Isaiah 3 and 4 provide a prophecy of a then-future people who would be so sinful as to trigger end times desolation. Let's study this chapter and see what modern characteristics, if any, might match his description, in the hopes that we can address these deficiencies in our personal lives, even if we can't turn the course of society as a whole.
In part one of this series, we will look at the failings of women as described by God through Isaiah. I have highlighted the verses that appear to be speaking of women specifically.
1 For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water.
2 The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient,
3 The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.
4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
5 And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.
6 When a man shall take hold of his brother of the house of his father, saying, Thou hast clothing, be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand:
7 In that day shall he swear, saying, I will not be an healer; for in my house is neither bread nor clothing: make me not a ruler of the people.
8 For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his glory.
9 The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.
10 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
11 Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
12 As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.
13 The Lord standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people.
14 The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
15 What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord God of hosts.
16 Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:
17 Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts.
18 In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon,
19 The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,
20 The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings,
21 The rings, and nose jewels,
22 The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins,
23 The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.
24 And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.
25 Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
26 And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.
The shift
Babylon is a unique system in contrast to the systems in place throughout history. We in Babylon live in a system vastly different than those seen in the millennia before us. A unique mix of advanced technology, cheap oil, and a militarily-enforced strong first-world currency has allowed a severe perversion of our ideas of what is right, wrong, normal, and abnormal.
This new pattern has emerged since the industrial revolution. Subsistence farming--an institution whose needs and experiences provide reinforcement of the traditional family--first lost market share to factory work. Factory work provided a way for women to earn money despite not having the skills men did. Factory work did not require male physical strength, and provided a mechanism for women to earn money without relying on a husband.
During WWII, the shortage of working age men caused the service economy to open its doors to increasing numbers of women. Here, as in factory work, qualities unique to men did not provide an economic advantage. However, service work provided much higher pay than factory work, fostering a sense of independence in working women, as factory work paid so little that it required women to live in collective housing, usually provided by the factory, or with a working husband. Now women could support a life independent of roomates, subsidized housing, or a working husband. Service work also provided a sense of power that factory work did not provide, as women in managerial service positions were able to supervise other workers and make administrative decisions while wearing more sophisticated outfits than factory overalls.
Today, the economy is largely an illusion. Fueled by cheap oil, the illusion allows the majority of people to work in "information" jobs. Only 1 in 150 Americans today are farmers. Meanwhile, the husband has been replaced by the government, with welfare and divorce law paying the bills of women and their children absent a father. This situation is not sustainable, and eventually there will be a sharp adjustment back to the sustainment farming lifestyle practiced for all of human history until the advent of cheap oil.
The Babylonian Illusion
Here in Babylon, we constantly hear the cry of women who believe they have been oppressed. They clamor for what they call equality. Those from a restoration tradition rejoice in the coming of Zion, for they expect their version of equality to exist there.
My personal belief is that the number one cause of our societies' deviation from Zion is a corrupt understanding of womanhood.
A female friend of mine wrote: "If we think tyranny has been dark and difficult to bear under the rule and reign of men, it will be inexpressibly worse under the rule of evil women. When women turn to the dark side all creation suffers, mourns, and cries out for release."
Men (and women) are deprived of their mothers in modern culture: they are outsourced for schooling, outsourced for play, outsourced for feeding, outsourced for nearly everything. Thus, without question the greatest impact a woman can have is traded for a mess of porridge.
As adults, the greatest consequence of modern culture is the well-being of the woman: She is woefully miserable. The second greatest consequence is to the man: he gets an incredibly bad deal.
More and more men are opting out of the system, preferring to jump from the ship rather than sink with it. If left on track, this path we are on will continue to increase the amount of suffering endured in society until a crescendo of collapse occurs.
To women: Buying these lies has caused misery to you and pushed society to the brink of destruction. Society as a whole is most likely irreparably damaged. Whether it can recover without first collapsing remains to be seen, but you can recover, and you can impart more successful culture to your sons and daughters. While God will provide the events that will correct the system, those who are wise can fix themselves and rise above the suffering.
Let's investigate a few of the lies Babylon teaches us about women.
