College Education and Impossible Standards

Here’s another one of those whinefests from a liberated career woman about how she and her “successful, gorgeous, and amazing friends” in their 30’s can’t find a man to save them from themselves.

This stood out for me from the article:

For one, it’s not as if we are holding out for Jake Gyllenhaal, but we do have certain non-negotiable expectations for potential mates that include college degrees and white-collar jobs. Life has always gone according to our plans, so why wouldn’t we land a man with these (reasonable) requirements?

This point has been made before, but I will make it again.

A woman requiring an education from a man is not a reasonable requirement, at least if she actually wants to find a man.

There are 1.3 females graduating for every 1 male who graduates. For every 10 females that may potentially find a man with a college degree, it is an absolute impossibility for 3 of them to.

I repeat: it is a mathematical impossibility for at least 23% of college-educated women to find a college-educated man.

The article, like most of these types, does mention this, but glosses over and understates the severity of it:

But increasingly, there aren’t enough of these men to go around. Women now outnumber men on college campuses, and single, childless women out earn their male counterparts. In fact, as author Liza Mundy writes in her book, The Richer Sex, Millennial women are increasingly finding two options when it comes to romance: marry down or don’t marry.

It’s not that there just “aren’t enough”, it’s that there is a major shortage.

And men know this.

Can a women honestly think that a 30-year-old college-educated man, knowing that he’s in very high demand is going to settle for a 30-year-old career broad, rather than the newly minted 23-year-old college grad or the cute 22-year-old waitress?

Honestly?

Sure, I said absolutely nothing new, but it bears repeating. While some seem to recognize the problem, it is always understated.

It is an absolute impossibility for 1-in-4 college-educated women in the US to find a college-educated man.

If you are a women looking for a college-educated man, look hard and when you find bite hard while young before both you and the college-educated man enters your 30s and he realizes his high value, otherwise you could be in the 25%.

On the bright side, if that happens you could always write freelance articles complaining about how you can’t find a man.

****

For those women who don’t want to be in the 25%, the Captain runs down how to capture your college-educated man. You simply have to be:

A physically attractive woman who is
nice
responsible
reasonably intelligent
and likes sex

That’s it. May probability be with you.

The Bookshelf: How to Read a Book

I finally finished How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler, my first book from the Free Man’s Reading List.

As implied by the title, the book essentially tries to teach you how to properly read a book to best understand it.

The book divides reading into four main types: elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical.

Elementary reading is, more or less, being literate. It’s the ability to read something and understand what it says on a basic level without having to regularly stop to use a dictionary. This is talked about but very briefly; the author seems to, rightly, assume that if you are reading “How to Read a Book” you’re already capable of this level of reading.

Inspectional reading is essentially skimming. It’s going through the main sections, the introductions, the conclusions, and the headers, while skimming the rest to get a general idea of what a book is like. This is what you did when you procrastinated on an essay in college and needed to get a few more sources to meet the minimum requirements for your paper. It is properly used as a prelude to real reading or to find out if a book is worth reading fully.This makes up a short part of the book.

Analytical reading is the next step up. It is reading the book in a thorough manner to be able to fully categorize, summarize, understand, and properly criticeze a book. The discussion of analytical reading is the bulk of the book.

The highest level of reading is syntopical reading. This is reading numerous books on a similar topic and linking them together in the context of each other. The Free Man’s Reading List is essentially a syntopical reading project. This makes up the last few dozen pages of the book.

The book is divided into four main parts.

The first part explains some theory of reading and advice on how to be a demanding reader, as well as the explanations of elementary and inspectional reading.

The second explains how to read analytically in the general.

The third explains how to read analytically in relation to specific genres of work (such as literature, philosophy, social science, etc.).

The fourth explains syntopical reading and encourages you to rad to grow your mind.

There’s also two appendices, the first being a recommended reading list of the classics of Western Civilization and the second having a few exercises (which I did not read or do) to test yourself on the four levels of reading.

The book itself carries a lot of information, almost too much information, on reading and is very thorough on it’s topic matter. It really teaches you how to read a book. This is both a blessing and a curse, some of the information is great, while some of it seems so obvious you almost think the author is condescending to you. As well, given the large amount of information presented, some of the good points are drowned out.

As for the writing style, it was dry. The author has a tendency to use 15 words where 10 would do and sometimes explain things far too precisely or in too much detail instead of assuming the reader has basic competence to understand. Adler could have been more concise.

The first sections and most of the second were not too bad, slightly dry, but nothing all that bad, but the last chapter of the second section and the entire third section was simply mind-numbingly dull; it was so dry it was often hard to concentrate. I’d read on the bus, get through 2 or 3 pages, then fall asleep. Hence, why it took to long to finish. The fourth section was on par with the first and second.

Overall, the first, second, and fourth sections were worth a read, with the occasional skim, but skim over or skip the third section, reading only that which is of particular interest. The book is well-organized, so finding the parts that might interest you is easy.

Recommendation:

If you are embarking on a major reading project, such as the Free Man’s Reading List (hint, hint) I’d definitely recommend reading the first two and fourth sections of How to Read a Book, so you can get the most out of your reading.

As well, read the first two section goes if you are desiring to be a better reader and/or want to better understand what you read in the future.

