Carnal Lite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bits and Pieces.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep these arseholes at arm's length.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




*Refer to Dual Process Theory.

Fops.

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

Augustina's touched upon this theme in her comment:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Consolations of the Flesh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


 

Augustina's World.

I noticed this very moving comment over at Dalrock's yesterday on the subject of whether or not romantic love must precede commitment. 

I will wade in here, late, but hopefully I have something to add to the discussion. This is a subject that I know about from personal experience, as well as observing other women in similar circumstances to mine. So let me tell you a bit of my story. I am specifically responding to Deti and others who think that romantic love must proceed before a woman will remain devoted to her weakened husband.

I have never had romantic feelings for my husband. There was no falling in love period before we decided to get married. He asked me to marry him in a letter. We spoke over the phone a few times (he lived in a distant state), and I agreed to it. We were both socially conservative and I wanted a large family where I stayed at home and homeschooled the kids. This is also what he wanted, so I went for it. I never liked the dating scene and didn’t want to deal with it any more.

I agreed to marry him before I even met him. There were no tingles, no attraction, no romance. I went live near him and we spent a few weeks together before we got married. He was on the short side and slightly built. As far as sexual attraction goes, I would say it was neutral for me. He did not repulse me, but he didn’t make me tingle either.

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

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

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

I can attest that a passive man who doesn’t lead will invite the fury of his woman. I was angry, furious, confused and resentful. He was, in addition to his passivity, also cold and difficult to reach. When I had tragic losses all I asked for was for him to hold me. He couldn’t do it. He could not comfort me. He also had a host of strange behavior, that I tried at first to pass off as eccentric. In short, he failed me in every way imaginable.

Finally, when I could take it no more, I considered divorce. I just wanted to be free of the emotional turmoil and unrelenting disappointment and resentment I felt towards him. But I did not consider divorce for long. I asked myself, what would it be like, to be free of him? And then I got a vision. There was my husband, sad, small and alone, in a dingy flat above a Laundromat, eating a bowl of ramen noodles. I knew that’s what divorce would do to him. And I couldn’t do it. I could not deprive this man of his family.

For all his faults, and they were legion, I knew all he wanted was a loving home for him and his children. I could not take that away from him. To do so would be bad, evil, disgusting, horrible and nasty. Marriage is fundamentally about trust. You make yourself vulnerable to the other person. You trust that they will stick by you, even if you are imperfect. I could not violate that trust, even if he didn’t live up to expectations. To violate that trust is evil. It is akin to murder.

So I dismissed the idea of divorce. Instead, I accepted my situation. I was forced, unwillingly, to be the leader of my family. I could not understand why. I did not want it, I was dragged to it, kicking and screaming (often quite literally). He didn’t ask me to be the leader, he just didn’t lead. So I looked for a career and went back to school and started working.

Once I accepted my situation, my attitude improved. I was less angry, less depressed, and more at peace. Not entirely, and this took a long time, but I felt noticeably better. It was only a few months after this that the full understanding of my situation came about. My husband’s brother was diagnosed with probably Huntington’s Disease. My husband was eventually diagnosed as well. 

This explained so much. Huntington’s is a neurodegenerative disease that affects all aspects of a person’s life: motor, cognitive and psychiatric. I would say all of our problems stemmed from the early symptoms of the disease. One of the hallmarks is loss of executive function. A man cannot lead a family without executive function. Poor executive function means no ability to make decisions, to initiate activities, to plan even in the short term. 

So what kept me loyal to him? A previous romantic attraction, that I could hold to? No. That was true of my SIL with her husband, but not for me. Hypergamy? My husband was not ever powerful, and never made much money. We were poor and dependent of family support through much of our marriage. I often felt embarrassed by his behavior. 

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

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

Now Dalrock, you don’t know me, so feel free to edit my overly long post. I am not in the habit of baring my personal life on the internet, but as it pertains to your post, I thought I had something to add. In short: romantic love or sexual attraction are not necessary prerequisites to devotion to a weakened and ailing husband.

