One of the most disgusting spectacles on the internet is the self-styled right-wing manosphere writers (whose macho-posturing is nearly-always contradicted by their chickenhawk pseudonymity), who purport to write from a Christian perspective; but who argue using only secular, materialist utilitarian reasoning and evidence - and then thinly-coat their conclusions with a supposedly-Christian veneer.
(The intent is apparently to retain the male extra-marital sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility of the sexual revolution; but in a situation where women are held subordinate - hedonistic materialism for the men and patriarchal religion for the women.)
Given the pseudo-scientific, pseudo-Christian, posturing, prideful and self-serving midden that is the manosphere, on the one hand; and on the other the dishonest, incoherent, demonic evil that is mainstream socio-politics... how should Christians then proceed in understanding women from a genuinely Christian perspective?
The answer is obviously to begin with the Christian understanding of sex and sexuality; to begin with 'what God wants and intends' from the fact of there being men and women. Only later may the materialist and pragmatic socio-political conclusions be derived.
Here, there are differences among Christians. Traditionally, the official theology of most Christian churches has been that sexuality, sex, marriage and procreation are merely a temporary feature of our mortal lives; all of which either cease, or else cease to be important, after death (for instance marriage until 'death do us part').
This has not always been the view of actual Christians, for instance among the 'laity'; who have often regarded sexuality, sex, and marriage to be at least potentially continued in Heaven.
This has been given a metaphysical basis in Mormon theology, which regards men and women as distinct from the beginning, a complementary dyad - the ultimate 'unit' of a Man. Only the dyad is capable of the highest exaltation to fully divine creativity, which is the chosen, irreversible, eternal marriage of a man and woman, as separate beings bound by love to make a complete god.
My point is that a real Christian needs to - indeed ought to - first reach a personal understanding, as best he can; by faith (that is by personal revelation, through prayer and meditation, by the fullest intuitive knowledge) - of why from the divine perspective there are men and women both; why there is marriage and what is its ultimate nature and importance; and what sex is ultimately for.
From this solid ground, we may then be able decide the secondary issues of what are the mortal, this-worldly, my-personal-life (and perhaps cultural) implications of this Gods-eye-view understanding.
Given the way in which the sexual revolution has been the major, most powerful, most successful instrument of demonic strategy over the past fifty-plus years; this is something we all absolutely need to do.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query manosphere. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query manosphere. Sort by date Show all posts
Saturday 4 August 2018
Tuesday 23 September 2014
The Secular Right, Alternative Right, Neoreaction, Dark Enlightenment, Manosphere is an Antichrist ideology
*
The word Antichrist refers to an evil phenomenon that is a fake Christianity, something that takes some elements of Christianity but either omits Christ, or else makes him into something other than Lord and Master. An Antichrist may be a person such as any modern mainstream politician in the West advocating Christian language or concepts, or a movement/ ideology such as communism.
The Secular Right movements listed above are Antichrist phenomena because they take elements of Christian morality - especially related to social organization - as a basis for gaining support from Christians, and to make their agenda seem Good.
But at root the agenda is simply a different blend of Leftism - the Secular Right is anti-Christian, pro-pride and with a bottom-line hedonic moral calculus (i.e. good is what makes you feel good, evil is what causes you pain and suffering). Since it is Secular - their ultimate weapon, the One Ring, is hatred (the second most powerful motivator in the universe, but the most powerful one available to secular ideologies): and it will not long resist deploying it.
*
The Secular Right uses Christianity as a means to an opposite end; similarly some Christians hope to use the Secular Right as a means to Christian objectives. Both strategies will fail, both will end in disaster, and of the same (secular) variety.
The Secular Right (ie. the common-sense Left) hopes to use the impending collapse of modernity to grab power from the socialist pathological-altruism Left, with the help of Christians and other religions whom they then intend first to enlist then to betray, when that becomes expedient. (Obviously betray! since they don't want a religious society.)
*
How do you know which you are?
Easy - Ask yourself what comes first: what is your priority; is it religious or political; is it repentance and revival, or is it swift and tough action to stop the rot?
(Is it not-of-this-world or this-worldly?)
Simple question: unambiguous answer.
Now you know which side you are on.
*
(And the pressure to focus on 'this world' as the first priority will only increase as the crisis deepens.)
*
Note: Commenter Ingemar (below) has dubbed the Secular Right, Alternative Right, Neoreaction, Dark Enlightenment, Manosphere blogplex by the name:
The Boromirosphere
with the attributed mission statement:
"Hey lads, let's use the One Ring to fight Sauron!"
*
The word Antichrist refers to an evil phenomenon that is a fake Christianity, something that takes some elements of Christianity but either omits Christ, or else makes him into something other than Lord and Master. An Antichrist may be a person such as any modern mainstream politician in the West advocating Christian language or concepts, or a movement/ ideology such as communism.
The Secular Right movements listed above are Antichrist phenomena because they take elements of Christian morality - especially related to social organization - as a basis for gaining support from Christians, and to make their agenda seem Good.
But at root the agenda is simply a different blend of Leftism - the Secular Right is anti-Christian, pro-pride and with a bottom-line hedonic moral calculus (i.e. good is what makes you feel good, evil is what causes you pain and suffering). Since it is Secular - their ultimate weapon, the One Ring, is hatred (the second most powerful motivator in the universe, but the most powerful one available to secular ideologies): and it will not long resist deploying it.
*
The Secular Right uses Christianity as a means to an opposite end; similarly some Christians hope to use the Secular Right as a means to Christian objectives. Both strategies will fail, both will end in disaster, and of the same (secular) variety.
The Secular Right (ie. the common-sense Left) hopes to use the impending collapse of modernity to grab power from the socialist pathological-altruism Left, with the help of Christians and other religions whom they then intend first to enlist then to betray, when that becomes expedient. (Obviously betray! since they don't want a religious society.)
*
How do you know which you are?
Easy - Ask yourself what comes first: what is your priority; is it religious or political; is it repentance and revival, or is it swift and tough action to stop the rot?
(Is it not-of-this-world or this-worldly?)
Simple question: unambiguous answer.
Now you know which side you are on.
*
(And the pressure to focus on 'this world' as the first priority will only increase as the crisis deepens.)
*
Note: Commenter Ingemar (below) has dubbed the Secular Right, Alternative Right, Neoreaction, Dark Enlightenment, Manosphere blogplex by the name:
The Boromirosphere
with the attributed mission statement:
"Hey lads, let's use the One Ring to fight Sauron!"
*
Wednesday 26 October 2022
Advice about "women"...
Don't know about you - but I cordially dislike the online (and print) manosphere genre of "advice about women" - the stuff that emanates from chaps who claim to have a lot of experience of a lot of women (because, obviously, they know the most and are wisest on the subject - yes?)
Not, I notice, the opposite kind of chap who has known one woman and stuck with her... Apparently such men don't seem to have quite the same keen-ness to expound at such length on "women" - and what could such a man know about "women", anyway?
(Or maybe it is best for the expert on women to be something in-between? Perhaps there is an ideal number for experience - a sweet spot, somewhere between one and loads?)
