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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   30524 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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Something like this.

You're absolutely right that the body-builder on horseback/Chad Squarejaw meme is a mirage. That is not a strong man, that is a weak man's caricature of a strong man. The strongest and most terrifying of men often come across as unassuming precisely because they are sufficiently self-possessed and confident in themselves, that they don't feel a need to actively project that image.

And yes good men create good times. But good men are rarely reasonable because having principals and caring about people/things outside one's circle of immediate concern is utterly irrational in the conventional sense of the word.

Building on this, I saw no recognition by the OP of the distinctions between types of strength, or even the distinction between power and strength. Weak leaders can have much power, and use the power of their position / context / brute force to paper over their weaknesses against those with less power.

Moreover, the 'strong men are where the survivors are dominant' easily misses that Darwinian selection doesn't select for strength, it selects for survival. Survival only correlates with strength when the selection force is targetting weakness- but it often doesn't. Wars will kill the brave and the selfless first, while cowards who flee live. Purges will select for those with the strength of the (wrong) conviction, but spare the sophists or the deceitful. Darwinian survival isn't survival of the best, it's the propagation of those most likely to multiply. Calling those features 'fitness' is assuming the conclusion.

I think an underestimated component of this is that physical strength/survivability is often down-stream of mental strength/survivability. As the old saw goes, a lot of guys want to be swole, but few have the discipline to eat right, lift weights, and do so with consistency.

Physical strength isn't much good to a doormat, and mental fortitude/astuteness can absolve numerous physical faults, the old Dashiel Hammet bit about how "Guzman didn't move fast, but then then again Guzman never needed to move all that fast because he'd seen you coming from six blocks away" comes to mind.

Agreed, and perhaps a simpler illustration is: why isn't everyone 7ft tall? Sometimes it pays off to be the small guy who just doesn't need to eat very much.

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