Don Giovanni left a very thought-provoking comment in the current Open Thread. I would like to give it greater visibility, so I am reproducing it below. My response is in the comments section.
One theme that has been discussed often in this blog is that a woman who is, say, 30 years old, single, with no kids, and focused on her “career” (regardless of what kind of career that is) often suffers from poor mental health, and the idea is that such a woman is really not doing what nature intended a woman to be doing. In hunter-gatherer times, such a woman would be raising offspring.
I really wonder whether a similar argument could be made for men. Let’s take a 30 year old male that is fixated on his career. Let’s assume that he’s actually had a fair amount of career success, and has acquired significant resources. But let’s also assume that he is single and childless – maybe he’s a lonely incel, or maybe he’s actually a Chad that’s having tons of casual sex with women. Is that really what nature intended a man of that age to be doing?
I’ve met incel guys in such a situation who are basically on the verge of suicide. They’ve done everything “right” that would have secured them a wife 60 years ago – good job, car, house, etc. – but they’re “forever alone” because they haven’t looksmaxed, and haven’t put forth the rather substantial amount of effort it takes to get good at “game.”
The case of the unhappy Chad is perhaps more controversial, but I can tell you, as someone that’s both had a steady rotation of fuckbuddies / one night stands and who has been in relationships, I found that being in a relationship really helped motivate me to do well in my career and put up with the stress it creates. I’ve worked with a lot of men with families and I’ve found that they are often very successful. Work may be really stressful at times, but the fact that they’re doing it to provide for a family gives them a huge amount of motivation.
Of course, “providing” for some 20 year old that you don’t have kids with is rather different from providing for a wife and kids, but – if I can get a little Freudian – having a girlfriend who is significantly younger than me definitely has brought out my paternal instincts.
So could it be said that, just as women weren’t meant to be single and childless at 30, neither are men?
To come back to the evolutionary thinking, the one concept that I have not addressed is the case of the so-called “alpha male,” and whether Chad, by being an alpha, is actually succeeding wildly at what nature expects from him. But I would imagine that in hunter-gatherer times, such an alpha male would have lots of kids, whereas the contemporary Chad is often childless, so maybe for that reason, there’s something that’s just not quite right.
Thoughts?
One perspective I would like to add is that a healthy relationship can ground you and it probably will also make you a bit more successful in your career. For instance, it you do not need to provide for a family, you would probably walk off a well-paying job you don’t like and instead take one that is more enjoyable overall. You are simply inclined to stick with a possibly sub-optimal “work experience” if the money is good. In contrast, you would take career probably a bit less seriously if you only have yourself to take care of.
Furthermore, there is the angle of the single, aging Chad. There is a time when you will be too old to bang hot twenty-year old chicks. So, what do you do then? You probably will not bother with banging a bunch of single moms. Instead, you’ll keep yourself busy with hobbies, if you are so inclined. This is where an above-average IQ will help you. Thus, you may optimize your life for personal happiness. Yet, Chads with more limited mental facilities face different problems. This is where drug and alcohol problems come into play. Consequently, I think if you are not able to fill your spare time with worthwhile, wholesome pursuits, your suffering will be somewhat similar to the fate of the middle-aged woman who spends her evenings eating tubs of ice cream and re-watching Friends or Sex and the City for the umpteenth time.
Aaron,
1. “There is a time when you will be too old to bang hot twenty-year old chicks.”
At what age will this be at before Chad will have to start paying for it?
2. “Chads with more limited mental facilities face different problems. This is where drug and alcohol problems come into play.”
Isn’t this due to not having any real-world accomplishment like a career and/or making the money you feel like you deserve? Thus, they feel like losers in life? Also, automation is the biggest threat to many people with careers and/or jobs.
3. “…a healthy relationship can ground you and it probably will also make you a bit more successful in your career.”
I’ve often seen men just log more hours (over-time) to provide for their families than moving up the ranks and/or acquiring a higher-level position with a higher income base? Shouldn’t men become successful in their careers first before settling down and establishing a family? Nowadays, I see men give up in life and not try to accomplish anything.
4. “…you are not able to fill your spare time with worthwhile, wholesome pursuits, your suffering will be somewhat similar to the fate of the middle-aged woman who spends her evenings eating tubs of ice cream and re-watching Friends or Sex and the City.”
>From your experience working with clients, what hobbies/pursuits are the most common? Are there any hobbies/pursuits that you suggest that are better than other that have more intrinsic fulfillment than others?
>In past articles, you have cited that women who are married and have “kids” have more inner fulfillment compare to their counterparts. However, I’ve seen women who are single mothers with either with one baby daddy or multiple baby daddies who lack inner-fulfillment. How are these women devoid of meaning in life if they have kids? They have accomplished what nature intended them to. Is there something else missing? These women go out party on a daily basis like if they are in their twenties. These women are often in their late 20s, 30s and 40s.
1) I think once you enter your late 30s, it will start to get more difficult to bang women in their early 20s. This assumes that you are healthy and in good shape. I furthermore assume that you look younger than you are. I still look as if I could be in my late 20s.
2) Yes, I’d agree that a lack of accomplishments or, more generally, purpose can lead people to abusing drugs and alcohol as well.
3) Well, it’s not as if you can just move up the ladder. Putting in the hours is often a precondition.
4) I have seen a wide range of hobbies. Some guys get a dog, others work on their motorcycle. I know one guy who is into home improvement. Surely, buying a run-down house and turning it into something nicer can be very fulfilling. Gardening or landscaping can be great hobbies, too. I am not sure how you would rank your level of fulfillment but I would argue that anything creative is more fulfilling than anything that is purely consumptive. Furthermore, a lot of men enjoy some degree of physical work. Thus, reading a lot of books or watching hundreds of movies is probably less fulfilling in the long run than woodworking or even something a lot less physically demanding like cooking.
I’m not sure single mothers are a good example of what nature intended. Raising one kid on your own I would imagine to be extremely stressful. This why we used to have a division of labor. Today, we have a massive welfare state and extensive support for single mothers. Without that, you would see a lot fewer single mothers. Think of how much better the life of a woman is who can fully focus on being a mother and homemaker because her husband takes care of her. Those women, I would argue, feel very fulfilled. Single mothers do not have that, and neither do single childless feminists, which probably explains a lot of the vitriol towards the nuclear family.
Aaron,
“I am not sure how you would rank your level of fulfillment but I would argue that anything creative is more fulfilling than anything that is purely consumptive.”
I’m not sure if you recall my interest but its running marathons. It was “very” fulfilling when I was a teen in high school. Why? My dad. My dad and I would always train together and compete with each other during actual marathons. It was a lot of fun getting competitive with my dad. I wasn’t able to beat him in the marathons until I got older and stronger. He has retired years ago from running. I find myself reminiscing those days. Now, its just me on my own. The last time we ran together was about two years ago.
I recall this. Sports are of course a physical activity, so it fits the categories I mentioned in my previous comment. Also, there are the aspects of competition (even if just against yourself) and, in your case, the emotional significance as it was a bonding activity between you and your dad.
Don’t know, but learning a new language and studying some basic Math can be very fulfilling hobbies for me. For language, I am learning Spanish and Russian right now. For Math, I am working through Fourier series. I find infinite series in Math to be very beautiful and intriguing.
@Aaron: my current hobbies are mostly reading, working out and hiking.
So I see no reason why I won’t be able to do my lifestyle into old age.
Also want to get into writing at some point like you.
I also plan to play computer games even in old age, it helps to prevent neurodegenerative diseases.
But I’m high IQ and I agree, for low/average IQ people it could be more problematic, especially if they rely on parties or other social activities for their entertainment.
This makes sense, but I think it’s a bit unnecessary. Children are a part of the human experience. I don’t see how it is possible to not have that curiosity of what it’s like to hold your flesh and blood in your arms not gnaw at you. No need to overthink this one. Don Giovanni is absolutely spot on.
