When white males do wrong these days, everyone takes them to be responsible, and so culpable. Other sorts of perpetrators are almost always treated as themselves somehow victims, devoid of effective moral agency or ratiocination, unable to act rationally in service of the good, and thus essentially insane, chaotic, like a storm or a flood. Their crimes are wholly adventitious, “random attacks” that hurt someone “in the wrong place at the wrong time” because of essentially harmless youthful hijinks or a “botched crime” that would otherwise have been carried forward to a successful and unobjectionable conclusion. The crime then does not generate any moral guilt, but only the legal sort. Thus the sense among liberals of the injustice involved in incarcerating felons: they didn’t really do it, their environments did.
This is our clue to the fact that, despite the ruin of the ancient patriarchal system in the modern West, everyone still subconsciously thinks that only white males possess full moral agency. They feel that their own moral agency is derivative of the agency of white males, and as derivate is therefore but partial. Whatever their failures, then, or the defects in their lives, they blame on white males, whom they still apprehend as fundamentally in charge of the way things work. You can blame him only who has himself done wrong; and in the modern West only white males are understood as thus quite fully competent, and therefore culpable. The less that white males actually do, the more are they blamed for what happens. And lots of white males agree with this analysis; they hate and blame their own ilk just as much as everyone else does.
Almost everyone feels, in other words, that patriarchy is still in full effect. And they are hot with resentment at the patriarchs. They insist that the patriarchy must be overthrown, when they themselves have been in charge of things for fifty years or so, and the patriarchs have (almost) all recused the office of patriarch. Why?
It is because they all take their moral cue from the patriarch. Everyone does. It’s wired into us. We all need fathers. Those who rail against the patriarchy miss the guiding hand of the absent or rudderless father. They resent him for having abandoned or failed in his paternal role, and duties. They resent the patriarchate *because* of its recusal.
And they are correct. Patriarchy *is* still fully in effect. As feminism is a project of patriarchs, and could not endure for more than a week without their acquiescence, so every aspect of society is either intended or allowed – which is in the end to say, intended – by patriarchs, who could if they chose bring the whole charade to an instant end.
The antics of modernists (Including cads) are just like those of an unruly teenager acting out. They are children who have not yet been taught the limits of propriety by the stern discipline of a strong and loving father, and are frantically searching for those limits. They act out as a way of trying to provoke a response from the world by and in the person of the father – a response that will reassure them that they are doing well, by teaching them when they are not. Thus the post-modern cult of transgression.
The Fall of the West could be arrested and reversed in very short order if men were to reclaim serious ownership of their patriarchal offices, and brook no resistance thereto. Such resistance as now everywhere advertises itself so shrilly is no more powerful before the might of the confident, dutiful and loving father than the mewling of a baby.
The Orthosphere 
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A number of years ago when I first engaged the gamers on their own turf, Roissy et al — and when I was still feeling my way around their place in the scheme of things — I outlined the problem as something very much like what Kristor has described here. Sure, my understanding then was inchoate, seen through a glass darkly, and not as eloquent as what Kristor says here but essentially the same. I was promptly run out of town and relegated to the sidelines before leaving, rarely to return (thankfully).
“Men are not the borg” I was told. Any kind of collective action or identification was a false understanding. Men should not feel a duty to right the wrongs of prior men. Pushing the idea that civilizations rise AND fall under the leadership of men is pathetic white-knighting for degenerate women. Men must attend to ourselves and our needs individually (and here’s how: game). But it’s clear now that Kristor is right and the gamers wrong.
One question only need be answered: who is the strongest? He it is who then controls the situation, willy nilly, and whether he exercises that control or not. The power is his, and it cannot be got rid of while he lives. If things are out of control, it is because he has devolved control to another, who is then his effectual agent, and from whom he could take it back.
Taking it back will be harder for him than if he had never let it go to begin with, just as it is easier to be firm with a toddler than a teen. Nevertheless who is strongest has a duty to implement his power. It has not been given to him for no reason.
Even today – evidently, given the discourse of all others, in which they are the bêtes noir – it is white males who are the strongest.
“…it is because he has devolved power to another.”
And he immediately proceeds to defend her and prop her up, thus proving once more that it is *he* who is real power behind the throne.
Great series of posts!
Kristor…
It is erroneous to stop at “white male” as white men are even stronger and the wS the strongest.
Kristor…
There is nothing inherent in a “white male” that justifies universal accountability. As you alluded, it is actually only the white Supremacist, ie, white Christian Patriarch that is understood as fully accountable DUE his absolute responsibility as the truly freest of men.
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The desire to hold only white males accountable should not be seen as in the service of righteousness, but rather to satiate the degenerate masses’ desire for systematic wrongness. In addition, that white males themselves sense a personal accountability tied to the feverish desires of the degenerate masses NONETHELESS provokes no real righteous backlash. The reason for this is self-evident. Most white males are firmly enveloped by the degenerate masses and make common cause at their very own expense.
This really depends on how you interpret Carlyleian Anarcho-Tyranny. I interpret it as a State of Nature.
My interpretation: when all rules are thrown away, you have thug rule. The classic might-makes-right type of gangsta situation, organized in small tribes, ruled by the strongest and most ruthless. This is the standard, biologically normal, “barbarian” setup.
If you look at a more civilized system like feudalism, on one hand the rule of force is replaced by the rule of law. On the other hand, the guys higher in the hierarchy are still the strong guys in armor who could cut down a 10x as big peasant army.
This is what maybe one can call the realistic rule of law. Have civilized, codified power relations, not random tyranny, but generally let those guys have power who _would_ _have_ _it_ _anyway_ even in anarcho-tyranny. Nature and culture/law supporting each other, not working against each other.
