Shaming Tactics, Self-Righteousness and Violating Boundaries

"Shame is a soul eating emotion." - Carl Jung

I read a lot of articles about how women use "shaming tactics," apparently far more than men. I have noticed these shaming tactics myself. I've also noticed women don't even know they're doing it.

Those shaming tactics are based on self-righteousness, i.e., I am right and you are wrong. And they're always based on violating people's boundaries - even though they don't know they're doing that, either. And just about every time someone violates someone's boundaries, they are trying to shame and humiliate them.

Carl Jung (probably more than once) made the comment that women's greatest flaw as to think she was always right.

When someone tries to humiliate/shame someone, and is self-righteous (I am right and you are wrong) and violates people's boundaries (and doesn't know it or else if they know it, think they have the right) the modern word for that is "narcissistic."

A narcissist is someone who thinks they are always right, and in fact is grandiose. They violate people's boundaries and try to humiliate them. And the narcissistic blame their problems on other people - and women are notorious for trying to blame their problems on men.

So from all of this I have to conclude most women are more narcissistic than men.

Now one of the most interesting things about the narcissistic is that they are covering up a lot of problems having to do with self-esteem. Arrogance and self-righteousness on top, insecurity and shame on bottom (that is why those who talk about "the Dark Triad" being a good thing don't have the slightest idea of what they are talking about).

For some reason I don't quite understand I really set off these, insecure, narcissistic women. I've been like this since I was 12.

Women who are intelligent, sensitive, humorous and imaginative always like me. Women who are not-too-bright, who are self-righteous, and who violate people's boundaries act like they want me to die. And if I did, they'd probably be happy about it.

Shaming tactics don't work on me. Whenever women try it I immediately put a stop to it, or else act amused, which really sets them off, since I'm not taking them seriously. And when you don't take a narcissist seriously, that insecurity and sense of shame pops right up. That's the best explanation I have for why I set them off - because they treat them like the joke they are.

What I have actually found is that women who like me have good marriages, and those who dislike don't get married, have bad marriages, and often get divorced. It's like I'm some kind of barometer in that way.

The history of the world has been that men want to be protector/providers/fixers/creators. The more that women try to shame and humiliate them, insult and ridicule them and violate their boundaries, the less men are doing to do any of the things they do. And in the long-run, it'll hurt women more than men.

It's happening right now.

"Shame is self-sabotaging. It triggers feelings that we are unwell, unworthy, unlovable." - Joyce Marter

"We have no imagination for Evil, but Evil has us in its grip." - Jung

"I Got a Bad Feeling About This"

Sometimes your gut knows more than you do:

“In my 30 years of researching violence, every victim of violence who lived to tell the tale said they had a ‘bad feeling’ before the actual attack…If an alarm goes off, respond to it. Got a bad feeling? Address it. Something nagging at you? Stop and look into it. Don’t ignore these signals. Don’t rationalize and mentally correct them. Don’t dismiss them without assessing them. Your body is built for survival and one of its hard-wired systems is designed to alert you to danger.”

That's good advice.

Art imitates life:

"There is a strict separation between the political class and the rest of the populace, with the latter working in slave-like conditions to support the former."

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

"Let's jump right in by reminding readers you see the world in part through what is sometimes called the prism of empire. This refers to the belief that the behavior of governments is best understood as the attempt by unfettered politicians and bureaucrats to dominate others."

We all doomed - sort of.

I Pine For The Old Men's Magazines

My father had a subscription to only one magazine: True. I was about 11 years old, and I still have one of his magazines. This one:

I was driven to distraction by school but I was certainly interested in my father's magazines. It absorbed me, something that school never did.

I remember one article about a guy who hunted bears with a .45, another about Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, and one about Phineas Gage, who had a iron rod go though his head - and lived.

Do I miss that magazine! I even enjoyed the ads.

And the cartoons:

True ceased publication in 1975, and oddly, that pretty much coincides with this country starting to go downhill (wages stopped going up in 1971). That magazine was a model for young men, and since art imitates life, the loss of that particular magazine, with its emphasis on high adventure, sports profiles and dramatic conflicts, was not a good thing.

I don't see anything like the old men's magazines these days, and I don't know why. But I sure learned a lot of history, such as an article about Benjamin Butler, a real sonofabitch of a carpetbagger, although the history books have whitewashed what he was really like.

I also remember one about Merrymount, which could be considered the first Civil War in America.

I found a quote about it: "The inhabitants of Merrymount ... did devise amongst themselves to have ... Revels, and merriment after the old English custom ... & therefore brewed a barrell of excellent beer, & provided a case of bottles to be spent, with other good cheer, for all comers of that day. And upon Mayday they brought the Maypole to the place appointed, with drums, guns, pistols, and other fitting instruments, for that purpose; and there erected it with the help of Savages, that came thither of purpose to see the manner of our Revels. A goodly pine tree of 80 foot long, was reared up, with a pair of buckshorns nailed on, somewhat near unto the top of it; where it stood as a fair sea mark for directions, how to find out the way to mine Host of Ma-re Mount."

The Puritan Gov. William Bradford wrote this in his History of Plymouth Plantation: "They ... set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking together, (like so many fairies, or furies rather,) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalians."

In fact, the killjoys were so infuriated at these merrymakers that Miles Standish and his troops invaded the place, seized the leaders and sent them back to England. The Indians were run off of the land, and the Maypole was chopped down.

What these people were doing was playing and partying, but for God's sake we can't have that! Got to work your life away!

There are men's magazines for specific things: Field and Stream and Popular Mechanics, for example (I also found the writing in Playboy was impeccable). But I am not familiar with any light men's magazine. But what can be considered a general men's magazine, such as Esquire, is just way too earnest and serious.

Most of the men's magazines in the past were geared toward the middle-class. Now they are targeted to manginas from New York, who are obsessed with expensive clothes and cars. Ugh.

I'm kidding here, but if I was to open up a men's magazine I'd ask two or three smart 12-year-old boys what they thought was interesting. I suspect it would make for a pretty interesting and successful magazine.

If You Like It And You're Good At It, Then It's Play

“Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people...” — Arthur Schopenhauer

The man who has most studied play is Dr. Stuart Brown. He has come to the conclusion that it is essential to health.

I have come to the same conclusion, and have also found you have to like what you do, and if you like what you do, then you are good at it.

So, in a sentence, if you like what you do, and are good at it, then it's more like play. That is something you have to have in your life in order to be happy. And that is why the Greeks, about 2500 years ago, said that well-being is achieved though excellence - being good at what you do.

Brown has studied more than 6000 life histories, looking at people’s play experiences over their lives. He found that play is essential for children - and adults.

When he studied made a detailed study of homicidal males in Texas, what he found was severe play deprivation in the lives of these murderers. I find that astonishing. It's been known for thousands of years that humiliation leads to the desire for revenge, and that can often led to murder. It also makes sense that humiliated people can't play, and probably couldn't even as children.

Brown found that children who were severely deprived of play demonstrated much dysfunction - loss of emotional control, loss of social competence, loss of resiliency, loss of curiosity. When they became adults they showed social, emotional and cognitive narrowing, inability to handle stress, and often experienced chronic depression.

When Brown later studied highly creative and successful individuals, he found they had a rich play life. "Play," he wrote, "is who we are."

Many have identified areas where play has been damaged, even destroyed.

Public school is one of them, where the influx of uncomprehending women (and their mangina supporters) is attempting to annihilate the natural mayhem of little boys by the use of mind-drugging drugs such as Ritalin and having them arrested by equally uncomprehending police for drawing guns on paper or bringing squirt-guns to school.

Brown wrote: "Beginning in preschool, the natural mayhem that three-to-five-year-olds engage in (normal rough and tumble play) is usually suppressed by a well-meaning preschool teacher and parents who prefer quiet and order to the seeming chaos that is typical of free childhood play...when there are smiles and continuing friendships, rambunctious play is healthy."

"Learning," he wrote, "should not be drudgery. Play promotes true intellectual curiously....the play-less adult becomes stereotyped, inflexible, humorless, lives without irony, loses the capacity for optimism, and generally is quicker to react to stress with violence or depression than the adult whose play life persists."

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is also famous for studying play. When we are absorbed in what we are doing he called it "Flow": "the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does."

I often wondered why we have no polymaths anymore. I came to the conclusion that one of the main reasons is because most children are not allowed to follow their own interests in public school, and that most of them are not educated in the sense of education drawing out their natural talents. Instead they are often considered cogs to be pounded to fit in a machine. Students are not allowed to play anymore.

What is going to be the end of this lack of education, the suppression of play, and the attempt to turn little boys into automatons? Nothing good.

You're going to get some people saying the hell with public school. They are going to pull their kids out of the public schools and home-school, and if need be, move into rural areas to get away from the destructive environments of bigc cities.

And since it is men who have created just about everything, we're going to get less advancement in every field that supports and maintains society.

Another problem is single mothers. Contrary to the hysterical protestations of some, women cannot raise boys by themselves. The problems associated with women trying to raise boys by themselves are well-documented, to the point there can be no argument.

