September 2, 2009

The 1960s: Elite Lib

In traditional Western cultures, below the rank of aristocrats, romantic and sexual impulsiveness was a major threat to social standing. The punishment in terms of class standing for out-of-wedlock births was so harsh that the illegitimacy rate among women in England in 1200-1800 was stable at around 3-4%, even though women didn't marry on average until age 24 to 26.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s, which hit home in the 1970s, disrupted this traditional system of social sanctions. You can see its power in the spread of the term "single mother," which is now used as a self-description not only by mothers who have never been married, but also by divorced mothers, and even by widows with orphans! My wife knew a Korean lady with two young daughters whose husband had been killed in a car crash. Being old-fashioned, I assumed she would describe herself with that honorable term "widow." But, being a newcomer to America, she had realized what I hadn't noticed yet: "widow" was out of fashion, "single mother" was in.

And yet ... the old logic that children need two parents to have the best chance to succeed in life still plays out even though we aren't supposed to mention it. What I've noticed in socializing with financially successful families whose children are on the academic fast-track is that they follow the old rules implicitly. Divorce is relatively rare, illegitimacy even rarer, mothers who aren't highly-paid executives are typically housewives, and so forth.

So, by removing social indoctrination of the masses, the post-Sexual Revolution system selects even more than the earlier system for social success by individuals who are intelligent and cold-blooded. In contrast, people of impulsive temperaments and less ability to foresee the consequences of giving into their impulses are now much more on their own with far less guidance from the culture.

Thus, the people in the upper reaches of society are increasingly of what you might call a Swedish or Swiss personality (or are Asian immigrants whose families never took seriously the 1960s).

But nobody is supposed to notice that publicly. So, the top level of our society continues to argue for the breaking down of old restrictions, whether on the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman or that their should be limits on debt and interest rates. After all, individualistic self-determination works fine for the upper middle class.

From this perspective, the 1960s cultural revolution look like an Elites Liberation movement, in which Unitarians, Congregationalists, Jews, Episcopalians, Christian Scientists, and similar products of centuries of bourgeois culture decided that they, personally, could get by without the old rules, which, indeed, many of them could. Moreover, they were tired of being expected to be role models of starchy behavior for the proles.

But the tenor of the times demanded that this Elites Lib movement be cloaked in egalitarian and civil rights rhetoric and policies (such as refocusing AFDC from Roosevelt's aim of supporting widows to supporting single mothers, because we wouldn't want to discriminate against blacks), with disastrous effects on people toward the bottom of society, especially blacks.

By the way, that reminds me that perhaps nothing I've ever written has outraged people more than my defense of America's average African-Americans that I wrote during the Hurricane Katrina anarchy. I pointed out that the New Orleans blacks who were misbehaving so conspicuously on TV aren't representative of the national black average:
Judging from their economic and educational statistics, New Orleans' blacks are not even an above-average group of African-Americans, such as you find in Atlanta or Seattle, but more like Miami's or Milwaukee's. About half are below the poverty line. With the national black average IQ around 85, New Orleans' mean black IQ would probably be in the lower 80s or upper 70s.

I argued that New Orleans' African-Americans had long been notorious for worse behavior than the national black average, and that New Orleans' libertine Latin / tourist trap morals are one cause:

The unofficial state motto is "Laissez les bons temps rouler" or "Let the good times roll." Compare that to New Hampshire's official motto of "Live free or die," which display a rather different understanding of freedom. Louisiana's reigning philosophy is freedom from responsibility.

It's a general rule that the tastier the indigenous cuisine, the lousier the government. Its culture has provided America with jazz, A Street Car Named Desire, and the great American comic novel of the 20th Century, A Confederacy of Dunces. New Orleans is a nice place to visit. But you wouldn't want to raise your kids there.

All this is now common parlance, more or less. What you won’t hear, except from me, is that "Let the good times roll" is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.

The berserk denunciations this observation of mine elicited were partly the usual Pavlovian Emperor's New Clothes response to examples of Blacks Behaving Badly. When the most prominent black professor in the country throws a two-year-old's tantrum, the President of the United States insists upon a national conversation about white racism. When six black high school football stars batter a single unconscious white youth in Jena, then the future President of the United States denounces white racism.

As Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox said about Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, the psychology of the story suddenly goes all wrong at the end. As you’ll recall, the two “weavers” contend that only intelligent people worthy of holding their jobs can see the new clothes. So, just because one little brat is saying “The emperor has no clothes,” the mob isn’t going to suddenly agree with the kid. They are instead going to get very angry at this obviously stupid child who, clearly, isn’t even worthy of holding his job of street urchin, unlike all of the respectable people who deserve their positions of authority, who are all smart enough to see that the Emperor is wearing a ... uh ... new, higher form of clothing.

I suspect, however, that I had also sinned by tangentially calling into question one of the sacred myths of our age, repeated endlessly by PBS: that the 1960s cultural revolution was for the benefit of blacks, when, in truth, it was for the benefit of upper middle class whites, and was very much at the expense of people farther down the social scale.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

115 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a big fan of your work and I think this might be one of my favorites.

Fred said...

Steve,

This is a great post, but I think you misunderstand (or ignore) the main objection to your New Orleans essay. It was this one line,

"The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups."

Which, in addition to rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, was ambiguous (perhaps deliberately so) and isn't consistent with what you wrote elsewhere in the essay. If you believe that IQ is mostly hereditary, and New Orleans blacks have lower IQs than American blacks in general, then your real point is that Now Orleans blacks have lower IQs; their education level is determined by that, not the other way around.

Richard Hoste said...

"I suspect, however, that I had also sinned by tangentially calling into question one of the sacred myths of our age, repeated endlessly by PBS: that the 1960s cultural revolution was for the benefit of blacks, when, in truth, it was for the benefit of upper middle class whites, and was very much at the expense of people farther down the social scale."

If the elites are still playing by the old rules, how did it even benefiting them?

I personally think that blacks, despite the crime, poverty, etc. may on balance still be better off under the affirmative action state. The entire black middle class was created by affirmative action and government employment.

The Undiscovered Jew said...

The sexual revolution could not have been prevented, regardless of what the elites wanted.

The reason that feminism did not exist before the 20th century was not merely because of social penalties and the nonexistence of birth control, but because before 1900 women were extremely dependent on their husbands for their very survival.

Before the Industrial Revolution, most work in the West involved back-breaking physical labor that women were simply not strong enough to perform.

Women tended to the home because they mostly had no other way to sustain themselves financially other than to rely on their husband and brood of children unless they were from wealthy families.

With the rise of machines starting in the mid-19th century, birth rates started to fall across the Western world even without the introduction of the pill, and fertility rates hit record lows in the early 1920's (the original "Birth Dearth") as women started to find more and more employment in white collar jobs (France, for reasons that are not fully clear to researchers, was the first country in the West to experience "demographic transition" immediately following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars).

With the rise of white collar employment, the link between surviving on a day to day basis and having a husband was severed forever.

Anonymous said...

Steve,
I agree with the first "commenter." This is probably your best post I have read over the past two years.

Anonymous said...

I don't fully understand the lesson of the breeding sex ratio data that was presented in the last thread

Indulge me here - the breeding sex ratio is evidence of the % of the men that were able to reproduce in past generations.

In a society where one man pairs up with one woman for life, you would expect a low breeding sex ratio.

In a society in which the dominant males mated with hundreds of women each, leaving no mating for the non dominant males, you would expect a very high breeding sex ratio

all of this is clear

but can you show the actual breeding sex ratio by country ?