LIE: WOMEN ARE THE SAME AS MEN
TRUTH: WOMEN AND MEN ARE DIFFERENT IN COMPLEMENTARY WAYS
At its core, feminism (at best) is the idea that men and women are equal.
Men and women are not equal. There was never a time in history where men and women have been equal. Even today, when the Babylonian illusion economy has blurred the capacity limitations of each gender, there still persist undeniable albeit muted differences.
One obvious domain that displays the gender difference is sports. Which sports are co-ed? Hardly any. Why? Because women cannot compete against men in most physical feats. While it is true that there are some women with atypical physical strength who can best a man in physical tasks, that advantage disappears when they are compared to males who are as exceptional compared to other males as they are compared to other females. Put simply, the fastest 10% of women runners are faster than the average male, but quite slow compared to the fastest 10% of men. It's simple genetics.
The differences do not end with external physical traits. Internal traits (emotional behaviors) are also vastly different. Increasingly, some people argue that these internal traits are merely the outcome of training. This overlooks the fact that many (perhaps most) internal traits are as unchangeable and potentially physiological as external physical traits. No amount of training can make an elite female runner run faster than an elite male runner, or an elite female lifter stronger than an elite male lifter. Similarly, women will always, for example, make decisions based on feelings rather than logic.
The intelligence of men and women is distributed differently. Women tend to be closer to the same IQ than men. Smart men tend to be smarter than smart women, and stupid men tend to be dumber than stupid women.
Men and women are different when it comes to production, even in a service/information economy. Testosterone creates drive and aggression, which translates into professional performance. Because of this, a graph of production for the whole population would be a Pareto distribution, and you would find far more men at the right side than women.
Sex-based strengths and weaknesses are fundamental. They will not change--not through legislation, not through philosophizing, and not through wishing.
Feminists suggest that the only alternative to gender equality is monogender superiority--the idea that either men or women are superior. Contradictorily, many feminists actually embrace the idea of female superiority, manifested by their assertion that females are capable of everything men are capable of while also possessing unique capacities that men do not possess. This belief is both patently false and toxic to the happiness and health of both sexes.
Gender differences are not a bad thing. They are to be celebrated.
Men and women are complementary. Both have strengths and both have weaknesses, and each category has little to no overlap. Where women are strong, men are weak. Where men are strong, women are weak. Anyone who thinks men are better than women will fail to leverage the strengths of women in their relationships. Anyone who thinks women are better than men will fail to leverage the strengths of men in their relationships.
Unfortunately, it seems like only the masculine advantages are subdued. I have yet to hear any clamor about the unfairness of men not bearing babies. I haven't heard it even once. We all seem to accept (and men probably rejoice) that it is only women who can have babies. I haven't heard any complaints about how most women are naturally more nurturing than most men. It is celebrated in our culture, and readily recognized. When you are in a store and there is a crying baby, you will never hear the women say, "where is his dad?" Even the most "progressive" ideologue will instinctively say, "where is his mother?!"
Everything in Babylon is designed to cause sorrow and to crumble to the dust at the worst possible moment. Those who believe that men and women are equal will be sorely and repeatedly disappointed in their interactions with the opposite sex.
LIE: ALL WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL, FOREVER
TRUTH: SOME WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL FOR A FEW YEARS.
It will come across as some wacko propaganda, but did you know that women peak physically at age 16?
It is interesting that, on the one hand, modern society has made it taboo for a man to marry a 16 year old or so woman, suggesting it is inappropriate to find a 16 year old or so woman attractive, while simultaneously designing all manner of makeup products and fine-twined linen to make women older than this look as similar as possible to 16 year old or so women. [I use the word woman because historically people used to base a woman's physical maturity on--you know, her physical maturity, instead of on an arbitrary age.]
After peaking physically at 16 or so, a woman's physique will slowly decay until around 30, where it fades fast. This is not an opinion statement. Women's hormones change significantly at this time, which is why there are physical changes: they are much more likely to have children with birth defects, they accumulate additional fat deposits, their rears and breasts change, etc. These changes make women significantly less attractive to men. Again, not an opinion statement, as women under 30 were rated far more attractive in research summarizing dating website preferences.