With stuff like capitalism and liberalism this gets seriously difficult. Growing up behind the Iron Curtain, I was exposed to a lot of Commie propaganda. Most, but not all of them was 100% wrong. One recurring – and better – note in propaganda youth novels was that a 13 years old boy who is already strong and hardened by tough labor sees the son of the business owner who is soft and pudgy and could not stand his ground in neither in work nor in a fight, and wonders why exactly would he have to follow the orders of this guy when he grows up? And this is actually not a bad question to ask. This is not a natural type of power relationship. It is purely based on law, but not supported by biology, because these rules are not the kinds of rulers who would be rulers in a barbarian anarcho-tyranny, in a State of Nature.
Kristor,
“everyone still subconsciously thinks that only white males possess full moral agency”
Somehow I’m reminded of Auster’s idea that the left-liberal script consists of three groups: “evil” whites, “good” whites, and moral agency-less non-whites that the good whites can use to demonstrate their virtue.
Yes. This post is just a footnote to that insight.
You’re being modest. You’ve expanded on that insight in an important way.
I agree with this analysis as it certainly centralized Patriarchy as one of the key elements deciding between societal ruin or success. Without Patriarchy, nothing else can really follow, either in the logical sense or in practical application. Women certainly cannot hope to actually fight off a male power grab, just look at the Pakistani girl that the Taliban shot. If they have the will to impose something on women, men just can. And beta males cannot do too much to stop them.
There are some fundamental things one has to consider:
1) In this age, the feminine impulse is ascendant or has peaked. It has to use masculine levers of power of course (no feminine levers exist for control because feminine virility is wholly a dependent rather than independent element), but behind the throne the influence coils itself around the culture and pushes the narratives you describe.
2) Men are funneled through an education system in almost all cases which suppresses and inhibits masculinity, churning out a high number of ‘betas’ and stupefied alphas who don’t really know what to do with themselves.
3) The order of the day is guilt, guilt for the white man. When you ask a white man how he feels about the demographic trend that will make him a minority (and this is on tape at one college) the response is, “so what?”. The same is true when men are presented the choice between power and servitude. They are very willing to follow rather than lead because they have been taught that when they had power before, they abused it and did horrible evils.
However, as I outlined in the latter parts of my analysis of Dávila’s essay…
http://citadelfoundations.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-authentic-reactionary-part-i.html
The will of the people is not the historical fiber optic cable, it is just the light trapped inside that must follow distinct rules. It rebounds off of reality, and so it doesn’t matter what they might do to males, in a second they can be overturned simply because of the realities of the male sex. The Progressive Revolution is NEVER safe.
Given the mechanization of weapons through firearms and the possible mechanized enhancement of the body through exoskeleton perhaps such inventions by men may grant women masculine hard power permanently.
Guns have already leveled the field somewhat given that is effectiveness of the weapon is not dependent on physical prowess as well as the fact that marksmanship is not dependent upon the weaknesses of the “fairer” sex. Provided that they do so from a prone or fixed position.
@ Mark Citadel
1. Females have been assimilated by raw masculinity and now project dyke-face to the crowd.
2. The system creates anti-white Supremacists with “white” male anti-white Supremacists being the logical first choice for total infiltration.
3. What you call “guilt” is really denial of the collective desire for “white” self-annihilation.
There is a way out of this milieu for the mass of whites, but it must come with a real psychological conversion first.
Women have superior linguistic intelligence. Linguistics is superior to strength. E.g. individual Pakistani men are scrawny compared to white British men (think of the times of Paki-bashing), yet, because they know both Urdu and English, and white British men know only English, the police can easily prevent the latter from organizing. Thus, Pakistani men rule the streets.
Guilt, guilt, guilt is the result of Christianity not having an ingroup-outgroup morality. And this is again the result of not having a semi-secret language, like Hebrew or Arabic.
Oddly this sentence could have been extracted from a diatribe in post-colonial critical theory. That is, those sort of people agree with you that our culture tends to attribute too much agency to white men and not enough to other groups, who have to do battle with the culture in order to seize it.
There is something pathetic about imagining “men” as a political coalition, plotting to seize back the reins of power. In my experience special interest groups have to be a lot more special than that. This too seems to echo of unconscious acceptance of feminist principles (they also believe that men constitute a patriarchy).
White males whining about how their powerful manhoods are so very powerful — or would be if not for those meddlesome feminists/modernists/whatever — really are cringe-inducing. Here’s the thing about power, if you don’t have it, then you don’t have it. There is no right to it (although righteousness has a power of its own). If the girls were able to band together and take your power from you, that is kind of embarrassing isn’t it? It means it was a sham all along.
Thanks, a.morphous, for this comment, so instructive and rhetorically useful. The point of the post is of course that feminists took nothing, but were rather granted everything they now have. Men could easily take it all back – indeed, they could enslave women if they wanted to, for women are very weak. But *they don’t want to.*
The most interesting thing about your comment is that it bewrays an inability to parse human relations except in the derivative terms of power politics, as if men were a faction arrayed against the party of women. The reality is of course much deeper and more basic: men and women are biological allies against entropy. They are not antagonists. No men, no women, and vice versa. What is more: no men proper, no women proper. I.e., (among other things) either men are stronger than women, or there are neither proper men nor proper women, at all; in which case, there are no babies, either.
Patriarchy precedes and subvenes politics. It is, first and foremost, an instrument for the protection and succor of women and children.
In what sense? If you mean physical strength, then you are (probably) very weak compared to the local motorcycle gang members. But who cares about physical strength? That is not how power relationships are settled in the modern world.
That is very fancy language, but insofar as I understand it it is probably false. Politics precedes humanity, and anything deserving the label “patriarchy” is obviously political, whether you think it is a good thing or not.
I mean physical strength, at least. That some men are stronger than I signifies nothing; almost all men are stronger than the strongest woman. Power relations may be settled on other terms nowadays than physical strength, but those terms are a thin scum on the underlying basis of lethality.
