On What Grounds Are You John?

I was thinking about arguments, and Paul Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement. These thoughts weren’t spontaneous: I get accused of various bad forms of argument quite a bit; especially by people who believe themselves to be above such things, and usually right after they have committed one of the same.

For the most part, it doesn’t bother me, but it is quizzical. Not just for the hypocrisy (Hypocrisy is often closer to virtue than vice in my book.), but because my frame of reference for appropriate debate is how it’s done in scripture. It is full of name-calling and ad hominem. Jesus, and all the heroes of the Bible, seems to use the whole range of the argument pyramid in their arguments; even name-calling. In the first conflict between those of the Old Testament, and those of the New, the pharisees approach John the Baptist to be baptized and he quickdraws on them, “You brood of vipers!”

I guess John the Baptist never heard of Paul Graham.

One oft-considered fallacious argument that Graham does not rank is the appeal to authority; though he does sort of slide it under ad hominem. For what I hope are obvious reasons: I love the appeal to authority. It’s probably my favorite.

The remarkable thing about the rejection of authority is not so much, “Where would we be without it”, but, “Who would you be?” The closer we get to the basic facts about who you are, the less we really know and the more we just argue beliefs of ourselves on pure authority.

How do you know how old you are? Do you remember it? Do you know where you were born like you know where you were last week? You were surely there, but you just take it on authority that the month and date and place of your birth is what is actually recorded on your birth certificate.

On what grounds is your name, say, John? You answer to it. You tell people to call you that, but all you know is that people have been calling you that for a long time, and you respond to it. Sure, you can go to some bureaucracy and change your name, and then you can know that your name is Bubbles or whatever, but how can you know before that without resorting to pure authority?

There is at least one thing that is sure evidence of who you are: Your resemblances to your father and mother. If I’ve seen them, I can know whether you belong to them, or not. The entirety of your provable and demonstrable identity rests upon how well others can match you to your parents. And what is parentage but physical and mental authorship?

Turns out there’s a lot more, “You were thought of, and so you are”, than, “I think therefore I am”.

Game: The Spice of Strife I

(Editor’s Note: Keoni has been a friend to me since I started. He was one of the first commenters, and when I started he immediately put me into his blogging feed.)

 In a comment of my last post I wrote something that I want to expound upon.

Clothes and jokes and negs (teasing) can cover over some marital bad spots for a short while, but in the meantime if you’re not addressing the underlying problem it will never work. The slut crutches of negs, dread, etc. are fine methods for picking up, spinning plates, etc., but a lousy way to run a marriage.

Let me rephrase that last paragraph in a way that doesn’t sound so harsh to the pro-Game crowd: Game tactics are spices, but pepper does not a meal make. Nor are folks starving to death (divorcing) over its lack. The problem is–and I think Keoni should agree–is that we have gorged on simulated sweets. Now some folks are claiming more pepper with the sweets will make those phony meals nutritious because we have heard that some healthy folks put pepper on wholesome food.

To which he responded:

“I like the analogy, but I’ll respectfully disagree on the “starving to death” aka divorcing analogy.

The lack of spices in cooking leads to a monotony of bland dishes. While bland dishes can be nourishing, when access to spice is available, the temptations of the spicy meal can be much more compelling when you’ve endured years of nothing but bland, unseasoned fare.

“Variety is the spice of life” “

There are two reasons I want to continue this discussion, and the second follows from the first, and in (at least) another post.

All Good Game is Good

In my last couple posts I talked about how all things God made are intrinsically good and have moral value. So, don’t tell me that “Game is just an amoral box of tools”. That won’t fly here until you are prepared to prove logically, through scripture, that God makes things that are without morals. “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are good for me”, he said…twice. If they are lawful they are good. What is the modifying substance? You. Me. Humans. It may be that I am not fit or ready to use something. It may be that you are not strong enough for me to safely use them, and I must take you into consideration when I do something. Regardless, the things themselves are still lawful; they are good because we know God only makes good things.

Where we get into trouble is labels.[1] When we give a label to a behavior we tend to start thinking of it as a thing unto itself. That’s fine and even good if it is a thing, but sometimes it’s not a thing, but an action. Hypergamy, for example, describes the female preference in mating. If a married woman finds another man who is more dominating, superior, and attractive than her husband her hypergamy is probably going to notice. If she acts on that hypergamy (from flirting to fornicating) then we might say that her hypergamy drove her to it. We would be wrong. That’s not hypergamy. Hypergamy is the thing that made her notice he was superior/attractive–and that’s it. What she’s engaged in is coveting and lust. It’s lack of self-control. Lust and coveting aren’t unconscious “biological drives” unanswerable to reason. They’re choices. They are the willful products of a mind that is conformed to the spirit of this age.