Brain-destroying public schools, single mothers, marriages not forming or breaking up, the loss of high-paying jobs, the destruction of play...these are the the things that are making society stagnate or go backwards.

I expect to find more revenge, more depression, more drop-outs, more anger. And no one is going to like that or be good at it.

The Truth About Guys Who Brag About All the Girls They Are Getting

Contempt is the Opposite of Respect

Several years I was interviewing a young couple. She said something to him in a contemptuous tone (I don't remember what she said) and he just sat there expressionlessly. What he did is called "stonewalling." I remember thinking, "This marriage is not going to last."

John Gottman is best-known for studying what causes marriages to break up. He hasn't said anything that hasn't been known for a few thousand years, but, these days, he's the one who's studied it the most. About 20 years, I think.

He found the biggest predictor of divorce is contempt. Actually there are four things: Criticism, Defensiveness, Contempt and Stonewalling. If you want, you can call them the Four Horsemen.

Contempt is the opposite of respect, and respect is based on gratitude and appreciation. What contempt is really saying is, "You're not good enough."

And the reaction to that attitude is going to be resentment and defensiveness, including the phrase, "Nope, I'm not going to do that..." You can end that phrase with, "...anymore."

There is always going to be a reaction to contempt, never good ones. So it mystifies me that some people think they can show contempt and ingratitude and expect something good to come out of it. Do they honestly think they can change behavior like that?

I know a man who was a mercenary, and he killed a lot of people, all of whom, in my opinion, deserved it. After he retired from it he became head of security in a pretty bad area. Whores, pimps, drug dealers, that kind of thing. He told them, you do your dealings over there, not here, and there will be no trouble. This is my territory and that is yours. He specifically used the word "respect" in taking to me. And, he told me, he never had any trouble with them, ever.

I see three main trends in the Manosphere, which means there are three main trends in society: Men Going There Own Way and men not getting married and having children.

Each of those is Stonewalling and saying "no," which means they are reactions to contempt and ingratitude.

The Third Trend is the PUA (Pick-Up Artist). This is based on revenge and contempt for women, contrary to the protestations of some well-known commentators. Of all the PUAs I have known, not one liked women. And every one of them screwed up his life unless he quit was he was doing.

Not long ago I read some articles about how some women are trying to draw out the courtship process to get free entertainment and food. The extent to which this is true, I do not know. Most women couldn't pull it off successfully.

But whether it is a little successful or a lot successful, it's showing contempt and disrespect for men, and zero gratitude and appreciation.

I know a man who went away to college when he was 18, and come not make it home for Christmas, since his home was a few thousand miles away. A woman he had met told him she'd pick him up and he could spend Christmas with her and her family.

She never showed up, never called, never explained or apologized, and I don't think he was ever the same. He was 18, alone, away from home for the first time, and got a rude awakening to what lies and disrespect really were like.

As for Men Going Their Own Way and not getting married and having children, the best explanation is that they feel they getting a bad deal - being treated contemptuously, without respect or gratitude, feeling that they are the objects of attempts to humiliate them.

Contempt is the attempt to humiliate someone. And the attempt to humiliate someone leads to the attempt at revenge. That's a repeatable science, and has been for thousands of years.

Lack of Gratitude and Appreciation Will Kill Just About Everything

"The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated." - William James

"When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears." - Tony Robbins

"Ingratitude is the essence of vileness." -- Immanuel Kant

My, how things have changed. How things always change, and oftentimes for the worse. I can't quite remember the quote, or who said it (one of those Greek guys, I think), but it was along the lines of, "Any change not necessary is an evil." But then, change is inherent in nature, including change for the worse, so we'd better make sure we can minimize the disruptions. We're not doing a very good job of that right now.

I see a fair amount of lack of respect and appreciation today. Indeed, I see quite a few small fish in even smaller pools, who think they are big fish. They are incapable of handling even the slightest bit of authority, and that translates into trying to humiliate people...which they don't even know they trying to do.

The German word "achtung" means "attention, respect, esteem." German often seems to have more accurate words than English, such as "vorfreude," which means "the joyful anticipation for something or someone." Then there is one that has made it into English: "schadenfreude," which means the pleasure you get from the misfortunes of others. In English, it's usually reserved for those who deserve their misfortunes.

But I digress a bit.

In college I had a friend who was practically a dwarf. No, not really. He was just short, about 5'6". I was mystified at some of the things he told me. Women who stood him up on dates. Ones who left in the middle of dates. Ones who insulted him about his height. He didn't get much respect, or appreciation, from some women.

No respect, no appreciation, no gratitude. Enough so that he clearly remembers it. Fortunately, he did get enough to turn into a decent guy.

People who don't get the appreciation they should - which means people are grateful to them - handle it in different ways. Sometimes they think they deserve it, which leads to depression and self-abasement.

Some just get resentful and angry. I think the French word "ressentiment" is more accurate: "a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration." Which means if you are abused and disrespected, and don't get much appreciation, or gratitude, you're going to figure out who is doing that to you, and zero in on them, perhaps looking to deal out some revenge...or justice.

Now as for those who don't feel any gratitude or appreciation, they've got their problems, too, and they are some pretty damn big ones. I am reminded of something Meister Eckhart said: "If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough."

Now that I think about it, saying "Thank you," although these days it's just a formality, really is supposed to mean, "I'm grateful to you for what you did for me."

Robbins is right: when you are grateful, fear does disappear and you feel that abundance that Eckhart hinted at.

One of the biggest places where I see a lack of respect is in the workplace. I'm not surprised when someone walks off and sabotages the place. I've seen that, more than once. Or sues the place. I've seen that, too, more than once.

The second biggest problem I've seen is the relationships between men and women, and when it comes to lack of gratitude and appreciation, it's women who are the biggest offenders.

Men have generally been protectors/providers, and now that's being thrown in their faces, even taken away. And what do many women reciprocate with? Contempt, disrespect.

Contempt is the biggest predictor of divorce. There are in fact four main predictors of divorce: criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling.

So many men have been so criticized and held in contempt they have become defensive and started stonewalling. They are now "divorcing" women without even being married. And they're refusing to get married, so they're not providing for them. They're starting to cease protecting them. Or else they're Going Their Own Way. Or they're turning the tables and becoming predators.

Almost all of this - perhaps all of it - is caused by a lack of respect, gratitude, appreciation.

The contract has been broken. I'd actually call it a sacred contract, and it's been thrown in the gutter.

The Mirror of Humiliation

"Disgust introjected from the other can be seen as the root categorical emotion of the compound emotion of shame" - Linda Graham

There are three concepts I keep in mind: model, mentor, mirror.

A model is someone you model yourself after, especially when you are a kid. One of my nephews, when he was little, had this obsession with a cartoon character named Bravestar, and he was so enamored of him he talked his mother into making him a costume, which he wore around the house. That's a model.

Incidentally, the villain's name was Tex Hex, and it intrigued me that my nephew was only interested in being the good guy and not the bad one. So there are good models, who we want to imitate, and bad ones, which tell us that is which we don't want to be.

We all know what a mentor is: someone who mentors you and shows you the ropes.

The least known of these concepts is that of the mirror. A mirror is someone in which you can see yourself in their behavior and comments.

And therein lies a tale.

When I was in high school (perhaps 16) I was walking to a party a few neighborhoods over. I do remember it was dark, since parties generally didn't get going until about eight.

As I was walking down the street I saw coming towards me a girl I knew from school. I knew who she was but had never talked to her.

She was walking her dog. I thought, "Friday night and I'm going to a party and she's walking her dog?"

She wasn't good-looking. She wasn't ugly, but she wasn't attractive, and chunky, the kind of chunky that even if she lost weight she'd never have a nice body.

She gave me a look of fear. She knew who I was but I suspect didn't know my name, but recognized me. But why was she scared of me?

I was so mystified by this I walked by her and didn't look at her or say anything.

I knew intuitively that she didn't think I was going to attack her. I think she was afraid I was going to laugh or her or mock her.

I thought about it later and wondered what her life was like.

I'm sure she never had a boyfriend, had probably never kissed a boy, and wasn't popular at all. Mostly, I suspected, she was completely ignored. Ostracized, by both boys and girls, never invited to parties...nothing. What an awful life.

In other words, I think she felt humiliated, and that's where that look of fear came from. She probably thought, in one way or another, I was going to add to her humiliation.

I wondered what it like was spending your life alone and ignored. Everywhere she looked, what people were mirroring to her was, "You don't count at all."

Imagine what it would be like if everyone you met looked at you with contempt and disgust, or told you from the beginning that you were nothing, or responsible for all kinds of problems, none of which you were responsible for. That attitude, if if went on long enough, would get inside of you and become part of your character.

How would you respond? Some people would feel guilty and think they deserved what they got. That way leads to guilt, depression and self-abasement.

Others would feel humiliated, and that's worse than guilt, because feelings of humiliation led to the desire for revenge. And that is what I mean when I write about Hubris (which originally meant humiliating someone in public) leading to Nemesis (revenge, which is the attempt to replace feelings of humiliation with feelings of pride or self-respect - competence, confidence, power, feelings of being good at what you do and liking it).

