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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.
You are wrong about the changes in the second sexual revolution; it began with protests by male college students against being banned from female dorms. Before the first sexual revolution young men's sexual opportunities were limited to prostitution or after marriage(at which point one would no longer be considered a 'young man'- and the average age for which was almost certainly older than you expect. Even when teen marriage happened, it was a girl thing). Between the two it came with the subclause that non-occult sexual acts required marriage. Young men wishing to sow their wild oats benefitted greatly.
And what happened thereafter to the marriage rates, marriage age, and birth rate?
Uh no it was about 21 for men during the USA baby boom, what are you talking about? In antiquity is was also around 21. Do you think 22 year old men are middle aged?
On X they're calling this capeshit history. That means it's storybook fantasy. A neat, little, visual, graspable event « kicked off » everything. Oh boy! It's like a little modern Homeric myth! When the reality is what happened is some esoteric cohort effects caused peoples' instincts to shift and so on.
Yes, male age at marriage reached a temporary minimum in between the two sexual revolutions. But we actually have male age at marriage data about as well as could ever be expected, and historical male ages at marriage tended to be late twenties or early thirties. Moralists just before the first sexual revolution recommended 25+, Romans talked about 30 as ideal and normative- and what data exists suggest these were, broadly, reflecting general norms.
Marriage rates declined with the second sexual revolution. That's bad. But the norms in between the two sexual revolutions were not durable or sustainable.
You are way off, sorry. None of this is true.
You're just making that up.
Shame on him for not pre-emptively sourcing you, but greater shame on you for replying with "nuh uh". @hydroacetylene is in fact correct.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-demographic-economics/article/marriage-age-ushape/F94BC91AFF2CF4A9B5031C52476B06D9
(U shaped marriage age)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern
(Late age of marriage for bothe men and women in europe)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_and_Days
(Late Recommended age of marriage for men)
...
Argue a priori, argue a posteriori, or ask for sources. Don't "nuh uh."
Age of first marriage for men until recently didn't get much above 25, with about a 4 year age gap. Now it's over 30 with a 2 year age gap. The current situation is much more different from the historical norm than the 1950s nadir at about 22 with a slightly over 2 year age gap.
no but you see this is good because young men expecting to have sex with young women (to say nothing of the opposite) even in the confines of a marriage is bad
imagine having sex with women that are actually young, couldn't be me, i hagmax like Ben Franklin
if we could we'd push age of marriage up to 40, 50, 60 because they'd be more mature then and more cognizant of the risks, that would be good
especially because most of us are already unhappily married and we want to help our kids avoid that, but we have no idea how to do that so we just tell them to delay it and they trust us, dumb fucks
imagine marriage was an important part of living life, and imagine that you'd ever want to maximize the amount of fulfilling life time you (or others) will get
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