The other way labels get us into trouble is we start to call behaviors–choices–as things; such as lust. Lust is not a thing, but a decision. We make the label lust because it’s a heck of a lot easier to say “She is full of lust”, than it is to say, “She has a habit of repeatedly engaging in sexual thoughts and conduct that were inappropriate.” Hypergamy is not a choice, but is a fact. Lust is a choice, and not a fact. Hypergamy is good. Lust is bad.

So, if your wife is suddenly browsing old high school boyfriends on Facebook, or talks about her male boss just a little too much: You don’t have a hypergamy, or even hypergamy in overdrive problem; you have a sinful wife problem.

There are good choices, too. Love is a choice; not a fact. Falling in love is a choice, not a fact. People will protest that it is beyond their control. That’s wrong. When a man says, “It’s not my fault that I fell out of love with her when she gained 50 lbs. and stopped wanting to have sex with me.”, that’s a lie–though he often doesn’t know it. The truth is, “She communicated to me that she didn’t want me to love her by gaining 50 lbs. and rejecting my sexual advances. So I quit trying to be in love.” We know this because it’s the only logical conclusion from our premises. We also know it because a man in that situation is angry at her and her behavior; not the facts of her existence. Men who focus on the facts tend to be melancholy, or even depressed about them; not angry.

Why do I say good Game is good? Well…it depends what we mean by Game. There are, generally speaking, three different definitions of Game.

• knowledge of the facts of human existence, circumstances and behavior
  • an understanding of hypergamy, koreogamy, socio-sexual cues, and other features of human nature
  • an understanding of current trends in the Marriage MarketPlace (MMP) and Sexual MarketPlace (SMP), i.e., knowledge of the behavior to which people are actually engaging
  • the ability to read a person’s behavior; to interpret verbal and non-verbal cues; particularly of a sexual nature

• manipulation of self or circumstances to affect change in another’s perception or behavior
  • ex.: flirting, dress, negs, agree and amplify, etc.[1]
  • is strictly conscious behavior
  • this is the most-often denied definition, but is ubiquitously used (e.g., “I did X, and she couldn’t help herself!”)

• an established pattern of behavior
  • strictly speaking this is conscious behavior, but it’s practiced unto relative thoughtlessness. It’s manipulation as muscle memory or rote response; like shifting gears, or tying shoelaces, or replying to a question with “Yes sir and no ma’am”.
  • The way a person lives; the totality of their behavior. In this sense it’s like a personal culture. We say a person has “No Game” in the same way we say a people have “No culture”. What we really mean is either we don’t like the culture, or we believe the culture is inferior. Like it or not: McDonald’s and blue jeans are American culture.

The first definition really ought to be called something different, but for the sake of understanding I’ve included it. Regardless, it is, I think, wholly good. We are not called to be ignorant. We are to be wise as serpents. We are to heed wisdom crying aloud in the streets. Some knowledge may be unnecessary (there are plenty of deviant behaviors I could live my whole life without knowing), but if I were clean of sin, knowledge of them would be no hinderance to me anymore than it hinders God, and in fact might aid me in helping another. That’s a good thing.

The second and third definitions are the behaviors. These are the things that are not moral or immoral, but never amoral either. Again: Actions are not things, and the moral value of an action depends entirely on the actor, and the circumstances. You can get into some really crazy digressions here (and Catholics do), but the point to understand is that your intent, your act itself, and the consequences all have a bearing on the morality of any given action. More exasperatingly: Sometimes the second two conditions are completely unknowable; particularly the consequences.

Here’s a strange but vivid example: Suppose you’re on the 12th floor of a burning building with many other people. You look across the breezeway, and it seems to you that it’s close enough to jump from your window to their fire escape. You tell the others you have a plan, and they agree: You go first. You jump, miss the ledge, and plummet to your death. The remaining people find another route, and escape the blaze. Even though your intent was to save lives, and even though your example saved the lives of others, it was still stupid. Stupidity is sinful.