Anonymous said...

Besides Steve and Charles Murray, who else gives a damn about the people on the left side of the curve?

Anonymous said...

Yeah Undiscovered Jew, women were just "tending the home" before the industrial revolution. All that clothing the men were wearing grew on frigging trees.

The Wife of Bath wants a word with you.

Anonymous said...

Besides Steve and Charles Murray, who else gives a damn about the people on the left side of the curve?

Pope Benedict XVI

Anonymous said...

Steve
Originally, I posted this under the wrong heading (State of Play).Pleae remove from that thread.

I am confused.
On one hand, you made fun of white liberals who supported Obama because you believed that many of them thought that his election to the Presidency would encourage other blacks to be like Obama. You implied that this line of thinking was ludicrous.
On the other hand, you seem to believe that elite, white liberals (i.e. the counterculture) were able to succesfully transmit their contempt for traditional social mores to the same population of blacks.
Resolve that inconsistency for me. Why aren't there more black Jefferson Starship and Neil Diamond fans?

Anonymous said...

I wish every newcomer to your blog could read this post first because it succinctly establishes the context within which all your comments on race can be properly understood.

The Undiscovered Jew said...

Yeah Undiscovered Jew, women were just "tending the home" before the industrial revolution. All that clothing the men were wearing grew on frigging trees.

Well, they were mostly stuck doing housework and farmwork whether they liked it or not until the 19th century brought new economic niches for them to fill.

Are you going to seriously argue that French women in, say, the 12th century, could survive financially on a day to day basis completely independent of a husband's wages as easily as women now can in France 2009?

Anonymous said...

More Swiss and Japanese mentality than Swedish. The illegitimacy rate is very high in Sweden.

anony-mouse said...

1/ The sexual revolution was already forming in the '50's (Playboy, bikinis, Kinsey, research on The Pill, gay sex novels winning awards, pointed bras, singers (male!) openly gyrating their hips, National Geographics get color photos, male Kennedy's being let out in public).

2/ Yes the African-American illigitimacy rate went up after the sixties. But before the sixties if a Black man looked at a White women the 'wrong' way, he could be lynched.

So tradeoffs-the good old days weren't always good.

Darwin's Sh*tlist said...

David Frum wrote a book about the 1970s that I think has a similar take (I haven't read it, but I saw him intereviewed when it came out). He more or less says that the 70s were in many ways more damaging than the 60s because that's when the hedonistic attitudes of the 60s were really democratized. No need to go to Berkely if you could find suburban key parties, porno theaters, and a coke dealer in Kalamazoo.

And, Chronicles' Thomas Fleming has repeatedly set forth that the aristocracy has always had a decadent element, but the danger comes when, in the name of equality, every man is entitled to be Hugh Hefner.

Several times VH1 Classic has run a documentary about sex in the postwar era that is highly symptomatic of this. Except for AIDS (for which, of course, Anita Bryant and Ronald Reagan were to blame), the negative social consequences of increased sexuality are scarcely mentioned at all - particularly as they relate to the underclass (which is invisible, except when depicted accepting free contraceptives).

Anonymous said...

"So, by removing social indoctrination of the masses, the post-Sexual Revolution..."

I know what you meant there, but that's still an unfortunate turn of phrase. The rise of TV after WWII increased the rate of indoctrination of the masses to a level never before seen. Modern immorality isn't caused by a lack of social indoctrination, but by an abundance of immoral indoctrination.

Really, indoctrination of the masses was least effective in the millenia before Gutenberg. Most people were educated by their parents in the home, with minimal input by the church. After the rise of print indoctrination went up, after the rise of movies and radio it went up once again, then it reached its peak with the spread of TV, then backed down a tiny little bit with the rise of the Internet.

Anonymous said...

That the 1960's were essentially an explosion of selfishness by the privileged young elite, masquerading as a liberation movement of "the people", makes total intuitive sense.

The real question is how many of the intelligent youth were aware of this; far from all of them, I bet.

One of the best ways to manipulate even bright people is to tell them what they want to hear.

Anyway, good post.

Anon.


Anon.

Anonymous said...

I disagree with much of what you write. However, with this post you have touched upon the answer to Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" - why do the working class so often vote against their economic interests in favor of social conservatism?

One of the answers is that divorce, crime, addiction is much more disruptive to the poor. Paris Hilton and her pals can divorce, party and get high, and still rely on well-paid nannies to clean up their messes. The poor cannot, and intuiting this, perhaps this is one reason they tend to vote socially conservative.

Play it again Sam said...

... Steve,
I agree with the first "commenter." This is probably your best post I have read over the past two years. ...

Mega dittos.

Anonymous said...

?Are you going to seriously argue that French women in, say, the 12th century, could survive financially on a day to day basis completely independent of a husband's wages as easily as women now can in France 2009?"

Well, sure, so long as they were engaged in The Oldest Profession.

Truth said...

Now that's a solid post Steve, allow me to be the third to laud you here. It is informative, well thought out, interesting, and fair.

I could quibble about the silly Gates-Jenna 6 comparison, but I won't.

Anonymous said...

Besides Steve and Charles Murray, who else gives a damn about the people on the left side of the curve?




Read Life At The Bottom.

John Seiler said...

An excellent discussion of illegitimacy a century ago is in the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia. It includes a chart of the major countries of Europe, showing a slight decline around the turn of the century. Some examples: England and Wales: 4.00. German Empire: 8.50. France: 8.85. Ireland: 2.60. Holland: 2.37. Sweden: 12.02. Switzerland: 4.06.

The article laments: "These figures are sufficiently disturbing, and yet they do not exhibit the full extent of the evil. Many illegitimate births are registered as legitimate, while many others escape registration entirely. This happens in all countries; probably it is particularly true of Greece and Servia. While the percentages in the first column are about the same as those which obtained for a long period previous to 1891, those in the secondcolumn indicate a decline in the rate of illegitimacy in most of the European countries since that date, and in some countries a very notable decline."

And this is interesting: "Heredity is undoubtedly a factor, but to what extent cannot be determined even approximately. In general the Teutonic and Scandinavian nations exhibit a higher rate of illegitimacy than the Latins and Celts, but, since the former are mainly Protestant and the latter mainly Catholic, the difference might be due to religion. Between the north and south of England there is, however, no such difference, nor any other difference that seems sufficient to explain the greater prevalence of illegitimacy in the former, except that of race..... If we compare Ireland with, for example, Belgium, it would seem that the much higher rate which obtains in the latter country can be explained only by the difference of race. Both are Catholic countries. However, a greater proportion of the people of Belgium live in cities, and are engaged in mining and industrial occupations generally; two of the classes within which illegitimate births are very frequent, namely, domestic servants and factory operatives, are more numerous proportionally; and the influence of bad literature and foreign associations is much more prominent. Does heredity, then, go far toward accounting for the different amounts of illegitimacy in these two countries? Perhaps the safest general statement that can be made concerning the influence of heredity is that if heredity be understood not merely in the sense of certain psychical and physical characteristics, but also as including the heritage of public opinion and social intercourse, it is undoubtedly a factor of some importance."

Article link: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07650a.htm

Anonymous said...

On one hand, you made fun of white liberals who supported Obama because you believed that many of them thought that his election to the Presidency would encourage other blacks to be like Obama. You implied that this line of thinking was ludicrous.
On the other hand, you seem to believe that elite, white liberals (i.e. the counterculture) were able to succesfully transmit their contempt for traditional social mores to the same population of blacks.
Resolve that inconsistency for me.




