Attention Rather Than Merit

Attention, as in other people noticing someone, is a necessary part of status, which itself is an integral part of the human condition. Human organization is hierarchical, with the most successful males at the top and the least successful at the bottom. In order for a male to gain status, he must get attention for whatever deeds are rewarded by the community in which he exists. Status seeking therefore requires attention seeking to the extent that others notice the status establishing act.

For most of human history, the causal relationship was pretty simple. The man did something that was important for the community in a way that was better than the average man of the community. Hunting for example. He may parade his success around before the rest of the tribe as a way to show off his skill. This got the attention of the tribe and he was recognized for his skill. This recognition of his achievement increased his status within the tribe.

As people settled into communities, the types of skills rewarded by the community increased along with the customs for celebrating them. The Roman triumph was nothing more than a way to give attention to the triumphant general, in order to celebrate his victories and therefore increase or secure his status. The American habit of having a daylong celebration for installing a new President is really just the modern equivalent of the Roman triumph. We celebrate the man for his victory.

Spin this telescope around and it is fair to say that attention is a normal human trait that is expressed in all times and places. This male desire for attention is rooted in the desire for status. This is, of course, entangled with the female desire for the attention of high status males. That in turn leads men to find new challenges in order to show off their prowess. Even the most extreme example of sacrificial piety may simply be the manifestation of status seeking.

Whether it is conquering new lands or increasing the prosperity of the people, the need for attention and status is the main driver of human history. The need to be better than those who came before you, in order to get attention and therefore status, naturally leads to increasing the stock of human accomplishment. Each generation seeks to surpass their ancestors in the things important to their people. The young are always in competition with the shadows of their ancestors.

If we just focus on attention seeking in the modern age, it reveals a lot about what is valued in this age, what will provide status. For example, in modern sporting events, the players are always looking to draw attention to themselves in various ways. The most popular way is to perform some form of boogie dance after a play. In American football, the boogie dance now accounts for a large amount of the player’s attention, as they practice these routines for hours.

Outside of sports entertainment, social media provides the best opportunity for one to gain attention. Males will post outrageous things in order to offend what they believe to be convention. Alternatively, they will post exaggerated versions of some ideal with which they want to be associated. The Bronze Age Pervert cultivated a cult following by posting exaggerated claims about himself and his lifestyle on Twitter. He got lots of attention to a virtual version of himself.

A recent example of this phenomenon is the story of a guy, who created a fictional version of himself as a high stakes sports gambler. A young male calling himself Robert Gorodetsky, made a name for himself pretending to be a big time gambler. His status was first cultivated by using Instagram to get attention to his outlandish behavior in and around the professional gambling scene. This gained him attention and status, as well as some suckers willing to give him money.

It is tempting to say this was just a swindle, but the evidence suggests his primary motivation was attention. The money he got was all used to promote his image on-line. He wanted to be known as this high stakes gambler, but he really had no desire to be an actual gambler. It appears he just burned through the cash like any other idiot. The purpose of it all was to be a big deal on Instagram.

By just looking at how males today seek attention, what we see is that they are mostly empty gestures. There is no merit at the core of the act. Rather than parade around the village with their kill, they are parading around empty handed, making wild claims about what they did on the hunt. Status in this age is now gained by telling increasingly bizarre and outrageous fishing tales. It is a desire to seek attention, and therefore status, without first doing anything of merit.

This is not just a phenomenon among the proletariat on-line. In fact, it is a habit learned by watching the elites. Status in areas like politics or entertainment is often just the result of clever attention seeking. In the music business, attention seeking has been industrialized and monetized. In politics, the people running for office take pride in having never accomplished anything. In fact, never have tried to accomplish anything is the badge of honor. A man of deeds is wholly unwelcome.

Of course, this is further evidence of the feminization of society. Attention without merit is an entirely female trait. Males take great risks to accomplish things for which they will get acclaim and status. Females use their natural charms to gain the attention of the high status males. For the female, the accomplishment is in gaining attention, rather than in doing something that results in attention. Today’s male social media stars are highly feminized males performing female roles.

One possible reason for this is that the avenues for gaining male status have been cut off by modernity. Richard Spencer cleverly played on this to attract an audience of young males on-line. His “Faustian man” stuff was an appeal to the natural desire of males to accomplish great things. Ironically, it was just an attention seeking act by someone with no accomplishments. Even so, it is another bit of evidence to suggest there is an unrealized desire at the core of this new attention seeking.

Another possible reason is we have quickly evolved into a state where high-testosterone males are marginalized, in favor of more compliant and less threatening low-testosterone males. The defense mechanism of the neoliberal order is to flip the normal status system on its head. The new world order is a matriarchal structure that rewards empty gestures and attention seeking. This would also explain the whole tranny thing.  Males now compete to be women.

Whatever the reason, we now live in an age in which genuine merit has no value, while pointless attention seeking is the coin of the realm. A young male would rather invest his time building his YouTube platform than acquiring practical skills that allow him to accomplish practical deeds. Because attention is disconnected from accomplishment, all attention is the same. This would be why young males have turned the movie Joker into an instant cult classic.


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181 thoughts on “Attention Rather Than Merit

  1. Hard times create strong men.
    Strong men create good times.
    Good times create weak men.
    And, weak men create hard times.

    ― G. Michael Hopf

  2. Interesting post first off. We seek fame.

    Perhaps the reasons young males have resorted to false attention seeking is that there is no more to do. All the great deeds are done and it’s time for us to step aside for the younger, more compassionate races.

  3. I view Spencer as a tragic figure. Such a waste of talent. Just google his debate with the Texas rabbi to appreciate his ability. However, fascism doesn’t work in the USA and when he started sieg heiling it was all over culminating in him driving the alt-right over a cliff in his nazi bus (Charlottesville).

  4. I think you can see why the concept of a warrior elite has its own logic. What we’d like are rulers with virtue and, while it’s not easy to select for wisdom, justice, or temperance, a warrior elite are likely at least to possess courage. That puts such a society at +1 over everybody else as a start. From there, maybe you can build structures that increase your odds of the other virtues in the elite.

    Our society selects elites for their smartness – really, their mimicry of what others imagine smartness to be. That’s pretty bad, since smart – even the real thing – isn’t a virtue. And the way we think of smartness just makes the whole thing absurd. We really develop an elite who are elite for no reason at all. With an inherited aristocracy, there was some process that made some virtues at least a little more likely. This is evolutionary fitness, gang, we need every tiny advantage in average values we can get.

  5. I (and my Lady) disliked the “Joker” movie intensely…seemed to us to be an apologists answer to sociopathy and psychopathy….was shocked to find out it was actually a very popular movie… not a good sign for our civilization..
    When a rabied animal attacks you, not because it actually wants to, but because it must by the nature of it’s disease, you MUST put it down (still feeling sorry for the animal)…

  6. The decline of male robustness is a consequence of our modern affluent society devoid of real hardship and existential risk. In the natural world of our ancestors, a soy boy would likely be dead before he could reproduce. This problem will not be remedied until we return to an environment that selects for strength, intelligence, bravery, etc. The good news is that the soy boys will fall quickly in the aftermath of the collapse. When real bullets are flying, video gaming skill won’t keep your vertical.

  7. yea/no in responds to a question is another one that raises the I’m not talking to this knuckle head flag instantly for me. what is it ? yes or no ? they don’t seem to want to commit to either one.

  8. In this Clownworld we find ourselves in the adult boys with “sunken chests” are a feature, not a bug, IMO. Inspired considerably by Lineman, Capt S and others, we are actively in the hunt for community of our people, even to the point of relocating to find them.
    To that end, “Whatever the reason, we now live in an age in which genuine merit has no value, while pointless attention seeking is the coin of the realm.”, those attention seekers make themselves more easily identified as worthless to the cause.

    Merit can take many forms, of course, but observable “fruit” is a good indicator that a man might be in our camp (or close). A family man with reasonable children and a wife that’s put together. Homeschool families, drivers of older cars, particular types of dress, general stature in a crowd, these and more give good indicators as to what a man believes and operates out of. The contrast is important. Sadly, trying to make community connections can also make us stand out. And as association and weaponized speech becomes criminal for us, having a filter for our folks is going to be even more valuable.

    We don’t need Rowdy Roddy Piper’s sunglasses to see THEM, they expose themselves gleefully! So let the estrogen-laden boys continue their descent and play the modern games. The darker the room the brighter the light.

  9. Every strain of Progressivism demands that the Laws of Nature be reshaped. This is what liberals mean by “Progress”. Four or five generations of Feminism and its insistence on role-interchangeability is about to render the species unreproducible. That will end this sorry Era!

