Being a mother when the world is ending

[Terabith]

https://homeculture.substack.com/p/what-happens-to-the-people-who-survive?r=53b5o&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwAR1-R0_yMxZSj5FrIKQ6wYsopDbXWoaQKhguXFFtdfB6wXLqWjUOpNKgEzc&fs=e&s=cl

[Faith-manor]

Raw and powerful. My babies are grown, and yet I feel this so much as I wonder about the world they are inheriting, and what awaits them as Rome (USA) burns so to speak. 

[TexasProud]

I had that same exact chart when I taught World History. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I also saw when I taught ( even had a worksheet) about the similarities between the fall of Rome and America.

My husband thinks I am way too pessimistic when I say our empire is ending. I too believe the world is ending. 

[Corraleno]

What a powerful piece, and so beautifully written... "oppression sometimes produces a quiet that sounds like peace from a distance." 

I really fear for the future of my kids and the increasingly dystopian world they are inheriting. It's terrifying to realize just how fragile our social, economic, and political systems are, and how easily they can be corrupted and co-opted by a handful of madmen, aided and abetted by all those who hope to profit from watching the world burn. Our technology may have "progressed" in the last few millennia, but humans haven't changed much — we just have better tools of destruction, surveillance, and control than we used to. We're basically just medieval peasants with iPhones, still obsessed with marginalizing anyone "not like us," still baying for the burning of witches. 

Edited July 16, 2022 by Corraleno

[madteaparty]

I can’t seem to be able to open anything with “the world is ending” as a title—I think people have been saying that, well, since the….moment they were able to escape the wild animals enough to ponder what else was around the bend? Of course they’re all technically correct. It’s just not very interesting to me. It’s also a very american point of view…my world has literally ended a couple times already, and this is the case to many millions. 

Edited July 16, 2022 by madteaparty

[Danae]

16 minutes ago, madteaparty said:

I can’t seem to be able to open anything with “the world is ending” as a title—I think people have been saying that, well, since the….moment they were able to escape the wild animals enough to ponder what else was around the bend? Of course they’re all technically correct. It’s just not very interesting to me. It’s also a very american point of view…my world has literally ended a couple times already, and this is the case to many millions. 

This particular article makes that point.  It’s not a the entire planet will be destroyed doomsday idea.  “The world ending” is always local and has happened many times for many civilizations throughout history.

[Corraleno]

6 minutes ago, madteaparty said:

I can’t seem to be able to open anything with “the world is ending” as a title—I think people have been saying that, well, since the….moment they were able to escape the wild animals enough to ponder what else was around the bend? Of course they’re all technically correct. It’s just not very interesting to me. It’s also a very american point of view…my world has literally ended a couple times already, and this is the case to many millions. 

I don't understand why you say this is "a very American point of view"? If you read the article, the author is discussing the plight of mothers throughout history, she wonders what it must have felt like to be a mother at the end of the Bronze Age, rocking her child to sleep as invaders came over the horizon. I think about the millions of Ukrainians for whom the world as they knew it ended as they fled bombed-out homes with their children and nothing but the clothes on their backs — all to satisfy the insatiable ego of a madman. I think about women giving birth in Ukrainian hospitals with holes in the roof and no power, women giving birth in concentration camps, women stolen from their homeland and sold into slavery, all lamenting the destruction of the world they grew up in and horrified at the world their children were being born into.

[madteaparty]

3 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

I don't understand why you say this is "a very American point of view"? If you read the article, the author is discussing the plight of mothers throughout history, she wonders what it must have felt like to be a mother at the end of the Bronze Age, rocking her child to sleep as invaders came over the horizon. I think about the millions of Ukrainians for whom the world as they knew it ended as they fled bombed-out homes with their children and nothing but the clothes on their backs — all to satisfy the insatiable ego of a madman. I think about women giving birth in Ukrainian hospitals with holes in the roof and no power, women giving birth in concentration camps, women stolen from their homeland and sold into slavery, all lamenting the destruction of the world they grew up in and horrified at the world their children were being born into.

Those people are not reading articles “what to do when the works is ending”. It’s a bit trite. 

[Corraleno]

18 minutes ago, madteaparty said:

Those people are not reading articles “what to do when the works is ending”. It’s a bit trite. 

The article is not about "what to do when the world is ending," it's a beautifully written meditation on the pain of being a mother, and she extensively references the Iliad and discusses the universality of the pain of Achilles' mother. People for whom world has ended often find solace in the telling and retelling of stories about it, including the grief of mothers like Thetis and Andromache — that is the whole reason we even have the Iliad. Thinking and writing about the universality of the pain of mothers, who fear for the world their children are born into, is the basis of much great art and the opposite of trite.

