Carnal Lite.

 
My interest in the Christian relationship with Eros is based upon the notion that this dysfunctional relationship provides the key to the understanding of our current socio-sexual dysfunction. As I've said previously, I'm broadly in agreement with Nietzsche and his claim that Christianity gave Eros poison to drink and it degenerated into vice.

Sexual perversion was rife in ancient times and from my perspective, it appears that the Christian pushback left a legacy of hostility towards it. Over the long run Christianity was able to  effectively "de-carnalise" it, transforming it into a "fleshy-lite" version of its former self.  It was this new understanding of Eros that manifest itself in a variety of ways into Christian culture and became a mainstream understanding.  Part of the reason why Trads are so hostile to Game is because Game's understanding of erotic love is explicitly carnal in nature and thus opposed to the traditional understanding. For the Gamesters, it's all about carnality/biomechanics,.... spirituality.........eh?

Christian masculinity and the Christian romantic tradition were in many ways shaped by the "carnal-lite" understanding of Eros. The good Christian male was quiet, meek, industrious and would "turn the other cheek". With regard to women, he would having nothing but the "best intentions".
The system worked well for both society and the man, when the woman's choices were limited. There was a social pressure on women to marry and the alternative to not doing so was rather bleak for the average women.

Economic and political emancipation changed all this. Having financial independence and social freedom to be single freed women of a lot of the pressure to marry. Social changes, particularly sexual license, and the elevation of the importance of romance, meant that the externalities which forced marriage onto women were gone. Women were free to choose the partner they wanted and experiment a bit. Hypergamic affirmative action was effectively shut down.

Serious Christian males were sideswiped completely by the phenomenon. They did everything they were told to do only to find that they were relatively unattractive to women. Trying to understand this phenomenon, they posited that women who failed to find them attractive were in some ways flawed. i.e. that they were skanks or sluts, or that they were psychologically unwell, or that they were being "manipulated" by the man. How many nice beta males have stood, mournfully perplexed, at their love interest who spurned them for a loser thug? How many women, recognising that they made a bad impulsive choice, were able to rely on these old chestnuts to abdicate themselves from any responsibility?  The trads still argue along these lines.

One of the stock standard arguments of the traditionalists is that the world has gone mad. But it is also the same argument of a schizophrenic. When you start thinking that everyone else is mad, perhaps it is you that has the problem. It never occurs to the Trads that maybe their understanding of Eros is flawed and that Nietzsche, despite his faults, was maybe onto something.

Take, example this understanding of "Bad boy" by Zippy;

Define “bad boy” = “men who make poor fathers”.

Fatherhood has nothing to do with being a "bad boy". A computer geek can be an objectively a bad father yet he is not a bad boy. An dorky engineer can be a good father and yet he is not a bad boy.
A bad boy is a man with erotic capital. His potential fatherhood status is irrelevant.This continual conflation of moral and sexual attraction is something that is continually present in the trad crowd.
Initially, when you read comments like this you feel that the commentator is dense, but, since the same error gets repeated over and over again, the impression forms that perhaps this is systemic error of Traditional Christianity and not an individual failing.

The continual conflation of physiological sexual attraction with moral parameters (either positive of negative) seems to be a problem of Christianity when it comes to an analysis of sexuality.  Good Christian men can't understand why they are not sexually attractive, despite living according to God's law.  Living in the hope that God will send them a good woman who will not be like the "others". This deficiency in the understanding of the biological dimension of sexuality means that no practical advice is given on how to improve the success rate with the ladies, apart from pray. Most of the other advice is next to useless.  On the other hand, due to this hostility to the "flesh" men and women who are sexually attractive are deemed to be morally bad. Amongst weaker minds there almost appears to be an associative incompatibility between being "hot" and being "Christian".  Drab women and grey men.

The Trads seem to be unable to recognise that he attraction a woman feels for a man is involuntary, i.e. it is morally neutral. How she chooses to act on the attraction gives her actions a moral dimension. But they continually conflate the two. The fact that Jessica is attracted to Bill, the bad boy, does not mean she will be attracted to dweeby Ben, who is also morally bad but lacks erotic capital. Morals have nothing to do with the issue, attraction is decided by the flesh.

This tradition of conflation in my opinion stems of Christianity's aversion to "flesh". The overtly erotic was simply seen as the express route the Hell and Christianity did all it could to suppress it. As a result, Christianity developed a good tradition of fighting the flesh and neglected to develop an understanding of it or accord it any legitimacy. The result has been that Christianity can't evaluate sexuality on the biomechanical level and insists to continually evaluate it on the moral on. The resistance to this common sense understanding is perplexing.  It's as if the Trads do not want to acknowledge a carnal nature to our sexual desires and instead continue with their understanding of human sexuality as if the mechanics of sexual attraction did not matter, only its moral evaluation; still, which they nearly always view in the negative.

