A youth pastor speaking to an assembled group of men told us that daughters need a father’s love. If they don’t get it they’ll find it somewhere else and sometimes not in a good way. That stuck with me.
When the father does not respect the mother of his children, the children will not show any respect for their father or their mother. We wind up with gangs of feral children stealing, vandalizing, and hurting one another and others.
Since we're mentioning clothing, I want to add that these "parents" can be recognized by their clothes: "athletic" clothes (like "running suits") with the "mothers" exposing too much (especially if they're "overweight", a term now out of favor).
We’re just a few months apart in age and I remember my mother wearing short white cotton gloves to go to the grocery store. At school, us girls had to wear skirts and the boys had to wear shirts which had collars. So bring back dress codes for the student too.
As to the rest of the article, I fear that we’re already well into generation three and nearing the end of it. It’s going to take something cataclysmic to turn us back to sanity. I pray for my grandchildren and their married monogamous church going parents.
When I started to school in the late in 1948, (graduated high school in 1960) the only time we were allowed to wear pants to school was for western day (in honor of the rodeo in progress) or if it was really cold, then we could wear long pants under our dress to keep our legs warm. I always wore a dress in college and when I started working in 1967, even though we didn't interact face to face with the public, we were required to wear a dress. sometime after that we were allowed to wear a pant suit as long as the top and bottom matched and covered our "derriere". Now I see girls going to school in the shortest of short shorts with their butt cheeks hanging out. That's not progress in the right direction! I have a photo of my grandparents walking down the city street in my hometown, my grandfather wearing a suit complete with hat & tie and my grandmother wearing a dress complete with hat & gloves. She wore gloves to drive every time she went anywhere so her hands wouldn't get so spotted. We always wore dresses, hats & heels to church. My, how times have changed!
And we dressed in our Sunday Best when we travelled by train or plane. When we chafed at dressing up for a school event or even church my parents explained it was to show respect. My poor mother almost stroked out when a friend showed up for my 1977 wedding wearing jeans and a flannel shirt.
I have a straw fedora and a felt one, though I don't wear either of them very often. I once took my wife to an Irish pub on the San Antonio Riverwalk. I wore that straw fedora, a cream colored sport coat and matching trousers, cap-toe oxfords, and I was using a cane at the time, due to worn-away knee cartilage. I got five compliments. Three twenty-something fellows walked by and one of them said, "Looking fly, man."
What I really want, but don't have yet, is a felt fedora with a teardrop crown and a 2 1/5" brim, like the one worn by Timothy Hutton in the Nero Wolfe series. That'll set me back $250 or more, but when I find one, I'm buyin' it.
I hear you. I worked a sales conference for my then emplyouer. It was in the summer in Dallas and I wore a white suit with a straw fedora. I never got so many compliments. Some lady attending actually yelled. "That suit, the hat, sir. You wearing it. Man. are you wearing it." Later I passed her again at the event and she said, "If my mama were here, you'd need a stick." :D
I had a collection of hats in a drawer in my dresser as a small child. Didn't wear them much in school K-12 -- college but in the last 40 years, frequently. JFK was the death of hats. Before him, photos of men in the streets and at railroad stations with politicians on the rear deck of observations cars campaigning show univeral application of head coverings. He didn't wear one. They've come back a bit generally. A decent felt hat can be obtained at moderate cost from Pendleton and other sources, a nice one of English or Italian origin is expensive but, if proper care is taken, all will last a lifetime. One charcoal gray fedors I purchased on an April day in a decent haberdashery in Washington DC on a rare business visit a couple of decades ago. It was raining like hell that spring. The proprietor told me not to worry, it was waterproof, the nature of felt made from animal fur. I wore it out the door and today it is still very nice.
I routinely exchange compliments with gentlemen I encounter displaying nice hats, too.
Harry Truman wore a hat! I didn't know a political party from a hole in the ground, but Truman wore wing-tip shoes and a hat much like my dad wore. As a child, I called those "preacher shoes." PS: I thought haberdashery was a bad word reserved for FDR's replacement, but I liked Truman.
my first job was at a grocery store in flint,mi. 90c an hour. i was 16. we all had to wear a white shirt and black bow tie. i forgot my tie one friday and the manager told me i had to wear a bow tie or punch out and go home. the clerks wore a long black tie. he loaned me a dollar and i went to the store next door, bought a bow tie, went back to my store and the manager calls me over and asked why i had on a brown bow tie. i told him they were out of black bow ties that only cost a dollar. he gave me 2 more bucks so i went back, got a refund and bought a 3 dollar black bow tie. on my next check i had to pay the the manager 3 dollars that i owed him. my check was for around 6 dollars so i couldn't go on a date that weekend.
you're right about that. my mother didn't even reimburse me for that three dollar tie either. she told me that she wasn't the one who forgot the tie. i wore that sucker for a long time too.
lesson learned. plan your work and work your plan. respects!
