Heart of Darkness. Part I

A digression.

It's well known the JFK was a man who honoured his wedding vows in their breach. He was a notorious philanderer and the the passage of time seems to have exposed the majority of his lovers. Very few people, with the exception of hard core Democrats, think of him as the saintly knight of Camelot, and therefore Mimi Alford's biography, where she recounts her sexual liaisons with him, seems not to have changed people's opinion of him too much.

I quite surprised that none of the man-o-sphere has taken much interest in her story. With the exception of Sibling of Daedelus, who really isn't part of the manosphere, Ms Alford's story has flown under the radar, which is a shame, since the the book is a powerful exposition of the power of hypergamy, animal instinct and the dangers of "five minutes of alpha".

Were I American, I would be a Republican with all the anti-Democrat sentiments that it would engender. But I am a realist, and though the Kennedy administration was rotten to the core it possessed style in spades.  In front of me is a copy of Life's "In Camelot", and even now the administration possess a degree of glamour that with the passage of time has grown. Compared with the frumpiness of subsequent administrations, the Kennedy's were "Hot". I think people need to remember this when they read her biography. As a young nineteen year old virgin, unexpectedly summoned to work in the White House as an intern, Ms Alford (then Ms Beardsley) was keenly aware of the glamorous universe she was about to enter.  The center of that universe was JFK.

Ms Alford, has recounted her first experience with JFK on his wife's bed. What's interesting about the story is two things. Firstly, just how little effort JFK took in "seducing" her. He simply walked her to the bedroom under the pretext of a "house tour", walked her over to the bed, and started having sex with her; so powerful was his socio-sexual status. The entire "seduction" must have taken only seconds. People may think that it was his presidential status that conferred this power, but its hard to imagine Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter getting away with the same.

Secondly, in her description of the event, she describes an almost involuntary magnetic attraction and sense of powerlessness as he starts to have sex with her. The feminist harpies of the media have tried to reframe the event as a rape, but Ms Alford has been adamant that JFK would have stopped if she said no: The thing is that she didn't want to say no. Media depictions of the event tend to portray Ms Alford in a passive light during the incident, but in her book she's not so passive:

Then he reached up between my legs and started to pull off my underwear. I couldn't believe what was happening. But more: I could not believe what I did next. I finished unbuttoning my shirt dress and let if fall off my shoulders. [Ed] He pulled down his pants and then he was above me.
He paused briefly when he felt some physical resistance.
"Haven't you done this before?" he asked.
"No," I said.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, and he resumed, but more gently.
"Are you okay?" he kept saying.
I nodded, propped up on my elbows.

Once things got going she was an active participant with the power to say no at any time. She was actively unbuttoning her shirt dress. Remember this was a nineteen year old virgin from a WASP'y family on the "Social Register" with a good upbringing; not some trailer trash. The whole story serves to illustrate the fact that a woman's sexual response to a suitable mate is unconscious; she goes into sexual autopilot. Such is the power of alpha.

The talk shows have apparently been full of stodgy wives who have reported that she should have said no the President, and I agree, but there for the grace of God go I. I imagine if I were nineteen, alone in a bedroom with Keira Knightley or Megan Fox and they started unzipping my trousers, I would have a very hard time saying no.  She was taken by surprise, her defences were down; it just happened.  I really can't blame her at all for what transpired and her failure of moral virtue. I think Kennedy was a bastard for doing what he did, especially when he found out she was a virgin. But he was so narcissistic that he didn't care, not that Ms Alford minded, it seemed to thrill her that the most powerful man in the world desired her. It intoxicated her.

No, where I find moral fault in Ms Alford is in what transpired later. After the shock of what had happened had worn off Ms Alford was not sure what to do. Her answer came some days later when she received a phone call inviting her  back for a swim with the president (i.e meaning sex). She correctly identified this a juncture in her life. She had a choice.  Had she refused she would have returned to a life of normalcy, missing out being part of "Camelot" with all its associated glamour, something she did not want to do. She wanted to be part of the "in crowd" and the price of that was spreading her legs. It was a price she was prepared to pay. By all accounts, with few exceptions she had a satisfying sexual time with the President. A time she does not appear to regret.

Being this is Lent, and I'm Catholic, I can't but see the similarities with the tempting of Christ by the Devil on the mount and Ms Alford's own temptation. Some men are tempted by power, some by money and others by the pleasures of the flesh; she was tempted by the Camelot glamour and of being the object of the presidents desire. On deeper reflection is a an appeal to her pride and it was a temptation she failed. For as the Master said, "What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?"  In taking the path that she did, a part of her soul died and the consequences were to be felt for the years to come. I still don't think she realises how dead she is.

Observations on American Women.

During my trip the U.S., a person who frequently came to mind was Roosh V.  I often found his observations of America and the American sexes similar to my own.

I'd planned to do these series of posts whilst on the trip but  I'd often wonder  how to convey to Americans the difference between them and the rest of the world without appearing to be either snarky or ill informed.  I came to the conclusion that most people would impute bad motive to me and so my advice to Americans is for them to travel, something that Roosh V advocates.  Nothing beats first hand experience.

Still, I'd thought I make a couple of comments the men and women of America as they appeared to me.

Firstly, a bit about my standards. I evaluate women on two parameters, both physical beauty and that essence which we call femininity. In order for me to find a woman attractive she must possess both features. Sure, if your standard is "bangability" then your standard is different to mine and its a standard that America can cater to. On the other hand, if your standard is feminine beauty then you've got a real problem in the U.S. It case of Pamela Anderson vs Audrey Hepburn: America has lots of Pamela Andersons.

When making generalisations about a culture, what a man is concerned about is the both median and standard deviation of the societal parameter in question.  Aspergy types tend to forget this and tend to emphasise  exceptions in an attempt to disprove the rule. Still generalisations are to sociological observations what the median is to statistical measures; a valid measure. Exceptions do not render them invalid. To me at least America has a reasonable amount of "bangable" women but very few feminine ones. Compared to Europe, where a man can honestly get whiplash from some amazingly beautiful and graceful women, American women were, well....... meh. American women are comparable to Australian ones in physical beauty but are less feminine.  To quote my wife, there is a "butchiness" about them that you don't see anywhere else I have traveled.  Even in that bastion of prolification, England, there large pockets where a man could find both femininity if not beauty,  in the U.S. femininity was rare. ( Note, do not confuse feminine beauty with moral virtue). The problem was least evident in the South, but compared to global standards, U.S women are in a class of their own. Even German women appeared more feminine.  It's not that the American women weren't well mannered, it just that they weren't "girly".

I've often thought the Roissy's criticism of the over-forty-year-old's was a bit harsh, but after coming back from the U.S. I think his opinions justified. In Las Vegas, for example, nearly every stylish woman I observed who appeared over forty, was both thin and spoke with a foreign accent.  Most of the older local women looked tired and seemed to have given up on trying to be attractive. Strangely enough though, quite a few of the older women (over 60's) I met, particularly in the South, still managed to maintain a significant degree of grace and femininity. It would appear that the failure of femininity in the U.S. seems to have begun in the generation that come of age in the mid 70's.

There were some notable exceptions however.  Whilst most coloured women were just like the rest there was a small but significant portion of them who were surprisingly feminine, elegant and graceful. The best dressed black women blew the white women away in both grace and style.

Of Swine and Pigmen.

Whilst in New York my family and I decided to make a visit to the financial district.  We passed Trinity Church on the way to Wall St and some remnants of the Occupy Wall St crowd were there.  They were fenced in a very small area calling out to passers by. They were the usual nose-studded rent-a-Socialist types who looked like they need a wash. They seemed pleasant and friendly enough, still a visceral contempt stirred inside me. Not because I had any problem with them protesting against the corruption and idiocy of Wall St but because their solution was  even more idiotic and corrupting. Should these guys ever get into power, I thought, my family and I would be considered the near equal to the pigmen as objects of their rage.

Socialists, like lawyers are the natural enemy of the medical profession.

We moved on and spent the morning exploring the financial district. The architecture of the district was quite spectacular though I was surprised at just how small the district actually was; somehow I always imagined the centre of the financial world to be physically bigger. Still, the joy in appreciating architecture is in the details. As I wandered around the district I walked past a street sign, on it was written Maiden Lane.

I remembered that Maiden Lane was the name of the holding company that the Fed set up to receive toxic assets after the collapse of Lehman Bros.  Though I was not looking for it, the thought of Maiden Lane triggered an association with the Fed  which in turn led me to the conclusion that it must be close by.  I pulled my guidebook out of my bag and soon realised that all I had to do was walk about a hundred meters and I’d be there.