If you read mostly popular or genre fiction, this book will be worthless to you, don’t bother reading it. The book is designed for helping you read either the intense literary classics, non-fiction, and scientific/philosophical works.

But honestly, give section three no more than a skim. That was almost painful, and was definitely not worth the time/effort which could have gone to reading something else.

Housework, Independence, and Entitlement

The issue of men and housework seems to have sparked renewed interest among the chattering classes. It seems to have been sparked by this Tide commercial of some vaguely metrosexual father washing his daughter’s princess dress.

Judgy Bitch had some fun with this and CR points out the biological origins of the issue, but I’m going to weigh in as well.

Now, honestly, I don’t care if men do housework. Doing the laundry, cooking, or cleaning because you want to makes you neither more nor less of a man. If stuff needs to get done, men get stuff done.

A family should pursue whatever division of labour works best for them.

On the other hand, being a kitchen bitch is emasculating and will ruin your marriage. If you are a man, avoid it, it won’t go well for you.

Of course, all this assumes that there’s actually a chore gap. Which is unlikely as the time-use studies on this tend to ignore traditionally male chores.

I’m not going to write about proper housework division, that’s a personal issue. Instead, I am going to write about how this debate relates to independence, entitlement, and the society.

****

First, independence and strength.

Feminists, you wanted careers, you wanted to work outside the house, you got your wish, please shut up.

What these women don’t see when they complain about the “patriarchy” and being “oppressed” by staying at home rather than work mindless corporate drudgery, is that they now are doing what men have always done.

In the industrial era, men have always gone to work, they have always come home to do house work (home repairs, renovations, garbage, car repairs, yard work, finances, BBQing, etc.), and they have always participated in family life (to a greater or lesser degree).

The thing is, they didn’t, and still don’t, bitch about it. They didn’t write articles about how “over-whelming” it was. They didn’t demand that women step up and do they’re jobs for them. They didn’t whine about how unfair life was.

They just did their jobs, because that’s what independent adults do.

Independent and strong people don’t whine about how tough life is, about how unfair it is, they just do what needs to be done.

Women, you are now in the position those “oppressive” men have always been in.

Working all day for somebody else then coming home to take care of the house and family is what men have always done. You wanted to do it, now you are doing it.

You can not complain about women being “oppressed” when you do not have men’s responsibilities, then whine about having men’s responsibilities when you have spent decades demanding them.

From the Atlantic article:

The good news is that many men already seek out these responsibilities. I like to call their actions “small instances of gender heroism” or “SIGH”s, in honor of the intense pang of gratitude and relief a damsel-in-distress feels when a superhero notices her especially—amidst a crowd—and swoops in to enact a rescue that was so unexpected that its impossibility had become the central pillar of her fierce independence. You know, like the dreamy effect Mr. Darcy has on Elizabeth Bennet, Superman on Lois Lane, and Antonia on her line through Danielle and Therèse.
…
Find a working mom and lead with the following SIGH: “What do you need, in order to raise your children and advance in your career at the same time?” Just swoop in and help her out, not because you’re obligated to rectify an injustice, but because you can. Responding to the misery of the people you care about is what you do.

Independent and strong people don’t need SIGHs.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

If you need someone else to help you, you are, by definition, not independent. You are, by definition, weak.

If you want to be independent, be independent, but then don’t beg others to pick up your shit for you, do it yourself.

Don’t demand men clean your houses, don’t demand men come to your rescue, don’t demand others do things for you. You are independent now, deal with it.

****

Second, entitlement.

If you read these articles, you get a strong sense of entitlement.

The SIGHs talk above and the rest of the Atlantic article reek of entitlement, but as usual Jezebel just does horrible, entitled bitch so much better than anyone else.

The title of the Jezebel article (no link, if you’re curious see JB’s article) displays this perfectly:

“How to Make a Dude Sweep the Kitchen Floor (Correctly), Without You Even Having to Tell Him”

What kind of world-class bitch writes this? It sounds like a manual on training dogs to urinate outside.

In this mentality men exist to do what women desire, in the way women desire, while telepathically understanding both.

A few gems of overactive entitlement:

It’s not just that you’re tired and pissed, it’s that you never get the feeling of having your own life, or free time, or time to recharge, if you feel like you are the only person overseeing the household’s concerns and making sure they are handled, or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.

Because the entirety of everything revolves around the women’s feelings. As well, men are incompetent and everything must be done to the women’s standards or its worse than not having done anything at all.*

The Atlantic has some fancy sociological theories for this well-documented disparity as to why humans with peens can’t scrub a bathroom right without a lot of rigmarole:

Remember, all the jobs have to be done to the women’s standards, because men are incompetent and their standards don’t matter.

They Can’t Be Bothered (Motivational Hypothesis)

Of course they can see what needs to be done, but in their eyes, it’s just not that important to do it, especially when other stuff matters more. Homemade valentines for your class party, kiddo? Why bother when we can just buy some and save time?

No matter how useless the man may think the project is, if the women desires it must be done and he’s a jerk for not counting it as important housework and sharing the duties.

Later, Travis wonders why Alice can’t just constantly leave him notes to tell him what he has to do? Sure thing mister, right after she cuts the crust off your PB&J.

Because men should know what women want. We’re all mind-readers.

