TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
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User ID: 616
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
This excellent piece on age segregation has got me thinking about how serious and pervasive this problem is. As the author states:
Young adults are afraid to have children, because they can’t possibly imagine adding some to the life they currently have. New parents are isolated from most of their previous friends, as their paths suddenly never cross again unless they too have kids of their own. Children compete within their age group at schools, never having a chance to either mentor someone or have an older mentor themselves. Teenagers have no idea what to do with their lives, because they don’t know anyone who isn’t a teacher or their parent. And everyone is afraid of growing old because they think that the moment they stop going to the office they’ll simply disappear.
As discussed in @2rafa's post downthread, a major issue of the fertility crisis is a lack of time. Another issue it seems is a lack of even interacting with children unless you have some yourself, or have some in your family. I wonder if the lack of time among young adults in the West is causative of this age segregation?
Regardless, it likely has its roots in the K-12 education system. It's profoundly unnatural from a cultural standpoint to only be in the same peer group as people right around your age. I'm convinced it's unhealthy, and it predisposes us in a massive way to only socialize with people close to our age.
Do you think age segregation is an issue as well? If not, why not?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
9mo ago
My question is why wasn’t this leaked earlier?
A bit of a tangent, but I'd like to point out this is an excellent example of a real conspiracy that wasn't leaked. So many people on here act like conspiracies are impossible because someone will leak it - clearly not!
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
9mo ago
Just adding your weekly reminder that the Motte remains the brightest and best hope for open discourse on the internet. Be proud and relieved you are a Mottizen - we have made it to the shining City on the Hill, the one place online where truth and free speech are protected.
I'm doing all this grandstanding because I'm flabbergasted that right now Tildes, one of the other 'reddit-alternatives' that claims to stand for open and intellectual discourse, is actively and unapologetically censoring anything to do with the UAP hearings.
Many of the users there are rightly pointing out that it's insane that the moderators would block discussion about a literal Congressional hearing... but this is the doublethink that we Mottizens are up against:
Hypothesizing that aliens might well exist based on the vastness of our universe is not a harmful thing.
Believing in conspiracy theories based on zero credible evidence is incredibly harmful. This hearing centers around a man with absolutely zero evidence claiming that there is an arm (or arms) of the government operating above congressional and presidential oversight. The claim is that we are dealing with a massive, top-level coverup. Does that sound familiar to anyone else? Anyone want to quess which Qrowd is qoing to eat this shit up?
Giving these conspiracy theories a platform on a forum where discussion is purported to be high quality and based on intellectual curiosity is harmful. Have you ever noticed how people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in multiple conspiracy theories? Worse, they are even likely to believe all conspiracy theories, even those which are completely contradictory to each other.. This is called conspiracist ideation, or conspiracy theory monism.
Anyone who hasn't been under a rock for the last 8-ish years knows how harmful this can be. They helped elect a president who built our current supreme court. Check out /r/qanoncasualties if you forgot how it harms us on a more individual level. You could also go back further than Q anon and read accounts of witch trials, rapes, genocides, wars, and all manner of horrible things caused by false beliefs in conspiracy. Not to mention the countless deaths caused by vaccine avoidance - something that started long ago, but with which we are still dealing today.
Politicians having a hearing about this conspiracy theory is news, unfortunately. However, the conspiracy theory itself is not the news. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert openly discussed Replacement Theory, should we give that its own thread and discuss its merits?
The only posts we should have regarding this topic, in my semi-humble opinion, are well-written articles absolutely tearing our politicians apart for even humoring this hearing. Perhaps a good debunking article explaining that this whole testimony is based on hearsay and rumor, and explaining that someone's position in government doesn't mean they're immune to conspiratorial thinking.
Again, luckily there is some actual pushback on the site itself. But please, my fellow Mottizens, let this open display of intolerance remind you to keep your guard strong. Keep your eyes focused directly on the goal, and remember that if we let ourselves be distracted by our petty differences, the Motte may well become the same censored cesspool as the rest of the internet.
Be strong my brothers and sisters, and never forget the incredible and unique nature of this Forum that we have built. Don't take the Motte for granted, and be swift and sure when defending it.
