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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30730 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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I need not persuade you that we suffer from a lack of responsibility today; it is a common enough opinion. We are told that young men are refusing to "grow up": they aren't getting jobs, they aren't getting wives, they aren't becoming stable and productive members of society. Birth rates are cratering because couples feel no obligation to produce children. The right complains that people feel no responsibility to their race, the left complains that people feel no responsibility to the workers' revolution.

By the way, this notion of growing up and being a man who knows the stakes and plays his part etc. etc. has become a topic of some contention among the homoerotic sim cluster of the online right (BAPists). I found it interesting in how it clashes with the view prevalent here, espoused e.g. by Hlynka, FC and others. Says BAP:

Most "right wing" Public Intralexuals are under the thumb of wives or Ezra Levant types and impotent "advocacy" for flag, cross, FAMILY--which comes pre-caricatured and has done nothing for decades--is a cynical advantage for people who just want to be on TeeVee. Few things are more useless than pontificating how Liberal Capitalism destroyed Community and like, you should have a family, be religious, etc.; what would actually be effective--all-male groups, parties, factions--is not only not encouraged but derided as "gay" and fascistic. Of course this line of argument, so popular since at least 2017, also has the advantage of being completely safe and acceptable to the academic left, which gives these people an "edgy" thrill...to "reach out" to Socialists for a Conversation.

Also quoting the Samurai.

His follower cites from The Podcast a rant which contains one extremely clear-headed take:

If you're in a secret society, or whatever small group of men, not a secret society, a group of men who devote themselves to, let's say a great scientific task or such, or if you're in Order of Teutonic Knights or Templar Knights or other such, and one of you, he pines to go home to his wife and that's his priority. And he does your thing during the daytime hours for work, or for money, or entertainment, but his real priority is his wife at home. That man is a traitor. And if that sounds extreme to you, this is why nothing gets done today by the way, because of what I just said now, because it sounds extreme to you. Whereas if you took even seventy or eighty years ago, communists, let me say, not fascists because whatever you can say about, you take communists eighty years ago, or you take a group of scientists or artists with the ambition that French artists had in the nineteenth, early twentieth century, everything I have just told you would have been a complete matter of course for them. But if you say it now, you're an extreme nihilist, misogynist, you don't respect family, you don't respect women, you're gay. Well I tell you that any man historically who would have put his wife and private household as his number one priority would have been mocked in an aristocratic society, ridiculed as a stay-at-home, as a househusband, would have been laughed at as a henpecked creature, a woman-man little better than what you call a cuckold now. […] This is actually what is meant by atomization by the way. A male's descent into private family life, which really means a henpecked husband.

Clarifies another:

(As a family man myself) BAP is right about all of this, about the impossibility of great work and great action under social circumstances dominated by the priorities of a man to his family, to his home above all else. But it is not complete… This leaves out the problem of being born into a time when even imagining the kind of society, or brotherhood, or endeavor that one might undertake that could justify setting aside familial obligations, or even reconstructing what those obligations are, is near impossible.

Instead, given our present arrangements, devoting your resources and energies to being a great father/husband is about the best you can do, and seems to be, with perhaps extremely few exceptions, one of the only worthwhile and noble ways to spend the bulk of one’s life […] It has become an all consuming project, so much so that it goes basically unremarked upon, that’s it’s just assumed that family ought to be the centerpiece of our life’s work

I think they're correct in their dunks, to the point no coherent rebuttal can be made (the value of the actually fascistic outlook of BAPists, and its pitfalls, is a topic for another discussion; I, for one, take great issue with their propensity for delusions and dreams of violence, and complete inability and lack of interest in building stuff).

But this familyman ideal is much more authentic and normal than the whole mannerbund LARP – particularly for Europeans with their notion of romantic love and history of pronounced selection by mate preference. It is also more conductive for maintaining order – if at minor scale. And, as with cleaning your room before taking on the world, being a good bourgeois is a deceptively low bar that not everyone can adequately clear.

But that's still a brand of seriousness that's akin to searching for your keys under the lamppost.

But regarding your point.

The abdication of responsibility, the default of all promises, reaches its apotheosis in the advance of technology, and in particular in the advance of artificial intelligence. The feeling is that one should have no obligations to anyone or anything, one should not be constrained in any way whatsoever, one should become a god unto oneself.

You might consider that the camel is only the first metamorphosis of the spirit.

I suppose I'd shrug at that and say 'the great man can devote himself whole-heartedly to his work or passion or art or group of alchemists meeting in masks and funny hats because he has a wife at home making sure he has cooked meals, clean clothing, and she handles running the house and making sure the bills are paid'.

There's a balance in everything. Someone who really is happier at home with his family and his pursuits is not a traitor; better that he go home, than stick around distracted and half-assing the job.

Someone who really is happier at home with his family and his pursuits is not a traitor; better that he go home, than stick around distracted and half-assing the job.

I mean, on one level, sure. Some random person who is happy at home isn't a traitor, but that's ignoring the context of a (possibly secret) society devoted to $GREAT_WORK.

Generally when you join such a group, you would take an oath to put the group above all else. It's the betrayal of this oath that constitutes treason, which requires that you be in the in-group before you can commit it. The in-group membership is important. The same way someone born in Bolivia cannot be a traitor to the country of Iraq, someone who never joined the secret society can't be a traitor. An enemy? Sure. But not a traitor.

Presumably the takeaway is that someone who is happier at home should never take such an oath and join such a society, which seems reasonable. But the context of the quote seems to specify someone who has already made such a commitment.

Yes, I was almost hesitant to include this example in the OP, because I knew it would be misunderstood. I considered elaborating on this point further, but the post was already at the character limit anyway.

I don't think that men should slavishly adhere to this particular life track - get a wife, get a house, get an office job and climb the corporate ladder - merely because it is the currently fashionable view of what it means to "be a man". I don't want people to live lives of meaningless hedonism, but I don't want them to be rubes either. You first have to ask yourself if the woman is worth loving, if the society is worth serving (in this particular way).

If someone says they have no time to build a family because they have to go be a great artist or whatever, then that's fine by me. He'll probably fail of course, but this is no great catastrophe to himself or anyone else; the social organism can easily tolerate a small number of losses of this type.

For the great majority of men who don't have anything else going on, building a family is probably the most meaningful way they can spend their time.

If someone says they have no time to build a family because they have to go be a great artist or whatever, then that's fine by me.

There's a fuckton of selfishness hiding under that bushel, though; for every one guy who does become a star (or even manages to become a professional who can earn a living from their art), there's twenty who are just indulging themselves and will continue to be 'in a band' or whatever for years and never get anywhere.

I'm probably prejudiced, though, by the case I encountered in social housing of the guy who left his small kids to his elderly mother to take care of, because he had to go 'be an artist' (he was a musician). Of course he never made it as a career, but it was sure handy for him to be able to dump his responsibilities on his family and go off to live the way he wanted.

There's a fuckton of selfishness hiding under that bushel, though

Well, there certainly might be. Or there might not be. It always depends on the specifics of the situation in question. It's certainly possible to use ostensibly noble goals as an excuse for laziness, hedonism, and all the rest; but sometimes a noble commitment really is just a noble commitment with no ulterior motives.

I agree with you that there's very unlikely to be anything praiseworthy about a man abandoning his children. He should have thought about the consequences before he had children, and he should have to live with those consequences even if he feels them to be a burden.

Yeah, my view is "You're single and don't have any committments? Go do what you like". But once you have dependents or committments, then man (or woman, this applies to the ladies too) up and do your duty.

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