Alice Kishuda is a podcaster and writer who has recently written an article that challenges the idea that men and women have to get along in order to be on the same page. In this episode, we talk about how technology and social engineering have made it harder for men to communicate with the other sex, and why this is a problem.
00:01:51.700And I thought we would get into a topic we haven't really touched on the last few times you've been on, which is something you've been writing about recently.
00:01:58.880I really liked that you were kind of addressing a problem.
00:02:04.100I think one of the most controversial opinions I have funny enough for people on the right is that men and women have to get along.
00:02:10.260That seems to be something that seems to be something that is kind of shocking to a lot of people, something that maybe some people don't necessarily agree with.
00:02:18.340And while I think there are massive problems with feminism, I do think that this is a problem that is one of coordination and technology and all kinds of stuff that you kind of touched on in your piece.
00:02:31.360So I wanted to start with an insight that I think was a really good one, which is that a lot of the advancements through technology and social technology, social engineering that we have put a lot of time in, that a lot of men specifically put a lot of time and innovation and sweat and brainpower into, have in many ways made them obsolete and made it very difficult for men and women to kind of find a rhythm and kind of properly signal to each other.
00:03:00.800Could you talk about that a little bit?
00:03:01.800Could you talk about that a little bit?
00:03:03.800I mean, this whole piece comes a little bit from a frustration of mine because I spend my time obviously a lot on the dissident right and kind of, you know, even in manosphere circles.
00:03:12.800And that's kind of a well-known sphere for a lot of listeners, my audience as well.
00:03:17.800But I also have been spending time in the so-called rad femme circles.
00:03:21.800And it's very interesting how much of a mirror image of the two that they, you know, you put them in opposition and the, you know, the ferocity and monstrosity of anecdotes and statistics.
00:03:32.800And, I don't know, pretty much fear mongering about the other sex that you find in these circles is of the same caliber that you find even in the deepest, darkest MGTOW, you know, places that you can imagine.
00:03:45.800You know, kind of a bit of a schizophrenic tone about what's even possible with the other sex.
00:03:52.800And I thought, okay, you know, this seems like a topic that's on everybody's mind.
00:04:00.800It's something that I've obviously considered myself quite a lot.
00:04:03.800I mean, I feel like I've reached some form of personal equilibrium in my relationship with the opposite sex, being married and having children.
00:04:11.800And a second one on the way, by the way, this is the first time I'm mentioning this, but yeah.
00:04:19.800So, yeah, I mean, things are going pretty well in this department for me.
00:04:24.800So, I thought, you know, okay, I'm just going to write out my position, which is not necessarily rosy.
00:04:31.800I mean, a lot of that article that I wrote is pretty much a kind of a, you know, darkish, black pillish type of situation.
00:04:38.800Because it does describe a situation that, you know, we are kind of the last man and the last woman.
00:04:45.800But what, you know, what is causal to this situation and where to point the finger and where to lay the blame, I think that's where we fail.
00:04:55.800And I feel like people need to understand that we're in this together.
00:04:59.800I mean, you know, there's a lot of talk about men being emasculated.
00:05:03.800And I agree, I think men are being emasculated.
00:05:06.800But, you know, the culprit isn't necessarily feminism or women as an entity, you know, coming in, you know, putting their foot down and emasculating men.
00:05:17.800I mean, we've all kind of converged to this kind of androgynous unit of humanity that needs to perform in the industry and consumption modes and all of these.
00:05:26.800Because this is what the circumstances require.
00:05:30.800This is what you needed to do and what you could do and what you also couldn't do.
00:05:38.800A lot of the technologies that made life comfortable for us, you know, indoor plumbing, heating systems, electricity, running water, all sorts of things that you needed to spend quite a lot of time on back in the day.
00:05:52.800And involved a lot of hard, you know, manual labor, lifting things, fighting off things, you know, fending, chopping, all sorts of things that required both skill and power are done by the market or the state now.
00:06:07.800The tasks that are left in the household and life in general are kind of the one-to-one tasks, you know, the caring tasks.
00:06:15.800So washing up, you know, laundry, you know, it's done by the machine, but you still have to put the stuff in, take the stuff out, dry it, fold it, all sorts of little feminine type tasks.
00:06:26.800And the reality is that in most households, if you don't actively decide as a man that you will fix, I don't know, what can you fix, I guess, the doors and do carpentry and things like that, which are quite skilled now.
00:06:42.800Because there's a lot of complexity to these things, and you have to learn these skills.
00:06:48.800Most people of my generation weren't taught by their fathers directly of how to do things in the household.
