Category Archives: Society

Guest Post from Europia: The Importance of Fathers

Below is a guest post contributed by someone who wishes to remain anonymous. Remember, If you have something you want to say that is in line with the blog’s purpose and topics, feel free to send it to me.

3. I just thought that these figures MIGHT interest you, even though some of them might be a generation old.

3.01: I just thought that you would find the following FACTS from Social History of some interest. The 43% of U.S. children who live without their father (U.S. Bureau of the Census) account for the following:
3.02: 60% of America’s rapists came from fatherless homes. Source: “Life without Father,” copyright 1996 by David Popenoe. Reprinted by permission of the Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc.
3.03: 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Bureau of the Census).
3.04: 70% of long-term prison inmates as opposed to youths in prison, are fatherless. Source: “Life without Father,” copyright 1996 by David Popenoe. Reprinted by permission of the Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc.
3.05: 70% of youths in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes (U.S. Dept. of Justice, Sept. 1988).
3.06: 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services press release, March 26, 1999).
3.07: 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools).
3.08: 72% of adolescent murderers grew up without a father. Source: “Life without Father,” copyright 1996 by David Popenoe. Reprinted by permission of the Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc.
3.09: 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes (Rainbows for All God’s Children).
3.10: 80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes (Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26).
3.11: 80% of adolescents in psychiatric hospitals come from broken homes. US Dept. Of Health & Human Services (1988
3.12: 85% of all youths in prison as opposed to long-term prisoners come from fatherless homes (Fulton Co. Georgia, Texas Department of Corrections, 1992).
3.13: 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes (Center for Disease Control).
3.14: 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes (U.S. Bureau of the Census).

4.01: Regarding “Deadbeat Dads” you may find these figures of some interest.
4.02: 90.2% of fathers with joint custody pay the support due.
4.03: 79.1% of fathers with visitation privileges pay the support due.
4.04: 44.5% of fathers with no visitation pay the support due.
4.05; 37.9% of fathers are denied any visitation.
4.06: 66% of all support not paid by non-custodial fathers is due to the inability to pay.
4.07: In 1992 the General Accounting Office (GAO) found 14% of fathers who owe back child support are dead.
Source 4.02 – 4.06 inclusive [1988 Census “Child Support and Alimony: 1989 Series” P-60, No. 173 p.6-7, and “U.S. General Accounting Office Report” GAO/HRD-92-39FS January 1992]

5.01: 61% of all child abuse is committed by biological mothers (Department of Health and Human Services Report on Nationwide Child Abuse).
5.02: Rates of serious abuse are lowest in intact families; six times higher in stepfamilies; 20 times higher in cohabitating biological parent families and 33 times higher when the mother is cohabitating with a boyfriend who is not the father. (UK research).
5.03: 70.8% of children killed by one parent are killed by their mothers! 206 (National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System)
5.04: 70.6% of children abused by one parent are abused by their mothers! (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Child Maltreatment reports from 2001-2006

6.01: Child Murders
6. 02: Killed by Mothers 1,100
6.03: Killed by Live-In Boyfriends 513
6.04: Killed by Stepfathers 250
6.05: Killed by Biological Fathers 137
Source of 6.02 – 6.05 inclusive, The Heritage Foundation report “The Child Abuse Crisis: The Disintegration of Marriage, Family, and the American Community,” May 15, 1997.

Men Need Responsibility and Reward

I was reading the comments over at Vox Day, which has the best comments section of any site I’ve yet read, and came across this:

If culture says “Men, you are responsible”, many will live up to it.

You’ve all read and mocked dozens of man-up screeds despairing at how young men are enjoying themselves rather than feeding themselves into the grinder.

As one recent example, at Sarah’s Daughter RLB has had an impressive streak of MGTOW shaming, catalogued by ar10308 here. To some degree I sympathize with RLB’s position, giving up and whining is not exactly a manly Christian response. On the other hand, deti’s response is rather on the nose, it is very hard for a young Christian man to find a virtuous wife.

Why do men act like children? Why do men not grow up? Why are men so adverse to taking responsibility? Where are all the good men? All these the so-cons and over-the-hill women ask.

I’ve already discussed the reason here, incentives. Essentially, there is increasingly less reason for the young man to try and increasingly more reason for him to be irresponsible.

While incentives is the primary driver it is not the only one. The lack of responsibility given young men is another.

Men need responsibility, they thrive on responsibility, and even if they don’t know it they crave responsibility.

Men are made, not born, and they are made through responsibility. There is nothing that makes a man, a man like responsibility.

You make a man by giving him his little area of life and telling him, ‘this is yours, you take care ot if, you are in charge of it, and you will reap the natural rewards and failures of your care of it.’

The man will rise to the challenge (or fail) and will be forged in the process.

This is man’s purpose, to have dominion.

You destroy a man and prevent him from being made by denying him this opportunity. He doesn’t even get the chance to fail, let alone succeed.

Guess which route today’s world takes with our young men-in-the-making?

Our young men are sent to school and university, where they are given no responsibility beyond handing in their work on time. For many men, even that is pushed on them by their helicopeter patents. The young men enter the workforce and are almost always put in low-level jobs where all their actions are dictated by corporate policy; there is no room for responsibility or personal judgment for the young man making his career. The average young man does not start a family until his late 20s, on average, and even then are no longer heads of their household, given responsibility over their family. Nowadays, a man can easily get into his 30s having borne no real responsibility for anything in his life.

How the hell are we as a society to expect young men to man-up and become men when there is almost no opportunity for a young to take responsibility.

We will not have men if we do not forge them.

Of course, once a man reaches his late-20s, the man-up rants come out. At this point, opinion leaders and women are more than happy to start demanding that men start taking responsibility (particularly by marrying that single-mother or aging ex-carousal rider).

But their definition of responsibility is a twisted and distorted one.

Under their perverted form of responsibility the man is given something, told to care for it, and told the penalties for failure will be levied against him should he not succeed. But, he is not given any power over the situation. He is cut off at the knees and his leadership is undermined, if not wholly denied. In addition, as my incentives post pointed out, he is not receiving the traditional, natural rewards of taking good care of his area of responsibility.

Society needs responsible men and men need responsibility. The obvious solution is for society to start giving young men responsibility, full responsibility. Give him his own part of life to have dominion over; give him a domain.

Demanding they man up is pointless. Demanding they feed themselves into the grinder is both sadistic and pointless. Making them accountable without giving them power is cruel and pointless, as is punishing failure, but not rewarding success.