Veritas omnia vincet.
A psychologist himself, Adam Mastroianni proclaims: I'm sorry for psychology's loss, whatever it is.
I found this post on the slatestarcodex subreddit. The main article discusses how the replication crisis really isn't as bad as most people think, because:
Gino's work has been cited over 33,000 times, and Ariely's work has been cited over 66,000 times. They both got tenured professorships at elite universities. They wrote books, some of which became bestsellers. They gave big TED talks and lots of people watched them. By every conventional metric of success, these folks were killing it.
Now let's imagine every allegation of fraud is true, and everything Ariely and Gino ever did gets removed from the scientific record, It's a Wonderful Life-style. (We are, I can't stress this enough, imagining this. Buzz buzz, I’m bees.) What would change?
Not much.
Basically this idea can be boiled down to 'well most modern psychologists don't do anything that's even remotely important, so why do we care if these studies don't replicate?' I'm very wary of buying this type of argument. One reason is that over $2 billion dollars went into psychology research, in the US alone, way back in 2016. I'm sure it has increased since then.
On top of that, as psychologists themselves have acknowledged, many public policies get based on psychological research. In the light of the replication crisis, this is perhaps the largest and most under-discussed mistake of the 21st century. The majority of our politicians are basing their decisions, and public justifications, on a field of science that has been proven to be mostly fake. To me, that's not something we can just throw up our hands at and say is trivial.
Another interesting point, which I won't go too far into, is that many of the replicable studies in psychology are just completely ignored. Here's a highly-upvoted comment on the SSC subreddit:
Psychology has nothing interesting left because all of the rock-solid empirical results with tremendous real-world consequences were buried due to being politically awkward.
Psychometrics, heredity of various personality traits, innate gender differences, etc.
So you're naturally left with irrelevancies (monkey prostitutes) and lies (growth mindset, power posing, priming, multiple intelligences).
It's almost enough to make me empathize with Gino and Ariely. The modern discipline is all about garbing feel-good falsehoods with vestments of science. Their only crime was taking the more direct path to that end, rather than undertaking the standard rituals of plausibly innocent methodological infirmities (p-hacking etc.)
I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not Psychology deserves an equal place among the rest of the sciences.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
7mo ago
Eh, I don't find this argument persuasive. I highly doubt the vast majority of supporters of the MeToo movement would be caught dead agreeing with any sort of 'sex negativity.' It's really about women wanting to have their cake and eat it to.
The way these sexual assault and rape proceedings are going, we are hurtling towards a world where young women get to become intoxicated at parties and fuck around as much as they want. But then if a man they slept with (or presumably could've slept with) ever does something they don't like, they can bring the full force of the law against them. Even 20 years later.
Yes conservative courting norms and laws were created to prevent this exact thing, but I'm not sure most mainstream progressives are able to think of anything labeled 'conservative' in a positive light. It's quite strange but the modern media landscape really has made a world where people see a group labeled 'enemy' enough times and they get to a point where they just literally cannot fathom that that group has anything beneficial going on.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
Historically science flourishes best when you have motivated scientists that can devote multiple decades to learning everything about a problem.
Forget the name but there’s a book about one of the guys who ran Xerox PARC who talks about how this was his strategy. Just find scientists that seem brilliant and guarantee them 20 years to devote to a project, then sit back and let them do it.
The current scientific establishment is almost the opposite of this - in order to compete you have to publish quick and publish something important. And I don’t blame the scientists, most of them will lose their livelihood if they don’t get grants, and they typically don’t have skills to fall back on. Or much of a backup plan in general.
So, it looks like Anthropic has finally gotten the backing to give OpenAI a serious run for their money when it comes to foundational models, via a Series C round of $450 million. There are a few core differences between their approach, and intelligent AI pundits seem to think that these could have dramatic impacts down the road on who gets to control the future of AI. My personal thoughts are still muddied - I'm not sure how much the technical side of things will matter in the age of hype and massive digital marketing. ChatGPT's first mover advantage may have already cemented them the crown of AI for the foreseeable future - unless of course they make a massive blunder.