This historical position has had practical real world sequelae. Admittedly, Christianity is not responsible for the excesses but it provided for a a cultural fault line which was waiting to be exploited.

1.  For good or ill, the Church was the dominant cultural force in the West till about the end of the 19th Century, it's suppression of the erotic, not procreative, component of sexuality, meant that as the Church lost power, the pendulum swung the other way. Nature abhors a vacuum and in the absence of any theology of desire the world developed it's own. Predictably it was stupid. Today's sluttery is due to yesterdays prudery.
2.  It has made a meaningful discussion on sexual polarity difficult since the spirit was more important that the flesh. Yet our sexual polarity is intrinsically tied to our carnal bodies. Gender equality/interchangeability is easy when the flesh is irrelevant. Cue feminism.
3. It has conditioned people towards evil by making sexual evil fun and virtue boring.
4. It has encouraged physical ugliness by neglecting or erotic complementarity. Desire is supercharged in bodily perfection and diminished in dysmorphia. The Fat acceptance movement is based on the idea that we shouldn't be so "superficial" and judge people on appearances.

I get a lot of heat for taking this position, but here is an interesting question I'll wish you to ponder: Why has "bad boy" become synonymous with sexual attraction and "good boy" with sexual repulsion? Perhaps it's because contemporary Christianity lacks the capability to be sexy and good. The flipside to this is the notion that the erotic and good are incompatible. See what I'm getting at?

Finally, I want to say something about the Neoreactionary Canon. While I'm chuffed to have some of my posts there I think it was a grave error to leave Roissy out. The errors of Modernism are cross-cultural, affecting nearly every facet of life. Human sexual dynamics is one such area and the supreme Neo-reactionary warrior has been Roissy. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of things he says that I disagree with, but when it comes to the red pill reality as pertains to Eros, he is the prime expositor.
 
Furthermore, any Neoreactionary neophyte is better starting off with his writings than those of Moldbug or myself. His turgid style and my shitty blogging are liable to put people off. At his best, he is an unbelievably good writer who is able to shove the red pill down your throat. Nothing hooks a man more to neoreaction than sexual success is the presence of what seems a never ending drought. Roissy is able to co-opt primal force in the pursuit of truth. It's an unbeatable combination.

Bits and Pieces.

Posting has been light because I've been busy lately.

Firstly, Simon Grey has put up a good post outlining the problems that come with an increase in the popular appeal of the the "New Right". I use the term New Right because there are several different streams of thought within it: some of which are mutually incompatible. The Right needs to realise that while the Left is the natural home of stupid, we have more than our own share who are a dangerous "in house" threat.

The one that worries me the most is the influx of crypo Nazi's.  Now, I'm not using the term Nazi in it's common usage sense, i.e. a name the Left calls someone whom they disagree with, rather in its specific usage, i.e. someone who believes in the ideals of Aryan National Socialism. Nazism and Fascism are Trojan viruses of the Left designed to infect the right. (More on that in another post.) And these knuckleheads are their sympathisers are the ones most likely to cause self destruction of the Right.

Repeat. After. Me. The Nazis are a LEFT wing movement dressed in right wing rhetoric.

As an act of Charity, for those who are still retarded, here is a brief summary of Fascism's intellectual development.

Socialism->;Syndicalism+(Futurism)->Fascism.

Keep these arseholes at arm's length.

Secondly, Simon takes me to task over my post, Peak Democracy. I like Simon. He is a good writer, thinker and a worthy critic.  However, I think he is wrong in this instance. He writes;

Incorrect. The elections in America are definitely not free, as universal franchise doesn’t exist.  Not all citizens can vote, even among the adults.  They are also not fair, given that non-citizens have been known to vote, dead people have been known vote, imaginary people have been known to vote, and even alive citizens have been known to vote on multiple occasions.  Furthermore, those who are part of the political machine are generally corrupt and usually manipulate the machine to their own ends.

I other words because real world democracy is not perfect our electoral process is not free or fair. Any real world implementation of democracy is always going to have to accept some degree of fraud and dishonesty. The question is, how prevalent is the corruption? In most of the Western Countries, particularly those of the Protestant West, the elections are essentially free and fair. Simon further writes;

Incorrect.  California passed proposition 8 and all the gay marriages were stopped the state Supreme Court overturned the law.  Clearly the voters get exactly what they want every election, and no one ever stands in the way of the people’s will. The unelected officials never subvert the will of the people.