Give men responsibility, then demand they be responsible, and let them know they will receive the natural rewards and/or penalties for their care of their area of responsibility, and you will get the men you want.

A man needs a domain of his own, any healthy society will ensure he has many opportunities to acquire one.

The White Conservative Male

I recently watched Django Unchained, a movie I thoroughly enjoyed. At one point, slave-owning Leonardo asks concerning the blacks, “why don’t they just rise up?” The Last Psychiatrist already addressed this better than I could:

Anyway, perfectly ordinary slaveowner DiCaprio asks a rhetorical question, a fundamental question, that has occurred to every 7th grade white boy and about 10% of 7th grade white girls, and the profound question he asked was: “Why don’t they just rise up?”

Kneel down, Quentin Tarantino is a genius.  That question should properly come from the mouth of the German dentist: this isn’t his country, he doesn’t really have an instinctive feel for the system, so it’s completely legitimate for a guy who doesn’t know the score to ask this question, which is why 7th grade boys ask it; they themselves haven’t yet felt the crushing weight of the system, so immediately you should ask, how early have girls been crushed that they don’t think to ask this?   But Tarantino puts this question in the mouth of the power, it is spoken by the very lips of that system; because of course the reason they don’t rise up is that he– that system– taught them not to.  When the system tells you what to do, you have no choice but to obey.

If “the system tells you what to do” doesn’t seem very compelling, remember that the movie you are watching is Django UNCHAINED.   Why did Django rise up?  He went from whipped slave to stylish gunman in 15 minutes.  How come Django was so quickly freed not just from physical slavery, but from the 40 years of repeated psychological oppression that still keeps every other slave in self-check?  Did he swallow the Red Pill? How did he suddenly acquire the emotional courage to kill white people?

“The dentist freed him.”  So?  Lots of free blacks in the South, no uprisings.  “He’s ‘one in ten thousand’?”  Everybody is 1 in 10000, check a chart.  “He got a gun?”  Doesn’t help, even today there are gun owners all over America who feel that they aren’t free.  No.  You should read this next sentence, get yourself a drink, and consider your own slavery: the system told Django that he was allowed to.   He was given a document that said he was a bounty hunter, and as an agent of the system, he was allowed to kill white people.  That his new job happened to coincide with the trappings of power is 100% an accident, the system decided what he was worth and what he could do with his life.  His powers were on loan, he wasn’t even a vassal, he was a tool.

This is not to minimize the individual accomplishment of a Django becoming a free man.  But for the other slaves, what is the significance?

Of course Tarantino knew that the evil slaveowner’s question has a hidden, repressed dark side:  DiCaprio is a third generation slave owner, he doesn’t own slaves because he hates blacks, he owns them because that’s the system; so powerful is that system that he spends his free time not on coke or hookers but on researching scientific justifications for the slavery– trying to rationalize what he is doing.   That is not the behavior of a man at peace with himself, regardless of how much he thinks he likes white cake, it is the behavior of a man in conflict, who suspects he is not free; who realizes, somehow, that the fact that his job happens to coincide with the trappings of power is 100% an accident… do you see?   “Why don’t they just rise up?” is revealed to be a symptom of the question that has been repressed: “why do the whites own slaves?  Why don’t they just… stop?”  And it never occurs to 7th graders to ask this question because they are too young, yet every adult thinks if he lived back then, he would have been the exception.  1 in 10000, I guess.  And here we see how repression always leaves behind a signal of what’s been repressed– how else do you explain the modern need to add the qualifier “evil” to “slaveowner” if not for the deeply buried suspicion that, in fact, you would have been a slaveowner back then?  “But at least I wouldn’t be evil.”  Keep telling yourself that.  And if some guy in a Tardis showed up and asked, what’s up with you and all the slaves, seems like a lot?  You’d say what everybody says, “look wildman, don’t ask me, that’s just the system.  Can’t change it.  Want to rape a black chick?”

Then I read this. According to the statistics given about one in four women suffers violence/rape at the hands of men, although, I have read elsewhere that this number is exaggerated and one in eight would be more accurate. But either way, tThe original giver of these numbers seems shocked that these numbers are so high.

I think the better question is why are these numbers so low?

When men are dominant over women in absolutely every area of power: physical strength, political strength, economic strength, capacity for violence, etc., and these same women hold control over the one base desire to rule them all, why isn’t there more use of force by men to take what they desire?

Women have what men desire and there is little they can do to stop men from taking it. Yet, only a small minority do.

Why isn’t there more violence and rape?

Then I read this: white men are scary. The title says it all. Down in the comments Vanessa stated this:

White men gained power, not because of violence, but because of innovative technology and organization

That’s precisely what makes them scary. They’re not just violent, but clinically focused and horrendously efficient.

I’m German, you know. People think German men are cowards, but they’re not. They’re just very slow to anger, and thank God for that. It is as if the white men of the world have been asleep, and they’re starting to wake up. It’s going to get very scary very fast.

I’ve written about this before. The human male is the apex predator; the single greatest biological killing machine God and/or evolution ever brought forth. White men have brought this violence to levels of horrificness and efficiency previously unknown (except possibly Ghengis Khan).

And yet the question remains, as Vanessa points out:

I think the idea of “white male privilege” is the ultimate Frechheit. It’s not that white males privilege themselves, you ingrates, it’s that they privilege everybody else. They go out of their way to give help everyone else to the same standard of living that they have.

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

I don’t know if this is ignorance, or their hate talking, but it makes them sound like clueless idiots.

I’ve written about this before as well. The white man created the greatest civilization in the history of the world and he has the unrivaled power to dominate any who oppose him and take anything he desires. Yet, instead of using this power for absolute domination and enslaving those who aren’t the white man, he allows others to become a part of his civilization.

Why is this? With this unrivaled power, Why does the white man not take more than a few nebulous “privileges”?

Then, we come to another roadblock: even among white men, there is a power differential, an ideological one.

Simply put, almost the entire capacity for violence among the white man rests in one ideological tribe, which, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll label conservatives. The military is conservative, the police are conservative, gun owners are primarily conservative, white males. This ideological tribe controls every level of violence in society.

Yet, in white society, these conservatives are the outer party. Almost the entirety of the government, the media, the education system, etc. rests in the hands of the conservatives’ rival tribe, which, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll call liberals.

This seems odd. The white, conservative male controls the hard power of society by a large amount, but invites others to share in his civilizational inheritance and allows the other white tribe to control the soft power.