00:06:53.800So people usually just call, they call the carpenter, they call the guy to fix the TV.
00:06:58.800You know, the cars, the cars are made out of, I don't know, IT modules now.
00:07:03.800They're essentially, you know, are impossible to fix by someone who's not, I don't know, very highly skilled mechanics.
00:07:11.800So I think we've kind of gotten into a little bit of a corner with technology and with the abundance that essentially, you know, you mentioned that men have created.
00:07:22.800The men of ages past, not, you know, directly the men of now, but they're maintaining it.
00:07:30.800I mean, women kind of have been left with the caring tasks of day to day.
00:07:34.800But at the same time, they've also, for reasons, you know, you could say, okay, it's partly feminism, why are women in the workforce?
00:07:42.800I mean, women in the workforce are also because of, you know, historical reasons.
00:07:45.800I mean, wars, the possibility, even just the possibility of not having to, you know, fight for survival is a very easy thing to not only bring about the soft conditions of history where you can actually think about, oh, what should we be doing?
00:08:02.800What should the relationship between the sexes be?
00:08:05.800But also just, you know, to give people options.
00:08:07.800I mean, if you want to do this, you can do this because you're not under the like iron rule of nature.
00:08:13.800You're not under the insane schedule of agriculture.
00:08:16.800You know, all of these pressures fell away and we could get, I don't know, creative in a way with what we want to do, what we should do.
00:08:24.800And that's just, you know, fairly an organic process.
00:08:27.800So, I mean, essentially what I, what I was reacting to with this article was this like growing sense of animosity, growing sense of feeling that, okay, we can't get together, you know, why, why should we even try?
00:08:40.800And the reality that I know, you know, I was someone who was in a position where I was very disenchanted with the whole idea of marriage.
00:08:49.800I mean, you know, raised by boomers and very, you know, conflict laden household.
00:08:53.800And I just didn't understand why anyone would go through this, why put your children through this, you know, and I kind of had to have almost like a rediscovery of what it could mean and how good it could be.
00:09:08.800It took me a while and I just don't want people to lock themselves out of this opportunity because they just load themselves with whatever, you know, divorce rape statistics or, I don't know, you know, the idea that, you know, if you get married, you're, I don't know, you're stuck in the longhouse and going to be emasculated until the day you die.
00:09:28.800So I don't know, it's just, it just felt like there was a lot of, a lot of unnecessary blackpilling on the timeline.
00:09:38.720So I thought, you know, maybe I'll, I'll just put my thoughts out there.
00:09:42.420Yeah, it's something that I understand is, is very difficult for a lot of people.
00:09:46.020Of course, many people in my generation are in exactly the position you're talking about.
00:09:50.040I'm, I'm in now, I guess, what is the minority in that I came from a kind of a very Cleaver-esque household.
00:09:56.320You know, my parents had a great relationship.
00:09:58.780They were very, you know, caring to us.
00:10:00.960It was always something that I wanted, you know, it's always something that seemed very positive to me when people looked around and said, this can't work anymore.
00:10:09.440I just never understood what they meant because I had kind of experienced it firsthand.
00:10:13.700So I knew what it was supposed to look like, but at the same time, looking at the world around me, I can certainly understand why so many people didn't, you know, didn't know what it was supposed to look like.
00:10:23.020How they can't even imagine someone like that even operating in the modern world.
00:10:27.480And I think it's really important, you know, Mary Harrington also makes this point that feminism is an outgrowth of that technology, right?
00:10:34.960It's a luxury item stacked on top of many other technological and social advances.
00:10:39.580It's really the fact that you can even have the conversation about male and female roles is itself a very decadent thing, right?
00:10:47.060It shows that your civilization has reached a point of security and safety where it can just generate its own problems and eat itself from the inside because you no longer are falling into, like you said,
00:11:00.040those very clearly defined roles that no one needed to figure out or explore that came with just biological realities in a situation where you're fighting for survival.
00:11:11.340Women don't kind of have the health care that allows them to decide, you know, all kinds of things and, you know, to enter the workforce.
00:13:39.700But they probably will return with a cycle of and then things will, you know, even themselves out quite quickly.
00:13:45.120But for now, with the parameters that we have, we are in a point of negotiation.
00:13:52.180And I can also understand if people really, you know, MGTOW level people who really are on the fringes at the end of their tether,
00:14:00.000you know, the most disillusioned radfems and the most, you know, upset MGTOWs that they want to completely opt out.
00:14:06.900But I don't think that should be a mainstream thing because I also believe one thing about ideology, you know,
00:14:14.060by swimming in the sea of ideologies in the last few years is that the ideologies that I tend to believe in are the ones that bear fruit for the individual and for the communities around them.