I do agree that it will be worse for the low IQ Chad. That is an interesting addition to this discussion.
Moral of the story? People need to get married younger and have lots of little future Chad’s and Stacys. Of course lots of things need to change socially and economically for that to be possible.
Marriage in a traditional society is very anti male imho. We are not made for monogamy.
Marriage in a society that has also lot of cheap whores, that is much better.
I strongly suspect that in more primitive times (hunter-gatherers), most alphas did not live to get very old by todays standards. Tribal conflict was widespread, and depending on the the place and time, between 20% to 50% of the male population died violent deaths. Add accidents, malnutrition, disease, and the occasional large predator to the mix, and it would be no surprise few alpha males/chads got to old age during the times during which our psychological structures evolved.
In those times, most of their reproduction would have happened in a time window that roughly coincided with the fertility window of women in similar age, so they already would have a bunch of offspring around by the time they died.
In animal species that live in packs/troops/herds etc… alpha males have a limited, and usually short tenure. IIRC, among lions, a male lion that takes over a pride can expect to be alpha, on average, for less than 2 years, which is the reason why they immediately kill all living cubs left behind from the previous male (it takes a female about 2 years to raise a cub, and they will not ovulate before, so if he waits from them kids to grow he will find himself displaced by the next male before he can raise any of his own).
So this could well be a problem that our minds are not adapted to cope with, since industrial society is only a few generations old.
If I have not found a girl to settle down with by the time I get too old to get chicks, wel… as long as your dick is working, and got some money in your pockets, you are never too old for sugar babies and prostitutes. I like reading on a wide variety of topics, so I seriously doubt I would run out of material. I might retire to the countryside to have some peace.
This whole “alpha whatever” is a red pillers wet dream. Native people lived in family tribes and the elders were the leaders of the tribe, not the “alphas”. Also, they lived like communists without knowing the distinction between “your child” and “my child”. That’s why we humans can adopt other children, or why women so many times press the “blood doesn’t matter it’s your child!” bullcrap. A lot of Amazonian tribes even believed that you need more than one man to create a child. The introduction of legal fatherhood is in fact the beginning of modern civilization and capitalistic societies. Because you are not willing to work for other people’s offspring anymore.
And that’s why our ideas of alphas and leaders are ideas of modern, capitalistic civilization. You cannot use this modern mindset and bend it into a worldview to describe the past, because like I said, native people live like communists – it’s inbred in our brain. That’s why so many people are falling for it and believe that it’s a good idea. It indeed is a good idea if you live in the wild with 200-300 people that are mainly your relatives. But it’s not scalable to billions of people.
You are confusing political leadership with reproductive alpha. In many animal species they are the same, but not necessarily. Human societies are more complex of course, and there are different types of arrangements, culture will adapt to changing circumstances much faster than biology. Still, the elders who in some societies run things (or hold other important positions, like wise men) are most likely alphas whose reproductive prime is already past them – they have already raised their children and now fulfill other functions.
Blood relations can be pushed off the center stage by cultural axaptation, but never fully ignored – there is a reason why child abuse and incest are much more prevalent between parents and adopted children.
Paternal uncertainty, where males do not know which children are theirs and carry on their genes, is a female strategy to avoid infanticide by competing males. Notice that it is only the males who are ignorant about their offspring, mothers always know which children are theirs. This has been observed in several monkey species as well.
Your reply touches upon something I missed completely in my original comment – family structure. The “lonely chad” scenario assumes a social structure based on the nuclear family, or something close to it. There is little or no close relation with the extended family, nor multigenerational homes. This is a historical oddity, and most particularly a western oddity. For most of history, in most places, tribe and clan were your extended family, so you were never really alone at any age.
So yes, growing old alone may not be something we are naturally equipped to do, psychologically speaking, although I believe it is possible to adapt to it. In any case, I am pretty certain that it would be much easier for men to do so than for women.
There have been some excellent responses to this in the Open Thread and in the comments section of this post.
The biggest source of debate seems to stem from this sentence:
“I’ve worked with a lot of men with families and I’ve found that they are often very successful. Work may be really stressful at times, but the fact that they’re doing it to provide for a family gives them a huge amount of motivation.”
I would certainly agree with Aaron that, in many cases, the wife and kids cause a man to tolerate a stressful job he may not want to put up with otherwise. I also agree with Ubermensch that having a decent job will significantly improve someone’s ability to seriously date women. I wouldn’t say I’m mixing up cause and effect, though – I’d say having a career and some type of family can support each other in a variety of ways. The kids thing is interesting, because I’ve seen countless times how it can cause all sorts of issues with work performance, but I’ve also interviewed plenty of unemployed people who would do anything for a good job so their kids aren’t homeless.
This reminds me of a comment I was going to make in response to Barry’s quotation from the unnamed woman’s Reddit post about female hypergamy:
“In contrast, the average man nowadays is quite literally the opposite of what I just described. Dad bod despite no children, ugly face, puts zero effort into their appearance, contrarian and offputting personality, poor emotional intelligence, no education and minimum wage job (or no job at all), lives in moms basement or with roommates, filthy living space with zero attempt at interior decoration, struggles with basic life skills, their main hobbies are porn and video games, and a nature that is domineering, hateful, misogynistic, and lacking in empathy.”
The “zero attempt at interior decoration” part made me chuckle, and also made me think. Perhaps men weren’t meant to moonlight as homemakers and interior decorators – just as they’re not meant to moonlight as a part-time dancer, fashion model, or “fitness model and clown,” to quote Ubermensch.
One of the biggest benefits of marriage, or a successful long-term relationship, is the division of labor it creates. One member of the household can deal with the homemaking and interior decorating, and another member of the household can be the breadwinner. Of course you’ll find all sorts of feminists say that there’s nothing intrinsic about women that makes them better suited for homemaking and childrearing, but this is clearly bullshit, as evidenced by differences in brain structure, hormones, or an evolutionary argument that should be easy enough to make.
My – perhaps cucked – stance is that household chores should be negotiated on a case-by-case basis in relationships depending on the wants, desires, and strengths of the people involved. I know guys that would love to quit their careers and be stay at home dads, and if they find a woman that is okay with that (highly unlikely), then great.
In my case, I’ve never dated someone who was making more money than me, and nearly all of my girlfriends were making somewhere from 10% to 50% of my income at the time we dated. My most recent ex was in her mid-twenties and had a full-time job, and made about 20% of what I make. I actually never bothered to ask her to cook or clean, but she offered to do this countless times in an attempt to get me to stay with her. And why wouldn’t she? She could live in an outstanding neighborhood rent-free, or travel the world with me, and all she’d have to do was some chores. For anyone who would say I’m beta for not having her pay her own way, I’ll add that my expenses were actually significantly lower when I was in a relationship – I mean, I already had a place big enough to accommodate two people, and the companionship the relationship provided me actually made it easier for me to stick to a budget (of course once I saw enough warning signs that in the long run, she was going to be a huge drain emotionally, I exited.)
And in my case, simply having someone to clean the bathroom, cook meals, and give me free sex without having to put forth all of the effort it takes to chase women would really help a lot. I’m avoiding a relationship at the moment for a lot of reasons, but I can see how this type of arrangement would be beneficial for a lot of guys. That said, I do feel sorry for the guys whose partners aren’t putting out, who are married to some obnoxious, fat pig, or who are being financially exploited by their partners. Maybe they should have spent a few years working out and fucking 40 or 50 “loose women” before settling down with one.
We used to have a functional division of responsibilities between man and wife. Feminists and corporatists tore it down. My work experience has shown me that men like to get out, move around, explore, and even do some heavy lifting (especially high testosterone males). Anybody who’s ever done a physically demanding job knows what I’m talking about ( of course there are limits to this). But lifting at work has a liberating effect similar to lifting at the gym. Women, even at work, are more comfortable in confined, submissive environments. They excell in them. Many men go crazy doing it.