These differences are significant when contrasted to men. Men peak some 5 to 10 years later than women. Men also stay in their peak for around 15 years, but fade much slower than women. (This is not my opinion, but the conclusion of a study of internet dating sites).
Some people will moan and complain at these facts, as if we can define nature by our sentiments. Yet, these same people probably have no problem with the fact that short men are rated as far less attractive by women than their taller peers.
You can either protest facts, or change your life to accord with them. In this case, these ideas ought to cause women to be more urgent in their search for a man. They ought to cause women to be more aware of the fact that as they age, they should be more grateful to husbands who love them anyway (imagine how most women would react to a husband who earned less money every year over 30). If they don't exert a moderate effort to watch what they eat and exercise, maybe they should. Of course, these things don't happen.
Why? Maybe it is because they have an unbroken chain of people telling them that everything is beautiful. Beauty is not a common attribute. It is a statistical descriptor. Just as the word "wealthy" means "having more money than most people", "beautiful" means being better looking than most people. By definition, then, most women are not beautiful. Nor are most men attractive. These are facts. Scientifically speaking, beauty is distributed on the bell curve. According to author Steve Jeffes, 2% of the population are "Very Unattractive", 15% are "Unattractive", 10% are "Slightly Below Average", 46% are "Average", 10% are "Slightly Above Average", 15% are "Attractive", and only 2% are "Beautiful". According to Jeffes' numbers, a whopping 73% of women are not attractive.
When you add in the age factor, you'll find that most women under 25 are considered attractive by men, and almost all over 30 are not.
What is the point of all of this? Remember that the point of Babylon is to sell you lies that make you miserable. If you believe the lie that a women's worth is primarily dependent upon her looks, you are guaranteed to be miserable, because every woman will reach a point where she will fall short on this measure, and no amount of makeup or clothing or excessive exercise or plastic surgery will fill that hole.
LIE: WOMEN ARE CLOSER TO GOD
TRUTH: WOMEN HAVE ISSUES AT LEAST AS SERIOUS AS MEN, AND JUST LIKE MEN, THEY WILL NOT GET TO HEAVEN WITHOUT REPENTING
This problem is odd in that, while a Babylonian lie, it gets a lot of press in some churches.
Women tend to emotionally attack their husbands, tend to gossip, and tend to judge others. They can be relentless and vicious in these behaviors. For some reason, these things are minimized or never mentioned at all. Yet, they are just as sinful as anything men do, and perhaps more damaging given the importance of a woman's role and how these behaviors directly detract from them.
I want to spend a bit of text focusing on the problem of emotional attacks. Women don't seem to realize that emotional abuse is just as damaging, according to brain scans, as physical abuse. When you go off on your husband once, realize that his choosing to stay with you is as angelic and/or foolish as it would be for you to stay with him if he beat you once. Now, think about how often you may have done it, and consider whether you appreciate him and what he does for you nearly enough.
Not surprisingly, it seems that at least part of the problem here is the focus we put on women's looks. Think about it. Until they are 30 years old, the only thing a woman has to do to have value in Babylon is prevent herself from eating too much. During the same time, a man is taught in no uncertain terms that he has to produce ($$) and he has to become (character). By the time he is 30, any man who is not a complete loser is well honed in both the ability to earn and his character principles. What has a woman been taught in that same time? While a man has been taught that he can increase his value through hard work on himself and on his world, a woman is learning that the way she holds onto the looks she was gifted by birth is through deception (makeup, clothing, etc.). In the meantime, society has given her a pass on anything inside.
By the time a woman turns 30, she should have spent more than a decade working on her individual character flaws. She should be able to control her emotional storms, or at least recognize the damage they cause and deeply appreciate those who endure them.
LIE: CHILDREN ARE A HASSLE
TRUTH: CHILDREN ARE CRITICAL TO A WOMAN'S HAPPINESS
Many women today do not want children. In fact, the majority of the hundred or so first dates I ever went on, the woman revealed to me that they were not interested in having kids. Instead, they wanted to go to college, work, and travel. Women are having so few children in the first world (US, Canada, Europe, and Russia) that the birthrate is negative for the first time in human history. For these folks, there is no benefit to having children.
