{"id":111527,"date":"2017-01-12T09:47:40","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T17:47:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=111527"},"modified":"2017-01-12T09:50:12","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T17:50:12","slug":"homesick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=111527","title":{"rendered":"Homesick"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Sailer writes<\/a>: Dr. Matt emphasizes that contemporary Americans are more stiff upper lip. Our culture doesn\u2019t like people complaining about being homesick. For example, we emphasize to 17 year olds that they are supposed to go off to a distant college next year and live amongst strangers. Only losers go to local colleges.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, lots of college freshman get depressed, but we\u2019re not supposed to use the word \u201chomesick\u201d in describing them.<\/p>\n

* Whenever I read history books on topics from 19th century and earlier that quotes personal correspondence, I\u2019m frequently struck by the perfervid emotions routinely expressed between people who are not lovers.<\/p>\n

* What is lost when emigrants leave their homes is unfortunately usually neglected when considering migration policy. They don\u2019t only leave behind family, friends and community, shredding human ties and social capital in the process, they\u2019re scarred in the process and probably doomed to never really arriving in high-trust communities where people are committed to the communities and willing to invest in their welfare.<\/p>\n

Perhaps America\u2019s most noteworthy freedom is the freedom from duty and obligation that its citizens feel. After leaving everything and everybody behind\u2026 so many times\u2026 uprooting for emigration, pioneering along the American frontier or relocation to chase modern ambitions of career and cosmopolitan experience, market services have liberated us Yanks to follow our bliss . instead of relying on family or neighbors in the community. The latest iteration of the dot.com fad to enable strangers to transact to provide a lift across town or a place to crash when travelling is a logical market development and probably not the last one in this line. Americans have taken reinventing ourselves to the extreme of the notion that \u201ccity air makes you free.\u201d<\/p>\n

At what cost came this mobility and freedom? Mr. Sailer\u2019s grandmother in law asks an important question we should consider when reflecting on what to make of the American experience. There is no doubt about the allure of social mobility that \u201cstreets paved with gold\u201d promised. But hardship and disappointment for so many was often more the reality than the promised fantasy. Finally I wonder if the unnatural selection that sent America the most restless unattached dreamers might be an unexamined curse?<\/p>\n

Frequently I\u2019m confronted with evidence of this unkind notion, \u201cAmericans don\u2019t solve problems, we leave them behind\u2026\u201d Every article or report I see, \u201cAmerica\u2019s best places\u2026.\u201d \u201cRetire here, not there\u2026\u201d makes me believe that so many Americans are mere \u201cconsumers\u201d of their home community. Rather than investing and contributing their love and time to make whatever their home is better, they\u2019re all too ready to pick up and move to whatever place looks to provide a more agreeable turnkey experience, eg. offer the greener grass, milder weather, lower tax burden, better school district, exciting bohemian lifestyle, etc. Not that I can blame them at all. I recognize this all-too-American instinct and restlessness in myself. Perhaps I\u2019m projecting this a bit too much on my fellow citizens?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

A couple weeks ago I flew back east to visit a brother who had just moved there. His new home is a few hours from the town where I (mostly) grew up and went to school. On a lark we drove down there after I hadn\u2019t been there since I left home 20 years previously. It\u2019s uncanny how a place I knew so well could completely empty out of everybody I knew in a few short years. I recall all the kids in school who couldn\u2019t wait to leave\u2026 out of state\u2026 as far away if possible. Now not only are all the kids gone, the empty nester parents have left too. They only settled in the town because of the excellent schools. But once the kids were done, it was time to leave for someplace without the ridiculous tax burden necessary to finance those good schools. A peculiar unsustainable pattern follows, but not quite like with salmon, who leave the streams for the big ocean. In this case the salmon don\u2019t much care to return to the same exact stream to spawn. Any ol\u2019 stream will do. Whatever freedom and mobility our lifestyles have given us, I might agree with Mr. Sailer\u2019s grandmother in law, \u201cGod damn Christopher Columbus.\u201d For the immigrants lost a community, continuity and loyalty that as their descendants we\u2019ve never known.<\/p>\n

* A sad story is that of Eric Carle, the artist\/children\u2019s book author (\u201cThe Very Hungry Caterpillar\u201d). He was born in upstate NY of German immigrant parents. In \u201935 when he was 6 and a perfect little American 1st grader, grandma wrote a letter saying, \u201cAlles ist gut!\u201d back in the Fatherland \u2013 that Hitler fellow had made Germany great again. America was Depressed, mom was homesick, so they went back. When the war started, dad got drafted into the Wehrmacht and ended up a Russian prisoner \u2013 they didn\u2019t send him back until \u201947, at which point he was broken physically and mentally (my own grandfather was never the same after his time in the Gulag). They sent Eric out to dig trenches. As soon as he could, he went back to the US (he was a birthright citizen) but he still speaks with a German accent. I think the whole thing made him completely allergic to politics so he writes sweet childrens stories about worms and bears that don\u2019t even have an allegorical meaning.<\/p>\n

The same thing happened to my wife\u2019s father\u2019s cousin and family except they went back to Stalinist Russia in \u201936 and the ones that survived didn\u2019t get out until perestroika 50 years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Sailer writes: Dr. Matt emphasizes that contemporary Americans are more stiff upper lip. Our culture doesn\u2019t like people complaining about being homesick. For example, we emphasize to 17 year olds that they are supposed to go off to a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111527"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111532,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111527\/revisions\/111532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}