Do you mean settling down with a woman or with a loose woman? If it’s the latter, I’d say guys should search a bit longer. Obviously, it is getting more and more difficult to find women who did not have ten or more guys before marriage. However, it has been well-established, even by politically correct “science” that a greater number of premarital partners increases the risk of divorce quite significantly. It is also a good indicator of poor mental health and a whole slew of other personality issues. Given how high the prescription rates of antidepressants among women are, you could even argue that, on average, women today are depressed and emotionally unstable. Yet, if these are your odds, it is better to give up your search after a few years if you don’t find anyone to settle down with, and focus on other goals in life.
I meant settling down with a woman, not a loose woman. I can confirm that in my experience, women with a high partner count usually have psychological issues. Not all of these women came across as bad partners, although obviously, as you date someone for a longer period of time, they tend to reveal more of their true colors, and I’ve never dated any of these women for long enough to let their craziness take its toll on me.
As an aside, I have the privilege of having a sister who is much younger than me – still an undergraduate, in fact. I say it’s a privilege because it gives me a lot of insight into how younger girls operate, and because I’m used to taking on a paternalistic role, which I find that younger girls are often looking for when they date older guys. It also sort of means I basically already got the parenting thing out of my system, and see no reason start having kids (I also have another brother who is very young.) My sister has an extremely low partner count, and is in a long term relationship with the first boyfriend she’s ever had. She is happy enough in her relationship that she sees no reason to leave, and in fact, I’d encourage her to stay with her boyfriend indefinitely if things are going smoothly. The happiest couples I know were people that were dating since high school or college. But she’s also received lots of awful advice from people that she should be sowing her wild oats, and I’ve encouraged her to ignore this nonsense.
The idiom “sowing one’s wild oats” is interesting. I understand it to be a euphemism for spreading your jizz far and wide. It therefore cannot even apply to women. It can be quite revealing to think about language. This is yet another example where feminists simply take a male concept and apply it to women, without considering the implications.
@Don Giovanni Those who advise your sister to sleep around are truly idiotic and irresponsible. You should stop them from spreading bullshits.
Women have been told that screwing every Chad they can actually increases their success in relationships with life partners. They won’t cheat because they already fucked everybody else. Feminists create these ideas out of nowhere. No scientific data whatsoever to back up their claims
it just “sounds good.” They just bitch about the fallen patriarchy, without any viable solution going forward. And they wonder why women are alone until they are 30 and marry the wrong man.
Lol imagine a wife that is loyal to you, not because she loves you. But she screwed enough guys to where it’s “out of her system.” If she hadn’t, she’d definitely be fucking around on you. When the opposite is actually true. They actually sold this lemon to an entire generation of women.
@GoodLookingAndSleazy:
“Women have been told that screwing every Chad they can actually increases their success in relationships with life partners”
By the same logic, men should fuck many prostitutes to get a lot of experience 🙂
I wonder why we never hear feminists advocating for that…
@Uber,
Feminists views on prostitution make zero sense. Her body, her choice. I remember learning that during the Victorian era women left lucrative careers to be prostitutes. Far from being oppressed.
What career would be more profitable than being a prostitute?
Had a shit job once and there was a coworker who hated it as well. The reason he was more at peace with it was that he had a family to go home to. I was hellishly miserable. Thankfully, I was able to get out of it. I’m glad i didn’t have the family like him. though. One cannot just up and leave to a new country when he has a wife with a career, and kids.
Aaron,
“…if these are your odds, it is better to give up your search after a few years if you don’t find anyone to settle down with, and focus on other goals in life.”
Does this mean that men should also give up on the idea on having “kids” as well? If so, that means that your blood/genetic line comes to an end from an evolutionary standpoint.
“that means that your blood/genetic line comes to an end from an evolutionary standpoint”
yes and so what? DNA is just molecules. No reason to be attached to it.
Also you need to consider if you bring kids into this society:
Your son will most likely become a depressed incel (or semi incel), even if you are a Chad.
Your daughter will most likely become a slut.
Even with very good parenting the influence of culture is very strong.
Could you live with this?
I would argue that Western society is in a phase of terminal decline. The West has arguably run its course, which is also why so many men are dropping out of the rat race as their efforts would not be appreciated. They are told that they are the enemy. In Sweden, there are schools that round up all boys and tell them that they are rapists, for instance. Meanwhile, school headmasters make excuses for actual rapists from MENA countries by claiming that “boys will be boys” and that “boys do this kind of thing”: https://www.thelocal.se/20111114/37340/
If you want to have kids, you need to leave the big liberal cities. Probably, you should consider leaving the West altogether if this is a possibility.
I think Aaron’s idea or leaving the West, or at the very least, finding a non-Western partner, is a sound one.
I’ve had really good experiences with Southeast Asian women. 10 years ago, I would have thought that some guy was a loser if he had to resort to a mail order bride from Thailand or the Philippines, but having met guys who have done this, and met their wives, I find that their lives are going way better than men who married a Western feminist (seems nearly impossible to find a Western woman that’s not corrupted by feminist thinking.)
I’ve also had good experiences with East Asian women – from China and Korea, mostly, although the ones I’ve met here in the U.S. are quite Westernized.
I consider that the general distinction here is predominantly along the line of being an Incel vs. Chad.
Incels never experienced the raw and true affection of a woman which, at least for average heterosexual males with normal T levels, is the epitome of boy’s existence in younger years. This leads them to immerse into their careers if they are talented, or to become basement dwellers if being of no use whatsoever. Those who overcome their inceldom are few and far between, but are aware of what should and could be done. Formative experiences (Less than 30 yrs of age for majority of guys) probably cement your neuroplasticity once you’re in your thirties and older. Not having those reference experiences of receiving female energy and inability to make a profound change in their thought-processes is, at least for me, the primary cause of despair in midlife.
Chads, on the other hand, experience this affection in abundance in their formative years (I define Chad’s formative years to be at maximum 21-23 yrs of age, that is the end of University). Their success is mostly connected to their ‘natural’ state of being, not by overcoming their own shortcomings. They do not need to change or improve in any meaningful way as the good things (and YHT girls) were just ‘meant to happen’ to them. This results in laziness to grow and improve with age. Moving on into thirties and beyond, attention from YHT diminishes even for Chads (high T men have more masculine physiognomy and their faces look older/mature faster), and because the average Chad does not put special attention to his career in those younger years, the general ROI starts to stagnate or even diminishes. Consequently, Chads thus start to suffer from cognitive dissonance due to their formative experiences where everything was handed over to them. However, I observed that Chads who succeeded both in career and family life had come from well-off families. I guess that Chads who continue to count notches into eternity largely fall into middle/lower class plebs.
On another note, I think that having a right spouse/woman in your life is crucial for your longterm career success after you already made it, but not at all for building up your career for the first 10 years or so. E.g. if a guy is doing his PhD or wants to climb just under the C-suite management before 35-40, having a full-time girlfriend or spouse is more detrimental as it eats away too much of your time. If one’s life consists ONLY of working and spending time with his girlfriend/kid, then thumbs up, this can work out. ‘Happiness’ in your midlife is, in my opinion, more connected to your overall outlook on life one developed already in formative years and built upon it later, not on ‘accessories’ to happiness like having a supportive wife, ceteris paribus, makes a man happy. Being satisfied with your life trajectory, whether single or with your own family, is more a state of your internal self.
Not sure how this would apply to me then – I had the affections of attractive women when I was in my late teens/early 20s, but I consider myself an incel now in my mid 20s. I blame this largely on lack of social opportunities, and I look better in person compared go pictures IMO (I’ve never put a serious effort into online dating but it seems not worth the effort at this point in my life). After high school/college interactions with the opposite sex drop off, and I’m not risking the HR minefield of flirting with women in my office (even though I have received what seems like interest). The social dimension of actually meeting people is very underrated, back in school even average guys got decently attractive girlfriends.