I have an interest in Architecture and recognised the Fed building immediately, but before I could say anything to my family, my son pointed it out as a building that looked like Gringotts, the bank in the Harry Potter novels. To the casual passerby there was little to indicate that here was one of the temples of global finance, if not the epicentre. There was very little in the way of signage on it  except for a small plaque, but observant onlookers would have noticed that there were something peculiar about this particular building. Unlike other buildings in the immediate vicinity, two policemen appeared to be on permanent guard duty and there were more than the usual number of CCV cameras (discretely positioned) monitoring it.  Here at the temple of Bernanke, I thought of GBFM and his secretive tapings; except here the tapings weren’t so secretive.

It was an imposing building that did not want to be noticed, still, in the spirit of GBFM, I wanted to get my photograph on it’s steps.  The two policemen eyed me as I approached them. They were OK with me getting a photo on the steps and then ignored me. I wanted a record of being at the Lion’s den.

There was a slight incline uphill as we walked away from the building and approaching us from a downhill direction were three men in the early twenties. They were walking three abreast occupying  the whole of the sidewalk and it was apparent from their appearance that they expected people to get out of their way: they were not moving for anyone. It’s not that these people were thugs; they were worse. They were immaculately dressed and their overall bearing gave them the appearance of being “financial types”. From the expression on their faces they conveyed the impression of uninterrupted and effortless success, of supreme arrogance, self-assuredness and power. They were pigmen.

They wore an expression that I’d seen before. On surgeons who’ve never lost a patient, on men who’ve broken hearts but never had their hearts broken, on the fabulously gifted who’ve never known loss or hardship. Men who knew incredible success and no loss: they were invincible.

My wife could see that we were going to collide with them and she stepped off the sidewalk onto the road. However the expression in their faces stirred both a simultaneous sense of revulsion and instinctive defiance in me; I was not going to yield.

As they rapidly approached I braced myself for impact; they giving no hint that they would move. A the last possible moment, seeing that I wasn’t moving, they attempted to make an opening, with the pigman to right of me trying to get between me and the wall. However, it was too late and our shoulders collided. It was quite a heavy blow, which affected him more than me. I turned around expecting to be abused by them and steeled myself for their onslaught but they continued their march downhill, not even turning back. It was all over in an instant, as if nothing had happened.

It was an event of no significance and yet if felt like it was. The sky was grey, the mood somber and the Fed sinister.

Still, somehow it felt like an omen.

The Class Divide.

Another one of the impressions that America left me with was with regard to the class divide. Compared to Australia, I certainly felt that there was a far more overt stratification in society. The effect was most marked to me in both Los Angeles and Charleston. Now, I don't have a particular problem with societal stratification (provided that people can live decently) but one of the things that struck me about America was that there appeared to be a subtle caste like structure in place, with the workers being the inferior class of human beings. I want to emphasise that it was a subtle phenomenon.

To give you an example of what I mean; in many places when I struck up a conversation with some sales member or supermarket cashier, they initially seemed taken aback that I wanted to speak with them in a normal social way. The impression that I got was that they were somewhat unsure as to why a customer would want to speak to them on a social level.  I found many of these people to delightfully warm, helpful and quite conversational. However, I could not help but form an impression that many of them did not get spoken to unless someone wanted something from them.

Don't get me wrong, this sort of stuff happens in Australia as well. For one of my summer jobs I worked as a cleaner in the local mall and noticed that people treated me differently whilst I was in uniform and when I wasn't. The thing is, the effect seemed more pronounced in the U.S.

The other thing that I noticed was that people who appeared to be wealthy wanted to be recognised as being "apart" from the rest. Once again, I've noticed this phenomenon in other parts of the world and at home, but it appeared to be far more overt in the U.S. (The other place where I noticed similar behaviour was in Eastern Europe, where the wives of the biznis men behaved in a similar fashion) Apparently wealthy women would barge in front of you, not acknowledge your existence and bark orders to the sales staff and I can tell the difference between prole rude and snob rude. These were snob rude.

Overall I got the impression that in the U.S. there seemed to a subtle  "successful caste" and "prole caste" and that the successful caste wanted to emphasise the difference.  Now in Australia,  as commentator Horst noted, we do have an entrenched culture of "tall poppy syndrome" with the effect that the rich or successful are far less likely to assert any superiority. As a popular local beer commercial emphasised, "Australians sit in the front seat of the taxi" apparently both an allusion to our society's egalitarianism and by implication the un-Australianess of doing so otherwise.  Like all popular myths, it is just that. But I have to admit the class divide seems much smaller over here.

This egalitarianism has both negative and positive effects. On one hand, it does tend to enforce a cultural equality, on the other, it suppresses any form of excellence. (Which is usually appreciated and rewarded outside of Australia). America, on the other hand, seems to have a culture which accepts and rewards success almost to a degree that Australia doesn't. On one hand, it seems to attract the best and brightest to your country, both for their benefit and for the benefit of America. On the other hand, it does seem to create a bigger class divide.

Tipping

One of the big differences between the U.S and Australia is the practice of tipping. Now in Australia, the practice is becoming more prevalent than it used to be but it still not common, so I was quite interested to see how the custom influenced the service I received. These are my thoughts.

Firstly, I managed to get into conversations with some of the waiting staff and they informed me that their official wage, which was paid by the employer, was somewhere in the vicinity of 2-3 dollars an hour. Now look, I know that these people can earn quite a bit in tips, but there is something fundamentally wrong with paying a person that rate in a first world country. For a forty hour week, that equates to an official salary of 80-120 dollars a week. Now I understand that people who work in high end restaurants can earn quite a bit, but its those people in the roadside diners that worry me; in many of those places there didn't seem to be much through traffic.

As far as I was concerned "tipping" was not really an option since if I was unhappy with the service (an inconvenience) the person would have a significant portion of their wages docked. There seemed to be an asymmetry in cost to the waiter in favour of the customer. This would be alright if all customers are reasonable but some are not.

The net result was that a lot of the waiting staff were working quite hard to get that tip and laying on the charm quite thickly; so thickly that it appeared at times contrived, especially when the waiters appeared tired. Staff were quite attentive but once the bill was paid and the money was "extracted", staff sort of disappeared. Something that doesn't seem to happen at home.

Once again, I found the whole experience a bit off-putting in the end. Eating out felt like a simple commercial transaction.(Except in the South) You could never be sure if the waiting staff were being nice to you because they were genuinely nice or that they were being fake in order to earn some cash. I felt that the whole system of tipping compelled the waiting staff them to what we in Australia call, "kiss arse" in order to earn a living. It was a sort of trade-off in dignity for the dollar.

It's one thing to tip a man when he doesn't need it and its another thing to tip him when he does. In the first instance there is no compulsion to give, in the second there isn't as well; and yet there is. In the first instance your giving a man a bonus, which in no material way harms him when he does not get it. In the second, your providing him with his living wage which to a degree is obligatory.

The other issue at play is the independence of the waiter. The customer is not always right, he is not always nice and sometimes can be a pain in arse. The waiter should be able to refuse his business if a certain minimal standard of behaviour is not shown towards him. The whole tipping system subordinates the waiter to the customer. The whole system seems to enforce a subtle attitude of "the man with dollar must be kowtowed to". Subtle, but pernicious.


I understand that many people think that tipping provides an incentive towards superior service but compared to Australia, where the waiters are paid at least a minimum wage ($15.50 an hour), I did not notice any real improvement in the table service.

The Fat of the Land.

Prior to traveling to the U.S. we had been told by many that the U.S populated by huge numbers of “fatties”. The truth be told, my own  impression was that the U.S was just as fat as Australia, and on that measure I did not feel too far from home. Still there were some subtle differences. The average young U.S. man seemed less lean than the average Australian, whilst the average U.S. woman seemed slightly leaner than the average Australian. Subtly, Your fatties looked less healthier than ours  Compared to Europe, both countries have serious problems with obesity.

Obesity, is of course, a complex problem being a product of genetics, diet and energy expenditure. What I want to concentrate on here is the food. Now, I’m not particularly into organic foods and don’t mind some pesticide or applied fertilizer; I don’t approach food like a biochemistry assay and I’m not a gourmet. What matters to me is taste and quality, and I like to know that the animals were treated well before they were slaughtered. However after eating in the U.S. I did get the impression that “junk’ food was the staple and fresh produce was a premium product

Quite a few U.S. bloggers have lamented the state of U.S nutrition and I’m the emerging “Paleo” trend. I initially thought that their commentary was a bit over-the-top  but after my travels I want to fully endorse them. Never have I eaten so badly as I have in the U.S.

Firstly, the supermarkets. I actually like visiting supermarkets whilst  traveling in foreign countries, as it gives a good index to the cost of living compared to Australia and it also gives a good idea of what locals like to consume. Comparing Australian to U.S supermarkets, I would say that:

1) In the U.S., processed food (meals in a can, frozen dinners, breakfast cereals, chocolates etc) were much, much cheaper than in Australia.
2) With regard to cost, fresh fruit and vegetables were on par.
3)However on average, the quality of the fresh fruit, meat and vegetables seemed lower than at home. Whole Foods was very good but not superlative.
4)Big supermarkets tended to have a good selection of foods.
5)Smaller supermarkets tended to resemble the supermarkets in Eastern Europe, with a very large selection of processed food and a small selection of fresh produce.
6)Alcohol was much cheaper in the U.S.

