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Has the Occident betrayed its young men?
I have been feeling intense abjection lately vis-à-vis my culture, and I wanted to explain why here. Much has been said about how the West treats its young men, particularly with respect to feminism and and wealth redistribution. But more and more, I have been feeling that the state of things is truly one of complete betrayal. Complete betrayal is weighty and generally seen as impossible to come back from. This is different from simply feeling that something is off.
My argument for it constituting complete betrayal starts with the following. Humans are fundamentally animals. As animals, they require resources and reproduction over everything else. The West provides a lot of distraction for its young men, that is true. It provides, certainly, a lot of education, whether they want it or not. Many such things are provided better than ever before. But at the end of the day, humans are animals and the true duty of a culture is to provide those it is loyal to with reproduction and resources, namely resources which convert to shelter, food, reproduction access, and child investment. Humans have a useful single number for all of this called money. So for a human animal, it is really about reproduction and money. Culture/society might provide young men with distraction, but does it provide a mate and an income?
I believe the situation is one of complete betrayal, because culture/society actually deeply interferes with young men getting income and reproduction, and does quite a lot to prevent it and keep young men alone and poor. This is nothing less than complete betrayal. Let me explain the specifics as to how this is done.
Sexually, every revision to law and culture in the last 100 years fit the pattern of preventing, delaying, or degrading the marriages of young men. Every prohibition that was dropped was a prohibition that served young men. This includes adultery laws and laws against divorce. Every prohibition that was strengthened is a prohibition against young men. These include prohibitions against marriage at certain ages and prohibitions against the husband's authority in the home, as well as prohibitions against having sex in many other circumstances, especially on university campuses, which in the late 20th century were the last great place for spouses to meet. On top of that, every sexually related cultural movement interferes with the reproduction of young men. LGBT is a great distraction and tells young men to have sex with each other instead of with women. Modern dating culture says have barren, temporary relationships with the opposite sex. Radical feminism teaches women to be functionally lesbian or asexual and otherwise to avoid romance with men. Taboos have been created to ostracize young men who criticize these cultural movements. It is extremely easy to imagine a culture that better serves its young men reproductively. The fact that it only ever gets worse is a sign of the betrayal.
Economically, credentialism has eaten away at the right of young men to have an income. They are now commanded to stay in school to later and later ages. When they work, the tax burden is immense; more and more money goes to foreigners, single women, and the old. Every government handout taxes young men and married men and pays out to women, children, pensioners, and foreigners. More controversially, I also believe young men are systematically underpayed when they do work, although mostly this goes to redistribute wealth to middle aged men, which young men become, so it's probably the least bad of all the problems and is best fixed by reversing the tax burden on young men from heavily taxed to becoming net receivers of welfare even while working. Credentialism also needs to be curtailed, and then younger men can build more marketable skills at younger ages, boosted their base at any given age pay insofar as the age-income correlation is meritocratic.
Young men pay taxes largely so family courts can threaten whatever marriages they do establish, instead of defending them, so that their money can go to the education system that robbed them of several years of income and work experience, so that their money can go to old retirees who set up this system, so it can go to immigrants and foreigners, so it can go to single women who won't get married, and so it can go to police who will arrest them if they ever end up breaking one of these back-breaking rules that were set up to oppress them. That's complete betrayal by culture & society.
What does complete betrayal imply? It means Western young men should never die for their country. Don't ever join the military. If you get drafted, dodge it if legally possible. Young men should never contribute to their country. Insofar as legal, enter a parasitic profession like finance and drain your country dry. They deserve it because they allow it and they hate young men anyway. Young men should leave their country; move away from the west. Start a city-state in Latin America with a charter from Honduras where young men are served and not betrayed. Go help develop a 2nd world country where young men are served and not betrayed. Pay taxes in the new country. If your old country demands taxes abroad, renounce your citizenship, because your country is a traitor.
In other words, young men are like a Jew in Christian Europe. They are hated by their neighbors, so lend to them and charge as much interest as possible. They are hated by their neighbors, so never fight invaders for them, strike a deal with them if they win. They are hated by their neighbors, so they should move between places and never settle in one place. They should demand maximal pay for minimal work, because they are hated by your neighbors. They should be a Zionist, and dream of the foundation of a new Israel. A place that does not despise them.
I appreciate feedback on this. Maybe I am overreacting or got something wrong here and the situation is not so dire. But as I have lived my life, this is the conclusion I've increasingly come to.