Some of you are asking, “But what is the thing that inspires and motivates a person to do what they do? Yes, love is an action, but God says He is Love, and that we ought to have love for one another. He speaks of it as a thing. And there are other things that are mentioned as things.” Yes, you’re right. Those things are called spirits. In out times, we’ve psychologized the crap out of spirits, and call them other things; the “psychology of…”; “attitude; psychiatric problems. We will call them anything to avoid the word spirit; unless we’re talking about ghosts, or some sparkly cosmic feel-good ultra-violet luminance to which we sorta-kinda pay homage in church.  But spirits are real, Yes, God is love. God is and has a spirit. Love is a spirit. Spirits are real. They are what we tap into to motivate us to make decisions about what to do, and why. This is especially true when we aren’t sure of what we’re doing, as a mind can override a spirit. That’s what they’re for.

So which Game is good Game? It’s the action Game motivated by a good spirit. If you’re trying to figure out how to convince your wife to lose 50 lbs. so that you are attracted to her, then negs are not the answer because she’s going to get older and uglier no matter what you do. If you’re trying to get a woman to follow you for the rest of your life, then a committed workout routine and a sensible diet aren’t going to cut it when those luxuries are no longer available for economic, health, or age-related reasons. If you’ve been looking to evolutionary psychology for the reason your wife cheated on you, then you’re looking in the wrong place.

If you’ve been imitating Dark Triad of narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism to attract and keep a wife, then you’re in for a world of pain. If you’ve been trying to appease and niceguy a former harlot into a goodgirl, then you and the Dark Triad guy can commiserate.

You, or she, or both have a spiritual problem, and need a spiritual solution. There are a lot of spirits out there vying for our attention, and some of them are loose in the world, and some of them are in people, and some of them are people. There is only one spirit of God though, and His spirit is love. This is why the civilizationalists vs. nihilists debate is–at best–a sideshow of the Christian Manosphere. It’s really just a huge debate on which type of paganism and idolatry one prefers. We are not called to save or destroy any society, and in fact we believe that they all will be burned. While it is a travesty that a wife can divorce her husband, and take half or more or even all of his belongings, that is insignificant compared to the fact that we will die, and everything we have will be given to others. Not only us, but our wives, our kids, and everyone we know. Crying over dismemberment of earthly hoards is truly ridiculous once we accept that. Yet it is the domain of Satan to steal, kill, and destroy. It is the friends of Job whom Christian nihilists echo. In fact, it is his wife whom they most resemble:

“9 Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.”10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

We shall receive good and evil. Christian marriage isn’t about saving civilization, and it isn’t about avoiding caddishness, sluthood, and nihilism. It’s about committing to love and serve someone who is not worthy of love, but who needs it. It’s about collaborating with them in a loving, joyful, and orderly spirit of authority and submission to be not only open, but enthusiastic about raising and sending forth life and spirit. It’s about representing the gospel and the trinity to the world. If civilization or darkness prevails during our times, that is God’s business, not ours. We cannot know whether we shall save our spouses, much less civilization.

As for the Christian MGTOW…what about them? The Christian MTGOW is perfectly acceptable and holy; provided that he is in the right spirit. If his spirit is one of destruction and condemnation, then he is of Satan; who was a murderer from the beginning.

To some of you, this may seem like a simple a different perspective or rephrasing of the same things most the Game bloggers are saying (with a holy-roller bit tacked on at the end), but this shift in paradigms will make all the difference. In the next post I’ll take a look at three Manosphere stories (two of which should be familiar to most of my readers), and dissect them to show what I’m talking about, to those who can see and hear it.

I didn’t do my links to bible verses this time. Judging by the click-throughs they are a waste of time. If you want to know upon which verse(s) I base a statement you can ask me in the comments, and I will gladly reply.

[1] I’m a big fan of labels, but that doesn’t mean we ought not be considerate in their use…you hippie.

[2] You’ll notice I do not include the accumulation of things or experiences in here. From a Game perspective, it’s useless to simply be wealthy if it is not demonstrated in some way. A dotcom billionaire in a teeshirt and jeans is no better off than the broke college student in teeshirt and jeans until the girl sees the ferrari. Also, a string of past sexual conquests is worthless unless it can be demonstrated to have value. Prostitutes are sexually conquered no less than tramps; but women will judge the value of those conquests differently.

What Are We Doing Here II: That Rock Has Moral Value

Leave it to Dalrock to ask the hard questions. I’ve twice deleted 1500-plus words on this subject because both drafts went in the wrong directions. I’ve chosen to just go the direct route; taking it for granted that everyone understands I’m arguing ideas, and that I have tremendous respect for Dalrock.