I had already pointed out that insofar as you understand it politics precedes humanity. But that is just silly. Just look at that notion: is it not absurd on its face? How could you have human politics without first having humanity around to do the politics?
That there are power relations among the chimpanzees does not tell us that those relations are prior to the chimpanzees themselves. Nor does it tell us that chimpanzee politics precede chimpanzee patriarchy. Nor, a fortiori, does it tell us anything about hominid societies, let alone that they were political before they were patriarchal.
What I’m trying to get at here, a.morphous, is not really antagonistic to your arguments, but rather only approaching them from a more fundamental perspective, which indeed you might find amenable. I don’t disagree that power relations are important in the analysis of society. Obviously they are. But you can’t have power relations within a society that does not first exist as a society. What I am suggesting is that patriarchy is coded into human (and chimpanzee) society in virtue of the overwhelming advantage in physical strength that males have over females. This differential is wired in, hard coded. It is not up for grabs. And this greater power of males is a forecondition of hominid societies per se. Without it, we would be a different sort of species, with quite a different reproductive strategy.
In other words, to get human politics, you need humanity; and patriarchy is essential to humanity, such that (regardless of the ostensible arrangements) if you don’t have de facto patriarchy, you have something other than humanity.
Thus it is just not the case that men and women are jockeying with each other over who will wield the most power. Men just have that greater power, that’s all; so politics ain’t in it, as between men and women. There is no dispute about this, except insofar as men, having power to allow or disallow any such contest for power between men and women, do go ahead and allow it.
Politics, then, properly speaking, is not worked out between men and women. It is a procedure that settles relations between families, mediated in the final analysis by and among men (albeit often proxied or influenced by their women).
But even then Kristor, the nature of Neo’s Reaction is instinctive rejection of Patriarchal autonomy. Most “white” males of the West do not want a Patriarchy and only whine of the dominance of “feminism” (actually devout dyke movement) to obscure this fact. A.morphous is trying to tell “us” in an “intellectual” way that HBD IS FOR THEE and NOT FOR ME.
Kristor…
God-ordained free will is still paramount. However it is that Patriarchy is encoded in our mechanics, it cannot “override” sheer will even when selfishly appropriated to an undeserving source. There is a DESIRE to destroy Patriarchy with an “intellectual” movement to “spiritually” justify the attempted destruction. There is REAL DESIRE AMONGST high IQ “white” males to Finally Liberate. Deconstructing and destroying white Patriarchs is absolutely necessary to achieve this Final Liberation.
And it goes beyond brute physical strength; men are emotionally more powerful than women in the same way. That we all too often choose not to exercise our emotional superiority over women signifies nothing more than that we understand this at a base level. Even YOU understand it, a.morphous. Rejecting the proper order of things is not the same thing as misunderstanding it.
I’ll say again that the proof is in the pudding of men handing over power to women, and simultaneously coming to their defense in the exercise of that power. Leave “powerful women” to their own devices (that is, devoid of support from men), and they will quickly break down emotionally and happily hand the reins of power back over to men where they belong.
This whole issue of women having and exercising real power independently of men is an elaborate ruse.
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but it sounds wrong for any possible meaning.
You can’t have it both ways. If men’s superior physical strength means they deserve to rule over women, then the local steroidal goons deserve to rule over you by the same virtue.
Such an odd way of thinking you have, always trying to figure out what is “prior”. I have absolutely no clue what that is supposed to get at. Chimpanzees have an evolved tendency towards power politics. It is part of what they are. Us too. It is inseparable from “chimpanzees themselves”, whatever that is supposed to be.
This seems to have the same thought-bug as the previous passage. Society is a collection of relationships (including power relationships). It’s not like one came before the other, they are the same thing.
Suggest it all you like, it’s still nonsense. Try reading the book I cited; even chimpanzee politics is not as simplemindedly reductive as you suggest human society is.
I really don’t understand why religious types like you, who presumably have a strong theory of how humanity is capable of transcending our biological roots, should be so eager to assert that we are prisoners of the most primitive kind of biological constraints.
These are not arguments. At most they are empty rhetorical flourishes; at least, they are admissions of dialectical incapacity.
It’s not a question of desert, but of fact. Ceteris paribus, men in fact rule over women; ceteris paribus, stronger men in fact rule over weaker men. Who disputes this disputes with reality. There’s no point in grousing about it.
Of course, not all other things are ever quite equal. Thus Odysseus was not the strongest of the Greeks, but he was the canniest. Joan of Arc likewise was not the strongest of the French, but she was the boldest and the holiest. Strength is much, and without it there is nothing; but it is not the only thing. To suggest that it is really would be reductive.
Agreed! It’s just that patriarchy is logically prior to politics in our nature. What I mean by this is that, while politics are indeed inherent in humanity, it is not the case that this or that political order is baked into human nature. But patriarchy is.
There is a deep grammar to human language, but that grammar can accommodate thousands of languages. So likewise is there a deep grammar to human society, that can be expressed in many different ways. Patriarchy is part of that deep social grammar, along with hierarchy, religion, and a number of other things (I take monarchy to be a palmary form of patriarchy, as aristocracy is a palmary form of hierarchy). There is always an oligarchy, always a state religion, always a market, always a political order, and so forth, just as there is always a language, always custom, always ritual. But these may take many forms.
So yes, there is always some consensual political order or other. In that sense, politics in the most general terms is baked into human nature. But this is not the way it works with familiar order. It is not true that some unspecified familiar order or other is baked into human nature. Patriarchy specifically is baked into human nature, and there is no gainsaying it. The variations of familiar order are all variations on the patriarchal theme.
Put another way: there are lots of stable and workable mutual political accommodations to which a population of more or less equally lethal, strong and aggressive males may all concur (ditto for a population of women, I suppose). But there is no way that men and women can arrive at a stable, workable familiar order that is not de facto patriarchal (no matter how it ostends itself).