With regard to restaurants, food, in mid level, “sit down” , non-chain type of restaurants was generally quite good. Expensive restaurants all over the world generally provide good food. Where the the food was quite bad was in the roadside type chain restaurant and chain-diner.  While the portion sizes in most roadside diners and chain restaurants were generous, the quality of it was extremely poor. It was fatty, but in a bad way, and it all seemed to possess an underlying bland factory processed taste. In Las Vegas I discovered that scrambled eggs and pancakes came out of a bottle. Much like the man who fed himself on McDonalds for a month, I was beginning to fell unwell by the end of my trip. My children were actually craving vegetables by the end of the trip. ( BTW, what is it with orange cheese?)

What I found very hard to find was food that was cheap, reasonably healthy and tasty. In Australia, for example, its really easy to find stores which sell fresh tasty rolls and sandwiches, using fresh ingredients and crusty breads, even in small regional centers.  In New York, I ended up grabbing a sandwich at the Deli section of Whole Foods or Pret-a-Manger, not because I wanted to, simply because everything else that was “grab and go” was utter crap. Aside from the huge portion sizes, obligatory melted cheese  and complementary fries, nearly all of the food had that same factory processed taste.  I never thought that I would eat better in London than in New York.

With regard to regional variation. I quite liked the food in the South and can’t rave enough about Jestine’s Kitchen in Charleston. The food there was calorie laden, and probably ‘bad” for me, but unlike most food I had tried, it was incredibly tasty. I know that the South is  “different”, but then again, I got the impression that most American “specialty”  restaurants were quite good, it was the mainstream day-to-day stuff that was bad. That’s the problem. It’s a problem because people make food decisions not only on taste, but on time and economic factors. A tired mother working two jobs trying to keep afloat in the U.S. economy has to buck the economic and time pressures she is under if she wants her family to eat well.  A certain amount of time and economic affluence is required to eat well.

It not only that, what we put into our bodies is just as important as how it tastes and can’t but help feel that part of reason for feeling unhealthy by the end of our trip was because of stuff I ate. Like my kids, I developed a craving for “healthy food”. As mentioned earlier in our post, I notice that the American obese looked more unhealthy than the Australian. Just as grain fed beef tastes different to ranch cattle, was the Australian obese “healthier” than the American because of  dietary composition?

Overall, I got the impression that whilst good food is available in the U.S., it is a relatively difficult to find premium product. The other impression that America left me with, was that the quality of food was being driven down to the bare minimum by the sole metric of the capitalist imperative: the minimal acceptable quality which generates a profit. Compared to the Italians and the French, the Americans on average have much much lower acceptable standards when it comes to the quality of food.

Arbeit Macht Sie Frei.

My first impression of America, upon landing in LA, was just how tired everyone looked. From first day of our visit to our last, this overall perception of worn out people was everywhere in the US. It was obvious that everyone was working quite hard, but it was also obvious that they had been working quite hard for a very, very long time.

The other thing that surprised me is just how many people were working two jobs. Now it’s quite common in Australia to see young people working two jobs to get ahead, but what surprised me is just how many older people (40’s and above) were working two jobs. It appeared that a lot of the older people were working to stay afloat, and not to fall between society’s cracks; there seemed to be  this invisible whip continually lashing them. Americans, in my opinion, were very hard workers.

What also surprised me is just how many older people were working in the “hamburger flipping” type of industries ( A phenomenon that is beginning to appear in Australia as well).   In Australia, and in my experience of Europe, these jobs are considered workforce “entry level jobs” and are still the province of younger people, whilst in the U.S., the majority of the service staff that I met were above the age of thirty. They were all working what I would consider anti-social hours and all of them looked worn out ..... and trapped.

The overall impression it gave me, was of a worn out society that was barely holding itself together. I must confess it shocked and saddened me. Everyone seemed overworked. Everyone also seemed grimly resolute to the task. It appeared to me, that to most Americans, this was the only way things could be.

One of the most interesting conversations I had was in the bowels of the Hoover dam. Whilst being taken through an access tunnel, our tour guide asked us we were all from. Two groups were from Australia and another from France. We got into a discussion about vacations and explained to him, that on average, Australians get four weeks paid leave a year. I think the French said that they got five. He clearly looked pained at our responses. He told us that he only got one week and that his employers were trying to take it away from him. He was clearly an intelligent man and wanted to travel but was unable to do so due to his work commitments. It dawned upon me at that time that perhaps one of the causes of American insularity is the simple fact that many Americans simply do not have time time to leave their country, trapped by the obligations to their employers.

Now in Australia, I see a lot of small businessmen who work just as hard and I have seen that look of work-weariness before. I know the toll that it places on human beings. My experience has taught me is that everyone seems to have a work threshold, that once crossed, becomes socially and personally destructive. A man is not only a means of production, but he is also meant to be a husband, father and a member of the community.  A healthy man balances all these duties, and healthy society gives him room to balance them. Men devoting all their times to work have no time to devote to the other obligations in their life.  Men working long hours become harsh and irritable, they make mistakes, they opt for quick snacks instead of proper meals, working hard for their families, they don’t ever spend time with their them, eventually finding themselves alienated from the ones they have devoted themselves to.

It appeared to me that whilst America had fully internalised the Protestant work ethic it had neglected any concept of the right to leisure. Labour laws,  in the end, are a reflection of society’s values. In America, it appeared that leisure was perceived as either an opportunity cost amongst the go getters, or an frivolous luxury amongst the miserly. And amongst those who would like to take some time off for a rest, it appeared that American culture offered them no legitimacy. It was a society that seem geared toward the primacy of work and production and you were either with the program or you were not.

What I Saw in America.

My family and I have recently completed a nearly four week holiday in the United States. Over the next few posts I hope to write about the impressions that the country left on me; not all of them positive. I found it difficult to articulate these impressions for a while and upon return to Australia, picked up G.K Chesterton’s book on his experience of the U.S. He visited it in the 1920‘s and 30‘s,  and surprisingly, I felt that many of his observations still hold true to today.  Whilst he was very polite in his writings about the U.S., I could not help but form the opinion that the country disquieted him, seeing in it something that was toxic to the ideas of Christendom.

Americans, I have found, find it very difficult to take criticism of their country objectively and tend to impute malice towards the critic. And it is true that there are a lot of malevolent critics of America. I am not. Sometimes its very difficult to see the problems from “inside” and that what’s needed is an outside view, and that’s what I’m trying to provide. I am convinced that one of the big problems of the U.S is it’s cultural insularity. Roosh V is on the money when he urges people to travel and I think it is its very important that young American men of the Right ( who will be its future advocaes) get out and see the world. Not so much as to remake the U.S in the image of another country, more to be able to compare how other people live; in many instances better than in the U.S.

Nearly all of the Americans that we met appeared to be fundamentally good and decent persons, and in many ways, better than a lot of the Europeans and Australians. If I had to generalise however, I would say that the higher up the food chain an American was, the less I tended to like him. Prole America in its failures seemed more human that corporate America in its success. What distressed me the most however, was the erosive destruction of the American people by an economic system that seems to be literally grinding them into the dust.  After visiting the U.S. the “we are the 99%” movement is very easy to understand.

As a result of this trip I feel that I understand Roissy a lot a better, especially with regard to American women; they really are different compared to other women of the world. My appreciation of Ferdinand Bardamu has also grown, as I feel he is quite accurate in his critiques of American society.

Service Announcement.

Just a brief note to my readers that I will be not posting for the next five weeks, as I'm off to "the home of the brave and the land of the free."

I'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a safe and prosperous New Year.

Romantic Adultery

One of the curious feature of our decarnalised view of romantic love is that its intellectual underpinning permits a lot of moral evil to fly under the radar. One of the themes raised in Dalrock’s post, concerned the subject of porn. In the movie, Fireproof; one of the justifications that the “heroine” uses to leave her husband is because of his consumption of it. The movie presents her grievance in a sympathetic and justified light and several commentators on Dalrock’s blog felt that this position was both unjust, and that divorce was a disproportionate response in any case. As commentator Grerp put it:

I don’t like porn. It’s dehumanizing, and the industry grinds already broken people up for its own profit. But it sounds like Caleb was only dabbling in it – which is worthy of a trip to the confessional, rather than divorce court. Clearly Katherine was dissatisfied with the bargain she’d made and wanted a “Christian” excuse to get out. Porn use was it.

It’s the “Christian excuse” part of the comment that warrants further elaboration. I think that Grerp’s comment is rather perceptive in that in that many Christians equate porn to a type of adultery.  I imagine it all harks back to the biblical view that looking at a woman with “lust in your heart” is equivalent to adultery and therefore suitable grounds for divorce.