Edited July 16, 2022 by Corraleno

[madteaparty]

20 minutes ago, Corraleno said:

The article is not about "what to do when the world is ending," it's a beautifully written meditation on the pain of being a mother, and she extensively references the Iliad and discusses the universality of the pain of Achilles' mother. People for whom world has ended often find solace in the telling and retelling of stories about it, including the grief of mothers like Thetis and Andromache — that is the whole reason we even have the Iliad. Thinking and writing about the universality of the pain of mothers, who fear for the world their children are born into, is the basis of much great art and the opposite of trite.

Surely that universality allows for a difference of opinion on things like what’s beautiful or trite. Surely.

[Melissa Louise]

I've bookmarked it to read later. 

I may be just a hard hearted person, but since my kids hit adulthood, I don't actually feel a particularly motherly pain about what they have to inherit.

They are humans, and like all humans, they will be living in a difficult world. I never felt they would be in any way exempt from suffering regardless. We all suffer in ways unique to our context, including our historical context. Given that suffering is a universal, I don't feel pain about it so much as hope they have the resilience to persist despite or within it. 

I will be quite pleased if they don't have children of their own, however - what pains me most is thinking about my children's possible pain at their children's circumstances. A sort of deferred empathy, I guess. 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2022 by Melissa Louise

[Rosie_0801]

My daughter has already been through a lot. Mostly I wonder about how many generations it will be before the knowledge she has of how trauma works and how to cope with it is lost. I suppose she'll teach her kids some of it, and if they don't have to use it, it'll be lost. So I suppose my deferred empathy is for the next of my (assumed) descendants who ends up in the same position as we have been. 

[Melissa Louise]

12 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

My daughter has already been through a lot. Mostly I wonder about how many generations it will be before the knowledge she has of how trauma works and how to cope with it is lost. I suppose she'll teach her kids some of it, and if they don't have to use it, it'll be lost. So I suppose my deferred empathy is for the next of my (assumed) descendants who ends up in the same position as we have been. 

Yes.

I assume that when a world explodes, one is forced by the imperative to survive ( for others, or because humans are stubborn) to build or repair or simply exist around the hole, and that sometimes, when the support or tools are there, a person can weave across the hole. Not to obscure it, but to story it somehow? 

My assumptions could be very wrong..

 

 

 

 

[MercyA]

I liked it. I felt this was one of the truest passages:

"My textbooks taught me that apparent disaster was really often favorable to the general progress of mankind. When I was taught about slavery and genocide in America, both were depicted as sorrowful requirement of the nation’s progress. The Iraq War was a sorrowful requirement of democracy. Hungry children in America were a sorrowful requirement of capitalism.It took me too long to understand disaster is, in fact, mostly just disastrous. 

Was there a timeline on the wall of the fourth grade classroom in Uvalde? Is there a chart that can justify those 77 minutes until they fit within the progress of mankind? And if there was, what would that really mean? Not all progress sustains. Cancers progress. So do wildfires."

I don't understand the optimistic idea that our world is always progressing and improving. Sometimes we are going backwards, back into mistakes of the past. Sometimes we are moving forward into even worse times.

I think the principal thing to do is to just keep loving each other, as best we can. 

[Melissa Louise]

I did read it.

I found it a little over-written. I couldn't help but think maybe Ancient Greek mamas were more hard-nosed. 

I think climate change is more of a existential danger than the US specific concerns mentioned. (Proud Boys won't end the world).

I think that because we're already living in climate change. First our East Coast burned, and now it's flooding over and over. Places that were habitable not long ago are now uninsurable, and devalued. And off we drift towards further ecological disaster...

I assume there will be a lot of death and disruption over the next 100 years. 

I think I might feel more saddened if I had a new baby and new baby love-hormones. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Idalou]

3 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

I did read it.

I found it a little over-written. I couldn't help but think maybe Ancient Greek mamas were more hard-nosed. 

I think climate change is more of a existential danger than the US specific concerns mentioned. (Proud Boys won't end the world).

I think that because we're already living in climate change. First our East Coast burned, and now it's flooding over and over. Places that were habitable not long ago are now uninsurable, and devalued. And off we drift towards further ecological disaster...

I assume there will be a lot of death and disruption over the next 100 years. 

I think I might feel more saddened if I had a new baby and new baby love-hormones. 