Why doesn’t the white male, armed and capable of violence, take control of institutional soft power from the type of people who believe a moral lecture is “hardball”?

What is it about the white, conservative male that causes him to not use the power he has to dominate others?

Why doesn’t he rise up?

Following that: what happens if the white, conservative male sees he controls hard power and has the capabilities to completely dominate others? What happens if he decides to use it?

What happens when the white, conservative male realizes how the system is set up, and decides fuck this?

The system may seem invincible now, but as Vanessa said:

I think you are underestimating how angry young white men are and how little some of them have left to lose. They used to feel like they were the good guys, and they wanted to protect their reputation, but now they know everybody hates them.

On Advice Columns

I enjoy reading advice columnists. I check out Dear Prudence at Slate and a couple columns from my local papers regularly and Dear Wendy on occasion.

I do not read them for the advice. The advice tends to be either common-sense (don’t date that abusive, alcoholic, unemployed jerk seems to be a common theme), not applicable to anybody who isn’t insane or living near someone insane (and I try to keep only sane people within my circles), or fem-centric, liberal, and given to secular immorality.

Rather I read them for entertainment and insight.

It is highly entertaining to see the insane situations some people manage to get themselves into or how some people insanely overreact to the weirdest things. There is also a heaping dose of schadenfreude as people somehow manage to screw themselves and their relationships up in such novel ways.

But not only are these columns entertaining to read, they are also informative. You can learn so much about people’s rationalization hamsters, (un)thinking processes, emotional quirks, and such by reading these columns.

****

One thing you notice about these columns is the female focus of them. Females seem to represent the large majority of the columnists and the majority of those who write into them.

One wonders why there is not a market for a male columnist for male issues. Slate has recently hired one, but, quite frankly, he writes like an overcompensating, intellectually pretentious twat. That and so far the problems he’s had posed have been rather simple and not very entertaining. (Maybe that’s why? Maybe men’s problems are mostly too straightforward and not insane enough to make an enjoyable column). There’s also Dan Savage, but as a flaming, liberal hedonist, I don’t know why any man would trust him.

Roissy, Athol, and some others on the manosphere will occasionally print answers to e-mails they receive, but you wonder if something more systematized could be useful to the manosphere. A place where (an) expert(s) could answer those specific, situationalized life, game, or relationship questions some might have coming from a place of masculine frame.

But that’s well beside the point, I was originally meandering into, which was insight, entertainment, schadenfreude, and mockery.

I’m going to highlight a few letters from columns from the past couple weeks.

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Here’s part of the letter that inspired this post. It’s exemplifies too large a part of modern Western humanity.

My older sister is married to an abusive alcoholic asshole. She and I both grew up in a very conservative Christian household and neither of us have a close bond with our parents because they don’t like that we left home and formed our own adult lives that are very different from how we were raised. About 10 years ago, she moved 1500 miles away, met a guy, and got pregnant quickly. They both worked at a Christian school under a signed “morality clause” so they rushed to get married in an effort to not lose their jobs over the unplanned pregnancy. Well, they both got fired anyway and proceeded to have two more kids together.
…
I brought it up on a recent visit with my parents and they basically said she made a choice so they don’t care what happens to her. That made me so angry.

Revel in the hamster. Bask in its glory.

To fully understand this miracle of rationalization, I’ll run this through my universal hamsterlator:

We rebelled against our wise parents who tried to protect us from the poor choices we might make while young. In our rebellion, my sister ended up in exactly the situation our wise parents tried to protect us from. When, while still in a state of continued rebellion, I tried to force my parents to save her from her own rebellion they treated my sister like an adult capable of agency, just as we demanded they treat us. How dare they treat us like adults when we demand to be treated like adults.

This most perfectly sums up to many modern people. Complain when people don’t give you the rights you feel you deserve as an adult with agency, but complain about cruelty when people treat you like an adult with agency .

Of course, instead of slapping down the insanity of this, Wendy simply ignored the parent-child relationship.

****

Here’s one letter that exemplifies the misery some people inflict on themselves for the weirdest reasons:

Ten years ago a friend who I’ve known for 14 years told me her husband beats her. Through the years she’s continued to keep me updated but in the past few months she’s started texting me pictures of the abuse. He’s her high school sweetheart, they don’t have any kids, and he’s now the sole provider (which wasn’t always the case). The thing is she won’t leave him because she doesn’t want to leave her pets. I’ve tried to get her to leave repeatedly, but I don’t know what to do. I have these pictures, but no proof that he committed these acts because she won’t put his name on them, something that I gently suggested she should do for evidence or the police can’t prosecute him. I toss and turn, at night worrying that one day I’m going to get a phone call telling me he killed her. What can I do?

Remember that: she doesn’t want to leave her pets.

Insight: Some people don’t want saving. Don’t bother trying.

****

Here’s one illustrating why you should choose your marriage partner carefully:

My husband and I married a few years ago after just months of knowing each other. I have never once doubted our decision to marry, and on the whole, we are exceptionally happy. He is my perfect partner and an ideal father for our daughter—but, of course, there’s a but. During our very brief courtship, there is one habit he intentionally hid from me—online gaming. Apparently, he didn’t want me to think him nerdy. When he first disclosed this after the honeymoon, I thought it was funny and cute. A couple years later, I’m bitter—we have routine marital disagreements, but this is the only issue we ever fight about. He spends several hours a week (10-20) playing these online games! Every time we fight about it, he’ll cut back or promise to stop … but within a week or two, it’s back to at least a couple of hours every day. This is a man who has quit smoking and quit his pseudo-addiction to energy drinks, but can’t (or won’t) quit online gaming. I can’t imagine life without him, but this is making me miserable. I’m not willing to leave him over it; how can I get him to stop or change my own attitude to accept it? (For clarification, I have no suspicions of any online infidelity—it just bothers me that he spends his leisure time gaming instead of reading a book, watching TV with me, etc.)

2 hours!!! How dare he enjoy himself for two hours a day!?!

What a controlling, insane shrew. If I had the misfortune of marrying her, I’d probably be gaming a good 40+ hours a week just to avoid her.

On the other hand, some men find a keeper:

Re: Husband’s Gaming: My husband did this early in our relationship as well. I took a different tactic … I joined him. That way we spent time together and I learned something new about myself as well. Sometimes it takes giving a little to get a little.

