domain:aporiamagazine.com
Grant_us_eyes
7m ago
Having friends - even close ones - is a different experience from having a girlfriend/fiancé/wife you come home to every evening.
There's also the other side of this equation, when some friends get married(and have children) and the rest don't. Even worse if they move away. You're still friends, you still talk alot, but circumstances change when you can only see each other face to face once or twice a year.
sun_the_second
11m ago
This is the kind of guy they make uplifting youtube videos about. "This man has been picking pineapples for 30 YEARS, this is his story.".
2rafa
13m ago
I know of zero relationships that ended because the guy went too far right.
I know of one, the man now has a tiny twitter account retweeting BAP and Fuentes, NYU dropout, beautiful girlfriend, handsome and from a good family, started very loudly talking about how slavery was justified at parties, was literally part of the tiki torch march at Charlottesville, now lives in a small town inland in Florida off what most of his friends think is his grandfather’s inheritance. Went to private school in NYC (I didn’t know him then, but I have friends who did). Gained 50+ lbs.
AvocadoPanic
16m ago
I've had very similar experience with friends, some from childhood; divorce, asymmetric undercut in unnatural colors, attempts at lesbianism and public online displays of mental health issues. I've had the same thoughts about reaching out but ultimately didn't think I'd be heard in a way that added value.
tend to our own gardens
This is where I am, I like to think of it as being Mary, not Martha.
The opposite side of this we are now beginning to see in the online 'white well-being' posters. Some of this I think is just women being more influenced by their perceived peer groups.
Crowstep
16m ago
I can't give a definitive answer to your question (which I guess you're not really expecting). It's far too personal, and reasons you've given are valid to consider.
Louise Perry likens pregnancy and giving birth as the female equivalent of going to war. It's dangerous, intoxicating, glorious, painful and rewarding all at once. It's brings you close to death and closer to life. You're going through something that all of your female ancestors went through and coming out the other side having created a new soul.
If you do go ahead and have another baby, you'll be doing something heroic. That's all I can really say.
thejdizzler
17m ago
One of my problems in general, but certainly when it comes to self improvement/wellness is trying to do too much at once. For example, here is my list of goals for this month:
• Chores spreadsheet
• 400k words read Spanish
• 2 substack posts
• Read 3000 pages total (~100/day, roughly 8-10 books).
• 4 Spanish gramar exercises
• Up 3k spanish Anki cards, 500 italian Anki cards
• 300 minutes of meditation total (average 10 min/day)
• 20 days fap free
• Swim 4 days a week
• Build to 50 miles a week running
• Savings rate of at least 20%
This + goals at work seems to overwhelm me. Are there specific goals in this list that you think I should focus on? Things that I should cut? Is there a better way to approach goal setting in general?
faceh
18m ago
I went through a version of that.
Not so much the politics, but she ducked out of the relationship, cut many existing ties, gained a bunch of weight, and now she binges anime (I found her myanimelist account last year) and plays around in Role-playing servers.
And I have three different acquaintances that had this happen too, one of whom I mentioned recently.
One wife was a really nice Mormon girl who now is presenting as full on LGBTQ, blue hair, and does roller derby.
I know of zero relationships that ended because the guy went too far right.
WandererintheWilderness
19m ago
How's it a sign of virility?
In the most literal sense: it's associated with high levels of male hormones ("Men with androgenic alopecia typically have higher 5α-reductase, higher total testosterone, higher unbound/free testosterone, and higher free androgens, including DHT"). TMU it's a completely different phenomenon from hair loss in the elderly. In many young men's case, balding at the apex of the skull occurs concurrently with facial hair and body hair growth - in a very real sense it's another side of the same coin. The fact that we've come to associate it with old age and feebleness is just one of those things where cultural beauty standards have diverged from the biological reality of the human phenotype, like women having body hair, and I just think it's a bit silly in principle.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
21m ago
I think the biggest difference is male aggression toward women is usually physical while female aggression towards men is usually social, most notably attempted social ostracization. Women attack men's social bonds in ways that men don't attack women's, thus leading to this asymmetry.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
23m ago
This makes me appreciate, even more tangibly, how sane the countries I've lived in are. I mean sure, Indian politics involves a fair share of riots, gunfire and vote-rigging, but it's almost never this personal. UK politics just puts me to sleep.
I've never had the displeasure of cutting ties, or having them cut, because of politics. It's borderline unthinkable. There might be some bickering, then everyone goes out for tea and forgets it. I even had two uncles stand for (and win) elections for diametrically opposing parties, and they lived together.