Here’s an idea for the women complaining: go fuck yourself.

If you want to be a controlling bitch and demand things be cleaner, do it yourself. If you want the house cleaned to your spoiled, exacting standards, do it yourself. If men’s standards are not up to those that your entitlement complex demands, do it yourself. If a man doesn’t think your little social-climbing and status games are important enough to act on, do it yourself.

Essentially, quit trying to force your neuroses and perfectionism concerning cleanliness and social status-seeking on men.

Do it yourself, and stop bitching that men don’t care about your neurotic desires.

****

Third, society.

From the Atlantic:

Only a handful of working parents have the “village” they need to care for their children during the period in which career opportunities slam up against pregnancies, births, years of nursing, and other crucial forms of caregiving. Most of us have to buy the village, and it’s expensive—so expensive that almost everyone has to stop hiring once they have paid for childcare and, in the very best cases, a cleaning service, despite the fact that there is much more to do.

To completely eliminate the destruction that childrearing exacts on your mind, body, and career, you would have to hire workers to handle your finances, home repairs, pets, laundry, afterschool commitments, errands, and shopping, among other responsibilities. Add to these costs the overtime that most working parents pay to accommodate the fact that their childcare needs extend well beyond the presumed eight hours a day, and you’re talking about a lot of cash. No one has this kind of money.

Because no one can afford to fully replace themselves at home while they are at the office and because, when it comes to more important tasks like selecting afterschool lessons and resolving playground disputes, no one wants to replace themselves, working mothers have famously picked up the slack for both partners, subsidizing our market with their free labor, enabling our companies and institutions to charge artificially low prices for their goods and offer artificially high salaries to their employees.

All of this means that mothers are important, in all of the ways in which socially conservative forces routinely note. But it could also mean that mothers—especially working mothers—are exploited. They are being used as a means by their partners, our institutions, and our economy in a system they did not design, to do more than their fair share of the family’s work, all without compensation. No one yet has asked or empowered working mothers to reimagine and restructure their workplaces to suit their own ends. So the basic lack of self-governance and self-determination, combined with the unpaid labor, raises the specter of injustice.

I’ve written about all this before, but it bears repeating. Nobody is meant to work, take care of family, keep home, raise children, and all those other responsibilities at once. Of course child care is expensive. This is why we once had a division of labour in the family. It made it so people could manage all these things.

An you know what? It worked, at least until whining feminists destroyed it.

Now that they’ve destroyed the family division of labour which “oppressed” them, they are now whining that there is no division of labour and they actually have to take on multiple roles.

Well, boo-dee-fucking-hoo.

Feminists, you got what you wanted. Why are you so unhappy?

Please stop complaining about the changes you wrought on society.

Enjoy what you created.

****

Anyway, to sum, the whole housework debate, assuming that it is not a myth created by statistical manipulation, is simply women acting entitled.

Women wanted the “prestige” of the careers of men, so they “liberated” themselves and started to work outside the home.

Now that they are working outside the home, they are realizing it’s a lot of work, but instead of simply sucking it up and being strong and independent like men always have, they are bitching about how hard it is to work both outside and inside the home.

Instead of engaging in self-reflection on their own choices, they are choosing to blame men.

In addition, they are choosing to force their neurotic standards of housework on men and whining that men don’t comply with their controlling attitudes.

The whole housework debate is a ginned-up non-issue created by controlling, neurotic feminists who want to blame the hardship created by their own personal choices on men.

****

* As an aside, the sentence “or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.” sort of validates some aspects game theory. It is better to forgo helping women at all then to be a beta about it. They may dislike you doing nothing, but they will hate obsequiousness that isn’t perfect obedience even more.

Lightning Round – 2013/03/13

Be straightforward, be direct, be a man.

A teenager’s guide to the red pill.

“If you’re contemplating change, then you’ve already made your decision.”

What I learned from death.

“The nuts and bolts of being a man is to produce more than you consume.”

Althouse has an insightful comment on the same article I wrote this post about. “The stereotypical traditional male works so that a woman would have him and he could have love. Love was the end, not the means. If, for the woman, love is the means and the end is career advancement… then what? And why?”

The Thomas Carlyle Club tackles masculinity.

Seems SSM went down.
Related: Orthosphere women rank pro-marriage manosphere men on dating appeal.

Many women are simply not worth courting.
Related: Hehe… The solipsism of a female banker.
Related: Danny’s bubble gum analogy.

Fighting your nature.

The importance of marriage.
Related: The marriage strike is real.
Related: Are pre-nups no longer valid?

Alpha male power moves.

The real problem is laziness and entitlement.

Conservative Sociologist should remember that not everyone wants help. There is nothing for her to do.

An excellent introduction to reactionary thought from a non-reactionary.
Related: McCarthy was right.

Men turning their backs on modernity.

It’s about tribe. Also, Adam Corolla has a pirate ship.

CR on racial social interactions.
Related: Liberal terminology translation dictionary.

How to respond to “you don’t know how it feels.”

On offensiveness.

Cooking and game.

Keoni enjoys the Heart Attack Grill.

Banning porn is ugly women’s attempts to control male sexuality.

Matt runs down the basics of starting your own blog. Part 2.

Gun control is male control.