In my post, Anaemia, I argued that traditional Christianity had decarnalised sex, and I imagine that part of porn’s opprobrium is due to the fact that it is inherently and explicitly “fleshy”, It’s not about plot, it’s not about feelings, it’s all about the sex. Porn is all about “carnality”  But what’s really interesting is that this “decarnalised” view of sexuality raises a curious dichotomy.

Theses comment from Grerp:

The thing that annoys me about these sorts of narratives[Ed:Fireproof] is that they are crafted in such a way that it is hard to make a specific judgment because the info isn’t there, but they stand in for a reality that would not be hard to judge. So we don’t really know much about Caleb’s porn habits, and it appears that Katherine didn’t actually sleep with the doctor. But IRL she probably would have slept with him and we would know what Caleb’s real proclivities are. In a similar way, Harlequin romances are chock – absolutely CHOCK – full of single mothers who aren’t single mothers. Or aren’t single mothers of their own doing. They’re the aunts who’ve suddenly inherited children and are trying to do the right thing or widows whose husbands have suddenly died. Or they had to get divorced because he became a raging monster/drug dealer overnight, etc. This sort of narrative allows readers who might disapprove of single motherhood to still enjoy reading the rescue of a single mother by a handsome, well-funded hero who’s always wanted to be a father. Read enough of these things and you start thinking that all women are mere victims of circumstance. And from there it’s only a short leap to believing that they all have a right to be rescued. (To be fair, within the genre, this is changing somewhat. Now you have single mothers who are choosing to be single mothers, whether by sperm bank or ONS, because they are *independent women who can take care of themselves* but who might still like to have a white knight take care of some of the peskier problems of life. Fully entitled to the rescue that’s not a “rescue,” though.)

and

Another thing I’ve noticed about romance novels that is still more troubling is that the female characters in them have become more realistic – older, fatter, more career oriented, sexually experienced – while the male characters have become hyper masculine. This Batman-obsessively-pursuing-Liz-Lemon narrative is obviously total wish fulfillment (read: delusion) on the part of female romance readers.

My reply to Grerp:

Isn’t a Harlequin novel a female version of porn? I mean for most guys porn is a fantasy, but so are romantic novels for women. The whole idea of the romantic novel is to get the female reader to identify with the heroine and have a bit of fantasy adultery. True, that female porn places far less emphasis on those “yucky” anatomical bits and much more emphasis on “feelings”, but in the end both partners consummate their affections as assuredly as Linda Lovelace did with her lovers. Both “art forms” have fantasy adultery as their end point.

The question is why does our society look down with opprobrium on men who look at porn but at the same time not give a second thought to women churning through the Mills and Boon? It appears that as long as artistic depictions of adultery don’t involve any genital display, then its O.K.

Most religious folk, myself included, will intuitively recognise porn consumption as a moral wrong, and it still attracts a degree of opprobrium from non-religious polite society, but why is there no condemnation of decarnalised fantasy adultery?  Porn, being so overt, is easily recognised as a moral evil, The problem is, that a lot of poison can fly under the radar if its not recognised as such and because romantic love is desexualised some of the more pernicious effects of the romantic novel are not recognised.  To quote commentator Grerp:

My view is that there isn’t anything wrong, intrinsically, with a love story. People have been telling, and hearing, and reading love stories for thousands of years, and readers who read them aren’t wanting to commit adultery any more than people who play video games really want to kill someone. The problem is that a steady diet of even the “clean” romances will set you up with overly high expectations regarding relationships between men and women. The fact that romance novels have become more ubiquitous and regularly read indicates that something is wrong between the sexes and that women are getting their emotional needs met outside of human interaction.

I think she has a very good point. Just as porn seems to influence sexual expectations, so does the romantic novel influence the female expectations of a relationship, and yet our society seems relatively indifferent it.

In Fireproof, the disaffected spouse forms a close relationship with a doctor, something which is portrayed in a sympathetic light by its Christian producers. But as commentator Brendan noted:

Men don’t want to meet the women in porn, they don’t want to have affairs with them or with other women. Porn is an aid to masturbation for men. I’m not a big fan of it myself, but it isn’t at all like flirting with a real life person of the opposite sex in a romantic/sexual/emotional way. The latter doesn’t always lead to affairs, but is pretty much always the gateway to an affair. It is treading on thin ice, and in the case if you fall through it isn’t “virtual adultery” or “lusting in the heart” — it’s good, old fashioned “fucking someone else” adultery. Porn viewing, by contrast, does not lead to adultery. Now, if Caleb were perusing personals sites, or Ashley Madison, or Craigslist or something like that, it would be comparable to what Katherine was doing. Viewing porn for masturbation purposes is not — it’s sinful, but a sin of a very different order than the kind of sin that is the natural gateway to real, physical adultery.

And that’s what I think is curious. Why is overt fantasy sexuality viewed as an obvious evil whilst real intimate(non-sexual) friendship with another member of the opposite sex whilst married, not? I think it’s because we’ve so stripped our feelings from our sexual natures, through ascetic decaranalisation, that we believe that intimate friendships in with the opposite sex are completely possible without a sexual element eventually making its way into the picture. Romantic love is ultimately completed in sexual union, and the decarnalised view of romantic love so downplays the sexual component of it that it causes people to adopt the heuristic of thinking of sex and love as two separate things. Therefore it's perfectly understandable how “Christian” producers could portray our heroine as doing nothing wrong even though she has exposed herself to the real possibility “old fashioned” adultery. Whilst her husband is considered adulterous by looking at fantasy images.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The Elementary Forces.

Dalrock recently put up another thought provoking post. He gives a commentary on a truly awful film, Fireproof. The film is about the breakdown of a marriage and its story is typical of many marriages. You can go over to his site and read about the details of the movie and his commentary, but I thought it would be worthwhile to make a few comments of my own, especially on the subject of love.

A while ago I wrote a post on the subject of "parasitic lovers". It appears to me that a lot of marriages today are an arrangement of mutual benefit between two parasites ; each staying in a relationship only as long as they are a recipient of some benefit from the host. As soon as the host stops providing the benefit they move on. Another name which I've seen to describe the phenomenon is "Hedonic Marriage".

"Hedonic Marriage " really should be seen as a "fruit" of the modern culture and it is the end consequence of viewing marriage as a sort of "contract"; an exchange of goods. I suppose it is the natural consequence of the "Me" society; a view which places the happiness of the individual above else, even above the happiness of those about them. It's inevitable that in such a culture its constituents will want to emphasise their rights whilst dismissing their obligations. It is the underlying motive behind social atomisation.

Symbiotic love, on the other hand, recognises that's its own well being is contingent upon the well being of the host. Even at its basest level, the recipient of the host's benefits recognises that if they wish to continue receiving them, they've got to ensure the well being of the host. Unlike parasitic love, it is the love that binds.

Conservative Tectonics.

I get the impression that I'm persona non grata at several traditionalist websites. I can understand their position as many of my comments are decidedly nontraditional. As I've argued before, in previous posts, part of the problem with current modern predicament is traditionalism, which paradoxically provides the "life force" for leftist ideas.  For example, the traditionalist idea of creating a social structure which subordinates women to exclusive domesticity innervates the feminist movement by reaction.  Happy women, like happy workers, are not militant except by injustice; and societal structures which rub against human nature are ultimately percieved as oppressive. Sure, there are individuals who are objectively evil and wish to destroy what is good, but evil ideas, much like weeds, can only grow in the fertile soil of discontent.

My contention, and that of G.K. Chesterton and Whittaker Chambers, is that traditional society, whilst good overall, had several "structural anomalies" which produced profound discontent. It's also my contention that traditional western society could have survived intact (albeit in different form) had it changed in a way that accommodated those pressures without compromising the foundations upon which it was built. The problem was that it didn't, and it created the pressure cooker situations from which radicalism emerged.  Of course, traditionalists deny this; attributing to outright malice the motives of their opponents. This has the dual convenience of entrenching their own sense of moral superiority and permits the avoidance of any self reflection as to their own part in the state of affairs.

Therefore the traditionalist is always always harking to reset the system to "initial conditions". The problem is that initial conditions generate the same pressures that radicalised society in the first place, and thus the seeds of revolution are re-energised again. Tradition is the midwife of modern radicalism.

And I think this is why conservatism has failed in the 20th Century; it's failed because it's hitched it's star to traditionalism. I mean, what Negro would want to go back to traditional society? What intelligent woman would? Or even your average worker? How many of them would want to return to peon's existence that was the lot of the worker in early industrial capitalism? Is it any surprise that the main advocates of traditionalism are reasonably prosperous white males?

Practical,  that is political Conservatism, has realised that a return to initial conditions is political suicide and hence has to accommodate the wishes of the electorate. The net result is that modern political conservatism gradually morphs into liberalism by incorporating many of liberalism's ideas as a matter of political expediency.  Indeed, today's conservatism would be regard as leftist radicalism by the conservatives of a century ago.  The question is, why does it morph liberal?

