One more observation to add to my Taki's column "In Search of Sexier Scientists," which compares the feminist complaints in the NYT from a lesbian Harvard Business School dean (last month) and from a Yale grad girly-girl novelist (this month). The homosexual is upset by the pressure society puts on young women to dress sexy, while the heterosexual is upset by the pressure society puts on young women to not dress sexy.
By now it should be clear that a large fraction of lesbians will always have obtuse and self-serving theories about what pretty girls need: Young women should stop wasting time mooning over boys and instead follow the leadership of strong women (perhaps into bed). As Betty Friedan lamented in the 1970s about the fate of her National Organization for Women, feminist organizations tend to get taken over by lesbian cabals.
But, there aren’t many lesbians, on average; they're not particularly appealing; and most women don’t pay much attention to organized feminism. (For example, whatever happened to NOW?) Clueless lesbians ye shall always have with ye.
Of more concern is Eileen Pollack’s kind of disorganized feminism. Autism researchers have a term "theory of mind" to describe what autistics lack in their perceptions of other people. Pollack's 8000 word article on Yale coeds is strikingly lack in theory of mind terms when it comes to Yale men. They're pretty much ciphers. That's peculiar because she is a novelist in her later 50s and has a son.
In contrast, to lesbians, there’s nothing inevitable about feminine women in late middle age being as lacking in wisdom as Ms. Pollack. That’s real damage caused by marinating in decades of feminist ideology: feminism encourages self-absorption.
Mature female wisdom is a valuable societal resource. If you want advice on an interpersonal problem that is baffling you, the single most likely demographic segment to understand the various human perspectives involved is older women, especially ones who had fathers in their lives, brothers, husbands, and/or sons so that they have sympathetic experience with how males think.
Unfortunately, we're going to have the dumbest, most self-centered grandmothers in history.
Given how the boomers are not exactly getting any younger, I think the age of the self-absorbed demented old grey mare are upon us.
ReplyDeleteHence, Obama in office, a country mired in feel-good insanity and obsession with not hurting any ones' feelings (well, at least not anyone who REALLY matters) and up to its eyeballs in debt.
Well, at least their great-granddaughters will be able to find jobs- someones' going to have to service all of those wealthy Chinese men stuck with a deficit of women who will be buying up America. Hey, looks like Ms. "women don't get to dress sexy enough" WILL beat the bulldyke in the end after all.
My current position allows me some insight here. There are indeed many women entering and graduating hard-science/STEM programs in the USA. They happen to be Chinese.
ReplyDeleteIs this not commonly known?!
Oh I'm just waiting for the reality show in about 10 years:
ReplyDeleteOld lesbian advice giver-outer
It'll probably be on the History Channel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_Menace
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought you were making that whole lavander menace up.
The good St. Paul wrote a letter to a kid named Titus about valuing older women for their wisdom. Good thing nobody reads that letter today.
ReplyDeleteThe good St. Paul wrote a letter to a kid named Titus about valuing older women for their wisdom.
ReplyDeleteThe good Ben Franklin did the same, although he suggested valuing older women for something besides their wisdom.
Steve, you should take an extra five minutes and proofread your posts (again?) before they go live. It looks bad when there are blatant grammatical errors and/or missing words/punctuation.
ReplyDeletePOTUS dominated by a pushy woman, for the first time in hours
ReplyDeletecountenance said...
ReplyDeleteOh I'm just waiting for the reality show in about 10 years:
Old lesbian advice giver-outer
What are you talking about, we already had this.
The name was OPRAH! Hello? She was on the networks and she wasn't old then.
It'll probably be on the History Channel.
She has her own network and magazine to continually pontificate to the rest of the world.
So we're already there.
Question out there: If Oprah had been white, do you think that she would've had her staying power for as long as she has?
Of course, it could be argued that Oprah is merely channeling Margaret Mead. And she was a switch hitter as well as thought highly of her own vapid opinions.
So this kind of dykey advice giver outer goes back to Margaret Mead at the very least and now it's Oprah's turn to shine in the sun.
Yeah, YOU GO GIRL!
I agree Steve since true wisdom conflicts with the current zeitgeist. One has to be stupid on purpose to fit in. Not a gender specific problem.
ReplyDeleteAs a crossing of two recent posts, the OECD report and aging women in science, consider the relevance of the Schopenhauer proposition, that faster maturation for females than males results in women ultimately attaining a lower level of development. Thus, Schopenhauer applied within species a law that generally applies across species.
ReplyDeleteThis proposition fits with an earlier PISA finding for OECD countries that males scored higher than females on literacy within the 55-64 year age group but females scored higher than males for the 16-25 year group. The official explanation given for the PISA 2003 results was that this was a cohort effect in that those older women were raised in a time when they had fewer educational opportunities. Their younger sisters would do better later. The best test of the Schopenhauer and the OECD alternative hypotheses would be a longitudinal comparison, e.g., of 2013 with 2003. Unfortunately, I can't make any relevant sense out of the data currently available reports from the OECD's PIAAC.
Incidentally, the Schopenhauer proposition fits with my finding for women in law school -- altho girls earn higher grades than boys from elementary school up thru college, by the time they reach their high 20s in law school their class rank at graduation is significantly lower.
But with 'men' like Bush II, Quayle, McCain, Scott McConnell, Walter Russell Mead, and etc, where are wise conservative men?
