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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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People are deeply hostile to the reality, no matter who you are, that fulfilment and happiness and ‘living a worthwhile life’ essentially come down to a very simple recipe.

Marry young(ish) to someone of good temperament, have a reasonable number of children (three or more), work a job you can somewhat stand, have some kind of spiritual life. Above all, tend to a dense circle of friends and family who you trust and who trust you, who live nearby and who you see often. Save a little money if you can. Try to do good by those who care about you.

This advice is proven over countless generations. It applies to almost all people, everywhere in the world. It is attainable for everyone in the global middle class and above, which is everyone here and certainly everyone writing political commentary on the internet.

But it’s also kind of scary, because if it’s that easy to be happy and fulfilled despite living in a decadent, empty, atomized, soulless, blah blah blah modern hellscape (etc etc), then why aren’t you doing it? Masturbation about joining Wagner or the Foreign Legion or fighting a war against China or leading The Revolution is much more interesting, because the very fact that these things are unlikely to happen means that they confer no obligation or even pressure to improve.

The fact that the recipe for happiness is so easy is precisely what makes it so terrifying, because it means failure to achieve it is usually our own fault.

Marry young(ish) to someone of good temperament, have a reasonable number of children (three or more), work a job you can somewhat stand, have some kind of spiritual life. Above all, tend to a dense circle of friends and family who you trust and who trust you, who live nearby and who you see often. Save a little money if you can. Try to do good by those who care about you.

Do you apply this to women as well?

EDIT: based on 2rafa's past comments about gender differences and the Red Pill that I've read here and on the old subreddit, I'm not convinced that she actually thinks that marrying young and having 3-4 children* is the recipe for fulfilment and happiness for young single women. On the other hand, I can totally see why she'd give that advice to this online community here, which is mostly composed of men. In other words, I can understand why she'd argue that this is sound advice for single men who want to fulfill their male sexual imperative in a way that benefits them long-term.

*Just to point out one thing: having three or more healthy children as a woman implies in the context of current society that you enter a long-term relationship with your future husband at 18-20 years of age and have your first child 2-4 years later, when you're convinced that the relationship is stable enough. Who would actually even give teenage girls such advice openly these days?

Pretty sure 2rafa is a woman, so I would guess “yes.”

That's not something I see as evident. See the edit.

Fair enough.

Though…I guess even that sounds reasonable to me? Not the advice I’d give, but for someone of more traditional values, it doesn’t seem outside the Overton window.