It's my contention that modern liberalism is the only "new ideas" generator out there at the moment. The problem is, because of the liberalism's intellectual underpinnings, it's highly likely the solutions proffered by it  a likely to wrong.  Conservatism, strongly influenced by traditionalism, doesn't generate new ideas because all the "solutions" were worked out years ago by our forefathers. There's no need for any new thinking as all the thinking has been done for us before; it's a question of defending. Conservatism is always on the back foot.

But it's worse than that. Because people don't want to return to "initial conditions" traditional conservatism becomes an exercise in defensive irrelevance. Russell Kirk may have been admired and read amongst thinking conservatives but no one else cares.  From James Kalb's recent essay:

The canonical writers weren’t much help even among conservatives. Kirk’s romantic Burkeanism never had many adherents. Weaver and Voegelin, from most people’s perspective, were off in an ivory tower. And favoring the free market over socialism has gotten some traction, but it’s not enough for an overall conservative movement.

Now, I've had philosophic differences with Mr Kalb,  and I think I'm "on the nose" with him, but being a  man of ideas and not personalities, I've got to applaud him for his this essay: Liberal Values and the Seduction of the American Right. It appears that Mr Kalb has had a shift in his thinking, and it's a shift in the right direction. Commenting on the failure of Conservatism:

We’re in a political hole because we’re in an intellectual hole. If the problem is what people think makes sense, then we have to change or at least challenge accepted understandings in a very fundamental way.

and,

So much for the good. With respect to the true, it’s evident that we need the concept of transcendence, of something that exceeds what we can say or know. The point of talking about truth is that what we say about almost anything is certainly incomplete and might be altogether wrong. That shows we need “truth” as a higher point of reference. It’s an ideal standard that we can’t altogether attain, but can’t do without.

Our debate with the liberals is not over preference choices, rather, the conservative  understanding of reality implies that certain things are, or are not, in accordance with the "truth" of reality: Things are either right or wrong. Truth is the idee fixe of the Conservative, tradition is the idee fixe of the Traditionalist. Now, it's true that there may be truth in tradition, and the Conservative is happy to embrace tradition where it is true,  but where tradition is in error the conservative will ditch tradition.  Of course, by framing conservatism as traditionalism, this immediately pushes him outside of the conservative fold. Both the Left and the Right hate him.

The task then, for the modern conservative, is to look at history and ask, "Where did it go wrong"? "How can we change without compromising our core principles"? Even more importantly; What are our blindspots?" The most effective attack is the one that is not foreseen.

The fundamental error of thinking conservatism has been its assumption of the infallibility of tradition. This is the intellectual hole which conservatism has fallen in to and has effectively rendered it irrelevant. This is why any "Right Renaissance" is not going to occur within the mainstream right but rather outside it. It won't be the academy but the in the blogosphere where the right is reborn. This is not because I'm some technological junkie, rather because the internet provides a forum where all the "odballs" can debate and thrash the ideas out. Orthodox conservatism permits no such discussion. To quote Curtis Le May, speaking of American military culture in Fifties and Sixties:

We must-but do not-have a defense organization which permits controversy, which permits the "unthinkable" condition to be debated freely, which permits the screwball idea to come forth, and which tolerates the maverick officer. The Andrew Jacksons, the Zachary Taylors, the Ulysses S. Grants, the George Deweys, the Alfred Thayer Mahans, the Billy Mitchells, are not nurtured in orthodoxy. They are not products of a party line. And we have not infrequently called on them to save our shirts.

(Curtis Le May, America is in Danger. )

It is only after the traditionalists have been nearly ground into the dust that their prodigal sons will come back to save them.

Anaemia

  

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it but degenerated - into vice.

Nietzsche

A commentator on my previous post made the following remark. 

At least to this social conservative, you're going to have to work harder to sell the idea that hypergamy, as it is generally expressed, is not a vice. Here's a piece I wish I'd written, that does a splendid job of pointing out the trouble with 'alpha' behavior. I cannot believe that it is right and proper for women to select for that. It strikes me as something akin to men fetishizing breasts to the point of liking implants - it's a particularly unnatural and dangerous form of superficiality. If that is what it is, not only should it not be pandered to; it should be denounced left and right as the character defect, the symptom of the Fall, that it is.

The commentator links to a website which gives a good critical assessment of "Bad Boy" alpha-behaviour. From the link:

Who can provide for and defend the community. That is the one and only thing that will matter to anyone. For the men, they need to know that their fellow survivors can count on them to fight should the need arise. For the women, they need to know that the men they're now relying on can defend them. In today's world, the ability to provide is not valued at all; men that can provide for a family are a dime a dozen in the eyes of, well, everyone. There is no need, it's implied, for the providers anymore. What there is a need (nay, a desire) for are men that really can't provide, but can only push all the right buttons.

and,

The "jerk" is merely a man that says and does the right things that make a woman attracted to him. What is interpreted as "jerk behavior" is really a casual disregard for the opinions of others, a willingness to do what one wants, and a lack of fear when saying what's on one's mind. This comes across as "strong, capable provider", but women can be much more easily deceived than men in this respect: beauty is harder to change than behavior. Whereas a woman can easily attract a man with her beauty, a man must use his personality and charisma to attract a woman. Women, however, can be fooled into thinking a man is an Alpha when he is nothing more than a jobless tool because what attracts them is not based on appearances, but on actions. A man may change his behavior to hide who he really is, but to the worldly woman this is undetectable and irrelevant: "he just feels right."

I think what horrifies many Social Conservatives with regard to Game is that it would appear to advocate behaviours which are immoral, corrupting and exploitative. Furthermore, the sight of a nice young girl throwing herself with abandon and at "bad boy" whilst a "nice boy" is ignored intuitively strikes them as wrong. Social Conservatives operate within a moral universe where virtue should be rewarded and vice punished, and to them there seems to be something perversely wrong with a young girl physically giving herself to a man with attributes which seem so totally contrary to the Christian teaching and even prudent common sense. The SoCon intuits that there is something wrong with this picture, and indeed there is, but his intellectual foundations preclude him from coming to an accurate diagnosis. Their only explanation seems to be that the girl was either manipulated or that she lacked moral agency. Game then, is seen as a manipulative technique or something that works on women who aren't quite right; for example, women with low self esteem.

 And then there is this:

Hello everyone, i have been married to my husband just over a year but we have been together for around about six years. I love my husband a lot and care for him so much. But unfortunately when we get intimate i am not turned on or even want to have sex. We used to be so passionate and the sex has been fantastic! But the last half year has just suddenly fizzled. And when we discuss it, it's obvious it's not him but me. We find it hard to talk about, as he is normally really upset about it so we normally just ignore the issue. My husband is 10 years older than me, i am in my mid 20's. He is very handsome, intelligent and very loyal to me, so i am not sure why this is happening. I am not at all interested in other men or sex with anyone else. My libido must be so low! I have been hanging around my uni friends (females) a lot more than usual and going out (as we are all graduating), but this is not because i want to meet anyone but more because i just want to get out and away from the situation. Any advice or help or discussion would be very much appreciated as i feel really lost at the moment.

This is not an atypical case, and a cursory search of the internet will find many similar stories. In fact, one of the more common problems seen in General Practice (Family medicine) is that of the woman who presents because of a low libido,  and who feels guilty about it. These women have husbands who are hard working, loyal and treat them well, They want to be able to sexually satisfy and feel a  desire for them and don't know why they can't. They are not hoping to hop onto the carousel, rather, what they want is for their sex drive to return to normal.

Now, it's quite true that in some cases circumstantial stressors such as  financial difficulties, young children, illness, etc. can be contributory factors towards a diminished libido, however in many instances no cause is found. (In my experience, biochemical factors are rarely at play).  On the other hand, how do you explain this?

I can completely relate to everyone who says that they aren't attracted to their husband anymore. I am in the same boat, except for I have no reason except for something inside me, to not be attracted to my husband. He is great he sends me flowers, writes me love notes, talks to me all day while we work, we are true soul mates in every way, he is a great husband & father, but for some reason when it comes to intimacy I just don't want it with him.  I know I have what it seems to me is the perfect husband and I'm not attracted to him, he hasn't let himself go we are best friends and do everything together, so I'm not quite sure what is happening. I know it's me, their isn't anything wrong with my sex drive because I want to have sex just not with him and I can't figure it out.

I've been having feelings towards another man I work with, nothing has happened becuz I can't cheat on my husband but it makes me wonder why I have sexual feelings for someone else other than my husband, I wonder what I'm missing from my marriage to see it in someone else.

Now, if there were an organic cause to this lady's problem then there should be a universal reduction in libido, instead, what we find is a specific reduction which is directed toward her husband but not toward other men. Note too, that the woman is herself totally perplexed by this state of affairs; she has no insight into her condition and does not want to ride the carousel. (Note to MRA advocates, the women here aren't consciously lying). Why is she--despite wanting to--not attracted to her romantically perfect husband and yet is still attracted to other men?