What you don’t really understand is religious types like me. Religious types like me don’t have a theory about how man can transcend his biological nature. We have a theory about how our bodily nature can be redeemed – i.e., perfected, fully implemented. We have a theory about how our bodies can be repaired, so that they are what they were intended to be. The constraint of biology doesn’t look to us like a prison, but an eyrie.
True religion is not about transcending manhood, but correcting it. Nilakantha or Shenpen can correct me on this, but I think it is true that this is so even of Buddhism.
“And it goes beyond brute physical strength; men are emotionally more powerful than women in the same way.”
My semi-ignorant impression is that men are emotionally more fragile than women, but they are also better (under normal conditions and upbringing) at disengaging from their emotions to deal with the situation on a reasoned basis.
Feel free to explain yourself. Generally what I mean is “you seem to be infested with bad ideas that make your thoughts broken”. And for at least two of those passages I did explain exactly what the problem is.
Wasn՚t the entire point of your post grousing about it?
There you go again with the “prior”.
So, let me get this straight. There is some deep constraints in human nature, but we need religion to enforce them. Grousing about reality is pointless, but here we have a whole website devoted to grousing about how modern society has departed from the true way determined by our nature.
It՚s obvious self-serving nonsense. Nature is quite capable of enforcing its constraints without the help of religion. But “patriarchy” is not a constraint of nature, it՚s a particular human ideology that your particular religo-political faction is pushing.
Maybe “transcend” was the wrong word. Presumably we both believe that humans are qualitatively different from non-human animals, whether by virtue of being ensouled by God or having larger brains or whatever. This means our social relations are different from non-humans. Men may be physically stronger than women, but both sexes have roughly the same ability to use language and think, so physical strength is of less import than it is in creatures without language. But even the pre-linguistic primates have more sophisticated politics than your notion of patriarchy.
You didn’t say what the problem might be with the ideas that infest me. You explained that you yourself hadn’t a clue. This is not a compelling argument for anything in particular, other than the notion that … you haven’t a clue. By your own account, you don’t even understand the arguments you are controverting. Perhaps you are the one infested with crazed notions that render the mind incapable of grappling with things.
Uh, no. Just the opposite. The point of the post was that it is disastrous to try to implement a social order that is antithetical to patriarchy – that implements a sop to the grouse who whines about patriarchy. Like it says in the title.
You threw the natural superiority of jocks at me as though you thought I’d have a problem with it, and were disconcerted to find that I do not. I admire athletically talented men (and women), just as I admire intellectually and musically gifted people. Their gifts are beautiful, noble, and valuable to all of us. I aspire to be more like them, and I feel it is only just that their outsize talents attract commensurate benefits, including influence, power, authority, wealth.
You were the one grousing about patriarchy and power relations. I think they are natural, and just, and good, in and of themselves. It’s their perversions that I think are problematic, and the envy and resentment they provoke in small impoverished minds, that seek to tear down and destroy what is good, and noble.
That’s the odd thing about the Left. They moan and groan about the injustice of power relations as such, and criticize the whole social order as founded upon this gross injustice. Then they work and fight with all their might to capture the commanding heights of social power relations, and use that power to impose their mad notions ruthlessly on everyone else.
Conservatives, on the other hand – and by this I mean, John Boehner and everyone to his right – mostly want just to let people alone.
You have no clue what “prior” means, either? Really? OK. How about “more fundamental”? Does that work for you? Or, “more basic”? Or, “ineluctable”? Or, “given”?
No. Where did you get this? The post did not even mention religion. Religion is one of those deep constraints. It enforces itself upon us, willy nilly. Quash it as much as you like, it will keep coming back; indeed, the nisus to quash religion is itself at root a religious impulse, driven by the deep urge to conform our thoughts and acts to the order of reality. Ditto for patriarchy. It cannot even be rejected except by patriarchs.
Immaculately bass-ackward again. There is no point grousing about the order of being. But there is a very great point to grousing about policies that ignore and controvert it, or that try; for they are bound to end in disaster. One doesn’t grouse about gravity; but one does grouse about the fact that the driver is heading the car toward a cliff.
Yes! This is Natural Law theory! You sound like Marcus Aurelius! Totally agree. True religion is (in part) about conforming oneself to Nature – to , as our noncommittal comrades in neo-reaction call it, GNON: the God of Nature or Nature. Religion advises righteousness in part to warn us away from the sorts of acts that Nature will punish with implacable, relentless, irresistible power.
Show us. I have proposed arguments that contradict this notion. You have offered none in its support, but rather only bare assertions, hand-waving, snark, splutterings of incredulity, and attestations of your own cluelessness. You’re a bright guy. Surely you can do better.
I have said as much. Who could argue with this, other than some of your wilder comrades among the animal rights crowd? It’s the Leftists who, as good little reductive dialectical materialists, insist that all power comes out of the barrels of guns.
Patriarchy is not sophisticated. It is simple, and primitive, because it is basic to hominid reproductive strategies. The larger the brain, the more is it inescapable.
A.morphous, the 500 Spaniards were immensely weak compared to the vast majority of Aztecdom. And yet who won?
It takes cunning, grit, and the will to power to succeed. Do women have that? No. They also don’t have any physical strength or the willingness to commit extreme violence against those who might see them as enemies (and whom they see as enemies). Women want to make nice. Women need us for protection and men need them for procreation on the base level. On the higher level, we’re complementary so we have a strong need to pair bond.
Svar, I would respectfully caution you to not “misunderestimate” the ruthlessness of women! It’s not that women haven’t the *will* to succeed, it’s that they haven’t the independent power to succeed. They need men to help them achieve their bitter ends, in other words, but not because they lack the quality of will. I can elaborate further if you like, but at the end of the day we wrestle not against women, but against their fatherless, childless male backers like a.morphous. …
“Svar, I would respectfully caution you to not “misunderestimate” the ruthlessness of women! It’s not that women haven’t the *will* to succeed, it’s that they haven’t the independent power to succeed.”