I don't see the inconsistency. Where exactly do you think it lies? You seem to think that contempt for traditional social mores is not compatible with support for Obama.

If other blacks decide to "be like Obama" they had better hope that they have politically connected patrons to grease the skids for them.

Anonymous said...

Are you going to seriously argue that French women in, say, the 12th century, could survive financially on a day to day basis completely independent of a husband's wages as easily as women now can in France 2009?

In the 12th century hardly anybody worked for wages. You're an idiot.

Anonymous said...

The Emperor's New Clothes

John Seiler said...

And let's not forget the hippy-dippy Catholic leadership. True, the doctrine didn't change. But most people didn't know that, and still don't. In my 32 years as a Catholic, I almost never hear sermons on sexual morality -- maybe once every five years. (Although I did hear an excellent one by a young priest a month ago. The air conditioning cranked on just as he got to that part of his homily, and he joked, "Good thing it's getting cooler in here because a lot of you will get hot about what I'm about to say.")

Even when priests do bring it up, parishoners complain to the bishops, who either are lax themselves, or don't want to rock the boat because collections will fall; so the priests are silenced.

"Catholic" intellectuals, such as Garry Wills, keep attacking Catholic morals without refutation by the bishops. "Catholic" politicians, like Schwarzenegger and the Kennedys, enact pro-abortion laws and even tax subsidies. Public reprobates like Teddy K. get sumptuous, televised funerals.

Cohabiting couples are allowed to get married. When a friend of mine objected to this practice to a priest, he replied, "If we did it your way, there wouldn't be any marriages." Maybe not right away -- but in the long run, more of them, and ones that lasted instead of ending in divorce.

That is All said...

Bravo, Steve!

The Undiscovered Jew said...

In the 12th century hardly anybody worked for wages. You're an idiot.

Huh?

Serfs were paid in the Middle Ages. They were paid extremely poorly, but they still had some income.

Also, Guild craftsmen and their apprentices were given salaries:

Dependency and the lower orders
The serfs had a specific place in feudal society, as did barons and knights: in return for protection, a serf would reside upon and work a parcel of land held by his lord. There was thus a degree of reciprocity in the manorial system.

The rationale was that a serf "worked for all," while a knight or baron "fought for all" and a churchman "prayed for all;" thus everyone had his place. The serf worked harder than the others, and was the worst fed and paid, but at least he had his place and, unlike in slavery, he had his own land and property.

A manorial lord could not sell his serfs as a Roman might sell his slaves. On the other hand, if he chose to dispose of a parcel of land, the serf or serfs associated with that land went with it to serve their new lord. Further, a serf could not abandon his lands without permission, nor could he sell them

Anonymous said...

"I don't see the inconsistency. Where exactly do you think it lies? You seem to think that contempt for traditional social mores is not compatible with support for Obama.

If other blacks decide to "be like Obama" they had better hope that they have politically connected patrons to grease the skids for them.
"
Anon - I think you misunderstood my point. On one hand, HBDers like Steve argue that social programs like Head Start,NCLB etc. are doomed to failure because it is impossible for elite, white liberals to transmit their values to "genetically challenged "underclass blacks. On the other hand, Steve's post seems to argue that elite attitudes toward sex and drugs were primary in undermining the moral fabric of the underclass. There appears to be an inconsistentcy in that logic.

The Undiscovered Jew said...

Head Start,NCLB etc. are doomed to failure because it is impossible for elite, white liberals to transmit their values to "genetically challenged "underclass blacks.

On the other hand, Steve's post seems to argue that elite attitudes toward sex and drugs were primary in undermining the moral fabric of the underclass.


My understanding of psychology is that IQ and personality are not malleable (and it is supposedly extremely dangerous to try to modify personality) but behavior can be manipulated to a decent extent.

Richard Hoste said...

"Now that's a solid post Steve, allow me to be the third to laud you here. It is informative, well thought out, interesting, and fair.

I could quibble about the silly Gates-Jenna 6 comparison, but I won't."

Truth, you've really mellowed out lately. You been succeeding with game, brother?

Anonymous said...

2/ Yes the African-American illigitimacy rate went up after the sixties. But before the sixties if a Black man looked at a White women the 'wrong' way, he could be lynched.

I have little doubt that black men are murdered at a much higher rate post 1960 than they were prior to that year. If you have statistical data that refutes that assertion, then please share it.

Tupac Chopra said...

Anon - I think you misunderstood my point. On one hand, HBDers like Steve argue that social programs like Head Start,NCLB etc. are doomed to failure because it is impossible for elite, white liberals to transmit their values to "genetically challenged "underclass blacks. On the other hand, Steve's post seems to argue that elite attitudes toward sex and drugs were primary in undermining the moral fabric of the underclass. There appears to be an inconsistentcy in that logic.

Recommending self-control =/= removing self-control

agnostic said...

"Elite Lib" makes it sound like they were solidaristic, fighting for their common emancipation. But it seems more like an intra-elite Time of Troubles when there are too many of them and tensions mount.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

I disagree with much of what you write. However, with this post you have touched upon the answer to Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas?" - why do the working class so often vote against their economic interests in favor of social conservatism?"

Another possible answer to "What's the Matter with Kansas" is that there's nothing the matter with Kansas, but quite a lot the matter with Thomas Frank.

Toadal said...

And yet ... the old logic that children need two parents to have the best chance to succeed in life still plays out even though we aren't supposed to mention it.

Divorced, widowed, and single mothers are usually not only financially handicapped, being too poor to live among well-to-do two income families, but socially handicapped as well. Parents emotionally connect with other parents (male-female-male-female) much easier than single moms or dads. Also married couples resist socializing with single mothers for fear of tempting the husband, and fathers hesitate exposing teenage sons and daughters to single parent children they deem emotionally immature and sexually impulsive.

Married couples have spats and telling this to an angry young mom and/or dad can give them a more rational, long range, perspective.

The Undiscovered Jew said... Before the Industrial Revolution, most work in the West involved back-breaking physical labor that women were simply not strong enough to perform.

As someone who delighted in watching Jane Austin's 'Pride and Prejudice' I've learned European women were desperately dependent on men because they could rarely obtained title to real property without being married.

Mr. Anon said...

I'm doubtful that upper middle class whites behaving badly influenced blacks and created the vast black underclass. More likely, I would think, is that the removal of many of the prevailing social restraints simply allowed blacks to behave badly, and they then did.

Many of the calamitous behaviors associated with the black underclass have much in common with those behaviors that have made Africa such a basket case - which indicates a genetic predispostion to said behaviors.

However I believe the white underclass has expanded by dint of aping the behaviors of both the dissolute white middle class and the black lower classes.

Steve Sailer said...

Agnostic says:

""Elite Lib" makes it sound like they were solidaristic, fighting for their common emancipation. But it seems more like an intra-elite Time of Troubles when there are too many of them and tensions mount."

Certainly the number of college students grew enormously during the 1960s. However, it's not clear that Peter Turchin's concept of elite over-population leading to wars among the aristocrats, while intriguing, is applicable to the crucial early Baby Boomers. They weren't really competing so much against each other as they were rapidly filling blank spaces left by the Birth Dearth of 1930-1945. Thus, it's not surprising that the President from 1993 to 2009 was born in 1946, or that most of the superstars of Baby Boomer rock were pre-Baby Boomers.

The real over-production of elites happened to the second half of the Baby Boom, when well-ensconced early Baby Boomers were clogging the ways up.

Truth said...

"Truth, you've really mellowed out lately. You been succeeding with game, brother?"