A fairly unbiased piece on why firearms research is unreliable. Part 2.
Related: Why do pro-freedom advocates oppose funding for science research?

Hmmm… It seems the US still has an ammo shortage. Odd, we don’t here in Canada. I went to Cabela’s last week and picked up 2100 rounds of .22LR for the regular price. They had tons. You’d think they’d send some of that south.

80% of NYC high school graduates need to relearn the 3 R’s before entering community college.
Related: The school system is designed to prevent learning.
Related: More on the lobotomy factories.

New teaching methods could be hurting autistics and the socially awkward. The school system is increasingly becoming about creating rabbit people.

Fuck the mancave.

A general rule for social science research.

Study: Feminized boys like smaller breasts; real men like big ones.
Related: Judgy Bitch comments.

Christian television and popularity.

“When all is said and done, big business demands cheap labor, and then imports a bunch of illegal immigrants who work illegally for wages that American citizens can’t legally compete with on price.  And then the government makes it exceedingly difficult for Americans to circumvent big business by starting their own business.”

“To be perfectly honest, the fundamental problem with free trade is not that the federal government allowed foreign companies to sell their goods in the US, but that the federal government imposed a massive regulatory regime on domestic producers, as well as costly taxes, and generally onerous labor laws.”

Hiring tips.

The stupidity of Ygglesias. Related.

The paradox of libertarianism. A response.

You are miserable because you are free.

Trade-offs and decisions. The corruption of government.
Related: Why leftists cut essential services instead of trimming waste.
Related: 310k federal workers and 40 Obama aides have not paid their taxes.

Remember, voting twice is only a crime if you’re old and have dementia.

Some Canadian politics stuff on our “Conservative” party.

The 3 axis of politics.

YOU are probably a child pornographer. By the standards under which this person was charged, my parents are.
Related: On trial for thought-crime.

“Still, I blame the storm more than I blame the computer models.”

Some science on the first Y chromosome.

Did the Neanderthals die out to the sapiens because of rabbits?

(H/T: GCBH, Smallest Minority, Foseti, Maggie’s Farm, Troglopundit, Middle of the Right, Instapundit)

Government Transfers and GDP

I have started reading through the Captain’s Enjoy the Decline and in the 2nd chapter he talks about proving the US is in a permanent decline. He brings up his old point here about how GDP is growing at 2.2% rather than the 4% of yesteryear, and how we could have an average income of $100,000 if the government didn’t interfere. He was also talking about how government is now almost 40% of GDP. That got me thinking about the government and the GDP.

The most common method of calculating GDP is is through the use of this formula:

GDP = C + I + G + (X – M)

Or, in English:

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports – imports)

What I’m going to focus on here is G. As per wikipedia:

G (government spending) is the sum of government expenditures on final goods and services. It includes salaries of public servants, purchase of weapons for the military, and any investment expenditure by a government. It does not include any transfer payments, such as social security or unemployment benefits.

When calculating GDP, the measure of government contribution to the economy is NOT the value of goods and services the government produces; it is the measure of the value of the resources the government consumes. G in the GDP measures what the government takes out of the economy, not what the government puts into the economy.

For example, if the the government spent $200-million building a road it would count the same as if the government spent $200-million moving rocks from point A to point B and back to Point A. As long as the government wasn’t using the resources for transfer payments, they could bury the money and GDP would increase. (See the Broken Window Fallacy).

For the rest of this post, we will refer to C, I, & (X-M) as “actual GDP” and G as government spending.*

Here are the annual real GDP growth rates for the US since 2008:

2008: -0.3
2009: -3.1
2010:  2.4
2011:  1.8
2012:  2.2

Here’s G:

2008: 2,497.4
2009: 2,589.4
2010: 2,605.8
2011: 2,523.9
2012: 2,481.3

and growth in G:

2008:  2.6%
2009:  3.7%
2010:  0.6%
2011: -3.1%
2012: -0.6%

Over the last 5 years, since the housing crash, the portion of GDP that is made up of G has declined by 0.6%. US GDP on the other hand, has increased by 6% over the same time period.

Originally, when starting this post, I was wondering if increased government consumption was resulting in a higher G, inflating GDP numbers. In other words, I was suspicious the government was simply consuming more resources (whether for productive or unproductive tasks) from the private sector to mask a decline in actual GDP.

The data says it has not; in fact, the opposite is true, G has somewhat declined as a percentage of GDP. I was tempted to just junk this post as my suspicion and the point I was thinking I might make proved to be incorrect, but I decided I’d post this information here anyway for anyone who’s curious.

****

This however, brings up another point for my post.

According to Table 1.1 here, federal government spending has increased by 27.1% between 2008 and 2012. This new spending represents 6.0% of 2012 GDP. Total government spending has increased by 10% in the same time period, representing 3.6% of 2012 GDP. Interestingly (and completely surprising to me), non-federal government spending (total minus federal) has actually decreased by $323.8 billion, or 6.6% over the same five years, representing 2.4% of 2012 GDP.

As mentioned above, G only measures what the government consumes or invests in, it does not include government transfers.

G has more or less stayed the same (and has actually declined as a portion of GDP), while government spending has increased by over a quarter.