The Right needs to understand that the reason why the Gay agenda is being furthered is because a lot of people have sympathy for the cause. There is grassroots support for the changes across the country if not in California. One of the problems with living in a democracy is that the majority rules no matter how idiotic or repugnant their decisions. The simple fact is that people of California form a minority within the union. There is nothing to see here. It is the normal day to day operation of democracy.

If California doesn't like being a minority in the Union it has two options:

a) Secede. See Civil War. Liberty is ultimately ensured by appeal to arms. Nasty, but it is the way of the world.
b) Agitate to change the constitution through a democratic process and convince the majority. Admittedly hard but realistically doable. Volstead act?  The Left has concentrated on this latter mechanism to further its aims. The Cathedral targets the stupid (which forms the bulk of the electorate) and thus is able to steer the democratic process.  The Right debates (System II*) whilst the Left advertises.(System I*) The Right needs to understand that baleful changes being wrought in our society aren't simply "top down" driven but are "bottom up" supported. Furthermore, Simon writes;

It is not the patriotic mass-man who allows self-interest to bankrupt the country through his participation in a direct democracy, [Ed: My Link] but it is the skinflint businessman or politician who is willing to sell out the mass-man for a short-term gain.  In these modern times, globalism is not championed by the masses, but the elite.

Both the businessman and the people are selling out the country. I rest my case.

Thirdly, apropos the above, Samuel Gregg, a local boy who has made good in the U.S., gives this good talk on Europe's economic and cultural problems, particularly the economic death spiral caused by the embrace between democracy and the Welfare state. It's about an 45 mins long. Interesting stuff at about the 15min mark. Notable quote by the Luxembourg Prime Minister;

"We all know what to do, but we haven't worked out how to get re-elected after we have done it."

Fourthly, something for Aquinas Dad. Song of Songs is a Biblical text with a "problematic" literal interpretation. Allegorisation solves the "problem" by de-eroticising the text. The historical treatment of the text illustrates what I think is a profound problem in the Christian understanding of sexuality. Namely, the incompatibility between the spirit and the flesh. More on this later.

Finally, something arty. Kenneth Branagh does Hamlet. What is a man?




*Refer to Dual Process Theory.

Fops.

The manosphere, particularly its MRA component, likes to put the blame on our current sexual dysfunction squarely onto women. I've received a lot of criticism in the past for pointing out a lot of men are to blame for the current predicament as well. It's my contention that while feminism is a social poison, one of the other pathogens of the West is the failure of masculinity.

Augustina's touched upon this theme in her comment:

Our wedding night wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t that great. As I said, neutral. I could work up a desire for him but it wasn’t there naturally. Immediately, our young marriage hit rocky shoals, because that’s just life. I immediately got pregnant and had difficult pregnancies which did nothing to help our sex life. He lost his job. We moved several times, across the country and in three different states. We ended up living with my parents. This did nothing to raise his sexual attractiveness to me. Hypergamy? What hypergamy?

Flash forward fifteen years or so. I had finally had it. I wanted to be the good Christian wife, and be submissive to my husband. But there was nothing to submit to. He didn’t lead. He drifted. It was like being on a ship, but with no captain to guide it. And the waters are full of icebergs, rocky shoals, submerged reefs, and vast stretches of the doldrums. It was terrifying to have my now large family on a ship with no one to navigate these waters.

He was passive, hesitant, didn’t lead as a father should, couldn’t discipline the children, and still couldn’t support his family. I was forced to make every decision, to consider our options with no input from him. I would wait for his input, request his input, but never got it. 

One of the reasons why Augustina's comment resonated with me is because I've heard it all before.  After you've worked in a GP (family physician) for a while and accumulated a group of steady patients, people relax with you and like to talk about more personal details. Women love to complain about their husbands, however, the most frequently complaint I get is the one Augustina articulated. I rarely get complaints about all the other stuff. Sure, some complain about their husbands bad habits, snoring or excessive weight but what they most complain about is him "acting like a child". What's become more worrying though, as time has passed, it's not just the married women that are complaining about their husbands but increasingly, girlfriends are complaining of this type of dissatisfaction of their boyfriends as well.

The manosphere nearly all agree that there has been a contemporary deterioration in the "quality" of women, particularly with regard to their femininity, however what the mansophere, particularly the MRA types turn a blind eye to is that there has been a deterioration in the quality of masculinity as well. Our men have become women and women, men.