00:14:26.600Like literally in terms of having children, if your ideology is barren, it doesn't produce airs except for, I don't know, some interesting blog posts,
00:14:36.660then I might not be as interested, even if the blog posts are extremely interesting.
00:14:41.740If they, if it leads to, I don't know, desolation and despair in the lives of individuals and, you know, mental illness.
00:14:50.460Also, maybe even if it's really interesting, you know, it's, it's not, you know, so you will know them by their fruits.
00:14:57.620And I think, you know, maybe it's very like pragmatist type view on, on, on how to apply them.
00:15:03.760But, you know, I, I've, I've found ideology to be very fruitful for me.
00:15:09.060In some ways it saved me and I think it can save people.
00:15:12.860Um, but it's, uh, you know, one has to be careful with, with what you let into your, into your heart and mind, uh, because the internet's got everything, uh, and it's quite, uh, it's quite powerful.
00:15:28.200There's, you know, ideology is, uh, I hate saying there's, you shouldn't have ideologies because I think that's just kind of ignorant about how people work.
00:15:35.720But I think that your belief system, uh, should be grounded very, in a very particular need and a very, like you said, it should bear fruit.
00:15:47.900It should better you yourself, your community.
00:15:49.960It should bring you to a better place.
00:15:52.360And if it's not doing that, then it doesn't matter if it gives you some kind of, I don't know, uh, some kind of maze for your mind to run around in until you get tired and stop worrying about this.
00:16:03.700It doesn't actually solve your problem.
00:16:05.900And so I think those things, I think so many of these things are just ways for different factions to kind of break off and believe the things they want to believe or invest in the things they want to invest in.
00:16:16.440And it just kind of gives them a narrative about why they should be able to kind of check out, kind of opt out rather than providing anything that is actually going to solve your problem is, is ever going to bring any kind of positive change into your life.
00:16:30.720So I think it's very true that these things need to, these, these things need to be social technologies that bring you closer to a better way of life.
00:16:39.460And, you know, something that betters the community, those around you, rather than just something that lets you escape the kind of the, the, like the black pills that keep falling into, you know, different aspects of human relationships.
00:16:52.520No, no, I'm just saying, you know, I just want to say that the black pill is very enticing also because it absolves you of responsibility, you know, which in a way is kind of the, the opposite of, of, of masculinity.
00:17:04.600It's the idea that, you know, things are so, so bad, you know, the, the world is on fire.
00:17:15.420And it's time to, it's time to, you know, throw in the towel and just sit on the sidelines and, you know, do a, do a live stream vivisection of, of, of all the ills of the world.
00:17:24.680And, you know, what, what's, what's the responsibility on you?
00:17:28.260Well, you know, can't really do anything, you know, have you seen, have you seen these, these people?
00:17:33.080So, yeah, I think that's, you know, it's, it's, it's appealing.
00:17:37.520And I feel like they're not, not only this, but there are a lot of incentives baked into just the framing of the internet and how social media works.
00:17:45.380Because, you know, we're talking about ideology online.
00:17:47.400This is not, you know, people picking up a book at the library and falling into some, some deep crevice.
00:17:51.660There are specific incentives built into how leaders of ideologies organize people, how they consolidate their positions online, how they try to cleave off other people, how, you know, like Gio Panicetti described us as like the, the shark womb of, of, you know, the dissident, right?
00:18:10.440Where you have to have someone who's extremely aggressive and culling people and builds, builds kind of a fearsome reputation from that.
00:18:18.360So there are all sorts of little mechanisms built into this.
00:18:22.860So, you know, it's, yeah, there, there are things here that are not just a pure ideology.
00:18:27.800It's not just about, you know, this is our 10 point manifesto and the people who like it are ours and the people who don't aren't, there's, you know, all sorts of layers on it.
00:18:37.020And it's not necessarily good for the ideology itself.
00:18:40.260It's just the way the internet works and it works the same if you're in a, I don't know, pro anorexia community or, you know, you're into mommy bloggers who really like sleep training and they all kind of have these, these dynamics of, of, you know, building clout, sustaining clout, consolidating groups, you know, cleaving off dissenters, all sorts of type of stuff.
00:18:59.280So, um, I think these things, uh, these things are just became apparent to me by being in these communities in these years.
00:19:05.200And I feel like this is a really interesting area of study just to see, okay, there is a certain life cycle to these, to these things, you know, the independent of the truth claims of the ideologies themselves.