Well, one thing I can say about you is that you are definitely NOT cognitively impaired. What a memory! I'm younger than you and I barely remember my first job. 😂 Great story. It's so good to tell those stories so we all remember.
LOVED this column and I would also love a link to the article that another reader sent to you with the original sociological study done by the priest.
When my hubby and I were visiting a few areas around the country several years ago, trying to decide where to relocate to OUT of the swamp (aka DMV area), at one point I exclaimed to him "Ah! I know where I want to relocate to!" and he very excitedly asked, "Where?!" and I answered "The 1950s".
I have a favorite tie. My wife bought it for me at a thrift store for $1. It is an art museum gift store tie of Monet’s Water Lillies. I have received more compliments on that tie than all the other ties I have ever worn. It has become my funeral tie, because I think there is a spot in heaven that looks and feels like what Monet painted.
In the late 70s through the 80s after dropping out of college I worked for a small defense contractor, starting in the stockroom. Within five years I was a manager. As a manager I felt I needed to wear a tie, both as a statement of self-respect, and wanting respect. I knew I'd probably get a ration of crap from teasing co-workers but nervously went ahead. The first morning of my promotion the one guy I expected the most grief from walked by my open office door and did a double take. I thought, here we go. He paused for a moment and said, "dude, you look good." He and several other men in my department began to occasionally wear ties, and some every day. It created a more professional atmosphere and projected seriousness and confidence, and confirms your point about dress and the culture at large.
I remember when my office instituted “casual Friday”, when you could wear what was termed “business casual dress”, rather than full on professional attire.
The difference in work ethic and attitude was palpable!
in the mid-nineties the company where i worked went to business casual. i quipped that it was so they would know who was interviewing with other companies.
Fascinating article!! But what a hard sell in these times, as we’ve fallen so far from the grace such civility once bestowed.
I’d only add one other big item to the list of things that destroy a culture and that is the abandonment of faith in God, the ultimate check on human behavior. When that happens, all the rest fall like a strip of dominoes.
I'm the same age as you, Don. I always say that the problem is that there are now no standards. If you look at pictures of airline flights from the 'fifties, every man has on a tie, and every woman a dress. Now a plurality of the girls are wearing pajamas. One thing I learned as a child up in the Head of the Holler was that men do not wear hats indoors, and in restaurants full of men in hats, mine is always on the table from the moment I sit down. Things matter.
Males wearing hats indoors is my husband’s biggest pet peeve. He has been known to confront them and kindly suggest that they remove them. Sometimes it actually works. He’s 76 years old.
When Obama suggested that a Romney presidency would take us back to the 50’s, my first response was, “And what’s the problem with that?”
I worked with a manager in business (Marketing) who also taught part-time at the local regional university campus. He had a rule that students could not wear their hats (baseball caps) in his classroom. You never saw a more confused look on a 20-year-old face. This teacher was classic: old-schooled, military background, and unflinching in his standards. You either followed his rules or you left class. This was circa 2000 so it was a little while back.
A man who knows hat etiquette! Gotta have good short hair to remove your hat and not be embarrassed by "hat hair" which is probably why he gets resistance. ☺
How I hated to come to the end of this article! For a brief moment in time Mom and Dad were still around to help me over the hard parts! Brother was at college, sister was preparing to marry her USN Ensign and I was old enough to drive, but still rode my bike to school, wearing a dress. Thomas Wolfe was right. You can't go home again (you wouldn't recognize it).
This is the best post of yours I have read, Mr. Surber. Thanks so much for including the link to the History Facts website. I will be 74 this June and I often wondered why I have been so programmed to do certain things. My wife’s two sisters often marvel at how I always open a door (car doors as well) for her. One even remarked that my wife would wait inside the car for me to come around and help her out. She said if I ever forgot, her sister would sit inside the car forever, or at least until I actually did come back and open the door. My father taught me that…not by words but by his actions. Same thing with toilet seats. I have never left the seat up since 1957. That was when my mother shrieked in the middle of the night and the next day reminded me that gentlemen always lower the seat. To this day, I cannot leave a bathroom without making sure I have kept my promise.