In the comments of my previous post Dalrock asks some questions that highlight a clear distinction between myself and most of the rest of the Manosphere, and the majority of the Western world. I had wrote:

Should we blame mental/spiritual sickness on intrinsic womanhood? No, but that’s what the idea of the Feminine Imperative does. It’s the equivalent of blaming war on manhood.

To which he replied:

I don’t think “blame” is an accurate word to describe Rollo’s view. This is actually an area where I disagree with him. Rollo is very careful to avoid value judgments, especially when he is describing the actions of women. Beyond this, your argument resembles the feminist denial of nature in the nature vs nurture debate. Are you arguing that there is nothing intrinsic to womanhood (in general). Or are you arguing that there is nothing intrinsic to womanhood which when unchecked can produce bad (or even catastrophic) results?

As the paragraph goes on, Dalrock does the same thing I do: He digs through my statements to unearth the principle lying below; the frame of the argument. Another way to say that is he is discerning the nature of my argument.

1) Blame is the right word. It’s called the “Feminine Imperative”. The title (to which I obviously disagree, but I’m trying to not lose anybody in the argument) lays the blame directly at the feet of women, womanly behavior, and those who work with with. Rollo may claim that this is not blame, but it can be no other way. At best, it’s confused to call something “feminine” and not “blame” it on women.

In that same vein: We should be judging and assessing value. Aside from the (hopefully) common sense perspective that good is better than bad, and that profitable is better than unprofitable–we are Christians. We are followers of the son of the One True God, Creator of all, and we are made in His image. What does He do? He makes things, and then He judges them. “This is good”. “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” Lawlessness…lacking judgment…lacking value assessment.

Christ goes further in the Sermon on the Mount. He says:

¹⁶ “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. ¹⁷ But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, ¹⁸ that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

¹⁹ “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, ²⁰ but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

²² “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, ²³ but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

²⁴ “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

In my thoughts, I keep coming back to this passage in my refutations of the desirableness of Game (as based on Dark Triad traits, or the 16 Commandments of Poon; both of which dovetail smoothly with the precepts of the Feminine Imperative as most specifically laid out.), but for right now I just want to look at the bolded part. Whatever we do not give value to is worthless. Whatever value we blind ourselves to–in a misguided attempt to be impartial or inclusive–is filling ourselves with emptiness…nothing…darkness–because the light is empty, valueless, and know-nothing. We should be extraordinarily careful in rendering judgment, but to refuse to value is as bad as valuing improperly, i.e., to choose evil over good. How we should value things could be another very long post, or it can be summed up as: value as God values, and not as the world does. No man can server two masters.

2) Nature-vs.-nurture debates are usually nothing of the sort. They’re almost always nature-vs.-nature arguments, with each side choosing to emphasize or detract from various natural components.

For example: Egalitarians almost always consider themselves nurture-over-nature; that the “environment” (peer-group, parents, education, etc.) around a person can override or overcome a person’s “natural” tendencies, strengths and weaknesses. First, humans are inherently social creatures. Environments are completely natural phenomenon, and part of the person’s make-up. It’s not extra-personal. Lots to be said here, but I’ll move on.

More importantly: Egalitarians are trying to bring cognizant and demonstrable equality to things that are nature-ally very similar already. Both men and women are human. They can mate. They have extraordinarily similar sets of organs, motivations, and environments. In turn, apes aren’t far off. In fact you have to drill down a few levels into the secular scientists’ animal kingdom before you hit truly different classes of creatures. What egalitarians say to themselves is “This woman-thing has a head and a brain and a heart just as man-things do. They can both learn and speak and read and do all the same sorts of things. There are really only minor natural differences. Therefore: we ought to see them as equals.” It’s not an argument based on nurturing at all!

The Judeo-Christian paradigm is very nurture-over-nature.

“Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

“Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

“And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;”

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵ For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶ For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. ⁸ Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Nature is the flesh; which is death. Our way–Christ’s way–transcends death, and it does so by a nurturing process. In the beginning, the natural way was life in the Garden of Eden, but because we nurtured evil, that nurturing overcame the nature of life and wrought destruction on the whole planet.