I’m having a hard time thinking the single chad is unhappy too and I’m having a hard time believing “I found that being in a relationship really helped motivate me to do well in my career and put up with the stress it creates. I’ve worked with a lot of men with families and I’ve found that they are often very successful. “
I’m now at a certain age to reflect and take a good look at all my social circles; people my parents know, I grew up with, looked up too and people I’ve connected with. To make it short: I can evaluate more than 100 people I know for more than 30yrs.
They all did not decide to get into marriage. They just did what has been normal, have been pushed into marriage or were bored.
Maybe they had their own business, have been successful (whatever you call that). Maybe they got value out of their marriage (they say so) but they re dependent on their wife. Most men are still kids and like Esther Vilar wrote, need to receive kudos. They’re wife just filled the spot their mama left when they got married.
You need to keep in mind: most unhappy men are married. And if I be honest, every married men looks at my with envious. They just try to make me feel bad because I did not decide to be a slave.
I’m glad we’re living in a society we have now, because it’s the first time, men are free to choose. I don’t think we’re all made to live in a relationship or men need women.
Being successful: dude have you really seen successful people? People who work 50-60 hrs per week? I think I’m in a pretty good position and way above average paid (stem foundation, job in automotive). I say for being great in my field, it’s good if you have unlimited ambition and energy. Married colleagues (and to be honest I have to say all) are burned out.
But just one short question: I realized i think ten yrs ago, after i had an orgasm, I’m not interested in that women (I had sex with) anymore. For what do i need a women, if there is nothing I want (and most importantly she can give me) than sex?
As Uber touched on, humans were not designed for monogamy. Yet, our mental capacity drives us to strive for a better society. Almost like sacrificing for a greater good. It’s a conundrum.
I would say only a small minority wants to improve society. Ironically, those who claim to be “progressive” want to destroy everything we have built.
I would even go so far as to say that if you cannot handle being alone as a man, you are a manchild / baby.
So many “men” say they need a woman for emotional support (whatever that means).
They basically replaced their mum with a wife.
Women are weaker, both physiological and psychological. So if you need a woman to support you, I would argue you are a very weak man.
And most men don’t even marry because it is a logical decision they made. They did it out of conformity, not because they considered the costs and benefits. It is “what you are supposed to do”
Traditions generally make sense, but the problem is when you follow something out of tradition, but the rules of the game have changed.
Marriage was a good move for men in the past, but it isn’t anymore. (at least not in the West)
And don’t forget how much the availability of reliable contraception changed the rules of the sex game.
From my own experience: I spend most of my time alone, and I actually prefer it. I read, I watch movies, go on walks, work out, with no one interrupting me and I have to answer to no one. It is pure freedom. For sex there are escorts (and it is not like men in marriage get a lot of sex, LMAO, just go on deadbedroom reddit).
I’m a natural introvert so maybe extroverted men need other people, I don’t know, but I think it is also something that you can learn, at least partially.
And I actually prefer the current degenerate society over a traditional society in which I would have to marry. Would rather fuck prostitutes for the rest of my life than being tied to a single aging woman. No thanks to that. It is very anti male.
Best would be an androcentric society like the Roman Empire. Men had wives, but they also had cheap prostitutes available.
“Best would be an androcentric society like the Roman Empire. Men had wives, but they also had cheap prostitutes available.”
That kind of societies are male-biased, and the reason why you support it is because you are a male. To be fair, one needs to restrict sex of both men and women, make them commit. There is no reason to go back to that kind of society where men can fuck around, but women remain chastised. That’s bullshit and double-standard.
Women get hurt as well when they are being cheated. Generations are told to swallow it up because that’s how women should be.
I see no reason to return to that kind of oppressive system, just as I see no reason to support the current female-centric society either.
Of course I want such society because it would benefit me.
I don’t believe in your slave morality death cult of equality.
What slave mentality are you talking about? I view that modern society is a massive improvement over any kind of caste system or slave system of ancient or medieval world. It is downright comical to deny this fact.
With your kind of behavior, you only want a society where you are the ONE that reap the benefits, while enslave the rest.
That is a pipedream you are possessing. It is not part of the reality that we are living in.
Dream on! Atta boy!
How long did the Roman Empire last? How long do you think the United States is going to make it?
Also, I think a good argument can be made that a Medieval serf had a better live than most plebs today. They had almost half the year off. Their government did not bug them much. Yet, if the king wanted too much money, they got a few guys together and pitchforked the fucker. Today, you get to vote once every few years and no matter whom you vote for, you get more of everything you don’t want.
“Also, I think a good argument can be made that a Medieval serf had a better live than most plebs today. They had almost half the year off. Their government did not bug them much. Yet, if the king wanted too much money, they got a few guys together and pitchforked the fucker. Today, you get to vote once every few years and no matter whom you vote for, you get more of everything you don’t want.”
Point out to me which kings and kingdoms were killed by peasants in Middle Age?
If lives of peasants were much better than common men in our eras, why did we even have the Peasant War in Germany during the 16th century?
Have a look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Peasants%27_War
Of course, one can argue that lives of peasants or lowest strata of society in medieval Europe varies according to time period. But overall, there is so much evidence to suggest that a common man in the West in our era enjoy a much higher living standard than any peasant that you are dreaming of.
And don’t let me start on the peasant revolts that topple the Chinese ruling dynasty. The situation must be nasty enough for them to band together in millions to overthrow a dynasty. Yet, no kings in China were killed by peasants. They usually ran away with their treasures. Very few emperors in China were common men, except Zhu Yuanzhang (Ming Taizu) and Liu Bang (Han Taizu). The rest were men of elite strata of society.
It is unthinkable to compare living standard and quality of life of a normal man in the developed world with peasants in Middle Age, East or West. It is also a dream to think that medieval kings and emperors could be killed by peasants.
These mistakes would not be made if you have been serious about History as much as Mathematics when you were in high school.
Are you aware that I have a tendency to exaggerate for effect? Dial down the autism a little bit, please. The main point I made in that post was that in a modern “democracy” you cannot get rid of your leaders who, furthermore, do not have any intention of improving the lives of the average man. In contrast, before the advent of modern technology, leaders could be disposed of, even if this does not literally mean that a bunch of serfs band together, storm the castle, and pitchfork the king. There were plenty of revolts in Medieval times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_revolts_in_late-medieval_Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts
@Sleazy
What you are describing is much more closer to Communist state like China than the US. You could not get rid of the leaders, you cannot voice opposition. In the US, we can vote for an alternative candidate. I am not sure why you have such a confused notion.
How well did voting work out last autumn? Now even elections are getting openly rigged.
Also, count how many peasant revolta succeed in toppling the kings. Most pf the time, the leader was someone from an affluence background.
Peasantas achieved little. Most rebellions were crushed in bloodshed anyway.
“How well did voting work out last autumn? Now even elections are getting openly rigged.”
First off, whether the elections are rigged is an open question (at least to me). You just gather tons of infos on Zerohedge and make it seem as if it is the truth. Did you participate directly in the process of examining that election? Or are you just reading news and then decide to cheerlead those news that confirm your personal belief?
If the election were truly rigged, why Trump didn’t even win any case when he opened his legal case against states where votes were allegedly fraud? It takes a lot more for me to buy that the whole legal system in the US is so corrupted that he loses all cases. Sure, the “elites” (whatever that includes and means) could buy off all judges and let them busllhit inside and outside the court. It sounds ridiculous yet people in the right buy them wholeheartedly.
The fact that you can even raise legal case against election result is unheard of in China. The voting system in China is done by a handful of members of the Politburo. Common men have no choice to select their leaders in anyway.
You always get things backassward. When intending to describe the failing Western democracy, you move closer to a crisp description of a state like China. I don’t know why you get things totally upside down.