Not only do I succeed with game baby boi, I LIVE game, I BREAVE game you Naa-mean?

As a matter of fact, I just threw on my flyest suit and made a movie...fo' sho'

rast said...

"If the elites are still playing by the old rules, how did it even benefiting them?"

Keeps the middle class down -- poorer and less free. The evolutionary psychology explanation is that their kids won't have to compete with poor and middle class kids, some of whom will have IQs just as good. But honestly I think its more sinister than that.

Abbie Hoffman said...

After Brokaw came out with his "Greatest Generation" book, I cringed in anticipation for his sequel paeon to the Boomer Generation. I was hoping he'd title it "The Most Self-Indulgent, Narcissistic and Destructive Generation".

So this is how great civilizations die - from within. The last great generation conquers all and leaves the world at their childrens' feet. Said chidren, the Boomers, denied any further material challenges to define a purpose, substitute a lifelong pursuit of indulgent adolescent rebellion.

rast said...

Truth, the problem with the Gates affair is that he and Obama played the race card. Tens (hundreds?) of thousands of white Americans are unjustly arrested every year for contempt of cop, but we don't see them invited to the white house. Obama would have done much better to make the issue about civil liberties, but explicitly non-racial. The usual crowd of cop boot-lickers would be upset, but the rest of us would think better of him.

Anonymous said...

I'm doubtful that upper middle class whites behaving badly influenced blacks and created the vast black underclass. More likely, I would think, is that the removal of many of the prevailing social restraints simply allowed blacks to behave badly, and they then did.




Six of one, half a dozen ..

The social restraints were removed because the elites found them a pain, and because they could live without them. (Or so they believed.) The upper classes also used to set the example for proper behavior - they were ladies and gentlemen. When they let themselves go they tacitly encouraged everybody else to do so as well.

Anthony said...

Anonymous (yes, you!) said:

"The illegitimacy rate is very high in Sweden."

My guess: This doesn't mean 'illegitimate' in the sense the word is received, because of trends in places like Sweden toward long-term monogamous relationships ("girlfriend"-"boyfriend") instead of marriage, where a mother and father both raise the child and live together, but don't actually get 'married'.

Anonymous said...

"I personally think that blacks, despite the crime, poverty, etc. may on balance still be better off under the affirmative action state. The entire black middle class was created by affirmative action and government employment."

Is that irony or ignorance?

We can agree that the military and some government employment may have helped African-Americans move out of poverty and into the middle class, but affirmative action is one of the most pernicious concepts to infect our culture. It has vastly increased distrust between all races (did that guy get into med school because he was good or because he was black? - damn hard to know), retards progress by its direct opposition to the concept of rewards based on merit (see Ricci), leads even the "advantaged" groups into self-doubt and hate that must be externalized (see Michelle Obama). Moreover, there were black intellectuals and areas with an educated, thriving, and legitimate black middle class - Harlem and D.C immediately come to mind - before affirmative action and the "liberation" Steve describes destroyed their meritocratic and disciplined social structures.

A most excellent and original post, Steve.

Anonymous said...

Jeff: ...the Asian way of ignoring the cultural change, and the Swiss/Swedish way of using a cold, overdeveloped superego... the redneck/hillbilly way of joining an evangelical megachurch. This method does not always work. It may not even work half the time. But it can be viewed as an attempt by people more emotional than Swiss or Swedes to control destructive impulses...


List of countries and territories by fertility rate
en.wikipedia.org

Sweden
UN, 2000-2005: 1.67
UN, 2005-2010: 1.80 [SAY HELLO TO MOHAMMED]
CIA, 2000: 1.53
CIA, 2008: 1.67 [SAY HELLO TO MOHAMMED]

Switzerland
UN, 2000-2005: 1.42
UN, 2005-2010: 1.42
CIA, 2000: 1.47
CIA, 2008: 1.44

Japan
UN, 2000-2005: 1.29
UN, 2005-2010: 1.27
CIA, 2000: 1.41
CIA, 2008: 1.22

South Korea
UN, 2000-2005: 1.24
UN, 2005-2010: 1.21
CIA, 2000: 1.72
CIA, 2008: 1.20

Taiwan
UN, 2000-2005: N/A
UN, 2005-2010: N/A
CIA, 2000: 1.76
CIA, 2008: 1.13

Hong Kong
UN, 2000-2005: 0.94
UN, 2005-2010: 0.97
CIA, 2000: 1.27
CIA, 2008: 1.00


In the war that we are losing [and losing badly] with nihilism-induced extinction, little redneck bastard children [like Bristol's boy, Tripp] are better than no children at all.

I mean, hell - it's not even a war - our side never showed up for the fight.

We've already been devoured, digested, and expelled by nihilism, and no one noticed it - or at least they haven't noticed it yet.

But boy oh boy oh boy are the next few decades going to be a nightmare.

Bill said...

The punishment in terms of class standing for out-of-wedlock births was so harsh that the illegitimacy rate among women in England in 1200-1800 was stable at around 3-4%, even though women didn't marry on average until age 24 to 26.

There's no way that 3-4% illegitimacy from 1200-1800 figure is correct. Maybe 1750-1950.

I don't mind being proven wrong, but for now I can't believe that without some hard evidence.

Spend some time around illiterate white folks (most of England until 17th century or so) and you'll understand my skepticism.

Anonymous said...

No, Undiscovered Jew, what you just copied and pasted out of wikipedia does not show what you think it does. People in the 12th century, and prior to the industrial revolution in general, were not generally working for wages, nor was the buying and selling of goods and services central to most people's existences the way it is today. Most people's needs were supplied by household production, which means that women's work - "tending the home" - was just as vital to survival as men's. Before the industrial revolution, the sexes were interdependent. Women's economic dependence on men was caused by the superiority of industrial spinning, weaving, dyeing, soapmaking, candlemaking, etc etc etc. to home production.

Chaucer is online, go read some. And look up the etymology of the word "economics."

Melykin said...

"...the old logic that children need two parents to have the best chance to succeed in life still plays out even though we aren't supposed to mention it."
----------------------------
Having two parents may not cause children to be more successful. Maybe parents that marry and stay married tend to do so because they are more intelligent and less impulsive, and their children, in turn, tend to inherit these traits genetically.

I think it is the massive increase in drugs and the associated crime that is the most destructive product of the sixties. It seems to be particularly destructive for blacks. It may be that they are more prone to drug addiction than Caucasians and Asians. This tendency to addiction might be independent of IQ.

headache said...

Steve, I fully agree that black society requires MORE control and guidance than white society, even though the latter is becoming increasingly dysfunctional as it adopts liberal values. This was a premise of Apartheid, which contrary to common propaganda, was an attempt to bring black society under control in order to stabilize the country and make it prosperous, also to the benefit of blacks. Of course through liberal intervention the country is now on track to emulate that great example of progress called Zimbabwe.

Lake Wobegon said...

"... but the danger comes when, in the name of equality, every man is entitled to be Hugh Hefner. ..."

This is EXACTLY IT, the ULTIMATE PROBLEM that vexes the "modern" West.

Of course, since 'we' are all putatively 'equal' in multi-kult Amerika, everyone, including the village idiot, 'deserves' access to those well out of one's league.

Like George Soldini ASSumed.

To think otherwise would be 'blasphemous' against the goddess égalité (and what a jealous bitch of a 'goddess' she is).

Ah, the "Religion of Equality" is one of the worst cults to have ever been inflicted on the minds of mortal men.