What this means is that the none of the new government spending is from the government actually consuming or investing in anything. None of the new government spending is new roads, new hospitals, new schools, or new jet fighters; none of it has even gone to increased bureaucrat’s salaries, buying heroin for the homeless, or burying resources in the desert. None of the new spending was used on anything remotely productive or even on a program pretending to be productive.

All 27.1% of the new federal spending has gone to increased transfers.

In other words, since 2008, the federal government has forcibly taken an extra 6% of the entire economy from some people and transferred it to other people with not the slightest pretense of it being for the public benefit or as an investment in the future.

This is naked robbery.

In addition, part of this extra federal spending has come at same time that state spending has been reduced, further centralizing government spending.

Just federal transfers, not including state transfers or federal consumption of investment as found in G, now make up about 20%** of the economy. Six percentage points of that came from the last five years.

The federal government has taken an extra 6% of the entire US economy from the producer class and given to the parasite last five years and currently spends an one-fifth of the economy simply in transferring money from producers to parasites.

If this pattern continues, the US will become a centralized socialist state.

****

* All dollar amounts are 2005 US$ and in billions.
** May be slightly off, but not by more than, maybe, a percentage point. 2012 #’s were used for GDP and federal outlays, but I could not find a 2012 number for federal G, so I used the 2011 number.

Feminist Self-Annihilation

It seems it’s now a thing that women feel guilty about desiring a long-term relationship. As per that liberal rag, the Atlantic:

As a sociologist who’s interviewed several 20-something women on their sexual development, I’ve found straight young women aren’t necessarily embracing hooking up because they’re masters of their own destiny, as suggested by Hanna Rosin here a The Atlantic but because they face a new taboo and it’s not about sex or money or power. Instead, it’s a taboo about that traditional province of women: relationships. Ambitious young women in their 20s feel they shouldn’t want relationships with men at this phase in their lives.

I can’t believe this is a thing. I knew some feminists wanted the right to be sluts without shame, but what the hell?

What could possibly possess a person to feel guilty about desiring a human relationship?

But what really got me about this piece was this:

Some young women deeply desire meaningful relationships with men, even as they feel guilty about those desires. Many express the same sentiment again and again: “Why do I, a young and highly educated woman in the 21st century, value relationships with men so highly?” To do so feels like a betrayal of themselves, of their education, and of their achievements.

Really? I can’t even really feel anger over this, just sadness.

Women value relationships with men because humans were created (or evolved) to live with each other, to love each other, and to form relationships. We are social creatures; relationships define who we are.

To not value human relationships is to engage in self-annihilation.* The desire for companionship is the most human part of you, to fight against it is to destroy yourself and your humanity.

Meet a girl named Katie:

Katie, a 25-year-old woman I spoke with as part of my research, confided that she worried her single-minded pursuit of a graduate degree might limit her ability to meet a man with whom she could build a life. This realization—that she might want to prioritize a relationship over a career—felt shocking to Katie, and she did not admit to it easily. She felt deeply ashamed by such thoughts, worried that they signaled weakness and dependence, qualities she did not admire. To put such a high premium on relationships was frightening to Katie. She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.

Read that again: “She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.”

This women is destroying herself, destroying the things that are real in her life (relationships, family, and her desires for such) over ideological cant.

Dear Katie, if you are not pursuing what you truly desire because you are worried about signalling weakness and dependence, then you aren’t liberated and you are weak. If you are denying your human desire for companionship to “signal” independence, you are a slave, not of the body, but much worse, of the mind.

You are still letting others define you, you have just changed which group is doing the defining.

Also, which do you think you will value more in a decade: a man who has loved you for the last decade or an over-priced piece of paper that you are still paying off?

I have heard Katie’s dilemma from countless young women. Many feel ashamed about being too relationship-oriented in their 20s. Parents warn, “Do you really want to settle down so early? We just don’t want to see you miss out on any opportunities.” Friends intone, “How will you know what you like and want if you don’t play the field? You’re only young once. Now’s the time to explore.”

I think these parents and “friends” are going to have a lot to answer for on judgment day. What kind of idiotic advice is that?

Like Hamilton and Armstrong’s respondents, many young and aspiring women with whom I spoke felt as though it were counterproductive to their development to prioritize a relationship with a man.

Because human relationships are not a part of self-development?

This is a new phenomenon that goes against the grain of centuries of female socialization.

Because the desire for human relationships is something socialized?

Anxiety is difficult to tolerate, and rather than experience it, many of the young women I interviewed and work with in my psychotherapy practice split their desire for a relationship off from their professional and self-development desires. Confused about freedom and desire, young women often split their social and psychological options—independence, strength, safety, control, and career versus connection, vulnerability, need, desire, and relationships—into mutually exclusive possibilities in life. Romantic relationships then often become something to be avoided and denigrated rather than embraced.

Wow. Why would any women tolerate this kind of psychological self-annihilation?

Why? Why would women put up with an ideology that required them to destroy themselves?

I find this more sad than maddening, but if I were a women, I would be pissed over this.

****

Slate XX commented on this. Read:

How can you want a relationship if you have no prospects? Unless you’re actually casually dating someone (or have a secret crush on someone you interact with regularly), actively “wanting” a boyfriend seems rather silly to me.

Really? It’s silly to desire the basic human need of companionship?

Ellen Tarlin: I disagree. I think it’s almost unavoidable. Relationships are so romanticized and overvalued in our society! We are plagued by images of them.