The women-experts talk about "women" in the form of sweeping generalizations, almost invariably rounded-out by checklists and bullet points.
My problem is that - when it is Christian, as well as manosphere - the mode of such discourse destroys that which it purports to promote: i.e. the possibility of good relations between a man and a woman - one man and one woman.
Why? Because it is an Ahrimanic, bureaucratic way of talking about people and inculcates and entrains such a mindset. But instead we ought, as Christians seeking good, to be concerned about individuals. And not, therefore, to reason inductively about particular people.
Now, of course, everybody - including myself - talks and writes about 'people' and subsets of people such as The Establishment and The Masses, and Westerners. We talk about specific nations, classes, professions, religions, ideologies etc. etc. We do so for various reasons - sometimes genuinely scientific, more often to do with how 'best' to 'organize' society.
Or sometimes it is a form of humour (albeit this may be destructive in tendency and in large doses, even as it is indeed genuinely funny).
But that 'categorical' way of talking about aggregates and averages is innately and intrinsically hostile to good individual human relationships.
It is even hostile to our capacity to respond to specific situations, to the me-here-now of actual living in particular places.
The one is descriptions of crystalline structured, timeless-generality; the only is our personal experience of something fluid, interactive, unique. If the first impinges on the second, it will tend to degrade and destroy it.
And 'the general' does indeed tend to impinge on 'the personal' - because the general is the subject of public discussion and debate; the subject of expertize, training, evidence, reasoning and argument.
Whereas the personal is - and should be - essentially private.
If you want to weaken or destroy an established good personal relationship (e.g. a marriage) - then it just needs one of the two to start analyzing it using general concepts that (supposedly) apply to most/ average/ subsets of people; to start discussing its details with 'friends' or with professional experts whose knowledge derives from samples of data from several or many persons - and who claim the ability to apply this 'evidence' to the specific situation.
If you want to prevent somebody finding a good relationship - go ahead and do the same! Get him to frame all potential and incipient relationships within a categorical scheme derived from what most/ average/ this-subtype of person supposedly does.
Yet, there is a vast gulf between, on the one hand, trying to prevent what are usually bad outcomes for most/ average people of certain types (utilitarian social policy...); and, on the other hand, trying to promote good outcomes between specific and unique individuals. They aim in opposite directions.
Trying to conflate two incommensurable approaches has predictably adverse outcomes.
My point is general: How we discuss something affects - and may destroy - what it is that we intend (or tell-ourselves we intend*) to say.
For instance; as a doctor, scientist, literary scholar or teacher; I came to realize that anyone who advised or instructed me about my subject in a 'managerial' mode Would Do Harm to that role, if I took any notice of him; regardless of the content.
The mode of thinking that was signaled by managerial discourse, is one that is innately hostile to good outcomes of a kind that required either personal or creative engagement.
The same applies to advice or instructions purportedly aimed-at personal (or creative) goods.
Think about it.
*Our awareness of our own good intentions may be (often is) self-deception; may be yielding to a temptation to sin. Do we really want to help 'people'; or is it instead that we personally enjoy talking and writing about 'this kind of stuff', and posing as an expert; and rationalize it with an altruistic veneer?
Saturday 29 August 2015
Putting Christianity Second: What is wrong with the Manosphere, Religious Reaction etc?
The Christian Manosphere is primarily about 'men' and only secondarily about Christianity - my impression is that their analysis would be that the problems of men need to be sorted-out before Christianity can be sorted-out: that the problems of sexual relationships are primary are most-urgent, and these problems are blocking any realistic possibility of Christian revival. the conclusion is that society must sort out sex first.
This is analogous to those Religious Reactionaries (primarily political, secondarily Christian) who regard sorting-out the problem of mass immigration as the primary priority, which needs the most urgent solution - and that only after that has been done, and borders are secure, can Christianity be sorted-out.
There are several other flavours of Christianized socio-political grouping - for all of whom the priority is secular.
My own view goes in the opposite direction - I believe that it is lack of Christianity which is preventing us from 'solving' what are in fact trivial-non-problems.
Our anti-Christian, secular, hedonistic society is so profoundly disorientated and demotivated that it has become incapable of basic common sense.
Therefore, whatever the major socio-political problem, the answer is Christianity; and Christianity must come first.
The fact, and I think it is a fact, that Christian revival of any flavour seems extremely improbable in The West does not alter its being a fact.
Since it is the weakness of Christianity that is the underlying problem; giving priority to any secular problem leads to more secularism, and worse problems.
This is analogous to those Religious Reactionaries (primarily political, secondarily Christian) who regard sorting-out the problem of mass immigration as the primary priority, which needs the most urgent solution - and that only after that has been done, and borders are secure, can Christianity be sorted-out.
There are several other flavours of Christianized socio-political grouping - for all of whom the priority is secular.
My own view goes in the opposite direction - I believe that it is lack of Christianity which is preventing us from 'solving' what are in fact trivial-non-problems.
Our anti-Christian, secular, hedonistic society is so profoundly disorientated and demotivated that it has become incapable of basic common sense.
Therefore, whatever the major socio-political problem, the answer is Christianity; and Christianity must come first.
The fact, and I think it is a fact, that Christian revival of any flavour seems extremely improbable in The West does not alter its being a fact.
Since it is the weakness of Christianity that is the underlying problem; giving priority to any secular problem leads to more secularism, and worse problems.
Wednesday 21 September 2022
Freudianism in the USA, and its enduring harm to global public discourse (including the Secular Right, 'manosphere' and 'Trad' Christians)
Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis was mainly adopted in the USA, where it soon permeated almost the entirety of social discourse - and did immense and lasting harm.
Of course, few people have ever been-through anything like a full 'analysis' - i.e. an hour, three times a week for several or many years, done by an accredited analyst who had himself been analyzed.
(Except for Freud himself. Founders of initiatory organizations, somehow, themselves never require the prolonged and systematic they require of their followers. Rudolf Steiner was the same in this regard. I suppose this exemplifies Weber's discussion of charisma and bureaucracy, and how the one invariably assimilates to the other.)
But a very high proportion of people in the USA, especially among the ruling and professional classes, have spent significant time in 'therapy' of one sort or another; and all these therapies are more-or-less-closely descended from Freud in terms of their broad assumptions, and effects.
(e.g. In a month at a medical school in Texas, I met only one person who had Not experienced psychotherapy.)
All sorts of aspects of psychoanalysis became embedded in US life. For example, the idea of psychological 'traumas' being The cause of 'problems' later - this assumption forms the basis of most modern biographies.
Or, the 'confessional' way of interacting; whereby people 'spill the beans' about themselves, their history and their feelings, as a major mode of social interaction, even among strangers - and the assumption that Not to do this is unhealthy: storing-up problems for the future.
Extending from this, is the notion that 'repressing' any feeling does harm, whereby expressing it - doing it - is healthy and a sign of good adjustment. This, especially and above all, in the realm of sex and sexuality; where in fact the anti-Freudian idea is that desires need to be 'acted-out' rather than being purely articulated and discussed.
('Strict' Freudian analysis takes places entirely within the consultation room.)
