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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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According to the revealed preference of their favorite leisure activity, men really love raiding enemies and aliens.

I already addressed that - yes, men like the idea of fighting and winning glory. You have provided no evidence that this means we all deep down enjoy causing pain and suffering and wrecking what other people have built. Like all your just-so stories, it's just something you spun out with deepity words.

I think if you actually read journals of people fighting in the Napoleonic era who were not Napoleon, you will find that as in most wars, most of the men fighting it did not actually enjoy it, even if they have fond memories of the camaraderie afterwards. They justified it with pride, with self-defense, with national interest, but not "'Cause it's fun to destroy what other people have." Master and Commander is not about guys enjoying destruction and pillage. The whole point of the movie is that they are trying to defend their homeland; Aubrey's rousing speech to his crew is all about preventing the French from taking over England.

But you don’t have to do exegesis, you simply have to understand that very devout Christians have always engaged in the joy of taking from enemies.

Very devout Christians have always enjoyed fraud to get rich and consorting with whores, too. You are still just making up what you want the Bible to endorse.

It’s very normal in video game culture to say things like “you ruined his night”, “he will cry himself to sleep tonight”, “you made him uninstall” after vanquishing your foe. Why do you believe boys and men say this? Or are these just evil people in your mind? Usually when you make the enemy quit the game, this makes the male player happy. You would have to explain why this occurs, if not for causing misfortune and pain upon your enemy.

They justified it with pride, with self-defense, with national interest, but not "Cause it's fun to destroy what other people have”

Do you really think the soldiers did not enjoy the prospect of taking things from their enemy? Then why did all of Napoleon’s soldiers loot? Why did the British loot the Chinese? Why did the Catholics loot the Byzantines? Why did Rome loot their enemies? It’s possible you have an atypical mind a la typical mind fallacy. Hell, I know a guy who proudly showed of Saddam’s execution sword, which of course he looted in Iraq while in the army. And again, male leisure activity involves looting mechanics for precisely this reason — video games are fun for a reason and the reason relates back to our innate psychology. We like to play the assassin who kills enemies and loots their bodies because deep down we have some kernel of an instinct which comes from prehistory, though of course moral compunction overrides this. What boy didn’t want to be a ninja in his adolescence? Why do people play GTA and not “give out compliments simulator”?

The whole point of the movie is that they are trying to defend their homeland

That’s just a speech to give them a just cause on top of their mannerbunding; Britain had declared war first and the ship was off the coast of Brazil. No one is watching the movie because they sympathize with the cause of the King, instead they see themselves in the männerbund who are singularly interested in destroying their enemy through trickery.

I think you're the one typical-minding. If your mindset is that it's fun to hurt people and take their stuff, I can see why you'd project that onto others and even construct justifications for it under your religious frame, but I do not think that is in fact the natural default psychology of most men. Most men want to be respected, to achieve things, and to defend the people and things they care about. War is a means to an end and we sing songs about it, but it's not the end. It's not our reason for being.

Your philosophy, like KulakRevolt's, is that everything else is all just a veneer over our desire to rape and kill. If that's true we'd never become a species capable of epic poetry, of grand architecture, of space travel. You and Kulak would have us never evolving beyond chimp behavior. Yes, we all have a bit of the chimp in us. That's why we teach boys that you shouldn't hit people because they hurt your feelings, and that fighting should be a last resort, not your first recourse. People like Kulak who say no, violence is the first and only answer, and people like you who say, but violence is fun and everyone wants to do it, cannot be trusted to build and maintain the very societies whose decline you bemoan.

You’re not coming up with any direct or circumstantial evidence to forward your theory, though. Your worldview lacks explanatory power.

Your philosophy, like KulakRevolt's, is that everything else is all just a veneer over our desire to rape and kill

This is a poor misreading. My theory is that men have an instinct to dominate alien or defecting groups and thus find it gratifying. American men waste this instinct on video games and have been wrongly taught that they can’t express it politically. Somalis express it politically, which is why they are stealing the Swedes’ resources and replacing them in Minnesota. The Somali allows himself to feel joy at his victories, just like the Puritans felt joy upon vanquishing their enemies, but the modern American male is only told to feel such joy in worthless video games.

You’re not coming up with any direct or circumstantial evidence to forward your theory, though.

And yours is just "My feels."

I think you have no idea what either the average Swede or the average Somali feels, only just- so stories to flatter your preconceived notions. You just make stuff up, throw it at the wall, and pontificate about "explanatory power" when you're just starting at a desirable conclusion and working backwards to construct a theory.