    We’re seeing this in the Royal fracas and its wider appeal to the globohomo’s attack on tradition and patriarchy. A mama’s boy prince was easily deceived by an Instagram “princess” who smelled a dead meat beta from 5000 miles. Both are specimens of modern celebrity cult and victims of that most Feminist of institutions – divorce. What could possibly be left for these 2 empty vessels, but politics? Even the Clintons and Obamas saw “opportunity” written on this banana.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxxQR3aOnJk

  10. Interesting theory.

    The phenomenon of attention without merit has happened before. A couple of examples that come to mind are the sophists of ancient Athens and the cliff divers of Hawaii. I’m sure there are numerous other instances throughout human history.

  11. Our society values bullshit and posturing above all else. Look at the Neocons or our political class.

    Boys and men who want to learn trades or who just like working with their hands have been derided since I was a teenager in the early 80’s . Like working with metal or wood? Well it’s clear you’re dumb as all the smart people go to college and push paper.

    Today you can’t find a middle or high school that has a wood or metal shop.

    For young boys the situation is a disaster. Instead of learning how work with their hands build things with mechano sets and the like. Today’s boys spend all their time with a Ipad that stunts their development and ruins their attention spans. Maybe if they’re lucky they get involved in MMA. But many remain lacking the skills their fathers and grandfathers had.

    In terms of being man, there are few venues available. You either join the military and go for a very tough MOS that puts you in a select brotherhood or take up a hard ass trade. BTW I used to be a industrial electrician, it was hard, dirty work but I worked with real men who watched your back. You could actually trust these men with your life. There was a camaraderie you will never find in the white collar world.

  12. Status has been uncoupled from merit for a very long time. It has certainly become worse (or more noticeable) with widespread access to the internet. Perhaps “noticing” is the first step towards reversing the trend. Mumbles Menino rose through the ranks from “bag man” to “coat holder” to “driver” to mayor-for-life. All without ever having uttered a simple declarative sentence.

  13. This post ties together more loose ends than a macrame artist. Food for thought enough for another satisfying Z Man buffet!

  14. “there is an unrealized desire at the core of this new attention seeking”

    Said another way worth thinking deeply about, “most men lead lives of quiet desperation”.

    Turn inward with philosophy, rest that question of the nature of mind. The ego is blind, it can’t see it’s thru a kind of surrender that brings the end to the desperation of seeking perceptions.

  15. We absolutely live in a matriarchal structure that marginalizes high testosterone men. For example, look at our current DUI laws, where you have to pay a fortune to sit in a room and be lectured to about your health and endangering others by a useless cat lady. Even in the 70s you could get into your Eldorado after six or seven martinis at the steak house, put on some Sinatra, and drive home in peace. Matriarchies are fleeting because they consume a vast amount of resources to stay afloat. Matriarchies require a thousand steps of conversational gathering to do even the most routine things and micromanage on every issue. Patriarchy, on the other hand, is ruthlessly efficient and only cares about a few important things. Our current bond market, now supported almost entirely by the Fed, funds the matriarchy. When the bond market can no longer function, the patriarchy will re-emerge as the dominant way of human interaction, and all the cat ladies will be shuffled aside with their boxes of wine.

    • “Even in the 70s” ?

      Try “even in the 80s”.

      I do distinctly remember an awful lot of what would be called “drunk driving” on the part of myself and pretty much everybody I knew in high school and college – in the early to mid-80s.

      And everybody I know of a similar age – will tell the same story. I have a friend who says he once crashed his car off the road… rolled it down the embankment – and when the cop showed up to see what was going on – offered him a ride HOME (not to jail). And he stresses the point ” I was obviously drunk”.

      The male/patriarchal culture is – at least in my opinion and experience – FAR more tolerant of misbehavior, at least among males – as long as that behavior doesn’t result in actual harm.

      Whatever happened to those pranks they used to pull at MIT , you know – like the one where they put a fake cop car up on the dome – complete with a revolving light and a box of donuts in the passenger seat?

      Those days seem long gone.

  16. I still like Spencer, believe in him, and want him to succeed, but Z’s diagnosis is hard to deny. Bitter medicine is still salutary.

  17. This is why I advocate for young dissident men to join the trades especially mine because you are still rewarded and can advance by doing manly things well…Their status comes still from strength, speed, and wits and not from virtue signalling or victim status…Like I’ve said before if anyone needs some direction for their kids or someone that they know let me know…

    • You are an admirable role model for young men. I was happy to hear that young men in your life are following in your footsteps. Well done.

    • Trades are highly underrated. Had I known about elevator repair, and its heart surgeon like wages, I would have looked into that trade as a career option early on. I have to go to the gym to break a sweat. Going to the gym is the blue collar work of white collar people.

      • Where I live, getting into the trades is still a sinecure. You either have to get into the local Ag-Tech (with an Ivy League acceptance rate) or know someone. And surprise, surprise, surprise! The lack of immigration enforcement has evolved into the “Trades” being dominated by people who have no fear of their hiring practices attracting the attention of non-existent immigration enforcement.

        • When I talk of trades I’m talking trades that have a hardcore apprenticeship to weed out the undesirables…On the “others” hiring their own is one reason why I advocate for our own Communities…

        • R.O.B.G;

          What you say about hiring illegals in some of the trades is true. But there’s a kind of Sayes Law problem: If you don’t hire illegals for cash and no bennies, you’ll be underbid by those who do. So now what_?

          Actual enforcement of E Verify would go a long way to fixing this.

      • JR, it’s worse. Often, the trades are scorned. This is elitism at it’s worse. I believe such thinking is one of the reasons this country is tearing apart over a “class” divide.

        I told this story once before, but way back when as an undergraduate, I was invited to a BBQ at a married friend’s home. So a bunch of us egg-heads went and stood around talking “shop”, which of course was interesting to nobody outside one’s specific discipline. Certainly, not the wives and girl friends. Anyway, one of the guests was a master auto mechanic that taught at the community college trade program.

        After an hour or so, guess who everyone stood around and listened to? You’d have thought he was selling something, but no, he was interesting, funny, and had a zillion car repair stories that involved detective work and quite a bit of deductive reasoning. Hell, everybody had a car and everybody had had their car break down at one time or another and could identify with him.

        He put the rest of us academics to shame, but I was a bit to young to comprehend such at the time.

    • As much as I bitch about the quality of some of the tradesmen I’ve used, I must also say that when I am impressed, it is always with that hard charging young guy Lineman mentions. You can just tell by watching. Then ask a question or two of a young fella—how long you been doing this, how did you get into this trade, where do you expect to go in the business, etc. You’ll find a young man in a hurry—with answers and a plan. No excuses, no hesitation, no entitlement BS.

    • Lineman;

      For the average (and that’s most of us) young guy of today there is also a strong economic argument for joining the skilled trades instead of going to an average college for a near-useless degree. Positive cash flow from day 1_! Zero student debt_! By year 4 you’re likely to be making 2x your counterpart who went to college, *if* they can find a job, that is. And. if you’ve saved money instead of buying a big-assed new truck, you’re well on the way to being able to get married and buy a house.

      Besides this, you avoid the misery of having to regurgitate demeaning, transparently stupid, feminist BS just to get your increasingly mediocre ticket punched. When you’re done for the day, you’re done, period. Then you read/study whatever you want.

      • Exactly right Brother…Not only a great wage but the benefits and retirement are great as well…I bet not many people can say they don’t pay any medical premiums and still receive cadillac care that they don’t have any out of pocket expenses…

        • Lineman;
          I forgot another bennie: Once you’ve established yourself as a solid guy you’ll start getting offers to meet quality women who are your co-workers sisters/cousins/daughters.

  18. Status is a, maybe the, fundamental social currency. Men are hardwired to seek it, women to be attracted to it. When attention, to gain status, is decoupled from merit, I think that is the definition of a bored society. B/c attention without merit has another name, entertainment. And indeed, who are, literally the superstars of this age? The entertainers, actors and singers. Who is remembered from the 19th century and first half of the 20th century? Generals, war leaders, scientists, explorers etc. Who will be remembered from this age?

    Boredom is the combination of affluence, in the sense of material needs taken care of, and security. As the hunter Capstick once wrote, about a hunt for a man-eating lion, when a twig snapped among the trees as the men were gathered around the fireplace at night, suddenly no one was bored at all. And this boredom dulls the mind, weakens the body and saps the spirit. B/c, even though intensely craved when absent, safety is boring. That’s Darwin’s tax on our minds for having evolved from an ape that was the prey of cats, wolves and hyenas.

    • At one time, a man had a vested interest in making something of himself. In all but the trashiest circles, if he wanted a steady supply of sex, openly live with a woman and produce a family, he had to get married. Almost all men were willing and eager to marry. What kind of woman would a guy who was content to pump gas for a living attract? A low quality one. He had an incentive to, say, learn how to be a mechanic to make good money and perhaps even own his own shop one day. The ideas was to attract a high quality mate.

      That’s not true anymore. Easy sex, living together, welfare and feminism weakens the reason for a man to succeed.

  19. “…merit had no value”.