The archetypical American extraversion and action-orientation thereby fused with Freud's abstract intellectualism, to produce a kind of public and explicit drama from the (all-but endless) speaking and listening, thinking and discussing of strict psychoanalysis.
Consequently, psychoanalysis and 'therapy' of all kinds became, in the USA, heavily sexualized - with sexual relationships between therapists and clients almost normal, certainly unremarkable.
More generally, psychoanalysis led to the idea that 'it's good to talk', to interact, to socialize, to have lots and lots of 'friends'; and that these friends are (primarily) 'supportive' and 'encouraging' in terms of their comments.
And the flipside of this has been first to 'problematize' and then to punish the opposite: i.e. comments - or facial expressions - that make people 'feel bad'. Leading onto the ludicrous discourse of 'micro-aggressions' being developed, taken seriously; and then deployed as a core political weapon.
Similarly, the culture of 'analysis' and 'therapy' created and sustained the discourse and legislation based on 'unconscious racism' (or sexism, or *phobias) - which is posited as the primary cause of any difference in outcomes that disfavour an officially-privileged (i.e. officially labelled 'oppressed') group. This represents Freud's 'unconscious'; literalized and weaponized for social control.
Therefore, we can see that Freud was the origin of the New Left, with its psychological focus and (racial, sexual, etc.) 'victim groups'; which - from the middle 1960s - displaced the Old Left (which had been rooted in economics and class analysis).
The US way of understanding was quickly (almost instantly) exported to the rest of the world, mainly by domination of mass media, but also by the US status of political hegemony.
These and other themes were generated in the USA in the wake of the Freudian cultural-takeover back in the middle twentieth century. Freudian ideas (in culturally-adapted forms), in fact, became metaphysical assumptions: basic assumptions regarding the nature of reality - in particular the human condition.
Mainstream US life came to be rooted in the atheism, materialism, psychologism derived from Freud and therapy; combined with a hedonism (or utilitarianism) the Americans added to it.
This means that the framework of modern mass media - from news stories to movies and TV drama, and the interactions of social media - substantially dictates the approved content, and the status hierarchies.
(And these are sustained and manipulated - for Their own ends - by those with power, naturally.)
This began the process we now see at an advanced and degenerate stage of evolved corruption. Psychologism 'infects' many areas of American discourse; even among those who regard themselves as on The Right or at least against The Left - even among Christians!
For example; the current (weird) 'manosphere' obsessions with the 'socio-sexual hierarchies' (alpha, beta, gamma men, and so forth); or the endless discussion of blue, red, black and white 'pills'... indeed much of the everyday discussion in this general corner of the internet, and among 'trad' Christians of several denominations and churches...
Yet these discourses are derived from that same toxic set of attitudes and concepts that - broadly - evolved from Freudian psychoanalysis.
They are, indeed, instances of Residual Unresolved Positivism - and thus also of Residual Unresolved Leftism - and they work-against Christianity at a structural, metaphysical level.
Serious Christians would, I believe, be well-advised to recognize the malign roots of these ultimately New Left discourses; and to identify, and repent, their own impulse to engage in such thinking and interaction.
Friday 13 November 2015
The science of sex - the most important recent book? Sexual selection under parental choice, by Menelaos Apostolou
Menelaos Apostolou. Sexual selection under parental choice: the evolution of human mating behaviour. Psychology Press: London, 2014. pp. xi, 175.
See also: http://www.menelaosapostolou.com/
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/parental-choice-determines-mating.html
**
The work of Menelaos Apostolou, a young Assistant Professor from Nicosia University in Cyprus - collected and explored in this recent book, turns-out to be the most significant 'paradigm shift' in the evolutionary psychology of sex since the modern field began in 1979 with Don Symons The evolution of human sexuality.
Apostolou's work means that this whole area of work - many thousands of papers and scores of best-selling books (not to mention the theoretical basis of the online Manosphere and PUA movement) - now need to be reframed within a new explanatory context.
In a nutshell, and with exhaustive documentation and rigorous argument, Apostolou establishes that parental choice is primary in human evolutionary history: for many hundreds of generations of our ancestors it was primarily parents who chose and controlled who their children would marry and reproduce-with; and the individual sexual preferences of both men and women were relegated to a secondary role.
This means that it was mainly parent choice that shaped human mating preferences - and personal choice would have been relegated to a subordinate role within and after marriage (e.g. infidelity choices; and the choice to end marriage - e.g. when to divorce).
Most of this book is taken up by the collection and discussion of a mass of empirical data - hundreds of references, and the detailed working-through of the implications; but the take home message is relatively simple and clear.
Apostolou shows that in most societies in human history, and continuing in most modern societies outside of The West, individual men and women had very little choice of their mates - and that this choice was nearly always made by their parents. In other words, marriages were arranged by the parents of the husband and wife - especially the daughter's marriage, and usually by their fathers more than their mothers.
Parents preferences for a marriage partner differ from those of their offspring. In general, parents (relatively to their children, especially daughter) prefer delaying sexual relationships until an early marriage with early onset of child-bearing and little or no extra-marital sex. And parents have been generally hostile to divorce.
The characteristics parents prefer (compared with individual preferences) include good character, ability to provide resources (especially men), coming from a 'good family' - with high status and wealth, and pre-marital chastity (especially in women).
The characteristics individuals prefer (compared with their parents) include beauty and good looks (hair, face, figure etc. in a woman; muscular physique in a man), a charming and entertaining personality, the ability to provide sexual excitement and so on.
The system of parental sexual choice seems to be unique to humans - which makes it a matter of exceptional biological interest: we may be the only species that has not evolved to choose our own mates.
More exactly, the ancestral system was probably (to simplify) that two sets of parents controlled who their children married - the individual preferences of the prospective husband and wife may or may not have been consulted. Individual choice was probably important mostly after marriage - since there was the possibility of extra-marital liaisons (although Apostolou documents that these were extremely risky, and generally very harshly punished, up to and including death - especially for women).
But all the ancestral societies permitted divorce (while strongly discouraging it - since this undermined parental decisions) - although mainly in a context where one of the spouses turned out to be unsatisfactory from the point of view of providing grandchildren (eg. men who did not provide sufficient resources - due to their behaviour or from illness or injury, or women who were barren). Probably since women are more controlled in arranging marriage, it is mainly women who initiate divorces.
Apostolou summarises this as: Parents decide who gets married, children decide whether they stay married.
Another way of describing this is that parents screen or filter prospective spouses - and individual preferences only work within this pre-screened and filtered population. Consequently, modern men and women are not adapted to select a partner from an unscreened population - and not equipped with the proper instincts to assist their choice; so they are vulnerable to deception and exploitation.
Therefore human evolutionary history has left modern individuals, in a world where parental choice and control has been all-but eliminated from mainstream life, woefully ill-equipped to manage their sexual lives.
This affects both men and women adversely - but in partly different ways. men and women share a common problem of not being worried-enough about the problem of finding suitable long-term mates, marrying and having children - precisely because this whole business was managed for them by parents through hundreds of preceding human generations.