I do think it is important to have some perspective here. Individuals, men included, have never been freer. Mandatory conscription has declined since the cold war, education and knowledge is accessible to everyone, and outside of the big cities it is possible to live very cheaply as long as you don't mind having very few material possessions. No job can turn you into a wage slave. You are free to save up, quit, and live your life as you please. Wages are high enough that a single man with good financial sense can build savings over time.
Social mobility has never been easier. No longer are you bound to the same job that your father had. If you are born smart and driven, but low class, you are free to get an education, build connections at university and create a better life for yourself and your children. The social roles of gender and class have eroded, giving you more opportunities than ever before.
Male dominated jobs have never been safer. You are not going to die at 60 because your lungs were destroyed from inhaling dust at the factory. The western world has tons of regulations concerning ventilation, overtime, how much you are allowed to carry at once and so forth. If you do get an injury, modern medicine gives you better odds of recovery than your forefathers could have even dreamed of.
If you do initially fail to create a good life for yourself there are social safety nets that can catch you and potentially allow you to start over and learn from your mistakes. The strength of these depend on your country, but at the very least you are not going to starve.
A man who takes ownership of his life, builds an understanding of the world he lives in, and takes the initiative to improve his station has better chances than basically any man who came before him. The issue of course, is that young men are not raised to do this.
Where I agree with you is that society lies to young men. We are raised to be obedient and easy to manage, then bombarded with messages of how we are the cause of every problem in the world. We are taught to expend considerable effort on providing for minorities (anyone who isn't a white man) due to notions of guilt and fairness. Young men are taught to play it safe, avoid risks, and do only as others tell them. This completely fails to prepare them for a world that actually rewards risk taking, courage, independent thinking, and initiative.
Then, of course, there is the whole dating thing, where men are lied to about women want for their entire childhood, only to be ridiculed as adults for failing to attract any.
I do see problems, but overall I think your message can only hold true for men born into high social status. Historically, the majority of men have been largely considered as cheap disposable labor, and have led extremely harsh and thankless lives. For those, the current world by far outclasses what we had a hundred years ago. It isn't even close.
Not even close to true. Freedom on the frontier blows anything we have out of the water, and it's not close. You cannot have freedom in a panopticon, it's a misnomer.
Plenty of people have been much, much freer than this, and most of them are in the past of this very country.
It’s because ordinary people mistakenly accept a simple “freedom of motion” as an adequate substitute for the [real] feeling of freedom that comes from the absence of financial insecurity, the absence of neighborhood crime, the ability to express a distaste or prejudice without retribution, or simply being empowered to get up on a whim and move somewhere else.
Freedom from want and freedom from fear, as FDR put it, are not freedom but security expressed as freedom.
Reminds me of the quite commonly expressed notion over the last decade all the way to today, that censorship of wrongthink is required for free speech, because for women/POCs/LGBTQ+/etc. to have free speech, they must be free from other people expressing opinions that "make them feel unsafe" or "deny their humanity/basic rights/existence/etc." Another case of people smashing a square peg through a round hole because the roundness is what's been declared as sacred.
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It shouldn’t be any surprise to you I don’t agree with his ideology. An insecure population isn’t one that lives freely either. What the hell kind of freedom is it if I can’t walk outside my door without getting accosted by a criminal? Reminds me of the reaction ordinary Russians had of communism when they saw the plenty and relative abundance Americans lived in when compared with their own. The communists said, “But that’s exploitation…,” and the people shouted back “If that’s exploitation we want to be exploited!”
Who cares what FDR thought? (Damn… that’s deep dawg.)
Freedom isn't something handed to you. It's something you're able to hold onto on your own. When you try to give it to everyone whether they can hold it or not, you don't actually spread freedom around. You change what the word means until it fits people who can't carry the real thing, and what you're left with is safety, or dependence, with the word "freedom" stuck on top.
If somebody can grant you your freedom, then somebody can take it back. That isn't freedom. It's permission, and permission always comes from a person standing over you. A freedom you have to be given is just a nicer word for being managed.
What you're describing isn't freedom for everyone. It's a guy who can't count on anyone to protect him and isn't allowed to protect himself, being told that's what free feels like.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that living with the mentality that I have to be prepared to “take” my freedom for myself at any moment is true freedom in any way I should find desirable. Freedom is a wonderful thing, but I don’t fetishize the concept the way people do in the west. In Scandinavia you have a right to roam that doesn’t exist in the US. In China you have the freedom to be publicly intoxicated without running afoul of the law. In France you have a protected and enforced “right to disconnect” from your employer, ignoring any communications from them after hours. These are freedoms that don’t exist in the US.