    Is cuz merit has as a consequence a violation of the spirit of our age. Equality. If one man has more merit than another then how can they be equal? It’s unPC to speak of merit because inequality is a consequence. Affirmative Action laws exist to erase merit and affirm perfect human equality. Your inferiors may in fact be superior cuz they can be your equal without even trying!

  20. Everything by design and going according to (((plan))). The ‘central planners’ are gleeful at finally getting their wish that anything muscular & European must be immediately snuffed out through Human Resources, Courts, or in many (and my) cases the aggressive Police State. Don’t dare flex on -us- you f-cking plebe.

    RooshV has a profound article about this very thing from 2015, this was around the time he started realizing that his life had been wasted in large part chasing something meaningless and short-lived but at great effort and personal cost.

    http://www.returnofkings.com/58794/men-are-nothing-more-than-clowns-to-the-modern-woman

    This was the beginnings of the realization that we REALLY do live in Clown World in the most literal sense of the world. You must ‘entertain’ a modern wahmen at all times lest she lose interest which can happen rapidly in that vapid bird brain looking for dopamine hits from the shiny object that shows her pictures and plays sounds for her 24/7.

    None of this can be altered while women maintain such an adversarial role to their men, and again, this has been a century in the making feminism being hand in glove with cult marx, communism, and all the other poisonous -isms dreamed up by the Bolsheviks and their ilk. They attempted to core european masculinity head on and realized it was a losing proposition at the cost of millions of lives. So they snuck in through the back door by appealing to the natural vanity of women and reorienting them slowly over decades. Most women KNOW they have it good and are far too selfish and short-sighted to push back against the machine that keeps us living in a gynarco-tyranny (h/t Heartiste, PBUH).
    I’ve experienced a very severe version of this first hand for many years of my life being embedded deeply in District One life. I frequently walk through entire buildings of people for meetings or job interviews attempting to find a single man. I encounter many males but no men, I can cut a swath through these bugmen because they are noodle armed chumps and it is obvious I ‘don’t belong’. (hence why I’m trying to get out now, I’ve overstayed my welcome) And the women know this as well. Thus I generally get two reactions and not much in between. Immediate interest or fear.

    The second one has undone me in both relationships as well as career wise because a quick trip to HR can eliminate any white alpha male in a jiffy these days with all sorts of false accusations. The last time it happened was the extreme version where even a competitor brown male realized he could summon the Sword of Damocles to drop on me by merely telling TPTB that he was afraid for his life. Nothing else needs to be stated and little evidence is needed. The enforcers will be along shortly to collect you so that you dare not disrupt the clown world system they’ve worked so hard to put in place.

    It took decades to build this open air prison, you won’t be escaping from it in weeks or months. You ready to dig in and start being an insurgent, hiding in plain sight? That is what they did to build it, and what you will need to do as well to tear it down. There is no ‘easy button’ on this one, it will be multi-generational.

    • “I’ve overstayed my welcome.” That, AP, captures the zeitgeist in a nutshell for me. I feel utterly alienated by almost every social institution around me; and the knowledge that my opinions are not merely unwelcome but hateful takes the wind right out of my sails. All my years of training and education are deprived of any wider purpose than my own amusement, which is deeply galling. It is a daily struggle to quell the rage and bitterness that wells up as I drift through the ruin of society. The only antidote has been to cultivate extraordinary gratitude for every morsel of sanity and decency that happenstance still brings into my life on occasion. I have also come to see how essential it is to create new communities based on shared values, even if very small, as Lineman so passionately and persistly advocates. Zman has done a good thing by creating this space and allowing us to realize that we are not truly as alone and unwelcome as it so often seems.

      • I know the benefits it brings to your heart, mind, and soul which is why I advocate for it over and over…😉 I also know the power that comes from numbers working in unison towards the same goal which our enemies know as well which is why they strive so hard here and elsewhere to keep that from happening…

      • Maus, you need to meet up with people in your area who think like you do. It will reinvigorate you and get you working constructively with others to build out a like-thinking community.

    • Everyone seems to keep quoting that “butt pirate” we cast into the void a couple of weeks ago. 😉

      • Perhaps, and perhaps he merely states the obvious as one detractor here remarked. However, he manages to point the obvious out with a turn of phrase that is erudite, pithy, and memorable. Hence, we keep quoting him. To quote him and to remark on such is not to promote or accept his deviant lifestyle.

  21. “Weak men and immodest women.” There are Europeans who would make of men and women beings not only equal but alike. To both, they attribute the same functions equally, impose on them the same duties and grant them the same rights. It is easy to see that, in this ambition to make the one sex equal to the other, both are demeaned and that, from this crude mixing of nature’s works, will emerge weak men and immodest women–Tocqueville

      • “Easy to see”, for him. I do love that guy. This is a man who foretold the battle of America against Russia for control of the world back when Russia was still a backwater. And innumerated the exact nature of the cultural and political steps that would one day lead to our dissolution. Presicely innumerated.

        • James, don’t sell yourself short, you remembered and reminded us of what de Tocqueville said. And for that, we are all enlightened.

  22. In the early 19th century, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting five ambitious young Man With A Plan types, each of them carrying their opera score rolled up under their arm. By the late 19th century, the young Man With a Plan had a crackpot political manifesto or zany revolutionary pamphlet he’d written, instead of an opera.

    By the early twentieth century he had his manuscript of the Great American Novel. Then, we had the Young Man With a Horn (at first a trumpet, later a tenor sax). By the Sixties it was the Young Man With a Guitar. Then it was a turntable or a rapper’s microphone. Then it was a computer program. Then a startup company. Then an app. Now they either have to cut their dicks off, convert to Islam, move to Brooklyn and start an artisanal gourmet pickle company, or else dress up in an Antifa Halloween costume and go out hunting imaginary Nazis.

    I’m predicting a return to garage rock, it’s so much easier and so much sexier. Hint, guys: add a good classical-jazz-honky tonk pianist to thread into the guitar lines, and maybe a bluegrass fiddler to give it some extra flavor and dimension. But stay away from the beats. Beats are old. “96 Tears”, the Doors, and “Safe As Milk”, now there’s a sweet spot.

    • It just sort of reminds me… I was a teenager during the punk rock era, and we formed lots of ludicrous ad-hoc teenage punk bands all the time, just to get girls, because it was so easy to make yourself into a local celebrity by banging a few chords and singing something mildly clever, and girls will dig any guy who has enough guts to get onstage, get plugged in (this part is crucial, girls love to see guys masterfully using tools and heavy equipment) and demonstrate some sort of rudimentary skill. It was easier than being in the high school musical, and plus we got hotter girls.

      Anyway I’m reminded that we all discovered “96 Tears” because it’s very funny and easy to play, it makes even a retard sound cool. But what I remember was, we re-wrote the lyrics to go,

      “You’re gonna cry
      96 tears.
      And I’m gonna drink
      96 beers.”

      We didn’t know anything at the time about SMV or alphas and betas and so forth, but in retrospect, that rewrite strikes me as pretty darn alpha. Plus, it worked.

  23. Lying used to heavily penalized, socially and otherwise. Lying is now largely rewarded. Building a reputation over the long term? Ha. Fake it till you make it is king now.

  24. One of the things I notice about the shitlib social engineers is that whenever they turn their formidable intellects on a problem… they invariably make it worse while claiming to solve it. Racism… sexism…free speech… you name it – their best people are on the job and our culture will be better off for it! So shut your gob, and let your moral and intellectual superiors handle it!!!

    So it goes for ‘toxic masculinity’. I can’t take it anymore. I used to smirk and laugh as fags like that moron at Jim’s Blog, Vox Day, and other poseurs coached youngsters on the manly arts of dominating each other and scoring with women and it’s heart breaking to see the youngsters go along with them. Back in the day of wooden ships and iron men – guys like them would have been fired out of a cannon. But – it is what it is. Those guys are the blow back from 4th or 5th wave feminism. The new world order has destroyed our women too. When you do something to hurt one gender, you always end up hurting them both.

    I am hopeful though… the so-called ‘Tradwife’ movement is picking up steam in the UK of all places – otherwise known as Cuck Island. If they can turn the corner on that problem, we should be able to as well.

    • I’d just add that if we are talking “TradWife”, we’d best start talking “TradHusband” in the same breath. One can not happen without the other, and I believe *both* need to be brought into balance.

      • Amen. Much grief could have been avoided if Adam had said to Eve, “No, put down the fruit.” Darkness enters the world through women, but it’s men who call out to that dark nature.

        • Correct, KGB. There is enough blame to go round.

          And yet… they’re innocent too. We now are into our second generation of kids who never had to fail, that grew up on participation trophies, for whom their self esteem is more important than their merit. Their parents are often divorced, and some poor kids are raised by queers, pedos and other sexual degenerates. They don’t grow up right because they have no foundation of morals or ethics to build on.

          How do you convince a pick up artist with ‘game’ to become a Tradhusband? It’s now a catch 22: he’s not going to expose himself to divorce court rape, penury and poverty that would come from marrying the modern slut. Because the sexual contact has been nullified by feminism, women can no longer count on the men.