See, when you’re talking about a nurturing thing that is not natural (else one cannot have a nurture-vs.-nature discussiono at all), what you’re really talking about is the spiritual-vs.-the natural, i.e, spirit-vs.-flesh. Egalitarians have NOTHING on Christianity when it comes to truly parsing out the powers of nature and the powers of the spirit.

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Paul is talking a nurtural war; not a natural one.

“Well, Cane, that’s not really what we mean when we say “nature” and “nurture”, and talk about their various influences.” I know. And I’m telling you that because of this you haven’t even really begun to consider the implications of nurturing and the spirit world because this whole way of thinking about nurture and nature without a spiritual context comes about because these things have been discussed for decades now without assigning value; without judgment…like secular scientists. The Christian ALWAYS has recourse to a definitive ruler on the value of things–all things–and it’s most readily available as scripture. If we’re not starting from the principle and presupposition that scripture is profoundly correct on the nature of man and his state, then we are living with darkened lamps. Everything is darkness to us. In such darkness, you might grope upon a trope like “Feminine Imperative”, and not have the light to see that an amoral genetic conspiracy theory is bunk. This becomes obvious once you realize that even the tree outside your window is NOT amoral, but has a moral value, and that value is probably good. It is intrinsically good–from the beginning it was good. We can know this because God said so. It’s in the Bible. Why we can trust the Bible is another post. For now, I’m assuming that if you can accept that a man who claimed to be the Son of God was raised from the dead and ascended into Heaven, then you can accept that God meant it when He invented trees and said “It is good.”

3) In this last bit, I’ll turn to the word intrinsic, and how I meant it. I mean “from the beginning”, or “by design”. The amoral view of the natural universe is inextricable from an amoral view of feminine nature, and vice versa: a moral assessment of the natural universe (And, again: “It is good.”) necessitates a moral assessment of the nature of women. Therefore, as a follower of Christ–Son of the Creator of the Universe–I must reject the amoral view of nature, and I must accept the goodness of the intrinsic (intended/designed) nature of women. By this light I can see clearly. And if, by this light, I see evil in women, then I must recognize that evil as something separate from their nature. It must be something that grows there, i.e., something nurtured by themselves or another, or both. Whether it is a psychiatric disease like narcissism, or “mundane” spiritual disease like lust, or something exotic like demonic possession–I can categorize them under the heading of “sinful nature”.

Don’t get me twisted: Females have a nature. Hypergamy is a real thing, and I wholly believe it’s scriptural. It’s also a decidedly good thing. Think about it: Her hypergamy drives her into your arms. She wants to “fight” with you, and she wants you to win. It’s a fixed fight! This sort of thing is illegal in real fights because the profits are simply too high! If you don’t like this, then the problem is you. Yes, things can go wrong and she can abuse it out of all proportion, but it is an intrinsically good thing.

This, finally, brings us back to the comments of Dalrock’s post that inspired my previous post, upon which Dalrock’s comment and this post grew. In an attempt to describe what a Masculine Imperative would looke like, commenter Bluedog wrote:

A human MI society would be a society where the MI has totally dominated over the FI, so again I’d look to lions as a template for this. You would expect to see high concentrations of women around highly dominant “alpha” males, and you would expect to see men “in between” prides – either because they haven’t established a pride yet or because they got kicked out of one.

The human nuance in this is that I think you would see both men who freely choose to not have prides, who “go their own way” as it were, as well as men who are between prides but wish strongly to have them. All in all, I would imagine this to be a fairly violent and dystopic society.

The assessments of most other commenters lined up with this greatly…which is hilarious because this is what the Feminine Imperative is purported to be! Especially the highlighted portion. That’s right: What we’re here complaining and trying to understand is as much about the society as men have ordered it as how women have…just not most men. Surely not you or I.

Which is what I’ve been saying all along. There is a conspiracy, but it’s not so much run by women as it is run by very rich and powerful (in a worldly sense) men, and perpetrated on average women (which is almost all of them) who don’t even rise to the level of co-conspirator. They’re simply not that smart, important , or powerful enough to be anything but CONSUMERS of the conspiracy. Actually elite women are some of the most hurt by this paradigm. Don’t believe me: Ask John Legend’s model fiance Chrissy Tiegen about Farrah Abraham. Her rage isn’t because somebody banged Farrah, but because all you have to do to make national news is get knocked up as a teen and then make a sextape. I’d never heard of Tiegen before this, but she’s apparently kind of a big deal–and here she is outshined by a common (6 looks; considering physique) whore at the whim of the owners of Viacom and Vivid–companies run by elite men. Warren Buffett is calling for more women in business? Why? Because he knows (whether he has the vocabulary or not) that hypergamy dictates that he’ll get his way and their money. He’s not about empowering women. He’s about enriching himself. To do this: he jumps to the middle of the herd bleating, “Bah-ah-ah! Women are great! Bah-ah-ah!”