There comes a point where I really don’t care whatever someone wants to call it. Call it whatever you want. I’m a results driven guy. If someone wants to come along and drop some “profound” deepity a famous American president once said, with his arms crossed and a grin on his face he can do that; does that change the reality of the situation?
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It's never been easier for the average person to make enough money to not feel financial insecure.
If this is critical you can move to the countryside, which is much less crime-riddled than it was during the frontier days.
This is a pretty corny idea of freedom
There's nothing stopping you from moving except a way to support yourself financially, and it's easier than ever to save a bunch of money and/or get a remote work gig.
It's not that easy. I'm a white man with a STEM degree that tests at ~135 IQ, had good marks and all of that, and I pretty consistently can't get this right now. Seems to mainly go to people of preferable ethnicities. Statistically I am still better off than a huge majority of men my age. There is just no way someone with a 100 IQ can do what you're saying if it's not falling out of a tree for me.
If you're trying to get your first job and have no better options that spamming resumes online then OK I can see your point, especially if you were unlucky enough to choose computer science.
If you're mid-career or later though, with a STEM degree and 135 IQ then this is really just a skill issue.
Demonstrably untrue.
It was never trivial to support yourself, especially as a midwit or worse. The point is that it's easier today thanks to technology than it ever has been.
Only if you believe that IQ/competence/etc. are equal between those ethnic groups.
That wouldn't matter to the statement being argued:
Affirmative Action can exist and be bad and also not really matter to the employment prospects of any individual white person who isn't looking for a cabinet post or an NFL coaching job.
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You can always say that, it will still work even when you tell Mr. 1 in 1000 to rank up to 1 in 100,000, just so he can have a decent life, but the point is I have more skill than a majority of people, but it's still hard. So how do you expect the average person to be any better off?
Stats are too vague. What are Asians? Who is white? What about my field? I think Indians and Chinese are hired way more than they deserve in tech, and it crowds out white talent, these stats don't disprove that at all.
Sure, but still not easy.
I can confirm this, my current job is working with about 90% Indians where roughly only 1 in 50 are anything even approaching a competent software dev. Given that the managers are all Indian, this strikes me as pretty naked ethnic bias. The handful of East Asians I've worked with at least usually seem competent though.
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[citation needed]
And the barriers to entry have never been higher.
This is about right up there with just telling a homeless man to flip out his phone, dial up an Uber and go buy a house somewhere. So if you were some rando making say 60k a year, he should just quit his job, forego his bills, drive far out of his way and somehow live on the countryside?
Maybe freedom of speech is a corny idea. People should test it sometime in their society by seeing who they’re not allowed to criticize.
There’s nothing “stopping you,” from having the same opportunity to become as good of a Basketball player as Michael Jordan. There’s no specific “law of nature” that says you couldn’t build an elevator to the fucking moon. There’s nothing stopping you from going to a library and reading every book there is on fixing cars and becoming an auto mechanic, you’re still not going to get hired.
I really think people that speak like you have truly never experienced any difficult life circumstances of the kind that oh, you know… prevent you from doing the kind of thing you’re talking about.
Nostalgia economics is totally wrong.
By "countryside" I meant more of "anywhere outside the urban core". It doesn't have to be the complete boonies. There are plenty of low crime areas out there still relatively close to cities, and it will usually actually be cheaper to buy a house out there than it will be in the city. The downside is a longer commute.
"Freedom of speech" has always been fairly limited if your idea is actually "freedom to express prejudice". It's true that you probably can't expect to shout the word n!gger 20 times in a professional setting today... but I doubt you could get away with that 30 years ago either.
I know about wokes wanting to make any political opinion to the right of far-left verboten in polite society, and I agree that's bad. But your "freedom to express prejudice" is just a complaint about the Overton Window, which has always been mushy and ever-shifting.
What? There's genetics which is a hard-stop, and a ludicrous amount of effort too. That's very different from simply moving somewhere else. I really don't understand your point here.
If someone wanted to move across the country, it's far easier today to apply for jobs before moving than it would be in the 1990s or 1950s. There are of course things that could stop people from moving, but the point of this discussion is what's changed over time for the worse.
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