Monthly Archives: December 2022

Masculinity, toxic and otherwise

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I watched a short video clip where Jordan Peterson answers a young woman’s question about “toxic masculinity”, and it turned out that she couldn’t even define the thing, at least when asked about the differences compared to toxic humanity or toxic femininity. Dr. Peterson then proceeded to make a statement that would have one believe that “toxic masculinity” is just one of those liberal leftist phrases that are poorly defined and are in fact meant to target positive traits by being over-generalized, for instances purporting to target “toxic” masculinity, and in fact targetting masculinity as such.

Without necessarily disagreeing with his thinking in regard to this, I immediately thought that I actually do perceive toxic masculinity, and I think I could cite enough examples to be able to come up with a generalised enough definition. So, let me cite examples.

I’ve seen men starting to act like fools when they are around other men. Acting dumber and speaking in a more coarse and simplified language, typical of the lower social classes, usually in deeper voice, and talking in ways that accentuate the assumed consensus with other males. Also, talking about generically “masculine” topics, such as football or other generally popular sports, about cars, construction equipment and building houses, and consuming alcohol in amounts significantly greater than they would consume normally. Furthermore, displaying an aggressive, overtly-masculine stance, where you need to look tough and get into fights. Women are discussed with a dismissive, detached attitude, where the goal is to fuck them and increase the counter, and a wife’s place is in the kitchen, and so on; such an individual will treat even his wife worse when he’s around his male friends. Basically, the point of having sex with a woman is to increase your social standing among men, and the ideal wife is a combination of a cook, a house maid and a whore. Seeing your wife as a friend and a partner, and someone you talk to about sophisticated ideas, would be ridiculed in those circles. Trying to appear less intellectual, simpler and more “down to earth”, because that’s how men are supposed to be. Frowning upon any display of vulnerability and gentleness. Constantly poking other men and trying to establish hierarchies by either bullying someone, or sucking up to the perceived leader by going along with his nasty shit. Trying to think in wolf-pack hierarchies of either being an “alpha” or a “beta”, and a “true man should be an alpha”.

I think we have enough of a pattern here to attempt a definition; toxic masculinity is appropriation of patterns of behaviour that are perceived as stereotypically masculine to the point of caricature, in order for an inherently insecure individual to find acceptance and belonging in male company, even when those patterns of behaviour go against his personal choices manifested in his private life.

So, it is quite obvious that I find this pattern of behaviour objectionable, and let me tell you why. I find it objectionable because it reeks of weakness. It is all about making a show of strength because you are weak and you don’t have the courage to calmly stand behind your personal choices and defend them even if they go against what “everybody else” believes. It’s about being afraid of the consequences of not fitting into a group, so you make compromises that go against your personal beliefs and choices to the point where you feel humiliated and worthless afterwards. It’s about appearance over substance. Also, it’s a reduction to a pattern typical for men of lower social standing, and this is not something one should aspire to. If you think you have to reduce yourself in order to fit somewhere, you are probably trying to fit into a wrong group.

It seems we have a robust definition of toxic masculinity, but it is so obviously an aberration that we must also define healthy masculinity in order to get a clearer picture.