@Cuong Quoc Vu:
“I view that modern society is a massive improvement over any kind of caste system or slave system of ancient or medieval world.”
And yet in the modern world we have lot of men who cannot get sex, an elementary need, while in Roman society all men got laid.
What exactly is the point of living 80 years if all you can do is jerk of to a computer screen?
And compared to modern day wage slaves, I doubt Roman slaves had it much worse on average.
In some cases they were treated very badly, I don’t deny that, but the same is true today in a lot of countries, even though it is not officially slavery.
If you look at how companies like Amazon treat their warehouse slave laborers, I somehow think that Roman slaves had it a lot better. Imagine having to piss into a plastic bottle because if you take a bathroom break, you’ll get fired! We really have advanced tremendously since Roman times. Our women are more virtuous, our men healthier, our morals better, and our buildings more beautiful and longer-lasting. In all seriousness, if there is anything positive about this it is that once the West is done, the Pantheon will still be standing while our atrocious modern architecture has only been designed to last for 100 years or so. Well, this will only happen if we don’t get another alcoholic puppet like Churchill who wants to bomb Rome to smithereens because he seems nothing worth preserving and wants to make a point.
@Cuong:
“What slave mentality are you talking about? ”
I’m talking about the moral system which dominates the western world, which is derived from Christianity, which is a kind of slave morality, because it empower the weak.
Typical virtues are: compassion, being humble, treating everyone equal, being rich is bad, being competent is bad, don’t be greedy, be grateful
That everyone should be equal is the holy grail of slave morality.
The Romans had pretty much the inverse of this system, they valued:
Ambition, Pride, Honor, being better is good, and so on
The current slave moral System of the West ultimately leads to feminism and communism, and collapse of society.
Welfare states are dysgenic, so the cannot last forever.
You can keep the weak alive in the short term, but in the long term the system will collapse. You can’t beat evolution.
@Ubermensch
“And yet in the modern world we have lot of men who cannot get sex, an elementary need, while in Roman society all men got laid.”
Where is your proof that all males in Rome get sex? As for speaking of elementary need, it is a laughable bullshit from you. Sex is much less elementary compared thirst, hunger, and breathing. Without any of those 3 needs, you will die. For sex, you can live a total calm life as a virgin and still survive well by just jerking off.
Oh so from “all men” get sex, which implies male slaves in ancient Rome, now you move to “pleb”, or let say citizens. You can always book a flight to Austria to have sex with prostitutes if you want to. Plenty of American men come to Thailand or Vietnam to seek sexual pleasures from prostitutes. I don’t understand why you keep insisting on the lack of sex of modern men and the amplitude of sex of Roman males.
“What exactly is the point of living 80 years if all you can do is jerk of to a computer screen?”
If it is pointless, than it is pointless to you. Plenty of men still live 80 years without ever having to worrying to much about sex. After all, isn’t it taught on this blog, that you can perfectly be normal alone?
If you don’t want to live a life without sex, why not shoot yourself in the head?
“And compared to modern day wage slaves, I doubt Roman slaves had it much worse on average.
In some cases they were treated very badly, I don’t deny that, but the same is true today in a lot of countries, even though it is not officially slavery.”
Is this the way a guy who shows off his magnum “math skills” to a girl by doing combinatorics reason?
The answer to your inquiry is simple. Modern “wage slaves” have tons of options to better their lives when slaves in Rome did not. There are plenty of jobs where the salary is good, and they don’t require a risky college degree. Truck drivers come to mind. I have come across plenty of white men who are truck drivers with a salary of up to 80,000 USD.
Then there are also jobs like aviation cleaner. My cousin got in, and after 5 years, 85,000 USD salary. Sure, the job asks you to work at night, but you only need to work 4 days per week, 3 days off.
Could a Roman slave have such a diversity of jobs to choose from? If you don’t like what you have, leave.
If you are a handy man, you can always become a technician. HVAC technicians can earn up to 75,000 USD. I have some acquaintance who can attest to this.
So many jobs out there are very promising without needing a college degree. You just have to find them, or rely on your connection to get it.
And, for you and Sleazy who keeps dreaming up to Rome. You guys have never done any menial labour on a farm without mechanized tools. I am sure once you have done it, you wouldn’t argue in such a bollock fashion that Rome slaves are better off than modern “wage slaves”.
“Typical virtues are: compassion, being humble, treating everyone equal, being rich is bad, being competent is bad, don’t be greedy, be grateful”
I am sorry but that is highly irrelevant to my point. Here is what you said:
“I don’t believe in your slave morality death cult of equality.”
I share almost nothing with those mentality that you are putting in my mouth. My view is derived from the doctrine of universal rights of men, formed by men of the Enlightenment such as Rousseau, Montesquieu. As such, I do view that all men possess equal basic human rights.
There is nothing of this doctrine that states being rich is bad, or being competent is bad.
I see nothing of wrong with being humble, being compassionate, treating everyone equal and being grateful. They are after all embedded in the philosophical doctrine of Buddhism.
This shows how twisted your mind has become.
“That everyone should be equal is the holy grail of slave morality.”
Nope, that is the virtue of modern ideology. Otherwise, I can kick you in your stomach because you are just a piece of shit for not belonging to the upper class. You are nothing but subhuman if you aren’t born wealthy. And I can do whatever I want to a kid who isn’t born into wealthy family. Even worse, if you are a slave, your life is mine to take.
“The Romans had pretty much the inverse of this system, they valued:
Ambition, Pride, Honor, being better is good, and so on”
Oh, so Romans didn’t emphasize:
” being humble, being compassionate, treating everyone equal and being grateful”
Have you read Theodore Mommsen on Roman history. Except for the literal “treating everyone equal” (which includes slave), the Romans also treasure those virtues.
“The current slave moral System of the West ultimately leads to feminism and communism, and collapse of society.
Welfare states are dysgenic, so the cannot last forever.
You can keep the weak alive in the short term, but in the long term the system will collapse. You can’t beat evolution.”
Spare me your nonsensical apocalyptic forecast. I have never been to Europe so I don’t know. But here, in the US, nothing will lead us to the point of imminent collapse. Sure, China may overcome the US in terms of GDP, but that is to me unimportant. My standard living is still much higher than an average person in China.
China already has a higher GDP than the US in terms of PPP.
“Where is your proof that all males in Rome get sex?”
Yes, I cannot go back to know/prove this, it is just an assumption.
But you also cannot go back and ask the average citizen of the Roman empire how happy he is or feels.
I you think you can quantify this easily via income or some other bullshit metric, that just shows your total lack of knowledge of the human condition and basic psychology.
People in the 3rd world on average report the same level of happiness as people in the 1st world.
Some of the most happy people are living in the jungle without any technology.
So if you think I’m arrogant for making those assumption, you should get a little bit more humble yourself making very detailed claims about the psychological well being of people.
And LOL if you think people with sub average IQs who are working minimum wage jobs have a lot of options available to them.
Just tell all of those truck drivers (who will soon be obsolete) to become AI programmers. JFL.
“If you look at how companies like Amazon treat their warehouse slave laborers, I somehow think that Roman slaves had it a lot better. Imagine having to piss into a plastic bottle because if you take a bathroom break, you’ll get fired! We really have advanced tremendously since Roman times.”
You are lumping together all kinds of stuffs in response to my answer. I don’t know where to start to disentangle your post.
If you don’t want to work for amazon, find some other jobs. At least, those slaves aren’t being beaten do death, or tortured, or being mistreated at will by their masters. You have a life outside of work. What can a Roman slave be but working their butts off for their master and have no lives of his own?
Go read Theodore Mommsen and see for yourself the lives of Roman slaves. You are looking at the Roman world from a tint-rose glass.
I would advance an argument that a normal life of an ordinary peasant during Han dynasty was much better than the Roman slaves. The former still had some acre of land of his own. For tenant farmers, at least if they got killed, the perpetrator would be dealt with according to the legal code of Han.