What's most amusing to me in this whole situation is the way the landscape played out. Even though there were many firms hoping to advance the capabilities of AI, the two that are currently at the top originated as AI Safety outfits. Just like OpenAI, Anthropic sniped a lot of the top engineering talent pretending to care about safety,, then shamelessly pivoted to capabilities enhancement once they became "increasingly convinced that rapid AI progress will continue rather than stall or plateau."
While there are many condemnations and arguments over the AI Safety movement as a whole in the corner of the internet that cares, I think most people that discuss the future of AI don't take these signals strongly enough. The fact that the two largest, arguable most influential 'startup' orgs focused on AI Safety have already flipped to the other side, OpenAI having led the charge, should give anyone who believes in the Eliezer Yudkowsky doomer movement pause. If most people with power in that camp genuinely believed that doom was a given without a long period of AI restriction and alignment research, we should've seen massive departures and drama from OpenAI and Anthropic. The fact that their employees, stakeholders, and most of the AI ecosystem seems content to swallow their facile window-dressing as to why they've switched sides is proof to me that there's a massive lack of conviction in the AI Safety space.
Whatever happens, we're certainly in for an interesting few years. Whether AI continues to advance rapidly or stalls out, the world has already been changed at a level equivalent at least to the birth of the Internet. Now we're just waiting for the dominos to fall and the dust to settle.
It's getting unavoidable - the quality of news and novel information obtained from time here is crashing. I used to hear things here first - now I usually don't hear them here at all.
It's getting unavoidable that we're having far more people complain and add low-effort negative comments than actually take time to flesh out top level posts that are high quality. As @Amadan and others have consistently said, if you don't like the status quo why don't you contribute yourself, or try to organize something else to change it?
High quality, intellectual writing doesn't just drop out of thin air because you complain about it. It comes from intelligent people who are driven to write, and who want to sharpen their minds in an environment that tests their opinions.
Frankly, I'm concerned that the "quality of news an novel information" has gone up here much more than I'd like. In terms of a vision for this site, I'm far more in the camp of having great writers like @ymeskhout and @DaseindustriesLtd write long effortposts about serious issues they've spent a lot of time thinking about, rather than helping people like you get their latest CW fix.
There are a million places on the internet you can go to keep up with the spectacle of the twenty four hour news cycle. There aren't as many places where you can find in-depth analyses of Straussian themes, or a discussion that weaves together modern internet drama with the age-old idea of sacrifice and meaning and suffering, or the how the relationship between the rich and the poor has changed dramatically in the modern era.
These sorts of well thought out, insightful and useful write-ups are rare and take time to formulate. Expecting brilliant insights on every latest piece of CW gossip is ridiculous. Sure it might drive more engagement, but it would also likely lead us in a race to the bottom.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
Has anyone else gone through a period in adult life where you realize you've kind of forgotten how to actually have fun?
I'm not talking about just zoning out to a video game, but joyous laugh-out-loud relaxing fun. For me I feel I've gotten so bogged down with job issues, health issues, and planning for the future that even when I carve out 'free time' I never fully relax and just have fun.
Anyone relate? Or have stories on how they got out of such a mode?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
11mo ago
The future of AI is likely decided this week with Sam Altman's Congressional testimony. What do you expect?
I expect nothing to happen for another few years, by which time it's too late. As @2rafa mentioned below, I'm convinced AI research and development is already far ahead of where it needs to be for AGI in the next couple of years. Given the US's embarrassing track record of trying to regulate social media companies, I highly doubt they'll pass an effective regulation regime.
What I would expect, if something gets rushed through, is for Altman and other big AI players to use this panic the doomers have generated as a way to create an artificially regulated competitive moat. Basically the big players are the ones who rushed in early, broke all the rules, then kicked the ladder down behind them. This is a highly unfortunate, but also highly likely future in my estimation.
It's ironic that we've entered into this age of large networks and systems, yet with the rise of AGI we may truly go back to the course of humanity being determined by the whims of a handful of leaders. I'm not sure I buy the FOOM-superintelligence arguments, but even GPT-4 optimized with plug-ins and website access will be a tsunami of change over the way we approach work. If there are more technical advancements in the next few years, who knows where we will end up.