This is true, and women can be vicious when their children are at risk (see The Female of the Species)
“They need men to help them achieve their bitter ends, in other words, but not because they lack the quality of will. I can elaborate further if you like, but at the end of the day we wrestle not against women, but against their fatherless, childless male backers like a.morphous. …”
Could you elaborate further? It seems that lots of women, liberal or conservative, are sappy, dewy eyed types who fall easily for manipulations of the Left.
I said nothing about jocks, I was imagining gangsters and thugs, that is, those who actually employee physical strength in the service of quasipolitical power. Yours is the morality of the prison yard, but I prefer civilization.
How nice for you. And should we choose our rulers with an arm-wrestling contest or something?
Aside from the few true believing anarchists, everyone on the left is perfectly aware that in order to improve society you need to gain actual political power. This is not a revelation.
Too nonsensical to deserve a reply.
I know what it means, I just don՚t think it is applicable in most of the ways you use it. “Patriarchy is logically prior to politics” is a nonsensical statement, since patriarchy is a form of politics, in its very etymology. I suppose it is simply a pretentious way of saying that patriarchy is biologically determined – which is not the case, but at least expressed straighforwardly.
Well, I somewhat agree with that. Religion, like politics, is a rooted in some fundamental facts of human biology. But the religious impulse takes many forms, eg, tribal shamanism, aztec human sacrifice, hindu polytheism, as well as the local brands. So while religion may be a deep constraint, none of the particulars of any one religion are.
No you haven՚t, you՚ve offered nothing but unsupported assertion. I at least have cited one work of actual science (the de Waal book) which you haven՚t bothered to respond to.
You said nothing about gangsters or thugs. Say what you mean if you want people to respond to what you mean. How are we supposed to know what you are imagining if you don’t tell us about it?
To say that social influence is about physical strength is not to say that it is only about physical strength, as Marx insists that it is. Rather obviously, things are more complicated than that. Try to force your mind around the radical notion that things can have more than one causal factor. It’s really liberating. One need then no longer force reality into a Procrustean bed of inadequate reductionist theory in order to think about it.
By the way, do you disagree with Marx about dialectical materialism? It seems that you do.
No; probably better we do it by seeing who has more barrels of guns, as Mao recommends, eh? Or, should we rather decide on the Clintonian basis of who lies more craftily? Honestly, a.morphous. I say that I don’t have a problem with this or that form of natural superiority of one man over another, and you twist it in this way? Are you saying that you do not admire strength, intelligence, or musicianship, as I do? Are you saying that we would do better to get weaklings as leaders?
You are not really interested in trying to discover the truth, it seems, or in testing the ideas under consideration on their merits; you seem rather to be interested only in scoring cheap little rhetorical points for your fans in the peanut gallery. It’s pathetic. I’m embarrassed on your behalf. Make an argument, or stop making yourself and your side look fatuous.
Notwithstanding all that, I doubt we would get worse leaders by way of an arm-wrestling contest than the mendacious turds we get by the methods we now use.
So you admit that you have no problem with hierarchy, or the politics baked into hominids, as shown in the de Waal book. Good! So much for egalitarianism, Marx, all that garbage. It’s only about power for you and yours. This has always been obvious to everyone else. You knew that, right?
I.e., you don’t have one ready and able.
Did you notice the word “pater” in the word “patriarchy”? In its very etymology, “patriarchy” indicates that it is about familiar relations, rather than political relations. You grasp the difference between the familiar and political categories, no? You noticed the word “polis” in the word “political”, right?
You begin here at last to grasp my meaning, a bit: patriarchy is essential to man, given along with our reproductive strategy. So is politics, to be sure. But while political order can take at least several forms and still function properly, patriarchy can take only patriarchal forms and still work patriarchally.
Still no arguments to support this notion. Just bare assertions, at best, but mostly snark and handwaving.
This is just false. I have argued that patriarchy is baked into man on account of the obvious fact that men are more powerful than women. Men have this greater power, and there is nothing to be done about it. To pretend otherwise is only to pretend. Any such pretense then is a pretense of those who do in fact have that greater power – men. The pretense does not change the reality. It obscures and confuses it, only, misleading everyone to their great cost.
You have not yet responded to this argument at all.
I have not bothered to respond to the de Waal book because I don’t deny that apes all have political relations. That’s a tangential matter.
Svar, yes.
It’s just that I don’t think the greater tendency of women to invest themselves emotionally in liberal politics translates to a lack of will power on their parts. If anything, I would say it intensifies their will to power.
Women lack actual power because they’re physically and emotionally weak in relation to men. But their will to achieve their ends can be, and often is, very strong and unrelenting. They are also very capable manipulators when they feel manipulating the facts is necessary to the service of their ends. (I speak mainly of unregenerate women for whom the prohibition against bearing false witness is of little or no consequence.)
Beyond what you said, I’m not sure what in women you see as being a weakness in resolve, but I assume it probably boils down to an inability to garner necessary support from men in order to push certain of their points. I don’t see that as a weakness per se peculiar to women, but simply of acknowledging the reality of a given situation and moving on to something they may care less about, but that they know has a better chance of success given the relative ease with which they can draw men to their side.
Kristor, he said something about your probably being weak compared to the local motorcycle gang; I took this to mean basically thug and gangster types.
As far as choosing our rulers by way of arm wrestling matches, I agree that it couldn’t possibly result in a worse situation than we have. It would eliminate virtually all women for starters, and that’s definitely an improvement on the current way of doing it.
It was the word “steroidal” that put me in mind of athletes. I had by then already moved on from his earlier mention of motorcycle gangs, having as I thought disposed of it qua objection. I.e., that a gangster might be stronger than me does not mean that physical strength is not a legitimate criterion of social influence; and, that physical strength is a legitimate criterion of social influence does not mean that it is the only such criterion.