Part of the Feminine Imperative stipulates that women gather around each other when enemies attack. Let’s be clear: Tiegen is in the majority in calling Abraham a whore. So trusting to the amoral knowledge of the FI we should expect that Chrissy Tiegen would support and herd-gather around Farrah Abraham. Society doesn’t approve of Abraham–so they’re not gathering around her either…until Tiegen tweets her as a whore in unison with society. Then all Twitter-Hell breaks loose. Why? The Feminine Imperative is at an amoral loss to explain it; unable to tell the sheep from the wolf, and so calling all both. But widespread narcissism–a fundamentally spiritual disorder of falsely assumed self-godhood–explains it. Tiegens critics: 1) assume she is talking to them. 2) assume she is talking about them 3) afraid that someone like Tiegen might reveal their inner-sextaping-teenmom tendencies. So they rage. Tiegen, too, is a narcissist–surprised to discover that her Twitter followers are real people and not just props–so she rages back at them. All the while, each sheep in this milieu (Tiegen, Abraham, and the Twitter followers are trying to jump closer and closer to the center of the herd; to sacrifice enough others to calm whatever and whoever the enemy is. They don’t really care because narcissists can’t be bothered to actually figure that out.

Ok, Cane. Why is this important? What does it matter whether we call this–whatever it is–the Feminine Imperative, or Sin Nature? One, because the truth is important. It just is. If you don’t believe that then stop reading this and everything else I ever have to say.

Two, because those elite men know what I’m talking about. We can’t even fight them for our kids if we don’t know what game they’re playing. This is spiritual warfare, and they know even if it’s too “religulous” for them to say. Maybe you think that too. You might think I’m talking about angels and demons and “invisible bogeymen”…and I am. I’m also talking about how one five year girl with 30 minutes and a bad attitude can transform a whole team of five year olds from content and happy to maladjusted assholes. That’s not the Feminine Imperative–that’s Sin Nature.

One day I’ll go back to posts under 2,000 words.

What Are We Doing Here?

That’s the question I’ve been asking myself. This blog had ceased to justify it’s own existence, but I still believed that it could. The reason is because I believe other people know better than I do; especially those who have shown themselves to be of sound judgment and good character; people like Dalrock, GKChesterton, Empathological, Elspeth, and several others. Many others? No, not many. I think there would very few mourners at this blog’s funeral. Regardless, it’s going to live on.

But I still didn’t really have an answer to what I should be writing because I was still having trouble understanding what in the world everyone else is talking about. I see the problems, and I understand enough of what others are describing to recognize that I can draw an outline of that description; enough to understand that we’re seeing the same phenomenon.

Then they start adding detail to their descriptions, and it’s just…not what I’m seeing. What begins as an artistic description of the universe changes form. It becomes philosophy, and they start talking about how matter is arranged the way it is because while we can sense four dimensions there are at least seven more.

And I say, “Wait a minute! You’re not describing what you see anymore, but what makes sense to you as a cause of what you see.” At best it’s like blind people trying to see by learning about photons. Much more often it’s a whole lot worse: It’s the theory of speciation by natural selection (less data spontaneously becoming more  [and new!] data. Huh?), or the postulation of infinite universes (among which must be a universe that is a singular universe. Poof!).

Let me give you some Manosphere examples:

• The Feminine Imperative (and the now-comorbid Masculine Imperative)
• Evolutionary Psychology
• The Red Pill
• Rabbitholes
• Game

Tonight I’m going to write about the first one. From Dalrock’s blog*, he discusses what a man’s version of a story about “natural insemination”, i.e., arranged hookups for the sake of causing pregnancy. The framing and language of the article is certainly from a female perspective–what is called the Feminine Imperative–and so it follows (according to this paradigm of thought) that this is a calculated move by women to further enhance an already female-centric society.

If you protest that it’s too big and ill-considered to be calculated, they continue right on that it’s not calculated (as if they hadn’t just said it was a plan) that it’s just the Feminine Imperative at work. It’s the spontaneous combustion and re-combination of swirling fem-zymes and radical iso-tropes into what is obviously a new super-predator that feeds on men!