The terminology of love has been mangled quite a bit so what I want to make some clear definitions.

Conjugal love: The romantic and sexual love for a member of the opposite sex.

Eros: Contemporary use of term has sexual connotations, but here I'm using it in the philosophical sense where Eros referred to a type of love where the lover both wanted union and took delight in the object of his affections.  Unlike our modern usage of it, Eros was a type of love that could apply to non-sexual matters. For example, Plato felt that the love of philosophy was erotic since the philosopher both desired knowledge and took delight in it. The important aspect of the concept here is that Eros recognises  and delights in the inner beauty of the object comprehended. From the Wiki Link above:

Ultimately, Plato considers Eros to be a longing for wholeness or completeness, a daemon whose aim is to reach wisdom without ever owning her. In that sense Eros is synonymous with philosophy, which literally means the love or desire of wisdom. And since wisdom is the greatest of virtues, Eros is therefore the desire for the greatest of goods. However, it is important to note that for Plato, the object of love does not necessarily have to be physically beautiful. In fact the greatest of goods will be eternal, and physical beauty is in no way eternal. If he achieves possession of the beloved's inner beauty and goodness, the lover's need for happiness will be fulfilled, because happiness is the experience of knowing that you are participating in the Good.

The conceptually broad nature of Eros doesn't really help us when it comes to conjugal love. Since conjugal love deals with a particular type of Eros; an Eros directed towards a specific person which is meant to ultimately result in a physical sexual fleshy consummation.  C.S. Lewis, in his "The Four Loves", describes this love as erotic(conjugal) love as being comprised of both Eros and Venus  (the sexual appetite). I think a far better description of it would be to describe Erotic love as being composed of both Eros and Libido.

Now Libido needs to be understood as the sexual appetite: the desire to have sex. It is an appetite who's origin is in our biology; our flesh. It is an involuntary subconscious physiological response to the appropriate stimuli. To put it crudely, given the appropriate signals, it's what makes us horny.

Therefore: Conjugal Love= Eros + Libido.

To understand what is fundamentally wrong with the romantic conception of love, and how it injures conjugal love, it needs to be recognised that our modern conception of it has been strongly influenced by the ascetic religious traditions of the West. A tradition which denigrated the sinful nature of the body whilst elevating the spiritual nature of it. The Pagan and Christian ascetics were constantly warring against the flesh, seeing it as an impediment to sanctity, and many of them wanted to deny it its legitimacy. Fasting, flagellation and chastity were considered signs of an elevated spiritual nature, and over time, an association between goodness and bodily denial permeated into high western culture and our traditional conception of romantic love was formed. Romantic love is Sexual Love stripped of Libido: it's all Eros, in the philosophical sense.  To quote C.S. Lewis again:

It has been widely held in the past, and is perhaps held by many unsophisticated people to-day, that the spiritual danger of Eros arises almost entirely from the carnal element within it; that Eros is " noblest " or " purest " when Venus[Libido:Ed] is reduced to the minimum The older moral theologians certainly seem to have thought that the danger we chiefly had to guard against in marriage was that of a soul-destroying surrender to the senses. It will be noticed, however, that this is not the Scriptural approach. St. Paul, dissuading his converts from marriage, says nothing about that side of the matter except to discourage prolonged abstinence from Venus (I Cor. vii,5)

C.S. Lewis. The Four Loves.

This is what Nietzsche meant by his comment. He recognised that ascetic Christianity hadn't killed Eros(Conjugal love) completely, rather the sexual element of it, Libido, was turned into a vice. What was considered legitimate by the ascetics was an anaemic version of conjugal love: Romantic love. It was lots of "contemplation" of the other's beauty with hardly any legitimate sexual desire.  Legitimate love was something far less fleshy and far more platonic. And the whole subject of sexual desire was consigned to the filthy habits of the morally corrupt and was not a subject worthy of serious thought. And so whilst the West was well aquainted with vice it was rather ignorant of libido especially the female component as the feminine was considered higher and more pure than the masculine. Traditionalists use this conceptual framework when it comes to approaching sexual relationship matters.

Take the following situation. Our nice Taylor Swift girl-next-door is standing next to Tommy the thug and is feeling a fire in her loins. She knows that he is not good for her yet she is incredibly attracted to him. She knows he is bad but doesn't know why he makes her feel really, really good. She doesn't register that her attraction to him is not a choice but a physiological response: It is flesh speaking to spirit. A battle ensures between her reason which knows Tommy is bad, and her flesh, which knows Tommy is good. If the Rationalisation Hamster is strong, within a few minutes, Tommy has his hand up Taylor's skirt.

Taylor's in heaven; it's her five minutes of alpha.

Pushing aside the moral considerations of the act, Taylor's actions mystify the Tradtionalists. Tommy is clearly not a good friend to Taylor, and his abusive behaviour in no way follows the romantic script. Two seconds of rational calculation will show that Tommy is not interested in any long term relationship, so why is Taylor apparently acting against her own self interest? Taylor's actions are a mystery to them. Their only explanation is that Taylor either lacks moral agency( low self esteem, low IQ, depressed, intoxicated, etc) or is morally deficient.  The are so invested in their delegtimisation of libido that it never occurs to them to consider that libidinous aspect of Taylor's actions, so invested are they in their romantic model.

The problem with the ascetic romantic conception of love is that it's premised on the fact that consummation will occur given sufficient platonic contemplation by the lovers and the importance of sexual characteristics and behaviour as a prelude to consummation are dismissed. An understanding of what it takes to get  "horny" or even conjugally interested,  is effectively discouraged as a subject of polite conversation. The net result of this cultural practice is that Western society cannot rationally assess female sexuality preferring to work with a conceptual model that ignores the reality of female sexual desire. Now this is is the mainstream Kool Aid that is sold to young men through the media  and through the Conservative religious institutions. The meme traps timid guys into thinking that it gives them a chance with a woman without needing to display some overt masculine qualities, whilst religious guys who have a pair, "are struggling to behave like nice gentlemen" on the advice of their religious leaders. It's a double poison since it stops the beta male from "alpha-ing" up and emasculates the religious guy who is naturally alpha. The winners are the rakes. The losers are the good guys and the women.

Furthermore, operating within the frame of romantic love automatically subverts the woman's libido by making the man a supplicant of her affections. Sure, a woman may be quite flattered by all the romantic attention she is getting, but after a while the libido kicks in and the desire for a man emerges. Romantic love subverts the natural power dynamic which fires a woman's libido as the man is told he must be supplicant to gain her affections; she gets to be in charge. Contrary to Christian teaching, she has assumed headship of the man. You can't make this stuff up.

The fact that women get hot and horny for alpha males is not because of any deficiency in moral reasoning, it's because their libido's  are "wired up" that way. The strongly arousing feelings of attraction are not an aberrations but are a pre-determined physiological response.  Now, when "Gamers" say that "attraction is not a choice" they are basically asserting two millenia of Christian teaching on the subject of appetite:

It means the inclination of a thing to that which is in accord with its nature, without any knowledge of the reason why such a thing is appetible.[ED] This tendency originates immediately in the nature of each being, and remotely in God, the author of that nature (Quæst. disp., De veritate, Q. xxv, art. 1). The appetitus elicitus follows knowledge. Knowledge is the possession by the mind of an object in its ideal form, whereas appetite is the tendency towards the thing thus known, but considered in its objective reality (Quæst. disp., De veritate, Q. xxii, a. 10). 

Libido is the sexual appetite. What this passage implies is that God himself has implanted the hypergamous nature of a woman's libido. This does not mean that God permits adultery or fornication, rather, their sexual response is designed to be elicited in the presence of alpha behaviour. No alpha, no libido it's as simple as that. Blaming women for being sexually attracted to bad boys is just like feminists blaming men for being attracted to beautiful feminine women.

This is what I think horrifies the SoCons and the Feminists; in that the flesh is indifferent to their own conceptions of virtue. Now it's one thing to say that the appetites need to be controlled, but it's another thing to deny the appetites the legitimacy of their natures. SoCons think that their is something wrong with a woman who starts feeling sexual around a bad boy ( I used to think the same), the problem here is that SoCon's conflate moral beauty with sexual beauty. The problem with the girl who runs off with the bad boy is not the nature of her sexual desire, but in her self control; she is imprudent. Being attracted to him is not wrong, it just is. Running away with him is the wrong thing to do from a moral point of view, but it's perfectly understandable from a sexual gratification one.

Biology is not destiny (Something SoCons seem to forget) and human beings can exercise control over themselves.  Whilst attraction is not a choice, choosing whether to follow through on the impulse is. What makes the woman a good Christian is that she resists her desires, not that she has them.  But what also needs to be remembered is that the Good Christian woman can't will her desire ex nihilo in the absence of a hypergamous mate, and the sexual anaemia of many marriages is due to too much romance and not enough hypergamy.