Women are imprinted by modern society to find no fulfillment in child bearing. The trend is accelerating, because traditional mothers are simultaneously shamed and silenced. They are shamed by their working peers as being lesser than them, and they are silenced through not being allowed to speak of the fulfillment of their decision by those who have chosen not to be mothers under the guise of infertility insensitivity.
The cover story of the modern woman is that these progressive ideals have provided women worth outside of wifedom and motherhood, trading pennies for gold. In reality, the modern system has coaxed women into prostituting themselves out of the only things that can bring them joy, and provided only counterfeit currency in exchange. In short, they have sold themselves for a mess of potage.
The truth is that a woman's happiness in life is dependent in large part upon her being a mother. Of course, it gets more complicated than this, because women who are trained in Babylonian hedonism will find motherhood miserable, which is a great segway to the next section.
LIE: EXCITEMENT IS THE IDEAL
TRUTH: SERVICE IS THE IDEAL
Consider this incredible article, which oddly both explains the outcome of modern womanhood and cause despite demonstrating a clear pro-modern womanhood point of view:
Expectations for a spouse are much higher than they used to be.
For most of Western history, marriage had little equality. Wives bore the brunt of child care and housework, depended on their husbands for financial support and enjoyed little social autonomy while men openly had affairs.
Fast-forward to the age of rom-coms, Valentine’s Day and a $50 billion wedding industry. It’s all based on finding, marrying and keeping “The One.”
“Today Americans want not only a spouse who is reliable and reasonable, but also someone who is their best friend, and a great lover, and someone who pays the bills … but is also really fun,” said Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld.
According to research that Rosenfeld presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting last week, these heightened expectations can leave women feeling worse off in marriage than men. In a survey of 2,262 adults in heterosexual partnerships over the course of five years, Rosenfeld found that women initiate divorces 69 percent of the time.
On the whole, they also reported less satisfaction with their marriages than men.
Scientists have known for decades that wives are usually the ones asking for a divorce. But Rosenfeld’s study also surveyed people in non-marital romantic relationships, from casual flings to couples who had lived together for several years; in those relationships, women and men initiated breakups at equal rates. So there’s something about marriage that makes it harder on women.
“The expectation is that marriage has a whole bunch of benefits and positive characteristics for women that it didn’t have in the past, but the truth is much trickier than that,” Rosenfeld said.
Though he stressed that most women surveyed were happy with their marriages, many of those who weren’t cited controlling husbands and a loss of independence as causes of discontent.
He also speculated that, although most men today espouse egalitarian values, many probably still harbor subconscious expectations of a wife’s traditional role in the household. This could explain why, after all these years, women still shoulder twice as many domestic responsibilities as men. (In contrast, studies have shown that couples who equally divide their child-care duties have better sex lives.)
Rosenfeld’s survey checked in with the same individuals every year for five years. In cases in which someone was married the first year of the study and divorced in the last, his team was able to gather details in the breakup’s immediate aftermath.
One woman, who was 23 when the study began in 2009, initially reported a “good” (4 out of 5 points on the satisfaction scale) relationship with her husband-to-be: “He is very clever, fun, and sweet. I respect him and feel like we are equals on values, intellect and humor.”
She noted, however, “It is not ‘excellent’ because I wish that he was more romantic. He’s very practical.”
Four years later, the couple got divorced. In early 2015, she said, “I used to be a very happy optimistic person and it was like he was slowly starving my soul.”
She realized that the relationship had become emotionally abusive and promptly filed for a divorce.
Rosenfeld said respondents’ stories had echoes of “The Feminine Mystique,” Betty Friedan’s feminist treatise about unhappiness among middle-class housewives. Instead, many of today’s disgruntled wives have full-time jobs — and hence no practical need for husbands who don’t make them happy.