It the God of Biomechanics had a prophet, it would be Roissy, but his chronicler would be Michel Houellebecq. The power in  Houellebecq's novels lay in their ability to describe individual atomisation whilst in a crowd. Loneliness is the ever present undercurrent, and though his characters may form relationships, there is a realisation that once they are old, ugly or otherwise "inconvenient," the relationships will fail.  His characters only "love" contingent on the other having "something"; be that looks, money or fame. Once that "something is gone", so goes the "love". Lana del Ray's current song speaks about this angst. It's an ode to Roissy. All love is fleeting.

Hence the power of Game. Game is, simply,  cultivating that "something" which women will find attractive. It is the recognition for the need and the accumulation of erotic capital. But here is the kicker; time, entropy and the process of aging are in opposition to the hoard, hence, all of us will get old, ugly and undesirable. Thus the obsession with staying attractive and avoiding old age. In the sexual market place without erotic capital, the god of sexual biomechanics kicks in and we are all alone.

But contrast this with Augustina's type of "love". Here, there is minimal or no attraction, even repulsion at times, yet it still sticks with the other.  

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

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

This type of love is outside the jurisdiction of the God of Biomechanics, it's a different type of love altogether, and it is this type of love that is the basis of Christian marriage. People may stick together out of habit, social pressure, convenience and whatever other utility, but what makes them stay when there is nothing in it for them at all?

Augustina understanding of her motivations leads her to describe it as a kind of duty to her husband, but it is not a duty. When contemplating his potential plight, should she leave him, she is moved to pity. It's not duty that stopped her from leaving her husband but rather a desire not to do wrong by him, not to see him suffer. Whilst she is not attracted to her husband she still cannot do evil to him and it is this inability to be bad which is the basis of her love and provides sustenance to her marriage.

Good and Evil are moral polarities which are expressed through our actions. Augustina's marriage is sustained by her possessing a moral polarity of good, thereby stopping her from harming the marriage and her husband. Her actions are not based on rational calculation but on moral nature. She has no self interested reason to stay but she cannot be bad to the marriage. She possess Caritas.

From the wiki article.

The love that is caritas is distinguished by its origin, being divinely infused into the soul, and by its residing in the will rather than emotions, regardless of what emotions it stirs up. 

Executive summary: Possessing Caritas means being good despite of what you feel.

It's this type of love which keeps the marriage going when there is no reason for it to keep going any longer: It's the love that lasts. It is also the main reason why marriages break up today. Most people lack the moral polarity of goodness that Augustina has and thereby divorce. As the prophets would have said, we have become evil and are now suffering the consequences for it.( Note, I'm not retarded. The culpability attributable to divorce is contingent on particular circumstances.)

Aquinas understood Caritas as a type of friendship towards God and Man. Personally, and I know I'm on very shaky ground here, I think Aquinas' conception of it was limited. I would go further than he does and assert that Caritas, expressed in act, perfects all things.(Including marriages which would otherwise fail.) Caritas should not just to be thought of as a friendship towards God and Man but extending to all things, including the physical and animal world. It is the foundation from which all good things come. A man (or woman) in possession of Caritas has some of the "stuff of God" in him and thereby becomes sort of "related by substance" to Him and, as a result, assumes a limited God-like nature. Augustina God-Loves here husband whist most other women flesh-Love theirs.

Now I harp on about Caritas (no one else seems to in this corner of the blogosphere) because the lack of Cartitas is THE fundamental problem ailing the West. Caritas makes you stick at it when the everything is bleak. We divorce, because we find our partners unattractive and thus screw them over. We let the Left win because we feel like lounging poolside. We allowed ourselves to be silenced by PC because we're scared of what other people may think of us. But look at the early Christians. They were flogged, tortured and fed to the animals, but they would not renounce the faith or do evil. They were full of Caritas, we are full of shit.

