A Too-Planned Life

Life in the COVID era has been surreal. Masks are a pocket accessory as much as a cellphone or car keys. Assuming conversations about whether one has gotten the vaccine or not yet has become commonplace in everyday conversations, the way someone may talk about getting a UTI or being on birth control as if it were normal. Then there's that moment when you don't know what to do when you would normally shake someone's hand. Like I said, kind of surreal. "Normal" life seems like a dream ago.

One interesting aspect of the pandemic-age has been in housing. In some aspects, there has been a predictable rise in people fleeing major urban areas (70,000+ exodus from New York City alone costing the city billions in tax renevue) as many employers have gone to remote work. Other people more prone to prepping long for land and neighbors miles away.

In another sense, though, there has been the curious phenomenon of COVID creating a surge in demand for 'tiny homes'. Some on wheels, where you might have a Murphy bed or a composting toilet. Nano apartments less than 260 sq ft in Hong Kong which sell for around $650,000USD have also been on the rise. 

For our part, I have really appreciated having a little more space in our single family home--some extra rooms to escape to (no Millennial 'open concept' floor plan here in our 1950's split level), and without the need to constantly be cleaning and tidying up. 

Affordability may be part of it (though tiny houses are arguably a poor investment in terms of resale value and are more of a depreciating asset). But I think there's more to it.

Whether or not you ascribe to the idea of a global NWO, there seems to be an ideal of a more or less 'planned society' in the works. In Render To Caesar, I wrote, 

"Have you ever seen an architectural rendering? You know, one of those two dimensional stylized representations of a future reality that doesn't exist but SHOULD because it would be so awesome and would solve all of planet Earth's problems? Like a 200 story high rise that is covered with vegetable gardens, or a mixed-use space where young urbanites can live and work and play and shop in a walkable paradise? It doesn't exist yet, but 'build it and they will come.' 

I have an admission: I hate renderings. Why? I don't know. I just like life in the real world. I have a low bs threshold, and real life has a way of not always fitting into neat prescribed models. I remember watching Jurassic Park as a kid when it first came out and thinking, "this is a HORRIBLE idea!" And it was, in the end, as all the dinosaurs escaped or something and turned on people. Maybe it's my acute awareness of the Fall, not only the rebellion in my own life, but in the world in which we live, that is wary of such social utopias."

You know one thing that messes up best-laid plans (in the best possible way) and a perfectly manicured life where everything gets put away in its place, beds are flawlessly made, and everything serves a purpose and is kept only if it 'sparks joy'? 

Kids.

It's apparent that population-control advocates like Bill Gates see humans and future generations in terms of environmental liabilities rather than human worth and capital. In Children of Men, I wrote:

"We seem to almost be living in a science fiction novel today. 59 million lives have been lost to abortion since Roe vs Wade in 1973, and 1.5 billion worldwide since 1980. We manufacture human life in test tubes and freeze or destroy embryos, bank sperm, take a morning after pill to terminate a pregnancy after contraception fails. Governments enact policies to limit children to 1 per household and force sterilization and abortions when citizens don't comply, while black market surrogacy is thriving. Human life is commodified and exploited by merciless systems of production, and traditional nuclear families are in the minority. Meanwhile, Europe faces a population disaster due to plummeting birth rates, the economic implications of which are starting to be realized.

In short, we have taken human life for granted, and there will be a price to be paid.

A quote from the film that stayed with me was when Kee's midwife reflects on the beginning of the infertility crisis in 2009, when people stopped getting pregnant and giving birth. "As the sound of the playgrounds faded," she said, "the despair set in. Very odd what happens in a world without children's voices."

Admittedly, I do watch a lot of tiny house videos and things on YouTube, because I like learning about construction. Almost without exception, those enamored with the idea are single women or young couples sans children; additionally without exception, they have pets which they treat as children. 

I saw this meme once on social media. It was brutally jarring and uncomfortable, but I think it speaks a savage truth about how future generations are holding up and actualizing their ideals of a planned life:

I appreciate simplicity. I appreciate, to a degree, a minimalism in owning things and what we bring into our home (that often alludes me, despite my best efforts). What I appreciate most, though, is what most upends all of that: my children. And not just my children, in the possessive sense, but the children we have brought into the world (or, rather, that God has brought into the world using us as the co-operators in that plan) for the world's benefit. Not just "going forth and multiplying," as the Lord commanded (yes, commanded) us to do. But forming them, sacrificing for them, so that they can actualize the kind of world we as Christians see as the ideal. Which is completely at odds with the focus depicted in the graphic above.

Maybe the thing about COVID and all it brings with it is the unsettling sense of uncertainty and upending--when the pendulum swings, and in a vaccuum of faithlessness, and where the vaccine is the new secular Eucharist, people want more control, not less--from the top (the "global elites") on down to the couple that's okay with doing number 2s in a sawdust bucket toilet and owning two sets of dining utensils and living in 150 square feet--as long as children--the enemy of a planned future--don't come along and mess it up. Or if they do, that they factor in seamlessly to the well-manicured 'plan for life' they have laid out for themselves.  

It's one thing to have to live in a shoebox-type living situation by necessity in parts of the world like Hong Kong or Japan, or the slums of Calcutta. Millions of people do. But here in the West, the vast majority of us have the luxury of choice and space. The tiny house phenomenon may be a fad but it's a curious one and I think tells us about what those attracted to it prioritize. There is a happy medium between McMansions and cottages-on-wheels. It's where we find ourselves as a family, and happily so. We have room in our home and space in our hearts for children, for guests, for mess, for the (thankful) luxury of not having to be constantly cleaning and tidying and putting things away. 

I'm not sure what the future generations will look like in the "12...6...2...dog" projection, but it doesn't inspire confidence in a future that seems very much the opposite of 'sustainable.' In a too-planned life, there's no extra room in the inn, and not just in terms of square footage. We need room in our heart and lives for uncertainty (which necessitates faith); mortality (which inspires fear of the Lord); charity (which inspires virtue); and love and commitment (in marriage, which begets children). Or, as the wisdom of Scripture attests, “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but increase comes by the strength of an ox.” (Prov 14:4)