And some women can be reasonable:

RE: Husband’s Gaming: I, too, am married to a gamer. And I’m completely happy with it, because it gives him an outlet to unwind after a stressful day. He’ll often play games while I watch a TV show in the same room. That way we’re still around each other, but we both get to do our own thing. (How much interacting would you do while watching TV anyway?) This really is no different than reading a book—you get lost in an imaginary world there, too.

It’s amazing how not being a crazy, controlling harpy can lead to an enjoyable marriage.

As an aside, what is it about women and TV? How is watching TV somehow better than playing video games?

****

Here’s one that illustrates the insane pettiness and nosiness of some people:

There’s a young woman at work who uses a ton of hand soap every time she uses the bathroom. If you are in the toilet, you can hear the auto dispenser chug 10 times while she is washing her hands. I never noticed this until someone pointed it out to me, and now it is driving me nuts. I’ll go to the sink and there’s like a foot of soap bubbles that she will have left behind. Should anyone intervene with her about her OCD tendencies and advise her that all the girls are talking about her and think she’s wasteful and weird?

Even more insane is that this is not just one woman, but multiple women gossiping about something so pointlessly insignificant. How this merits even a comment, let alone a letter to a national advice columnist boggles my mind.

Some women are insane.

****

Here’s a recent one that from which I have no lesson or insight to draw, but it really amused me in a WTF sort of way. It’s the kind of letter you read these columns for:

My parents and I are huge animal lovers and have been feeding a feral cat colony for a few years now (they are all spayed and neutered). Our neighbor however cannot stand them and has been very vocal about it to us. He trapped them for a while whenever they would come into his yard and take them to animal control. However, since they are microchipped to our address, animal control would call us and we would pick them up. Upon their return, the organization that got them spayed/neutered has tried working with our neighbor to no avail. However a last month two of the cats started acting funny. We took them to the emergency vet only to learn they had antifreeze poisoning and there was nothing we could do but end their suffering. We thought of our neighbor, but wanting to give him the benefit of doubt, we dismissed it as an accident. However two weeks ago a third cat acted the same exact way and another vet visit confirmed antifreeze poisoning. We now no longer think it’s a freak accident. Several friends and family are telling us to call animal control and report our neighbor. However we have no proof that it is actually him putting the antifreeze out, only a hunch based on past interactions and experiences. What should we do?

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I might have been somewhat unfair earlier. Sometimes, the advice columnists actually do take some idiots to task:

I am a second wife to my husband who for years was married to a very difficult woman. A couple of years ago, he finally divorced her and married me soon after…At the same time, his adult children, a son and daughter, both in their 20s, have been a bit withdrawn around me, and I very much want them to be as close to their new younger sibling as possible…

The response:

What is wrong with his kids? Dad finally dumps their shrew of a mother, finds someone younger, hotter, nicer (and fertile to boot!), and they’re not celebrating. What ungrateful little beasts.

Hehe.

Although, really this should not have needed to have been written. Is it really so difficult for a replacement wife to understand why the children of the wife she replaced don’t care for her that she needs to ask a professional?

****

Anyway, the prime point of this post: advice columns are an endless source of entertainment and insight. Human stupidity is the most boundlessly renewable resource we have; if only we could harness its energy for electricity we’d be set.

The secondary point is simply this, the vast majority of the problems in these columns could be avoided simply by following traditional values: be responsible, don’t be crazy, mind your own damn business, don’t shack up or get knocked up, marry someone responsible, don’t divorce, raise your kids right, and choose decent, responsible friends.

The Problem of Natural Slaves

The problem with libertarianism is that most people don’t care about freedom. In fact, I would go farther: most people aren’t just apathetic about freedom but actively hate and/or fear it.

Freedom is naturally frightening. It is inherently risky and a free man’s actions will have consequences. The freedom to choose is the freedom to choose poorly.

A free man will face this fear, accept the risk, and live with those consequences, for good or ill.

Libertarianism and English liberalism are based around the concept of the free man and made for the free man.

Even right-wing ideologies that eschew freedom and abhor libertarianism still require the free man. Personal responsibility is an aspect of every right-wing ideology and only the man free to act, can be responsible for those actions. Organic community can only grow through free interactions, it can not be forced by the state. Even will-to-power fascism and related ideologies require free men, in the form of Nietzchian ubermensch and Platonic philosopher-kings, at the top to lead the natural slaves.

The free man is whom right-wing ideology is geared towards.

On the other hand, many, if not most, people are natural slaves. A natural slave is not capable of freedom, in fact, the natural slave loathes freedom.

Aristotle was the first to write on the natural slave in his Politics:

For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.
…
For the words slavery and slave are used in two senses. There is a slave or slavery by law as well as by nature. The law of which I speak is a sort of convention- the law by which whatever is taken in war is supposed to belong to the victors.
…
for it must be admitted that some are slaves everywhere, others nowhere.
…
We see then that there is some foundation for this difference of opinion, and that all are not either slaves by nature or freemen by nature, and also that there is in some cases a marked distinction between the two classes, rendering it expedient and right for the one to be slaves and the others to be masters: the one practicing obedience, the others exercising the authority and lordship which nature intended them to have. The abuse of this authority is injurious to both; for the interests of part and whole, of body and soul, are the same, and the slave is a part of the master, a living but separated part of his bodily frame. Hence, where the relation of master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have a common interest, but where it rests merely on law and force the reverse is true.
…
For there is one rule exercised over subjects who are by nature free, another over subjects who are by nature slaves. The rule of a household is a monarchy, for every house is under one head: whereas constitutional rule is a government of freemen and equals. The master is not called a master because he has science, but because he is of a certain character, and the same remark applies to the slave and the freeman.

Essentially, some are slaves of circumstance but not of soul, while others born to subjection and will be slaves no matter the circumstance. The latter are called natural slaves, the former we will refer to as circumstantial slaves.

What makes a slave?

For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave; hence master and slave have the same interest.
…
Hence we see what is the nature and office of a slave; he who is by nature not his own but another’s man, is by nature a slave; and he may be said to be another’s man who, being a human being, is also a possession. And a possession may be defined as an instrument of action, separable from the possessor.

Some are so afraid of acting self-destructively or choosing poorly as they are incapable or unwilling of choosing that they would rather have someone exercise their mind and foresight for them than to have to exercise their own mind in freedom. These people are naturally another man’s as they are incapable or unwilling to be their own man.

These are the natural slaves.

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In Western society, direct slavery is mostly extinct (barring some illegal sex slavery) and even when it did exist it was slavery by law and by war, circumstantial slavery, rather than natural slavery.

Natural slavery on the other hand is a dominant political thought-stream throughout the west.