00:19:18.720And I mean, this is, you know, interesting to me and I don't know, I just feel like a, a baby anthropologist of case study of one, just looking at, you know, what's, what's kind of happened through my life.
00:19:29.280And seeing kind of what, what people are doing and how it's working for them.
00:19:34.900Do you, do you find that kind of exhausting though?
00:19:41.520I know that technically I'm in the sphere and so I'm part of it in some way, but I just, I don't think about it a lot.
00:19:48.360And then I like see someone and they just clearly walked by and kicked someone's sandcastle because it's time for them to, you know, stir the pot or, you know, it's, it's to defend their ground.
00:19:58.360Or here's a new target I can leech, you know, cred off of or something.
00:20:22.060But it's, I, it just, the minute I see it, I'm immediately exhausted and want to move on to something else.
00:20:26.540Yeah, I mean, it is a bit, you know, it is repetitive because, you know, at first when I was like on social media, on Twitter and stuff, I was really excited about the beefs.
00:20:36.140I would kind of adjacently, you know, come in and say, say my piece about this or that person and stuff.
00:20:40.800And then obviously the beefs kind of pulled me in or they were about me at one point.
00:20:43.920And I was like, whoa, I don't, don't necessarily want to, you know, make this bigger than it is.
00:20:50.080And, and now I see them, you know, sometimes I admit I lurk and I look at the beefs, but the idea of, of starting, starting something like that myself, it's just, it's, I mean, who has the bandwidth?
00:21:03.240Because it pulls you into this, like, fight or flight thing when you're really in the middle of something like that.
00:21:07.980Because you, you know, that, you know, thousands of people are watching, they're, they're waiting for you to say a really cool, smart thing to destroy whoever is trying to, you know, usually of, you know, narcissism is small differences type stuff.
00:21:20.820You know, we're all, we all believe in the 10 point plan, but, you know, they have an addendum to 0.9 and then I say, no, no, no, that should be under 0.7 and then all hell breaks loose because, you know, this is, this is the most important thing ever.
00:21:32.860So, yeah, I mean, this is, yeah, an interesting thing, but it is important because these circles are relatively influential.
00:21:41.940I mean, how influential, I think time will tell.
00:21:45.440I think it seems like some, some important people are listening, how much that trickles into what they're actually going to do.
00:21:52.320I don't know, but yeah, I mean, in terms of cultural clout for the size of the group, yeah, I mean, definitely a very hefty type of endeavor.
00:22:01.180I understand why people take it seriously and, and, you know, go, go to the mat for whatever sub, sub point of their manifesto they want to argue about today.
00:22:11.940Yeah, it is weird how influential it can be, but, but, but here we are.
00:22:18.340So I want to get into some more stuff.
00:22:20.760I want to talk about, okay, so if this is a problem of technology, if it's something now that we have to navigate, what's the best way to navigate it?
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00:24:34.360So going back to the issue of meeting people, I think this is probably the biggest thing for so many right now is, you know, you're, you have remote work or you have a remote school after all the COVID stuff.
00:24:51.280You don't have these, these kind of normal meeting houses where people would run into each other in the culture and find somebody who's got similar values, similar tastes compatible.
00:25:01.720You've got all these dating apps, but I think I saw you say something that I thought was very funny that I've been turning around my brain for a while.
00:25:08.740You said maybe using the same thing that mediates your ordering of a pizza to find a mate is, is maybe not the best thing, which, which I think is a pretty good piece of insight.
00:25:19.660How should we view this process now that, that things have changed?
00:25:24.580Where should people turn to when it comes to finding someone?
00:25:29.620I mean, this is, you know, a core question and I think, you know, the, the, the answer is not as direct as it used to be just because, okay, we need to, we need to negotiate with the situation a little bit, you know, for someone who made that, that joke to actually have met my husband on OKCupid is quite ironic, but that was just, you know, it was the beginning stages of, of online dating.
00:25:53.440Things are still, you know, still the wild west. And, um, I can obviously say I'm not, I wouldn't necessarily discount trying to search for people on apps, especially apps that are maybe more branded towards long-term commitment.
00:26:06.460There are some that are a bit more like, okay, this is a more serious app. Um, on Tinder, maybe not necessarily the best or Grindr as well. Don't go on there, but there are, there are directions that you could go, um, that I think are useful.
00:26:19.620And I also gave this, uh, this advice to people who are trying to, you know, go the app route because it is the default now. So I, you know, I, I wouldn't want to exclude all your chances there, you know, obviously optimize your photographs to make you look nice. Don't edit them to, you know, make you look too nice so that people are completely appalled when they see you.