I find it humorous when a wrecker like a.morphous claims to prefer civilization when all he and his ilk do is try their hardest to sabotage civilization and its institutions.
These people aren’t to be debated with, they are to be cut and removed from the national body like a tumor.
Terry, I believe the affinity that women seem to have for liberal politics is really just a manifestation of their innate need to conform to the majority opinion (or what seems like the majority opinion).
I just don’t see women showing actual Will to Power in the purely Nietzschean sense, but I definitely see them falling in line with the victors.
That being said, this brings up another point. The Lunatic Left (as opposed to the honest, non-Marxist populist left of Huey Long and George Orwell) won in America because the Establishment at the time was too permissive towards social rodents. If America had spent less time worrying about commies (hell Nazis and fascists for that matter) on the other side of the world and spent more time trying to root out and snuff out the enemy within, she would be in a much better place.
The Lunatic Left could be easily toppled if a Nationalist and Populist movement were to commit itself to the Will to Power. The Left has already dug half of its grave.
Svar…
It’s going to take a different type of white Christian to exterminate the “social rodents.” In fact, good white Christian are STILL morally vexed over the very matter of simply facilitating in the “social rodents'” own self-inflicted annihilation. So “we” are in reality two steps removed from the inevitable action mandated in the face of a parasitic “nature.” Liberation without separation DEMANDS annihilation. But mere liberation means self-annihilation AND the good white Christian still seeks to turn the “social rodent” into a societal prince. Pull back far enough and it’s hard to differentiate who is REALLY good and who is bad. Good white Christians not only refuse to kill the parasite, they are still embarked on the mad idea of transforming its self-annihilating “nature” into that of a good white Christian. It’s madness all around!
Don՚t know what bad cartoon versions of Marx you՚ve been exposed to but I suggest you improve your knowledge if you don՚t want to sound foolish.
Um, what? I am not a doctrinaire Marxist or really any kind, but nothing I said has anything to do with dialectical materialism.
Sigh. You are disappointed in me, and I am disappointed in you. I really thought you were a more sophisticated thinker than this, and also that you didn՚t need to resort to ridiculous distortions of my position.
Did you notice the root “arch”, to rule? Do you think there can be rule without politics? Perhaps you do, the elimination of politics seems to be fundamental to the reactionary worldview. The longing for a king is the longing for a world without the conflict of interests, which may be more orderly but is nothing but an infantile fantasy.
The idea that patriarchy is biologically determined is not exactly a new or sophisticated idea that I am having trouble grasping. It՚s a very old, and very flawed idea.
No, you have argued that it is based on the fact that men are physically stronger than women, which can be an element of political power but is not the only one.
The point was not merely that apes have politics, but even their politics is too complex to be captured by a simplistic idea like “patriarchy”.
If you want to define all power relations as politics, then we are simply using terms differently, that’s all. It is important to distinguish between political relations, which transpire among people as participants in a human settlement – a polis – and familiar relations, such as patriarchy, which can operate in a family whether or not it participates in a polis. Your terms of analysis are blind to this distinction, so it is perhaps to be expected that you just can’t see what I’m talking about, feel clueless, etc. That blindness being I suppose the best explanation for this statement:
It misses the point, because it takes patriarchy to be a theory about politics, and finds that politics cannot be adequately accounted for by patriarchy. This is true, but not surprising, for patriarchy does not pretend to be a skeleton key to politics. It has implications for politics, to be sure, but there is much more to politics than there is to patriarchy, just as there is more to a city than there is to a family.
You have given lots of evidence of a great deal of trouble grasping what I am talking about. You have misinterpreted me egregiously, misled by your purblind categories. And you have given no arguments that the notion that patriarchy is essential to man is wrong. All you have done is say over and over again that it is wrong, and that it doesn’t explain politics (to which I have agreed) and that there is more to social power than physical strength (to which I have agreed), and so forth.
Again, demonstrate that the notion is wrong. Provide an actual argument. It should be relatively easy, because the proposal at the basis of the post is so simple and straightforward: the overwhelming male advantage in physical strength means that, in the limit, men can constrain women as they like, so that the social order of the sexes (whatever it happens to be, and however much it ostends derogation of men vis-à-vis women) is and must be amenable to men, or it would not come to pass. If men wanted to, they could enslave women in horrible conditions, and there would be nothing to stop them doing so, except other men. Ergo, men just *don’t want* to enslave women in horrible conditions. On the contrary, they seem to love women, and to want to protect them, even to die for them.
Show that all this is false.
Sure. I don’t reduce all human relations to politics, as you do. Nor do I reduce them to patriarchy, as you seem to think I do. Nor do I reduce them to factors of raw power. I think it is possible to rule on the basis of virtue, nobility, authority, sagacity, strength, and so forth. Nor is all social influence coerced, or stolen, or defrauded (as with Marxian false consciousness); there are really such things as love, and goodness, and love of the good. And these can motivate action, and submission, loyalty, fealty.
@svar
This is straight-out Nazi rhetoric. I think the issue of whether it was the Nazis or their targets who were wreckers of civilization was settled by history. You are right, debating between people like me and Nazis like you is pretty pointless; Nazis need to be defeated with force. Fortunately they mostly have been. I don՚t expect a remnant like the people here who are whining that the girls have beaten them up and stolen their lunch money are going to constitute much of a threat.
And in this “critical theory” the notion of white men possessing an inordinate amount of freedom relative to all other is called “white supremacy.” And it is an “evil” thing.
But I agree that Patriarchy CANNOT BE a collectivist movement ALTHOUGH patriarchs can move in collectivist fashion without the very self-generated friction that burns away at the identity of those belonging to the various liberationist collectives.
And it is the devout dyke that truly represents the public pushback against the Patriarchy and not just the white female or “white woman” or “female supremacist.”
There is something in what a. morph says, without a doubt. Critical theorists and “the Right” are so very often in agreement about the nature of situations. They just disagree about evaluating that nature as good or bad.