We've rejected God's nature and have reverted back to our default Pagan mode--look about you--except this time, with far less discipline than in the early stages of Ancient Rome or Greece.  We all know how Rome and Greece ended up.

........................

As an aside, and pertinent to my recent posts on the role of language and conceptual development/retardation, the wiki article also notes the danger of conception failure due to the non specificity of the word "love"; 

Confusion can arise from the multiple meanings of the English word "love". The love that is caritas is distinguished by its origin, being divinely infused into the soul, and by its residing in the will rather than emotions, regardless of what emotions it stirs up.

and;

Note that the King James Version uses both the words charity and love to translate the idea of caritas / ἀγάπη: sometimes it uses one, then sometimes the other, for the same concept. Most other English translations, both before and since, do not; instead throughout they use the same more direct English word love, so that the unity of the teaching should not be in doubt. Love can have other meanings in English, but as used in the New Testament it almost always refers to the virtue of caritas.

Rigorous minds, aware of the distinction will appreciate the contextual difference in meaning but weak minds, some in places of high authority will not. The Biblical meaning of love is quite specific to Caritas. I honestly wonder why English translators of the Bible did translate the word as Caritas and avoid confusion of meaning rather than using the word "love" which opens up the Bible to "Eat, Pray, Love" types of interpretations.

Deus Caritas est is translated in English to God is Love, but since love can have so many different meanings in the English language this translation is wide open to abuse. Since Caritas is a specific type of love with no equivalent English word, the translation, no matter how stylistically awkward, should be God is Caritas.  It's just another example of how limitations in language can sytmie concept development and further the development of bad thought.

Happy Festive Season my arse. It's Merry Christmas.

De-Christianising Christmas is not a new concept. Back in the 1940's, Mustachio had the same idea.
 

It didn't look like he was having much fun.

The Daily mail has run a couple of articles on the subject which are worth looking it.

How Hitler's Nazi propaganda machine tried to take the Christ out of Christmas.

Hitler's Christmas party: Rare photographs capture leading Nazis celebrating in 1941

The second article describes the Hitler's view on Christmas.

But the Nazi Christmas was far from traditional.
Hitler believed religion had no place in his 1,000-year Reich, so he replaced the Christian figure of Saint Nicholas with the Norse god Odin and urged Germans to celebrate the season as a holiday of the ‘winter solstice’, rather than Christmas.

Now Nazism, as I've shown before, is a left wing ideology tailor made for stupid right wing people genetically disposed System 1 thinkers. The Left has always waged a war against Christmas and whilst the Nazi ideology is almost dead, the other variants of Leftism still carry on with the project.  

I''m of the opinion that we are living in times akin to the 1930's and how this ends I don't know. But Hitler is dead and from Stalin's Russia comes a new respect for religion. The thousand year Reich and the Gulag have gone to dust.  On the militant secularism of the West remains.

It too will pass.

Even so, normally, I'd be rather pessimistic, given the cultural triumph of the Left, but this Christmas there seemed to be a "disturbance in the Force". Perhaps its only in my little bit of the world, but the kids seemed to remember Jesus's birthday, the parents seemed to be less apologetic for going to Church and more people seemed sick of the blatant materialism. There's a whiff of something in the air. That's not to say that the secularisation project is being reversed, rather, there is a tangible sense of pushback, be it ever so mild.

I don't know what 2014 is going to bring,  but let's say I think it's going to be interesting.

To all my readers I want to wish you a Merry Christmas and happy New Year. May God bless you all.

Peak Democracy.

Roissy was in fine form the other day with his take-down of the pyjamaboy and the associated left mindset. However, one bit of his piece disturbed me, and that was comment he quoted from Randal Parker's blog. "If we had real democracy":

The elite support democracy but democracy of the sort the Western industrialized nations have in which all but the most trivial decision-making processes have been removed from elected representatives and placed in the hands of unelected judges, bureaucrats, and trial attorneys.