I could go on and on but this article is such a good example of why I love waking up to your columns. Reading them each day is the second thing I do after waking up. No, actually third because I have to make a cup of coffee to enjoy while reading them. Anyone our age can guess what the first thing is (and that includes putting the seat back down).
You absolutely brightened my day. Thank you so much!
When a society discourages family formation it encourages the destruction of civilization. Think of all the good things one learns in a healthy or even just ok family and you see what holds a society together and leads to civilized behaviour toward others. Just look at the effects on children now growing up without the security of unconditional love of two parents. Such children do not love or form responsible attachments and do not grow up.
Just give copies of this essay to everyone you encounter today.
As for ties, I’ve been known to wear an Ascot on more than one occasion & - with a trip across the Atlantic coming up this June on the Queen Mary 2 - I’m sure more opportunities will abound. The ship apparently has a dress code strictly enforced. Seems the Cunard Line has a retro streak & God Bless them for it!!!
If you are a fan of TCM & older films, in them every man - even the bad guys - are in suits & ties. Every woman wears a dress. A unintentional funny moment occurs in the James Bond premiere film “Dr. No” (1962) when Bond & his CIA counterpart Felix Leiter are in the process of investigating one another & they wind up chasing each other around on a Jamaican beach - wearing suits & ties!!! Hey - it was 1962 & the “Ultra-Lounge” craze was at its height. This trend lasted thru the 1960’s, Michael Caine’s character in “The Italian Job” (1969) is always impeccably dressed.
It’s not however just fashion & style that have been destroyed by the sexual revolution (& social media) but also social mores, dating, & character. How many men know that when walking down a street with a woman the man should always be in the outside, I.e. between the woman & the street? This was done so that if a carriage came down the (unpaved as a rule) street the woman would not be splashed with muddy water? The intent was that the guy take the hit for the woman. When the Titanic was in the process of heading to Davy Jones’ Locker it was “women & children first” into the lifeboats; that’s the way it had always been. The Principles of Chivalry played a large part in this; men were expected to display Chivalry @ all times: respect & deference to women & the elderly, care for children, the weak & the sick. Even opponents/enemies were afforded certain rules of war in that one never attacked an unhorsed opponent not stabbed/shot a man in the back. That was considered cowardly. And rape was unheard of among those who practiced & lived their lives under The Code of Chivalry. These principles were the living code of the Chivalric Orders back in the Middle Ages. It’s been largely lost to history but Knights were in fact soldier monks, they served The Order for a period of time (such as guarding Jerusalem from Muslim attack) before retiring & only then could they take a wife in marriage. While on active duty they were unmarried & celibate. The fear of God & Final Judgement kept a lot of people in line back then. Sadly, that’s pretty much been erased by “progressivism”, “feminism”, “woke-ism” & transgender-ism now we have generations (Millenials & Z?) who are so clueless (in large part) & so lost morally & spiritually that a complete collapse of civilization seems the end result.
If indeed we wind up in some sort of “Mad Max” endgame situation men of these generations will suffer horribly.
Wow Don, this is one of the Best Columns you’ve written (imho).
The Best Thing a Father can do for his Children is Love (and show Respect for) their Mother.
A youth pastor speaking to an assembled group of men told us that daughters need a father’s love. If they don’t get it they’ll find it somewhere else and sometimes not in a good way. That stuck with me.
When the father does not respect the mother of his children, the children will not show any respect for their father or their mother. We wind up with gangs of feral children stealing, vandalizing, and hurting one another and others.
Since we're mentioning clothing, I want to add that these "parents" can be recognized by their clothes: "athletic" clothes (like "running suits") with the "mothers" exposing too much (especially if they're "overweight", a term now out of favor).
All out of favor terms need to be brought back
My dad said that a lot, too. :)
Worst I've read in a year
One word for today's column: decorum.
Also, Dignity.
Outlaw the “F” word in public and in writing. Sorry something do need to be censored. Pornography and cursing are two of them.
A thousand “Amens” Don!
We’re just a few months apart in age and I remember my mother wearing short white cotton gloves to go to the grocery store. At school, us girls had to wear skirts and the boys had to wear shirts which had collars. So bring back dress codes for the student too.