Augustina's complaints about her husband revolve around what the the medical profession calls a loss of "executive function" and it appears to me that as women mature it is this characteristic that becomes very desirable in a man. Now, in her case, the loss of function seemed to have an underlying medical basis, and I see quite a bit of this amongst the seriously depressed, however, what I'm seeing is an increasing number of younger males who, despite being healthy, have very poor executive function. 

I grew up amongst men who were children and adolescents in the post-WW2 carnage of Eastern Europe. They literally had to have their wits about them in order to survive and it was apparent this "training" in their early lives did them well later on. They may not have had intellectual qualifications or social airs and graces but they had their shit together. They could do anything. Slaughtering an animal, fixing a car, disciplining children, home repairs, amateur metalwork, cooking if necessary and so on. They also loved a fair fight. Tough, resilient and "street smart" they had buckets of executive function and would look upon the younger men, raised in more comfortable times, as weak and unresourceful.

Executive function is one of the core attributes of masculinity. Unlike theoretical ability, executive function aims at the achievement of practical results. The ability to impose your will on circumstances is one of the marks of a successful man and one of the most attractive features mature women find in men and a man without it is profoundly unattractive.

Executive function is itself composed of a collection of other human attributes. There needs to be some practical knowledge i.e "street smarts" in how to achieve goals, there has to be industriousness and ability to stick at a task, tenacity in order to face opposition and prudence in know when to act appropriately. Clearly, there are genetic components to these domains of human behaviour; some men are born natural leaders but it's also clear that environment plays an role, and the current cultural-social-political environment is profoundly hostile to it's development. Genetics may set limits on "leadership expression"and executive function but it' s environment which fosters its growth.

Executive function needs a Darwinian environment in which to thrive and develop but our society has become less Darwinian with time.  For example, the social welfare state, protects men from the consequences of their action, so failures (Aspy's, I don't mean the genuinely sick or incapable) just limp along without needing to put any effort into their life. (Big problem in Europe with its massive social welfare state) Men end up being grown "mummy's boys" protected by the state instead of their family.

Prolonged prosperity and wealth also poison its development. Firstly, by wealth providing a buffer between stupid action and consequence and secondly, by providing a secure environment in which thinking about survival becomes unnecessary and executive function thus atrophies.  Witness the effect that loss of employment has on unionised workers who "expect a job" to be there, never ever considering the fact that their job is due to the consequence of some evil capitalist's executive function.

Thirdly, the socialist/egalitarian cultural undercurrent in the West, manifest in so many law's and day to day cultural habits, push away at the man who legitimately tries to assert himself. As Mencken said, the worst crime in Democracy is not to assert your superiority but to prove it.  Thus mediocrity thrives and excellence is quashed.

Fourthly our society's excessive love of comfort and morbid fear of violence contributes to this atrophy.  Executive function is primarily involved with handling of life's adversities. The school bully is proof that evil exists in the world. The question is how to tackle it? Our current system is so aghast at violence that it tends to blame both aggressor and victim when he justly fights back, teaching them that violence doesn't work. Yet history shows that violence does work and passive kids tend to remain passive in the hope that the "system" will protect them.   The state wants to assert a monopoly of violence but it would appear to be that the state needs to leave some room for "limited private violence" in order to encourage the development of masculinity and executive function. 

The bleating, by women, that there are "no good men left", should not be dismissed so easily by the manosphere or explained away by the "pickiness of women". Sexual attraction is a pre-wired response largely determined by genetics. If women are finding the average man repulsive it may be due to the fact that society has turned Joe Average into an aberration of nature.

The Consolations of the Flesh.

One of the things which moved me in Augustina's comment is the realisation that despite the good moral polarity of the woman, her life was a emotional struggle against her fleshy instincts. Whilst she may have had joy through her children, her joy as a woman--as someone who was loved by a man--was destined to elude her.  Caritas and the grace of God may have given her peace but her ultimate psychic deficiency remained. To quote;

I don’t get much out of my marriage. For all intents and purposes I am like a single mother, and I often wish I had romance in my life. I have never had romantic love, and doubt that I will ever experience it in my life. 

Perhaps I am devoted to a higher cause: my family. I have devotion to him, and fondness for him. I recognize now what a struggle it was for him and that he is not at fault for his ‘failings.’ But it is not based on ‘tingles’, attraction, previous romantic feelings or any other such thing. I took vows to love and honor him, in good times and bad and in sickness and in health. So be it.