          Eventually something is going to give.

          • What needs to give is the state-imposed economic ecosystem that feminists and their fellow travelers inhabit. (government jobs and government-mandated/instantiated fake private sector jobs) Actual producers are being robbed blind to pay for them. That’s why I am very happy that the budget deficits under Trump are at record levels.

            There is no repairing the system, and even if there were I do not want the system repaired so that foreign invaders can inherit it. The systems governing European peoples are broken and need to be replaced. Harsh reality: that which cannot go on forever will not. The maggot people may be able to kick the can down the road for several more decades, but eventually the chickens WILL come home to roost.

      • At one time, parents often told their daughters, “Don’t worry about getting an education. You’ll get married and your husband will take care of you.” The attitude changed and in the 1980s, even conservative parents warned their daughters, “Men are no good nowadays. Get an education because you may have to stand on your own two feet.” Now, I am aware that the majority of divorces are filed by women and not for major reasons such as abuse or adultery.

        Still, Boomer men expected to be the primary breadwinner. Even today, the most feminist woman expects the same situation. It’s human nature.

  25. Girls becoming more masculine and boys becoming more feminine was one of the things mentioned in “Dialogues with the Devil” back in the
    60s. Many of the things the Devil was supposed to be doing to destroy mankind on the various worlds has become ever more apparent.

    I sometimes wonder if the dialogues were not real.

    • I’ve never heard of that. The writer looks pretty interesting. This is from her Wikipedia page

      “Many of Caldwell’s books centered on the idea that a small cabal of rich, powerful men secretly control the world.”

      Ha!

    • Z: “Males now compete to be women.” It hurts to read that sentence because of its truth.

    • There is a physical basis for it. male testosterone levels in the Western world have dropped like a rock as well as sperm counts.

      As to why. It’s the industrial chemicals in our foods, containers, etc.

      We now have males in their 20’s who have T counts that of 90 year old women. See the Buzzfeed test of their male employees.

      • “male testosterone levels in the Western world have dropped like a rock”

        It’s not just the West. I was talking to some Pakistani women the other day, and they were complaining how the young (under 30) men back home are increasingly and disturbingly non-masculine.

        So be of good cheer, O ye dissidents and deplorables.The dreaded wave of swarthy, swaggering, Muslim-male conquerors swamping the West is rapidly running out of momentum. (Of course, if we nonetheless end up conquered, by flouncing faggots rather than striding supermen it will be to our even greater shame….)

        • Ok, but at least it improves our chances of survival if the prospective conquerors are also weakened. Or perhaps it just delays the crisis.

  26. This is not simply about usury. It is about that and the many forms in which culture is cheapened. Ignorance of a great past leaves a people directionless. Everyone chases after short-term glories that are fleeting and lack resonate meaning. The future becomes a fantasy not a responsibility. The present is Ex Nihilo Nihili Fit: from nothing comes nothing. To say that we are a people is to say that we have a past, a great one worth preserving and building a future upon. Calling out the rot and cutting it out is what this poem is about:

    Canto XLV
    By Ezra Pound
    With Usura

    With usura hath no man a house of good stone
    each block cut smooth and well fitting
    that design might cover their face,
    with usura
    hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall
    harpes et luz
    or where virgin receiveth message
    and halo projects from incision,
    with usura
    seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines
    no picture is made to endure nor to live with
    but it is made to sell and sell quickly
    with usura, sin against nature,
    is thy bread ever more of stale rags
    is thy bread dry as paper,
    with no mountain wheat, no strong flour
    with usura the line grows thick
    with usura is no clear demarcation
    and no man can find site for his dwelling.
    Stonecutter is kept from his tone
    weaver is kept from his loom
    WITH USURA
    wool comes not to market
    sheep bringeth no gain with usura
    Usura is a murrain, usura
    blunteth the needle in the maid’s hand
    and stoppeth the spinner’s cunning. Pietro Lombardo
    came not by usura
    Duccio came not by usura
    nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin’ not by usura
    nor was ‘La Calunnia’ painted.
    Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis,
    Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.
    Not by usura St. Trophime
    Not by usura Saint Hilaire,
    Usura rusteth the chisel
    It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
    It gnaweth the thread in the loom
    None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;
    Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered
    Emerald findeth no Memling
    Usura slayeth the child in the womb
    It stayeth the young man’s courting
    It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
    between the young bride and her bridegroom
    CONTRA NATURAM
    They have brought whores for Eleusis
    Corpses are set to banquet
    at behest of usura

  27. It’s the same thing in art. Up just before WW1, works of art were grandiose and complex. Then Dada became a thing and by the 60s, it was all pretentious art installations and public displays of nudity.

    They couldn’t compete with the masters. At first, they went for shock in the form of nudity or disgust. When that wasn’t enough they went for “deep” where the work needs a paragraph to explain it’s worth. Now the height of modern art is the ugly female artist nude covered in her own menstrual blood, screeching. Don’t worry someone will tell you the point.

    • I have a simple test for “art”—sort of a “I know it when I see it” test. If a piece of art makes me “stop and think” about it, it has value. If l’m repulsed by it, or most often indifferent, then it’s not art, it’s a cry for attention or most often just mediocrity on display. Most “art” is mediocre, it will never stand the test of time—unless museums dedicated to mediocrity become popular.

      And yes, I freely admit I could not even draw a stick figure on my best day. But there is more to art than technique. 10’s of thousands of students are enrolled in Fine Arts programs around the world, they all know technique, but do we have a surfeit of Picasso’s, Mozart’s, and the like. I don’t see it.

      • Well lets not forget the Guggenheim which is a vast repository of mediocre art or take any museum dedicated to modern art. I remember wandering into a local MOMA one day, talk about barren and senseless. The real kicker was a grotesque, brutalist apartment complex next to it. I expected at any moment that it would disgorge a horde of ax wield maniacs.

        There is truly something soul crushing about modern art and architecture.

    • Tykebomb,
      The art in modern art is not the painting or sculpture displayed, its the explanatory essay below; all art is verbal gymnastics now. Some say its because of the take over of the art world by a people with no history of visual art but purported high verbal IQs.

  28. Lately I’ve been floating the term “whore economy” to describe a system (our current one, evidently) that incentivizes and rewards pathological attention seeking above all.

    As that term suggests, it marks a feminization of society, but one oriented towards the most vicious and disruptive feminine qualities.

    The emergence of this kind of system may not be something new to our time. In fact it might be a predictable symptom of an unraveling social order. A couple of Shakespeare plays come to mind as illustrating the theme in history.

    • Have to agree. The women of the 19th Century sought attention by being “accomplished.”
      “‘It is amazing to me,” said Bingley, ‘how young ladies have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are.’

      ‘All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?’

      ‘Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens, and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time without being informed that she was very accomplished…’

      …’Oh! certainly,’ cried his faithful assistant, ‘no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, all the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.’

      ‘All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.’

      ‘I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.'”
      https://modernmrsdarcy.com/the-accomplished-woman/

      Reading, writing, arithmetic, sciences and social sciences, languages, music, dance, artistic endeavors, and needlework were required of the accomplished lady.
      https://randombitsoffascination.com/2014/11/04/accomplished-lady/
      Not really that daunting, just general education for the time.

      Today? Attention and status are awarded for the display of natural or surgically enhanced charms,* conspicuous consumption, disruptive behavior as mentioned, and professional attainment. Males are beginning to be very body conscious, as well, not that it isn’t appreciated. Back in the day, boys didn’t give too much thought to their physiques, generally speaking and Charles Atlas notwithstanding. Today they tend to be almost as body obsessed as women.

      *Those “natural” charms may take quite a bit of effort and skill to cultivate, so perhaps in that sense they are something of an accomplishment.

      • At one time, a truly well-educated person was expected to know history, foreign languages, literature, etc. The idea of a liberal arts education was that there were certain things that a free man should know in order to properly participate in society. Public schools actually taught and people studied on their own. Nowadays, a person might have a PhD in psychology but not know the years the Civil War was fought nor care.

        I’m a tail-end Boomer and didn’t know anyone in HS who bulked up. That would have been considered weird. Boys did sit ups, push ups, ran around a track, and girls were beginning to get involved in sports. There’s also more obesity than ever. Even cheerleaders are fat but I guess that it would be “discrimination” to bar fat girls from cheerleading.

        • Lack of a liberal education starts in high school. Way too much BS going on today at the expense of basic cultural literacy. I remember extensive Shakespeare reading in English class—not Mya Angelou and Ebonics. My senior year math textbook was exact the same as my college freshman year mathematics textbook (that’s how I knew I was in the wrong class). Economics was taught and so was World Geography. We learned about every major country on earth, but particularly Latin America. Hell, we had a test in which we had to match pictures of South American “leaders” (really dictators, all) to their respective countries in South America. In Chemistry we learned to use a “slide rule”—it put a man on the moon and still was essential for engineers. We manage to get in 4 years of a foreign language as well.