Confidence. Competence. A man should be confident enough of himself to persist in his personal choices and behaviour regardless of the preferences and beliefs of a group. His confidence and composure will in fact make others want to follow and emulate him, rather than him having to conform to the beliefs and actions of others. If he doesn’t belong to some established social group or a pattern, he will shrug and leave, and it is very likely that a new group or a pattern will start to form around him, simply because he creates an aura of coherent stability around himself, and if this is based on competence, it has great persuasive power, because other competent people will always prefer the company based on competence and calm confidence, to some vacuous concept such as hanging out at a bar and talking about football and getting into fights when drunk. Such a man will see a woman as a valuable person and talk to her seriously and directly; if he thinks she is wrong, he will clearly state this and show her the errors in her thinking, instead of being either dismissive of her and acting as if trying to score points against her to impress other men, or being so entranced by her femaleness that he would swallow any kind of nonsense she spouts. His attitude towards a woman he likes is “I know the goal, and if you trust me, I will lead you there and take care of you”. He is confident enough to constantly learn, instead of trying to pretend to know it all; mistakes are immediately acknowledged and corrected. Weakness is not tolerated, but weakness is defined as insufficient moral and spiritual strength to adhere to the right goals, principles and ideas. If he needs to change the course, or persist on the current course, he will think about this from the position of higher values and higher good, make a choice and then implement it. He’s not scared of appearing indecisive, of changing course, or of persisting until death. He’s scared of not seeing what the right thing to do is, because that’s what a man is supposed to do – see what the right thing is, and then do it; also, cooperate with others who want to achieve worthy goals, and oppose those who are disruptive, who want to impose unworthy goals and ideas, and are of lowly character. Follow God and the right principles and ideas, and lead and protect your wife and children first, and, as an extension into a wider society, show such good example of virtue, proper spiritual orientation, kindness and strength, that others would want to follow your good example and cooperate with you in creating a wider society based on such virtuous principles. Be a barrier of force between good principles and good people who chose them, and predatory seducers and evil ones who want to lead them astray. Attempt to raise the level of every social interaction by demonstrating a good example of kind humour and intelligence. Ignore bad ideas and people of lowly character, and steer the direction of a conversation towards something of value. If your company shows resistance to goodness and virtue, leave. If you see something admirable, follow it.

So, there you go, it wasn’t that hard.

Corruption

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I was explaining to Biljana yesterday how Russia can create weapons that exceed American equivalents for a fraction of the cost, and I think you will find the explanation interesting. You see, it’s not that Russia doesn’t have problems. It has a problem with corruption, for instance, but the thing is, corruption is against the law in Russia. One can abuse his position of power in order to steal material and sell it on the black market or whatever, but he can be caught, and in that case he will end up in jail for a long time, and Russian jails are not the most pleasant places. The Russian system is designed to be very lean and effective – the weapons are designed to be cheap to purchase and to require very little maintenance. They also need to be durable. This is because it is understood that the purpose of weapons is to defend Russia and kill the enemies, at the least possible cost to the state, because every Rouble wasted is a Rouble not spent on something useful, such as infrastructure or education. Because the system is designed to be lean and effective, there are no legal ways for people in positions of power to dip their hands into the pork barrel, and if they do so, they have to do it illegally and risk jail.

In America, things are designed differently. The weapons manufacturers, big pharma and other industries finance the campaigns of politicians who pledge to serve them if elected to office. They hedge this by financing politicians from both parties, which guarantees that they will get what they want. The elected politician then works for them, and not for the nominal electorate, and his job is to push through legislation that favours his owners, including government purchases of extremely expensive equipment that includes all kinds of pork barrel dips by a huge chain of leeches that each need to “earn” a commission. Only the smallest fraction of the cost is the actual equipment, and it’s designed to require frequent and extremely costly maintenance in order to guarantee future pork barrel dips, and it’s also designed to fail early, and require replacement, also guaranteeing future pork barrel dips. Corruption in America is therefore designed into the system, and not only is it not against the law, it’s actually the entities that generate corruption that control the entity that makes the laws, basically creating a situation where normal states have corruption, and corruption has America.

Update

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I’m recovering from a bad case of flu (most likely of some covid variety); nothing terrible, but not great either. I’m still not able to perform physical activities anywhere near the level prior to the disease, because I’m running out of oxygen on physical exertion. It’s getting better, but I have to give it time.

I’ve been thinking about many different things during this period, so I’ll summarize.