What annoys me most is that this doomer rhetoric lets politicians act like they're doing something - stopping the AI companies from growing - when in reality they need to face the economic situation. Whether it's UBI, massive unemployment benefits, socialized housing, or whatever, our political class must face the massive economic change coming. At this rate it seems neither side of the aisle is willing to double down on the idea that AI will disrupt the workforce, instead they prefer to argue about the latest social issue du jour. This avoidance of the economic shocks coming in the next five years or less is deeply troubling in my view.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
11mo ago
Great comment, reported for quality contribution.
The problem isn't guns, the problem is that there are millions of disaffected people living in a country founded on the idea of individual human rights. That works when the people are hyper-invested in their families and the future that they'll be living in; that doesn't work when everybody is depressed and hates each other.
This is an underrated point. So many times when societal ills come up in rationalist discourse, people hand wave away, are ignorant of, or flat out ignore the fact that at least 1/5 (probably more in actuality) of the US population is depressed or has some mental disorder. Even given that our modern psychiatric framing is largely faulty, this mass wave of disaffectedness means that traditional solutions, things that worked for our forefathers, need rethinking.
Even though past societies had plenty of times of upheaval, they had different ways of fixing things. Revolutions, massive aligned religions, cultural processes and holidays like the Roman Saturnalia which acted as a pressure release valve for hierarchical resentment. We've been increasingly preventing a release of the pressure, and it will only get worse as we continue to do nothing.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
We’re starting to see the contagion of mimetic violence that Girard predicted. Except our myths are so fragmented that it’s difficult for people to even agree on a narrative - the violence for its own sake is becoming naked, stripped of its justifications.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
I couldn’t tell you why that worldview exists; I think it’s a side effect of turning African American cultural complaints into mental masturbation, but it really is what it looks like.
Ultimately you can see it as a rejection of the idea of competence and hierarchy. All hierarchies and power differentials are inherently unjust according to a far left view, because they involve one being dominating another. Competence is simply a way to justify the hierarchical subjugation.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
4mo ago
I'll go ahead and guess: it will look explicitly and seriously religious.
To me the social history of the last few decades, and indeed the last few centuries, is that of a hollowing out and lack of seriousness in religious practices and traditions. While there have been revivals here and there, the overall trend has been to become more and more secular as modern 'philosophy' and science becomes more powerful. When Descartes completely threw out Aristotelean formal causes, and claimed the Mind was totally separate from the body and physical reality, he unwittingly destroyed the way humans made sense of the world and each other from time immemorial.
At this point I'm convinced that modern philosophy, specifically post-Cartesian philosophy that sees materialism as the ultimate truth and the universe as nothing more than meaningless particles bouncing into each other, cannot coexist with human society. Either we will destroy our societies through increasing social fragmentation, or the transhumanists will get their wish and change the fundamental way human beings interact with each other to paper over the problems of a materialist philosophy. Perhaps both will happen.
Either way, Social Justice has become such a force because it attempts to fill the gap left by the absence of sincere religions, and just like previous 'isms' and secular ideologies, it is doomed to fail because these sorts of religious systems just can't work in a materialist universe. For better or worse, humans need to believe in purpose and meaning beyond dead matter in order to cohere together in large social groups. If we can't have that, well, we will burn it all down.
Personally I think Christianity will rise again to rule the day, at least on a religious level. It has died many times before and come back from the grave - that motif being the mythological bedrock upon which the entire enterprise is founded is no coincidence. The primary, hidden strength of Christ's gospel is the fact that it gives hope in the darkest of times, and promises a renewal and escape from death.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
1mo ago
Pretense, decorum, expected behavior; these are arbitrary and often worthless. Note often, not worthless for being arbitrary, worthless where they only exist to delineate class. Talk more properly, dress more properly, behave more properly, again I ask whose fucking properness?
To look at this point a bit, these things are absolutely not arbitrary and worthless. Manners, expected behavior, et cetera are highly refined social technologies that teach people how to socialize in expected manners and not have to figure it all out on their own.