I see a lot of the attempt to humiliate people these days. I see it in life, in the media, and in the schools.

Some years ago I went to pick up one of my nephews early from school. As I was standing in the hallway I saw a pudgy, unattractive female teacher manhandling a shrieking little boy into the "time-out" room. It happened so fast I could do nothing.

At the time I thought, "She an idiot and shouldn't be teaching boys." What did she think this boy was going to learn from this humiliation? To hate school, hate teachers, and to hate some women?

He certainly wasn't going to learn to behave himself, contrary to her delusions.

Another time I was standing outside a school and saw a pudgy, unattractive (and female-hysterical) teacher talking to a mother: "I am very upset!, etc. etc. etc."

The boy, who was about six, was standing there stone-faced.

It turned out this boy had told his teacher he didn't want any black kids attending his birthday party at the school.

The teacher, who was clearly a liberal, was blaming the boy's attitude on the boy, and not on the unpleasant blacks students. This teacher was attempting to shame and humiliate the boy in public, in front of his mother.

I wonder sometimes if the mother told the boy, "Ignore the teacher, she's a moron, and you have the right to invite to your party whom you want."

Everyone gets humiliated sooner or later. But these days, it seems to be young boys, teenage boys and men who are the objects of it, and a lot of it.

I see it on TV, in the movies, in the media, and in the schools.

This is one of the reasons the Manosphere exist. It is an attempt to replace humiliation with pride. Hubris followed by Nemesis.

It's taking three forms:

1) The refusal to get married and have kids. Today that is a sucker's game. Why should a man suffer the unfairness and humiliation of possibly losing his money, home and kids to a unfair woman and unfair laws? (This is actually "stonewalling," which is a reaction to being treated with contempt.)

2) The PUA lifestyle. This is based on contempt for women, contrary to protestations. It's based on turning the tables and having power over them.

The Men Going Their Own Way lifestyle. This is based on having power over your own life and attempting to avoid unfairness and humiliation.

None of these are good things, but they were predicted.

The worst of things is men go longer getting married and having children, and instead making only enough to support themselves, with no surplus. That means The End of Things as We Know It.

After all, who wants to not be appreciated and respected and instead be treated with contempt?

What many men are having mirrored back to them is that they are suckers, they don't count, they get what they deserve, and that they are the bad guys.

Freedom

How to Create More Serial Killers, Rapists and Psychopaths - In General, a Bunch of Screwed-Up Guys

First, start with a boy, because males are the ones who are really responsible for the truly awful violence in the world. This is why they have to be treated much better than they are, instead of as second-class citizens as is currently the norm.

Then, from the day he is born, physically and emotionally abuse him (actually, do it before he is born). Do this to him, in school, and in the media. Especially have his mother and other females do it. The men can also engage in it or not protect him,or in some cases, not be there at all.

Want to see two movies about abusive mothers and weak fathers? Try Born on the Fourth of July and Boogie Nights.

Continue it throughout his childhood. Emotionally and physically abuse and humiliate him. A lot. His parents can do it, and other kids, and, again, in the schools and in the media. Let him be immersed in it. Make him soak, indeed marinate, in the propaganda.

Do it though middle school. The kids there, especially the girls, can ignore, reject and humiliate him. Continue it through high school and college until he graduates.

Then, make sure there are no good jobs available to pay a middle-class wage. Impoverish them by making sure good blue-collar jobs are outsourced, and shut him out from white-collar ones with Affirmative Action.

Make sure there is no place to turn unless it’s prison or homelessness. Give them psychiatric drugs, aka murder/suicide pills.

Blame everything on them. Make sure leftist feminists says, “Men are responsible for all the problems in the world.”Shame him and make him feel guilty for things he was never responsible for.

Then sit back and watch what happens.

There is a very good chance that some of them will become serial killers, mass murderers, rapists, and abusers, almost all of it directed toward women.

Others will withdraw from women, marriage, and trying to sustain society and civilization. They'll make just enough to support themselves, with no surplus.

All violence, to the violent, is an attempt to achieve justice, no matter how warped it is, since to them revenge is justice. All violence is in fact revenge, an attempt to replace feelings of humiliation with feelings of pride, defined as self-respect, self-love, self-esteem.

The Greeks noticed all of this thousands of years ago, when they wrote that Hubris (originally defined as humiliating someone in public) was followed by Nemesis - revenge.

By the way, they considered humiliating someone in public so obscene they banned it from the theater. They knew what humiliating someone leads to (the word "mortify" means to "make dead" - to make dead inside, i.e., their feelings).

I'm not sure how much of us is genetic and how much of us is environmental - nature or nurture. That argument has been going on for a few thousand years.

But, clearly, we are the result of both.

All of us are born flawed. Some of us are born more flawed than others. But those tendancies can be activated by the way we are treated by other people and by society, which includes media and the schools. By humiliation, shame, hatred, contempt, disrespect.

James Fallows, the neurologist in the above video, says he has the brain of a violent psychopath. But he didn't become one because he had "a wonderful childhood."

Even though he doesn't mention it, he has a satisfying job that he enjoys and is clearly good at. I'm sure he has a lot of respect and appreciation/gratitude from others. I'm sure he likes what he does and is good at it - including making good money.

I do believe there are some ways to ameliorate these problems.

1) There should be all-boy schools with all-male teachers until 12.

2) Men should be hired over women, especially for high-paying jobs.

3) Single mothers should always have their babies taken from them.

4) In a divorce the children always go the father.

5) Get rid of no-fault divorce.

6) No alimony for women.

I'd settle for those six things. It'd be a better world, a noticeable better world, one with far less violence than the one we have now. And far less abuse, humiliation and disrespect of young boys, most especially at the hands of women.

I Am The Uncle You Never Had

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things." - Philippians 4:8

I get a fair number of people asking me what I think about certain things.

One thing I have found out is that the first defense people use is to blame their problems on innocent people. It's the most infantile thing people do, and one of the most dangerous things in the world. M. Scott Peck called this scapegoating "the genesis of human evil."

Another thing I have learned is that dumb people don't learn from their own mistakes, smarter people learn from their own, and the smartest learn from others, i.e., history.

I also know that you have to have some sort of meaning or purpose in your life. The Greeks understood this, which is why they pointed out you achieve eudaimonia (flourishing, well-being) through arete (excellence). That's what I mean about paying attention to history and what it tells you.

Here's an example: I know a man who knows everything there is to know about Volkswagens. In the area I used to live there were a lot of those old VW Bugs, and he would build one from the ground up. He never took any classes; he taught himself. Yet people with VW problems always went to him.

He's made enough money to buy some land outside town, and built a small house.

He works for himself, he likes what he does, and he's good at it. That's what I mean about well-being coming from being good at something. You have to have this. If you don't achieve this you won't have much of a life.

I've posted this before, but it illustrates something very important:

Walter White's problem was Hubris. He had no Prudence (choosing the right path out of many).

Prudence is one of the Four Cardinal Virtues, which some think are obsolete. Not even close. In order to achieve well-being you have to have Prudence (to choose the right path). You have to have Self-Control, which means discipline (like taking the time to learn how to build a car from the ground up, or learning how to do programming). It's the opposite of being impulsive, which leads to catastrophes including prison and death.

You have to have Courage, which means confidence and perseverance, or believing in yourself. And you have to have Justice, which means each his due.

It's better to work for yourself these days, if you can. I was stuck years ago by something the father told the son in Laura Ingall Wilder's Farmer Boy: if you work for someone else, you will be a wage-slave and you will never be your own man.

And that's what it's about: being your own man. Having control and power over your own life. (Incidentally, "virtue" really means "the powers of man.")

At best, what you do should feel like play. "Play" doesn't necessarily mean "fun." Play can be a serious thing.

The above is not hard to memorize. The Four Cardinal Virtues, and arete to achieve eudaimonia. All of them are interrelated and none are separate from the others.

Now...women. You are the leader and she is the follower. The Bible has some really good, practical advice about this.

I remember when I was in my early 20's I told my girlfriend: "I am the one who ultimately makes the decisions. I will listen to what you have to say, and you might be able to change my mind, but in the long run I'll decide what gets done."

She said nothing, which is an illustration of the old saying, "Silence is acquiescence." And she did accept it.

There is a saying today, "Never listen to what a woman says, only what she does." That applies to men, too. It applies to everyone, and to use a saying from the Bible: "You will know them by their fruits."

You'd better have a sense of humor. There is a lot of silly terms in the Manosphere, and a lot of very bad and indeed dangerous advice, but one that makes sense is "amused mastery." That's a good concept, a very good one.

To me that means being cocky/funny, which is my case is a talent I was born with. (I once had a woman tell, "You are an arrogant asshole," but she stayed with me for a long time. She also told a friend of mine, "He really is quite charming and witty.")

Don't argue with women; lots of them like the drama. I've walked out the door and never told them where I was going. Their attitude is different when you return.