So while the institution of marriage hasn’t completely shed its inequitable roots, women can afford to be a lot choosier.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2015/08/27/why-women-are-more-likely-to-initiate-divorce/)
My goodness. Women dropping their faithful, dedicated husbands because they did not live up to romantic ideal of making them happy. Women equating practical behavior with soul starving emotional abuse. Why? Because real marriage is not a Disney fairytale--an emotional chaser that provides an even greater chemical high than singlehood. Instead, it is an opportunity (for both genders) to abase themselves for the benefit of the other. Modern women want to marry someone "reliable and reasonable, but also someone who is their best friend, and a great lover, and someone who pays the bills … but is also really fun"--someone who will never question them, never challenge them, and never have a bad day. The problem is that this person does not exist--whether he be a man or a woman--and if he did, being married to him or her would do absolutely nothing to improve you as a person. The other, potentially larger problem, is that modern female culture wants to hold two mutually exclusive positions. On the one hand, a modern woman wants to marry a man she perceives as better than her (hypergamy--an inviolable female trait across cultures and species for all of recorded history). On the other hand, she wants someone who will never question, challenge, or fail to focus on her (a very modern innovation spawned by the lie that women are as good as men in every aspect).
Young women are conditioned to treat relationships as a drug. Chasing an ever-greater high, they go from getting a little attention from men as they are developing to getting a lot of attention from men at their physical peak. Those whose value is defined by hedonistic activity can perpetuate the high beyond the peak age by indulging in excessive destructive behavior--alcohol abuse, random sexual encounters, many sexual partners, etc. These women seem to be unknowingly mortgaging their ability to find and value a stable relationship when they finally come to terms with their declining so-called sexual market value. They typically fail to adjust their view of what they deserve toward objective reality in time to intersect the shrinking pool of available men who are wise enough to provide for them, but unwise enough to realize they could do better.
Rather than seeking the next emotional high, a woman who sees and embraces reality will seek a stable, long-term marriage partner as early as she can. She will derive value from her husband's willingness and ability to have her lean on him, provide for her, and endure her storms. Her excitement is not about what she can get from men, but what she can give to her husband. It is not about how much time she can spend partying, but how much quality time she can invest in her kids (and later, grandkids).
LIE: MARRIAGE IS MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL FOR EACH
TRUTH: MARRIAGE IS A NET LOSS FOR A MAN
Modern women are "haughty" or high-minded. They are completely out of touch with reality when it comes to what they have to offer and their perceptions of what they receive from men. Consider, for example, that 80% of men are rated as less than average by women on social media. Anything over 50% means that women either over-value themselves, under-value men, or both. Consider, for example, that there are many women of all shapes, sizes, ages, and personalities that believe they deserve a 6-ft tall, washboard abs, 6-figure salary man (which, incidentally, refers to far less than 20% of the male population). When asked what they bring to the table, they reply, "ME," as if their value is intrinsic while a male's is objective.
What seems to be non-obvious to modern women is that she expects to marry a man for what she can get from him, but expects that man to be concerned only with what he can give to her. And, not surprisingly, this is about all a modern man gets out of marriage. It is a tremendously risky bargain for the man: 75% of marriages will end in divorce, the majority of which are initiated by the woman, and the majority of the time the man will be saddled with a disproportionate financial burden.
What does he get in exchange for this? Modern women wait until around 30 to marry. A woman reaches maturity at about 16. At 30, she is past her prime. By this age, modern women have been steeped in training that almost certainly dooms their marriage to misery and failure. They have enjoyed many sexual partners, which has been shown to significantly increase probability of failure of marriage. They have spent a good deal of time and money in self-centered hedonism, which is antithetical to marriage and family. They have spent their entire formative period in situations where the need for character improvement was masked by the incessant chase of male suitors. Now, what she offered them is permanently gone. What does she offer her husband? Perhaps a year of her diminishing body, until late-age pregnancy permanently destroys it. Perhaps a year of her youthful lifestyle, until children permanently end it. Perhaps a few years of marriage, until the staggering odds of her cheating on and/or divorcing him take effect and he is left paying her bills for the rest of his life. Even if they make it through all of that, here comes menopause and the emotional rollercoaster that brings.
What does the woman get? She got to spend the 10-15 year span of her prime having guys chase her and bed her. Now, marrying around 30, she gets all the financial and emotional security of marriage. Every year, as what she brings to the table declines, what he has to pay to keep her increases.
This was never a secret historically. This is why a woman's value was tied to how many (male) children she could bare a man and why a woman's parents paid a man to marry their daughter. It was plainly recognized that a man's cost to marry was much higher than a female's, and that the cost would only be recouped once she had borne him sufficient sons to provide in free labor on the farm what she took from his table and time.