Materialistic nihilism on full display.

Laura Helmuth: I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, but I am kind of thrilled that this is considered embarrassing among smart young women.Having a boyfriend and/or being well on the way to marriage used to be the default for twentysomethings. It’s fascinating that the social stigma has reversed so dramatically.

I am thrilled that women are denying their basic human desires and needs to pursue empty corporate work and a consumerist lifestyle.

Hanna Rosin: I feel like this moment we’re in now of shame about the boyfriend is great and necessary for progress and all that but will recalibrate and settle down.

Is she a fucking sadist?

Emma Roller: On the other side of this, I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years. I’m  anxious about missing out on what the zeitgeist says the 20s lifestyle “should” be (playing the field, etc.), but what if I’m happy where I’m at?

Please re-read that, and just think about it for a minute. “I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years.”

Juliana Jimenez: I hear you. I sometimes get a bit anxious over that as well—that I’m missing my 20s and I’m really living a 30s kind of life with my stable boyfriend and what not.

Again, consider that.

Meg Wiegand: I guess I’m the minority here: I’m in my late 20s, perpetually single, and very much worried about not finding someone. I know I’m absolutely fine on my own, and like Aisha, I’ve rarely met anyone I would ever want to consider being ”attached” to. But I continue to bounce on and off online dating sites and go on dates with friends of friends (mostly just ending up with great cocktail fodder) in hopes of finding someone who could be a partner.

Part of me is embarrassed by this—that I’ve escaped small-town Ohio and lived abroad and have a master’s degree but can’t find a partner. The other part feels that society already tells me that I should be ashamed of my body fat and short legs and hair that isn’t straight and blond, so why should I take this any more seriously? And why is this any different than feeling lonely because my family members and close friends are a plane ride away?

Wow. You could write an entire post just on these two paragraphs. It’s like every manosphere stereotype of modern American women rolled into two paragraphs.

Alyssa Rosenberg: What strikes me as weird about this conversation, and why this shift in priorities doesn’t seem like a complete feminist victory, is that it discounts the idea that a relationship can be an incredible source of support for career and life goals. Having someone who, say, helps with chores to give you more time to study or work, or who encourages you when you’re discouraged, or works in a similar field and helps you with ideas, who backs you publicly, etc? All this stuff can make it much easier to work harder and in a more productive way or to work through difficult challenges. I’m not sure we should get psyched by the idea that young women don’t want relationships but rather by the idea that women want more from their relationships or that we view relationships as part of a larger matrix of things that can work well together.

Alyssa here is comparatively rational. She sounds almost human and not like she had her heart replaced by the archives of Jezebel.

Ellen Tarlin: Because twentysomething men are selfish! (Joke. Sort of.) No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard. Your boyfriend or husband may support the ideals of feminism, but when he gets home, maybe he’d just really like it if you would make dinner, too. (Who wouldn’t?)

Read that again: “No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard.”

Think on it for a minute. You should now realize how insane this whole thing.

These women are sitting around discussing a sadistic, near-psychopathic (feminist) societal expectation that is causing women to annihilate themselves and their base human desires, and celebrating it because it destroys older societal expectations.

Dear women, why do you listen to people like this?

Why do you take the advice of people like this?

Why?

I don’t know, there’s not much left to say. This makes me sad.

****

* Severe autists, clinical psychopaths, and others with a natural inability to form human relations excepted.

Lightning Round – 2013/03/06

Things 18-year-olds should know.

Modernity is the problem.

The guide to getting things done.
Related: Real men are busy.

Be thankful we don’t live in this Orwellian society.

A must-read post, Capitalism: a Hate Story.
Related: What we have is not capitalism.

Shit-giving.

I pooped.
Related: Two words women need to hear: You done?

De-framing.

Give them something real.
Related: The essence of game: Be the best version of yourself and be real.

A lot of people don’t want help or the truth. Don’t give it to them unless asked.

Alpha is relative.

Take each other for granted.

Male Settling Order. Aiming for #3 and will settle for naught less: I’ve always preferred cute (pretty) to hot anyway.

7 reasons not to seriously date women over 30.
Related: Advice to a women in her 30’s.

5 signs you should marry her.

Judgy Bitch with a great rant.

STD testing and sluttiness.
Related: Virginity and sluttiness.

Chick crack.

Using PoF.

Hugo Schwyzer’s big idea: make men more feminist by sodomizing them. Makes sense: a catamite would generally be more feminine, less masculine, more submissive, and an almost literal mangina, so I could see any man willing to be sodomized as more likely to be a feminist. If you’re willing to degrade yourself sexually, why wouldn’t you be willing to degrade yourself in other ways. Also, I love how feminists define “secure in their masculinity” as meaning having not even a tiny ounce of either masculinity or self-respect.

The ponzi life.

Hoplophobia.
Related: The consequences of hoplophobia.

3D-printed guns keep getting better.

It’s been 20 years since the FBI murdered 76 people.

Manpower: The most abundant and renewable resource.

God doesn’t forgive the unrepentant and neither should you. Good comments as well.
Related: On judgment.

A sterile culture.

Some red pill humour. More. More. More.

Putting the pieces together results in shame.
Related: Liberal champions of white supremacy.