As to the rest of the article, I fear that we’re already well into generation three and nearing the end of it. It’s going to take something cataclysmic to turn us back to sanity. I pray for my grandchildren and their married monogamous church going parents.
Sad to say but I agree with you that we are further down this path than Don thinks.
When I started to school in the late in 1948, (graduated high school in 1960) the only time we were allowed to wear pants to school was for western day (in honor of the rodeo in progress) or if it was really cold, then we could wear long pants under our dress to keep our legs warm. I always wore a dress in college and when I started working in 1967, even though we didn't interact face to face with the public, we were required to wear a dress. sometime after that we were allowed to wear a pant suit as long as the top and bottom matched and covered our "derriere". Now I see girls going to school in the shortest of short shorts with their butt cheeks hanging out. That's not progress in the right direction! I have a photo of my grandparents walking down the city street in my hometown, my grandfather wearing a suit complete with hat & tie and my grandmother wearing a dress complete with hat & gloves. She wore gloves to drive every time she went anywhere so her hands wouldn't get so spotted. We always wore dresses, hats & heels to church. My, how times have changed!
And we dressed in our Sunday Best when we travelled by train or plane. When we chafed at dressing up for a school event or even church my parents explained it was to show respect. My poor mother almost stroked out when a friend showed up for my 1977 wedding wearing jeans and a flannel shirt.
First men stopped wearing hats, then society began to lose its head. (A baseball cap is not a hat)
I have a straw fedora and a felt one, though I don't wear either of them very often. I once took my wife to an Irish pub on the San Antonio Riverwalk. I wore that straw fedora, a cream colored sport coat and matching trousers, cap-toe oxfords, and I was using a cane at the time, due to worn-away knee cartilage. I got five compliments. Three twenty-something fellows walked by and one of them said, "Looking fly, man."
What I really want, but don't have yet, is a felt fedora with a teardrop crown and a 2 1/5" brim, like the one worn by Timothy Hutton in the Nero Wolfe series. That'll set me back $250 or more, but when I find one, I'm buyin' it.
I hear you. I worked a sales conference for my then emplyouer. It was in the summer in Dallas and I wore a white suit with a straw fedora. I never got so many compliments. Some lady attending actually yelled. "That suit, the hat, sir. You wearing it. Man. are you wearing it." Later I passed her again at the event and she said, "If my mama were here, you'd need a stick." :D
The hat makes the man or woman. I make my own felt hats. Long arduous process, but I usually get what I want. ☺ You need a good milliner.
i've three fedoras, one similar to your aspirational one but in olive. i love the panama.
Nero Wolfe series was great. Nothing good like that any more.
I had a collection of hats in a drawer in my dresser as a small child. Didn't wear them much in school K-12 -- college but in the last 40 years, frequently. JFK was the death of hats. Before him, photos of men in the streets and at railroad stations with politicians on the rear deck of observations cars campaigning show univeral application of head coverings. He didn't wear one. They've come back a bit generally. A decent felt hat can be obtained at moderate cost from Pendleton and other sources, a nice one of English or Italian origin is expensive but, if proper care is taken, all will last a lifetime. One charcoal gray fedors I purchased on an April day in a decent haberdashery in Washington DC on a rare business visit a couple of decades ago. It was raining like hell that spring. The proprietor told me not to worry, it was waterproof, the nature of felt made from animal fur. I wore it out the door and today it is still very nice.
I routinely exchange compliments with gentlemen I encounter displaying nice hats, too.
Harry Truman wore a hat! I didn't know a political party from a hole in the ground, but Truman wore wing-tip shoes and a hat much like my dad wore. As a child, I called those "preacher shoes." PS: I thought haberdashery was a bad word reserved for FDR's replacement, but I liked Truman.
My Boony is not a baseball cap (only worn while mowing for headphones) nor is it a fishing hate.
my first job was at a grocery store in flint,mi. 90c an hour. i was 16. we all had to wear a white shirt and black bow tie. i forgot my tie one friday and the manager told me i had to wear a bow tie or punch out and go home. the clerks wore a long black tie. he loaned me a dollar and i went to the store next door, bought a bow tie, went back to my store and the manager calls me over and asked why i had on a brown bow tie. i told him they were out of black bow ties that only cost a dollar. he gave me 2 more bucks so i went back, got a refund and bought a 3 dollar black bow tie. on my next check i had to pay the the manager 3 dollars that i owed him. my check was for around 6 dollars so i couldn't go on a date that weekend.
that was in 1964.