Marriage is a net loss to men. It always has been, and it is more of a loss today than ever before.
The Fruits of Babylonian Female Culture
Some modern innovations have made it far easier to complete the home-based tasks traditionally accomplished by women. To get a sense of this, let's discuss clothes washing. First, imagine the quantity of clothes to wash if you had 8 or so kids, which was a necessity in a subsistence farming culture. Now, realize that you would need to pump water or walk to a river. Now, consider that you have to wash these clothes by hand, which includes churning them by hand for a long time, then wringing them out, then hanging them to dry, then collecting them. We could do the same for heating with wood, teaching children at home, cooking with wood, preparing and storing food without electricity, cleaning without machines, etc. Realize that modern housekeeping takes something like 1% of what it did throughout history, and much less than 50% of what it did in recent history before vacuum cleaners, microwaves, refrigerators, and public schools.
So with all this extra time, modern women surely have more kids and better/more experiences with them, right? Nope.
Women have swapped the option of having and raising children for the requirement to have a full-time career. It was a bad deal if you ask me. After the tax and daycare costs, how much do modern women actually make? In most cases, a very modest increment. Is this worth the loss of home cooked meals and extra time with children after public school gets out, to say nothing of the economic contributions of home production and the widespread benefits of home schooling?
Since 1972, a national annual survey has asked men and women: "How happy are you, on a scale of 1 to 3, with 3 being very happy, and 1 being not too happy?" Women have grown progressively less happy since 1972, both in comparison to their 1972 counterparts, and to their male counterparts.
The Rough Reset
During my decade in the Army, I had plenty of opportunity to go into the wilderness. In times such as these, when Babylon's broadcast is muted, you see the differences between men and women come out in force.
When a man is tossed out into the wilderness, he is physically and psychologically equipped to reroute his Babylonian energy into resourcefulness. There just isn't much adjustment to be made. You take a guy into the woods for a day, a week, or two weeks, and for the most part as long as he has something to eat (nothing fancy) and can stay relatively warm, he'll be the same guy on the last day of the trip as he was on day one.
Now, take a woman into the woods for the same amount of time, and see what happens. From the first moment, the illusions of Babylon melt away. She is left in dismay as she battles the training Babylon has given that her worth is a factor of what she looks like and the technology-enhanced illusion that she can produce similarly to a man. She has no access to all the things that make her look young and beautiful, and quickly loses the ability to be clean or smell nice. She struggles to sleep outside of the artificial environment of modern living. She is almost constantly confronted with the fact that, outside the narrow realms of service economy, the men can do much more, faster than she can. She has no social media network to provide a constant stream of shallow platitudes from other women. She cannot create a filtered online version of herself absent the dirty realities of physical life. She is fully exposed to the monthly physical separation and demobilization caused by menstruation, which can't be hidden without modern means.
In a primitive situation, a woman's cost far exceeds her contribution. In that situation, a woman's physical and emotional needs far exceed a man's, but their contribution is far less than a man's.
That primitive level of existence is not normal, even historically. People typically have homes, children, and farm plots. However, during the desolation to come, and while the dust settles (a combined period that will most likely occupy more than one generation), the needle will go too far the other way from where we are now before it stabilizes somewhere in the middle, where the historic balance between men and women is restored. First there will be a tremendous humiliation of women, where only godly men value them, and then only because God says to.
Restoring the Glory of Womanhood
The scriptures abound in the instruction that those who abase themselves will be exalted, while those who do not will be forcefully abased, and receive nothing but sorrow in return. There is no reason to wait for the desolation to forcibly reset what about women we value (including what women value about themselves).
What can a woman do to prepare for this scenario? They can accentuate the attributes that will be of most worth in this situation:
- Humility. Humility is practiced in two ways: First, by the realization of our limitations, and second, in asking for help on those things. Do you realize your own limitations? Do you rejoice when they are revealed, or do you flee from them in willful ignorance? Do you rejoice in how your husband can fill in what you lack, or do you resent him for it and act in enmity towards him? How much do you appreciate him? How do you show that? Do you focus on his needs, or are your actions towards him more about making yourself feel good about yourself?
