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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27719 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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Interestingly 1) is basically the conservative Hobbesian view right? That all of civilization is just a skin over our inherent natures. Women it appears are aware of the Leviathian shaped hole, even if they have never heard of Hobbes.

Which probably aligns with memes where men threaten their daughters prom dates with guns. They believe an 18yo man can't be trusted with their daughter without some fear being involved.

The question is are they right or wrong. I might suggest the large amount of rape during invasion and conflict might point to an underlying truth many men are uncomfortable with.

That more men than we might think would rape when the social order is not there.

Of course that is just a subset of the idea that more of us would murder or commit violence in general in the absence of a restraining force. The state of war of all against all.

"It follows that, in such a condition, every man has a Right to everything--even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural Right of every man to own everything exists, there can be no security to any man--no matter how strong or wise he is."

In a Hobbesian view there may not be a lot of difference between a bear and a human unburdened by societal restraint. We both exist in a state of nature.

Of course the bear is atill stronger and has better natural weapons. Is it better to be hunted by a bear or a human (assuming the human only has what they can cobble togerher in a forest)?

Women it appears are aware of the Leviathian shaped hole, even if they have mever heatd of Hobbes.

An old redpill/manosphere saying was "Men are the real romantics, while women are, at the end of the day, the hardcore realists"

Validity of that statement aside, I think your phrasing is far better and more inclusive of real cultural dynamics.

Of course that is just a subset of the idea that more of us would murder or commit violence in general in the absence of a restraining force. The state of war of all against all.

Is this not self-evidently true? Societies with weaker social/cultural/legal system infrastructure have higher rates of physical violence, SA, etc. There's the infamous (repeated!) studies on Papua New Guinea pointing out how it's Heart of Darkness levels of pain and chaos.

Does this mean that inside the heart of every man is an eager but repressed rapist? Of course not. That's on-its-face wrong. The entire point of well developed social/cultural/legal system development is to leverage the inherent social conformist nature of humans to build broad pro-social patterns of behavior. In fact, those who fail to conform in the extreme are either/both (a) locked up permanently and/or (b) labeled as cognitively malfunctioning. This is a good thing. What could be looked at as "boys will be boys!" behavior to an A.D. 1000 viking is now seen as "criminally insane and unsafe for anything besides lifelong warehousing."

Well if it takes a well developed cultural system to leverage us into not behaving that way, then are we not just repressed rapists? Just ones buried under years of conditioning? Teach men not to rape indeed..

Just to be clear I don't 100% agree with Hobbes here, though I think it is as you say partially true. Just noticing the similarity in positions between somewhat feminist thought and the Hobbesian conservatives.

You're right. And it wasn't lost on me the weird parallel between Hobbes and feminists that emerged when I wrote the response. I can't say I've totally wrapped my own head around it. All of us Trads do say "We need trade values or else society will fall apart." But it's couched heavily with the idea of personal choice; "You can choose to not follow Trad values, but then your life is going to be shitty." I'd contrast that with the progressive concept of culture which is fundamentally authoritarian; "You MUST adhere to the approved cultural norms, or else you are dangerous and will be excluded from society."

"Teach men not to rape" is too far of an extreme because I think the implicit assumption is that men are born with the rape module turned up to 10. I don't think this is the case. Men (and women!) are born with the basic mammalian firmware desires for food, water, shelter, reproductive activity. The duty of society is to teach men and women how to go about fulfilling these fundamental needs in pro-social ways.

Appreciate your comment. One of the better "stop and made me think" situations I've had on here in a while.

the Leviathian shaped hole

I admit to not being enough of a Hlynka scholar. Can someone explain what this actually means?

A related question, who coined the phrase Leviathan-shaped Hock? It's been living in my head since I read it in one of these roundups.

I did, to make fun of them both being a meme at the same time.

Essentially (to my understanding) that people assume our rules and norms are self-enforcing whereas in actuality (as per this theory) without significant effort we would exist in the "state of nature".

So thinking that men would revert to such a state when deprived of the social efforts to repress our base instincts means you are noticing the hole in our current (mostly Western) mindset.

Exactly what it says on the tin. Modern civilization is so successful at hiding the base reality of violence that props it up that it's easy for people to forget it even exists. That we're just animals in a well organized pit.

Though I would argue, here this distance from violence rather manifests in being so delusional that you think a bear isn't a death machine that can eat you alive on a whim if some armed man isn't around to save you.

As I understand it, it's the assertion that whenever someone identifies a societal problem and begins asking "why is it like this? what can we do about it" the answer is that the identified problem arises from something we ought to already be aware of; base human nature.

The solution (what Hlynka used to point to as the piece that would fit into the "Leviathan Shaped Hole") is often some mix of traditional cultural values, a stronger executive within the state Apparatus, more rigidly defined social roles for men/women/minorities/majorities. I'll admit that on this last part, I could be a little wrong as Hlynka's writing was often a little impenetrable.

I hope I'm close enough here.

In war, aren’t you selecting for people who are already murdering people? War is different from just the state of nature.

Well Hobbes believes the natural state is war of all against all. So the idea here is that everyone is really such a killer if left to our own devices. And war (or other catastrophes) just removes the oversight we would normally fear.

I think Hobbes is wrong. Most of the time most people are like hobbits. State of war is the oddity; not the normal.

Both Rousseau and Hobbes are wrong. There has never really been a thing such as the state of nature in the anthropological history of man, we were never perfect individuals, we were always individuals living in communities.

Man isn't inherently good or bad. He's both, has always been both and will always be both.

The point that Hobbes makes that this common Shire existence exists because there is a sovereign to monopolize violence and enact justice is still a potent one though.

The saga era Iceland didn’t really have a sovereign and it wasn’t super dystopian for the era

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