Another thing that’s missing from society today: the sting of consequences!
And shame. No matter how egregious, no one suffers being shamed.
Some people do not understand shame they have been so dumbed down.
you're right about that. my mother didn't even reimburse me for that three dollar tie either. she told me that she wasn't the one who forgot the tie. i wore that sucker for a long time too.
lesson learned. plan your work and work your plan. respects!
“Accountability” ceased to be owned by one’s conscience and turfed to the lawyers and courts to decide.
Well, one thing I can say about you is that you are definitely NOT cognitively impaired. What a memory! I'm younger than you and I barely remember my first job. 😂 Great story. It's so good to tell those stories so we all remember.
You, sir, are a Gentleman and a Scholar!
LOVED this column and I would also love a link to the article that another reader sent to you with the original sociological study done by the priest.
When my hubby and I were visiting a few areas around the country several years ago, trying to decide where to relocate to OUT of the swamp (aka DMV area), at one point I exclaimed to him "Ah! I know where I want to relocate to!" and he very excitedly asked, "Where?!" and I answered "The 1950s".
Today's article explains why.
I have a favorite tie. My wife bought it for me at a thrift store for $1. It is an art museum gift store tie of Monet’s Water Lillies. I have received more compliments on that tie than all the other ties I have ever worn. It has become my funeral tie, because I think there is a spot in heaven that looks and feels like what Monet painted.
Wearing a tie was a ritual that told the world that the wearer was a member in good standing of the overall society.
In the late 70s through the 80s after dropping out of college I worked for a small defense contractor, starting in the stockroom. Within five years I was a manager. As a manager I felt I needed to wear a tie, both as a statement of self-respect, and wanting respect. I knew I'd probably get a ration of crap from teasing co-workers but nervously went ahead. The first morning of my promotion the one guy I expected the most grief from walked by my open office door and did a double take. I thought, here we go. He paused for a moment and said, "dude, you look good." He and several other men in my department began to occasionally wear ties, and some every day. It created a more professional atmosphere and projected seriousness and confidence, and confirms your point about dress and the culture at large.
I remember when my office instituted “casual Friday”, when you could wear what was termed “business casual dress”, rather than full on professional attire.
The difference in work ethic and attitude was palpable!
in the mid-nineties the company where i worked went to business casual. i quipped that it was so they would know who was interviewing with other companies.
Hah!!
My manager used to say if you dress like it's a day off, you'll work like it's a day off
Sooo true!!
And then, you became CEO, sold the company and because a multi-millionaire, yes? I hear dressing for the job you want works. Well done! 😉
“Dress for Success”!
Anyone born in the 1950's lived through a time that migrated from a strict dress code in life to, by retirement, almost anything goes at work.
When dress codes changed for the worse, so did professionalism and manners.
Fascinating article!! But what a hard sell in these times, as we’ve fallen so far from the grace such civility once bestowed.
I’d only add one other big item to the list of things that destroy a culture and that is the abandonment of faith in God, the ultimate check on human behavior. When that happens, all the rest fall like a strip of dominoes.
Amen Suzie. That is number 1 in my book!
I'm the same age as you, Don. I always say that the problem is that there are now no standards. If you look at pictures of airline flights from the 'fifties, every man has on a tie, and every woman a dress. Now a plurality of the girls are wearing pajamas. One thing I learned as a child up in the Head of the Holler was that men do not wear hats indoors, and in restaurants full of men in hats, mine is always on the table from the moment I sit down. Things matter.
Males wearing hats indoors is my husband’s biggest pet peeve. He has been known to confront them and kindly suggest that they remove them. Sometimes it actually works. He’s 76 years old.
When Obama suggested that a Romney presidency would take us back to the 50’s, my first response was, “And what’s the problem with that?”
Obama and his ilk destroyed or sought to destroy most of the things that made this country great. How anyone thinks he was a good leader is beyond me.
I worked with a manager in business (Marketing) who also taught part-time at the local regional university campus. He had a rule that students could not wear their hats (baseball caps) in his classroom. You never saw a more confused look on a 20-year-old face. This teacher was classic: old-schooled, military background, and unflinching in his standards. You either followed his rules or you left class. This was circa 2000 so it was a little while back.
A man who knows hat etiquette! Gotta have good short hair to remove your hat and not be embarrassed by "hat hair" which is probably why he gets resistance. ☺
I always remove my hat before entering a building. Back when I was making sales calls I held my hat in my hand or sat it on my lap if sitting.