00:26:36.740But, um, the idea and it is, you know, the bio is also important. Women do read the bio, uh, and, uh, it should be something very, um, I don't know, not just, just kind of lay out a vision for what you'd like your life to be and say, okay, you know, this is, this is my, my tenure plan.
00:26:55.280And this is what, you know, this is, if this is appealing to you, just, just let me know. And, you know, if you're interested in something more serious, obviously. And I think that's what, that's what most people are interested in now. Um, then I think, you know, obviously church people, a lot of people say church. I mean, this is a nuanced thing. I mean, participating in church, you should probably do that for other reasons. Um, there's also the problem that if you just show up at the church and try to, you know, uh, pick up women at the church, uh, you know, the church elders. Yeah.
00:27:23.960And other people at the church might be a little bit like put off by you and maybe the girls as well. So, um, I don't know, into trying as best as you can to integrate in the community, um, honestly, and with, uh, with openness to the community itself, not just what you can gain from it in terms of whatever networking or, or, or relationships. Um, I mean, that's a good in itself, uh, and, you know, it can have collateral benefits. Um, and there are, you know, all sorts of groups where people still meet in person.
00:27:53.380I mean, I remember when I was in the UK, I used to go to all sorts of meetups, you know, you know, people who are, um, interested, I mean, through the meetup app, I know this is again, a very, a very app, uh, um, focused way of, of meeting people, but you know, you have, I don't know, board games, meetups, meetups about, I don't know, some area of interest.
00:28:13.160Uh, I went to like, um, uh, I don't know, a biology microscopics class there and was filled with interesting people. So, I mean, if you're kind of an urban area, I'm sure they're like a lot. Um, you can also meet people through, uh, meetups that are geared towards some area of work that you're interested in. I used to work in startups.
00:28:31.160So I would go to all these, you know, startup focused meetups or you'd, you know, have a beer with people in whatever industry and talk to them, sell them something. I mean, that was my job, but whatever, you know, you could, you could do whatever you, uh, you needed to do there.
00:28:43.920So, um, I think a lot of the problems here, not necessarily that people don't exist out in the world and they don't do stuff. It's that, um, there's a certain timidity that we've, um, we've grown because of our interaction with technology.
00:29:00.020I mean, even I realized, I mean, I used to work in sales. I used to be able to pick up the phone and just like blabber onto someone and, you know, pitch to them, be very loose with my, uh, uh, my, uh, voice and, you know, explaining things to people.
00:29:14.260And now after, maybe after COVID and just, you know, being in, in the internet for a few years, um, I feel like a lot of those skills are, are fading and I was naturally an extrovert.
00:29:25.060So I can imagine that people who are already kind of on the introvert side are losing these skills at an even faster rate or, you know, never building them, never giving themselves a chance to do that.
00:29:35.320And, um, I would urge people to have maybe just a smidge and more courage in how they interact because a lot of times the people, um, at the party, you know, hanging around there, they just want someone to come up to them and talk to them.
00:29:48.180You know, everyone's waiting for the other person to make the first move.
00:29:51.860Um, and it is important obviously to do this tactfully with social skills.
00:29:58.100You know, you, the internet is full of, you know, charm school type content.
00:30:02.200It's important, you know, to not be super creepy at first interaction and, you know, to kind of know how to comport yourself with other people.
00:30:10.800Um, but that also comes with practice.
00:30:12.720So I guess just, you know, maybe 5% more, um, courage to make the first move, uh, could pay a lot of dividends because a lot of people just don't have that 5% in them.
00:30:23.380And if you were the person who, who does, you know, it, you know, it might have a good returns.
00:30:28.480I mean, like I said, there's no silver bullet on this.
00:30:30.900I don't think there is like a, you know, guys, I know the place, you know, there's a, there's a basement down on X street and there's all the trad wives are there.
00:31:03.400You're not going to be able to do important things and if you're sitting home alone working or you don't have some kind of thing that forces you to go out and regularly interact with people, you're either not going to build or you're slowly going to atrophy those skills.
00:31:18.700And you, there's really just no substitute for reps, uh, in anything.
00:31:23.640Uh, and it's particularly true when it comes to socialization.
00:31:27.100I was not a particular, you know, I shocked everyone here, but I was not a particularly smooth operator, uh, when I was younger.
00:31:33.400I was not a particularly emotionally adept guy, but you know, over time you put yourself in enough social situations, you take some lumps, you you're willing to get hurt.
00:31:42.880Cause you will. And, and you kind of figure things out and there are still, you know, I I'm in a weird place cause I met my, my late wife in church.