Honestly, it's a testament to the stability of US institutions that there's this much rage and disdain circulating in the water, and yet the amount of political violence is, in objective terms, nigh non-existent.
2rafa
23m ago
Sure, but then this cuts both ways. In that sense MGTOw man who regularly goes to pub with his colleagues or who plays D&D with his friends or who organizes grill party for his nieces and nephews or who volunteers for summer camps for children is not lonely either.
Sure, I don’t think this guy is necessarily lonely, unless he does really want a romantic relationship in which case he might be. But there are plenty of widowed older men who have similar large social circles, even if it’s less common than for widowed women.
2rafa
24m ago
Male friendship can be as close, but my impression has always been that male friendship is abandoned for a romantic relationship in a way that female friendship isn’t always.
thejdizzler
25m ago
I think dating is a big part of it. There is no motivation for me to grind or hustle or finish my PhD fast because I don't see girlfriend/wife opportunities coming very easily.
2rafa
26m ago
That is sad, I think it’s a great tragedy for a child to grow up without their biological mother but I’m sure your current wife is able to help as best she can. I do think it’s best for the children to know, the alternative is that they seek her out, meet her as impressionable teenagers and young adults and then are possibly ideologically indoctrinated; if they think she’s a loser from the beginning that is much less likely, and any lies she might tell about you are less likely to be believed. All the best.
Owlify
26m ago
What kind of state kills people due to accusations like this? And no, I don't think it counts as violence. I wouldn't say it is emotional abuse either, because that's a specific kind of harm to me, but it is definitely as severe. She was trying to get herself removed and either genuinely didn't understand the full consequences of her actions on her family or she just didn't care (probably this).
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
30m ago
Sure, and way more people in today's America genuinely, deeply believe in mental illness than believe in demonic possession. We'll see more explanations from the dominant religion of Scientism than we will from other religions. Even pious Catholics acknowledge the dominion of Science and Psychology, even most self-identified Catholics don't really believe in demonic possession as something that might happen to them today.
Though, you're right in that even within their respective paradigms, mental illness is much more common than demonic possession, and a "mental illness" like mild ADHD isn't much compared to possession. So maybe a better analogy would be if we had a survey asking people if they "are a sinner?" Far more right wingers would say they are sinners than left wingers, this would not reflect any underlying reality about sin.
I just don't really accept that "mental illness" is much of an explanation for anything, divorced from generalized statistics about outcomes, which are much more mixed and inconclusive and mostly gets into a series of No-True-Scotsman and Motte-and-Bailey games around what is actually meant by Red Tribe and Blue Tribe. There's something "the enemy is both strong and weak" about saying leftism is the cause and effect of mental illness, while also saying the left controls all the levels of power and all the commanding heights of industry and academia and culture.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
35m ago
Yes, the face is one of the body parts that loses weight the quickest, so when you have a massive caloric deficit on semaglutide, your face grows gaunt faster than the rest of the body. That, and people are attuned to small facial differences, so going from a typical plump American face to a one that is actually able to contract and show facial lines is striking.
faceh
35m ago
I find myself drawn to emotional intensity and struggle with finding women who don't have that to be...boring (The trick is to find someone who has an intense affect, but is otherwise relatively sane.)
It's me.
And yeah, they also have to be smart and, to some degree, self aware.
Unfortunately them merely being aware that they're being unreasonable isn't enough to convince them to STOP being unreasonable.
The smart ones tend to be able to create unique coping mechanisms that work until they have a particularly bad episode and then all collapse at once.
At which point they usually shut down all connections in life, job, friends, living situation, move somewhere new and start over to try again "fresh."
Corvos
40m ago
One think to look into is prefills - writing the first part of the AI's answer for them and then letting them 'continue' it. It's quite good for overcoming the more mind-killing varieties of fine-tuning that the big players use. Generally used for overcoming censorship but I think probably also good for directing approaches to problems, etc. For example, "Hmm, I should think about this very carefully, it's important I don't get it wrong" or "Oh, that's easy. Just...".
DelendaEst
42m ago
I'd take "no MAGA" as a challenge
I wouldn't. I live in an area where a disproportionate number of the pretty young women on dating apps were liberal (at least a decade ago when I was single, probably even more true now) and I have liberal friends so I never thought it was anything worth filtering out. Two things have changed my mind.
One is that my wife is more liberal than me and this causes friction, both from her being annoyed that I am not more anti-Trump (I am not MAGA and do not like Trump but I remain a conservative and push back against TDS type stuff) and us not always being on the same page for child rearing.