The natural slaves continually beg for their own disarmament. They plead for themselves to be left at the mercy of predators and their masters.

Half of the US population is on government benefits while the government controls 41% of the economy, and still the natural slaves demand more government and more dependence. While the US is self-destructing, the natural slaves debate frivolities. Most of the rest of the West is as bad or worse.

Feminists, and women in general, get on their knees begging for the state to control their bodies and provide them with choice at the expense of freedom. They believe themselves entitled to the enslaved labour of men.

We already see the end result of the natural slavery mindset in Black Americans. A group that whole-heartedly supports the political party that dedicated itself to their slavery. The party that continues to purposely force dependence and weakness on them, enslaving them through the welfare state.

White society is following rapidly behind.

Westerners are becoming so afraid of freedom, that they are willingly and purposely selling themselves into dependence and slavery.

****

Now, admittedly, many modern people with servile minds may not be natural born slaves. The state indoctrination system has had a large hand in training modern society to a mind state of servility, and so many of the people who may appear natural slaves, may simply be circumstantial slaves who have been trained that way. But having been indoctrinated so thoroughly in the servile mindset, I fear many, if not most of them, will not become free men any time soon, so I will, for the purposes of this post, count them as natural slaves.

****

The problem is, how should a free society do with natural slaves?

The will-to-power right-wing ideologies can answer this question easily, have the ubermensch be their masters.

But freedom-oriented right-wing ideologies have a conundrum: how can the natural slave be integrated into a society created for free men?

It is cruel to oppress free men with a slave society, but is it not also cruel to impose a free society on those whose very natures revolt against against it?

How can a society oriented around exercising freedom be anything but oppressive for those incapable of exercising freedom?

Even if the natural slaves are integrated into a free society, given sufficient time, won’t their natural hostility to freedom assert itself, leading to the decline of freedom in that society, as is currently occurring throughout the English-speaking nations?

I don’t really have answers to this.

The existence of natural slaves poses the probably the greatest ideological conundrum for the libertarian.

****

That’s not to say I don’t have any ideas, but I’m not sure if any will suffice as an answer.

Could children are educated as free men from an early age, could we not make circumstantial free men, just as a slave-mentality oriented education produces circumstantial slaves? Is that possible? I don’t know, but it seemed to work, somewhat, for English-speaking countries prior to the mid-1900’s.

We could create a voluntary program, where natural slaves can contract away their freedom to the government or to other individuals in exchange for the protection and provision of the government. It’s a possibility, but it seems prima facie unworkable and impractical.

The best bet is probably subsidiarity; we could concentrate power locally. This way natural slaves and free men could self-segregate. Free men could live in municipalities and states/provinces where freedom was valued, while natural slaves could live in municipalities which took freedom away in exchange for comfort. The US and Canadian federal systems could, with some tweaking, provides a good backbone for this sort of system. but how long could this last until the natural slaves envy and hatred of free men and their masters’ lust for power led them to try to re-assert centralized authority?

Maybe free men could simply create their own country and refuse natural slaves entrance? But how would you test for natural slaves and keep them from the country? Who’s to say they wouldn’t invade out of their hatred for freedom?

I’m not sure what the proper response to natural slaves it. What do you think of the problem posed by the natural slave?

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.

Obliviousness, Incivility, and the Destruction of the Old Order

I came across this article from some feminist who, according to the little blurb at the bottom, has written for “Jezebel, The Frisky, The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project.” In it she complains of the incivility of men in public:

It’s a drizzly Friday in Chicago and I’m leaving a bar with my roommate sometime after midnight. We’re on a quest for tacos and we’re discussing the finer points—Should we get pork or beef? From where? How many?—when you decide to make our conversation your business. You’ve been loitering outside the bar with your friends, but you hear the word “taco” and soon you’re in lock step with us, asking us about our “tacos,” laughing, hooting back to your friends. We push past—literally shoving you—and continue on our way.

Here are some things you should know about my week: I’m on the phone with my mom on my way to yoga when a guy leans out of a doorway, drags on his cigarette and gestures with his pelvis how much he is enjoying my yoga pants. I’m walking home from the grocery store and a middle-aged guy, maybe high, maybe drunk, yells at me, “Get back here, girl!” I’m waiting for the bus when a carful of bros whips by; one leans out the passenger window, points at the girls waiting at the bus stop and yells, “Yes, Yes, No…Yes!” After work, I’m walking from the train to my apartment and four teenagers are trailing me, discussing my body, guessing measurements; they know I can hear them.

This behaviour causes her to feel unsafe. This is understandable as she is a young woman and these men are quite obviously under-civilized brutes; rape or violence would not seem to be an impossibility in some of these situations and given the inherent physical inequalities between the sexes there is little she could do to defend herself (excepting carrying a gun, which someone who writes for Jezebel is unlikely to do).

This is not my issue with what she has written. The incivility of modern times sometimes irks me as well, although, as a tall, broad-shouldered man with confident bearing, I rarely worry for my physical safety.

Rather, my issue is that, as feminists are wont to do, she blames “the patriarchy” for the incivility of ruffians.

She, of course, being an miseducated feminist is oblivious to the twin facts that:

1) Men being uncivil is not “the patriarchy”, it is the breakdown of the patriarchy. It is men being freed from the constraints which the patriarchy put upon them.

2) The left-wing feminist politics she advocates are the primary cause of this breakdown.

Because of this her analysis, such that it is, is flawed.

****

Men’s sexuality, absent civilizational constraint, is naturally aggressive and promiscuous. These men laughing at a woman’s “taco”, grabbing ass, and doing pelvic-thrusts, are acting out their natural sexuality.

At one point in our society, this would have been unacceptable behaviour. Under the old order, lovingly referred to as the patriarchy, but probably more accurately referred to as civilization, civility towards woman was standard; it was called chivalry.

Men raised under this order would have been loath to issue even a mild oath in the presence of a woman, let alone crassly harass a woman over her “tacos”. Had a man been uncivilized enough to harass a woman in such a way, he would have suffered immediate consequences in the form of violence from other honourable men, and more permanent consequences from a loss of social status.

As an example of the sort of man the old order raised, we can use one Samuel Proctor, who tipped his hat towards a woman. When said woman asked what that meant he replied:

Madame, by tipping my hat I was telling you several things. That I would not harm you in any way. That if someone came into this elevator and threatened you, I would defend you. That if you fell ill, I would tend to you and if necessary carry you to safety. I was telling you that even though I am a man and physically stronger than you, I will treat you with both respect and solicitude. But frankly, Madame, it would have taken too much time to tell you all of that; so, instead, I just tipped my hat.”