She'd better have some respect, gratitude and appreciation for you. Without that...the relationship won't work. She'd better understand that men created everything in the world, women didn't, and that women are 100% dependent on men.

The biggest red flag that things are headed downhill is when she starts showing contempt for you.

That's why you lead and she follows. And ultimately, that's what most - in fact, almost all - women want.

"When a wife develops a healthy sense of gratitude for everything her husband does for her, she is elevating him in her eyes." - Donal Graeme

"Fix your own ungrateful heart." - Sunshine Mary

I'm Just Not Quite Sure It's Worthwhile To Get Married Anymore

"If women are strong, independent, and self-reliant, then men are no longer obligated to be protectors and providers." - Mark Trueblood

"A man who should like to be a provider to a loving wife and family has virtually every force conspiring against him." - Bryce Laliberte

Now the story is that 50% of marriages end in divorce, and 90% of them are initiated by women. Even if those percentages aren't exact, and are just approximate, then it just might be true that marriage these days is a raw deal for men.

If you add into that mix that fact that generally the children are given to the mother, and the father has to pay alimony, that's just an added nail added to the coffin of marriage.

There are some other problems.

I've seen more than one estimate (I've even figured it myself and got the same results) that if wages had continued to go up as they had in the '50s, the average yearly income would be from $90,000 to $100,000 a year. One economist has figured that if they had risen as they should have since after WWII, it'd be about $300,000 a year.

(As an aside, I've always been amused by the Aspie whackjobs who shudder at the horror of an increase in the minimum wage - they see a tiny little twig but completely miss the forest.)

When I graduated high school the blue-collar guys went straight to the steel mill, started at what today would be about $30,000, and in five years were making about $75,000. (I remember one guy whose wife told me she'd find his uncashed checks in his desk drawer. He had so much money he didn't particularly keep track of it.)

Those days are now gone. Poof.

Even in college I worked part-time, had a studio apartment, a used car (with insurance), bought a radio, had a phone, bought my clothes (at a thrift store), and paid for my food (when I wasn't eating the left-over pizza at the delivery place I worked at). And I was still able to save money. It wasn't even hard.

Try that today, It's not possible. Again, poof.

Wages haven't gone up since January, 1973, and you can thank the government for that, 100%.

My father, who was a high school drop-out (as was my mother) ended up being a general contractor, and gave us a middle-class lifestyle. I lacked for nothing.

Before that my grandfather dropped out in the eighth grade and installed wooden-strip floors for a living. He and his wife had nine kids and still lived a middle-class life-style. Now that today is completely impossible. Poof, poof, poof.

So the economy is part of the problem. You can't get married and have kids if you have no money.

That's just part of the problem, though. High-paying blue-collar jobs have been outsourced, and the court-jester economists lie to themselves, and you, and say this is a good thing. It's not.

Then, as has been noticed many times, Affirmative Action means "White Men Need Not Apply." I've seen this many times. So men are being shut out of high-paying jobs.

Problems, problems, problems.

Men are the ones who created civilization and maintain it, and one of the reasons they do it is because they can get married, have kids, and have a decent life-style. All of that has been taken away. There is no incentive whatsoever for a man to produce any more than he needs to live. Which is means there is, ultimately, going to be no support for women.

So, what is going to happen? Society is going to collapse, and it's happening right now. I'm half-fascinated, half-horrified, watching this slow-motion train-wreck.

What is going to happen to women in the near future? They're going to pay for it more than men are. The day will come - is coming - when men refuse to support them anymore. And women certainly can't support themselves. Why?

Women cannot maintain a civilization or an economy on their own, contrary to their delusions. Women are 100% dependent on men - they can either marry men, or marry the State. It's not because of those left-wing hallucinations about "oppression" and "patriarchy." It's because men and women have different natures and different brains.

Sooner or later, the State is going to collapse, as it always does, and women's make-work jobs are going to go away, as is their support from the government, i.e., taxpayers. Then what are they going to do?

And if enough men refuse to get married - and close to 50% of men aren't - what happens to women? They end up spinsters with the proverbial cats. And I've seen that, too, not just one time, but many times. And of course, these women blame their problems on men, as women are wont to do.

Complain, complain, complain.

Another thing we're going to end up with is one man seeing several women. Sort of a soft harem. If polygamy was legal (and it would be a horror), then starting at about 16, I could have collected perhaps 12 wives.

So as men withdraw from marriage, they are either going to avoid women completely, or else become predators doing the Pump 'n' Dump. That's what you seen today with the MGTOW or else the PUA lifestyle. Then you've got the men who never could get women, and they are the ones truly fucked.

It's going to be an interesting ride, and not a particularly good one.

"The Western World has quietly become a civilization that undervalues men and overvalues women, where the state forcibly transfers resources from men to women creating various perverse incentives for otherwise good women to conduct great evil against men and children, and where male nature is vilified but female nature is celebrated. This is unfair to both genders, and is a recipe for a rapid civilizational decline and displacement, the costs of which will ultimately be borne by a subsequent generation of innocent women, rather than men, as soon as 2020." - the Futurist

The Men in the Jungle

What a book for a 13-year-old to read. Norman Spinrad's The Men in the Jungle, that is.

Spinrad published it in 1967, when he was 26 or 27 years old. He says he is an anarchist, but in this, his second novel, he comes across about as conservative as Joseph Conrad is in Heart of Darkness. Spinrad's novel, not surprisingly, has a lot in common with it.

I originally started reading science fiction because of the sense of wonder and awe that I felt from it. I certainly didn't get any of those feelings from The Men in the Jungle, which is about how power intoxicates, and immunity corrupts. It's also about murder, cannibalism, genocide, slavery, and rape.

This novel remains the bloodiest, goriest, slice 'n' dice novel I have ever read. Even today, I have never read anything that even comes close to the horrors in this book. And yet, oddly, enough, I can't say it is a horror novel, just a science-fiction one.

Horror can be defined as evil attacking good, or chaos attacking order. None of those definitions really apply to Spinrad's novel. There isn't any good in it, or any order for that matter, not if order means "harmony." It's more like bad attacking evil, or chaos attacking something even more chaotic.

The novel is set some few hundred years in the future, on the planet Sangre, which had been ruled for the past 300 years by the Brotherhood of Pain. These several thousand human monsters enslave some 15 million people, torturing them for fun, eating them since there are no animals on the planet, and raping the specially-bred hot babes. There's nary a word about young boys and children, though. Maybe even that was too much for Spinrad,

It's all "fun and games," as one of the novel's character comments.

The whole planet is as close to a Hell as I have ever read, far worse even than Dante's Inferno.

The Brotherhood of Pain lives as the Marquis de Sade philosophized: self-willed, with unfettered free choice, committing hideous and irrational acts in their attempts to live as gods, lacking any moral sense in relation to other people, and, of course, sadistic and murderous. Nihilists, really, ones who worship themselves. And, as Russell Kirk so perceptively noticed, "the monstrous ego is the source of all evil."

Into this mess drops one Bart Fraden, along with his girlfriend, the improbably-named Sophia O'Hara, and his partner, Willem Vanderling.

Fraden sees the revolutionary potential on the planet, which he plans on exploiting to take the place over. That's not what exactly happens.

I won't spoil the novel, but I will point out what Spinrad is saying.

One, there are no good Revolutions, and I mean revolutions with a capital R. That is the kind of revolution in which people think they can destroy a society and rebuild it from the bottom up. The Nazis and the Communists tried it, and it lead to the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th Century.

Two, society is but a thin film holding down a lot of nasty human nature. When societies are destroyed by revolution, what you get is not all the inherent goodness of human nature popping up, but oftentimes a lot of destruction and genocide. Think the French Revolution, in addition to the Nazis and the Communists. Also think Pol Pot and the "Cultural Revolution" in Red China.

Three, those who direct violent, bloody revolutions almost always lose their souls. They become corrupted and intoxicated by the blood and the power, and after that happens, find it nearly impossible to repent. Dostoevsky, in his The House of the Dead, put it this way: "Blood and power intoxicate; coarseness and depravity are developed; the mind and the heart are tolerant of the most abnormal things, till at last they come to relish them. The man and the citizen is lost for ever in the tyrant, and the return to human dignity, to repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible."

That's Sangre, alright.

Dostoevsky also noted that humanity's worst failing was a "constant lack of moral sense." To this I'll add that people rationalize they do have a moral sense no matter what perversion they use it for, because when people do evil they must convince themselves it is good, and people can deceive themselves into believing anything.

One of the most horrible thing about The Men in the Jungle is that the ghastly society destroyed is immediately, literally in the blink of an eye, replaced by something much worse, what Kirk called "Chaos and Old Night."

Those three characteristics above I would call "conservative," in the sense that true conservatives believe in flawed - sometimes terribly flawed - human nature, as opposed to liberals, who usually believe in the essential goodness of human nature, almost always to be developed by the government. However, it is the "government" that has bought three centuries of horror to Sangre. On this planet, our own Earth, it has also always been government which has murdered the largest number of people throughout history, without fail. One only needs to be The Gulag Archipelago to understand that.

After all, ultimately, all government is based on brute force and fraud.