          This was a *public* high school. Of course, all White, but not all wealthy. My mother—for all her faults—broke her ass to move into such a district in order to enroll me. But for her, and the Grace of God, I’d not be here today.

          • Still can recite who speeches from Shakespeare that we had to memorize in high school. For geography had to hand draw and label maps of various continents. You never forget that.

        • Don’t get me started – I do sports physicals from time to time and have often found a near-spherical mass on the exam table who is going to be a cheerleader, or swim, or play soccer. All I can think of is, poor coach who can’t pick and choose any more.

          I’ve posted this before too, but it’s a lot of fun and there are always new people here. It you are much over fifty, find one of your high school yearbooks. Look up those you remember as fatties. Spoiler alert: they won’t be any more.

          • Some chubbies and one morbidly obese boy. That’s it. Chubettes didn’t wear short skirts out of embarrassment.

      • Charles Atlas, look up a photo, could not compare then to what is today considered mediocre wrt body-building. Hell, high school seniors in sports or just young gym rats are more defined—and perhaps physically stronger. And it’s not just steroids.

        • I looked up pix of Charles Atlas. He had a nice physique. You are correct that many young men are more muscular now. Alternatively, many young men are more fat.

          I watched the Italian sword-and-sandal pictures dating from the 1950s and 1960s on tv and Steve Reeves who played Hercules was more muscular than Charles Atlas. As corny as those films were, it indicated that people still enjoyed watching movies set in the past.

      • If men are honest (and women know this or why else “augment”), there is something compelling about seeing a women with a nice rack. No doubt this is rooted in some evolutionary mechanism; but such theorizing isn’t half as satisfactory as recieving a simple smile in reaction to the appreciative male gaze. Sometimes the most basic truthes are also the most elegant.

        • It’s knowing that they are fecund that draws the instinctive gaze of a mating aged male…Women know it to which is why they get their boobs done…

        • I believe there is Neanderthal period smallish stone figurine of a naked, chubby, female. Think I saw it in the Smithsonian. Sort of a cave man Venus de Milo. Such sexuality is that old.

    • Many of them respect it nonetheless.

      Women want to be liked. Men do too but being disliked often goes along with acting masculine. They don’t teach you that in school. Young men have been trained to be women.

      As crazy as it is it makes sense why all the gay/trans/effeminate stuff is happening.

      In other words, don’t be afraid to offend women. You don’t want someone who can’t handle you anyway.

      • Thats the problem painter. Women want to be liked and yet are eschewing those things that men tend to like about women; men want to be liked and yet are doing those things that women (pre)tend to like about other women.

        So we have women competing to be more like men who are competing to be more like women. Gross.

        To your point: men need to stop wanting to be liked and start working toward being respected by other men. Other men they in turn respect for their work.

        This is what breaks the bondage to the femcentric attention whoring amd re-orients toward actual merit, which re-orients toward the natural sexual polarity and commentary nature of men and women.

        We aint going to break the gynocracy by playing gurl games better than the girls.

        Operate outside the fag hag scrum for likes and we moght be able to restore some natural masculinity. The women will follow.

        • I agree and like I said below working in the trades especially mine will do that for a young guy just starting out…

          • Hey Lineman, are you familiar with Mike Rowe from that tv show ‘dirty jobs’? He has been speaking up about the war on hard work and the trades. I’m sure its got all the appropriate diversity and prog-approved signaling, but it does address a lot of this in tangent if not head-on. I haven’t dug into it so I’m not necessarily advocating, but i like what I see on the surface.

            It is a model that I think our guys need to emulate as part of building a preferential, self-serving economic infrastructure insulated from globohomo pozz. I don’t think community can survive without it.

            https://www.mikeroweworks.org/

          • Yep he is definitely pro trades and I think his voice is reaching many…You really need to get out of the city Brother it would help you out in ways that imperceptible to you at the moment…

          • Mike might not be one of “our guys” – but he is on the path. He might have different views of the racial issues – but I’m sure if you had a conversation with him he’d agree on some of the gender / feminist issues.

        • Yup. Do your thing. If it offends oh well. Their problem not yours.

          Only way to fix it is to be masculine. Bring it back. If that means you ruffle feathers or have fewer notches on your bedpost so what. Your future wife, your kids and grandkids will thank you.

        • A lot of the support for Leftism among white males at least is purely poosey begging. It comes from guys who think they will have more success with women by adopting their idiotic politics – “Oh nooo! I would never buy an AR-15”. They don’t get that most of women’s political posturing is just their way of participating in a gynocentric modern social religion from which men are prohibited by definition.

          It isn’t necessarily that these guys are insincere though certainly some of them are. A lot of these sad young guys are just hollow men with no direction in life so they adopt views they think will get them laid.

      • To use the language of the young guys, women are biologically-driven to “shit test” (fitness test) men, in particular prospective mates, all the time. Biologically-speaking, eggs (ova) are expensive and in short supply in the fertile human female, whereas in the male, spermatozoa are cheap and plentiful. Women may acted offended by the guys who defy them, who they claim are offensive, but deep-down, many respect them, even feel an attraction to them. Contrary to their politically-correct bleatings, almost no women want limp-wrested Alan Alda types; they want themselves a man’s man.

        The grave danger that this dynamic poses for our civilization, for the West, is that – having created a society awash in betas – the feminists and many of the rest of the women now find that they aren’t happy with these soy-boys. Aren’t attracted to them,don’t want to be around them. Which is why they are voting en-mass to import de facto armies of swarthy, dark-skinned men from places like the Middle East. Men who will fulfill their biological imperatives. Or, so they imagine…

        In reality, they are importing what William Lind and John Robb term 4GW – fourth-generation warfare – de facto invaders who will set their heretofore safe and secure societies ablaze and send them back to the 1600s where their rights and privileges are concerned. There will be a lot of confused women in our midst, wondering how they came to be wearing burkas and hajibs.

        • I’ve been saying for a while now – to women – when the subject of “feminism” comes up………….. that the way things are going the ultimate end result of the feminist experiment is going to be women losing all their rights – and probably wearing burkhas.

          It really pisses them off . Especially when you punctuate it with some laughter.

  29. A young male would rather invest his time building his YouTube platform than acquiring practical skills that allow him to accomplish practical deeds.

    I think part of it (though it’s certainly not the only factor) is that a lot of young people don’t think that there will be much of a future. If there’s no future, why build something lasting?

    Why build a nice house, for example, if you’ll just have to white-flight later?

    Why do something virtuous if young people are taught to scorn virtue (and their elders)?

    Analogous to business: people don’t invest as much when the future looks bad, or even just uncertain.

    • Yeah, gotta be careful about using that as an excuse, but you’ve got to admit that the future isn’t what it used to be.

  30. I think there’s more to it. In a post-christian, materialistic age the only people that have immortality are celebrities. No one else matters so if you want to matter, you must get attention otherwise you’re just walking dust.

    • Yes, I read awhile ago that the average person is 3 generations away from oblivion—completely forgotten, as if he never existed. I never thought of leaving a lasting memory at that time. Never thought of a public legacy. But after that insight, I do. Quite a black pill.

      • And that’s why you should pray for the souls in purgatory that have been forgotten by every person on Earth.

      • Compsci: your observation is correct. But, it is far more than the average person; the vast majority of folks that have ever lived never had a lasting legacy beyond their grand-children or, in rare cases, their great-grand-children.

        This is our lot in life. I have no illusion that I will have any real effect on any generation so far removed. Even celebrities fit this category, as the number of those remembered much beyond their deaths is statistically insignificant. I am happy.

        I raised two boys to be hard-working, honest, and punctual; they are valued in their circles for those virtues. I ran a dozen foreign exchange students through my home; at least 4 of those had life-changing experiences. While working, I mentored dozens of new hires as a technical lead; younger staff fought to be included on my projects because it was well known they would grow as a result of the experience.

        In the end, all you can realistically hope to do is to improve the lives of your children (or other wards) and to not purposely disappoint those that you love. I have done both to the best of my ability. I am content. Now, if TPTB would just leave me the fuck alone so I can die happily, that will be enough.

    • Good point. The softening of males does seem to have accelerated. My grandfather used to mention it when I was a boy. He’d say he grew up in the age of wooden ships and iron men. I was in a world of iron ships and wooden men. Not much of an exaggeration. My cohort was no where near as tough as the men of the early 20th century.

      I look around today and it is not just the physical aspects, but also the mental aspect. Young males are strangely girlish in their disposition. John Derbyshire has written about this. Males are almost androgynous now.

      • I’m an X-er, and the “uptalkers”–guys whose voice rises in pitch a little bit at the end of sentences–started just a few years after my time. It makes them all sound weak, effeminate, or gay.

        I’ve got to work with some of those guys and it drives me absolutely @#$%ing nuts.

