Abolition of Man

S9E18 – Abolition – Ch. 3, Pt. 1 ("Man's Conquest of Nature")
Pints with Jack | 3 March 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJP-JBNg1P4

19:02 Further reading? Chesterton. ALL you can get across.

Not least What's Wrong with the World?

22:10 Anyone of you saw Snarky Jay's video on how Hollywood degraded the mentor archetype?

1977, Obi Wan Kenobi. Death of a mentor is major trauma (confer Gandalf in Moria, 1954). 2025 films, death of mentor is a sigh or relief.

I compared US statistics for 1977 and 2025 (yes, they were already in), and given the shrinking percentage of a typical mentoree age (20 to 24) and the increase in percentage of typical mentor age (all from 60 up), anyone in mentoree age is up against, not sure I recall the US stats correctly, but this was the case for France between 1968 and 2025, twice as many potential mentors. And any oldie defining otium cum dignitate, especially the cum dignitate part, as being a mentor, only has half as many mentorees to pick from.

So, yes, CSL was on spot. People contracepting are opting to get the next and overnext generations more subdued than they were.

(When we speak of generations, what CSL predicted about a "generation X" if I recall correctly, has been diluted over two generations, boomers and the ones called X).

26:57 Eugenics was alive and well before the Nazis.

Pope Pius XI condemned it in 1931, before the Machtübernahme. Casti connubii.

Lenin had a research project, which fortunately Stalin and Lysenko cancelled.

If Britain didn't get forced sterilisations, in the 20's or 30's, it was not thanks to CSL who came to the forefront in WW-II, it was thanks to Chesterton and Belloc. But some states of Canada already had it and four Nordic countries at least had it. Dito some states of the US.

31:08 The internet, unusually, actually gives us more freedom ... for as long as no admin disconnects one.

[Unlike Malcolm Guite, I'm actually offline most of each 24 hours, since I access internet on borrowed computers, cybers and libraries]