Women delay and delay marriage and child-bearing, and seem unconcerned about their genetic extinction - because their deep inbuilt expectation is that these matters will be arranged for-them. men worry too much about attaining high status among men, and becoming a good provider - when these were selected for in a world where prospective in-laws wanted these attributes from men; but in the modern world they are an ineffectual strategy for getting a mate.
In sum (and in terms of their biological fitness) modern men are too worried about working hard, and not worried enough about meeting and impressing individual women.
So men and women who are apparently, in biological and historical terms, extremely well-qualified as potential husbands and wives, remain unmarried and childless in large and increasing numbers.
Modern single people therefore are much too happy about their living in a state of unattached childlessness, than is good for their reproductive success. And this (biologically) foolish happiness is at least partly a consequence of evolutionary history: people are behaving as if mating and marriage will be sorted-out by parents - but it isn't.
However, as is usual in works of evolutionary psychology - in a subject where the professionals are almost 100 percent atheists (and militant atheists at that!), in this book there is a too brief and conceptually inadequate consideration of the role of religion.
The subject gets about three pages, and religion is treated as merely a trumped-up rationalisation for enforcing biological imperatives. However, it is not mentioned that in modern societies it is only among the religious that we can find biologically viable patterns of mating, marriage and family - and indeed only among some particular religions that are traditionalist in ethics and patriarchal in structure: which fits exactly with the evolutionary predictions.
My point is that religion needs to be regarded as a cause, not merely a consequence, of sexual behaviour and selection pressure; in sum, religion (more exactly, some specific religions) is the only known antidote to the pattern of maladaptive modern sexuality which is trending towards extinction.
Another omission is the role of intoxication by alcohol and drugs. Much of modern sexual behaviour is initiated in parties, bars and nightclubs; and occurs more-or-less under the influence of intoxicants - and this in itself deranges delicate brain functioning and destroys the benefits of behavioural adaptations that may have taken centuries or millennia to evolve.
An intoxicated person is maladaptive.
So, from a biological perspective, I would contend that there is no reason to suppose we can solve the biological problems of modernity outwith religion (especially since the social system of religion has in practice been replaced by... the mass media - see my book Addicted to Distraction). Biological knowledge can diagnose the problem - but science cannot provide a solution nor the motivation to implement it; since humans are not evolved to structure their sexuality according to biological principles.
We are 'set-up' to seek our own gratification and try to avoid suffering with reproductive success as a by-product - we do not seek directly to achieve optimal personal/ or tribal/ or national/ or species-level reproductive fitness.
Such omissions and other imperfections do not detract from the exceptional originality and importance of this book and the empirical research and theoretical discussion which it summarises.
In a world where actual scientific achievement was the primary determinant of professional success; Menelaos Apostolou would be among the most prestigious, most cited, and most intellectually influential people in evolutionary psychology.
I hope that this deserved outcome will, sooner or later, come to pass.
See also: http://www.menelaosapostolou.com/
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/parental-choice-determines-mating.html
**
The work of Menelaos Apostolou, a young Assistant Professor from Nicosia University in Cyprus - collected and explored in this recent book, turns-out to be the most significant 'paradigm shift' in the evolutionary psychology of sex since the modern field began in 1979 with Don Symons The evolution of human sexuality.
Apostolou's work means that this whole area of work - many thousands of papers and scores of best-selling books (not to mention the theoretical basis of the online Manosphere and PUA movement) - now need to be reframed within a new explanatory context.
In a nutshell, and with exhaustive documentation and rigorous argument, Apostolou establishes that parental choice is primary in human evolutionary history: for many hundreds of generations of our ancestors it was primarily parents who chose and controlled who their children would marry and reproduce-with; and the individual sexual preferences of both men and women were relegated to a secondary role.
This means that it was mainly parent choice that shaped human mating preferences - and personal choice would have been relegated to a subordinate role within and after marriage (e.g. infidelity choices; and the choice to end marriage - e.g. when to divorce).
Most of this book is taken up by the collection and discussion of a mass of empirical data - hundreds of references, and the detailed working-through of the implications; but the take home message is relatively simple and clear.
Apostolou shows that in most societies in human history, and continuing in most modern societies outside of The West, individual men and women had very little choice of their mates - and that this choice was nearly always made by their parents. In other words, marriages were arranged by the parents of the husband and wife - especially the daughter's marriage, and usually by their fathers more than their mothers.
Parents preferences for a marriage partner differ from those of their offspring. In general, parents (relatively to their children, especially daughter) prefer delaying sexual relationships until an early marriage with early onset of child-bearing and little or no extra-marital sex. And parents have been generally hostile to divorce.
The characteristics parents prefer (compared with individual preferences) include good character, ability to provide resources (especially men), coming from a 'good family' - with high status and wealth, and pre-marital chastity (especially in women).
The characteristics individuals prefer (compared with their parents) include beauty and good looks (hair, face, figure etc. in a woman; muscular physique in a man), a charming and entertaining personality, the ability to provide sexual excitement and so on.
The system of parental sexual choice seems to be unique to humans - which makes it a matter of exceptional biological interest: we may be the only species that has not evolved to choose our own mates.
More exactly, the ancestral system was probably (to simplify) that two sets of parents controlled who their children married - the individual preferences of the prospective husband and wife may or may not have been consulted. Individual choice was probably important mostly after marriage - since there was the possibility of extra-marital liaisons (although Apostolou documents that these were extremely risky, and generally very harshly punished, up to and including death - especially for women).
But all the ancestral societies permitted divorce (while strongly discouraging it - since this undermined parental decisions) - although mainly in a context where one of the spouses turned out to be unsatisfactory from the point of view of providing grandchildren (eg. men who did not provide sufficient resources - due to their behaviour or from illness or injury, or women who were barren). Probably since women are more controlled in arranging marriage, it is mainly women who initiate divorces.
Apostolou summarises this as: Parents decide who gets married, children decide whether they stay married.
Another way of describing this is that parents screen or filter prospective spouses - and individual preferences only work within this pre-screened and filtered population. Consequently, modern men and women are not adapted to select a partner from an unscreened population - and not equipped with the proper instincts to assist their choice; so they are vulnerable to deception and exploitation.
Therefore human evolutionary history has left modern individuals, in a world where parental choice and control has been all-but eliminated from mainstream life, woefully ill-equipped to manage their sexual lives.
This affects both men and women adversely - but in partly different ways. men and women share a common problem of not being worried-enough about the problem of finding suitable long-term mates, marrying and having children - precisely because this whole business was managed for them by parents through hundreds of preceding human generations.
Women delay and delay marriage and child-bearing, and seem unconcerned about their genetic extinction - because their deep inbuilt expectation is that these matters will be arranged for-them. men worry too much about attaining high status among men, and becoming a good provider - when these were selected for in a world where prospective in-laws wanted these attributes from men; but in the modern world they are an ineffectual strategy for getting a mate.
In sum (and in terms of their biological fitness) modern men are too worried about working hard, and not worried enough about meeting and impressing individual women.
So men and women who are apparently, in biological and historical terms, extremely well-qualified as potential husbands and wives, remain unmarried and childless in large and increasing numbers.