Populism is in complete opposition to this type of democracy. If the people could vote directly on each individual issue, they’d support all these things: an end to almost all immigration, legal and illegal, and sending back people in the country illegally. Strong defense, but non-interventionist foreign policy. Strong tariffs on just about everything to put American workers back to work. Tough crime laws and severe prisons. Death penalties after one month. Gun ownership, but with licensing. Removal of vagrants from the streets. Forcing the mentally ill into institutions. Equitarianism not egalitarianism. Forced government jobs for everyone who can’t find one in the public sector. An end to affirmative action. You get the idea, they are on the opposite side of the elites on all issues.

Yeah, sure.

By and large, the elections in Western Countries are free and fair. Political and policy change is only an election away. If people were seriously pissed off about current policy they would look for alternatives. They don't. Third party politicians and their parties rarely make any headway. Every cycle of the electoral process offers a chance for change, and yet with every cycle the incumbents remain the same.

Conservative pundits, despairing of the slouch to the left,  proclaim that the public are being "tricked" and that if only the public could be better informed then people will see the errors of their ways. Bit like arguing that the way to lose weight is by more information about diet. Despite the plethora of diet books, magazine articles and internet sites, how exactly has that notion worked out?

The current political landscape is the way it is because voters have voted for it. Yeah; sure, the voters may complain about illeagal migrants but they sure as hell love the government largesse. And when it comes to a tradeoff between national good and personal interest it always ends up being a tradgedy of the commons.

Here in Australia, the electoral cycle would swing between the economic incompetence (usually through largesse) of the Left, followed by the unpopular but necessary austerity legislation of the Right. The "system" was balanced. However, the net result of several cycles of this political pattern has resulted in the Left being percieved as the "caring" party whilst the Right is seen as heartless amongst the mind of the local mass-man.  Astute Conservative politicians here have recognised that there is little to be gained by being fiscally responsible, especially when the electoral margins are tight, as it will ensure electoral wipeout and have also begun with the social security largesse.  The system is now in a positive feedback loop.

The reason why there is always some second rate tool heading a Western Government is because a good man is unelectable. Any good politician, genuinely concerned for the interest of his nation, given the current state of the West, would have to implement anti-populist policies and would thus be thrown out in the next electoral cycle. In trying to convince the people with rational arguments for his policies, he would pass the microsecond attention span of Joe Sixpack, and besides, X factor and American Idol are on. He's also boring. Not like the football.

Thought experiment. In imagining who pyjamaboy would vote for, is not Obama the perfect fit? Could you see him voting for Reagan or Eisenhower?

Mencken laughs to scorn.

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. 

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Hope and Change. Pyjamaboy-Obama. Menken's prophecy is realised.

And for the poor bastards who bled for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan--I weep for thee. Here is the wiki article on Support for Gay Marriage in the U.S.

That even 50% of American would support a notion,that as little as 20 years ago was though of as ridiculous,  would confirm Menken's notion that American is nation of morons and repudiates Randal Parker's commentator. Amongst my friends here in Australia, I can't believe the amount of positive talk I'm hearing from people who only years ago thought such a notion insane.

The fact is that popular opinion on the subject has swung because the Left has, through a carefully thought out psyche ops, program "convinced" the "rational" voter. The convincing has involved nothing more that simplistic, childish pseudo-philosophical arguments, careful media presentation and soppy sentimentality. It was an appeal to the emotions and not the brain. Classic Advertising 101.  The fact that the public have fallen for them is not proof of Left trickery but public stupidity. Con men are most successful with morons. That's not to say that the Left are "conspiring to trick the public"---they believe their own bullshit, it's just that their smart enough to realise that when it comes to convincing the "common man" they've got to aim for heart, which is easy, since he hasn't much of a head.

In a democratic society, the foundation material of the body politic is an idiot.