The second comes from a young woman I met on OKCupid. We had a first date that went well, and then at the end of the second date after I kissed her she explained that she had seen I was a conservative and she was a liberal and she was looked for a long term relationship and didn't think it would work out. In hindsight I'd say this was very mature and correct of her (though waiting until AFTER I'd wasted my money and time on the date instead of canceling beforehand was pretty shitty), but at the time it was soul crushing. She was not the prettiest girl I'd met on the apps (due to shyness, confidence issues, and not liking to drink I had better luck on the apps than IRL though if I had it to do over again I'd work to change that) but she was up there and she was definitely the one I had the most in common with. And what is very clear to me is that after our first date she liked me a lot and happily accepted the second date and then went to look at my profile again and found the dreaded right wing thought. It is one thing to be filtered out up front by by blue haired harpies with problem glasses, having something with manifest promise cut off at the knees was a gut punch.
Corvos
44m ago
@self_made_human, how are you getting on with the new PC?
I actually copied your specs, on the basis that you seemed like someone who knew what he was talking about, and I'm liking it very much but I need a proper monitor. You were going to get an OLED TV rather than a conventional monitor - did you? And if so, what do you think of it?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
48m ago
It’s not just a problem of brain rot though. We’ve had a narcissistic culture for decades before brain rot hit the accelerator. Americans prize autonomy, their own needs and wants, and tend to see anyone or anything that requires them to give up their freedom and autonomy to care about others, do things they don’t want to do, or takes the focus off themselves as negative. It’s not that other people don’t want this, but Americans have long taken this to extreme levels. Brain rot simply weaponized this cultural trait and uses it to push political and social ends. Marinate an American raised in the culture of autonomy and narcissistic tendencies in content that tells them they are oppressed and abused by anyone who wants them to do something they don’t want to do. Then celebrate those who “throw off the shackles of oppression” by blowing up all their relationships, quitting their jobs (claims of burnout), dying their hair odd colors (rejection of the norms of society). People who read that stuff end up destroying themselves.
Thanks for sharing your experience (and welcome to the Motte!). There were always similar concerns in my household (my children are all adults now)--I would like to have had more children (like you, I come from a large family) but then I talk to people who were lucky to have one kid, or who struggled with infertility for years and never had any, and it makes me feel like an ungrateful whiner.
My main reaction to your post is "you don't owe a baby to the world!" You aren't overstating the magnitude of the risks--even today, though the risks of pregnancy and childbirth are much less than they were even a hundred years ago, they remain real. At the extremes, women still die in the process. Even the temporary stuff, like sciatica and morning sickness, is still genuine suffering.
But pro-natalism has arisen almost exclusively as a reaction to the rise of philosophical anti-natalism. And one of the central arguments in anti-natalism is an incongruency in ethics: there often seem to be morally compelling reasons to not have children (e.g. you know you are unable to care for a child, and know that no one else will), but (outside extreme cases of authoritarianism) essentially no one thinks anyone should be compelled to bear children (even pro-life people who think it is wrong to terminate a pregnancy don't believe it would be right to force a pregnancy on an unwilling woman). Anti-natalists inflate the arguments against childbearing toward an all-encompassing edict: humanity should voluntarily work toward its own orderly extinction.
Because I am not a utilitarian, I do not find such arguments compelling. When I say you don't owe a baby to the world, what I mean is this: it is morally permissible for you to have another child, if that is what you decide to do, despite the risks. Whether the risks are worthy to be undertaken is open to you to decide, but you are not under any utilitarian obligation to have another child even if that child would be of tremendous benefit to the world. Something that I think most ethical systems really miss is the range of permissibility; utiltiarians and deontologists frequently run into the assertion that there is always and only one truly right thing to do (the "best" thing) in any situation. It's very constraining! As a contractualist, I think that there is actually a wide range of things it is morally permissible to do, and that having children is often one of those things.
But if you do, you should do it because you want to, and because the risks are acceptable to you; or, you should not do it, because you don't want to, or on reflection you find the risks too great. Whatever you choose, it's not on you to make the world a better place. It's only on you to do what is reasonable. That's all it means, to live a life of choice and value. It's wonderful that you already have three children, and I wish you luck with that endeavor. Whether or not you continue to grow your family, I thank you for your existing contributions to the rest of the world, which we did not earn, were never owed, and can receive from you only as a welcome gift--never, ever as the fulfillment of a moral obligation.
"Already old and has grandchildren" is quite the goalpost movement. When I think of the modal "lonely male" it's not someone who already has grandchildren, it's someone who never had children yet.
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