- Ability to support. A wife's traditional role is to support. This will be exceptionally useful in a primitive situation. Men do not like to be nagged. They don't like extra stress on top of the external-to-the-family situations they must deal with. This will be exacerbated in a primitive situation. There will be plenty to worry about and plenty to complain about. A man has a natural tendency to want to stay alive, which can either be accentuated with your constant support, or quickly abandoned in your negativity. If your man loses his will to live, you lose your odds of surviving. Being positive and supportive will pay dividends in your family's well being by empowering your husband to continue to do what only he can do to keep you alive.
- Ability to control emotions. There will be plenty of emotional triggers in a primitive situation. If you are quick to become emotionally-controlled, you will be a substantial liability to your husband and children. On the other hand, if you have mastered the ability to control your emotions, you will be a real resource to your family.
- Ability to accomplish repetitive, non-physical, menial tasks with a positive attitude. Are you able to perform repetitive tasks for the greater part of the day on a daily basis? Men will not have time for spinning wool, grinding wheat with a rock, tanning hides, preserving meat, mending clothing, or stoking fires. They will be doing things that only they can do: hunting, chopping wood, scouting, packing loads, building shelters.
- Ability to care for children and keep them well-behaved and positively oriented. Men will not have time to care for children. They will be too busy doing tasks women can't do and where children cannot accompany them. Are you good at getting kids to eat plain, repetitive food? Are you good at keeping children quiet? Are you good at keeping kids calm when they are scared?
Modern society is not preparing women for this role. If anything, it is doing anything possible to ill-prepare them for this role. Social media, instant gratification, illusory workplace roles, day care, public schools, self-worth from physical appearance--all of these things create women who are poor suited for primitive situations.
Modern history has consisted of society measuring the worth of women by how well they can perpetually look like an 18 year old while doing all the things that men do. This is only possible in a Babylonian service economy. Go to a farm, or better yet, out in the woods, and see it all melt away. While I'm not necessarily recommending dressing in burlap and throwing out your makeup to live in a tent for a year, I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, either. Psychological preparation is the second most important preparation we can make for the desolation (spiritual preparation is the first). You would be surprised to learn how helpful even brief simulations can be to preparing yourself mentally for hard things. If you don't know what it is like to not wear makeup, and what that will do to you psychologically, why not try it for a week? If you don't know what it is like to not wear nice clothing, why not try it for a week? If you don't know what it is like to live in a tent without any modern equipment, eating nothing but wheat, why not try it for a week?
We will live to see the prophecies of Isaiah in regards to women fulfilled. While it is described as a punishment, it doesn't need to be lived as one. It ought to be seen as a correction to--or even a restoration of--what is true.
Women age, and can still have tremendous worth. Women can be desirable without Babylonian clothing and makeup. Women can have worth without being men, and in fact it is their differences from men that give them value. Men do not value a copy of themselves, and women do not value a copy of themselves. It is our complementary nature that is desirable. In a primitive situation, women perform very poorly when evaluated in their ability to be men. They do not have equal strength, and they are limited in those tasks most of their adult lives by menstruation, pregnancy, and nursing. That is not a handicap or an accident. It is a mission of beauty and worth, not a shameful thing to minimize or pretend it doesn't exist.
So many problems in the world today will be instantly rectified when women (by force, unfortunately) reclaim their historic place in the world, or, as Isaiah put it "when my Lord has washed away the excrement of the women of Zion" (Isaiah 4:2). Men and women ought to stop hyperfocusing on women's physical beauty. All flesh is as the grass. It flowers, then withers. Even beautiful women are not beautiful for more than a few brief years. A woman's worth is not confined to how much she can artificially prolong looking like an 18 year old through skillful use of excessive exercise/diet/makeup/botox/plastic surgery/fine-twined linen. Men ought to seek after and treasure godly traits in women, and women ought to focus on acquiring those godly traits. Both of these ideals are sorely lacking in our Babylonian culture. Women ought to adjust to the lack of the finer things in life, learn how to function in primitive situations, and how to find joy in and excel in the roles of wife and mother.
Women can no better find happiness in the modern system than men can find true emotional connection in a prostitute. Babylon is a whore, and she attracts far more female clients than male ones.