So really then, it's really not about "equality" at all, but rather, the "EQUALITY' of 'SUPERIORITY", like in liberal-utopian fantasyland -- Lake Wobegon.

Yet, reality has does not stop the stupid and the envious from realizing impossibility, and the HYPOCRISY, of it, that they are mutually exclusive ideas.

Faust said...

Some very good points but I don't think anyone other than a very small number number of degenerate perverts gained anything from the "Sexual Revolution." Paul Craig Roberts wrote a great article a few years back titled "Men are the losers of the Sexual Revolution."

I will also add technology had very little to do with the "Sexual Revolution" the Roman Empire had pretty much the same thing happen which the same horrible results.

Richard Hoste said...

"We can agree that the military and some government employment may have helped African-Americans move out of poverty and into the middle class, but affirmative action is one of the most pernicious concepts to infect our culture. It has vastly increased distrust between all races (did that guy get into med school because he was good or because he was black? - damn hard to know), retards progress by its direct opposition to the concept of rewards based on merit (see Ricci), leads even the "advantaged" groups into self-doubt and hate that must be externalized (see Michelle Obama). Moreover, there were black intellectuals and areas with an educated, thriving, and legitimate black middle class - Harlem and D.C immediately come to mind - before affirmative action and the "liberation" Steve describes destroyed their meritocratic and disciplined social structures."

Nice job of opposing AA in a very PC way.

If blacks feel such a psychological burden from AA, why aren't they clamoring for its end? So they can be judged on their merit? Because whether whitey thinks they're competent or not the vast majority of blacks live much better off with government favoritism than without.

Powell supports affirmative action. Ethan Bonner, in a typically laudatory review of The Shape of the River (a pro-affirmative action book-Richard H.) in the New York Times (”Study Strongly Supports Affirmative Action in Admissions to Elite Colleges” (September 9, 1998): B10), quoted Powell’s derisory comment about the supposed harm that affirmative action does to its recipients’ self-esteem: “Asked about the stigma that opponents say affirmative action imposes on blacks who attend these elite colleges, General Powell was dismissive. ’I would tell black youngsters to…get one of those well-paying jobs [that they will get through affirmative action] to pay for all the therapy they’ll need to remove the stigma’.”

This "blacks are the victims of discrimination in their favor" nonsense needs to go.

bjdouble said...

What Steve says about being born 1930-50 is interesting. Take university professors . . . it was a piece of cake to get a university job if you were born in 1930 - by the time you got a degree circa 1955, there was plenty of hiring. If you born in 1951, there were no more jobs left by the mid-70's, all the hiring had been done . . . Many of the physicists who couldn't get academic jobs went to Wall St. Read a book by a guy named Derman about his move from physics to Wall St., for instance.

Bob said...

I agree with Bill above about the 3-4% historical illegitimacy rate not being correct.

The 50's and early 60's look good in comparison to now, but it is easy to forget they also look better than prior decades. For example, crime was lower that decade than any other in the 20th century.

Likewise the Victorian era was an especially moral one, but even then not as good as the 1950's.

I'd say one reason why the post-war era was so moral is that for the lower classes, hard work paid well while crime and sloth didn't. That isn't the case now.

Sadly, the private sector unionization rate has fallen from nearly 40% in the 1950's to under 6% now.

Bob said...

Going back to your main point, I think you make a mistake is treating "liberals" as some organized intentional group that ran the whole USA in the 1960's.

What did liberalism have to do with the invention of the pill or the advancement of technology that made unskilled male labor less valuable?

Or, for that matter, with right-wing free trade ideology that further smashed traditional male industrial work?

Martin Regnen said...

A very good post indeed. As in all times and places, our elites don't know what we're actually like. Unlike in other times and places, they assume we're like them except with less money and education. We sort of know what they're like because we see them in the media all the time. I think Megan McArdle has written about this a few times.

They don't have to hate us or be only looking out for the interest of their own group to do a lousy job of ruling us - it's enough that they have no idea whom they rule.

Anonymous said...

Say what you will about Dan Quayle but I always thought he was absolutely right about what he said and got a raw deal from the media and Hollywood "elites".

Anonymous said...

Yep. There's no sadder sight in the world than a stressed out woman of about 30, dragging 3 or 4 kids around who (obviously) have different fathers. Cheer up honey, you're free.

l said...

One frustration I've heard repeatedly from a Unitarian friend is that, in spite of that denomination's bending over backward to "welcome" working class folk and minorities, they get very few takers. On Sunday mornings the poor either sleep off their hangovers, or flock to "fascist" (his word) fundamentalist churches.

Libs need to re-read "Lord of the Flies."

Nine-of-Diamonds said...

"There's no way that 3-4% illegitimacy from 1200-1800 figure is correct. Maybe 1750-1950."

It might be. One source I read said "legitimate" births in early modern Europe often included children conceived during premarital sex (so long as the parents married during the pregnancy).

Also read that it was somewhat socially acceptable as late as the 19th Century to kill/expose infants - who therefore wouldn't show up in the stats. Probably not a huge source of unrecorded births, but it was there.

Anonymous said...

Steve - you're the best!

Anonymous said...

This was simply suberb.

This was like watching the Olymbics, and some promising little gymnast who has been doing a very competent job all along comes out, nails the routine and sticks the landing.

Kudos from Anonymous - Your biggest fan!

Pat Shuff said...

Besides Steve and Charles Murray, who else gives a damn about the people on the left side of the curve?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Most anyone who understands it.
Implicitly Jensen et al more explicitly and heartfelt enough to choke one up, Gottredson.

Tanstaafl said...

in truth, it was for the benefit of upper middle class whites

Were you trying to be ironic, making your story suddenly go all wrong at the end?

Your conclusion is simply bizarre, unless by "benefit" you mean "destruction", because that's what's actually happening as a result of "the 1960s cultural revolution", ie. the displacement/diversification of what was until then an overwhelmingly White leadership for an overwhelmingly White country. As a direct result of the civil rights and open borders that sprang from the cultural revolution Whites of all classes are today an endangered species, and hunting season is open 24/7.

Anonymous said...

the purpose of the revolution WAS to destroy society not liberate people. the purpose was destroy the white, christian middle and upper middle classes - the civic classes. Who benefited? Who runs all the ivy league schools now? who are the 'tastemakers'? architects, etc?

Who, whom.

Anonymous said...

With the recent 40th anniversary of Woodstock and the showing of the documentary, one thing I couldn't help but notice was the number of children running around.

This was of course in the day prior to on-demand abortion and The Pill.

Truth said...

"Tens (hundreds?) of thousands of white Americans are unjustly arrested every year for contempt of cop, but we don't see them invited to the white house...."

How many of them have been friends with the president for 15 years?

Faust said...

I will also add that I would disagree that the "elites" "follow the old rules implicitly." Divorce and immorality are common and their birthrates have dropped below replacement. They have in no way escaped the destruction which they unleashed.

Anonymous said...

Truth, thank you for that comment and the video. What a good laugh.

Anonymous said...

>We can agree that the military and some government employment may [sic] have helped African-Americans move out of poverty and into the middle class, but affirmative action is one of the most pernicious concepts to infect our culture.<

Name a single black who ever went broke from it.

Btw, it's more than just "the military" and "some government employment." Things have been happening since the Nixon Administration.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous wrote:

"Values have to do behavior, which is arguably at least as important a topic as IQ but one we don't have handy ways of measuring."

Yes, values are probably just as important as IQ.

Or... we can at least say that a full understanding needs to take values into account.

It's *not* true that values can't easily be measured.

Values can be measured - SRI's VALS survey is one way of measuring them.