A man raised in the old order as Mr. Proctor was, would never have even considered joking about a woman’s “tacos”.

Civilization was used to control men’s natural sexual aggressiveness to create men like Mr. Proctor, who acted civilized and would control their aggressive sexuality for the betterment of society and the safety of women.

Some decades ago, a cabal of dissatisfied women under the label of feminism and a small, but vocal minority under the banner of affiliated progressive ideologies decided they did not care for civilization and its constraints. They rebelled against it and fought a long, hard ideological war to destroy it.

They won.

This cabal destroyed the old order and with it the control it had over men’s sexuality.

Men are now free to be uncivil brutes. Civilization no longer holds full sway over them.

Hence, “tacos.”

****

So, in finale:

Dear Feminist,

This is the world you desired.

You and your ideological kin spent decades ruthlessly destroying the old order which kept men civilized. You smashed the patriarchy which kept men’s naturally externalized sexuality healthly internalized and productively directed.

You denigrated the institutions which controlled men, smashed the civilization which ordered men, and have created a generation of brutes and half-men.

You asked for sexual license. Men are now free to express their sexuality without consequence.

You asked for freedom to pursue hedonism. Men are now pursuing hedonism.

You asked to be freed from the rules of civilized conduct. Men are now freed from these rules as well.

You rejected your role as a lady. Men are rejecting their role as gentlemen.

These rules were made to protect you, dear woman. The patriarchy was made for your benefit. The old order existed to serve you.

You desired, nay demanded, them destroyed, and destroyed they have been.

When you destroy civilization, incivility will be the order of the day.

You have got what you asked for, enjoy it.

Regards,

A Traditionalist

Sexbots – Redux

Today, SSM had a look at the world of sex dolls and felt both ickiness and sadness. I’m going to talk a bit about it and answer some of her questions. I have already written about the rise of sex dolls* and potential implications here, so check that out first.

Would women have any interest in these whatsoever?

I think no.

I agree; women are generally sexually attracted to dominance and indicators thereof, no sex doll can replicate that. On the other curves of 36-24-36 are not overly complicated to replicate; a pretty face is more complicated, but not insurmountable.

Is sexual activity with a sexbot a sin?  Would it be fornication?  Would it be adultery if the participant is married?  Is there anything in the Bible that would justify condemning the invention or use of sexbots?

It would be neither fornication nor adultery, in itself. On the other hand, it might violate commandments against lust. On the third hand (I’m am mutant), is it lust if it’s not towards an actual woman?

It’s a fairly similar question to masturbation, and whatever your opinion on masturbation should be your opinion on sexbots.

Would it be pedophilia if the sexbot is formed as a child?  Think I’m way off on this last one?

It would be. I think she’s dead on here. As I talked of in my previous post on the subject, illegal and physiologically impossible sex acts are going to be one of the primary drivers of sexbots.

I’ll put it simply, there are more clinical pedophiles out there than there are homosexuals. They can’t sex a real 10-year old (at least not without violating both social taboos and the law), but when they can sex something that looks like a 10-year old without actually injuring a 10-year old, why wouldn’t they?

How do you argue morally against sexual gratification without harm without using religious or socially conservative arguments about the spiritual and/or societal importance of proper sexual relations? Note that the argument for proper sexual relations has been lost for decades, so there is no real societal defence against letting pedophiles get theirs rocks off on toys. In fact, it would probably reduce harm by letting them satiate their perverted lusts on inanimate objects rather than children.

Of course, SSM has not mentioned the potential of sexbots which cry, scream, and resist to satiate the rapists and/or sadists which make up an even larger minority of the population than pedophiles or homosexuals. Then of course there’s sexbots for all the other, weirder and less predominant fetishes out there.

Do people see sexbots as being replacements for actual human life partners?

Some do view it as a replacement for actual human life partners.

Or more accurately, they have been so scarred by negative interactions with women and/or have a keen enough awareness of their own low sexual value that they no longer even desire and/or hope for a normal human relationship with a real women. Instead, they make due with the best alternative.

The better term might be substitute good.

Is that the attraction?

The attraction is simple: for the omega male (and even for the beta male) finding a mate in these times is a grinding, brutal, and confusing process of rejection, mind games, loneliness, shattered hope, hopelessness, boredom, inanity, pettiness, and humiliation. At some point he simply decides it’s not worth it.

A sex doll provides a better than masturbation simulator of the real thing.

If it’s just a sexual thing, why attach a body to it in the first place?

Because it’s a sex thing. Masturbation relieves sexual urges but is lacking a certain something. Sex dolls somewhat close the gap between sex and masturbation; they trick your mind and body (somewhat) into believing you’re with a real woman. The more realistic they get, the better the mind is tricked and the narrower the gap between masturbation and sex.

How would this affect the relationship between men and women?

Once they get realistic enough: poorly.

Relational options for low-attractiveness women would evaporate; why sex a fatty when the sex doll looks better?

A significant portion of omega (and beta) men would leave the sexual/relational market; why waste all the time, pain, and effort required to attract an average looking woman after a decade or two of loneliness, when $3000 get’s you a reasonable facsimile of companionship right now?

Average women will be strongly negatively effected. Sexual/relational options and attention provided by betas/omegas will dry up.

Alpha males and greater betas will make out like bandits, as women becoming more desperate as their options dry up.

Hot women will have their marriage options dry up, but will still be able to get sexual and relational attention from higher status males. Competition from more average women though will decrease their ability to make demands and be bitchy, so they will be forced to be more feminine and nice.

Marriage will become almost solely the domain of the religious. Why would any secular man link up with a woman for life and risk his mental health, property, stability, and freedom on a woman, when woman are so driven to desperation and a sexbot can give a reasonable facsimile of real sex?

Those of you who question if omegas and lower betas would do this, simply lack the understanding of just how brutal the sexual market place is for these folks.

Will we still have any interest in one another?

No idea about women, but a lot of men will stop caring about women. Most women are simply, by male standards, shallow and uninteresting on a friendship level; with sexual desire satiated on demand by plentiful sex (from desperate women and sex dolls) many men will simply stop trying to sift through all the vapid, flaky, emotional, attention-whoring women to find the minority of sane, level-headed, and enjoyable ones; there will no longer be enough incentive to.

If men could choose between an average, real woman and a super-hot fake woman, which would most men prefer?