” if there is anything positive about this it is that once the West is done, the Pantheon will still be standing while our atrocious modern architecture has only been designed to last for 100 years or so. Well, this will only happen if we don’t get another alcoholic puppet like Churchill who wants to bomb Rome to smithereens because he seems nothing worth preserving and wants to make a point.”
I am sorry but doesn’t this strike you as survival bias? The Romans have constructed plenty of buildings. Only a small number of them survive the test of time. Are you telling that modern buildings, after 1000 years, would not survive? I don’t believe it. We can build much more comfortable buildings than the Romans, and we don’t need them to survive anyway. I believe in that after 1000 years, we still have plenty of buildings that survive the test of time.
The Chinese used to build massive buildings with woods. Almost none of them survive according to archaeology, but I see no one commenting that their civilization is much less glorious as Romans.
” Our women are more virtuous, our men healthier, our morals better”
Now, when it comes to women, our view agree. I have nothing to add to this. It is true that women nowadays are unbearable compared to the past.
Which modern buildings do you think rival the Pantheon?
““Where is your proof that all males in Rome get sex?”
Yes, I cannot go back to know/prove this, it is just an assumption.”
So you pull this out of your ass, you got NOTHING to prove yet you still pretend to show off your bravado?
“But you also cannot go back and ask the average citizen of the Roman empire how happy he is or feels.”
Are you just arguing to ghosts? My point is SLAVES in Rome would be much less happy than normal people in our modern times. I didn’t say anything about the happiness of Roman citizens. What are you babbling about?
“I you think you can quantify this easily via income or some other bullshit metric, that just shows your total lack of knowledge of the human condition and basic psychology.”
Oh yeah, are you the one who is arguing with sources, or out of ignorance?
Do you have an income distribution chart of the Romans?
“So if you think I’m arrogant for making those assumption, you should get a little bit more humble yourself making very detailed claims about the psychological well being of people.”
No, I don’t think you are arrogant. I think you are blissfully ignorant because you have chosen to read books like Gibbon’s and pretend to be an armchair historian, pulling arguments from your ass. Your level of historical knowledge is even worse than an average member of Historum. At least those guys read plenty of amateur book.
“And LOL if you think people with sub average IQs who are working minimum wage jobs have a lot of options available to them.”
IQ again? Want to impress me with your IQ? Let me tell you frankly that I don’t give a flying fuck about your IQ. When it comes to measure a man’s intelligence, all I care about his aptitude for specific fields, and that can be measured by a specialized test?
There are plenty of reasons why those people end up working those kinds of jobs. A person can be intelligent but lack all kinds of virtues that allow one to advance deeper into life. Among these are 3 primal factors that I think is much more important than “IQ”.
1) Self-discipline
2) Drive that forces him or her to never quit
3) Patience to see the end through (when start doing something, always try to finish it up, and try to optimize it)
There are no codes in the West to ensure that if you are born with a low intelligence, you can become instantly a middle class member. Find for me such a guarantee in the legal code of the US. What we can ensure, is that you will receive an equal treatment before the law. If someone kills you, he will serve his time. If someone cheats you out of your salary, you can sue them. Such a protection by the law is unheard of in ancient Rome.
“Just tell all of those truck drivers (who will soon be obsolete) to become AI programmers. JFL.”
First textual analysts will be replaced by AI, now truck drivers. I am sorry but it is gonna be another 30 years until that becomes a reality. And we don’t know the job market for the next 30 years.
I don’t need your prediction. They are ridiculous.
Ok if you thing IQ is not important we can end the discussion right now.
It is the most predictive metric that is available in psychology.
Most manual labor jobs will be automated quite soon, leaving almost zero jobs for low/average IQ people.
“China already has a higher GDP than the US in terms of PPP.”
Ok, I didn’t know that, thanks!
“Ok if you thing IQ is not important we can end the discussion right now.”
Up to you.
Even the most brilliant mathematicians like Terence Tao couldn’t care less about IQ. It is a nonsensical honour badge to wear anyway.
You need much more to succeed, not just intelligence. Intelligence by itself is useless. There are more virtues that can help a normal man with average intelligence to succeed than just raw intelligence.
Terence Tao most certainly has an extremely high IQ. If he made statements to the effect of IQ being a meaningless number, he probably just did not want to dish out harsh truth to some lefty parent who was wondering if their borderline retarded son can also become a mathematics professor.
“Which modern buildings do you think rival the Pantheon?”
Empire state building.
On what metric? If you think that the Empire State Building is comparable to the Pantheon, you need to get your head checked. Have a look at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon%2C_Rome#/media/File:Pantheon11111.jpg
On that note, debris from a Greek or Roman statue has more aesthetic appeal than any modern Western building. The idea that people would travel to NYC in order to marvel at the foyer of the Empire State building is ludicrous. It is a commercial skyscraper.
You should read this article by Tao
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/
Many of my friends who have won medals and scholarships to good universities in the West love this article, for it gives hope to them (they are all Math students).
If challenging fields like Algebraic Geometry, Algebraic Topology is too abstract for them, they can opt to become a statisticians or someone who work in the industry.
I personally think having a good teacher is much more important than raw intelligence. My friends can attest that many bright students have been driven to the abyss because they have never had a good teacher during their high school years, and are misled to believe that Olympiad Math is everything. Some are even so stuck in those elementary inequalities that they refuse to believe there are multiple universes in Math to be discovered.
I have had a good teacher to guide me through. That’s why I am a late student to Math and will never be able to earn living by doing it.
To win the Fields medal I’d argue that you have to be a genius. This article is precisely what I had in mind. It is worthless drivel. If you are not smart enough, you won’t even understand the relevant mathematical concepts for your work, so how are you going to build upon that? On the other hand, what else could a professor in communist California have written? Had he stated that there are IQ differences, he would have gotten hounded out of UCLA. In order to avoid that fate, he talks about “hard work”, conveniently neglecting that you need a sufficiently high IQ to be able to do the work.
“On what metric? If you think that the Empire State Building is comparable to the Pantheon, you need to get your head checked. Have a look at this:”
The Pantheon could survive the test of time is because it has constantly been preserved by later generations. Has it been left to decay on its own, it would look almost like the Parthenon of the Greeks.
The counter argument here is that it was seen as being worth preserving. I don’t think a commercial skyscraper will ever elicit a similar reaction. The idea that we would preserve the Empire State building for millennia after the collapse of the United States is not very convincing, but you are welcome to try making an argument for it.
If you don’t like skyscapers, you could have a look at the US Treasury Building, the White House, the US Capitol, or the Reichstag in Berlin.
Seriously, if modern architecture want to build something that could match the Romans, they have more power than the Romans to do so. After all, they could build tunnels that withstand nuclear bombs, the Romans couldn’t.
The modern Reichstag is an abomination. I wish they would have restored the building.
Your point about “power” is interesting. It is absolutely mind-boggling what the Romans were able to achieve with their relatively limited means. In contrast, we could not match their work even with modern technology.
Your point about nuclear bombs is absurd. Why should the Romans have built such a tunnel in order to protect against a weapon whose invention would take another 2,000 years? That you make such a statement is hard to fathom for me. The most plausible explanations are that you 1) are trolling or 2) don’t have a good argument for why we would preserve the Empire State building for millennia so you are grasping at straws.
So why did they preserve the Pathenon, but not other great buildings of Rome? Modern architects succeed to build far more great buildings than the Romans. They are all beautiful. Think of Paris or London for instance.
There are many metrics to assess a building. the Romans would never be able to construct a skyscraper like the Empire State Building.
I have full confidence that if modern architects want to build something like the Pantheon, they have more power to do so.
London is an ugly city. I don’t think modern architects are able to create beautiful buildings, just like modern composers are unable to write symphonies like Beethoven did. Similarly, today’s painters are so far remote from the geniuses of the 18th century that you wonder if we, as a species have completely degenerated. (This is a rhetorical question with an obvious answer. I think that humanity has degenerated significantly.)