All manner of corporates, non-governmental organizations, political parties are using (psychographic) values models and assessments.

They're using them because they work, because they predict behaviour, not just over a week or two - but over decades, they get in quite deep.

It's amazing what you can learn about a person from their answers to 10 quick values-related questions.

I think VALS is derived from Maslow, as is Inglehart's values work.

There are other streams of values research too.

Here's one:
http://www.cultdyn.co.uk/articles.html

And here's the VALS site:
http://sric-bi.com/VALS/types.shtml

I'd love to see work comparing IQ to values models and to Elliot Jaques' findings on cognitive strata in organisations etc.

Usually values researchers, and the Jaques scholars, tend to say that their stages of complexity don't correlate with IQ.

I'm not entirely convinced, and suspect that the picture's not that simple - but they find a strong link to IQ to be impolitic.

Anonymous said...

Re: 60's Elite Lib: Original and intelligent thinking unlike anywhere. Sailor, I'm a 50-year old west coast white guy and grew up in a world like your's, I suspect. But damn, you really define it and battle the brainwashing, myths, lies, PC and "untouchables" while you're at it....and I find myself saying ....."he's nailing it!" as I read your stuff.

Thanks.

dearieme said...

My recollection is that your point was noticed at the time in Britain, where it took the form of "the 1960s cultural revolution" spreading from the students at the universities to the sad sacks in council housing.

Anonymous said...

Excellent piece .Don't mean to offend the "poindexters" posting out there, but religious faith or lack there of is a huge factor with the elites and society. The decline of True Faith in God and devotion to a religeon, attending church, etc. fits into Steve' theory of tossing social mores

The eilte driven culture in TV, music, ads, pop culture, etc. during the 60-70's cemented the direction.

Marc B said...

You have touched on one of the most important downsides of the 1960's. There was this presumption among the cultural terrorists that libertine behavior was a right, and far preferable to the constrained and confining traditional model that had served Western Culture and civilizations worldwide well for at least 2000 years.

Most of the members of this vanguard were college educated, with at least average inborn intelligence and impulse control. That meant that the majority of them could expand their mind and sexual resume for experiential purposes, find their limitations, and either get it out of their systems or find a way to enjoy their indulgences while maintaining otherwise productive if not moral lives. Not an ideal society, but something most people will tolerate in our live-and-let-live society.

The problem was that the floodgates opened for EVERYBODY, not just those of high or average birth. Large numbers of the prole were also given their recipe for destruction. They lack the internal mechanisms of self-control, and revert to their most base and carnal behaviors. I no longer believe this was merely an unintended consequence of the sexual liberation movement, but something unleashed on purpose by the Frankfurt School operatives, well were aware of the corrosive effects it would have on Western Civilization.

Jerry said...

"So, by removing social indoctrination of the masses, the post-Sexual Revolution system selects even more than the earlier system for social success by individuals who are intelligent and cold-blooded. In contrast, people of impulsive temperaments and less ability to foresee the consequences of giving into their impulses are now much more on their own with far less guidance from the culture."

I think this is the central point Steve is making here. Given the selection pressures here, how is society going to look in 100 years? Valuing the process of cognition more than its goals, like so much of humanities academia today? A degeneration in the guise of ever greater erudition, so that the US comes to resemble the mandarin-tocracy of pre-modern China?

One thing to add here is the question of drugs that strengthen one's "cold-bloodedness." This is exactly what Ritalin and other "ADD" drigs do, don't they? Botox for the mind, that was my experience of it the one time I took Ritalin. So does this even out the playing field, or give the oligarchy an even greater advantage?

Conatus said...

This is exactly Myron Magnet's theme from his book The Dream and the Nightmare. the upper classes dip their toes in the crucible of chaos such as drugs and sex and after a few years of fun they beat a hasty retreat back to the bourgois lifestyle while the poor are still trapped in the hedonistic crucible.

Dutch Boy said...

The principal victims of the sexual revolution are children (of all races). Enough of this greatest generation stuff: the sexual revolution began while the GGs were in control of society (as did many other negative trends, e.g., the alienation of the American economy).

Svigor said...

"Let the good times roll" is an especially risky message for African-Americans.

You see the same kind of upper-class-ish carelessness vis-a-vis "anti-religious" (a euphemism for anti-Christian) sentiment. Yeah, sure, Mr. educated upper-class-ish blogger, religion is absurd on its face. I agree. But keep your bloody mouth shut already! Lots and lots of people need that crap. Hell, I (and just about everyone else, I suspect) need that crap, except, I can't believe.

Maybe that's what militant atheism is really all about - the sour grapes of people too smart and skeptical to believe.

testing99 said...

Steve -- I lived in New Orleans for several years. EAST New Orleans looked like Irvine by the Bayou. It was home to solid, middle-upper class Blacks (Ellis Marsalis, father of Wynton and Branford, lived there and taught at UNO). Far different than the rest of New Orleans.

Moreover, pre-1960's New Orleans HAD a civic infrastructure, of benevolent societies, Black dentists and accountants and lawyers and doctors. It was a rough place, but nothing like what I saw, my arrival there with my brother, we drove past a crime scene where one crack guy had beaten another to death with a metal pipe over $10 of crack. Jelly Roll Morton's Library of Congress recordings, now available again, or Louis Armstrong's painfully typed out autobiography, paint the picture of rough but working New Orleans, with far less good times rolling than you'd thing.
------------------
As for the instinct to cast off marriage, it's far older than the 1960's. Mary Wollstonecroft (mother of Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley) advocated free love, and lived it (as did her daughter). Byron, Keats, and Shelley all wrote and advocated it. William Blake, that most Christian of poets, compared Marriage to slavery and prison in "Daughters of Albion." The Oneida Commune in the 1840's practiced free love (and predictably collapsed) and Thoreau, Whitman, and other Romantic poets wrote and advocated it as well.

You could just as well argue that the casting off of traditional mores in the 1960's was the triumph of aristocratic classes flush with new Post-War expansion money, and able to buy their way into norming their own preferences into society. Think about all that money that flowed into "the new aristocracy" and you'll see what I mean.

/I am also Whiskey.

testing99 said...

Undiscovered Jew is quite right btw about Birth rates -- France got hit hardest and earliest, around the 1860's or so is when it's birth rates plummeted.

Svigor said...

More likely, I would think, is that the removal of many of the prevailing social restraints simply allowed blacks to behave badly, and they then did.

This is the case. The problem with this is, conservatives have moved so far to the left that they can't put it this way. So, they have to blame "black failure" (I hate that term, as deceitful as "white flight") on something white liberals did, instead of something white conservatives stopped doing. It's sort of like Glenn Beck today, lauding Van Johnson & company's goal of legitimizing inter-racial marriage; conservatives have moved so far left on race that they don't even recognize their former selves. The right in this country is a bunch of radical leftists on these issues: try getting a single conservative to acknowledge man's right to free association and self-determination if you don't believe me. I'd be surprised if there is a single man in Congress who would admit to believing a community should have the right to regulate its composition.

Anonymous said...

John Seiler said...

Public reprobates like Teddy K. get sumptuous, televised funerals.

Not just that, old Teddy received communion at a recent papal mass.

Of course, no one told Ted before he died that receiving communion does not get one to heaven, Ted needed to confess his sins and repent. Whoever decided to turn a blind eye to the sins of Ted, must have had no regard for Ted's soul.

Anonymous said...

African-Americans, such as you find in Atlanta or Seattle, but more like Miami's or Milwaukee's.

[......and Chicago's].