00:31:51.920And then when, you know, came back out and there, there were, or, you know, at that time there was no, you know, there's no online dating apps.
00:32:00.000There's none of that stuff. Uh, there, there's no meeting people online.
00:32:03.900You had to do it IRL. And then when I was ready to, to date again and, you know, found my current wife also at, you know, at church through friends there.
00:32:15.700So luckily I got to skip all of the, the electronic dating stuff, even though it was now like a more or less a prerequisite.
00:32:22.320So, so luckily I kind of got the bypass that in either situation, but it, it really does.
00:32:29.120You have to put yourself in those situations. You have to be willing to just constantly go out.
00:32:34.240The difference between you and the other guy is you're the one making the effort to constantly be in those scenarios.
00:32:40.660But there is also this really, to be fair to guys out there, a very difficult situation in that there's very hostile when it comes to approaches.
00:32:50.220Yes. Most women do want you to, to make the move. They want you to have the confidence.
00:32:55.080They want you to initiate the conversation again, like you said, in a non-creepy, you know, and understanding the social signals type of way.
00:33:02.620But the problem is then you also have, you know, just really predatory behavior.
00:33:07.420You know, everyone saw the, uh, the, the tick tock with the girl, uh, you know, trying, trying to trap guys at the gym.
00:33:14.640There's all of a sudden this explosion of women. Oh, guys have eyeballs in a gym.
00:33:19.220And then, you know, I can't believe they're looking in my general direction at any point.
00:33:23.160It's like, actually, that's kind of a necessity for human beings to continue to exist, that they'll look at each other, you know, um, that, that men will look at women and women will look at men.
00:33:32.640So you don't actually want to just punish that behavior at all times.
00:33:35.900And so there is this set of, of, of kind of punishing signals sent to men.
00:33:40.620Don't ever put yourself in the scenario because you could, you know, suddenly end up, you know, internet famous and lose your job because you just tried to talk to some girl at the gym.
00:33:50.260Um, you have to, you have to get much, much better, unfortunately, reading a room.
00:33:56.400That's not fair to have that expectation of you have to make the move and you have to be able to figure out if this woman's going to suddenly like blast you on social media.
00:34:03.480But also there just isn't another option at the moment.
00:34:06.620So, so, uh, not particularly helpful, but the only answer to that is, you know, you got to figure it out.
00:34:12.520And this is, you know, this is also kind of a hard to, to stomach idea for anyone.
00:34:18.900Um, but you know, if you're on the right, the concept of fairness is already a little bit suspect.
00:34:24.900I mean, men, if we accept that men and women are different and if we consider that, you know, the proportion of men who historically haven't had a chance to, to, you know, propagate their, their seed, even without feminism, even under the strictest and most iron patriarchy, um, you'll see, I mean, life is, is not fair.
00:34:44.420There's a tragic component in life that we've been, uh, conditioned to, to, to not, um, accept because, you know, a lot of things who, you know, if, if your pizza is cold, you send it back, you know, if, if the water is not running, you call the guy who, who makes it run, you know, a lot of things are, are solvable, but the inherent issues of, of the difference between men and women, um, are not.
00:35:06.860And obviously, you know, people say, oh, you know, women have it very easy.
00:35:09.940They, there are certain things, you know, spend some time in, in, in Radfem Twitter and you'll see, at least they complain about a lot of, a lot of similar issues of unfairness and, and inequality and, you know, being targeted by disproportionate amounts of violence and all sorts of things.
00:35:25.800And, um, it's, you know, there is, there is a certain tragic component to life, um, and not everyone will get it to the same degree as, um, as others.
00:35:38.360And, um, I mean, I've been, I've been interested in kind of like internet ideologies recently, and I've been doing a lot of reading on antinatalism.
00:35:47.080Essentially, antinatalism is the fringe most position of this lack of acceptance of the tragic dimension of life, you know, or it's, you know, it's seeing the tragic dimension of life and saying no to life, you know, and being so appalled by the fact of the unfairness, of the cruelty, of the pain of life.
00:36:04.920And the fact that, you know, it is a struggle, there is pain inherent in life, um, that you just want to annihilate all of existence, you know, um, uh, you know, Adam Lanza was, you know, very much tied into this ideology, kind of the philosophical end of it.
00:36:21.080Um, and he said no to life in a very, you know, very, uh, clear and painful and, and, and direct way.
00:36:36.060Um, you know, before we, uh, we started recording, I, I remember just, I ran into the, you know, the quote by, by Kierkegaard about, you know, if you'll marry, you'll regret it.
00:36:45.580If you kill yourself, you'll regret it.
00:36:47.500If you don't kill yourself, you'll regret it.