        • In addition to “uptalking,” men have picked up the feminine habit of saying “right?” at the end of each statement. Whenever I hear this quest for validation, I always respond, “How would I know if it’s right, you’re the one saying it.”

          • Hah, hadn’t thought of that one, but will notice it forever since you brought it up. I know it’s been a pet peeve for time immemorial (or as long as I’ve been around), but saying “like” every fourth-to-seventh word, too. Typically, it’s used as a filler to give a person some space to fought up their thoughts into speech. It denotes a lack of confidence in conveying ideas. This lack of fortitude is always present in feminizes, low-t men.

          • DLS, I call it the “NPR accent.”

            I hired a digital agency a couple years back for a business of mine. Total waste of money but thats another story. The firm was full of up talking millennial dipshits.

            Not surprising, it was 90% sales spin and 10% value-added service.

            Mostly cute-ish young girls and a handful of numales. Somewhere there was likely an actual man running the scam but I never saw him.

            They all spoke this cult-like jargon of poopytalk that went in circles. They had a rhythm that was obviously formulaic to the point of making me cringe like when the home security salesman knows he is not saying anything of value but can’t break script.

            They would talk for an hour and be right back to the beginning of the problem with nothing but a plan to have another call.

            I dreaded their weekly update conference calls. Their voices were like talking in crayon.

            I wanted to believe that their lack of oratory skill and atrocious casual vernacular did not reflect a dim intellect, but maybe instead merely reflecting the social decay we see everywhere.

            But in the end I was left to conclude that it was both social decay and mental retardation.

            The inability to clearly articulate ideas, problems and solutions and to navigate the natural vectors of conversations – even within their area of supposed expertise, was well out of reach.

            Like so much of that generation it was about going through the motions. Just tell me whats going to be on the test.

            I would have been embarrassed for them if they weren’t such arrogant pricks. As if no business has ever been built before Google.

            With a handful of hours on free blogs and youtube one could learn their entire business (Using the black box of search google analytics as a fear tactic and then repackaging it and selling it as a proprietary dashboard). So thats what I did.

            Its easy to dismiss these cultural shifts as “get off my lawn”.

            But these seemingly small turns of the dial, uptalking soyboys and ubiquitous girls with phones glued to their hands, aren’t just annoying loud music that I find distasteful.

            No, their brains and bodies are changing. They are becoming something else.

        • That’s true, there’s an increase in male uptalkers. Sometimes you’ll even hear these soyboys speak with “vocal fry.” That’s a common way females speak where their voice at the end of the sentence becomes creaky. If you’re not sure what I mean, there are several videos on YouTube about the strange affectation.

          • Vocal fry for the wymns started with Elizabeth Holmes of “Theranos” – aka “The Steve Job of Medicine”.

            According to the book “Bad Blood”, there’s every reason to believe it was an affectation for the investors and the press.

            Fully expect her to go full “Little Girl” voice now that she’s defending herself for massive fraud. Think C. Blasley Ford.

        • Uptalk for the boys.
          “Vocal Fry” for the ladies. (trying to sound like men, or what they imagine men used to sound like?)

          I don’t know which one I hate more. NPR is full of it…I can’t listen for more then 30 seconds before I want to rip the radio out of the dash.

      • The welfare state paid by high taxes on working men took the risk and reward out of life. Women don’t need you because they have your job, or at the worst, can get Section 8 and TANF.

        • The big thing that that’s done is remove the survival premium for intelligence and diligence. Coupled with the separation of Sex and reproduction it’s had a devastating impact, At a recent Thanksgiving at my mother-in-laws, the seven people of my generation had 10 Degrees and six children among them.

          • Its probably better for the species . Big brained idiots almost destroyed the western hemisphere back in the 80’s , c.f Soviet nuclear false alarm incident.

            Just plain folks won’t do that.

        • Automation is an issue as well. Do to computers and automation fewer jobs require masculine traits.

          Of those that do there is a vast vast labor surplus so wages can arbitraged down. It is possible to decrease the surplus through closed borders and repatriation but “capital” will fight tooth and nail against this even though it is in their best interest long term.

          Now I’m no fan of Reason magazine but long ago back in the early 2k period they had an article on low fertility that made a salient point , simply maybe people don’t want many children and that the more affluent are having all they want.

          We have been pushing for Americans as Rational Economic Man and crushing the idea of culture for decades and now that we got him, nearly everyone who can participate is behaving rationally.

          Children are trade offs, cause unpleasant life changes and are expensive therefore have less of them. Its very sound thinking from a rational POV.

          The reason this hits us now and didn’t before is birth control .

          In any case 1 kid, maybe 2 is all people want and can handle in a city, 1 or none for apartment dwellers.

          Even ignoring the social issues here, the old standby, more immigrants is not going to work, Mexicans who make up most of them are near replacement at home and once here go into rapid decline.

          If a society we decide we want more people and I’m not sure we do or should, we’ll have to figure out how to make it work. Its going to cost and knowing our culture such as it is, we won’t pay and will leave it to the religious folks

          The future may well be Amish and the US majority speaking Palatine German l

      • How often do you see cool masculine white guys in TV commercials today? They are almost always weak, soft urban types. The kind of guy who would panic if he had to change a tire. If there’s a black guy in the commercial, he’s wise, cool and manly in contrast. Same thing if there’s a female. They’re always making the soft white guy look foolish, while the Person of Color and the female have the answers, are capable and wise.

        • Yea sets my teeth on edge and my lip into a snarl when I see that Battery Commercial with the oh so smart gurl giving the white male a jump start because she knew which battery to use and he needed her guidance…If it wasn’t the hotels TV it would of been thrown out the window…

        • Instead of Black Achilles, we’re gonna get Jessie McGuyver. In a dress.

          The season cliffhanger- is Jesse pre- or post-op?

        • Seriously? I’d say pickup truck commercials (usually).

          But nothing else. Literally nothing else.

          • Which piece?
            The latter you can find in many of his 12 rules lectures
            the former because I recall you expressing a surprisingly curt (surprising to to me at least) dismissal of the man.
            I think he’s right about 80% of the time and the other 20%- White nationalism and “anti-semitism” is due to a deficiency of testicular fortitude rather than of conviction.

          • I used to think likewise—fruit of the tree and such, but lately I’ve been seeing so much of this in my closer friends children that I’m inclined to look elsewhere. In (((another))) tradition it is considered poor show to brag on your kids to excess as they are a gift of God and your input is rather limited in comparison.

            Maybe at the extremes we have a finger to point. But today, I’m not as sure as I once was.

          • She was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis when she was a little girl. She’s actually doing pretty good.

          • Agree on the daughter. Much of it seems physical affliction rather than intellectual,

            I don’t know what to think about “The diet” thing .

            I may give it a shot just for shits and giggles.

          • You mean Jordan Peterson who argue about feminism and at the same time insist Kavanaugh should resign?

            Jordan once said that Jews dominate academic field not because of ethnocentric nepotism, but they are superior

            translate to Normie friendly, what Jordan actually said is he has no principle and he won’t turn around Pro-Semite politically correct virtue

          • That’s the piece I disagree with.
            The implied claim that achievement is genetic in jews but not in whites.
            I thing he has decided to deliberately take this position out of, shall be say, an excess of caution.

          • I’ve always understood JP to say that genetics is controlling of native intelligence (IQ) in all people, including whites, but that Ahskenazi Jews have the highest average IQ (which is universally agreed among researchers). And IQ is the greatest predictor of “success” in the world (i.e., stupid people don’t advance and generally have a harder time in life). Along this line is what he says is the “dirty secret” of IQ testing — that you have what you are born with and there really is no way to raise it; programs (e.g., online “Brain Games”) that purport to make you smarter only make you better at the game, but do not raise your overall intelligence in other areas. So, again, genetics rule all people, but liberals don’t want to say this because they want to believe–or proclaim–that their programs, education, etc., can help the proletariat. If they don’t promise that (all the while subsidizing bad behavior) what reason is there for them to vote for the LIberals?

          • “Why would you think this?”

            Because in your past posts regarding them, you have implied Stefan “not an argument” Molyneux and Peterson are sophistic Internet dweebs.

        • Though it will grate a lot of NR types who see him as competition. But given his popularity with younger white men and the message in his book 12 Rules for Life I tend to agree.

      • We see photos of men constructing the Empire State building having lunch sitting out on a girder 800 feet above the city like birds on a wire. Times were good. When the Golden State bridge was under construction during the Great Depression there was a camp of three thousand men waiting by the bridge for the next guy to fall off. But they had the Second World War to look forward to. Now our guy is in his mothers basement.

      • ” Males are almost androgynous now.” The countless photos they post of themselves with huge wide open gaping mouths….

        • Don’t forget the stupid head tilt. Came in the late ’90s (I think), Before that men sat for portraits with head erect (so to speak of the larger one).

      • The vilification of testosterone the last 35 years is not a coincidence. When even dissidents have otherwise thoughtful men like Steve Sailer routinely perpetuating the myth that high T is the only factor to consider when discerning violent or angry behavior, you know the efforts to feminize males has been effective.