 

 

 

 

 

Why would you think Ancient Greek mothers would be more hard nosed? Women love, dream, and mourn for their children, babies to adulthood, the world over. Can you explain a bit more, this is a statement I just can not fathom.

As to your Proud Boy belief, I think it takes being an American to understand the danger the growth and rise of these type groups have as to " making a crack in your sky". That sky is our country.  I think you'd understand this, as I've read more than a few of your posts stating Americans need to stay out of, or don't fully understand Australian political stuff. 

Edited July 17, 2022 by Idalou

[Melissa Louise]

6 hours ago, Idalou said:

Why would you think Ancient Greek mothers would be more hard nosed? Women love, dream, and mourn for their children, babies to adulthood, the world over. Can you explain a bit more, this is a statement I just can not fathom.

As to your Proud Boy belief, I think it takes being an American to understand the danger the growth and rise of these type groups have as to " making a crack in your sky". That sky is our country.  I think you'd understand this, as I've read more than a few of your posts stating Americans need to stay out of, or don't fully understand Australian political stuff. 

Children died  more frequently in the past; death was a more frequent companion. Infanticide was also more common. Familiarity with death changes how we perceive death. I can't see any reason to assume that an Ancient Greek would feel the same way as a 21st C American woman. Chronological projection. 

Re Proud Boys, if you want to claim they are the equivalent of climate change, go ahead. The sky is global; some cracks are more literally world ending than others. 

I didn't realise the writer was being so nation-focused. When I think of the world ending, I think of the world, not the US. 

 

 

 

[TexasProud]

36 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

 

I didn't realise the writer was being so nation-focused. When I think of the world ending, I think of the world, not the US. 

 

 

 

Yes, she was being nation focused. So yeah, I think of mothers in Ukraine and how in the world they feel that their world is ending. 

[Melissa Louise]

Just now, TexasProud said:

Yes, she was being nation focused. So yeah, I think of mothers in Ukraine and how in the world they feel that their world is ending. 

War is definitely world-changing.

 

 

[Scarlett]

I did not really think it was nation focused.  She was using examples that she is living which happen to be things like the Proud Boys.    This country is cracking. It doesn’t shock me at all.  I feel like most people think the US can’t collapse, but I have never believed that. And watching the hearings going on recently have reminded me how quickly it can all unravel. 
 

 

[Terabith]

Climate change is a HUGE factor in the end of the world.  It won't be "the end of the world" like when the sun goes nova.  It will create global instability and famine and massive refugee crisis.  Lots and lots of people will live through it, but it will be civilization ending for much of the world.

The Proud Boys as an example of the collapse of American democracy and the loss of the US as a major empire will create an apocalyptic scenario, not just for the United States, but will have ripples on a large part of the world.  

[Corraleno]

10 hours ago, Idalou said:

Why would you think Ancient Greek mothers would be more hard nosed? Women love, dream, and mourn for their children, babies to adulthood, the world over.

I'm old enough to remember that during the Vietnam war it was a common trope to claim that "life is cheap" is SE Asia, that they didn't love and care for their families the same way that "civilized" (i.e., white, Western European, Christian) people do. And yet if you ask the mothers of Vietnamese soldiers who were killed, their grief is no different than that of American mothers. The idea that living in a time or place where death was more common means that mothers worried less, grieved less, missed their loved ones less, makes no sense to me. Life expectancy for American slaves was around 22 years, with only half of infants surviving to their first birthday — do people believe that those mothers loved their children less, worried less about their future, were less grieved when they died, than their great-granddaughters were 100 years later? Do people think the experience of a Bronze age mother whose daughter was raped by invaders was much different than a Ukrainian mother watching Russian soldiers drag her daughter away? Is it really less traumatizing to watch your child starve to death if famine is more common, or less upsetting to lose a child if you lose more of them?

Edited July 18, 2022 by Corraleno

[Melissa Louise]

I'd imagine you'd harden your heart a little, yes.

Idk. Mine is pretty hardened b/C we've had the threat of DD committng suicide hanging over us for the last six years. Self-preservation means you imagine not only the worst, but a world beyond the worst. You even begin building that post-worst world so it's there to catch you when the axe falls. 

Historically speaking, infancy and childhood is conceptualised very differently today, partly as a result of our small families in which we expect all children to survive infancy. . 

Harshly, our individual griefs  and sorrows end nothing, not even when we might want them to. 

 

[MercyA]

I am sorry, @Melissa Louise. 😞