Why old people don’t get respect.
Related: A battle is coming.

Eat fats.

Women: in poor shape because they do less housework.

The effectiveness of single-sex classrooms.

Yet another reason to homeschool your kids.
Related: You’re screwing your kids.

Mark Steyn tears one out of the anti-bullying campaign.

Science: Boys get worse grades than their test scores should indicate, except when they act like girls.

How about that: it seems women are the actual sexist bosses.

Why men are wrong and need to be more like women. Anyway, I think a advice blog dedicated to giving red pill answers to those with questions would be pretty nifty.

When guys do the same things as girls, guys are mean.

Women, men, and biology.

Equality is more important than safety.

What if everything you know is wrong.

Half of employers say college grads are a disappointment.
Related: Almost half of college students don’t graduate in six years.

The banks are unprofitable without subsidy.

How Amazon published the “Keep On and Rape A Lot” shirts.

Anarcho-fascism.

Everyone finds a religion.

Hipsters growing up.

Science: Pessimists live longer.

Nothing to see here. The Department of Homeland Security needs 2700 tanks for something, something.

Teen stops armed gun man, gets suspended.

Hehe… some take a bit longer to notice reality.

Shit. I smirk, talk in a tone of absolute certainty, and use sarcasm; I must be abusive.

Really? I highly doubt that a 6-year old is aware enough to identify as transsexual without the parent’s pushing. Also, you can tell this is the parent’s using their child as a political pawn as they called their male child “Coy”. Using your own children as a sociological experiment is hideous.

Crimethink in Canada.
Related: I’m disgusted is not an argument.

If only the socialists were always this concerned about government thugs.

The neo-feudalism of the ruling class.

Virginia man charged for following Biden’s advice.

Man thrown in jail for saying panties.

New Atheist courage on display.

On the differences between economists and others.

Is the jury system breaking down because people are stupid?

It seems the White House threatened a journalist. I’d be more concerned if I was remotely surprised or believed the media wasn’t already the slave of the government (or vice versa).

Not much for partisanship between the Republicrats, but this is funny:

Her contact information.

(H/T: BoingBoing, Instapundit, Maggie’s Farm, Save Capitalism, ar10308, SDA)

Matthew Yglesias is an Idiot

Today, I’ve decided to highlight more economic stupidity.

Here is something from one Matthew Yglesias (whose name I always want to spell Yggdrasil). He is the economic “expert” for Slate magazine. In other words, he is paid solely to “think”* and write about economics. Some of you may also know that Matt is a vulgar Keynesian of the Krugmanite variety. You could almost call him a lesser Krugman.** Because of his vulgar Keynesian, Yglesias has never met a government program and government spending he does not support (except when it inconveniences him personally).***

With that small introduction to this professional master of economics, we can turn to what he wrote recently on Amtrak:

In the main part of the country where people actually ride intercity trains and where intercity trains form an important part of the transportation infrastructure, we have operating profits. In a decent national rail policy, those operating profits could finance infrastructure improvements in the northeast corridor where rail is important and useful. Everyone knows that the Acela is a joke version of high-speed rail by European or Asian standards, and there’s a lot that could be done incrementally to improve that with upgraded rolling stock and targeted improvements to straighten tracks or improve tunnels and grade crossings. Instead we’re stuck in a dynamic where all these trains are running in places where nobody rides them and the local voters and elected officials aren’t supportive and Amtrak ends up sigmatized for its dependence on federal subsidies. But operating passenger rail where people want to ride intercity trains turns out to be perfectly viable without huge subsidies. And it could do a much better job of serving the needs of the communities where rail is useful and valued if those operating surpluses were used to cover infrastructure costs rather than soaked away covering operating losses elsewhere.

It’s almost like the train system could benefit from being put in places where people value it and not put in places where people do not want to use it.

This train system would make excess operating surpluses from extracting fares from people who value it. These fares could then go to whomever decided to provide the trains as an incentive to provide trains where needed. The provider of trains could use these surpluses to profit himself and to reinvest in more and better trains for greater surpluses in the future.

If only we could think of a system where people with resources, incentivized by the possibility of profiting off of providing trains, would invest those resources in providing trains in places people valued them in exchange for being able to take an operating surplus from collected fares. It would solve all our train system problems and the government wouldn’t even need to subsidize the train system, saving those tax dollars for something more important, like buying homeless people heroin.

Where, oh where, could the government possibly find a system like this?

What kind of system could possibly cause people to invest resources in providing valued services to others in an efficient manner solely so they can profit from operating surpluses?

A system that utopian must be impossible to create. I guess we must all suffer by paying taxes for trains no one uses.

****

In case you’re oblivious, that was sarcasm.

There wasn’t much of a point to this post, but this: Matthew Yglesias is an idiot.

I would generally use some superlatives here, but I don’t think my limited writing talents could possibly do justice to his ignorance, as his stupidity is positively Krugmanite.

If his head wasn’t rammed so far up his vulgar Keynesian ass, the supremely obvious solution to this supposed quandary might be able to penetrate his inordinately thick skull and he might actually be of some use other than as a paid stooge of the internet wing of the Cathedral press corps.