It's high time Conservative, especially Christian commentators, re-evaluate their approval of non-qualified democracy. Remember how Christ was put to death.

That's right, by democratic vote.

Goldstein's Book was a Dictionary.

Following up on my previous post, it's important to note that while concept development may be hampered by a lack of word to explain a thought, a far more insidious mechanism by which the Cathedral stifles realthink is through word-concept manipulation. Ever wondered why the Cathedral prefers the term "undocumented immigrants" to illegal aliens. ( In Australia the preferred left term is "asylum seekers") or why "tolerance" means being unable to say no to anything you don't like? It isn't an accident.

Advertisers have long known that when it comes making a pitch for their product they have to appeal to the "gut instinct" more than the head.  When Ford or GM want to sell a product they try to associate the product with other stimuli that will generate positive feelings. They're doing this because it has long been recognised that a person's emotional state influences their cognitive thought patters and that decisions tend to be congruent with the induced emotional state. The important point to recognise here is that information is is processed at both an instinctive and cognitive level. The automakers want you to "bellyfeel" their product.

"Bellyfeel" is an important concept which modern political science has seemed to avoid (the philosophical implications would destroy democracy) but which most modern dictators have understood implicitly.   I've proposed the word autognosis for the phenomenon but I'll use the Orwellian version of it since most people prefer Anglo neologisms.  Bellyfeel is not gut-instinct, rather, it sits between gut instinct and rational thought. It is System1 thought.

System 1 "thinking" is not really thinking at all, more like a very high order reflex that seems to be triggered in response to wide range appropriate associated stimuli. The important point here to recognise is that System 1 thinking is emotionally driven and not strictly rational. By manipulating emotions and their associations, System 1 thought can be manipulated. A significant portion of Cathedral resources are devoted to "emotional association management."

One form of emotional association management is euphemism generation. Now, just as images can have emotional associations with them, so can words. The words "Alien", "illegal", 'fat" and "black" conjure up negative emotional associations,  The Cathedral's objective is to coin euphemisms which have the affect of  disassociating the emotional response from information component. Undocumented immigrant has less of an emotional connotation than illegal Alien and thus a System 1 thinker (common man) is more likely to view the cause of undocumented immigrants more favourably.

A far more devilish Cathedral device is word redefinition. To illustrate just how powerful this effect is, consider the word gay.  The traditional definition was "lighthearted and carefree", but it's continual association with homosexuality has redefined its meaning to the extent that one cannot think of "gay event" without homosexual associations being formed. No one from the Left changed the word officially, the word was changed by a deliberate use of it outside its appropriate context.

Perhaps the most insidious and hence difficult to spot variant of this is word conflation, especially amongst concepts which are closely linked. Take "tolerance" and "acceptance" for example. Intuitively (System 1) the two concepts appear the same. It takes some higher order thought to recognise the difference. Tolerance is putting up with stuff that you don't like. Acceptance, is giving cognitive and moral assent to an action.

Words with closely related meanings are prime targets for Cathedral manipulation. The Cathedral does is by this by effectively (not explicitly) redefining the word through strict control of its practical usage. Uncritical thinkers (Conservatives and most Liberals) don't notice the difference in usage. By continually referring to those who uncritically accept its view as "tolerant", whilst brandishing those who oppose them as "intolerant", the System 1 thinker is conditioned into a new meaning of "tolerance". It never occurs to the System 1 thinker that the "tolerance" of Theodore Roosevelt is totally different to the "tolerance" of Barack Obama.  Thus the Left wing agenda of Obama is justified by the Right wing rhetoric of Washington.

It's horrifying to see how a bunch of Newspaper Editors (unelected and unaccountable), influenced by the Left wing arts/media faculties, are able to redefine words and so profoundly influence thought, especially amongst mass-man.   Whoever would have thought that dictionaries were so important?

Orwell's Newspeak is around you.

Neologisms and Concept Development.