For the average man, all things being equal, the former, but all things are inherently not equal. An average, real women comes with a lot of costs: the joyless, painful grind of pursuit, rejection, and dating to find her, the emotional costs of living with an emotionally volatile creature, the risk of divorce rape, the risk of her changing and becoming frigid over time, the loss of freedom a real relationship implies, the monetary costs of a relationship, etc.

Even so, I think the majority would prefer the former, if they could get it and the costs were reasonable. Unfortunately for a certain, but unspecific, number of men, they can’t get it or the costs would be unreasonable.

If (probably “when” is a more accurate question) sexbots hit the market, will people buy them?

Absolutely. They will sell well.

MEN: would you buy a sexbot?

As things stand now no. But in the future if the following four conditions are met: my Christian morality fades, my desire for a family fades, they were to get sufficiently realistic looking, and I were to find the costs (material and immaterial) of picking up women too high, I probably would.

Wouldn’t it be a better idea to fix marriage?

It would. Let’s see when ending no fault divorce becomes a viable political debate.

****

I think Cail got to the heart of the issue:

If you think having sex with an inanimate object seems like it would be dispiriting — well yeah, but jerking off into a kleenex doesn’t exactly make you feel like a king. Honestly, the prospect of cleaning the thing disturbs me more than the idea of having sex with it.

That will be most men will take on the issue. A reall women is best, but if they’re gonna end up masturbating regularly anyways, why not do it better.

Of course, some disagree:

With my “no” vote, the poll is back to even. I’m honestly surprised there are that many who would bed a robot, regardless of religious affiliation. It’s a robot.

From my understanding though, Stratton has had a happy marriage from a fairly young age. I would expect this reaction from most men who have never been involuntarily celibate for an extended period of time.

Who uses the bots will depend highly on their success in sexual/relational market in early life. Those men who are successful early and either marry young or have a lot of sex in high school/college, will probably find the idea repulsive. Those who aren’t successful will find the idea more alluring than their hand.

****

* Note: When I talk of sex dolls or sexbots in this post, I am referring to all semi-realistic stand-ins for sex, which would include VR sex, realistic sex dolls, future sexbots, etc.

The Price of Freedom

Now that a respectful amount of time has passed, here is my obligatory post on the Sandy Hook massacres. May God take His children to rest in His grace.

As is usual for these types of events, most seem to want a convenient scapegoat for the massacre.

Guns are easy to blame, but tools have no volition of their own.

Some blame mental illness, but only the perpetrator’s psychologist can possibly speak to that. Mental illness might explain some of it (or it might not, I’m no psychologist) but most mentally ill people do not shoot up a school.

Some blame cultural entertainment products: violent video games, movies, etc. Although, I’ve seen less of it this time around than when Columbine occurred, it’s still as silly as it was then.

Some blame the media for giving fame to losers. While achieving infamy may be a contributing reason to public violence, this again strips the perpetrator of their own volition and begs the question: why did the perpetrator choose to pursue infamy over the lives of others and continued living?

Some blame the sidelining of males, while others blame the loss of male privilege. I’ve warned about this trend in the past, but it only shows a trend; most males do not engage in such nihilistic violence.

Essentially, it seems everybody uses these kind of events to simply confirm the validity of their pre-existing bugaboos. I am guilty of this as well.

In the end, I think the most likely societal explanation is simple probability. In any society of 300+ million people, there will be some people at the nihilistic violence end of the bell-curve. This is not a societal trend, it is simply probabilistic reality.

****

Instead of looking for some great cause to blame, let’s put the blame where it belongs: the perpetrator.

Adam Lanza was a free individual, with his own will. and his own moral decisions to make.

He made them.

People have their own values, their own goals, their own choices to make.

They have agency, they are not simply the products of culture. People, even the mentally ill, are not empty cyphers of whatever societal trend we fear. They are human they make choices.

We should not dehumanize them.

We should not dehumanize Adam Lanza.

He made his choice.

Adam Lanza chose to shoot his mother, little Emilie Parker, baseball fan Jack Pinto, young Dylan Hockley, and 25 other individuals, may they rest in God’s peace.

Adam Lanza saw the mother who raised him and killed her. He saw the innocence of young ones and decided to snuff it out.

He chose to end dozens of young lives and destroy hundreds more.

Societal forces didn’t kill these people, Adam Lanza did.

****

If we look at all the great causes, no matter which it is, the “answer” is always the same: less freedom.

Guns are deadly: ban them and take them from law-abiding citizens.

The mentally ill are dangerous: lock them up against their will and drug them.

The entertainment and cultural industry is perverse and degenerate: institute content controls.

The media are vicious, amoral, parasitical vultures: regulate the press.

Males are losing their place in society: re-institute enforced patriarchy.

Males are angry at their loss of privilege: indoctrinate them further.

And on and on.

One person in 300+ million* commits a heinous act and everybody cries for the upending of society, for the expanded regulation of behaviour of other people. (Funny how it’s always other people that have to be regulated).

Because of these extreme, outside the normal events, everybody must be controlled. Somebody must do something to prevent these future black swans.

Something must be done, the government has to act. We have no idea what specific actions, but do something, anything. We have no proof any of these suggested actions will be helpful, but do them anyway. We have no rational basis for believing any of these actions will actually prevent the next nihilistic individual from committing extreme violence, but action must be taken.

Please do something, anything so that the placebo can give me back my piece of mind.

I can’t rest unless I know someone better than me is actively looking like they are doing something that vaguely resembles protecting me from extremely low-probability danger.

Fie on that.

Nothing should be done.

Shut the hell up and stop using dead children as political pawns for your anti-freedom crusades.

Shut the hell up and stop letting your mindless fear and inability to control your own peace of mind dictate society.

****

School massacres and other mass acts of nihilistic violence have been occurring since before there was a public school system and have occurred in many different countries and cultures. They have occurred with firearms and without. They have occurred whatever regulations may or may not have been in place. This is not a problem solely of our time and culture. It is not a problem of our regulations or lack thereof. It is not a problem of whatever other bullshit pre-existing ideological war you want to fight on the graves of dead kids.

It is a problem of individuals.

Some individuals choose to do evil things.

Adam Lanza did.

Adam Lanza was free to choose, and choose he did.

****

Here is the thing we must understand:

Sandy Hook was the price of freedom.

The freedom to make choices is the freedom to make bad choices, to make evil choices.

The only way to eliminate bad choices, is to eliminate freedom.

It is horrifying, but it is reality.