        Western Civ was built by high T men who had the benefits of quite a few other useful traits that are absent among our swarthier populace.

        • High-T kid were given Ritalin in grade school (during the 1980’s). This was to de-ball the boys and prevent a good portion of them from growing into men that would disrupt the feminized progressive social structure being built. And what do you know? Millennials are a very left-wing cohort.

      • “Young males are strangely girlish in their disposition. John Derbyshire has written about this”
        And who would know better?

      • This is because there is not much need for testosterone or masculine culture in modern life other than in some working class and poor peoples jobs.

        Also our leaders prefer weaker people so they can run their lives thus increasing their status which is in truth all there is left to compete for at the higher levels.

        This is natural outcome of prosperity past a certain point and the net result will be either extinction as humanity can no longer reproduce or most probably a gradual end to the prosperity.

        Humans being evolved to live in small bands (under 200) of hunter gathers will eventually fall back to what they evolved for. or go out.

        As a species modern humans may be as old as 500,000 years which means we’ve spent maybe 2% of our species lives with cities and until recently the last 100 years or so, most people still lived in villages.

        We can sustain village life since the numbers are the same or close enough though villages are often quite violent since people can’t just up an leave to deal with social issues but we cannot and will not sustain cities and modernity.

        How many will die along the way no one knows but when Rome fell I’m told it went from 1 million at its peak to 10 thousand losing 99% of its people. We may end up with something along those lines though if I had to hazard a guess we’ll decline to less than a billion

      • V.D. Hanson touched on this probably 6 or 7 years ago now. He noticed the change in his students, as he has been teaching Classics for some 40 years. Said he had done phone interviews and wasn’t at all sure until deep into the conversation if the person he was talking with was a chick or a dude. (Although he put it far more elegantly than that….lol)

    • Agree, David. I read “The Abolition of Man” 30-plus years ago, and it’s more contemporary today than ever. (Recall too, Lewis wrote it in the ‘40s.)

      It’s also incredibly compact—you can read it in an hour or so, and its insights stay with you. When I was thinking of a book to give to my son as he was headed for college, it’s the one that immediately came to mind.

      I would add that Lewis’ science fiction novel, “That Hideous Strength,” is a “companion” to “Abolition” that likewise has taken on a prophetic quality these days.

      • Just a note for the uninitiated: “Men Without Chests,” which David referenced, is a chapter in “Abolition of Man.”

      • Hideous strength is the only one of the trilogy I haven’t read. Will make a point of reading it.
        Maybe all these younger men should be encouraged to read all of Lewis’ short works, I believe they would be very amenable to it.

          • I’ve heard that criticism about Lewis’ female characters lately; but I wonder whether it has more to do with current ideas of “femininity” than it does with Lewis’ actual portrayals. Few of his fictional characters, male or female, are vividly memorable. But the scenarios he creates, and the ideas he dramatizes, are compelling. His novels are meant to give expression to his own imagination, rather than to plumb the psychology of the figures he invents.

          • Lewis’ Space Trilogy is “Out of the Silent Planet” (about a trip to Mars), “Perelandra” (about a trip to Venus), and “That Hideous Strength” (about an attempt to institute a demonic social order in Britain).

            Fun mid-20th-century sci-fi/fantasy (with a Christian accent) if that’s all you’re looking for. But also packed with ideas and critiques of the larger social forces that we’re still living with, and indeed that have metastasized to dominate life in the West.

            “The Abolition of Man” is an extended critical essay (in several parts) about the same social forces. It’s amazing how timely it is nearly 80 years after composition. At about 100 pages, there’s little time cost involved. So everyone should just read it. If it clicks with you, it’ll shape the way you view a lot of what we’re observing today. If not, you’ll not have wasted much time.

    • We have seen a large decrease in value of physical strength. Strong males were once natural leaders, but now most tasks requiring strength are done by machines. So men lift fake weights in air-conditioned rooms for the sole purpose of showing off their physiques, but do not use their muscles for anything productive. There is a big difference between gym strong and farm strong.

      • Also a quibble. Strength is its own reward, from the dopamine, to the boost in confidence. Strong, evem gym strong, men, are healthy men. Not the bodybuilder steroid men, but the average man doing basic barbell training.

        • I agree gym strong is a good thing per se and didn’t mean to disparage it. I sit in an office all day and work out with free weights in a home gym in the evening. It’s great for your health. But I feel bad that this practice has attained more social status than we used to give those who worked with their hands all day, who are now looked down on by many of the gym strong social elites.

          • You’re speaking of the tradesmen.Yeah they got the short end of the stick when the Marxist intellectuals took over public education in the late 70’s and started purging the shop classes from school.

            Now we have entire generations of men who cannot use a Arc welder, run a lather or even change a fan belt on car.

            And invention of the Ipad and similar devices has been devastating on male children. Instead of learning how to work with their hands and move around. They sit all day and play stupid games, stunting themselves.

          • Worse, Rwc. They don’t even play games.
            They go to youtube and watch other kids playing games

            Just to hear someone talk to them.
            Whole channels of this stuff. Some tiny entrepreneurs are getting very rich.

          • I honestly don’t think that games are the worst of it.

            The worst of it is that the digital world has led people into the belief that they are “doing something” when they create things digitally.

            There is VAST difference between building a house using a graphical drawing application – and actually having to build one in the real world.

            There is a vast difference between “racing” a car in an online sim, and sitting in behind the wheel of one going 150 mph with the real potential to get yourself killed doing so.

            The digital world has created one or two generations of males who believe they are “doing things” – but absolutely hate the idea of getting their hands dirty ACTUALLY doing things.

          • We got the short end of the stick when the illegal beaners overran this place because the rich fucks are cheap and lazy.

          • @ DLS: It is my belief that we as humans lose something important when we let so many computers and machines take over work we ought to be doing ourselves. Goodness knows, our high-tech inventions have done wonders – fed millions and much else – but efficiency isn’t all there is to living. Men in particular need to do work with their hands and bodies to feel as they should, even males who work in sedentary jobs. Personally, I go a bit nuts, a bit stir-crazy, being too inactive. There is something else that ranching and farming and other such things do – they keep you in contact with the natural world and with what is real. And there are satisfactions which accompany real tangible work which produces real, visible results – which can be obtained no place else.

          • Georgiaboy61: Very true. Studies show that what makes people happy is not accumulating material wealth, but in feeling like you accomplished something. I move numbers around on a computer screen all day. I know I accomplish things, but it’s not as tangible as putting up a fence or building a house.

        • Paying someone to mow the lawn or deliver the paper used to be the way the pensioner generation encouraged industry in the young.

        • “[work out] and then pay someone to cut their grass”

          A good indicator of a mark (as in susceptible to a con) is the man who takes the elevator up one flight to his gym, to use the stair machine therein.

          • My favorite is the people waiting for a parking spot to open in the first aisle of parking closest to the gym…..meanwhile there are acres of empty parking 100 feet away.

      • DLS;
        Agreed about gym vs farm strength. Played HS football in the early ’60s. Your summer job was your conditioning camp. However, as a downside, farm labor was then and remains now pretty dangerous. Had a hay wagon roll over my thigh after I fell off stacking bales. Farm conditioning must have worked because I was uninjured.

        • Al, I’ve often wondered about the difference, and if it accounts for the prevalence of “core injuries” in athletes. That is, all the gym weightlifting results in an unbalanced physique, compared to muscular growth from hard physical activity.

          • Triathlete here.

            And being an endurance athlete will give a person a generally stronger core than someone who is just lifting weights getting “ripply” while standing in front of a mirror.
            It’s a different type of fitness.

            There is a big difference between the high-ish status meatheads developing physical strength by lifting weights in an air conditioned gym to impress the females, versus developing physical (and mental, in fact) strength & endurance by doing things like swimming, biking, and running for a recreational sport, plus the goal of staying somewhat fit.

            Just a friendly chime-in that there are different types of strength / physical endurance work. (And farm work, no doubt, tops them all. But in the growing absence of that, I’d rather go ride my bike any day of the week!)

            Riding a bicycle for several hours (ideally outdoors) is a lot better for a man (or a woman), than, say, a man (or woman, yikes) lifting weights with the sole goal of getting “ripply” just so they can continue to “look good” for the opposite sex.

      • The thing that people don’t understand is that the “modern” school and corporate environment , as well as the society that we all live in – seems to actively work AGAINST physical strength and using your head to stay alive.

        What I have found after spending the 1st half of my working life in small business and/or startup companies – and then the 2nd half working in a large international corporate environment, is that the large corporation environment is stifling to the expression of ANY sort of masculinity – right down to and including mundane everyday tasks like lifting boxes. This may not seem like much – but when I worked in high tech startups – you got things done. Working in a lab that meant doing stuff like picking up a 100 pound server and carrying the thing across the lab to install it into a different rack. In the large corporate environment – this is ACTIVELY discouraged – up to and including threats that you’ll be fired if you do it. After you take the required online safety classes – which explain to you that you cannot life more than 35 pounds without a helper, the daily life consists of people who will bitch at you for doing simple things like this.