It is quite right to say, at the greatest level of abstraction, that human social circumstance X has no “right” to dominance. If it dominates, then it had a “right.” If it does not, then it did not so have. Loss of faith and will, are as much weaknesses as any other.
This article assumes that X segment of the population has a certain enhanced capacity for moral leadership. It uses the treatment of that segment of the population by the rest of world society as circumstantial evidence of that capacity.
I think the point of this article is that, if one is in such a superior position of enhanced capacity, then responsibility comes with this. And a “patriarchate” should eschew attempting to justify itself.
Inspire following, hopefully.
Coerce it, if necessary.
But do not justify.
Yes, this is a rant against Kantian ethics.
Rob…
The reality though is the growing DESIRE to acknowledge no bad natures… Other than that nature that INSISTS on The Good and “our” willingness to obtain “it.”
There is reason one identifies as a.morphous. And that reason is to NOT BE identified. What is the root of that desire other than an attempt to maximize one’s “bad” nature? Even the truly liberated are generally not so far gone as to desire to be identified FOR THEIR bad nature (although this is rapidly coming to an end). In fact, most are savvy enough to attempt to be identified as having a “good” nature BY MERELY joining the liberated herd. And so as the bad herd grows more “powerful,” its ability to falsely project itself as “good” grows with it. This is our reality.
It was Eve who was deceived, and Adam, her “head” and protector, was standing right there next to her and let her fall. Thus did patriarchy suffer its first blow, and that self-inflicted.
There is a connection, I’m sure, between Adam and white males — the primary vessels of both Judaism and Christianity: the source of all truth about human kind.
It’s seems all the “greatest” acts of treachery were a form of self-annihilation. Adam failing Eve… Cain killing Abel… The Chosen Ones crucifying their perfect son… Roe versus Wade…
The wages of sin is death. Sin *just is* suicide, however slowly enacted.
Enacted? How about obtained? The “mechanism” to sin is man’s God-ordained free will. Those that use the gift in its rawest application so as to OBTAIN annihilation must simply be outed for this very desire. The a.morphous’ of the world DESIRE self-annihilation… Final Liberation. Their “intellectual” arguments are mere distractions utilized to define the clearest pathway which bluntly includes introducing more sin and rejecting more truths, BUT NEVER BEING FORCED TO OWN THE REAL DESIRE.
^^^ This is OUR failure.
Debra: But it was the serpent whom the injunction excluded. Eve resented the injunction, but the serpent, perhaps much more understandably, must have felt resentment over his exclusion from the primal edict of culture, precisely for not being enjoined, like Adam and Eve. I have always felt a small pang of sympathy for the serpent. He is the veritable scapegoat of the Adam-and-Eve Story!
Debra: If the snake were Billy Satan, you’d be right; but the text only identifies him as “the shrewdest of all the wild animals the LORD God had made,” and given the fact that he can talk, he must be pretty close to human. One might say that he shares the Logos with Adam and Eve. Now my way of reading stories is to separate the plausible from the implausible. It is implausible that a snake would speak; but it is plausible that a man would speak. A “crafty” man might well be referred to as a snake. Therefore the snake is a man; and like any man, he feels envy. What does he envy? The injunction, which comes from God and which God lays only on Adam and Eve. The injunction marks Adam and Eve the way the favor of God marks Abel in the story of Cain and Abel. Just as without Cain’s murder of Abel, there would be no law against murder; so without the snake, who seeks to equalize his position with respect to Adam and Eve, there would be no rebellion against God – no Fall hence also no Redemption. In this reading, what disrupts paradise is the snake’s egalitarian impulse, which is the same as his resentment over being excluded from the injunction.
The snake’s scapegoat status emerges in the tendency of most readers to identify him, without textual evidence, as Billy Satan, and to blame him for the Fall although it is first Eve and then Adam whom we must blame for the Fall since despite the snake’s wiles Eve might have told him to take a walk.
The serpent lost any claim to sympathy long before Adam and Eve appeared on the scene.
Me thinks we – you and I — have different theological underpinnings, the truths about which we are equally committed. 🙂
The reality is that the Semite, the Jewish Semite (Our Lord Christ) in particular, was the vessel for Judaism and Christianity. This was later transmitted from the Jews to the Europeans who then transmitted it across the world.
Btw, Judaism is as truthful as Islam. Christ is the only Truth.
Kristor,
“patriarchy is coded into human (and chimpanzee) society in virtue of the overwhelming advantage in physical strength that males have over females”
Patriachy is a theory about Authority and not power. Father has authority over his wife and children. It is not in virtue of his advantage in physical strength. It is an irreducible fact.
The ruling element in a society is the thinking element-it holds in the most primitive society one can find and holds true in 21C America. The hankering for primivitsm is really getting overpowering.
The two are not mutually exclusive; when father’s authority is (invariably) challenged in the early stages of his child’s development, father must employ his superior strength to bring the child into conformity with his will. Children do not cheerfully submit to father’s authority initially, and even well trained children have occasional relapses of resistance to it. Yet, if he will but utilize it according to its purpose, father’s physical prowess is there to back up and sustain his authority; to establish father’s authority.
From my own understanding of anthropology, Vishmehr, it is in fact the Matriarchal impulse which is closer to primitivism, and women often held great political power in tribal societies, whereas such a thing is virtually unheard of in civilized societies up until the Modern era.
But Kristor is linking patriachy to brute physical strength. So do you think physical strength should count little in a primitive tribal society?
In fact, your thesis is a refutation of Kristor’s.
I am linking patriarchy to physical strength, but I am not reducing it thereto, as you seem to think.
You really should read more carefully, Vishmehr. It would save you a lot of tilting at windmills.
To say that authority derives from physical strength is not to say that it derives from nothing else. “X is y” does not mean “x is nothing but y.”