The Men in the Jungle is a horrible and awful novel, not in the sense it is poorly written, but because it is about horrible and awful things. In a word, people.

The whole novel can be summed up in the dying Kurtz's last words in The Heart of Darkness: "The horror! The horror!" When it comes to the bad people can do, truer words were never spoken.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

"The Western World has quietly become a civilization that undervalues men and overvalues women, where the state forcibly transfers resources from men to women creating various perverse incentives for otherwise good women to conduct great evil against men and children, and where male nature is vilified but female nature is celebrated. This is unfair to both genders, and is a recipe for a rapid civilizational decline and displacement, the costs of which will ultimately be borne by a subsequent generation of innocent women, rather than men, as soon as 2020." - the Futurist.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine, and Death.

The first time I remember hearing about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was not in church but from a song by Aphrodite's Child, when I was in high school:

But onward.

Death: Some 70 million abortions. At this rate, babies will be killed after they are born (maybe placed in jars outside, the way the Romans did), if they are born with defects that was missed while they were in utero (here we use the advice of the Spartans). The elderly will be unwillingly euthanized, perhaps knocked in the head or smothered with a pillow. (I'm waiting for cannibalism, ala' Soylent Green, although perhaps using fetal tissue in vaccines and make-up might count - unless these things are merely Urban Legends. Guess which one sorta isn't?).

Conquest: That would be the State, which itself is an ever-growing monster, sucking away all our rights and trying to enslave us and turn us into the Borg, i.e., organic machines, cogs in the monster, in the manner of Metropolis.

Is not Conquest related to War - and therefore Death? In the 20th Century, there may have been 200 million murdered in various wars. No one is quite sure. Who counts peasants?

As for the 21st Century, what the U.S. has done to the world is astonishing, under the guise of humanitarianism.(Isabel Paterson called such ideologues, "The Humanitarian With a Guillotine.")

Now all of these things are pretty obvious. There are other things a bit more subtle and requiring more thought and analysis - although all of them fall under the Four Horseman.

Let's take the Four Sirens. (Creepy how there are four of them, isn't it?)

Easy Contraception. You'd think people would be responsible about this - and many are - but many aren't. Example: in his 1953 book, Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke predicted the end of marriage because of easily-available birth control, because it severed the link between sex and procreation, which would cause us to turn into "a culture of sex for pleasure and recreation unrelated to marriage and child raising."

Now you think that might not be a bad thing, but it's led to excessive promiscuity and the prevention of marriage. And there is no incentive for most men to do anything except withdraw and Go Their Own Way, or else become Cad/Sexual Predators who lie to and manipulate stupid women.

G.E.M Ascombe put it this way: women don't have to bear children if they don't want to, but they can still get men. Or they can have children without marriage. She also pointed out that Christianity was "at odds with the heathen world, not only about fornication, infanticide and idolatry; but also about marriage..."

In other words, we are now in the post-Christian world of Neo-Paganism, with fornication, infanticide, easy no-fault divorce, polygamy (in various forms), adultery, and idolatry (these days, that idol is that Moloch known as the State - which really means we worship ourselves).

No Fault Divorce, Asset Division, and Alimony. This is the second Siren, and it, too, falls under Neo-Paganism.

In the past a couple had to prove one spouse was at fault. Not anymore, but unfortunately the Law (sic) allows most women to get a divorce for no reason, takes her ex-husband's kids and money, and also get money from the government (which means from taxpayers). Under this system there is no incentive for men to get married, and since marriage is the basis for society, this is one more nail in the coffin of society and civilization.

The third Siren is Female Economic Freedom. Technically there is no such thing. Men created everything. Women who did are outliers. It's not due to "patriarchy" and "oppression" but because men and women have different brains. So what we've got are women either marrying men or marrying the State.

The only reason women have their pseudo economic freedom is because men, dupes that they are, let them be parasites who obtain worthless degrees that are used for parasitical make-work jobs.

Women's entry into the workforce would be just fine if they were productive (and some are) but many of them, I repeat, are just worthless parasitical "jobs."

Additionally, if women have highly-paid jobs, they are going to look around for what they consider an acceptable husband, and they then find he's not there, since many high-paying blue-collar jobs have been outsourced, and Affirmative Action means "White Men Need Not Apply."

So, then, marriage takes a big hit...and we descent further into Neo-Paganism.

The fourth Siren is Female Social Engineering. Many women are totalitarian/fascist/socialist in nature, and I really don't have to explain the destructive aspects of that - except to say, "Look at the schools.") I should add there are reasons there has never been a matriarchy in the history of the world...and they are good reasons.)

The biggest problem is the interference of the State and its "laws" (sic). If we had the proper laws, most of these problems would be alleviated.

1). Get rid of no-fault divorce.

2). Single mothers are not allowed to keep their children.

3). In a divorce the children are given to the father, which means no alimony for women.

4). Get rid of Affirmative Action.

5). Women are not allowed to vote.

I would settle for just those four things. The changes would be all to the good, and I see no downside to any of them. If we don't do them, get ready for the sounds of approaching hooves.

On Being Confident

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert A. Heinlein

You don't judge people so much on what they say. You judge them on what they do. That applies to both men and women. ("By their fruits you shall know them.")

I read a lot of articles in the Manosphere on being confident. A lot of the advice is bullshit. "Fake it until you make it." "Women like insanely confident men." (I've seen guys like that thrown out of bars by bouncers.)

Nope, it's all crap.

You become confident by being good at what you do. And what you are good at, you like. But it takes weeks, or months, or even years to become very good at what you like.

I am reminded of the last scene in Breaking Bad (although Walter White destroyed his life through Hubris):

"I liked it, I was good at it, I felt alive."

However, Hubris followed by Nemesis is what happens from being "insanely confident" and not knowing your limitations (the Greeks called that Sophrosyne (the "goddess or spirit (daimona) of moderation, self-control, temperance, restraint, and discretion").

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” ― Norman Vincent Peale

The Four Cardinal Virtues (essential advice for everyone) refers to confidence as Courage (which is perseverance). It's tempered by Prudence, which is choosing the right path among many (White choose the wrong path). Included are Self-Control and Justice (giving each his due).

You become confident by being good at what you do, and liking them. And what you are best at, you almost always are born with that talent, although you have to practice at it.

However, you become good at a lot of things by practicing. Some examples: I've pulled the heads off of engines and redone them, built a rocking chair out of black oak, cooked steak with mushrooms and potatoes with broccoli, built computers from scratch, designed and built houses. I can do those things not because I'm insanely confident, but because I learned how to do them.

I can make sourdough bread, and I remember in college one girl came into my apartment, looked at the sourdough starter, then looked at me with her mouth open. "You can do that?" she asked in awe. "I can do a lot of things, and I can do all of them well" I told her, and gave her a big smile.

When it comes to women, I've always had a natural talent at being funny (the Manosphere uses that ignorant word and inaccurate word, "negging"). I could have been a stand-up comedian, and in many ways I am.

And I don't listen to anyone who puts me down, which happens a lot when I point out to people they don't know what they're talking about and instead I'm supposed to agree with their uninformed opinions. (Usually putting someone down is done out of envy.)

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.” - Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

I was recently standing behind a woman who did not know I was there, and I heard her say about me: "That guy is funny." When she turned around and saw me, I said nothing but gave her a mischievous look. She had no idea what to say to me.

In college one guy I knew (who today would be called a PUA) once told me, "You don't seem to go after women a lot." "They go after me," I told him, and he, too, was speechless.

There are a lot of things I cannot do. I can't sing, I can't dance, and I can't play any instruments. But there are a lot of things I can do. I'm good at them because I practiced, and because I like doing them.

One thing that is imperative is to not listen to people who tell you that you that you cannot do it. I get the impression that is what happens in school today, when young boys are told, "You can't do it," and are humiliated and put down. They're not allowed to be boys anymore.

“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.” ― Michel de Montaigne

You have to not care what others think. That self-consciousness will destroy your confidence. It's exemplified by that sticker I used to see on cars: "No fear."

True confidence is based on being competent at things, not on bluster and a big mouth and nothing to back it up.

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” - Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

"How Poor Mental Health, Casual Sex Reinforce Each Other"

"There's no sign of life/It's just the power to charm." - "Modern Love," David Bowie

None of the most promiscuous women I knew in college are married. One of them a few years ago mentioned she sometimes thinks about killing herself (one told me she thought about killing herself after an abortion; she didn't expect that). She lacks, husband, home and children.

From ScienceDaily:

"A new study suggests that poor mental health and casual sex feed off each other in teens and young adults, with each one contributing to the other over time."

Researchers found that teens who showed depressive symptoms were more likely than others to engage in casual sex as young adults. In addition, those who engaged in casual sex were more likely to later seriously consider suicide.

“Several studies have found a link between poor mental health and casual sex, but the nature of that association has been unclear,” said Sara Sandberg-Thoma, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in human sciences at Ohio State University.

“There’s always been a question about which one is the cause and which is the effect. This study provides evidence that poor mental health can lead to casual sex, but also that casual sex leads to additional declines in mental health.”