        I know more than a few guys who have dumped working in a high tech company – to go do stuff like drive a tow truck. They just couldn’t stand it any more.

        I would also trace the decline in masculinity back to all the safety nazis. The ever increasing mandates from the EPA and OSHA dictates on things like automotive safety, have almost entirely removed not only any actual danger that might have existed in daily life , but have removed any SENSE of danger that might have existed out there to teach males to get their shit straight.

        I would also add any and all forms of welfare into that mix as well.

        Danger in all forms has been removed from society – and this has taken out the stressors that might have ‘naturally’ helped males build themselves up while leading their lives. Now – with all of that removed – you’re in a situation where you’ve got to survive in the feminized world – and if you’re trying to retain your survival instincts and “maleness” – that’s another task stacked on top of everything else you’ve got to deal with. And it’s a hard one. So it gets avoided rather easily.

        If you want a return to the healthy male society – whichever dictator takes over after Trump must eliminate OSHA, EPA, all car safety standards, all work safety standards, all forms of welfare….. etc.

        Only by doing that will you create a reality that males will have to rise to the occasion for – and females will “naturally” (by virtue of simply not being able to deal with it) – be excluded from.

        You can have your feminized “safe” society – or you can have a society that breeds strong males , but you can’t have both.

        • Many good points, especially on safety NAZIs.

          But I would add another factor: “bargaining unit” set-asides. In my former life LARPing as an engineer there were situations where you are not permitted to do “union work” such as moving furniture, lab equipment, or in extreme cases, merely plugging and unplugging devices (this was in Chicago, at McCormick Place, where a meathead straight out of “union thug” central casting physically threatened me for plugging stuff in in our own display booth at a convention).

          I’ve generally been able to get away with doing physical things by dint of staying on good terms with people so I don’t get ratted out (also keeping really weird/late hours helps). But it’s annoying to have to depend on that. (I did work in a place where the PhDs had it in their contracts that they were allowed to do “bargaining unit work”. That was great.)

          But yeah, the culture at larger places is to NOT do physical stuff. I am considered eccentric for doing things such as moving boxes of records (Iron Mountain guy says “My helper called in sick, I can’t move all these boxes of records myself”. Reply is “Then I will take an hour and be your helper, because we must have all this out of the office today.” This is apparently weird behavior.) Is it an optimal use of my time? Generally, no. But situationally, sometimes yes. Same thing with personally wheeling your patient to the CT scanner, when they have a 10-minute slot that suddenly opened up NOW, and patient transport is backed up 30 min.

    • Amen David.

      On the individual level we make men without chests. The aggregate of this is that masculine virtue is wiped out.

      What they can’t kill, however, is our instinct toward rekindling our masculine spark. So thats why the landscape must also be modified to prevent that.

      The feminization of our people makes it almost impossible for men to form groups.

      Free association of men, outside of moslem invader sects, is basically illegal at this point.

      And the combo of feminization of social protocols and the faggotization of everything male that doesn’t serve the gynocentric imperatives results in a kind of no man’s land.

      Men can go monk, hermit, or play ponytails with the girls and homos.

      Displays of masculinity for its own sake are hateful, exclusive, and misogynistic.

      Any male bonding outside of scripted female-approved man-cave playtime violates the social order and is ridiculed. Some men say GFY. But too many are locked into the frame of female approval seeking.

      Other areas of historically male-oriented bonding have been preempted by the gay mafia and thus avoided.

      Forcing male status seeking through the feminized displays like social media preening doesn’t just foreclose the potential for masculinity to form, it also cements male status as beneath that of women and faggots.

      Playing their game is capitulating all masculinity from the start. Everything then just becomes either a race toward more feminization or a contest of poosy begging and female approval seeking.

      So the best a man can do is compete within the feminized system for likes.

      Even if a man can beat most men in this game he is just trading in female currency in a system built for female primacy; he might as well be just a girl in boys clothing.

      He cannot actually compete against women because they are always higher status by definition.

      If he beats a woman he looks like a clown, gains no status; if a woman beats him he is a clown, loses more status. This is how we get legions of soyboys (racing toward androgyny) and a few faux alphas (racing toward amassing their legions of aspiring faux alphas).

      We see this in how males like Joe Rogan with all their masculine signaling will still poosy beg and pay their tributes to the gynocracy.

      In fact his “success” is largely attributable to his skill in packaging masculinity such that striving males can feel manly consuming it, while not actually building masculinity for its own benefit this becoming a threat to the queen. It is merely a nexus of larping to entertain and sell junk.

      He pushes the envelope but remains inside the femcentric plantation of display, consume, signal status, consume, etc.

      Nothing actually grows but his own status In the shadow of Oprah.

      I have a really hard time spending time around males who exist in this feminized state of hollow display.

      Even close friends with whom I can exchange hatefacts or truthspeech on occasion are like children in how they are trapped suckling the tit of the various virtual social media platforms.

      Ultimately I find it difficult to trust a man that would draw his worth from the serpent tents. As long as he is invested in the gyno apparatus he is unreliable IMO.

      Like any addict I suppose. At some point he will steal from me to chase that dragon.

      • Screwtape, you need to meet up with like-minded people. It will be a start in turning things around for you, and will help you turn your well-founded ideas and observations into a beginning of community-building, based on your (and our) principles.

      • @Screwtape: Excellent and insightful comment…. to which one might add: The feminization of western civilization, including the U.SA., has not occurred by chance. What we see around us today is the culmination of a century of Cultural Marxist attacks upon the foundations of the West – the traditional home and family, the church, the schools and education, the legal system, ethics and the law, the media and entertainment, politics and civic institutions, the military – and traditional notions of manhood themselves.

        There are those who say that the West is dying. That death, should it occur, will not have be n due to natural causes but to cold-blooded murder. We ought to be asking: Murdered by whom, and to what purpose and what ultimate end?

        The answers to those questions are somewhat involved, but a good starting point may be the fact that the increasingly totalitarian globalist movement has as its dominant ideology Cultural Marxism, which is to say communism, and its dominant religious creed appears to be Islam.

        • Georgia,

          Totally agree: this is not some accident.

          I’m old enough to have witnessed the long march on my watch. I’ve seen it up close.

          I was a boy scout, active in church youth groups, an elite athlete, an artist; grew up poor but went to an elite college, worked for small firms and the best/biggest. Unique first hand perspectives of both dirt and cloud.

          So I have seen the war on boys and men; the slow decay of boy scouts, title IX ruin sports, rape culture mythology and affirmative action hate policies ruin college, churches go full fem-prog, art go full ugliness worshipping pozz, corporate HR cancer and diversity, being told I had to hire women, etc.

          I have been cast aside for my folly of believing in the beta-provider lie; hypergamy revealing when my status was in question, my net worth liquidated.

          I have seen globohomo financialization become paramount, the dark triad personality and defect-defect strategy become prized, and the inversion of natural sexual polarity strip-mine courtship into dopamine roulette and empty, ugly rutting dominated by pimps and whores.

          And I have seen the salve of nihilism and hedonism slathered into the fissures in the hearts of those in its wake, with no shortage of snake oil salesmen and instawhore influencers like so many pied pipers willing to “lead”.

          My ongoing struggle to simultaneously separate from the evil system while building my own economy and community that can tap into it without succumbing to infection has been ten years in the works.

          I have yet to establish an economic solution; alternating currents of depression and inspiration, of engagement and disengagement, of taking risks and building and avoiding risk and running out the clock. Of bad actors and bad luck and apathy in its wake.

          And in that time, the culture accelerating into clownworld, putting me further at odds with the institutions and culture at large. Modern bugmen and harpy women souring what is left of the commons.

          I can see the puppet strings now. I know the truth. Things that can’t be unseen.

          But this also has a way of isolating. Which in turn demands a level of self-generated ambition and optimism that can be exhausting to maintain.

          Such is the challenge of many of our men these days.

          I’m really not a doogie downer. I am a pretty happy guy and laugh and play often. See beauty all around me. In spite of these sullen words.

          I have many close male friends, twenty plus years of mutual investment. Though geography separates.

          And a lovely woman in a budding relationship. Plus I take care of my mind and body, cultivate my hobbies, indulge my curiosity, avoid media, tech, bread n circuses.

          So better off than most.

          What Dutch, Lineman, et al recommend is spot on: to meet people IRL and engage; to seek out and build community.

          But to do this with a robust and mobile economic means is proving to be a challenge I have yet to overcome.

          I do have a move planned. Not the one I want, but one step closer I hope.

          I am thinking those straws that break camels backs must also work the other way. At some point all these small moves must add up to something.

          Thanks for your thoughts. Off to move some heavy weights around. Cheers all.

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