Modern single people therefore are much too happy about their living in a state of unattached childlessness, than is good for their reproductive success. And this (biologically) foolish happiness is at least partly a consequence of evolutionary history: people are behaving as if mating and marriage will be sorted-out by parents - but it isn't.
However, as is usual in works of evolutionary psychology - in a subject where the professionals are almost 100 percent atheists (and militant atheists at that!), in this book there is a too brief and conceptually inadequate consideration of the role of religion.
The subject gets about three pages, and religion is treated as merely a trumped-up rationalisation for enforcing biological imperatives. However, it is not mentioned that in modern societies it is only among the religious that we can find biologically viable patterns of mating, marriage and family - and indeed only among some particular religions that are traditionalist in ethics and patriarchal in structure: which fits exactly with the evolutionary predictions.
My point is that religion needs to be regarded as a cause, not merely a consequence, of sexual behaviour and selection pressure; in sum, religion (more exactly, some specific religions) is the only known antidote to the pattern of maladaptive modern sexuality which is trending towards extinction.
Another omission is the role of intoxication by alcohol and drugs. Much of modern sexual behaviour is initiated in parties, bars and nightclubs; and occurs more-or-less under the influence of intoxicants - and this in itself deranges delicate brain functioning and destroys the benefits of behavioural adaptations that may have taken centuries or millennia to evolve.
An intoxicated person is maladaptive.
So, from a biological perspective, I would contend that there is no reason to suppose we can solve the biological problems of modernity outwith religion (especially since the social system of religion has in practice been replaced by... the mass media - see my book Addicted to Distraction). Biological knowledge can diagnose the problem - but science cannot provide a solution nor the motivation to implement it; since humans are not evolved to structure their sexuality according to biological principles.
We are 'set-up' to seek our own gratification and try to avoid suffering with reproductive success as a by-product - we do not seek directly to achieve optimal personal/ or tribal/ or national/ or species-level reproductive fitness.
Such omissions and other imperfections do not detract from the exceptional originality and importance of this book and the empirical research and theoretical discussion which it summarises.
In a world where actual scientific achievement was the primary determinant of professional success; Menelaos Apostolou would be among the most prestigious, most cited, and most intellectually influential people in evolutionary psychology.
I hope that this deserved outcome will, sooner or later, come to pass.
Tuesday 10 December 2013
Why is it in practice impossible to have sensible policies about immigration? (Because, from where we are, 'good' reforms must necessarily be preceded by repentance and religious revival)
*
I have noticed that on the secular Right/ Reactosphere/ Alt Right/ Manosphere blogs, immigration policy is used as the major Litmus test, to evaluate whether or not a person or party is support-worthy.
(Whereas on the religious right the Litmus tests are related to the sexual revolution.)
Now it is trivially easy, mere common sense, to know for sure that mass immigration (e.g. of the order of one percent growth/ change per year) is lethal to any social order in the medium to long term; so it seems only sensible that massive population migrations must be prevented and the process must be controlled.
This is non-optional for any society - yet it keeps on and on not happening.
Why?
*
Because from where we are now in the situation we are; common sense policy is precisely what is impossible.
Open-ended mass migration is a problem because the Left has been in charge for many decades (and whatever the name of the party, the Left has won - all mainstream 'right wing' parties are in practice Leftist).
And minimally-restricted (in practice unregulated, mostly unrecorded) mass migration is a major plank of Leftism: such that positivity to long term and open-ended mass 'immigration' is a Litmus test for what they call 'racism' - which is widely taught to be the ultimate sin.
*
So THIS WORLD we live in is one where sensible immigration reform IS racism, and racism IS the worst of all possible evils.
And believers will RESIST ultimate evil (i.e. racism) to the maximum extent of their strength and will.
And THIS is our starting place for any future change.
*
Thus, from where are are now, 'sensible' changes to immigration policy are impossible.
Impossible, that is, in practice: if sensible reform to immigration policy was possible, it would have happened, long ago.
The fact that sensible reform did not happen, and there is zero sign of it happening, and instead matters are getting worse, is just that - a fact; and what that fact means is that making sensible immigration reform policy into a Litmus test is not as straightforward as it seems.
Not at all.
*
When the resistance against sensible reform of an obviously-suicidal policy is so strong - that is, resistance is strong enough to overcome simple logic and obvious common sense - this means that common sense reforms become desirable only on the other side of mass repentance and a religious revival.
Because (however sensible or desirable) if immigration restriction became the major priority of a political movement, if it became the 'single issue' for a party which hoped to attain political power sufficient to overturn a half-century of Leftism, such a party would need to overcome massive, powerful, unyielding, entrenched resistance from The Left - which is the party in power, and controls all the major social institutions (especially the mass media - indeed the Left is the mass media).
So, in practice, sensible reform would need to be massively-motivated - viscerally-motivated, (dare I say it) fanatically-motivated, in order to overcome the entrenched resistance of Leftism.
And this level of motivation could (probably) only happen by unleashing, encouraging and organizing the emotion of hatred.
Organized-hatred met by entrenched resistance equals serious civil strife, probably civil war; which is usually the worst kind of war; and once started this kind of thing can be very difficult/ impossible to stop.
*
This is why immigration is such a desperately fraught question.
And one which it is impossible to solve by secular politics without a high risk of making matters much worse - because in the modern world as it is now secular politics can only generate power by mobilizing wicked motivations such as hatred.
In sum, the Left have created an impossible and suicidal immigration policy, yet this suicidal policy is so deeply embedded and so recklessly defended, that to stop it and and turn around could/ would produce horrific overall effects. The specific problem or issue of mass migration might be solved, but only at terrible cost.
*
At root, suicidal mass immigration is a product (just one of many products) of the psychotic and self-destructive mind set of secularism, a disease that can only be cured by religion.
If the (apparently sensible) treatment is introduced without prior religious cure, then this would necessarily and merely be swapping one kind of psychotic self-destruction for another. It would be like 'curing' society's brain cancer by cutting-off its head.
The real 'answer', the good answer, the only answer we would want is that the first step must be religious revival (i.e. a real-Christian Great Awakening).
Only after the insanity of secularism has been recognized and repented, and the necessity of religion embraced, can 'normal service be resumed' - with sane, common sense, non-suicidal, sensible policies.
*
There is no short cut to victory against hedonic-suicidal secular Leftism.
The enemy is too strong for short cuts; but the desire for a short cut is a snare, and could easily make things much worse.
We must go the longer way round - via repentance.
*
I have noticed that on the secular Right/ Reactosphere/ Alt Right/ Manosphere blogs, immigration policy is used as the major Litmus test, to evaluate whether or not a person or party is support-worthy.
(Whereas on the religious right the Litmus tests are related to the sexual revolution.)
Now it is trivially easy, mere common sense, to know for sure that mass immigration (e.g. of the order of one percent growth/ change per year) is lethal to any social order in the medium to long term; so it seems only sensible that massive population migrations must be prevented and the process must be controlled.
This is non-optional for any society - yet it keeps on and on not happening.
Why?
*
Because from where we are now in the situation we are; common sense policy is precisely what is impossible.
Open-ended mass migration is a problem because the Left has been in charge for many decades (and whatever the name of the party, the Left has won - all mainstream 'right wing' parties are in practice Leftist).