But the other issue that doesn't get far enough mention in the manosphere is just how much happier women are when they are in a hypergamous relationship. Women who were cranky and miserable are suddenly much more fun to be around with. The beneficiaries of "Game" aren't just men.

The task then for today's Christian thinkers is how to incorporate the insights of hypergamy within the context biblical marriage. The SoCons will say that can't be done and they point to the hedonism of many of many of Games practitioners. I think commentator Thursday was absolutely correct in his view that many of Game's critics are "associationist" thinkers; conflating the lifestyle with the knowledge. These would have been the same people who would have denied Plato and Aristotle any influence in Christian thought since they were Pagans. Men like Keoni Galt and Dalrock have shown that it is possible to be hypergamous whilst remaining in a stable marriage with benefits for both parties.

(Hat tip to Robert Brockman II who directed me to the artist, Alex Gray, who painted the image.
Here is a NSFW image which I think is highly pertinent to our discussion. Yeah, I know it's New Age but it helps with the conceptualisation.)

A Few Points.

This is a religious post, so whilst I'd encourage my atheist readers to have a look at it, I can understand them if they don't.

I  felt that I should clarify a point with regard to my last point. Unlike Dalrock, I don't believe that there is a collusion between Feminists and Social Conservatives. People need to understand that the two movements are, at their core, fundamentally opposed to each other. I personally think that the claims about  Social Conservationism deliberately assisting Feminism are wrong. Rather, the traditional mainstream conception of femininity is synergistic with Feminist conception of it. Indeed, the more I think about it, the ascetic romantic conceptions of Gender may have laid the groundwork for feminism. Gender is rooted in biology, not spirit, and hence any weakening of the legitimacy of biology strengthens an ascetic conception of it. 

The reason I wanted to make this comment is because I'm Catholic and pro-Christian, and many of the manosphere crowd are profoundly hostile to both, and I want to clearly disassociate myself from them. In identifying a weak point in mainstream Christianity I hope to assist it, not destroy it which does not seem to be the case with a large portion of the manosphere, who seem to feel that some sort of western renaissance can occur without the foundation stone of European Culture: Christianity.

Some commentators have (on other sites) have accused me of painting a caricature of Western tradition.
I suppose Benedict's Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, should be mentioned here;

This is due first and foremost to the fact that man is a being made up of body and soul. Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be truly overcome when this unification is achieved. Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness. The epicure Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting: “O Soul!” And Descartes would reply: “O Flesh!”.[3] Yet it is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature. Only thus is love —eros—able to mature and attain its authentic grandeur.

Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed [ED]. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere.

Benedict here acknowledges the existence of anti-corporeal tendencies in the Christianity (I presume here he means all of Christianity. Catholicism had its puritanical elements as well as the Protestant and Eastern Orthodox religions). So, I suppose my fellow Catholics who feel I'm being revisionist with regard to the Church may want to take the matter up with the Pope. The impression I get, from a historical perspective, is that the Catholic Church has been trying to re-emphasise the legitimacy of the body recently. JP II was particularly active in that regard.

The Feminist in Every Social Conservative.

Dalrock has recently put up a post (with a very interesting comment thread) which I feel should be commented on.

Many commentators have noted the synergy between social conservatism and feminism.  To quote Dalrock

The underlying feeling is;  who cares, so long as they man up and marry these women once they are done riding the carousel.  It turns out however that the men themselves very much do care.  This is an extremely long time we are expecting men to go before marrying.  During this time we have the unspoken expectation that they will work their tails off to be ready to act as a provider while not getting too used to being single.  Each decade we have pushed the envelope a little further, and we expect each new generation of men to simply suck it up a little more and fill in the gaps.  One can argue that they should have beat another man to the punch and married one of the small number of chaste young submissive women who were looking to marry.  But this is just shuffling the deck chairs around.  At the end of the day this will only determine which men marry in their early to mid 20s and which ones are forced to wait it out;  the overall numbers won’t change because the change is being driven by the choices of women, not men.

Social Conservatives and Feminists have been pretty happy with this deal for the last 40 years.  What could possibly go wrong?

To be fair to the Social Conservatives, I don't think any of them supported the feminist project and its hedonic imperatives, and many of them, if given a choice, would turn the clock back to a traditionalist conception of society. In other words, a society which contained the pre-conditions for militant feminism. What traditionalist's fail to understand, is that traditional society had it's inherent structural problems and it was these problems which gave birth to feminism. (But more on that later)

Although ostensibly, they are two totally opposed movements, Feminism and Social Conservatism both share a commonality which many fail to grasp. Both movements have a warped view of female sexuality; a warped view which ensures a synergy between the two streams of thought. Both feminism and social conservatism share an effectively similar conceptual understanding of woman which ignores her "flesh"; both are in essence ascetic movements.

The first thing that needs to be affirmed is that HYPERGAMY IS NOT A VICE, rather, it is the NATRUAL ORDER OF FEMALE SEXUAL DESIRE.  Now hypergamy needs to be understood as not only as "mating up" in terms of resources and social status, but also as including mating with a sexually attractive mate. As Lady Hillingdon demonstrated, all the social and material resources in the world don't matter if a man lacks the carnal nature of hypergamy. Hypergamy needs to be though of a socio-sexual concept, not a solely a materialist one.

Commentator David Collard puts it as follows:

It seems possible to me that women are built to bond to the first man who masters her [ED]. In a healthy society, this will be a Mr Alpha-Enough who is her first and only lover, and for whom she is expected by social pressure to become Mrs Alpha-Enough. The problems develop when this process fails and she is left permanently bonded to such a man in her mind but in reality married to Mr Another-Guy. Or not married at all.

This is where Roissy’s “five minutes of alpha” being better than a lifetime of beta comes into play.

Now, it should be apparent why feminists deny hypergamy, because  the whole feminist edifice crumbles at acknowledgement of its existence.  Once you acknowledge that a woman's happiness is innately tied to a man who is capable of exerting socio-sexual dominance over a woman, then the whole idea of power-equality gets thrown out of the window.

On the other hand, the Social Conservative denial of hypergamy is more difficult to detect. Social Conservatives don't deny that women want to "mate up", but what they deny, or effectively downplay, is the sexual dimension of hypergamy: the importance of alpha.  For a variety of reasons, Social Conservatives have a real problem in acknowledging female sexuality.  Religious puritanism, historical paternalism and enforced female silence on the matter have engendered a conservative cultural conception of womanhood that paints a picture of the ideal woman as being relatively asexual. Sure there is much approving talk about beauty and love in the context of feminine identity, but as soon the subject of overt female sexuality becomes mentioned, the conservative approval is far more muted or outright critical.

If you look at it, pedastalisation, which is linked to the concept of romantic love,  is really an expression of conservative anti-carnality. Women in mainstream conservative thought are are "above" the grubby desires of men, their purity and beauty as a sex, seems to disassociate them from any form of bodily function. It is a disconcerting thought to imagine the beautiful princess as moving her bowels or passing wind; and yet she does. Dante in his admiration of Beatrice never really raises the subject of tinea or body odour, because mention of such fleshy maladies brings Beatrice back to earth  and out of the heavens. The flesh makes us real. So entrenched is the traditional conservative pedestalisation idealisation of women that that it shocks them when a woman's "fleshiness" is made evident.

Game, which is basically and understanding of female sexual desire, is attacked by Conservatives with pretty much the same language as used by its feminist critics, seeing it as some form of manipulation. It shocks the conservative that the pretty Taylor-Swift-like girl actually has desires of sexual ravishment. Indeed when sweet Taylor gets carnally intimate with Tommy the thug, the only explanation that the conservative gives is that Taylor was manipulated into performing the depraved acts. Never does the Social Conservative acknowledge that the woman is finding the manipulation extremely pleasurable and that she is allowing herself to be manipulated. There seems to be a failure to recognise the moral agency of women when it comes to sexual matters because the ideal conservative woman is relatively asexual (except when it comes to reproduction) This, of course, plays into directly into feminist hands when they wish to avoid the moral consequences of their actions.

The hi-jacking of Christianity by its ascetic-members has tended to downplay the carnal component of male /female relationships, instead focusing on the moral virtues. Christian romantic love, as formulated by these gnostics, was all agape and no eros. Love in this context effectively become a relationship between two disembodied souls, and practically, this is manifest in how Christians give each other marital advice. Its all about care and communication, treating each other fairly and justly, but far less talk about looking sharp, keeping in shape and eliciting sexual desire in each other. In fact, a lot of the ascetic-Romantic conception of love seems to be premised on the fact that corporal reality doesn't matter.  For example, if a husband were to say that he doesn't find his obese wife--who still loves him-- attractive, opprobrium will usually be directed towards him and he would be attributed with moral fault. Apparently, according to the ascetics, love is meant to conquer all, including obesity, halitosis and flatulence.