On the other hand, if his head wasn’t buried so deep in his rectum that methane and anaerobic bacteria were his primary means of subsistence, Slate wouldn’t hire him for the cushy job of confirming idiot liberals’ a priori emotional beliefs with a few hundred daily words of scientific-sounding economic nonsense.

So, maybe he’s smarter than I thought.

I wish I got paid for the nonsense I write and the Cathedral probably pays better than anonymous blogging.

Maybe I should start writing academic-sounding blather that validates the unthinking prejudices of the economically illiterate and makes them feel smart.

****

* In this case, the word ‘think’ is used in the loosest definition of the term possible.

** Yes, I know you’re wondering if it is actually possible for there to be a something intellectually lesser than Paul Krugman since he became a paid shill for the Cathedral in the NYT. In this case lesser refers to popularity with fools and usefulness to the Cathedral rather than to any intellectual or analytical (in)abilities.

*** Hint: The definition of a bad government program in the Coocooland of vulgar Keynesianism is any that is personally inconvenient to a liberal shill. The definition of a good government program is any that increases the power of government but does not inconvenience a vulgar Keynesian or a friend of the same.

Lost Kipling Poems – The Press

As long-time readers may know, I’m a fan of Kipling, and I think you should be too.

The news out of Britain is that that 50 new Kipling poems have been discovered. They are being put in a new collection that will contain all of his known poems? I haven’t drooled as much over a book since the Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Sadly, the $295 price tag is a bit higher than I’m willing to pay at this time. Hopefully, they’ll release a paperback version in the future at a more reasonable price.

Here’s one of the new poems:

The Press by Rudyard Kipling

Why don’t you write a play –
Why don’t you cut your hair?
Do you trim your toe-nails round
Or do you trim them square?
Tell it to the papers,
Tell it every day.
But, en passant, may I ask
Why don’t you write a play?

What’s your last religion?
Have you got a creed?
Do you dress in Jaeger-wool
Sackcloth, silk or tweed?
Name the books that helped you
On the path you’ve trod.
Do you use a little g
When you write of God?

Do you hope to enter
Fame’s immortal dome?
Do you put the washing out
Or have it done at home?
Have you any morals?
Does your genius burn?
Was you wife a what’s its name?
How much did she earn?

Had your friend a secret
Sorrow, shame or vice –
Have you promised not to tell
What’s your lowest price?
All the housemaid fancied
All the butler guessed
Tell it to the public press
And we will do the rest.

Why don’t you write a play?

It’s a solid poem, far better than the works of most poets, but nowhere near the level of his best poems, such as: If, Hymn Before Action, or Hymn to Physical Pain.

I find the title’s kind of odd as he already has a poem called The Press.

Anyway, Kipling’s awesome and his ‘new’ poem is solid. I can’t wait to read the other poems once they become available at a reasonable price (or on the internet).

Lightning Round – 2013/02/27

A pro-western Christianity reading list. As if I didn’t have enough to read.

On male friendships.
Related: The death of a man.

How to become a better writer.

What makes you tick.

Tips for introverts.

Advice for the young, right-wing, black man.

On frame, emotions, and social roles. Drama game sounds interesting.

Dalrock points out a rich, spoiled women demanding her privilege.
Related: The Code of Modern Chivalry.

People are so naïve.

The necessary dichotomy between beta and alpha.

A survival guide for modern society.

How to get over a girl.

Really? That actually works?
Related: 100 different openers. I’m probably gonna pick it up.
Related: Foot-in-door game.

Would misogynists make better housewives than feminists?

John the Baptist syndrome.

Guide to lifting.

Don’t waste your time arguing. (But it’s fun).
Related: Why I’m not a liberal or conservative.

What you should know about making money online.

On charity.

Who needs family?
Related: Ideas have consequences.
Related: Are liberals waking up to reality?

We can win the gun control debate by pandering status to the idiots.
Related: Impossible. It was a gun-free zone.
Related: Biden’s self-defence advice would land you in jail.
Related: Only the media could get you to root for the government.

Charts: The Ph.D. bust.

Bureaucracy in action: they stole my boat and bitched at me on my blog.

Reality destroys ideals. Related.

America’s new mandarins.

The wonders of government economic predictions.

Good for the Grizz.

Looks like we’ve exported parts of our society to China. Yay!

How government and society made us fat. Related.
Science: Fat people don’t live longer.

Height and attraction.

The health benefits of semen.

When a women earns more, divorce is 50% more likely. Surprising.

Learn Latin. If I were to learn a new language, Latin would be second after French.

“We are not racist people.”

Adolescence is a marketing tool.

Wishing for a barking cat.

Some good Orwell quotage.
Related: Environmental activists have murdered 8 million children.
Related: The tranzis kill 8,000 more. Slacking a little.
Related: That’s more like it, I thought they were losing their edge.

40 unusual economic indicators.

The type of behaviour welfare incentivizes.

“The biggest winner from a halted Keystone XL will be the railroads. And of them, the biggest winner might just be the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Obama supporter and Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett.” Talk about burying the lede.

The patents stifling the development of 3D printers.

Why Die Hard is the best movie ever.

All internet sites are connected within 19 clicks.

A demographic analysis of pornstars.

This is the intellectual level of the people we’re up against:

(H/T: SDA, GLP, the Captain, RWCAG, Maggie’s Farm, Instapundit)