“To win the Fields medal I’d argue that you have to be a genius. This article is precisely what I had in mind. It is worthless drivel. If you are not smart enough, you won’t even understand the relevant mathematical concepts for your work, so how are you going to build upon that? On the other hand, what else could a professor in communist California have written? Had he stated that there are IQ differences, he would have gotten hounded out of UCLA. In order to avoid that fate, he talks about “hard work”, conveniently neglecting that you need a sufficiently high IQ to be able to do the work.”
Then why Germany has not won many medals despite having so many geniuses? Why Kurt Gödel didn’t receive? John von Neumann never received one.
I argue that these mathematicians contribute far more than many field medal winners.
“To win the Fields medal I’d argue that you have to be a genius. ”
I don’t think so. You should just be the right person to reap the total benefits of many former unknown mathematicians who made constant progress in your field. Very few mathematicians could operate without guidance and instructions from their colleagues. The only one who could solely propped up many fields like a true genius in the 20th century is Ramanujan. But he is the exception to the rule.
“I don’t think modern architects are able to create beautiful buildings, just like modern composers are unable to write symphonies like Beethoven did. Similarly, today’s painters are so far remote from the geniuses of the 18th century that you wonder if we, as a species have completely degenerated. (This is a rhetorical question with an obvious answer. I think that humanity has degenerated significantly.)”
Well, we just have to agree to disagree.
Why am I trolling? My point is very clear. We have far more powerful technology to do a better jobs than the Romans. We could construct more buildings in classical styles compared to the Romans. Think of Versailles, Sanssouci. I have visited the US capitol, they are absolutely stunning.
It is you who try to cling on the nostalgia of the past. I am more forward looking.
As for the Empire State Building, the point of it being constructed is because it is good for its purpose.
You haven’t answered me on whether the Romans could build such a tall skyscraper. If not, it proves my point.
Your example is silly. I can agree that the fact that the Romans did not build the Empire State Building, nor buildings of a similar height, corroborates the claim that they were unable to do so. (There are other factors as well, such as properties of the lands, which may have made it impossible to even erect such a building in Rome.) However, the same reasoning applies to the example of the Pantheon: the fact that the West has not, for about 2,000 years, produced a building of a similar quality seems to corroborate that we are unable to do so. In fact, even artistically much less demanding projects I consider impossible to pull of nowadays. I don’t think we could erect another Gothic cathedral, for instance. There are also no great masters left. Not a single modern painter achieved a level of mastery that is comparable to a Michelangelo or a Ruben, or even of third-rate painters from back in the day. We — or should I say “they”? — have broken this tradition. A lineage dating back a few centuries in classical music was broken by Bruckner, by the way. High art in the West has systematically been destroyed.
“Similarly, today’s painters are so far remote from the geniuses of the 18th century that you wonder if we, as a species have completely degenerated. ”
You constantly accuse me of committing logical fallacies, when you yourself are full of them. What you are doing is selective bias.
We have much more powerful knowledge in Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and other fields of sciences. We also can combat diseases much better. That proves that we as a specie has progressed, not degenerated.
Stop spreading your gloomy view, or at least admit that it is just your preference. It’s purely opinion, nothing more, nothing less.
“Your example is silly. I can agree that the fact that the Romans did not build the Empire State Building, nor buildings of a similar height, corroborates the claim that they were unable to do so. (There are other factors as well, such as properties of the lands, which may have made it impossible to even erect such a building in Rome.) However, the same reasoning applies to the example of the Pantheon: the fact that the West has not, for about 2,000 years, produced a building of a similar quality seems to corroborate that we are unable to do so. In fact, even artistically much less demanding projects I consider impossible to pull of nowadays. I don’t think we could erect another Gothic cathedral, for instance. There are also no great masters left. Not a single modern painter achieved a level of mastery that is comparable to a Michelangelo or a Ruben, or even of third-rate painters from back in the day. We — or should I say “they”? — have broken this tradition. A lineage dating back a few centuries in classical music was broken by Bruckner, by the way. High art in the West has systematically been destroyed.”
How are my examples silly? You couldn’t counter my argument and examples, that’s why they are silly?
I have shown you that we can totally constructed great buildings that are comparable to the Pantheon. The Versaille, the Sanssouci, and whole lot of castles in neo-Classical style. Those castles still stand and are beautiful in their own rights. I don’t see why with modern technology, we couldn’t construct similar buildings, if we ever want to.
What changes is taste and emphasis. It is not coincidence that 18th century saw a return of classical style in architecture. In Math, that century also saw a revival of traditional Greek geometry (see Treatise of Fluxions by Maclaurin). Yet in modern time, we have done almost anything away with Greek geometry. We have advanced very far.
” the fact that the West has not, for about 2,000 years, produced a building of a similar quality seems to corroborate that we are unable to do so.”
Yeah? What about the Hagia Sophia, a masterpiece built after the fall of Western Roman Empire?
You are just making me to repeat myself again. Versailles, Sanssouci, Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest, Austrian Parliament Building, the whole Paris being reconstructed according the order of Napoleon III, Karlskirche in Austria, US Capitol, Hofburg in Austria.
There are tons of examples where modern (not so modern) technology can match the ancients.
It is silly to say that we are inferior to the Romans, particularly when comparing a building that has been preserved by many generations. And we haven’t even counted further additions added by later generations, just like the Hagia Sophia.
“They’re wife just filled the spot their mama left when they got married.”
Right, this is how marriage has always worked. From Book 2 of Genesis:
18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
…
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
My understanding is that the phenomenon of adults in their twenties and thirties moving out of their parents’ house and living alone has essentially been unprecedented in all of human history up until the twentieth century. Would be curious if someone more informed in history than I am can confirm this.
And man is a social creature. In pre-historic times, we lived in groups. We have a very real need not only for sex, but for friendship, and for human touch and companionship.
To any guy that enjoys being single, I’d say that’s great, that puts you in a great position. But I think you’re fighting against millions of years of evolution. As an aside, hookup culture has been sold to women for much of the same reason MGTOW / red pill has been sold to guys. Tinder used to have an a marketing campaign called “Single, not sorry,” and when you first opened the Tinder app, you’d see a bunch of young, happy women hanging out together and celebrating single life.
Since Aaron brought up IQ earlier, and many of you (who I presume are very intelligent) have mentioned that they’d rather engage in hobbies and intellectual pursuits instead of being in a relationship, this has me wonder whether the idea of being a single adult could be characterized as an evolutionary novelty, and such behavior would be more common among someone with a higher IQ.
In my case, I rather enjoy hooking up, but I’m coming from this in a position in which I’ve already gotten a lot of casual sex out of my system. I reached a point in which doing just “one more hookup” was sort of a chore for me. It can be a great release if I haven’t gotten laid in a while, but for me, casual sex is abundantly available, at least on Tinder, and if all I wanted was an orgasm, it would be a much more efficient use of my time to masturbate.
So I found that I’m doing what a lot of women do – using sex as a means to achieve other things. My most recent sexual partner would have been happy for me to just invite her over a couple times a week, fuck her, and kick her out. But she was from a different part of the country from me, and had traveled extensively, and I wanted to pick her brain about traveling. She also came from an extremely wealthy background, and from a purely selfish standpoint, I figured it might not even be a bad idea to meet her friends and family members some day, as she is 1 degree of separation from some CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. I remember one time, she actually thanked me for having sex with her, because she probably got the impression I’d rather just talk to her.
I kind of know what my problem is, which is that I need to make more friends – intelligent guys, as well as athletic guys who get lots of pussy. And this was going great until the Democrats shut down my state and city. Since then, my big project has been becoming as location-independent as possible so that I can take up and leave when a politician decides to shut everything down, or when poor, underprivileged Black (have to use the capital “B”) folk start burning down my city. In the future, I see myself very much going back to a Chad-like lifestyle.