Fixed it for you.

Anonymous said...

white liberals who supported Obama because you believed that many of them thought that his election to the Presidency would encourage other blacks to be like Obama.
-------


THAT'S a good thing?

It's The Theology Stupid! Obama, Wright and Farrakhan connection

kurt9 said...

I have a different perspective on this. Perhaps wanton sexuality is a result of boredom. The upper classes are as conservative as past times because they actually have lots of opportunities in business and careers to occupy their time, not to mention, say, outdoor sports if you live in the West. The lower classes, in contrast, have little economic opportunity and really have nothing new to look forward to and to work towards and, if they are urban, no outdoor sport opportunities either. Given such a situation, what else is there to do that's enjoyable other than getting laid a lot?

If people have lots of opportunities to do fun and existing thing other than sex, they tend to do them. If not, how can you expect them not to do lots of sex?

Truth said...

"Yep. There's no sadder sight in the world than a stressed out woman of about 30, dragging 3 or 4 kids around who (obviously) have different fathers. Cheer up honey, you're free."

Is it sadder than a "successful" 50 year old woman who never had any?

BTW Steve, it seems as though this may be your most well received post ever. All you have to do is find a way to bottle and reproduce what you have done here, and there will be a statue for you in North Hollywood park!*






(*Of course, Buster Douglas did win the heavyweight title once too.)

Anonymous said...

It might be. One source I read said "legitimate" births in early modern Europe often included children conceived during premarital sex (so long as the parents married during the pregnancy).

I believe this has always been the standard practice in all Western countries; it certainly is in the English-speaking world. You are legitimate if you parents were married when you were born, even if the vows were said in the middle of labor.

Indeed, back when illegitimacy still carried a stigma, this was a very important point in encouraging women who got pregnant out of wedlock to get married.

Reg Cæsar said...

...and even by widows with orphans!

Widows do not have orphans. Only dead women have orphans.

Well, okay, a widow might have someone else's orphans. I'm sure that happened a lot.

Anonymous said...

Over at Takimag.org Scott Locklin suggests that antibiotics, not The Pill, was a prime enabler of the revolution in sexual mores. (Abortion got safer with antibiotics, right?)

Is there anything to this?

Could drug-resistant STD strains cause a restoration of mores and/or a revival of syphilitic insanity?

Anonymous said...

Maybe that's what militant atheism is really all about - the sour grapes of people too smart and skeptical to believe.

Svig, I enjoy most of your comments for their conciseness and snark. But this line is crap. Believing is an act of the will. It has nothing to do with IQ. There have been many very intelligent believers, a current example is the pope who must be well into the 160’s; I myself am above your stated IQ.

The conflict between Christianity (I take it you mean Christianity, which suprecedes Judaism and Islam is plagiarism anyway) and science is mostly a smoke screen acting as an excuse not to have to believe. We have not in any way unraveled the world, so far we only scratched the surface, and there is enough space in there so that I can comfortably live with the apparent discrepancies between science and scripture, without having to resort to fundamentalist creationism or throw my hands up in disbelief.

Svigor said...

We can agree that the military and some government employment may have helped African-Americans move out of poverty and into the middle class, but affirmative action is one of the most pernicious concepts to infect our culture.

The "but" is a bit misleading; I suppose there's a high long-term cost to people having to deal with an increasingly intrusive government that looks less and less like themselves.

Svigor said...

(and what a jealous bitch of a 'goddess' she is).

Thanks for that. I've been calling leftism "hegemonic" for lack of a better term, to point out the fact that it cannot tolerate competition Anywhere in the Universe. But I like this much better, it dovetails nicely with the fact that Leftism is Christianity's replacement.

Leftism is a jealous god. Thou shalt have no gods before him.

Svigor said...

What did liberalism have to do with the invention of the pill or the advancement of technology that made unskilled male labor less valuable?

Or, for that matter, with right-wing free trade ideology that further smashed traditional male industrial work?


Globalism kinda ties all that together (interests, not ideology).

Anonymous said...

Hypocrisy sucks, but why constrain the expression of one's opinions, thoughts, and sentiments on the ground that a prole will pick them up and hurt himself with them? He is presumably an adult.

More and more, we assume that left-halfers (as in left half of the Bell Curve) are children. Shhh! Don't say that word out loud! Junior might hear it and suffer a psychological meltdown! Speak in euphemisms. We're not saying you're "stupid," Junior, we are only saying you're developmentally challenged. Special. Thus the rationale behind the "hate speech" laws. Plain talk about race is feared: it will allegedly rile the natives. (And there are groups who have worked hard for decades to *ensure* that such talk will rile them.)

America is becoming one big NAM nursery, full of baby talk.

You generally get more of what you encourage. It may be true that left-halfers have a mental age of 12. But all the cooing hypocrisy of SWPLs and other females are infantilizing the burgeoning multitude.

As for adult attitudes toward sex and religion, if the left-halfers can't cope with them, let them rack up Darwin Awards. One has to grow up sometime, or perish.

Lake Wobegon said...

Let's stop confusing the big picture here. All "beta" really means in a practical, meaningful sense is that the vast majority of men are simply average, JUST AS THE VAST MAJORITY OF WOMEN ARE ALSO JUST AVERAGE.

It is because we live in this foolish, Pee Cee narcissistic society where everyone thinks way too highly of him/herself (you know, the KULT of 'self-esteem), where, like in Lake Wobegon, everyone is somehow 'above average'.

This of course begs the question: If 'everyone' is 'above average', then who exactly is average, since you need a baseline to measure and compare the 'AA's' against, no???

It is utterly amazing the trend of impressionable youth today who think cause they have a *little* social status (mostly due to their family) that their somehow entitled to a paramour way, WAY out of their league...

HENCE, no one at *their level* is "good enough" for them, and they waste so much valuable time in their youth chasing after people who are often just using them for a little ego gratification.

Then they wonder why their 'still' single (and often alone) at 40.

And all the alcohol, feminist ranting, nor "PUA" courses in the world is going to change or mask this fact of life, that of living the rest of one's life as a lonely old man or a bitter spinster with her house of full of cats.

Wake up ... and grow up ... before it's too late.

Anonymous said...

Indeed, back when illegitimacy still carried a stigma, this was a very important point in encouraging women who got pregnant out of wedlock to get married.

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Puritans introduced divorce laws [more or less in direct violation of the Sermon on the Mount] for the simple reason that if a woman's husband wasn't an adequate provider, then she and her children could [quite literally] starve [or freeze to death].

The conflict between Christianity (I take it you mean Christianity, which suprecedes Judaism and Islam is plagiarism anyway) and science is mostly a smoke screen acting as an excuse not to have to believe.

Christians do not believe in God.

[All belief systems are forms of nihilism.]

Leftism is a jealous god. Thou shalt have no gods before him.

Leftism is the religion of nihilism.

can't believe my eyes said...

"And all the alcohol, feminist ranting, nor "PUA" courses in the world is going to change or mask this fact of life, that of living the rest of one's life as a lonely old man or a bitter spinster with her house of full of cats."

I don't know where people get this "bitter spinster" stuff anymore. Isn't that stereotype, beloved of many men, a little worn and old, even if some women still wear it?
I don't know about "lonely old men," (I'm surprised how many people of both genders think men need company more than do women in old age; my father thought that)
but most single,older women I know are not bitter, nor do they dwell on regrets. They are busy with second careers, hobbies, volunteering, appreciating nature and life in general more than when they were younger, etc. They do like to gripe on occasion, but that keeps one lively to at least act like you care about certain things. However, I wouldn't call them bitter, and cats are fun and affectionate. Why do men hate on cats so much? It's like those guys who were jealous of the wife's attention after the baby came.

