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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32947 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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having kids & taking care of them properly is insanely hard work compared to white collar labor. It's rewarding, but so is a successful career, or having interesting hobbies, or alternately partying & getting stoned all the time

I see this stated all the time, but it seems like a leftish version of copium to me. Women, particularly 30+ are increasingly unhappy, and are not having the number of kids they want. The hard work of children is not eternal compared to white collar work (which I haven't heard any colleagues of friends rave about, outside of a few positions that less than ~1% of all people can even have). I think what we are actually seeing is just confusion by all people in the 12-30 year old age range. I mean, for most people, work is work with little reward aside from bare sustenance. I even recall a bunch of girls in my HS AP/Honors courses basically 2 decades ago joking about how student loans were looming to cripple their entire life dreams. And that was 2 decades ago when tuition was much smaller, and the number of men for them at uni was much better.

What has actually happened? IMO it is that the US education industry is now almost fully a grifting parasite on the country. This was starting at least in the 80s, had become fully realized by 2000, and is now in a behemoth state (while still growing). On top of that, dating apps and social media generally have unleashed the most self destructive decision making of both sexes, unfortunately for women, these generally fall harder on them long term.

Oh, it's pretty obvious that western society is currently in a transition state from monogamy to polygamy where desirable/powerful men will have multiple female partners while a large portion of men will have to do without.

In the end such a state only benefits these powerful men, women are by and large hurt by polygamy (bigamy laws are generally seen as a way to protect women) because it means the moment her partner gets successful enough he's gonna take on a second/third wife (or rather a concubine these days, no need to marry and risk losing assets in a divorce when you can discard them like a used condom when you're tired of them) because the societal taboo against it has been dropped. Naturally this limits how successful a woman can become through marrying well, because if her choice ends up doing really well she now has to spilt the rewards between other women too.

And all I can say, after seeing the state of modern western women, is that they absolutely, 100% deserve it.

In the end such a state only benefits these powerful men, women are by and large hurt by polygamy (bigamy laws are generally seen as a way to protect women) because it means the moment her partner gets successful enough he's gonna take on a second/third wife (or rather a concubine these days, no need to marry and risk losing assets in a divorce when you can discard them like a used condom when you're tired of them) because the societal taboo against it has been dropped.

That sounds like France for generations. I sometimes wonder if it would be a scandal for a French president to NOT have a mistress, but I doubt that we'll ever know.

Moral acceptance of polygamy is going up in the US (bolding mine):

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/313112/understanding-increase-moral-acceptability-polygamy.aspx

But what fascinates me as much as anything else is the trend on polygamy. When Gallup first included polygamy on the list in 2003, 7% of Americans said it was morally acceptable, and that fell to 5% in 2006. But over the past decade, this percentage has gradually increased -- moving into double digits in 2011, reaching 16% in 2015, and this year, at 20%, the highest in our history. In short, there has been a fourfold increase in the American public's acceptance of polygamy in about a decade and a half.

Notably from the graph in the post you can see almost all of this increase happened in the 2010s, the time when cultural shifts really started accelerating.

Now this still isn't much, and there is natural variance in polls and just because something is seen as more acceptable doesn't mean more of it is actually happening, but equally I didn't say that we're having lots of polygamy right and now, just that we're transitioning from a state where it was very taboo to one where it is little more of an eye raiser than performing fellatio (something that was also taboo many decades ago but is now accepted).

That'd be my guess too (although I'd argue "rural", as they spent most of that time living in Vegas and Flagstaff, unless you're thinking of a different reality show/polygamist family than I am). One wonders if the sentiment will shift now that 3/4ths of said polygamist family relationship has now been loudly detonating, catching fire and leaking radiation all over the tabloid press...

This is the bit I really don't get: women are spoiled because they go to college, we'd all be better off if women only got high school education. So what about men? Are men spoiled by going to college? Would the world work better if men could only get to high school, too?

Because that really seems to be pushing for the "older guys get the younger women" model; the woman gets married or partnered off pretty soon after high school, which means in effect needs an older guy with a decent earning capacity to support the family. This leaves the 20-25 year old men still out in the cold, unless we say that "20 year old guy can date 16 year old high schooler" and maybe be the partner/spouse for her when she's 20 and he's out of college and getting that first job.

Or maybe not.

Because this works both ways: if men of all ages are most attracted to the 20+ age range in women, then the most competition will be for women in that age range, and if women have a greater choice, then they'll pick the better choice (the same way that if men had a range of attractive women to choose from, they'll pick the most attractive, and not the Plain Jane with the lovely personality but she has a squint and facial hair). If older men are chasing younger women and not women in their own age range, what do you do? I see a lot of online talk about women hitting the wall at [early age], so you're asking older men to 'settle' for the less attractive women (less attractive because older). I don't think that is going to work, either.

So what about men? Are men spoiled by going to college? Would the world work better if men could only get to high school, too?

Most men that go to college, yes. Our college enrollment is at least 75% spoilage.

This is the bit I really don't get: women are spoiled because they go to college, we'd all be better off if women only got high school education. So what about men? Are men spoiled by going to college? Would the world work better if men could only get to high school, too?

Certain degrees spoil you a lot more than other degrees, and women disproportionately do degrees that are personally destructive. I agree women shouldn't be prevented from going to college but we need to (gender neutrally) discourage a large portion of degrees and make them unviable unless the person is coming from a well off enough background that even after the damage of the degree they have a personal/familial safety net strong enough to support them.

College is generally destructive signaling. It would be better if we could just let high school students put their SATs / GPAs / coursework on CVs and go from there.

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