00:36:48.740You know, this, you know, this is the essence of philosophy.
00:36:51.140Um, you know, I feel like, you know, this is, this is the essence of life.
00:36:55.860There's a lot of pain and a lot of, um, fighting through things that, uh, seem very lonely at times.
00:37:02.700It seems that you're the only person or that you're in an excluded minority and that you are having the hardest time of all.
00:37:11.120Um, but just remember that this is, this is baked into the, the pie for everyone.
00:37:16.060You know, maybe some people have better seasons.
00:37:17.980Maybe they have, they have a, uh, an easier time on things you find difficult.
00:37:22.000Uh, but everyone's carrying their own burden.
00:37:25.000And, um, yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know if this is any consolation to anyone,
00:37:31.060but things are not supposed to be easy.
00:37:34.220Anything that's worth getting is, is, is complicated and hard.
00:37:38.280Um, even if it seems easy for some, especially with social media, social media is a hall of mirrors, people.
00:37:44.100It's, it's not what it seems, you know, people, um, show themselves in their best light and it's not something you should compare yourself to.
00:37:52.400Anyway, until I fall into more like, uh, you know, a Vogue type platitudes and stuff like that to stop me and we can move on to something more productive.
00:38:02.880I mean, people, again, as you, you have this, you know, this abstraction, right?
00:38:08.820This, you're, you're so completely removed from reality.
00:38:11.980You so rarely get to have genuine interactions, especially, unfortunately for many people with the opposite sex, that it's really easy to forget.
00:38:20.440You know, we all tell ourselves, oh, I know that online's not real.
00:38:30.620That's how they adjust their expectations.
00:38:32.180Whether we like it or not, we are constantly shaped by the things we consume.
00:38:36.940We can tell ourselves that we don't believe TV.
00:38:39.280We can tell, we don't tell ourselves that we don't really absorb what we're seeing online or, or what people are telling us online.
00:38:46.340But at the end of the day, we do because we're human and, and that's just how humans work.
00:38:51.440And so I think it's a little bit of, I think it's a little bit of cope for people to just be like, oh, well, that doesn't really, it's like, no, it really does affect you.
00:38:59.080And you have to, unless you do put yourself in real situations, unless you actively take the steps to kind of rip yourself out of that cocoon and put yourself in the real world where you'll get bumped and bruised and hurt and, you know, and, you know, you struggle against things, then you, you will just kind of believe the things that are constantly put in front of you.
00:39:18.860And it's one of the things I love about, you know, Spangler, yeah, the, the famous quote, you know, optimism is cowardice, you know, it's, it's like, look, but I mean, again, people hate this, but it's so true.
00:39:56.120There are things, again, there are serious problems, serious institutional problems, serious problems of approach.
00:40:03.300There are things that both men and women are told that are absolute lies that they completely internalize and it makes things absolutely toxic.
00:40:09.620And you can blame all those things every single day.
00:40:12.620But for you, you still have to change things.
00:40:15.220It's like the, you know, the Jordan Peterson thing.
00:40:17.960Like just clean up your room is a terrible piece of advice collectively.
00:40:24.660It doesn't lead your, your society to collectively solving issues and navigating issues, but it's really good advice personally, because it's the thing you can most directly do to change what's going on in your life.
00:40:37.460And so it's not a great thing to just blurt out anyone going through something difficult, but at the end of the day, it is the first step to any kind of change that's going to make a difference in your life.
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00:41:16.860Yeah, I don't want to also not discount, you know, the insights coming out of the so-called manosphere and, you know, even the radfemmes sometimes have a point.
00:41:28.640And especially because, you know, the manosphere brought a lot of stuff that was culturally taboo.
00:41:34.940I mean, there's, you know, there's this feeling, you know, the women are wonderful effect.
00:41:38.480And, you know, this is kind of an illusion that culture kind of wants to maintain, you know, that, you know, everyone has that feeling about their own mom.
00:41:46.600You know, you don't want to be, you don't want to be an asshole, essentially.
00:41:49.140That's kind of what happens a lot of times in relation to making broad statements, generalizations about women.
00:41:55.900The fact that the manosphere made generalizations about women and they were correct a lot of times does give them some power and some leverage.
00:42:04.000And I feel like, you know, some cultural cachet, that's well-deserved.
00:42:07.120But at the same time, like I said, you know, there is a, there are intrinsic mechanisms in how information is propagated online, how things get viral, how people find them, find out about them, how you become a personality online that are not necessarily good for finding out the truth, for crystallizing what is actually there.
