Posts
Novaseeker discusses the "haves" and "have-nots":
Christos noted, in the quote I made in my earlier post today, that the current system of dating and mating feels like untrammeled capitalism, whereby a large-ish class of “have nots” (sexually deprived men) are justifiably angry at the class of “haves” (women and the men who are in high sexual demand). He further states the following, which I think is quite telling as to the source of this anger:
It is natural to be angry with this, as much as it is natural to be angry when rich people exploit poor people. It is the same. Love and marriage is a big biological and sentimental need for most, like food. Why expect someone to be angry when he is hungry, but not when he is unloved and ignored? When someone tells you, "you are just an angry losser who can't get laid", it is the same like saying to a poor man in Africa who accuses capitalism "you are just an angry poor man who doesn't have to eat".
The cognitive dissonance between the Left's simultaneous embrace of a collectivist economic order on the one hand and an anarchical sexual order on the other has been much remarked on, especially be me. But I wanted to reflect on two different movie treatments of the role female companionship plays in a man's hierarchy of needs.
Consider Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Here is a man stranded on a deserted island, scratching out survival for five years. Hanks risks his life to escape this island, and indeed nearly does.
In contrast, consider Chris Atkins in Blue Lagoon. Again, a young man scratches out survival on a tropical island. Yet in contrast to Hanks, island life for Atkins isn't merely survival, but happiness. So much so that, seeing the possibility of rescue, Atkins turns his back on it.
What makes the difference between mere survival and happiness?
Which man among you would choose differently? Why would any man even consider turning his back on the life Atkins had to participate in our dreary consumerist society of cutthroat sexual competition?
5 comments:
I don't agree that marriage and children is comparable to food as a need. Being loved is, but love can come from a number of directions.
Where the analogy really breaks down for me, though, is that a good deal of what I have read about those "concerned" about the have-nots are (a) have limited concern for have-nots that are not male and (b) rather than blaming the haves, they mostly blame women.
There seems to be an assumption that (a) women are not have-nots or (b) they, unlike have-not men, are responsible for their own unhappiness. Very little emphasis is placed on male culpability. Suggesting that "men are too accommodating" doesn't count, nor does blaming a token 5% of alpha men and 90% of women.
Novastar even comes out for (a), suggesting (by the lack of a qualifier) that the winners are all women and few men. This would be news to a lot of women. Ahhh, but they deserve it, don't they? Individually or collectively, they must.
For those of us who do not share the underlying assumptions, it is not remotely dissimilar to elaborate theories that blame men for everything. Or blacks that blame whites (as though "the system" treats all whites the same). It comes across as something a lot less charitable than "concern" for the downtrodden.
I hadn't really selected the quote for its effort at apportioning blame. And indeed, since I do not presume that the rich are to blame for the plight of the poor (although this may be the case where force, fraud, rent-seeking, etc. are involved), I should in the interest of consistency avoid blaming women and alphas for beta lonliness.
But now that I think about it . . . it seems manifestly evident at this stage that the division among males between sexual "haves" and "have-nots" is a function of the destruction monogamy as a legal and social norm. It is equally clear that this destruction was wrought by a de-facto alliance between feminists on the one hand and Hugh Hefner's playboy philosophy on the other. Call them "women" and "alphas", respectively, if you wish, but this is where the blame truly lies.
But the truth is that my post was mainly an excuse to put up that picture. :-)
The picture is quite appreciated! I wanted to comment on the actual question at hand, but I haven't seen the movie so it's hard to. I suspect that I am too social a creature (something I don't say often), too romantically optomistic (ditto), and too much a technophile (okay, that I say often) to take living on an island with a wonderful and beautiful woman.
The destruction of monogamy as the social norm is attributable to a lot of things, though. Depending on whether you're referring to the sharp lack of enduring monogamy in the younger years or the commonality of divorce and not-infrequent singlehood in later years.
Regarding the former, circumstantial culprits would include (but would not be limited by) the increased prevance and idealization of youth culture, delayed maturity and life responsibility, and the (perhaps illusory) protection of sexual exploration provided by contraception and abortion. The people that support (and acknowledge) these things are not simply feminists and Hefner types. The status quo is also supported by people that don't have easy access to sex but prefer (or think they prefer) the comparatively few partners they do have (and have to bust their butt for) to marrying the best girl that would have them in their late teens and early twenties. And people that are, for a variety of reasons, against strong social institutions even if they theoretically serve their own best interest. And optomists that believe that even if they have trouble procuring sex now that things might change if they could just get their game on.
Regarding the latter, feminists may be as big a culprit as any since they support the loosening of divorce law, but they have the support of a lot of men outside the realm of alphas that are either sympathetic to the need of a woman to leave or want to reserve the right to leave an unhappy marriage themselves.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't point out that the anarchy has a way of sorting itself out on the terms of those involved. There are winners and losers, but it hasn't necessarily created a system of losers (and those losers are not, I have to repeat, all men).
In any case, the "enemy" here is not women or alpha males but mostly social liberals of all stripes. They're the ones that want to balance monogamy and the institution of marriage with individual autonomy and other considerations. I should note that most of my criticisms here do not apply to thoughtful and fair-minded social conservatives who have more comprehensive explanations for what ails society, but for those that hunker down on the simplistic equation that "I do not have as satisfying a love life as I would like, and since I would like these relationships to women and women will not have them with me (on the terms I would prefer), they are to blame."
You never saw Blue Lagoon? I guess I betray my age in remembering when the movie came out and the controversy that attended it. Rated "R", it is considered a milestone in the sexualization of teenagers for adult movie audiences, although by present standards, the movie is almost quaint.
On the point at hand, sure, you can find all kinds of people that support the easy availability of divorce and abortion for both personal and ideological reasons. But only feminism had the political muscle (including the ability to gain the compliance and support of political and legal elites) to carry off these institutional changes. I fail to see how the other people you describe were either necessary or sufficient to effect the same thing.
But I agree that "women and alphas" are poor proxies for social liberalism. And I would further agree that it is hard to have much sympathy for those men whose only objection to the social order is that they weren't at its pinnacle.
Post a Comment