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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.
With Friends like these, who really needs feminists... Yes lets put all young men into the bucket that makes them just animals, justify all the stereotypes that men just want to fuck and breed. The level of misandry in this post is quite high and you even have to the gall to pretend you are championing men's rights. You going around and repeating boomercon sexism: "all men are pigs that just want sex" is not revolutionary. News flash, men are people! And people want more than to just satisfy their base urges to have sex and spawn heirs.
Maybe Herbert was more prescient than he knew. We need a Gom Jabbar. Kill off all the men who's sole goal in life is to be an animal. They are holding back our species.
No, he’s mostly right. Your rendition of this is an uncharitable caricature IMO, but you can put it any way you want to. Virtually all men do want sex. Maybe not of the variety you have in mind, but they want it in some form or fashion; and the fact that they also have “other” wants, doesn’t negate those that are fundamental to their biology.
Yes men want some sex, but it's not their core driving impulse. Maybe for some hypersexual men but its a big world with a big range of libidos. Many don't want kids, some don't want partners. This convergence to "all men are just horndogs that want to pump out kids" is a weird conservative meme that refuses to adapt to contact with reality.
Well yeah, you’re essentially arguing with a meme conception of the idea, but underneath that caricature biology is still a real thing (and one that gives meaning to life incidentally).
I am using "meme" in the definition of the core metaphysical idea underlying a narrative or belief.
See this is what I disagree with. So I don't think I am arguing with a caricature based on your emphasis of it as true. Biology has given me no meaning in life. This is like saying science tells you what matters. It's wrong. Biology put us on this world but does not define the meaning of our lives.
You are satirizing a position and arguing with its caricature. If you ask most people the world over as best as it’s been approximated thus far, most of them do want it, specifically for the reasons I’ve drawn attention to.
Am I?
OP has literarily stated here That the only point of life is to make offspring and everything else is a worthless distraction.
Yeah, and he’s basically correct.
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Sex and reproduction aren't the same thing, though, and reproduction is arguably easier for men now that it's fairly straightforward to contract it out.
A surrogate costs something like $250,000, how does that compare to the historical price of a wife?
$250,000 would be the high end of a normal range for a domestic surrogacy from what I understand, with the low end being something like $60,000 if you don't go through an agency or go international.
Average cost of a wedding in the United States is about $35,000, and of course higher if international.
If you were correct that modernity was one big one way ratchet against the ability of young men to reproduce it would be illegal as well as immoral.
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And that doesn’t change my answer either. Globally, most men want both.
I don't disagree that most men want both.
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