And minimally-restricted (in practice unregulated, mostly unrecorded) mass migration is a major plank of Leftism: such that positivity to long term and open-ended mass 'immigration' is a Litmus test for what they call 'racism' - which is widely taught to be the ultimate sin.
*
So THIS WORLD we live in is one where sensible immigration reform IS racism, and racism IS the worst of all possible evils.
And believers will RESIST ultimate evil (i.e. racism) to the maximum extent of their strength and will.
And THIS is our starting place for any future change.
*
Thus, from where are are now, 'sensible' changes to immigration policy are impossible.
Impossible, that is, in practice: if sensible reform to immigration policy was possible, it would have happened, long ago.
The fact that sensible reform did not happen, and there is zero sign of it happening, and instead matters are getting worse, is just that - a fact; and what that fact means is that making sensible immigration reform policy into a Litmus test is not as straightforward as it seems.
Not at all.
*
When the resistance against sensible reform of an obviously-suicidal policy is so strong - that is, resistance is strong enough to overcome simple logic and obvious common sense - this means that common sense reforms become desirable only on the other side of mass repentance and a religious revival.
Because (however sensible or desirable) if immigration restriction became the major priority of a political movement, if it became the 'single issue' for a party which hoped to attain political power sufficient to overturn a half-century of Leftism, such a party would need to overcome massive, powerful, unyielding, entrenched resistance from The Left - which is the party in power, and controls all the major social institutions (especially the mass media - indeed the Left is the mass media).
So, in practice, sensible reform would need to be massively-motivated - viscerally-motivated, (dare I say it) fanatically-motivated, in order to overcome the entrenched resistance of Leftism.
And this level of motivation could (probably) only happen by unleashing, encouraging and organizing the emotion of hatred.
Organized-hatred met by entrenched resistance equals serious civil strife, probably civil war; which is usually the worst kind of war; and once started this kind of thing can be very difficult/ impossible to stop.
*
This is why immigration is such a desperately fraught question.
And one which it is impossible to solve by secular politics without a high risk of making matters much worse - because in the modern world as it is now secular politics can only generate power by mobilizing wicked motivations such as hatred.
In sum, the Left have created an impossible and suicidal immigration policy, yet this suicidal policy is so deeply embedded and so recklessly defended, that to stop it and and turn around could/ would produce horrific overall effects. The specific problem or issue of mass migration might be solved, but only at terrible cost.
*
At root, suicidal mass immigration is a product (just one of many products) of the psychotic and self-destructive mind set of secularism, a disease that can only be cured by religion.
If the (apparently sensible) treatment is introduced without prior religious cure, then this would necessarily and merely be swapping one kind of psychotic self-destruction for another. It would be like 'curing' society's brain cancer by cutting-off its head.
The real 'answer', the good answer, the only answer we would want is that the first step must be religious revival (i.e. a real-Christian Great Awakening).
Only after the insanity of secularism has been recognized and repented, and the necessity of religion embraced, can 'normal service be resumed' - with sane, common sense, non-suicidal, sensible policies.
*
There is no short cut to victory against hedonic-suicidal secular Leftism.
The enemy is too strong for short cuts; but the desire for a short cut is a snare, and could easily make things much worse.
We must go the longer way round - via repentance.
*
Monday 11 March 2013
Attitude to the sexual revolution is the single most decisive litmus test of Leftism
*
A positive attitude to the sexual revolution is the hallmark of Leftism, which trumps all other themes and unites disparate (and hostile) factions.
To be pro-the sexual revolution is not only the cornerstone of Marxists, Communists, Fascists, Socialists, Labour parties and Democrats; but is shared by mainstream Conservatives, Neo-Conservatives, Republicans; and by Anarchists and Libertarians; and by sex-worshipping neo-Nietzschian pseudo-reactionaries - such as those of the 'manosphere'.
To be pro-the sexual revolution is the nearest thing to a core value of the mass media; and of art both high-brow and low.
This vast conglomeration is the Left alliance; it is modern local, national and international politics - united only by being pro-the sexual revolution: but this is enough.
*
What is the sexual revolution?
Simply the divorce of sex from marriage and family.
Marriage and family are social institutions; but sex cut-off from ('liberated' from) marriage and family is (sooner or later) a monstrous, insatiable and self-stimulating greed for pleasure and distraction.
*
Attitude to the sexual revolution therefore marks the difference between those who are ultimately in favour of human society; and those who delight in its destruction (aka Leftists) who see social collapse as primarily an opportunity to feed their personal addictions; to use other people to make themselves feel good about themselves; to distract themselves with pleasure, and pleasure themselves with distraction.
*
A positive attitude to the sexual revolution is the hallmark of Leftism, which trumps all other themes and unites disparate (and hostile) factions.
To be pro-the sexual revolution is not only the cornerstone of Marxists, Communists, Fascists, Socialists, Labour parties and Democrats; but is shared by mainstream Conservatives, Neo-Conservatives, Republicans; and by Anarchists and Libertarians; and by sex-worshipping neo-Nietzschian pseudo-reactionaries - such as those of the 'manosphere'.
To be pro-the sexual revolution is the nearest thing to a core value of the mass media; and of art both high-brow and low.
This vast conglomeration is the Left alliance; it is modern local, national and international politics - united only by being pro-the sexual revolution: but this is enough.
*
What is the sexual revolution?
Simply the divorce of sex from marriage and family.
Marriage and family are social institutions; but sex cut-off from ('liberated' from) marriage and family is (sooner or later) a monstrous, insatiable and self-stimulating greed for pleasure and distraction.
*
Attitude to the sexual revolution therefore marks the difference between those who are ultimately in favour of human society; and those who delight in its destruction (aka Leftists) who see social collapse as primarily an opportunity to feed their personal addictions; to use other people to make themselves feel good about themselves; to distract themselves with pleasure, and pleasure themselves with distraction.
*
Sunday 27 November 2016
Christian infiltration of the Alt-Right (Neoreaction) - my six years of effort
Since 2010, I have been trying to infiltrate (unconcealed, upfront, in full daylight) and convert the secular Right movements such as Alt-Right, Neoreaction, Dark Enlightenment, the Manosphere...
This began from when I started work on my book Thought Prison - the fundamental nature of political correctness (http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk) and has continued. I published a few Essays in the original Alternative Right webzine - and perhaps as a result was put onto the Dark Enlightenment 'map' among the Christian Traditionalists (http://neorxn.com/introduction). Indeed, for the past few years I have gotten most of my blog traffic from the aggregator neorxn.com.
All this suggests to me that there must be a considerable spiritual hunger, indeed a specific interest in Christianity, among the secular Right - but, aside from a few individuals, the movement remains secular, and indeed net anti-Christian.
Why should this be? There are two reasons - one good, the other an error. The good reason is that the bulk of visible and self-identified Christianity - including the main Western denominations - is thoroughly corrupted with the worst kind of Left/ Liberalism: indeed it is not just 'corrupted'; rather these churches are primarily Leftist, and their Christianity is just a matter of jargon and 'lifestyle.
