard for parenting.... So I want to suggest that there’s another reason my generation dreads parenthood: We’ve held our own parents to unreachable standards, standards that deep down, maybe, we know we ourselves would struggle to meet.

Emphasis added. 

I remember a few years ago hearing a woman I know describe her work as "healing trauma," knowing that her clients were well-to-do women in the suburbs. She and others like her were training them to think of their lives as traumatic, when in fact they were plausibly among the most comfortable lives anyone was living anywhere on Earth or at any time in history.

That can't be healthy.