 It's interesting how things sort of align.  I've been thinking a lot about Orwell and his observations on cognition and concept development.  As Orwell noticed, Newspeak was an attempt to selectively de-conceptualise a language, thereby preventing the preventing the formation of ideas which were inimical to the regime. The important point here is that conceptual development is severely constrained by language limitation.

Without an appropriate word for a concept it becomes difficult to communicate the concept accurately, and consequently, difficult to analyse it and cognitively manipulate it appropriately.
For example; the word, proton, is specific for a positively charged particle in an atom's nucleus, as opposed to "that positively charged "thingy" located in the middle of an atom." The cumbersomeness of the second phrase makes thinking about protons difficult and prone to error.  It appears that the ability to name things is a precondition to thinking about them properly.

So it was interesting to see to Vox link to this article by an American Professor who spent actual time living amongst Africans. It's interesting to see just how deficient the Africans are in higher order concepts and terminology. It's also interesting to see how this impacts upon the actual practical functioning in society.  It's a very good article and worth a read. It's especially worth dwelling over his thoughts about dictionaries.

Secondly, interesting story was run on local television (American readers may not be able to access it.) about a hospital ship that travels around Africa performing lifesaving surgery. It was very moving story but what was quite interesting were the candid comments made by Africans during the show. Firstly, they were all grateful for the service, however, it became apparent during the show that the European/whites were definitely considered as the "other". In fact, several times they spoke of the European stock more as if they were aliens than fellow human beings. One fellow, upon seeing the hospital ship for the first time quite candidly mentioned that "we Africans could never build anything like that".*  There was a strong sense of fatalism and lack of personal agency amongst the Africans.

Now, I'm more hopeful than most of the Manosphere with regard to Africa and Africans. Personally, I think there is a lot of low hanging fruit there that could easily utilised improve the material quality of African life with minimal effort. IQ is important, but so is morality.  But what's really interesting to see is just how miserable life is, and just how depended men become, where they are stripped, haven't developed or are incapable of higher cognitive thought. Orwell's dumbing down is truly terrifying.

Now, some may argue that the concepts need to be there before they can be named and that Africans lack the ability for concept generation ( I dispute this--with qualifications) but what's important to recognise is that higher order thought appears to be impossible without higher order concept generation and analysis, something that is facilitated by the development of a neologism for the concept.

Which leads me to Conservatism.  As I've said before on this blog, the story of Conservatism in the 20th Century is one of continual defeat. Defeat by an enemy that has out thought and maneuvered it. Part of the reason, I believe, is that conservatism has been brain dead for the past two hundred years or so. Even concepts like doublethink and prolefeed came from an author whose intellectual heritage was from the Left.

That's why I think it's important for conservatives to coin neologisms (where appropriate) in order to both describe observed phenomenon and to be able to develop the concept.

For example, take the current observation that most people tend to congregate amongst others of their own race. The standard left take on this is that it is a manifest example of racism (thereby, through frame-shifting,  justifying their social engineering projects). Is there another more accurate word for the phenomenon?  Well, yes there is, homophily, the empirically observed tendency for people to associate with like. The Right is never going to win a battle (nor it should) based upon a justification for racism, but it may win adherents by arguing a case for a society based upon homophily.  Stable societies are built on an accurate understanding of human nature, not a denial of it.

The point is that the Right shouldn't be afraid of coining new words to describe new concepts. Roissy's contribution has been particularly invaluable. The hamster, hypergamy and carousel get an idea across more efficiently than their non-neologisic equivalents. As far as I'm aware, the concept of an  "alpha-widow" has no equivalent in the academic press. Consequently, there has been greater development of the ideas of intersexual and socio-sexual dynamics in blogspace than there has been amongst the "formal" academic conservatives. I'm not being hyperbolic here but the ideas have developed to the point where these ideas, if taken up, are a serious threat to feminism.  It's the first serious pushback.


*The Japs thought exactly the same thing till this bloke came along.