Sandberg-Thoma conducted the study with Claire Kamp Dush, assistant professor of human sciences at Ohio State. The research was published online recently in the Journal of Sex Research and will appear in a future print edition.

One surprising finding was that the link between casual sex and mental health was the same for both men and women.

“That was unexpected because there is still this sexual double standard in society that says it is OK for men to have casual sexual relationships, but it is not OK for women,” Kamp Dush said.

“But these results suggest that poor mental health and casual sex are linked, whether you’re a man or a woman.”

The study used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Adolescents from 80 high schools and 52 middle schools were interviewed when they were in grades 7 through 12 and then again when they were aged 18 to 26.

In all, this study involved about 10,000 people who were surveyed about their romantic relationship experiences across time, as well as depressive symptoms and thoughts of suicide.

Overall, 29 percent of the respondents reported engaging in any casual sexual relationship. These were defined as any relationship in which the participant reported he or she was “only having sex with partner” as opposed to dating. This included 33 percent of men and 24 percent of women.

The results showed that participants who reported serious thoughts of suicide or more depressive symptoms as teens were significantly more likely to report having casual sexual relationships when they were young adults.

Casual sex, in turn, was linked to further declines in mental health. Specifically, those who had casual sex in their late teens and early 20s were significantly more likely to have serious thoughts of suicide as young adults, results showed. In fact, each additional casual sex relationship increased the odds of suicidal thoughts by 18 percent.

However, casual sex in late teens and early 20s was not associated with changes in depression as a young adult.

The researchers are not sure why casual sex was linked to later serious consideration of suicide, but not depressive symptoms, in these participants. It may be that depressive symptoms fluctuate during adolescence and it is hard to capture an accurate reading when measured just twice, as in this study, Kamp Dush said.

But the findings suggest that both researchers and health professionals need to consider more than one measure of mental health.

“Just because a person does not indicate depressive symptoms in one survey is not always proof that he or she is doing OK,” Kamp Dush said.

“We need to look at multiple indicators of mental health, including suicidal thoughts.”

The results do point to a possible “cyclical pattern” in which poor mental health leads to casual sex, which leads to further declines in mental health, Sandberg-Thoma said.

“The goal should be to identify adolescents struggling with poor mental health so that we can intervene early before they engage in casual sexual relationships,” she said.

Kamp Dush said casual sexual relationships may hurt the ability of young adults to develop committed relationships at an important time in their development.

“Young adulthood is a time when people begin to learn how to develop long-term, satisfying and intimate relationships,” she said.

True Love and Mere Lust

There is a lot of very bad advice in the Manosphere. You know who dispenses it. The following is good advice.

From John C. Wright:

I have been asked what the vice might be in a man and woman, both adults, and unmarried, fornicating. The question is not rare in the modern day, where we have all been taught, and are continually reminded, that fire does not burn and water is not wet.

It is only after we are burnt or drenched that we begin to wonder if the modern Epicureans are all so very wise.

I used to be a loyal partisan of the sexual revolution: firmly libertarian, and firmly committed to the principle that whatever harmed no other did no wrong. Then I became a father, and I realized that I did not want my sons to be raised to believe this empty doctrine. Pleasures have consequences, not the least of which is, the pursuit of false and temporary pleasures hinders the discovery of true and lasting pleasures.

When Hugh Hefner, a man every partisan of the sexual revolution must admire, got married, and then divorced, I realized that he is a sad and lonely man. A big loser.

No matter how successful in pelf or worldly praise, no matter how admired by every horny schoolboy on Earth, his life is not worth living. He should hang himself from a oak tree branch.

In contrast, I have found true love, with a woman to whom I am and shall always be faithful, and I was a virgin before I met her. I live in the suburbs with my three and a half children, and work nine-to-five. I am everything the Playboy philosophy disdains: but I am as happy as the shining gods who dance on Olympus, far above the storms and stinks of earth, compared to him.

My joy is like strong sunlight, shining: his pleasure is like a wine-cup, drained to dregs. My joy grew a garden for me, my plowing and planting has produced fruit, which will give me further joys in the winter-tide of life: I mean my family, my children. He has the filthy dregs of an empty cup, and a headache. Who was wiser?

You see; my view of human nature is different from the Playboy view. Hefner says we can disport ourselves like minxes and stags in heat, coupling like satyrs and nymphs, without commitment and without consequence.

Satyrs do not marry, and nymphs are not given in marriage. Perhaps they can fall in love, true love, for an afternoon.

Humans are nobler creatures. An afternoon is not enough: we seek immortal love. We seek true love, a love true as a sharp sword, that will not shatter in the hand, a weapon equal to the task of keeping all life’s rude attacks at bay.

If you have the Hefner view of human nature, dear reader, nothing I say can make sense to you. Read no further.

I say that there is a terrible consequence to unchaste sex, one of three: corruption, or heartbreak, or callousness.

In unchaste fornication, there are only three possibilities. First, both love the other. Second, one loves and the other merely exploits that love to get sex. Third, neither love, but both merely want cheap sex.

If the two lovers are true in love, it is no burden to confirm the same by an oath and ceremony. Human nature is such that we are creatures who fall in love, and so deeply that it ennobles our every aspect, makes gold out of dross. The experience of mankind in all aeons and among all races has created a marriage custom. Marriage sanctifies sex and provides for its natural outcome or offspring, by excluding and deterring unchaste sex.

Unchastity renders marriage pointless. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk free? Marriage serves more purposes than merely to provide a convenient sex partner: corrupting it would have far-reaching and very dreadful consequences. In effect, once marriage was de-ceremonialized, all that would happen would be that the self-same habits would have to be re-invented under other names (cf. “paternity” rather than “fatherhood”), and family duties would have to be enforced by courts of law rather than voluntary submission to a consensus of morals, and the acts needed to avoid or to assume the duties would become unclear. No man would know if he were married, and required (by law) to act as a married man, or merely living with his girl friend, and free of those requirements.

Second, if one loves and the other merely craves sex, this is a recipe for heartbreak.

While it is possible that a devoted man might be being toyed with by a jaded woman, I have never seen it. But I have seen the other case often enough, even among close friends of mine: the woman loves and gives herself to a cad in the vain hope that her physical charms will enflame his higher and nobler passions.

Often it happens that a man who sleeps with an unchaste woman feels revulsion toward her the next morning. His instincts are telling him that she has sold her dearest treasures cheaply. His instinctive sense of self-worth tells him she is too cheap to be a worthy mate, and his instincts militate against a long-lasting desire to mate with unfit mates.

After he dumps her, the next man is not unreasonable to wonder whether she has enough self-control to be a proper wife. No one wants to marry and be betrayed; the most obvious advertisement of an ability to control the passions within a lawful scope, is to show that one can.

The third case seems to be the one about which I was asked specifically: where the man is already a cad, and the woman is already a demimonde, and neither has any illusions about it.

Well, the only way to indulge in love-play without love is to grow a callus on the heart. This callus renders one blind to the finest and noblest possibility of the human spirit, which is true love. For these sad and deluded souls, sex is nothing more than an entertainment, a past-time, and they seek a sex partner the way a virtuous seeks a tennis partner.

They pay Alberich’s price, and foreswear true love forever.

Alberich, however, gained the Ring of the Nibelungs, which allowed him to conquer hell, heaven and earth: a fine ambition. What does the cad get? What joy does the slut enjoy? Something only as entertaining as a tennis game.

And by the time their physical charms fade, there is not one with whom they have the ability to form a permanent spiritual relationship. All the wise brides sought out men who knew how to make a commitment; all the wise bridegrooms sought out women who knew how to make good and faithful wives.

Sucking Your Thumb

Years ago I owned a taxi. I noticed something interesting about many of the five-year-old girls I took to and from kindergarten: many of them sucked their thumb.

What surprised me about it is that every time they did, they calmed down. Some of them got very rowdy in the car. But, as soon as the thumb went in the mouth, they were calm and quiet.

I remember one little girl in particular. My taxi had a bench seat, so I stretched my right arm across it. She would lay her head on my arm, turn her head so she could see me, put her thumb in her mouth, and be completely calm. (She would also search my hair looking for "bugs.") Not a word out of them or any of the other thumb-suckers.

The explanation is that sucking your thumb goes back to an infant’s feeding behavior, yet ultrasound has shown infants in the womb suck their thumbs. If you'll look at that homunculus above you'll see our mouths and thumbs take up a lot of space of our brains. So, the thumb-in-the-mouth has something to do with the brain (I've read that thumb-sucking produces opioids).

I have seen adults suck their thumbs or binkies. I saw an obese woman in a motorized scooter, who had binkie in her mouth. When I mentioned it to my girlfriend, she said she had heard of adults using them to try and stop smoking.

Maybe, or maybe the woman was just nuts, just as the woman I saw in an elevator sucking her thumb was nuts. In her case she was coming out of a public mental-health center.

I once asked my mother if I sucked my thumb. She said no, I sucked my little finger and the ring finger on my right hand. Incidentally, I know a woman who once, when about 11, took a picture of her 12-year-old sister, asleep in bed, sucking her thumb. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of adults still do it in private.