To your examples about leaders dropping decorum, there's a difference between an in control man dropping decorum occasionally for emphasis, and destroying decorum entirely as a concept. Also, mass manipulation of public opinion via inauthentic markers of 'realness' is not a good development, in my personal opinion.
Part of the breakdown we're seeing in community and romantic relationships comes from this attitude of destruction towards all social convention, which rap absolutely pushes as you admit. On a higher level, I think many people on the right dislike rap because it is explicitly about tearing down these old Western ideals and virtues, which you seem to see as a good thing if it's clever and sounds cool.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
Or somewhere vs anywhere people.
Yep, I think this hits the nail on the head. One of the defining features of liquid modernity, to me, is a total disregard for place. Physical locations aren't what matters at all. In fact it's seen as uncouth and ridiculous to care about the place you were born and grew up in rather than somewhere else.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
Having charity and kindness being rules here was a mistake.
Not sure what you mean by this. Charity and kindness in debate have been norms that have been useful for far longer than wokeism, even if wokeism is taking those rules to the extreme. Baby and the bathwater, and all that.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
5mo ago
Last week, @ShariaHeap brought up some interesting points on the evolution of religion under the discussion of Bronze Age history that went under-discussed, in my humble opinion.
Specifically they ask:
is it better to think that standards of cooperation that evolved in hunter-gatherer tribes are set early, and understandings around symbols that serve flourishing somewhat timeless, such that most religions have access to them in differing degrees and emphases.
Or, finally, do they each capture something unique, and thus we should seek wisdom through their plurality, essentially operating in a secular mode?
To me, this question can be boiled down to - are all religions equally good, or are some better than others?
Of course we have to get into the 'objective morality versus subjective/post-modern plurality' debate here, which can be it's own morass. But I am curious about how, if you do take religions as potentially better or worse comparatively, how would they stack up?
I've been writing and thinking about an idea that many religions which are popular today are essentially negative when it comes to divine beings - as in, the popular Vitalism that talks about Mother Earth and the interconnectedness of the universe basically deny any explicit 'being' such as God. Typically the ultimate experience of divinity can be revealed in a sort of non-dualistic merging with the universe, or dissolution of the ego.
Buddhism and Hinduism in some strains, as well as Taoism, have heavily influenced this line of mystical thinking.
On the other end you have the more 'positive' versions of religion or mystical experience, that posit the existence of a God or pantheon of gods. While the two can coexist to some degree, like in Hinduism with Brahman etc, they do seem to have very fundamentally different structures at their core.
In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton takes a stab at more negative conceptions of the divine, fiercely stating:
The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself.
In this view, the more Eastern or pessimistic or cyclical religions are fundamentally destructive on a larger scale - they argue that nothing means anything, that all will end the same as it began, reality is ultimately an illusion, et cetera.
By contrast, Christianity and other monotheistic religions push us forward to some sort of Progress, which as we have seen... can have its own issues.
I'm curious if this specific topic has been discussed before, and if other folks here have anything to add?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
9mo ago
Virology experts as a fourth estate? Or is that closer to fortieth?
It's more like Scientists as a fourth estate. Scientism has rushed in to fill the void of a lack of religion and faith, which is ironic because science is supposed to be above all that. Unfortunately once you turn science into an ideology/religion/cult whatever you want to call it, it loses the vast majority of its explanatory power.
Maybe we'll see a 'fundamentalist' turn in science, where scientists insist we have lost the true path and return to our roots.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
9mo ago
I’d argue the dying out of Covid fanatics was a mix of quite a few factors:
- As you discuss, Omnicron and general Covid dispersion
- Social contagion effects, where being sensitive to Covid became a moral panic due to the easy signaling via mask (the signal lost its value as it became more common)
- Left wing resentment over Trump’s tenure dying out after Biden won
- Massive worldwide economic effects being felt after almost two full years of lockdowns
- Ordinary ‘rank and file’ progressives no longer being able to stomach not seeing their family & friends two years running
- General fatigue with imposed authoritarian demands like testing, restaurants closing etc (many people knew folks who lost their business due to lockdowns)
- Lack of trust in the medical establishment as it became clear they lied and/or massively exaggerated the risks posed by Covid and the effectiveness of masking/vaccines
The list can go on, but there was far more depth to the situation since it affected almost the entire world, quite quickly, and let to massive changes.