The price of precious metals is showing interesting signs; of course it’s controlled, but since the price has been moving within a very narrow band, and the prices of other commodities have been showing signs of significant inflation, the result is that the precious metals have been “on sale” recently, with the result that the central banks, and possibly other large entities, have been buying up physical metal at those discounted prices, and the divergence between the paper market and the physical market is increasing. The controlled paper market is showing no interest in gold and silver, while the physical market is showing large demand by the big players. The expected result is that the big players will completely exhaust supply in the short term, and this is without the general population even registering what is going on.

The pictures from Ukraine are increasingly showing snow and frosted ground, but this varies regionally, and some places are still a muddy quagmire. One of the worst places is Kherson, apparently, which seems to be one of the reasons why the Russians abandoned it – it’s an indefensible mud pit. The other reason is something I can only guess, but it seems that a significant percentage of the population there, around 20% or so, are aggressively pro-Ukrainian, and this could be seen in the referendum results too, because the Ukrops didn’t go out to vote. It seems that the Russians concluded that they can’t defend Kherson city with that much of a fifth column behind their backs, and they withdrew most of the pro-Russian populace and left the others to experience the joy of what is Ukraine at the moment – meaning, no electricity, no water, no heating, but plenty of vicious hatred. They also recently banned the Orthodox Church, because it was deemed pro-Russian. Of course it’s pro-Russian; it’s the Church. You can’t but be pro-Russian in these circumstances, unless you hate God really badly.

The Russians are routinely running out of missiles every Monday. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, seem to be running out of men to throw into the meat grinder, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone. Ten killed Ukrainians for each killed Russian seems to be a price America and the EU are willing to pay. The EU is running out of resources, energy, and time, but don’t worry, if your high-tech job is terminated, you can always go to America, like people did after WW2. Also, since there no longer is any availability of Russian gas, the American freedom gas will now cost much more than it was advertised for prior to this entire artificial crisis, but that’s free market for you, and it’s the best thing, right? The fact that this entire thing benefits America greatly is of course accidental. Just kidding.

Another interesting thing is that nobody seems to be thinking about God. That is quite weird, because in the past, during the hard times of this kind people tried to invoke memories of transcendence, but now there’s nothing. Only low-energy symptoms like anger, rage, hatred, schadenfreude, desire to harm the physical bodies of others, thinking this is the worst one can do, and the end to all. The old maxim that there are no atheists in the trenches apparently needs to be corrected – there are now. I’ve seen many terrible things during my life, but this one is among the worst.

Godlessness is the greatest sin, both in the sense that all other sins derive therefrom, and by definition, where sin is the state of separation from God’s will and presence. It’s the state of spiritual emptiness, devoid of God’s energy that by its nature seeks more God, and wishes to praise Him. I think this is why “хамство”, which the Orthodox Church sees as the greatestt spiritual problem, crosses my mind recently as the closest description of what I seem to perceive – arrogance, rudeness and sarcastic glee with which evil people seem to be compelled to communicate, or they just can’t manage anything better. It is, of course, a symptom of life devoid of God’s light. When all you see is darkness, misery, weakness, evil, lies, blood and dirt, your mind and behavior reflect that, because that’s what they do – reflect that upon which they dwell. Lack of God is an emptiness that devours itself in darkness, and screams viciously at others, that they are worthless and it is so great and enlightened. I’ve seen much of this lately, and I instinctively turn my eyes from it in disgust. All of this experimentation along the thesis of how great things can be and how great souls can be if only they didn’t know about God and didn’t perceive Him in any way, produced a terrible, abominable disaster, of a very predictable kind. There is an alternative to God, and it looks like Ukraine. It’s also known as hell. Хамство, hatred, schadenfreude, vindictive and sarcastic glee, desire for murder, desire to reduce others to mere flesh and laugh insanely as it is all mixed with mud in death, that is the alternative to God. People are somehow convinced that “sin” is fun, that it’s about doing all the fun forbidden things that boring people and boring God don’t allow them to, but no – sin is Ukraine. Sin is an arrogant emptiness, where human flesh is interchangeable with money and mud, and everything is a hopeless, desperate darkness of spirit.