“How long did the Roman Empire last? How long do you think the United States is going to make it?”
What are you trying to argue here? That the longevity of a political entity signifies its greatness? I hope you should go read more history books because your argument can be easily counter by pointing out these following examples:
1) The Eastern Roman Empire, the state that is now known as Byzantine, lasted much longer than the Roman Empire as a whole. Yet, it is a historical fact that this state could not match the influence of the Roman Empire.
And the Eastern Roman Empire enforced monogamy, so what does it mean by bringing up the longevity of the Roman Empire vs the United States?
2) The Tang dynasty lasted, according to the common agreement of historians, in total 289 years (from 618-907), shorter than the Song dynasty (319 years) that succeeds it and the Han dynasty that precedes it (388 years). Yet both of these empires could not match Tang dynasty in terms of global influence, military success and territorial expansion. Tang dynasty is widely considered to be one of the most glorious era of Chinese civilization. Song dynasty was always a military handicap while Han could not match Tang in any way, except for centralized control down to the smallest geographical units (that is villages).
Along this line of reasoning, I can point out frankly that the US is among very states that can exert such a omnipresent power in almost every area in modern world. It surpasses the Roman Empire in terms of economic power and military dominance. Rome still has to share its throne with Han dynasty, while the US enjoyed, for a short period after the breakup of the Soviet Union, supreme dominance in both economy and military.
How “great” any given civilization is will always be 100% subjective so what is your point?
And when you say people today enjoy a higher standard of living, again it is a totally subjective argument.
Does an incel today have a better life than a Roman pleb who had access to cheap prostitutes?
Does someone who works in an office for 10 hours a day, and 2 hours in commuting, have a better life than a hunter gatherer who worked 4-5 hours per day, in the sunlight?
For someone who seems to insist a lot on hard objective facts, I’m quite surprised you don’t see the total subjectivity in your own evaluations.
“How “great” any given civilization is will always be 100% subjective so what is your point?”
Moving the goal post? The hard indicator is territorial expansion, population, and military prowess. Don’t try to paint a different picture. It is a totally objective criteria and is done many times in the History profession.
You have posted tons of bullshits on this blog and the only reason why you are still posting these craps is because your view aligns with Sleazy.
“Does an incel today have a better life than a Roman pleb who had access to cheap prostitutes?”
Oh so from “all men” get sex, which implies male slaves in ancient Rome, now you move to “pleb”, or let say citizens. You can always book a flight to Austria to have sex with prostitutes if you want to. Plenty of American men come to Thailand or Vietnam to seek sexual pleasures from prostitutes. I don’t understand why you keep insisting on the lack of sex of modern men and the amplitude of sex of Roman males.
“The hard indicator is territorial expansion, population, and military prowess”
No, that is your indicator.
I would say the greatness depends on how much art, science and culture a civilization has produced and how happy the average person in this civilization was.
But that you don’t even see how this is subjective make me think having this argument with you will be kind of pointless.
“No, that is your indicator.”
Don’t bullshit me with your attempt to relativizing things. It is a cheapshot.
Plenty historians use those measures to prove the power of a civilization. From the Hitties to China, from ancient Egypt to Roman Empire.
Those criteria are objective and measurable, especially territorial expansion and size, including the area of political influence as well.
There are plenty books published comparing various dynasties in Chinese history. They all use up those measures.
So they are not solely mine.
Only a sod like you could advance an idiotic point that they are subjective.
“I would say the greatness depends on how much art, science and culture a civilization has produced and how happy the average person in this civilization was.”
Art and culture does play a role in the cultural achievement of a civilization. But that doesn’t have to be separated from territorial expansion and population.
Almost all empires on earth who achieve incredible sizes possess great cultural achievement anyway. You can argue that the Mongol empire is not the case. But that can be disputed by the cultural achievement of the Ilkhanids and the Yuan dynasty. So this leaves the Golden Horde and the Chagataids out, for they remain true to their steppe culture.
“Plenty historians”
you think your argument from authority impresses me?
Even if 1000 “very great historians” all share your criteria for evaluating “greatness of civilizations” it is still 100% subjective what makes a great civilization.
“you think your argument from authority impresses me?”
If they are authority, I don’t see why I should not trust them. There are hard metrics that can be used to measure the “greatness” of a political entity. That’s my point.
“Even if 1000 “very great historians” all share your criteria for evaluating “greatness of civilizations” it is still 100% subjective what makes a great civilization.”
If you want to keep your opinion, then do it. You can just close your eyes and argue with ghosts if you want to.
My original point is to refute Sleazy for saying that the longevity of a political entity can be used to prove its “greatness”, or its power, to be more exact.
This was more about stability. However, I think that on many other metrics Romans would far a lot better than Westerners. Maybe try imagining walking through Rome in its prime. Merely looking at crude reconstructions of the city gave me the chills. Now compare this to our decaying Western cities with their utterly atrocious architecture, dysgenic population, and their endless filth!
“This was more about stability. However, I think that on many other metrics Romans would far a lot better than Westerners. Maybe try imagining walking through Rome in its prime. Merely looking at crude reconstructions of the city gave me the chills. Now compare this to our decaying Western cities with their utterly atrocious architecture, dysgenic population, and their endless filth!”
I am not sure which part of Rome was more stable than the US. Let us talk about politics. The politics of the Roman Empire after the fall of the republic was never stable. The Praetoria and the army held too much power to assassinate or dispose emperors as they wished. After the long years of the good five emperors, most emperors of Rome could not rule till the end of their lives. The lack of stability at the central court created political ruptures in the whole empires. This culminated in the crisis of 3th century. Only with the brilliance of Aurelian could Rome be united once again, but this brilliant tactician died in the of a subordinate due to some causes that I am not clear.
In contrast, the US enjoyed much more stability. The current system of 2 parties ensure peaceful transition of power since the inception of the US. The only exception was the Civil War. This is quite unusual for a Western political entity. In the East, the state that could ensure such a peaceful transition is nowhere to be found but China. But China also went through massive turmoil that was unseen in the US.
“Now compare this to our decaying Western cities with their utterly atrocious architecture, dysgenic population, and their endless filth!”
Please rest assure that I am not that pro-US. This country has a filthy unfair education system. Good and proper education should be the privilege of any citizen of this nation. Yet, the total amount of student debts is staggering. The salary of teachers is also abysmal. You obviously cannot attract the brightest and most dedicated individuals to the education field with the current condition. It is a massive tragedy to watch this, it’s like a train-wreck in slow motion.
On the bright side, Senator Elizabeth Warren and president Biden has decided to forgive and erase some student debts. We will see how far and how much they can do to American citizens. I suspect that the pressure of the banking system would be too great for this to be of any useful scale. But future is the only answer.
OK @CQV, I had to intervene again because you’ve been saying a bit of BS lately and it’s kind of my area.
Modern buildings absolutely are designed to last 50 or 100 years, it’s called desing period in Civil Engineering. Or designed to withstand one exceptional seismic/climatic event that is expected to occur every X years, this is called a return period.
Have you heard of that Discovery Channel show that tries to explore what would happen to human-made structures and cities if humans suddenly disappeared and nature ate its way back into them? The 3D animations they make are not a pretty sight if you appreciate modern construction. Even Mayan pyramids fared much better more than 600 years after abandonment.
Forgot to add, the idea of these design and return periods is to build edifications that will withstand the passage of time/earthquake/typhoon *without collapsing*. Even if the building requires heavy retrofitting or it outright becomes unusable and good for nothing but demolition afterwards, if the thing doesn’t topple over on people’s lives it would be considered a success (for the magnitude of the event for which the calculations were made).
Modern construction values optimization of resources and practicality over beauty. The debate is whether this is justified by modern necessities or there should still be a
room for grandiosity.