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Notes -
What do you think about the idea that in order to be morally worthy of a romantic relationship, you need to be willing and able to endure great suffering either for the greater good, or for your tribe, or for no reason at all? Women do this through pregnancy and childbearing, which I have heard legitimately compared to frontline infantry combat in its level of hardship. Therefore, what good is a man, in a relationship, if he is not willing and able to endure a hardship or challenge of similar difficulty? Chad compensates for this by being very good-looking and very determined; there is a good chance he would do well in a war, too. But for us mere mortals? Our existence is legitimized and our desire for romantic relationships stops being completely base, disgusting, and hypocritical when we have proven ourselves worthy through being conscientious, dedicated, and determined enough to suffer greatly for no damn reason - even, perhaps, to die for no good reason. The poets of the First World War, and the soldiers there, died pointlessly but admirably for a few inches of mud; they embodied all that is admirable about masculinity and lost their lives in the mud of Passchendaele and Verdun and the Somme.
Every man, now, needs to choose their own struggle. It's like Fight Club, except you expect and are prepared for - as much as anyone can be prepared for, which may not be much - entering what is essentially Hell on Earth and surviving it. Once you survive, you are now worthy: you have endured, you are willing to endure, therefore you now have business asking someone to endure a deep visceral biological disgust day after day to make you happy, and for the good of the next generation. And you, too, will suffer, or may suffer. Maybe it's a dangerous job, maybe it's your wife shooting you and putting you in the ICU, maybe it's figuring out how to deal with it when your wife becomes a raging alcoholic, maybe you really do get the life of domestic bliss. But probably not - you're not Chad, and as such you do not deserve domestic bliss, much as your wife is very likely to be deeply disgusted with you and chooses this as her least-bad option, making peace with her inability or unwillingness to be Stacy.
I think it's dumb.
I think suffering as a human emotion is an over rated experience.
I dislike that shared group suffering is a consistent cheat code for unlocking group cohesion. I was always suspicious of groups that employed this method to bond their underlings.
Certain levels of suffering and pain are my personal proof that a good god does not exist, and never existed with any amount of power over this universe. The suffering present by default in nature is horrific and often purposeless.
Worshipping suffering bring to mind goths that would cut themselves in highschool. Lauding it as a method for social cohesion makes me think that the person is bad at normal human connection and is looking for a cheat code.
So basically the Hock is a cheat code cooked up by a lonely probably-autistic man looking to trade out the pain of loneliness for that of physical suffering, ideally shared.
On the goths: those fuckers formed strong as hell bonds due to the shared intensity of their experiences - arguments with parents, occasional psych unit stays, running away from home to escape said psych unit stays. The bonds lasted a while after high school but five or so years later they frayed after they got the money for sleeve tattoos and decent therapy and grew apart.
But: does this dumbness have a political slant to it at all? If it does, what quadrant is it in politically?
I don't think the trade will be successful, they will wind up with both the suffering and the loneliness.
Men don't come back from combat and war and feel that they are no longer alone. They come back missing the level of camaraderie they had. Many of those same men went in relatively fine too.
No, plenty of things don't have a political slant. If it does have one it is probably an artifact of demographics. Whichever quadrant young men are in is going to be where this is at.
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