I’ve read that kissing runs back to an infant’s feeding behavior, too. Sounds about right. If you think about it, it can be considered odd for adults to press their mouths together (I wonder what aliens might think the first time they run across this behavior in humans?).

Since many women babble way too much. I have an idea: all men should carry binkies. When a woman won’t shut up, just stick it in her mouth. It should even be a law.

It would be a much more pleasant world.

"People and Dogs: A Genetic Love Story"

I've always wondered why my pug loves peas and greenbeans.

From National Geographic:

Here’s a possibly true story about the first friendly dog. It’s dusk on a human settlement some ten thousand years ago. After a long day of farming, a family gathers around a campfire. They’re kicking back with hunks of venison (a rare treat), some corn, bread, maybe even a few cups of mead. Suddenly they hear rustling coming from the shadows. They turn around and see the glowing eyes of a wolf.

The people are surprised, maybe, but not scared. For many years they’ve noticed an odd group of wolves loitering just outside the village, rummaging up food scraps from the dump pile. The animals have never caused any harm and keep to themselves. But this is the first time a wolf has dared to come so close. It slowly approaches the fire, sits down, and cocks its head. Somebody tosses out a bit of bread.

As a recent dog owner, I love this story: Dogs are the wolves that mooched. They needed us, approached us, and ultimately wooed us into being best friends forever. This is a popular scientific theory — the ‘scavenger hypothesis’ — of how dogs came to be. But it’s not the only one, not by a long shot.

Treats, do you have treats?!

Another theory says that people went out into the woods and deliberately trapped wolf pups, with the goal of training them to be sentinels or hunters. Still other scholars say the co-evolution of wolves and humans was mutually beneficial, with humans learning to hunt by watching wolves. “There are as many specific scenarios as there are people working in this field,” says Bob Wayne, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We’re looking back at such a long time ago, it’s a matter of speculation.”

Most genetic evidence says that dogs emerged in the neolithic period, just as humans were transitioning from a hunter-gather lifestyle to one of agricultural settlements. But some dog fossils are much older, dating as far back as 33,000 years ago. Where canine domestication happened is also up for grabs. It could have been in the Middle East, China, Siberia or several places at once.

Erik Axelsson and colleagues at Uppsala University in Sweden tried to learn more about the evolution of canines by comparing the genetic sequences of modern-day dogs and wolves. As they report today in Nature, dogs show distinct differences from wolves in genes involved in two key functions: brain development and starch digestion.

The researchers combined samples from 60 different dogs of 14 different breeds, from the shaggy bearded collie to the super-short drever to the svelte and wolf-like Swedish elkhound. They sequenced different parts of the genome in each one, and then merged them together to create a master ‘dog’ reference. They compared this to a master ‘wolf’ genome based on samples from 12 wolves in seven different countries.

Some 36 regions of the genome carry different variants in dogs and wolves, the study found. Each region is relatively large, encompassing three or four genes, but only one gene in each region is likely responsible for the difference, Axelsson says. Of the 122 candidate genes identified, many have similar biological roles. For example, eight of the genes are involved in the development of the brain and nervous system.

Brain development genes are interesting because of the well-known behavioral differences between dogs and wolves — namely that wolves turn out to be aggressive and dogs don’t.

“Wolves and dogs are actually quite similar when they’re very young: They both do the same playful behavior, run around in circles, and generally look cute. Little wolf puppies will even bark like a dog,” says Nicholas Dodman, a professor in the veterinary school at Tufts University. “But suddenly the wolf grows up and becomes aloof and lean and suspicious.”

Many animals seem to take on a more juvenile state as they are domesticated, getting bigger eyes, smaller faces and less aggressive demeanors. “One common way of achieving a domesticated form of a species might be to slow down the development of the animal,” Axelsson says. “So the finding here, that it’s the development of the nervous system that’s affected, gives some support to this theory.”

Most of his new study, though, is devoted to digestion genes. Dogs break down starch in three digestive stages, and the researchers found genetic differences related to each. Their strongest example hinges on AMY2B, a gene that in makes alpha-amylase, an enzyme in the pancreas that helps convert starch into maltose. The wolf genome carries 2 copies of AMY2B, whereas dogs carry anywhere from 4 to 30 copies. What’s more, the researchers found that alpha-amylase levels are 28 times higher in pancreatic tissue from dogs and nearly five times higher in blood.

Dogs, in other words, evolved a mechanism for digesting starches that wolves don’t have. “This was the big surprise. No one had anticipated it,” Axelsson says.

Axelsson says his findings fit well with the scavenger hypothesis. If wolves had wanted to get human food, they would have needed to evolve both trusting behaviors and mechanisms for digesting starch. “Selection pressures to change both the behavior and the digestive system may have been happening at the same time,” Axelsson says.

Other experts point out, though, that these changes could have easily come about at different times. It’s possible, even likely, that wolves started hanging around our dumps a few thousand years before we had any starches to speak of. In order to know for sure, future studies will need to compare DNA from a wider range of dog breeds as well as from dog fossils.

Amidst all the speculation, I’m taking two broader points from this study. One’s a practical tip for dog owners. Should you try that trendy (and expensive) raw-meat diet? “This suggests no,” Wayne says. “Dogs have special digestive equipment for handling carbohydrates.”

The second is that dogs can teach us about our own history and genetic evolution. Get this: Human studies suggest that we, too, picked up extra copies of the alpha-amylase gene during the agricultural revolution. “We have evolved, co-evolved, in parallel to the same environmental change, which was the development of agriculture,” Axelsson says. “It makes you realize how big a change it must’ve been.”

The Monstrous Ego is the Source of All Evil

"Manipulation is natural to women; rational argument is not. As their biology gears them to connect people, they instinctively dislike anything that produces disagreement, and that includes anything sharp, cold, or logical - no matter how necessary. And that last bit is why it is extremely dangerous to make women and what they feel center stage." - Alex Linder

The late Russell Kirk said that bit about "the monstrous ego" in a short story of his. I can't remember which one, but he's right. He's not the only one who's made this observation.

In the Bible it's called Pride, as in "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

The Greeks were a bit more accurate: they called it Hubris followed by Nemesis. Conscienceless arrogance followed by revenge. They considered that conscienceless arrogance to be a type of insanity.

The original meaning of Hubris was to humiliate someone in public, often with a sexual connotation (at its worst, think "serial killer"). Then it is always followed by revenge, which is an attempt to replace the feeling of humiliation with pride - quite often by violence.

Those who wish to humiliate people do so for the feelings of power, domination and control.

And this brings me to something I read recently: Courting the Lifelong Virgin Cock Tease.

The women in the article are dating many men to get free entertainment, food and drinks, to extend the courtship process as long as possible. Notwithstanding the free stuff, what are the psychic rewards?

Power, domination and control. This is not a good thing, and in fact is a very bad thing.

These woman enjoy humiliating these men, even though they are so self-deluded they can't see it. And of course wouldn't believe it if told.

Who wants to be be strung along, abused and maybe laughed at? To be treated unfairly, degraded?

In fact, this Lifelong Virgin Cock Tease said, "I felt empowered." But did it ever occur to her how these men felt? Of course not. Lack of empathy and the inability to understand others is inherent in Hubris, or Pride, or the Monstrous Ego...or whatever you want to call it.

What would happen if men called these women on what they do? They'd be outraged, get hysterical...blame all their problems on men.

So what is one form men's revenge - the attempt to replace feelings of outrage and humiliation with pride - going to take? Withdrawal from paying for women, since the men get nothing in return.

There will be worse kinds of revenge, too. One of them is to learn how to exploit, dominate and control women, to use them and cast them aside.

There will even be worse than that.

These things are cause-and-effect. They are a science, because they are repeatable, and have been for thousands of years.

The Manosphere is about revenge - let's call it justice instead. It's about the attempt to replace feelings of humiliation and outrage with pride. To avoid being manipulated, used, exploited. To have power over your life, to avoid being dominated and controlled.

Things, obviously, are out of balance between men and women, and that imbalance is enforced by law. Women, contrary to their delusions, have too much power. And as Samuel Johnson noticed, "Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little."

None of this will last. Imbalances never do. Fortunately, things are starting to get in balance again, and it's going to be a dizzying and unpleasant ride.

"All wicked men, just like good men, desire to live without fear. The difference is that the good, in desiring this, turn their love away from things that cannot be possessed without the fear of losing them. The wicked, on the other hand, try to get rid of anything that prevents them from enjoying such things securely. Thus they lead a wicked and criminal life, which would better be called death." – St. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will

"Dog Ancestors Were Ice Age Man's Best Friend"

From The Telegraph:

"The bond between dogs and humans was forged in Ice Age Europe and is thousands of years older than previously thought, a study suggests."

Dogs first became man's best friend in Ice Age Europe up to between 19,000 and 32,000 years ago, scientists have discovered.