Really? Is it anyone’s experience that women desire (by volition) or need (naturally-occurring) more impediments to a one night stand with the male of their choosing? Because that’s what this is. “Natural insemination” is the addition of bureaucracy to the hook-up culture. That doesn’t strike me as female-centric at all. It strikes me as downright idiotic. If there’s one sort of positive, hooray-for-freedom thing we could say about the hookup culture it’s that it is free from oversight or obligation…that’s the appeal of it.

It’s also the problem with it, and up until this point it’s been one of very few defining and uniting criminal charges the Neo-Reactionaries bring against our feminized culture. This very lack of obligation in the hookup culture is blamed on women’s choices, or capitulation to them: no-fault divorce; abortion-on-demand; the Pill; delayed marriage… And I agree with the list. That’s what makes the decision to link natural insemination to the Feminine Imperative such nonsense. Even further: It (again) shows that the idea of the Feminine Imperative itself is nonsense. That means formalized natural insemination services are not a product of imperatives, but of insanity; of dis-order. It’s the result of widespread mental illness. We’ll come back to this, but is it not stated over and over that regulation, responsibility, organization–the traits of civilization–are the MALE domain? I wouldn’t be surprised to find out this is a ploy by men to create a stage upon which they can control the socio-sexual environment. If you’re a smart male 6, it’s a great idea to stock an inventory of “available” 3’s, 4’s, and 5’s to be compared against. Appeal is relative, remember?

So, what is this Feminine Imperative?

Novaseeker said:

“Rollo’s idea (he was the first to use the phrase [ed: Feminine Imperative], I think) is that it isn’t the genetic-based component of people’s individual motivations, but rather the construction of social, cultural, societal, legal, etc. norms, mores and rules concerning the interactions between the sexes, around the interests of one or the other sex to one degree or other.”

As far as I know it was Rollo, and indeed it was based in genetics/biological determinism. He predicated a good deal of it on the notion that eggs are expensive and sperm is cheap; combined with the social customs, climate, cues, etc. of the last couple centuries, and spiced with notorious acts of feminine vandalism against creation from throughout history. He further stated that there was in fact a biological basis for women’s natural cooperation. Specifically, that women are biologically hard-wired to work together to include or ostracize those who do or do not fit the group’s specifications. I would link to some place where he lays this out explicitly, but as far as I know there is no one place.

Since then the definition of the Feminine Imperative has morphed so that it means whatever behavior women do, or have done. Look at Novaseeker’s definition above: What in Hell does that mean? It could mean anything; even preference for men’s preferences. It truly would be just as helpful to say what our grandfather’s did: “Women’s Ways”. Except inventing new terms really appeals to exactly the STEM/DnD/nerd sort of guy who finds the Manosphere and looks to it for answers. This exasperates me because there are answers to be found here…but there’s so much bullshit, too. The answers aren’t in the definitions, but because they keep piling them on, you must first become an etymologist before you can learn to become manly. Being a man (the broadest and most benign definition forwarded for Game) is an art; not a science. There’s way too much time spent on critique, and not enough actually drawing circles. Consequently, the Mansophere is churning out art critics, and very few artists.

Art critics brings us back to the widespread mental illness because art critics are so often posers who couldn’t find enough appreciation among others for their own art. You know who likes to pose? Narcissists. Do you know what sort of people like to compartmentalize everyone and everything else? Narcissists. They’ll protest it’s some sort of science, of codification to enhance learning…but read what they have to contribute. It’s not the possible science they’re interested in so much as accessorizing their image of themselves. It’s life as set design and casting call.

Some of you want to say something like, “Well, Cane, actually the narcissist is the one who likes to boss others around. He likes to tell everyone what to do, and he thinks he’s the best.” No, not really. A narcissist is someone who can only really appreciate their own view. In their minds, only their existence and experience really matters.

• You’re my funny friend.
• You’re the strong friend.
• You’re the slut friend.
• He’s a beta
• He’s an omega
• He’s an alpha

You know the girl who self-identifies as the quiet one, and takes pains to let you know she’s not judging your behavior? Yeah, she’s a narcissist. What’s important to her is that everyone else (i.e., her audience) recognizes that she is “The Quiet One”, and that you know her manner is “Not Judging”. That narcissism enables the “lack of judgment” (i.e., lack of meaningful concern for others) about others because no one else matters to her but her. Since they don’t matter and yet they persist the narcissist copes by making them a prop; by directing them where to stand in the narcissists mind.