Today most guys do not take their hats off in a restaurant.
I was entering a restaurant one day and the manager came to my friend and told him he had to remove his hat.
Yesssss!!! Let’s take this goddamn country back.
Jim, there are still standards. Unfortunately they are double standards and substandard.
How I hated to come to the end of this article! For a brief moment in time Mom and Dad were still around to help me over the hard parts! Brother was at college, sister was preparing to marry her USN Ensign and I was old enough to drive, but still rode my bike to school, wearing a dress. Thomas Wolfe was right. You can't go home again (you wouldn't recognize it).
This is the best post of yours I have read, Mr. Surber. Thanks so much for including the link to the History Facts website. I will be 74 this June and I often wondered why I have been so programmed to do certain things. My wife’s two sisters often marvel at how I always open a door (car doors as well) for her. One even remarked that my wife would wait inside the car for me to come around and help her out. She said if I ever forgot, her sister would sit inside the car forever, or at least until I actually did come back and open the door. My father taught me that…not by words but by his actions. Same thing with toilet seats. I have never left the seat up since 1957. That was when my mother shrieked in the middle of the night and the next day reminded me that gentlemen always lower the seat. To this day, I cannot leave a bathroom without making sure I have kept my promise.
I could go on and on but this article is such a good example of why I love waking up to your columns. Reading them each day is the second thing I do after waking up. No, actually third because I have to make a cup of coffee to enjoy while reading them. Anyone our age can guess what the first thing is (and that includes putting the seat back down).
You absolutely brightened my day. Thank you so much!
Ditto C G
When a society discourages family formation it encourages the destruction of civilization. Think of all the good things one learns in a healthy or even just ok family and you see what holds a society together and leads to civilized behaviour toward others. Just look at the effects on children now growing up without the security of unconditional love of two parents. Such children do not love or form responsible attachments and do not grow up.
Just give copies of this essay to everyone you encounter today.
I always tell my daughter, (she is 31) that I love her unconditionally & always have her back.
As for ties, I’ve been known to wear an Ascot on more than one occasion & - with a trip across the Atlantic coming up this June on the Queen Mary 2 - I’m sure more opportunities will abound. The ship apparently has a dress code strictly enforced. Seems the Cunard Line has a retro streak & God Bless them for it!!!
If you are a fan of TCM & older films, in them every man - even the bad guys - are in suits & ties. Every woman wears a dress. A unintentional funny moment occurs in the James Bond premiere film “Dr. No” (1962) when Bond & his CIA counterpart Felix Leiter are in the process of investigating one another & they wind up chasing each other around on a Jamaican beach - wearing suits & ties!!! Hey - it was 1962 & the “Ultra-Lounge” craze was at its height. This trend lasted thru the 1960’s, Michael Caine’s character in “The Italian Job” (1969) is always impeccably dressed.
It’s not however just fashion & style that have been destroyed by the sexual revolution (& social media) but also social mores, dating, & character. How many men know that when walking down a street with a woman the man should always be in the outside, I.e. between the woman & the street? This was done so that if a carriage came down the (unpaved as a rule) street the woman would not be splashed with muddy water? The intent was that the guy take the hit for the woman. When the Titanic was in the process of heading to Davy Jones’ Locker it was “women & children first” into the lifeboats; that’s the way it had always been. The Principles of Chivalry played a large part in this; men were expected to display Chivalry @ all times: respect & deference to women & the elderly, care for children, the weak & the sick. Even opponents/enemies were afforded certain rules of war in that one never attacked an unhorsed opponent not stabbed/shot a man in the back. That was considered cowardly. And rape was unheard of among those who practiced & lived their lives under The Code of Chivalry. These principles were the living code of the Chivalric Orders back in the Middle Ages. It’s been largely lost to history but Knights were in fact soldier monks, they served The Order for a period of time (such as guarding Jerusalem from Muslim attack) before retiring & only then could they take a wife in marriage. While on active duty they were unmarried & celibate. The fear of God & Final Judgement kept a lot of people in line back then. Sadly, that’s pretty much been erased by “progressivism”, “feminism”, “woke-ism” & transgender-ism now we have generations (Millenials & Z?) who are so clueless (in large part) & so lost morally & spiritually that a complete collapse of civilization seems the end result.
If indeed we wind up in some sort of “Mad Max” endgame situation men of these generations will suffer horribly.