The error is that Christianity (or The Reformation) is blamed for Leftism (as in the 'Leftism is a Christian Heresy' meme). The truth is that Leftism was in its primary origins a mixture of atheism and apostasy - caused not by Christian devoutness, but by its lack.
However, the stark fact remains that the Organised Western Christianity which confronts a new Rightist is elderly, feeble, feminised, cowardly, and unspiritual. While there are some smaller corners and cells of Western Churches that are young, vigorous, patriarchal, and family-oriented; these are hard to find, and (rightly) exclusive and excluding with regard to membership - so not everybody can find a niche in any of the available alternatives. (I can't.)
All I can say is that people should not be put-off Christianity by any of this. Christianity is of immense power and potency - a deep well of courage and love - even when pursued as a personal faith - outside the churches.
I therefore say to anyone on the secular Right - don't wait to find a church: become a Christian first; and only then look around for a suitable congregation and denomination.
As Christian - explicitly, to yourself and others - your whole outlook on reality will be positively transformed in ways you can scarcely imagine; and then... who knows?
This began from when I started work on my book Thought Prison - the fundamental nature of political correctness (http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk) and has continued. I published a few Essays in the original Alternative Right webzine - and perhaps as a result was put onto the Dark Enlightenment 'map' among the Christian Traditionalists (http://neorxn.com/introduction). Indeed, for the past few years I have gotten most of my blog traffic from the aggregator neorxn.com.
All this suggests to me that there must be a considerable spiritual hunger, indeed a specific interest in Christianity, among the secular Right - but, aside from a few individuals, the movement remains secular, and indeed net anti-Christian.
Why should this be? There are two reasons - one good, the other an error. The good reason is that the bulk of visible and self-identified Christianity - including the main Western denominations - is thoroughly corrupted with the worst kind of Left/ Liberalism: indeed it is not just 'corrupted'; rather these churches are primarily Leftist, and their Christianity is just a matter of jargon and 'lifestyle.
The error is that Christianity (or The Reformation) is blamed for Leftism (as in the 'Leftism is a Christian Heresy' meme). The truth is that Leftism was in its primary origins a mixture of atheism and apostasy - caused not by Christian devoutness, but by its lack.
However, the stark fact remains that the Organised Western Christianity which confronts a new Rightist is elderly, feeble, feminised, cowardly, and unspiritual. While there are some smaller corners and cells of Western Churches that are young, vigorous, patriarchal, and family-oriented; these are hard to find, and (rightly) exclusive and excluding with regard to membership - so not everybody can find a niche in any of the available alternatives. (I can't.)
All I can say is that people should not be put-off Christianity by any of this. Christianity is of immense power and potency - a deep well of courage and love - even when pursued as a personal faith - outside the churches.
I therefore say to anyone on the secular Right - don't wait to find a church: become a Christian first; and only then look around for a suitable congregation and denomination.
As Christian - explicitly, to yourself and others - your whole outlook on reality will be positively transformed in ways you can scarcely imagine; and then... who knows?
Tuesday 12 November 2013
Note to the secular Right - cynical selfish hedonistic individualism is not a reaction against the Left, but *exactly* what the Left wants
*
Again and again I have read a response from the secular Right which regards itself as a defiant 'I'll show 'em - but which is in reality exactly what the Left wants.
Because what the Left wants is not any particular state of affairs, not any particular set of social arrangements (such as a society dominated by women or feminized values or 'other' races or some kind of inversion of heterosexual married family life...).
What the Left wants is destruction of the Good - and it only uses the above causes as temporary battering rams against strong institutional sources of Good such as Christianity, marriage, the family, patriotism, decency, hard work, altruism, truthfulness, beauty and so on.
So when a 'manosphere' secular Rightist responds to the degraded state of the current sexual arena with 'threats' of using women purely for gratification, of boycotting marriage, of avoiding responsibility etc - the fact is that this is not a threat to the Left, but instead precisely what the Left wants from them.
When the Left corrupts the churches, the military, the police, and the nation - and conservatives first lose faith in, then turn against, these institutions - then they must not delude themselves into supposing that this is any kind of act of rebellion against the Left; or anything hostile to the plans of the Left: it is exactly what the Left wants.
It is Leftism in action, in a refined form.
In fact, the Right cannot rebel by being more selfish, it cannot really rebel at all - because rebellion is negative and intrinsically Leftist; the Right can only create by courageous acts of faith and love; against the odds; based on transcendental Hope.
*
Again and again I have read a response from the secular Right which regards itself as a defiant 'I'll show 'em - but which is in reality exactly what the Left wants.
Because what the Left wants is not any particular state of affairs, not any particular set of social arrangements (such as a society dominated by women or feminized values or 'other' races or some kind of inversion of heterosexual married family life...).
What the Left wants is destruction of the Good - and it only uses the above causes as temporary battering rams against strong institutional sources of Good such as Christianity, marriage, the family, patriotism, decency, hard work, altruism, truthfulness, beauty and so on.
So when a 'manosphere' secular Rightist responds to the degraded state of the current sexual arena with 'threats' of using women purely for gratification, of boycotting marriage, of avoiding responsibility etc - the fact is that this is not a threat to the Left, but instead precisely what the Left wants from them.
When the Left corrupts the churches, the military, the police, and the nation - and conservatives first lose faith in, then turn against, these institutions - then they must not delude themselves into supposing that this is any kind of act of rebellion against the Left; or anything hostile to the plans of the Left: it is exactly what the Left wants.
It is Leftism in action, in a refined form.
In fact, the Right cannot rebel by being more selfish, it cannot really rebel at all - because rebellion is negative and intrinsically Leftist; the Right can only create by courageous acts of faith and love; against the odds; based on transcendental Hope.
*
Friday 8 March 2013
Is THIS BLOG part of the mass media?
*
On the whole, yes of course, since it could potentially be read by a billion people, which is 'mass'.
In actuality, it is read by a few hundreds a day, at most - probably (I mean actually read) - about the same number I could lecture to without technological aids (if the lecture theatre was well designed).
*
But the main determinant of whether this blog counts as 'mass' is in the behaviour of the reader.
Is reading this blog part of a large trawl though other blogs and websites; or is it a specific, deliberate and much more focused thing.
If reading this blog is just one element in trawling the web, or marinating-yourself in the internet, then it is indeed part of the mass media - even if only six other people are reading it.
*
Are you plugged-into the mass media?
*
I sometimes think that the main difference between pseudo-Right wingers (such as libertarians and neo-conservatives and 'manosphere' types) and real reactionaries is indicated by whether they are plugged-into the media, or not.
On this analysis, if you life is dominated by the mass media you are a creature of the Left - and this is not affected by the nature of the media content.
A self-identified 'reactionary' who spends several hours per day engaged with 'reactionary' news sources, magazines, blogs and the like - is actually a Leftist.
*
On the whole, yes of course, since it could potentially be read by a billion people, which is 'mass'.
In actuality, it is read by a few hundreds a day, at most - probably (I mean actually read) - about the same number I could lecture to without technological aids (if the lecture theatre was well designed).
*
But the main determinant of whether this blog counts as 'mass' is in the behaviour of the reader.