"Spinster" such an old-fashioned term that doesn't mean anything. Nobody is defined by "spinning wool" on a distaff anymore. Hmmm--what would be appropo today? Femininster journalister?
I really think men are more likely to be mired in the past, even though they are the main creators of the stuff that propel us all forward. Strange.
I am concerned, however, on the reproductive front though.
As far as "average"--most "average" women do reproduce. Average women, even with average appearance or worse, marry and/or make babies at a pretty good clip. However, the higher you go on the IQ scale, the fewer offspring women produce. This is indeed a fact. A shocking number of females with IQs over 130 are childless. I don't think this is true of men, but the stats on the non-reproductiveness of high IQ women is on record and scary. Since some say intelligence is passed on from the mother more than from the father, it's of special concern, though I don't know if that's really true.
It is even more the case among blacks, I've read. Probably less true among Asians. The more unusual high IQ is in a race or ethnicity, the more it seems to mitigate against reproduction. Steve Pinker said his genes would just have to go unreproduced. A lot of smart people seem indifferent to children that way. I think they just have too much on their minds, and think too much about the problems that will occur. Average and stupid people don't worry or think as much.

Anonymous said...

Christians do not believe in God.

u are right, they believe in Jesus Christ.

Anonymous said...

u are right, they believe in Jesus Christ.

No, that's not what I meant.

Lake Wobegon said...

can't believe my eyes,

First off, hello.

Secondly, I strongly love cats. You may have misunderstood the intent of my post.

It is about the increasingly typical American, usually an urban dweller, who thinks so highly of him/herself that they 'deserve' so much better than they are willing -- or can -- offer themselves.

As a result of this, they, in their ego-driven narcissism to find someone 'out of their league', often pass up perfectly compatible partners that would have made terrific wifes and husbands, with whom they could have had loving families to grow old together with, instead of seeking out paramours in 'relationship Lake Wobegon' ... where, according to the fantasy legend, everybody is 'above average'.

Anonymous said...

Probably less true among Asians.

No, actually the women of the Pacific Rim have the lowest fertility rates in the world, and this remains so even when they migrate to places like Canada.

A lot of smart people seem indifferent to children that way.

It's called nihilism, and if we don't do something about it [and do it soon], then it's going to lead us straight into a new Dark Age.

Templar said...

It's called nihilism, and if we don't do something about it (etc, etc))

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Anonymous said...

Well then think about it some more.

Lake Wobegon said...

Narcissism and the root cause of the "nobody is good enough for 'precious princess' little me" syndrome -

[...]

"I have a theory why settling has become a fate worse than rape in the minds of American women. In hunter gatherer times, when clan size was only 50 people, you’d be lucky to find just one hot girl in her prime. The beauty scarcity meant that there was no jealousy when the hot chick hooked up with the tribal leader. It was unremarkable. The remaining plain janes competed over the undifferentiated swath of clanmen who ranked lower than the tribal leader. This social dynamic helped keep women’s expectations in line with reality. There was little pressure to snag the top dog.

Fast forward to modern society where most young women in their prime are living in giant urban enclaves of millions and hot chicks are a dime a dozen. What do they see? Lots of cute girls hooking up with alpha males. Every day, everywhere. So the average woman, who in times past would’ve been happy with the average man, now gets bombarded with visual evidence of thousands of women dating the same small pool of guys she wants, causing her expectations to balloon out of control. ..."

[...]

Settling « Roissy in DC
http://roissy.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/settling/

LAKE WOBEGON INDEED!!!

Anonymous said...

A lot of smart people seem indifferent to children that way.

It's called nihilism, and if we don't do something about it [and do it soon], then it's going to lead us straight into a new Dark Age.


Have you ever asked smart people why?

Have you ever ask them what will it take for them to change their ways?

Smart people are rarely masochists, and do not have the protective benefits of the "bliss of ignorance". They do not identify with their childhood abusers, and that includes society.

This "new" dark age has been going on for decades.

As a final point, how come smart people in Asia aren't indifferent to having children?

Anonymous said...

As a final point, how come smart people in Asia aren't indifferent to having children?


IQ and the Wealth of Nations
en.wikipedia.org

List of countries and territories by fertility rate
en.wikipedia.org


Singapore
IQ: 103, #4 of 80
TFR, UN: 1.26, #186 of 195
TFR, CIA: 1.08, #221 of 223

Taiwan
IQ: 104, #3 of 80
TFR, UN: N/A
TFR, CIA: 1.13, #220 of 223

Japan
IQ: 105, #2 of 80
TFR, UN: 1.27, #184 of 195
TFR, CIA: 1.22, #215 of 223

South Korea
IQ: 106, #1 of 80
TFR, UN: 1.21, #192 of 195
TFR, CIA: 1.20, #218 of 223

Hong Kong
IQ: 107, #0 of 80
TFR, UN: 0.97, #194 of 195
TFR, CIA: 1.00, #222 of 223

Anonymous said...

THE FORGOTTEN MEN

"The attempt to realize a sexual utopia for women was doomed to failure
before it began. Women’s wishes aim at the impossible, conflict with one another,
and change unpredictably. Hence, any program to force men (or “society”) to
fulfi ll women’s wishes must fail, even if all men were willing to submit to it.
Pile entitlement upon entitlement for women, heap punishment after punishment
onto men: It cannot work, because women’s wishes will always outpace
legislation and lead to new demands.

"But while the revolution has not achieved its aims, it has certainly achieved
something. It has destroyed monogamy and family stability. It has resulted in a
polygamous mating pattern of immodest women aggressively pursuing a small
number of men. It has decreased the number of children born, and insured that
many who are born grow up without a father in their lives. And, least often
mentioned, it has made it impossible for many decent men to find wives."

SEXUAL UTOPIA IN POWER
~ F. ROGER DEVLIN

http://tinyurl.com/lj8crg

Anonymous said...

As a final point, how come smart people in Asia aren't indifferent to having children?

IQ and the Wealth of Nations
en.wikipedia.org

List of countries and territories by fertility rate
en.wikipedia.org


I wasn't referring to the average IQs and average fertility rates of various nations. I was referring to the fertility of the high (150+) end of the IQ scale.

Hint: Despite its "conformist" reputation, East Asian society nurtures its geniuses. Educratic post-1945 America did not, and does not. Geniuses are hardly "highly socialized" photogenic goose-stepping Ken dolls!

can't believe my eyes said...

"Secondly, I strongly love cats. You may have misunderstood the intent of my post.


Now understood. I probably agree with you. also, glad you like kitties.

Anonymous said...

As a final point, how come smart people in Asia aren't indifferent to having children?

East Asian society nurtures its geniuses.

But there's a world of difference between a woman giving birth to 2.10 children [whether they are subsequently nurtured or not] and a woman nurturing only 0.97 children [as is the case in Hong Kong].

In the first case, the population remains stable.

In the second case, the population [more than] halves every 35 years.

If these Asian geniuses of yours don't get their heads out of their nihilistic asses and start making babies again, then they & their bloodlines are all going to go extinct.

Heck, Japan* is probably already extinct as we speak.


*Japan being landlocked and Muslims not being known for their prowess at swimming.

Anonymous said...

Er, whatever the opposite of landlocked is.

Sealocked?

Islandic?

Dis-contiguous relative to the mainland?

Templar said...

Well then think about it some more.

I'd recommend you do that.