Some commentators are wont to disparage the legitimacy of the "tingles", but it is the "tingles" which provide for the natural attraction in marriage and which give it, and life, some of its felicity. The rush of love--and lust--is one of life's joy's, and a life absent of these things is a life deficient. Procreation out of duty is a different beast to procreation out of desire and dutiful marriage, devoid of the pleasures of the flesh--and here I mean more than just actual physical pleasures--is dry and barren. Augustina describes a marriage in which Caritas is present but is devoid of Eros.

Caritas perfects all things, including Eros but perhaps due to historical circumstances or inappropriate theological developments Christianity has put the two in opposition.  Nietzsche's comment, "Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice" has some legitimate traction in my opinion.  Benedict tried to the defend the Church in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, but I felt that his defence was weak, dismissive of the accusation more than a tackling of it. To his credit, Benedict put out the encyclical as a discussion document more than a definitive statement of things. These musings are my two cents on the matter.

Spiritual writers on the topic of marriage tend to emphasise the spiritual nature of it. It's all Caritas and zero Eros.  John Paul II--in his theology of the body--in my opinion, tried to "mystify a carnal act" in order to justify it. It was as if sex couldn't just be sex, rather, it had to be a reflection of some kind of divine relationship in order to be legitimate.  The Church asserts that the created world is good but when it comes to sex it needs added justification.

One of the consequences of the "All Caritas zero Eros" approach to marriage is that our traditional cultural understanding of it has tended to downplay--in fact disparage-- its carnal dimension. Wives are meant to have sex with unattractive husbands out of Caritas, without any reference to whether Eros is satisfied. Husbands who stray when their wives have become sexually repulsive for whatever reason, bear all the guilt for their act. Never is there a consideration of the legitimacy of Eros in a marriage or the recognition that one can sin against it.  

Morever, what Eros is divinely ordered to desire is no given no consideration whatsoever; it's as if we are all spirit and no flesh. Christian writers have always emphasised the war of the Spirit against the flesh but this does not imply that the Spirit is meant to kill the flesh, rather, it is to overcome it and control it, not pretend that it is not there.  Caritas perfects, it cannot destroy. It can reign in our sexual desires but cannot eliminate them.  Caritas does not turn a man into a eunuch. 

Wives submit to your husbands, is always quoted by traditionalists without any reference to a woman's biology. A good Christian wife may choose to submit to her husband but there is no way of guaranteeing that she will enjoy the subsequent relationship because the flesh controls the underlying neurobiology. Augustina lays the case out better than I can,

Flash forward fifteen years or so. I had finally had it. I wanted to be the good Christian wife, and be submissive to my husband. But there was nothing to submit to. [ED] He didn’t lead. He drifted. It was like being on a ship, but with no captain to guide it. And the waters are full of icebergs, rocky shoals, submerged reefs, and vast stretches of the doldrums. It was terrifying to have my now large family on a ship with no one to navigate these waters.

He was passive, hesitant, didn’t lead as a father should, couldn’t discipline the children, and still couldn’t support his family. I was forced to make every decision, to consider our options with no input from him. I would wait for his input, request his input, but never got it. 

This was clearly a victory of the spirit over the flesh, Augustina stayed with her man--despite the promptings of the flesh--but how much easier would it have been for Augustina if Eros was not in rebellion? This spiritual victory is still a human tragedy since the joy of a happy marriage eluded Augustina.  Don't get me wrong, the type of love Augustina gave her husband is the type of Divine love that really matters, what she missed out on, though, was human fleshy love.

Adultery and fornication are ever present realities of the human condition and are perpetuated by the pleasures achieved in their execution. Desire, lust, anticipation, the feeling of being "in love" all feel so damn good that men are willing to burn in Hell just to experience them. But the problem with Eros is that eventually leaves one unsatisfied. Chasing poon becomes boring. One girl is just like the other. The repetitive high that women get from bedding hot men gets boring as well. Even girls who have only slept with only18 guys want something more permanent.

The central theme in the novels of Michel Houellebecq is love in a world without caritas.  There is plenty of sex in his books but each of the characters ultimately ends up alone and fending for themselves. It's an atomised existance and profoundly depressing. Caritas means that we are never alone and that there is always someone who cares for us. Deeply happy marriages can exist on Cartias alone, but the blessed ones have a healthy dose of Eros as well.

 *I not criticising Augustina's husband here. He is suffering from a medical condition. It just that Augustina's comment illustrates how much hard work a good woman must put in to a marriage without Eros, and how such a state of affairs can tempt one to divorce.