A discussion with a friend the other night brought up the blog, and I mentioned that I was not entirely happy with the narrowing of my focus; specifically too many “collapse of Western Civilization” items.
After a bit of reflection this is unlikely to change, because I don’t care a whole lot about pop culture, and I require motivation to write this stuff. Motivation comes from strong emotions (indignation/disgust being most productive) or interest. A number of things that I’m merely interested in don’t inspire any (I hope) clever insight, but most of all it’s the NAME of the thing. I called it “Arithmetic on the Frontier” not merely because I like Kipling and it sounds cool, but because of what I hope to put across here. It’s about the Sharp End.
The sharp end is generally taken to be the “tip of the spear”, e.g. the folks on the front line, and I certainly work that angle. Note that the front line isn’t merely military; it can be anyone dealing with difficulty or fighting stupidity and ignorance in all forms. The other thing I try to address is the “thin edge of the wedge”. This can have the same meaning as the above, but here I mean it as some fresh (or ancient) indignity being hoisted upon right-thinking people. “When I use a word, it means what I want it to mean” indeed, but I’m sure you’re used to that here by now.
What does this have to do with anything you may ask? Well, a bit of clarification in the mission statement is useful at intervals, but it leads into this:
Executive Summary: The Western World has quietly become a civilization that undervalues men and overvalues women, where the state forcibly transfers resources from men to women creating various perverse incentives for otherwise good women to conduct great evil against men and children, and where male nature is vilified but female nature is celebrated. This is unfair to both genders, and is a recipe for a rapid civilizational decline and displacement, the costs of which will ultimately be borne by a subsequent generation of innocent women, rather than men, as soon as 2020.
It’s a loooong article, be warned, but worth reading, especially the parts that link to this guy. This does NOT mean that I agree with all of it, particularly not the bits about developing “Game” so as to play the women who aren’t worth the risk to marry. Entertaining reading in its’ own way that, but not addressing the problem.
None of this is news to me, but I read a lot of this stuff yesterday (I read a hell of a lot faster than I can write) and it made me think about it. My life bears absolutely zero relation to anything described by “Roissy in D.C.” , but he links some interesting stuff, and gives a glimpse of a part of the blogosphere that I had never thought to explore. That namely is one of unmarried men (never, or divorced) who are unimpressed with the women they know.
This is deeper than mere chauvinism; many of these guys are talking about women who are not looking for “the classic provider beta” male, so to me if these “cads” pick them up for a “pump and dump” (using the lingo here) I feel scant sympathy.
Of course this is the tactical picture, and seems an adaptive response within a certain slice of the American population (urban, educated, at least the women) to the strategic problem of many men feeling marginalized by the current Western legal position of men and marriage. I have thought about the basics of this as laid out by “The Futurist” and others, and the current state of feminist-dominated family and divorce law cannot survive.
This doesn’t mean that it’ll all come apart tomorrow, but ask yourself this; do you know a man who has been taken to the cleaners by a woman who simply felt that she no longer wanted to be married to him? I’m sure you do (unless there are 20-year-olds reading this that I’m unaware of), and the follow-up question is: where is the motivation to work hard or innovate when you’ll only have it taken away from you?
Yes, there are many legitimate reasons to end a marriage, and I most certainly don’t advocate (and would in fact fight) the repeal of the rights of women to be full and productive members of society. The problem was laid out as a combination of BOTH no-fault divorce AND guaranteed alimony.
Just because they were married, women can take a great part of a man’s income for a long time (all the way sometimes) after they split. Local details differ as to the exact regulations, but this is the general rule in our soft western countries. Yes, cases exist of men doing the same to women, but the numbers of those are not statistically significant, meaning it hardly ever happens.
These laws were passed with the best of intentions, as in many cases women would traditionally be kicked to the curb with nothing, so there is no simple solution. This is anecdotal, but I believe that the situation in this regard is much worse in the US than in Canada, so the above bloggers are somewhat biased. Alimony itself is not the problem (although child support is prone to abuse) so let’s look at divorce.
No-fault divorce is comparable to using abortion as a routine method of birth control. That’s pretty inflammatory, but in both cases you thought this was a good idea at the time and then changed your mind when the consequences became inconvenient. Phrased like that it is aimed more at women, but the numbers seem to indicate that they are most likely to initiate a divorce.
So, someone can decide that they want to do something else and then penalize the other party because of it? This seems unreasonable to me. Also, if you require extensive financial support from the other party for the children, it seems to me that custody should stay with he/she possessing the necessary resources, provided they want it.
Every once in a while some guy will kill his wife and kids and then typically himself. The numbers of these occurrences are absolutely small, but not as low as they should be relative to the rates of psychopathic/suicidal proclivities that would spontaneously generate these events. While in no way excusing this sort of behaviour, I will merely point out that it is universally known to be a bad idea to corner any animal. Men are no exception to this, and depriving a man of viable options never leads anywhere you’d want to go.
Incentives and disincentives are the real issue here. These are what make people productive or otherwise and the argument is made that de-incentivising men will cause the eventual collapse or sweeping aside of our civilization.
Much is made (rightfully) about excluding 50% of the population from achievement, e.g. the economy. While women moving into the workforce have not displaced men on a one-for-one basis, men are increasingly marginalized by official policy in addition to straight competition. As more and more of our economy moves to the Public realm this will bite harder, at least if you’re a white male.
Fred Reed has said that a civilization without men “would last until the oil needed changing” and I defy anyone to convince me otherwise. As expendable as we are individually, the current male-averse social structure is upheld by the acquiescence of men. There are certain irreducible truths in life, and that men are bigger and stronger than women is a physical fact; as a group if we are pushed too far the result will be a dark age for women that Gloria Steinem can only imagine. When men no longer feel that they are valuable to society they often do bad things as they feel they have nothing to lose anyway.
It’s not as bad as that yet, but I can distantly see it from where we are. Read the stuff I linked to this for a far more thorough take on it, but the treating of men like simpletons must end and the radical feminist agenda masquerading as many of our laws must be reined in. I am but one island of political-incorrectness, but if we are to survive as a society we must remain dynamic enough for ALL of our citizens, requiring true equality of opportunity, NOT of outcome.
I have also heard a good deal about the high maintenance required of the latest generation of young women, and it all ties in. Life isn’t a fairy tale, and a lot of women (not just girls) don’t get that until far too late. There is a lot more to say on THAT, but unless someone wants to discuss it I’ll leave it out there for now.
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