I’d imagine the history books will have quite a lot to say about the reaction to Covid, and how it shaped trends moving forward through the 21st century.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
10mo ago
I agree with @Soriek, while the early settlers and people in previous historical communities didn't control everything that happened around them, there were faces they could either love or hate depending on their circumstances. They could go to another person, beg forgiveness or extension, and generally make sense of their world in a more comfortable way.
The modern issue of dealing with "machinations in a distant court" is the exact problem here. Humans have lived with tribes and been comfortable dealing with powerful people in their direct, personal experience for almost all of our history after language, probably even before. Dealing with your life being ruined because of an indistinct rule created by a bureaucrat you've never met and will never meet is much more emotionally difficult than having your life ruined by Steve down the street.
I'm of the opinion that this alienation is why so many modern movements are focused around spite and anger, such as the Alt Right or whatever name they go by now. Our current way of living in the Western world forces us to constantly repress anger, and there's no good outlet for that anger because we don't personally see the people screwing us over.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
6mo ago
My take is that tragedy is an inescapable part of life. Wallowing in tragedy isn't. Stop wallowing buddy.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8mo ago
Gotta say, these comments are a beautiful breath of fresh air after all the complaining in the CW thread about bare links and such. I really appreciate these monthly write-ups, they help highlight very directly the excellent writing and discussion that still happens here, despite all the complaining and detractors.
Ut motte vivere in aeternum. Or something.
Circling back around to the topic of space exploration, this article by Palladium on the reasons for exploring space brings up an interesting shift in how geopolitical justifications are made over the last hundred years or so.
The main thrust of the article hypothesizes that there may never be a truly strong economic or political incentive to push space travel. I'm not necessarily convinced this is the case, but I agree that most people that try to justify going to space all those terms are fighting a losing battle. Even if we do stand to gain massively from an economic perspective by pioneering various space initiatives, the timescale for any reasonable returns is in the hundreds of years. Not something that will motivate people to come out to the ballot box anytime soon.
What's really fascinating about the conclusion, however, is that the article points out in excellent pro something I hadn't really grasped before:
Modern governments are often wrongly derided for lacking vision. In fact, they are already committed to multi-trillion-dollar, multi-decade-long visions that require all of society, technology, and world geopolitics to be back-engineered accordingly. The U.S. government, for example, spends half its budget on social welfare programs, especially for the elderly. We take for granted that this is unremarkable, when in fact it is extremely historically unusual and a reflection of our deep commitment to a certain kind of post-industrial society that existentially values comfort and individuality.
While it's debatable whether or not the modern welfare state and social security in western countries really qualifies as a 'vision' of the future, it's absolutely true that the massive social engineering projects we have going on nowadays are far more ambitious and far more expensive than any of the space initiatives that have been proposed so far. This discrepancy is to the tune of multiple orders of magnitude.
The article rightly points out that the only thing that ever motivates people to enact these massive governmental projects are social, religious, or emotional goals. Despite all of our fancy rhetoric, humanity as a whole is nowhere near rational in our large scale decision making. This is a fundamental flaw when it comes to most rationalists or philosophers trying to create policy prescriptions - they lay out a beautiful argument, but failed to give any reasons that will truly motivate people to follow their argument.
I'll let the article conclude itself:
The expansion of human civilization to other stars will not be pioneered by lone adventurers or merry bands of hardy explorers, like we imagine the voyages of Erik the Red or Christopher Columbus. This works for interplanetary space, but not interstellar space, whose travel time will require multiple generations of people to survive a journey, including on the first try. Interstellar travel will need to accommodate not just adventurous young men with nothing to lose, but also women, children, and the elderly. In other words, a whole society. The existence of a society always implies the existence of a government.