00:42:28.620But for hard, hardening factions around certain, you know, coordinating ideas, you know, which in real life is good, you know, it makes a nation, it makes a tribe, it makes a family, it makes religion.
00:42:42.180But online, you know, the stakes are low and the only direction that things can take is a ratchet.
00:42:49.180It's always like more and more and more and then cleaving off the naysayers and push it, push it, push it.
00:42:55.140And then you just get to positions that are just like a bit, you know, it's just, you know, who, who is your audience here?
00:43:01.860You know, there's like 10 guys around you who are that hard line that they, you know, want, I don't know, the total female annihilation or whatever, you know, is the newest click on the ratchet.
00:43:11.520So anyway, it's, like I said, good insights, bad incentives in the places where these insights are found and where they grow and where they propagate.
00:43:24.820So speaking of good insights, I don't know if you caught some of the current drama, but Lomez had an article in First Things, I don't know if you saw that on The Longhouse.
00:44:07.780There just seemed to be a real reaction to the fact that anyone would broach the topic of a culture that might be too feminized, that might be too feminine.
00:44:17.660All of a sudden just sent all these guys into kind of a tizzy and it's really disappointing because some of these people are people I respect, but just their, their knee-jerk reaction to dismissing and, and, and just, you know, defaming some piece that, you know, characterizing a way that just, I don't think was in any way accurate.
00:44:37.720What do you think about this, this reaction of people who are kind of supposed to be leading some section of the right, but just immediately recoil at the suggestion that like men might need spaces where they can kind of have, you know, male leadership and, you know, have the ability to exercise kind of their natural proclivities as men.
00:44:57.240Yeah, I think in that case, it did seem a little bit like a, you know, guilt by association type situation because I think everyone knows that the, the Longhouse meme comes from Bronze Age mindsets, associated Bronze Age pervert.
00:45:10.300You know, you know, maybe some preexisting negative associations with the larger Bronze Age pervert phenomenon is what they were reacting to.
00:45:18.300And the fact that I think maybe it was jarring for a lot of people, because first things is, I mean, as far as I know, it's a Christian magazine, it's got.
00:45:25.120Yeah, it's a Catholic magazine, I believe.
00:45:26.400Yeah, Catholic magazine, obviously, you know, the, the Integralist would probably bristle at the fact that, you know, some anonymous person who's, you know, maybe interesting, but they probably follow him, but he's from a different section.
00:45:38.600You know, there's, you know, there's, you know, there's a cordon sanitaire around this, this section, and that they're now being pulled into the, into the mainstream, the mainstream of Catholicism, Integralism, whatever, and that they're given a, given a platform there in, in, you know, the, the, the sacred center of, of, you know, a place where, yeah, where they usually publish.
00:46:02.680And I think there is obviously a tension between, I don't think necessarily what, what Lomas wrote in that particular article, though, you know, obviously the longhouse is Babs meme.
00:46:12.440But between, you know, Vita, pagan vitalism, I mean, I don't know exactly how pagan it is, but, you know, vitalism, Nietzschean vitalism, and the Christian part of the post-liberal right.
00:46:23.160I mean, this is pre-existing tension, it's been there since the beginning.
00:46:26.720Now the battles are being fought a little bit more, and I think this is just one of the, kind of the spin-off battles, okay?
00:46:33.260This is our turf, you know, why is the Catholic magazine publishing this, you know, associate of the, of the pagan vitalists, has nothing to do with Catholicism.
00:46:44.480And it, I mean, as far as I understand, Bab does reject Christianity as any sort of, he, he, he's not anti-Christian, he accepts Christians, he respects Christianity in some ways,
00:46:54.820but as a political solution, which most of these Catholic-associated people would, would think, okay, Christianity comes first, he rejects that completely,
00:47:03.900and, you know, he believes that that's going to open the doors to, you know, third world universalist mayhem, and fair, fair criticism.
00:47:13.160I mean, you could be Christian and also accept that that is probably what's going to happen, and, you know, it's kind of like the, the fact with integralism.
00:47:21.360I mean, you can be Catholic and, you know, be kind of interested in the idea of integralism, when you contrast that with the actual composition of the church,
00:47:27.880and, you know, especially with the things that came out recently, I don't know exactly what the book was called,
00:47:32.020but there's kind of a tell-all type situation about the Lavender Mafia.
00:47:35.880I mean, no offense, but they're pretty much all homosexuals, especially in the higher echelons, and, you know, what that trickles down into,
00:47:44.020and how abuse was covered up, and all sorts of just absolutely vile things,
00:47:49.060and the idea that we're just going to organize our state around this cabal of degenerates.