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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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More debates revolving around young single men in the mainstream media. Particularly, who the young women are dating due to them being disproportionately in a relationship. The article provides some insight, stating that many are dating older men and each other. This has led to a more intresting conversation of if older men are increasingly monopolizing women. Leaving younger guys out to dry supposedly, however a good chunk (acutally half, according to study from pew research). The data gives two large reasons, mainly: Having other shit to do & just like being single. What i always found frustrating with the mainstream progressive view of this matter is that they seem hell bent on blaming Men for this problem. Greg Matos, who wrote this (in)famous article which pretty much embodies the progressive view on the matter, has stated: “Women don’t need to be in long-term relationships. They don’t need to be married. They’d rather go to brunch with friends than have a horrible date,”. The argument from the mainstream being in a nutshell: that these single men are misogynistic, shitty bums and deserve to die alone. That take leads to some rather intresting conclusions however, when looking at the data. From the first pew research link and another one. The people who are most likely to be single are men who are: Black, young, only highschool educated, low income, and living with mom and pops. Are we suppose to assume, blacks, the youth, poor men, men without degrees, and guys without their own place are inferior romantic partners, and or more misogynisitic than their rich, old, white, college educated, apartment renting counter-parts?

Could it not simply be that these mens moral characters are fine, but they simply lack the resources and experience many women desire? Is such a thing their fault? Is the black man to become white? Or the poor man rich (or at least reasonably middle class)? Could there not be barriers preventing them from achieving such feats? In most cases, progressives would be open to outside forces interfering with ones ability to succeed. The matter is being treated as if all of this is entirely within their control, and their failures are a simple matter of poor character. The issue appears far more complex is you ask me.

Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work. There was a post about on star slate codex sub reddit about how good IQ was at predicting life success. There is a bunch data about how expensive being poor is, poverty traps, and how difficult escaping it can be. Disputes over gender wage gaps. Not to mention all the discussions being had about how race impacts such outcomes. Id be interested if there was some huge of huge meta study done on what percentage of these factors (IQ, class, race, gender, ect) all impact your chances at life success, if anyone had such information on hand. Though my intuition tells me that such a study would be insanely difficult to do, if it even exists.

Seems to me that women are behaving rationally.

-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

-you can simply chose not to have kids due to high-quality birth control & safe+legal abortion, no need to be sexually abstinant like in the bad old days

-if you're just having sex for pleasure, a lot of the utility of monogamous relationships is lost.

That following their modern sexual incentives leaves a good 30-50% of men out in the cold, is simply not women's problem.

Men might make it their problem eventually - failing any big changes, getting outnumbered & overrun by a pro-natalist culture seems inevitable. But there are some big changes in the pipeline (notably AI, sexbots and artifical wombs) which have a high probability of obviating the whole discussion.

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.

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.

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.