More importantly, the sociological challenge of persuading a whole society to migrate into the unknown is very different from that of an explorer’s mission, which needs only the promise of adventure. Like the ancient Israelites, the Pilgrims, or the Mormons, a great migration will only occur when a Promised Land has been credibly found. Indirect evidence of extrasolar planets will never be enough. Whether with colossal space telescopes or ultra-fast nano-probes armed with cameras, we will need to have beautiful images and real maps of alien worlds before human civilization can become interstellar. The purpose of interplanetary expansion is to build the infrastructure and technology to make such scopes and probes feasible. These will be our cathedrals, the legacy which we will leave to our descendants.
With the release of the recent Barbie movie, the old gender debates on the internet have been reignited. (Admittedly, I haven't watched it yet, might pen down my thoughts once I do.)
I recently encountered another article by a heterosexual, middle-class woman discussing how we can assist young men in discovering their masculinity. The piece, confidently titled map out of the wilderness, repeats the narrative tropes that countless similar works in journalism tend to focus on.
Does it argue that men are disoriented because women are no longer subservient? Indeed. Does it accuse men of falling for 'destructive' ideologues such as Jordan Peterson and Bronze Age Pervert whose political ideologies aren't personally favored? Yes. Does it claim men are discontent because women wish for them to behave more femininely? Absolutely. Does it state there's a lack of 'positive masculinity?' Oh, for sure.
To credit the writer, Christine Emba, she does highlight some of the more sinister issues that venture slightly beyond the bounds of conventional discourse. She openly criticizes feminists and women in general for refusing to assist men, citing an instance where Obama was chastised for attempting to help boys, and thousands of women denounced him in protest.
What prompted me to respond to this article was a moment of blatant self-awareness by the author, who admits when reproached by a man that she doesn't want to be intimate with men who heed her advice (emphasis mine):
Yes, dear writer, you recoiled in acknowledgment. If you, a talking head opining on this topic, felt this way, consider the reaction of those numerous women with lesser self-awareness when they encounter these feeble, effeminate men.
However, all the discussions around gender roles, sexual relations, power dynamics, and 'incels' are missing the real issue. They're distractions, veils obscuring the core problem.
At the risk of being cliche, I'll reference Nietzsche's most well-known line:
Why has this single paragraph echoed throughout recent centuries as one of the deepest and most frequently reiterated explanations of modernity's moral crisis? Obviously, Nietzsche, a self-proclaimed atheist, doesn't imply we've executed deicide in the literal sense. What we've done is obliterated any transcendent reason for existence. There is no apparent reason why young men should exhibit concern for their neighbors, work towards self-improvement, curtail their desires, or even make an effort to contribute to society.
For a young man in a contemporary world that is entirely individual-centric, what is the appeal of any altruistic act?
Regardless of the religion you choose, these systems provided us with a motive beyond primal, materialistic pleasures to care. They provided us with an aim to pursue. Most importantly, they offered us a social framework within which we could strive collectively with others and receive commendation for our benevolent deeds.
Nietzsche's suggested solution is that the New Men must 'become deities' to be worthy of God's murder. Regrettably, as we've found out, not everyone can ascend to godhood. Certainly some of the highest status and highest agency men can create their own values, but what about the rest of us?
How is a young man in his twenties, armed with a useless college degree and forced to work at a supermarket to get by, supposed to find purpose in what he's doing? How can he feel accomplished, or masculine, or empowered? He definitely can't rely on God or religion for that feeling. If he tries, he'll be overwhelmed by relentless mockery and cynicism from his society.
Returning to Ms. Emba's proposed solution, she states that men need to experience masculinity by:
This, she asserts, is 'Constructive Masculinity.' Let's look past the glaring issue that it's a woman attempting to define what masculinity should be - the question remains: why?
Without some larger mission, most men aren't going to be motivated whatsoever. Men need a reason to exist. And not a poor, weak reason like 'following your dreams' or 'getting money' or 'being a good person.' Men need something to strive for, something worth dying for, something that they can use to shield themselves from the terror of the void.
Of course this problem is applicable to far more people than just young Western males. This lack of meaning, lack of purpose, is at the core of modernity's societal problems. It waits like a tiger in the shadows, seizing us in our moments and weakness and pulling us into a black pit of despair, nihilism. Emptiness.
When you're on your deathbed, where will you look for comfort? What force or being or god will let you face your own death without flinching? What water will purify you?
How will you cleanse your hands of blood?
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