Conclusion
Modern culture lays a film over the otherwise obvious limitations of femininity. As recently at 70 years ago, every member of society recognized that a) a woman's odds of finding a good husband decreased with every year after physical maturity, b) a woman's physical maturity occurs around 16, c) a woman was not capable of providing the necessities of life for children, d) marriage is a net loss for men, e) the worth of a woman was very much a function of her ability to bear/raise children and keep the house, and f) a woman's nature is fundamentally emotional. While a common understanding of these realities did not ensure quality men or women, it did make two things more likely: First, that a woman would have an accurate understanding of her own cost/benefit as well as the cost/benefit of stable marriage, and second, that a man would have an accurate understanding of his purpose/responsibility as well as the cost/benefit of marrying.
Modern culture systematically strips a woman's worth down to a) how closely she resembles a 16 year old, and b) how much money she makes. This revolution is a tragedy, and has been shown to be responsible for a steadily declining happiness rate among women over the time period it has occurred. Meanwhile, the assault on traditional culture has proved a fulfilling prophecy on men: the practice of telling men they are not needed and interchangeable with women has raised at least two generations of men that are, in fact, nearly worthless. Because they don't realize their purpose and responsibility, they do not know or bother to rise up to it. This negative feedback loop is causing even more misery among women, who try to compensate by putting more effort into resembling a 16 year old and making money. It isn't working. It is a train wreck.
We will all shortly find ourselves in a situation where we are forced to reset to historical norms in how we meet the necessities of life. The only question is how we will react to that adjustment. There will be a time of rebalance, but those who have prepared themselves will adjust more readily.
32 A king shall reign in righteousness
and rulers rule with justice.
2 And a man shall become as a shelter
from the wind or refuge from the storm, like brooks of water in a desert place,
or the shade of a large rock in arid country.
3 The eyes of those who see shall not be shut, and the ears of those who hear shall listen.
4 The minds of the rash shall learn understanding,
and the tongues of the stammerers master eloquence.
5 The godless shall no longer be regarded as noble
nor rogues considered respectable.
6 For the godless utter blasphemy; their heart ponders impiety:
how to practice hypocrisy and preach perverse things concerning Jehovah,
leaving the hungry soul empty, depriving the thirsty soul of drink.
7 And rogues scheme by malevolent means and insidious devices to ruin the poor,
and with false slogans and accusations to denounce the needy.
8 But the noble are of noble intent,
and stand up for what is virtuous.
9 Up, and listen to my voice, O complacent women; you careless daughters, hear my words!
10 In little more than a year
you shall be in anguish, O carefree ones,
for when the harvest is over,
the produce shall fail to arrive.
11 Be alarmed, you complacent women; be perturbed, O careless daughters!
Strip yourselves bare;
put sackcloth around your waists.
12 Beat your breasts for the choice fields and flourishing vines,
13 for my people’s land
shall be overgrown with briars and thorns.
Mourn for all the amusement houses in the city of entertainment,
14 for the palaces shall lie abandoned, the clamorous towns deserted.
High rises and panoramic resorts shall become haunts for ever after,
the playground of wild animals, a browsing place for flocks.
19 For by a hail shall forests be felled, cities utterly leveled.
15 Then shall a Spirit from on high
be poured out on us;
the desert shall become productive land
and lands now productive be reckoned as brushwood.
16 So shall justice inhabit the desert,
and righteousness abide in the farmland.
17 And the effect of justice shall be peace, and the result of righteousness
an assured calm forever.
18 My people shall dwell in peaceful settlements,
in safe neighborhoods, in comfortable dwellings.
20 Blessed are you, who shall then sow by all waters, letting oxen and asses range free.
(Isaiah 32)
9 But by this shall Jacob’s iniquity be expiated, as a result of this his sins removed:
when he makes like crushed chalkstone all altar stones,
leaving no idols of prosperity and shining images standing.
10 Because of them the fortified cities lie forlorn, deserted habitations, forsaken like a wilderness;
steers forage and recline there,
stripping bare the young branches of trees.
11 A harvest of twigs dries, broken off by women who come to light their fires with them.
They are not a discerning people.
Therefore their Maker shows them no mercy;
he who formed them favors them not.
(Isaiah 27)