The only way to stop another Sandy Hook is to completely give up our freedom, to submit ourselves wholly and completely to another’s control.

The only way to stop bad choices, is to completely remove the ability to make choices.

However horrible 28 deaths is, on a societal level the loss of freedom is even worse.

Freedom is naturally a frightening thing, the comfort of giving up our right to choose, to let others choose for us, can be tempting. Do not give into the fear.

Individuals should be free to make choices, even if those choices may be frightening and may lead to suffering.

Individuals should only be punished or controlled for bad choices once they have actually made them.

Anything else is tyranny.

Sandy Hook is the price of freedom, but it is a price that must be paid; the alternative, a world without freedom and choice, is worse.

****

* If we include others who’ve engaged in nihilistic acts of public mass violence, it’s probably “only” on the order of one in tens of millions. I’m not going to calculate exactly, but still one person out of a few dozen million is still a very low probablility occurance.

Chivalry, the Lady, and the Old Order

Some chick at the Atlantic is asking for chivalry to come back. As is standard is many modern pro-chivalry arguments, she is talking only of men treating women as special, not about women’s corresponding duties under chivalry.

At one point in the article she asks:

Feminists want men to treat women as equals; traditionalists want men to treat women like ladies. Are the two mutually exclusive?

She then goes on about some stupidity about respect and civility.

The simple answer though is yes.

Chivalry and equality are not and can not exist simultaneously.

Chivalry is based in a hierarchical world-view and can not be separated from that worldview.

Chivalry is far more than simple respect and civility. Chivalry is a code whereby the stronger and superior man (the knight) extends his strength and protection to his inferiors who were too weak to protect themselves (women and children).*

In the chivalric hierarchy knights were strong protectors, women were weak and in need of protection. Inherent inequality is built into chivalry.

In exchange for this protection, women submitted to men and acted like ladies. They complemented the men’s strength.

Chivalry rested on this traditional order of society, where inequality and feminine submission is an accepted fact of life. Without this old order, chivalry is impossible.

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Besides inherent inequality, chivalry also requires on other thing: that women act like ladies.

If either of those two conditions is broken then chivalry can not exist. Any acts you do to be “chivalrous” are nothing more than chumphood and supplication.

A lady was originally a noblewomen. Over time, in romantic chivalry it came to refer to a virtuous women. Nowadays, its usually used as somewhat more polite/formal term for women. Only ladies deserve gentlemen, a term with similar origins and complementary meanings as that of lady.

Fundamental to the conception of both the lady and the gentleman is the concept of honour. A man’s honour in the romantic realm was found in his protection of and graciousness towards women. A women’s honour was found in her chastity and her graciousness towards men.

We already know how a gentleman acts; we call it chivalry. So, I will not go further into his duties. But how does a lady act?

A lady is chaste; she does not slut it up, she does not dress like a cheap hooker, she does not tease, and her flirting is light, discrete, and indirect. A lady does not compete with men. A lady acts with propriety and decorum; she is gentle, polite, well-mannered. A lady is feminine, she knows her nature and acts according to it. A lady is beautiful; she knows that her natural god-given beauty is a delight for the rest of the world, so she seeks to maintain it rather than destroy it. A woman who acts this way is deserving of chivalry.

Chivalry is for ladies. It is not for modern, independent women.

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Women, you have a choice.

You can like ladies and accept either inequality or submission or you can cast these off.

If you decide to act like ladies, men can act like gentleman and be chivalrous in return.

If you decide to act like modern, independent women, then you have made the choice to reject chivalry. If you ask for men to be chivalrous, all you are asking for is unearned privilege. You sound like a spoiled brat.

If you do not hold up your end of the chivalric bargain, why the hell should men be expected to hold up their end?

Do not ask for or expect chivalry; in fact, you should be repulsed by chivalry.

Enjoy your hook-ups.

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At this point some may be wondering if I am anti-chivalry. The answer to that is no, I am very pro-chivalry.

But chivalry exists as a part of the old order. Apart from that old order it is meaningless.

I am pro-chivalry, because I believe in resurrecting that old order. Within that old order, chivalry is a wonderful thing for both men and women. Outside that order, it is nothing.

As long as the old order remains buried, no male has a general duty of duty towards women.

In fact, every male should refuse to extend chivalry to a modern, equal, independent woman.

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If you are thinking of being chivalrous ask yourself three questions:

1) Does the woman I am about to be chivalrous think she is my equal?
2) Does the woman I am about to be chivalrous to think a women’s place is to submit to a man?**
3) Does this women I am about to be chivalrous comport herself as a lady?

If the answer to the first is yes and the second is no, treat her as the equal she believes herself to be. (If you do not know the answer, use social cues to determine the likely answer).

Do not give her chivalry. Do not hold the door open for her. Do not pay for her. Do not fight for her. Do not die for her.

As well, I would suggest not marrying her, but that’s an argument distinct from chivalry.

To give chivalry to any women who believes she is equal to you is to insult her. Chivalry implies and necessitates inferiority; by giving it to her you are telling her she is either inferior to or in submission to you. Given her stance on equality this should be repugnant to her.

Any women who believes they are equal yet demands chivalry is either insulting herself, selfish, or just plain stupid. Refuse to play into her stupidity.

Respect a women who thinks she’s your equal by treating her like an equal.

If the answer to the third question is no, then she is not a lady and not worthy of knightly protection. Do not waste yourself on her.

If a women acts like a lady, and believes in either male superiority or complementarianism, then be chivalrous. She is submitting to you, your protection, and your providence and is deserving of having it provided to her. Do not fail her.

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* The worldview of the chivalric code was also based on militarism, fuedalism, and Christianity. From these flowed other parts to the code such as knightly honour, duties to countrymen/Christians, and duties to God, which are also intrinsic to the code, but these aspects are not what most discuss when talking of chivalry nowadays. For this particular post, chivalry will refer only to knightly duties to women as distinct from the other parts of the code, unless otherwise stated. I’m not sure if it is possible for the part of the code dealing with knightly duties to women can be separated from the rest of the code and remain logically coherent, but in practice it has been, so I will assume for this post that it can be.

** This second question allows for complementarians/first mates who may hold to metaphysical equality, but not practical equality. I would argue that practical inequality is all that is fully necessary for chivalry to be extended, so complementarians and first mates should be provided with the protection of chivalry. But I could see where it could be debatable to hold metaphysical inequality as being necessary for chivalry; in which case you would withhold chivalry from most complementarians/first mates.