Genetic evidence analyzed by Finnish researchers found that the wolf ancestors of modern dogs were most likely tamed by hunter-gatherers thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

The findings, published in the Science journal, contradict an earlier belief that dogs were domesticated in eastern Asia after the origin of farming about 15,000 years ago.

Researchers from universities in Finland and Germany studied the DNA of various modern breeds of dog, wolf and coyote and compared it against samples from fossils of ancient wolf-like and dog-like animals.

They found that DNA from domestic dogs was most closely related to that of ancient European wolves as well as modern wolves, and there were few similarities with wolves, coyotes and dingos from other parts of the world.

It was previously thought that humans and dogs most likely forged a bond after the beginning of agriculture, when dogs may have been attracted by a plentiful food supply.

But the new findings suggest the canines may have sought out the camp sites of fur-clad hunter-gatherers in the hope of scavenging leftover meat and been tamed to help with hunting or protection against predators.

The scientists wrote: "Conceivably, proto-dogs might have taken advantage of carcasses left on site by early hunters, assisted in the capture of prey, or provided defense from large competing predators at kills."

Olaf Thalmann of the University of Turku in Finland, who led the study, said: "I was amazed how clearly [the findings] showed that all dogs living today go back to four genetic lineages, all of which originate in Europe."

The Cure for Ilegal Immigration

If you're one of those prissy self-deluded liberals you won't like this. All I have to say is this: two people can be stacked in that cannon, one on top of the other.

The Wisdom of Dogs

"The dog is the god of frolic" - Henry Ward Beecher

Dogs have abilities we don't, or perhaps more accurately, we have the same abilities, but in dogs they are vastly increased. We can smell, but it's almost nothing compared to a dog.

In sense we use them as organic machines, and have apparently for over 100,000 years. There is a saying, "Cooper's Law," that states, "All machines are amplifiers." They amplify abilities we already have, and dogs do the same.

It's well-known that many dogs are excellent - and instantaneous - judges of character. No one's quite sure how they do it.

For example, one guy, who later on turned out to be a trouble-maker nut, walked up to my car and asked for a cigarette. Before I could say no, my second pug, who was basically a comedic lovebug (as most pugs are) snarled and hurled himself over me, trying to get out the window to attack this guy. And this was an instantaneous judgement on his part. I thought the guy was just some bum looking for a cigarette, but he turned out to be a lot more than that.

That was my second pug.

The first was a runt of a pug named Norman, and he was an endless delight. In fact, I think that is one of the reasons we keep dogs: they are a source of endless amusement.

Norman wasn't very bright. I reckon, intelligence-wise, he was somewhere in-between a rock and a cabbage. But like nearly all pugs, he was a good-natured clown. He did such things as fall off of my lap into the trashcan and sleep on his back with his front paws sticking straight up in the air. He hopped back and forth like a rabbit, and often spun around, as if he thought something was sneaking up behind him.

I've read a dog's life described as eating, sleeping and playing, and when they're sleeping, they dream about eating and playing. That was Norman 's life. He lived the life that makes a dog happy, because he was expressing his dog nature to its fullest: eat, sleep, play, gnaw on rawhide bones all day.

Occasionally I wondered what he felt. Is he happy? He seems to be, very much so. Does he feel constant happiness? I am reminded of a poem by William Blake: "How do you know that every bird/That wings the airy way/Is in an enormous world of delight/Closed to your senses five?" Maybe that's true of a dog. Norman certainly seemed to be ecstatic when he attempted to untie my shoelaces by tugging at them with his teeth, or running in frenzied circles in the park.

Oliver Sacks once wrote of a physician friend of his, who somehow, had his sense of smell increased many fold, nearly, he suspected, to the extent of a dog's. He described it as astonishing, as being in an amazing world of smells that nearly overwhelmed him. He too used a poem to describe his experience: "The brave smell of a stone . . . the happy smell of water." He regretted it deeply when his sense of smell returned to that of a human's. Was that Norman 's life? I suspect it was.

It is from Norman, and other dogs before and after him, that I realized that humans, too, have to fulfill their natures to be happy. Dogs, less complex than humans, have a nature easily fulfilled. Humans aren't nearly as simple as dogs, but they too have to use their talents to be happy. They even need some of the things dogs need -- love and friends and community.

I tried to teach Norman in accordance with his dog nature. Dogs are very much herd animals, with a strict hierarchy. The top dog can tell every other dog what to do. Number two can tell everyone except number one; number three everyone but number one and two, and so on down the line to the last dog, who can't tell anyone anything.

I tried to teach him "sit," "stay," "down," and "come." Each one of these commands is based on the natural behaviors of a dog, which is why they work so well.

Such a life may sound awful to us, but it's what dogs want. Without it, they are unhappy; they're secure and happy when they know their place in the pack. So, Norman knew who's top dog, and he was happy.

Human education is supposed to be the same way: a teacher's job is to find a student's talents, and draw them out. Some people are born to be teachers, musicians, writers, businessmen. Sometimes their talent is so overwhelming they know what they're going to be when they've five. Most of us aren't so lucky.

The teacher John Taylor Gatto said true education has three purposes:

To make good people.

To make good citizens.

And to make each student find some particular talents to develop to the maximum.

In Norman 's case, you could say, "to make a good dog and find his particular talents and develop them to the maximum." That made him happy. It's not hard. Such education helps make people happy, too. That's not hard, either.

I don't think human education in the government schools works very well anymore. It doesn't even work as well as dog education. That's what I've learned from raising dogs.

Human education didn't work very well when I was in school. I had twelve years of public schooling, excluding college, and I'm not exactly sure what I learned. Did schools find my, and the other student's talents, and develop them? No, they didn't. I suppose I had some talents, but the attempt to draw them out, such that they were, actually bored me. Sit, march between classes, sit, march. That's not conducive to an interesting education.

I don't blame this situation on the teachers. They're doing their best, but stuck in a system that doesn't work very well. Even private schools may not be much of an improvement, to the extent they copy government schools.

It's not too far off of the mark to say that I, and many other students, were slightly driven nuts by junior high and high school. One of the curious things I noticed is that drug and alcohol use was fairly prevalent in my high school (as it is in most) but it dropped off substantially once we graduated. One of my explanations, and it's the main one, is that we self-medicated against the sit-march-sit-march that all of us had to do for so many years. It's better to be drunk or stoned than bored.

One of my defenses was retreating into my imagination. I spent most of my junior high and high school years daydreaming. I have been, since I first noticed it when I was four, a bit more sensitive, intelligent, and imaginative than many people. I have found that such people, even though they are at times very extroverted, still need much time to themselves. That time is hard to find when you spend five days a week in school, then have homework. Which I didn't do, by the way.

My imagination was so vivid when younger I even had what are called hypnagognic hallucinations, which generally happen as you fall asleep (it starts with paralysis). Because I've had them, I know that alien abductions, and old tales about succubus and incubus, are just these hallucinations excessively extended. And I will tell you this: when they are pleasant, they are so far ahead of drug use it's not even close. It reminds me of that old saying, "We seek without the wonders that are within."

I suppose that imagination was (and is) one of my inborn talents. I never had any idea in school what to do with them. The schools didn't either. Indeed, they tried to eradicate the imagination - along with everyone else's - because I wasn't paying attention in class, and it showed in my grades. I graduated high school with a D+++ average. I wasn't even supposed to graduate, but had already been accepted to college.

One of the reasons I am for the free market and liberty (and I think this is rarely noticed) is that it is an antidote to boredom. It allows you to express your talents to the maximum, which is a component of happiness. And if you're happy, you're not bored. I'm sure one of the main complaints of people in socialist countries was boredom. Hard to believe, since socialism was supposed to allow people to maximize their talents, indeed make them into earthly gods.

Curiously, a lot of people would have "security," thinking you can have both it and freedom. They think the government can give them both, not realizing they're going to end up as regimented as bees in a hive. Or dogs in a pack. I don't see things their way, and history backs me up. We're not dogs, seeking an exact place in a hierarchy. We have to have liberty; it is good for us, indeed necessary for us, because it allows us to be the most, and the best, we can.

Look at the ancient, static societies of India and China , which for thousands of years produced . . . nothing. In such strictly hierarchical societies, people couldn't be what they wanted, and ended up more along the lines of dogs in a pack, than much more complex -- and free and happy -- human beings.

I do not believe it is necessary to go to school 12 years to be a high school graduate, another four to get a college degree, and another three or four to get a Ph.D. That's almost 20 years of schooling, and in some cases, more. That is just plain ridiculous, and hardly liberating. One of my friends, who is a podiatrist, admitted it would only take six months to teach everything he knew. I suspect it only takes six months to learn most everything. The rest is just a filter to remove students who can't put up with excruciating boredom. School today, from the beginning to the end, is obviously not the free market.

People like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin barely had any formal schooling at all, and in some cases, none. Yet look how they turned out. Where are the people like them these days? Gone, wiped out by government schools. Liberty produced such people. But not anymore.

It's a sad day when it takes raising puppies to realize what true education is. But then, that's real life as compared to academia. And as much as I liked Norman, I don't want his simple, hierarchical, herd life. I don't think most people do, either.