This Social Conservative position stems from the rather too dominant ascetic's streak in Christian tradition, which was evidenced in the love of mysticism and hatred of earthly reality. These types tend to conflate Christ's sacrificial love with erotic love, which are two separate things. I can chose to sacrifice may life for a woman, but I can't choose to have an erection in the presence of an unattractive woman. Sexual attraction is not a choice, it's a physiological response, and the fact that the flesh is indifferent to moral virtue puts the ascetic types into a tizzy.

Whilst Social Conservatism and Feminism are two different ideological currents, both share the same effective conception of female nature; a nature that devoid of fleshy biological sexuality. Hypergamy strikes at the core of feminism in flatly refuting it's gender equality and it strikes at Social Conservatism by upturning it's conception of the feminine; a conception that is central to its understanding of sexuality. What the Social Conservatives fail to understand is that their conception of de-sexualised femininity--as if erotic didn't matter-- effectively provided and continues to provide the ideological justification which feeds feminist beast.

If a feminist says she wants to pursue a traditional masculine career such as a lumberjack, a conservative will grasp at all sort of reasons why a woman shouldn't be a lumberjack, usually arguing some sort of functional limitation. All it takes to prove that a woman can successfully perform the function, is for a woman to successfully perform the function; demolishing the Conservative's argument. If we admit the erotic dimension to the question however, we could rather successfully argue that masculine jobs make a woman sexually unattractive by masculinising her. Taking on a masculine job is the equivalent of voluntary hirsutism (NSFW). But this of course pre-supposes that a sexual argument is a culturally valid type of argument, something which social conservatism dismisses from the outset as a "base approach" to the subject.

Thoughts on Romantic Love.

There are some people who state that the exterior, sex, or physique of another person is indifferent to them, that they care only for the communion of mind with mind; but these people need not detain us. There are some statements that no one ever thinks of believing, however often they are made.

 G.K. Chesterton

Recently, I was commenting at a conservative religious site(I'm not linking to it) about the subject of Game. The host of the site was critical of Game, considering it to be anti-Christian at heart. Like most conservatives, the host could find nothing good about it, confusing the hedonist imperatives of some of its proponents with the actual teachings of Game.

I've often felt that one of the reasons why churchy types find game objectionable is because of its emphasis on getting a woman sexually aroused; and many churchy types point to this aspect of game when they criticise it. On the other hand, women who respond to game are frequently viewed negatively, as if there was something wrong with them. Even amongst a fair portion of the manosphere there is a lot of criticism of women who find players attractive.

I've been mulling over this point for a while, as I've often felt that there was something wrong with this line of reasoning.  The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the problem is not with the women but with their critics. The problem, I think, is in our cultural conception of romantic love.

There has always been an ascetic element in Western Culture which has viewed the pleasures of the flesh as morally suspect. Now, it's my belief that Christian culture has been hijacked by these ascetic types, and whilst Christianity has admittedly always warred against the flesh,  the puritan aspect of  it has seen this war as a war of extermination instead of subjugation. Subjugation at least recognises the validity of flesh's existence whilst keeping it under control, extermination denies the flesh's right to exist. And it appears that this puritan element of Christianity has had the upper hand in shaping our understanding of human sexuality and love.

Romantic love, as idealised, was always above the waist. Somehow, it was always a tender and romantic thing. Fluids, smells and noises were never mentioned; and the idea of a man and woman, shagging each other senseless, doesn't quite fit the fit the picture of romantic love. Indeed, one of the things about much romantic love is that it lacks a "physicality",  instead, being something that exists on another plane.

This romantic view of love, was also contingent upon their being a romantic lover; a lover who was courteous, considerate, gentle and kind. And it was this  romantic masculine ideal that became progressively entrenched in Western Culture, particularly amongst the middle class males. The resultant product was a consciously desexulised man, whom whilst "nice" to his wife, did nothing actively to satisfy her carnal nature.

Just as hunger predisposes the existence of bread, so do our carnal desire predispose the existence of a worthy lover. If we assume that average woman is in possession of a least some form of carnal appetite, then this implies that there is a man out there that can satisfy it. The problem is that the good man--at least defined by the puritans-- could not satisfy it, since he had been taught that the flesh was base and love is on a "higher plane",. The only man who could satisfy this carnal nature was the bad man: Puritan romanticism was the midwife of the "bad boy".

Now, women get a lot of heat in the manosphere for wanting to satisfy their carnal desires by sleeping with bad boys, in other words, the man-o-sphere is criticising women for doing what comes to them naturally. (See note below) However if we think about what is considered the ideal woman; the mother, the madonna and the whore, we find that there is a whorish dimension to the ideal woman's personality. What the manosphere is effectively doing is criticising women for being sexual.  It's  puritanism in another form.

What I'm not advocating here is sexual abandon, rather, rather a acknowledgement of the legitimacy of female carnality within the context of Christian marriage. A lusty but faithful wife is a good wife, not abnormal or impure in some way. If we recognise the legitimacy of this female carnality it becomes incumbent upon husbands to cater to it. Not in a sense of being a slave to a woman's desires, desires that are natural, rather recoginising that they are legitimate needs. Needs, that if not catered to,  will give an opportunity for someone else to do so. The usual Christian response to sexual frustration is re-emphasise the importance of the vow and pay lip service to the frustration, what we never hear is the Christian emphasise the legitimacy of the husband or wife's sexuality. Sexuality here does not imply the simple mechanical action of sex, rather the whole gamut of features which stimulate the partner's desire. When's the last time you've ever heard a minister/priest/religious figure criticise a woman for letting herself go or the husband for being a wuss? The whole ascetic conception of romantic love is that it will conquer all, and that sexuality is not that important.

But as long as Christians keep peddling this "asexual romantic" version  of marital love, they are undermining the foundations of that institution.  Firstly, by ignoring carnal legitimacy, they are promoting an institution that pseudo-legitimises sexual frustration. This does not mean that every Christian marriage is sexually frustrated, rather,  if sexual frustration occurs in marriage it is not viewed as big deal and effectively ignored. The good Christian puts up with it and his faith is constantly tested, the bad Christian seeks satisfaction outside the marriage or deligitimises the institution or the culture that put him in that predicament. Strengthening christian marriage will come about only when there is a recognition of the legitimacy of its carnal component, not in the context of making babies, but as appetites in themselves which seek satisfaction. Wives injure their husbands and their marriages when they ignore this dimension and husbands injure their marriages when they fail to satisfy their wives' carnal natures. The current bad boy fetish is because the "good guys" are  hyposexual.

Viewed in this light, a beta male, is simply hyposexual male from a woman's point of view. And this raises the second problem with the "romantic" view of love; it's an attack on concept of gender identity.  Now, if our sexuality is part of our identity, then masculinity must be defined, at least partially, by what women find attractive. That which sexually arouses the woman is masculine, and that which sexually arouses the man, is feminine. Our gender identity is the complement of our opposite's sexual appetite. Traditional "hyposexual" romantic love is an attack on our gender identity since it legitimises a lover which ignores our sexual needs: Being manly doesn't matter, only being nice and kind and loving, any asexualised man will do.

The solution to this problem is to reassert the carnal nature of male-female love and legitimise it. Romance is important, but so are our fleshy needs. Romantic love needs to be alpha'ed  up.

(For those Aspergy types. A woman who has taken a vow of marriage subordinates her desires to the marriage, hence if she breaks her vows for whatever reason she is the guilty party. But the degree of her culpability is contingent upon the actions of her partner. A partner who has been objectively neglectful of his marriage, in whatever sphere, bears some of the blame as well. Wussy and nice men aren't completely innocent. A man has to have a pair.)

Addendum:  

Hayley, over at Hayley's Halo seems to be thinking along parallel lines:

Also, I think the other, not-really-acknowledged part of it is that for all the admonishments for young, Christian women to look forward to the day God brings them to the special man God has picked out Just For Them, a lot of young, Christian women just don’t possess the suite of wifely skills that would increase their marital prospects.  Sure, there are hyper-organized young women whose idea of heaven is The Container Store, but there are just as many, if not more, slobby girls out there whose rooms look like hurricanes blew through them.  A lot of girls don’t know the basics of cooking.  A lot of girls don’t clean…much.  They don’t iron, they don’t decorate, they don’t know how to look for bargains or budget, they don’t know how to dress themselves with both dignity and style.  Some of these skills come with time and experience, but a lot of girls can only offer their youth and their love for Jesus.  That’s just not enough when it comes to marriage, but so much churchly advice does these girls wrong by teaching them that Mr. Right will be identifiable by his love for her good heart alone and that he will arrive in God’s Perfect Timing.  So just keep on being frumpy and praying, because God can see your beautiful heart even if those sin-blinded men out there
who are probably addicted to porn and as a result can’t see your true beauty
 can’t.  Is this really the best way to offer hope to unmarried women? [Or men, Ed.]