Is reading this blog part of a large trawl though other blogs and websites; or is it a specific, deliberate and much more focused thing.
If reading this blog is just one element in trawling the web, or marinating-yourself in the internet, then it is indeed part of the mass media - even if only six other people are reading it.
*
Are you plugged-into the mass media?
*
I sometimes think that the main difference between pseudo-Right wingers (such as libertarians and neo-conservatives and 'manosphere' types) and real reactionaries is indicated by whether they are plugged-into the media, or not.
On this analysis, if you life is dominated by the mass media you are a creature of the Left - and this is not affected by the nature of the media content.
A self-identified 'reactionary' who spends several hours per day engaged with 'reactionary' news sources, magazines, blogs and the like - is actually a Leftist.
*
Thursday 2 May 2024
Is Dale Carnegie the patron saint of the Based?
The "Right" or "Based" blogosphere, or Manosphere in its various manifestations - strikes me as the latest iteration of a theme of self-improvement that probably began with Machiavelli's The Prince; included Samuel Smiles (who coined "self-help"), Dale Carnegie's How to win friends and influence people, and many versions of the power of positive thinking ("every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better").
Nowadays there are many blogs catering to this theme, online podcasts and lectures, as well as books.
The idea is to improve your own life - by key insights, or new behaviours - with "improve" being in some way that matters to you...
Maybe simply feeling better about yourself, getting more money and/or a better job, improving health and bigger muscles (+/- greater strength), defending against violence, surviving disaster, gaining the admiration of men, or getting more sex with more women.
Self-help is implicitly rooted in secret knowledge; and this secret is always some key information about becoming clearer and more focused on what genuinely benefits you; and the key insight is about how to pursue your own self-interest more effectively.
In a nutshell: the appeal is a promise of more-effectual hedonism.
Well, all very understandable -
But what does this kind of stuff have to do with being a Christian?
...To do with following Jesus Christ to resurrection into eternal Heavenly life?
To ask is to answer.
**
NOTE: The point of this post is expanded by that which follows it, below...
Thursday 25 February 2021
The end of Reaction Times?
The 'Dark Enlightenment' cluster-linkage analysis
I feel that I ought to note the passing of the blog aggregator site neorxn.com, which was the all-time top referrer to this blog - accounting for 130,000 page views over the years.
The site was called Reaction Times, and had the insightful subtitle "The restoration will not be televised".
It was one of a group of a briefly-trendy neoreaction/ alt-right/ 'dark enlightenment'/ manosphere-type blogs from about a decade ago (I don't remember exactly when it began).
It did not include many Christian bloggers, but I was one of the handful. It is possible that some of the current regular readers originally found this blog via the neorxn link.
Anyway - since February 15 the site has been inactive and down - with the message "Service Unavailable - Server currently undergoing maintenance". I sent an email to the administrator, who used to run a blog called Free Northerner - but got no reply. So I guess it is all dead.
Did it fall or was it pushed? I don't know. Certainly, few of the original blogs that it originally aggregated, remain active - and that whole 'secular right' movement (often associated with Mencius Moldbug) has all-but fizzled-out; either from despair, convergence or (at best!) religious conversion (as was inevitable, and necessary).
Anyway, I thought that someone should note the passing of a once-vigorous web presence. For all its faults as a not-specifically-Christian aggregator; nothing better than neorxn has replaced it - so this probably counts as another loss.
Friday 19 January 2024
Some Romantic Christian "don'ts" about courtship and marriage
I find the "manosphere" - including the "Christian" sub-type - always and increasingly wrong-headed - and indeed harmful.
So I thought I'd add my two-penn'orth in a way that is intended to be a negative corrective to some of the most blatantly false attitudes and aims.
(I do not feel it would be right - would indeed be absurd! - for me to offer positive advice of a "what to do" kind; and indeed that would be counter-productive to the desired attitudes and aims.)
This is from a broadly Romantic Christian perspective (implicit in everything that follows) - which means it is rooted in my own intuition and experience for which I take personal responsibility; which implies that I will not "defend" my convictions, nor argue with those who disagree - because public "facts" and "evidence" depend on prior assumptions; and all logic and reason can do is infer the consequences of assumptions.
One assumption, behind all this, ought not to need stating to Christians - but, of course, does (we are all sinners); and this is that Love is By Far the most important thing in marriage; as it is in this mortal life and in Heaven.
(And Love is dyadic - as I have recently tried to explain.)
If Love is not the underpinning of marriage, then we will be dealing with a public institution; and that means - in The West, now - marriage will be subject to a System that is evil overall and by intent.
(Context: There are no guarantees in this mortal life; and your life is probably not "about" what you currently suppose it is about. We live in a divine creation - therefore (over the timescale of mortality - which is seldom in the immediate short-term) probabilities are not relevant to those fundamental matters crucial to the real purpose of your life; I mean, concerning matters where God would be expected to "intervene". In short; God will make happen what needs to happen.)
Courtship begins with adolescence, and - as of this time and place - we all start-out from an adolescence characterized by intense self-consciousness and alienated consciousness: a situation of bad faith, hypocrisy and fantasy.
We are hyper-aware of our-selves - but that "self" is compounded largely of fantasy (what we think we would like to be, what we want other people to be like). It is very seldom our real or true "primal self" indeed it is often an opposition or even inversion of that real self.
We need to learn from this original situation, and work towards something better; which is:
Making our public persona a genuine manifestation of our real self.
The other characteristic of modern adolescence, is also a consequence of our alienation. This is our conscious experience of being cut-off from spontaneous participation in the consciousness of other people; which means we tend to experience others (including women) in an un-real fashion - rather like characters in a novel, movie or play.
Too often; because our the standard modern set-up of consciousness and culture: we engage our own fantasies our our-selves, with other-people's own fantasies of themselves (including women); and this must be overcome as much as possible.
Furthermore; the above leads to the familiar situation in which relationships are reduced to a hypocritical war of attempted manipulations.
(e.g. We attempt to project our fantasy persona (of what we think we want to be like) to manipulate a woman who may be doing the same: the "winner" is the one who succeeds in fooling the other into accepting the projected persona, and thereby successfully manipulating him or her. Meanwhile, the primal self is cut out-of-the-loop altogether.)
For a Christian to accept that adolescent and alienated situation and work with it, rather than against it - and to claim this as Christian; is in bad faith - as well as hypocritical, dishonest, psychopathic (i.e objectivizing others and attempting to use them for gratification).
It also prevents us learning from the experience of our actual situation in this mortal life.
More explicitly, a marriage built on projection and manipulations is a marriage based on a lie. Furthermore, the lie intrinsic to a projected persona will tend to attract a woman who is attracted to that persona - which is not our real self: any resulting marriage will probably be rooted in dishonesty and deception.
One very small positive suggestion to round-off: if you succeed in making your public persona a genuine manifestation of your primal self; then a woman (and you are only seeking one woman, a single wife) who is attracted to marry you on that basis (or something near to it, tending towards it) - will be more likely to love you for your real nature.
If you hope for that marriage to be strong, lasting, loving - a basis in truth is surely for the best?
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