I would say authority derives from the violent imposition of the perfect will.
And when one talks of man’s superior emotional power, the above is what is meant. Men, in general, possess a greater desire to violently impose a perfect will both internally and externally whether that violence be physical or psychological.
Authority being a moral fact may derive from a moral premise or be a moral premise. It is confusion to talk about authority being derived from physical strength.
Authority, as Zippy might told you, is a moral obligation. A rational being recognizes authority and submits to it. It is absolutely nothing to do with physical strength. The two things are precisely orthogonal.
No. Physical strength is an expression of one sort of authority.
The world is through and through a moral operation – an expression, more or less, of the Good. No aspect of being is exempt from morality – from the urge toward the Good – including physical reality.
Physical objects are the fossils of moral operations. All becoming is morally charged. This is no more than to say that all becoming is morally consequential, and morally intentioned. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that there is some portion of reality where God has no sway.
“Linking” one thing to another is not informative. One could link A to non-A.
Vishmehr, you were the one who introduced the term “link” to this thread. What did you mean by it, that you then considered it informative?
How about if we just say that social influence derives partly from physical strength, and partly from other factors? Is that good enough?
Both libertarianism and Marxism work. Not for humans, as libertarianism works for tigers and bears while Marxism works for ants and molerats. Humans are pack animals similar to dogs and wolves and the story of humanity is basically the story of pack-warfare.
A.morphous, steroidal goons are nothing against a far more intelligent and cohesive pack of men working towards their own ends. That is where power comes from.
Men are ultimately both physically stronger and more intelligent that women. Just look at history, the sciences, philosophy, art and music to see the proof.
@Kristor
“The Fall of the West could be arrested and reversed in very short order if men were to reclaim serious ownership of their patriarchal offices, and brook no resistance thereto. ”
Whether it would stop the fall of the West, or societal collapse, I doubt; because the Fall is multi-causal and probably biological (genetic) to a significant extent – but you are surely right in stating that the primary problem is lack of motivation.
And this will only be fixed by religion since secularism has proven beyond any realistic doubt that it is incapable of motivating – indeed, it makes no pretence to motivating people since life is presented as isolated, meaningless and purposeless – and this perspective is inculcated and reinforced at every level from government and law through education to the mass media.
Therefore, religion (of some kind, as yet undetermined) will return and will destroy all secularism (whether explicitly Leftist secularism, of that slightly-less-Leftist secularism of the mainstream conservative, republican, libertarian and reactionary groupings – because as soon as religion does return and provide meaning and purpose, it will grow explosively and will brook no resistance – there will be very rapid mass defections from secularism – the religious will be filled with energies, they will have aims, they will display courage and self-sacrifice.
This will happen – in the sense that as soon as it does happen it will become unstoppable within days or weeks – but which religion/s is not yet decided and will presumably vary by place and grouping.
And, whatever it is, the religion will be ‘patriarchal’ – because all viable religions are (and necessarily) patriarchal (albeit that term embraces a wide variety of types).
If this reality can be grasped by Westerners ASAP, then the best outcome (ie Christianity, in various forms, as the triumphant religion) becomes much more likely.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/choose-your-religion-or-else-religion.html
Thanks, Bruce, great comment. I was perhaps a bit too glib in suggesting that the men of the West could turn things around quickly if they just woke up, the sluggish scrubs. I’ve been tracking your recent work on the coevolution of modernism and the gene pool, and it is indeed frightening – horrifying – in its implications.
Nevertheless I do think that an awakening of the men of the West could indeed quickly turn things around, precisely because I cannot envision it occurring in the absence of just the sort of religious awakening to which you refer. A radical moral revolution of that sort – a metanoia – is almost always accompanied by a complete paradigm shift, of a profundity that can only be achieved by a religious conversion of the whole person, that completely reorders his priorities, and indeed makes him much more willing to die in the service of his deep new convictions. Religious conviction nerves morale, by orienting the person to a project that transcends his own life, and all mortal lives. It increases the lethality of a man to a fantastic degree.
I have long thought also that when this paradigm shift happens, it will happen just as you say, with shattering force and stunning rapidity, comparable to what we saw when the Warsaw Pact fell. It will be unstoppable because all of a sudden almost everyone will find it simply impossible to pull the wool back over their eyes and proceed as they had before.
I do think that religion is the solution. That is why I constantly stress on my blog that hell is eternal.
@Kristor ” It will be unstoppable because all of a sudden almost everyone will find it simply impossible to pull the wool back over their eyes and proceed as they had before.”
That, and also because the non-religious have demonstrated that they are paralysed and ineffectual – so anyone who does not ‘join in’ with the religious explosion (who refuses to take it seriously, who regards it as disgusting and will have nothing to do with it, who attempts to persuade other people who stamp it out) will thereby render themselves irrelevant.
1989-90 is relevant. When the dictators ordered the military to shoot the rioters, the officers knew that if they transmitted the order, they would instead themselves be shot by their troops – I have this from a bottom level (private soldier) participant in the Romanian revolution – the ordinary soldiers decided, en masse – in little groups, that they would shoot the officers rather than the rebels.
Also, Western military and police have for a couple of decades been selected and trained for ineffectuality and demotivation – distorted by affirmative action, hobbled by politically motivated composition at all levels, trained to watch looting and not intervene, to allow themselves to be hurt – or even killed – rather than to suppress and hurt thugs and rioters etc.
Indeed, once a religious wild-fire begins to catch and grow – the best and most disciplined personnel among police and solders are likely to be among the greatest enthusiasts for it.
@Bruce C.:
Your anecdotal evidence closely knits with my own; I have personally witnessed, within my little circle, a veritable re-discovery by men of their unalienable, undeniable power as men. In certain particular cases their wives refer to them as “real men,” which, as you might imagine, is a source of real inspiration for me. Some of these men – the majority, in point of fact – were, until very recently, thoroughly feminized. …
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