Here’s another example: A woman will rarely describe herself as a slut unless she actually calls herself a slut. “Well, duh!”, you say. No, hold on. Sluts are defined by their behavior. If it’s a woman, and she puts out to others for pleasure without obligation (marriage)–by definition she’s being a slut, right? Steph, a narcissistic woman looks at her friend Jenny, who goes from boyfriend to boyfriend, and interspersed that (just a couple times) with drunken one night stands (“learning experiences/mistakes”). Steph admits that Jenny is…sort of a slut. She puts Jenny in the slut box.

What Steph’s friends know is that Steph–though recently married in a beautiful and moving celebration of romance and flowers and dresses and Steph–went through the exact same “empowering journey of self-discovery” as Jenny! But, see, Jenny is already in the slut box, so there’s no room for Steph in there because Steph requires her own space. Anyway, in Steph’s mind it’s Steph’s show and Steph doesn’t want to be in the slut box. So she’s not. Steph and Jenny’s friends accept this because they’re ALL narcissists, and in each of their minds it is Jenny in the slut box, but Steph is not. It’s entirely likely that Jenny accepts this herself, and revels in being the slut friend. That’s how this group of women got to be friends: They each had their own box. There was no competition for space; leaving them all able to be the star of their own internal show.

If Jenny repents of her ways, they’ll have to kick Jenny out of the group (slowly, and with lots lying, flaking, and backbiting) because Jenny will screw up the program by getting out of her box. That will raise the question: “NOW who’s going to be the slut?” Because it sure as Hell isn’t going to be the other friends. Often times, whole groups will disintegrate once the integrity of the boxes has been compromised by change in one person’s life.

That’s what the Feminine Imperative is. It’s a Manosphere variant of the “slut box” concept. It’s one of many ill-defined but infinitely useful coping mechanisms in the Manospherian narcissist’s arsenal to deal with the narcissism of women. That arsenal is called Game. I’ll write about that later. For now, aside from online discussions about socio-sexual relations, reflect on how people identify themselves in other discussions; by the movies they merely watch; the type of music they merely listen to; the type of games they play. It’s about what they consume. It used to be about who was your father. That’s hard to do when the fathers aren’t around, or aren’t fathering. Narcissism is the secret sauce in corporate marketing, so they promote doofus fathers and empowered mothers to make sure there is always a new crop of loyal consumers. Those marketing reps may not even know this is how it works. In all likelihood, their own narcissism blinds them to the process. They are the stars of their own marketing shows, and they know that there are several dimensions of the human universe we can’t even detect. Besides: You’re in the idiot box; not them.

What’s more: A lack of meaningful concern for anyone else is incompatible with an over-arching imperative. Imperatives–even those oriented outward–make it very difficult for a narcissist to maintain a personal space where they are the star of their own show.

You might say: “Ok then, smart guy: What is this phenomenon of women gathering around each other for protection?” Well people–and especially women–are sheep. When sheep are frightened they head for the safety of the middle of the flock. So what appears to be huddling around each other is actually sheep hoping the threat is sated by those on the fringe of the group. It’s the swarming of individual selfishness. Will they admit that? Of course not. No selfish-unto-narcissistic person will confess she is willing to sacrifice others for her own safety. Those folks are in the selfish box, and she’s clearly in the caring-star box. We should know she’s caring, she’d say, because why else would everyone be orbiting her?

In closing: Historically men are more likely to be narcissists, and women are more likely to be borderline. As we continue on in this grand experiment of personal freedom, lack of accountability, and gender neutrality I think it will only be natural to see more role-reversal trends. Individually, I would expect to see younger men more narcissistic, and older men crumble into borderline. Meanwhile, young women as borderline until they get to be about 30; at which point they molt into narcissists. This would explain why a 35 years old megastar rapper with his choice of women would stoop to impregnate a twice-divorced 32 years old celebrity (most known for making a sex tape with another man) while she’s still married to another man.

*To be fair to Dalrock, he is as ecumenical as they come. This post is not meant to disparage him in any way. The point of his post is not that the Masculine Imperative or Feminine Imperative are real things that should be defined exactly as others have defined him, but that–using the MI and FI as signposts–to point out the obvious and omnipresent feminine frame of reference of all discussion in the media, and society-at-large.