ReplyDeleteAnd look at right-wing women like Ann Coulter, Bachmann, Palin(some mother!), Cindy McCain, and etc.
They all suck.
Now, Alice Cullen, she's wise and special.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwpBz1gn_k0
Wiser words have never been spoken.
ReplyDeleteSome people are just naturally wise and tend to be impervious to fashions and dogmas. The brunette spouts the feminist line, the blonde girl has no idea what it's about, but the naturally wise Jodi Kramer gets the feminist girl's point but also sees through it--and more.
ReplyDeleteThe first crop of same-sex grandparents should be interesting...
ReplyDeleteWhen you're in the game, it's hard to be wise. It's all about win or lose.
ReplyDeleteThis is why Jake Lamotta wised up only later in life. When he was trying to win, it was all about ego and fighting.
Nixon wised up later after leaving politics.
When women had less power and weren't in the game, they viewed the game of power from afar and had a wider/wiser perspective. (Wisdom is related to passivity. It's when you finally let go(of will to power) that you feel more peace.)
But when women are in the thick of battle, they are in bitchy mode.
As women are in the game, it's hard for them to be wise. But this applies to men as well.
Steve Jobs and Zucker were hardly wise. But they were playing to win, and it's the driven/feisty jerks who win.
Wasps tried to be wiser and fairer but look what happened to them. They ended up like the old lord in RAN. In contrast the pushy/nasty Jews and bitchy/vicious homos got more powerful.
And speaking of contradictions, it's all around. Conservatives extol excellence over egalitarianism but then attack elitism.
Conservatives champion Christian values but love guns and tribalism.
Pat Buchanan is both a white nationalist and a Catholic moralist.
Conservatives attack amnesty but praise Jews who are the main force behind anti-conservatism.
Speaking of Jobs and Zuck, the NYT Mag features a brutal piece on Twitter's origin, which sounds nastier and more interesting than the Facebook origin story, with one or two WASPs in the Zuck roles and a fellow named Noah Glass as a Winklevi.
DeleteIncidentally, the article mentioned Jack Dorsey at one point left work early to take classes on sewing dresses, as he thought of being a fashion designer. Curious if he was gay, I did a search which turned up a "no" answer from a user on Quora, who said Dorsey had dated a ballet dancer.
Steve has an axe to grind against gay people. Somehow in Steve's screwed up mind lesbians are holding heterosexual women back from f*cking males. The modern bikini was invented in 1946. There were no female Nobel laureates from 1948-1962. Since 1962 there have been two in chemistry (same as before 1948), one in physics(same as before 1948), and one in economics (there was no economics award before 1969). So even with an increasing number of women enrolling in higher learning there has been no increase in number of Nobel Laureates in the harder sciences. Despite what Steve Sailer wants to think fashion trends have been for women to wear less and less clothes since the 1930s in spite of the feminist movement supposedly controlled by a lesbian cabal (LMAO). I bet Steve will blame that on gay men. Heterosexual women today are more concerned with their bikini bodies than they were in 1910. Maybe women "especially ones who had fathers in their lives, brothers, husbands, and/or sons so that they have sympathetic experience with how males think" should just go to work naked. Heterosexuals should take responsibility for what they do instead of passing blame and lying about gay people. Steve and his stupidity can f*ck themselves.
ReplyDelete"especially ones who had fathers in their lives, brothers, husbands, and/or sons so that they have sympathetic experience with how males think."
ReplyDeleteKinfolk don't give you too much insight into the opposite sex for several reasons. The strongest is the incest taboo -- all sorts of things you'll be prevented from understanding or going anywhere near. And anything that stems fairly directly from their dating-and-mating thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
Apart from those areas of psychology, Hamilton's Rule says you won't need to really get your close genetic relatives. They'll do good by you just cuz, not because you've understood them and proven that you value them.
Even if you've got full-blown autism, your mother and sisters will still accept you, treat you well, and so on, while you'll never get a date from one of your peers. There's little or no penalty for autism when the other side is kinfolk.
So, it's women who've had extensive relationships with males *outside* of the insulating nuclear family bubble who have the sharpest sense of what makes men tick (for better or worse).
A girl who hangs out in a mixed-sex group of friends, goes out on dates, works under a male manager, etc., but who has no brothers or sons and a workaholic/distant father will have a good understanding of guys.
One with lots of brothers, several sons, and an involved father, who nevertheless never hangs out with boys and doesn't go out on many dates, won't get them.
The committed feminist is just one strand of women who insulate themselves from genetically unrelated males and wind up clueless about them. Men who don't share genes, or a shared genetic future (i.e., husband), can only be polluting or corrosive influences. So they're out.
You have to find women who spent a lot of time interacting with boys as a child, teenager, young adult, and older adult. Earning the acceptance of your peers requires you to "figure them out" (not necessarily consciously, could be a sharpened intuition).
How much time do you think Mrs. Pollack has spent interacting with husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, etc., and how much time with unrelated males? That's what's led to her self-absorption.
I have two boomer older sisters that were fire-breathing feminists in their youth.
ReplyDeleteOne of them eventually got married, raised 3 kids (two of whom are boys). She's ok, and is a reasonably wise, sage elder female now.
The other never got married, pursued career. She's loaded now, but, as they say, has learned nothing, forgotten nothing. Every word out of her mouth is puerile adolescent garbage.
Unfortunately, we're going to have the dumbest, most self-centered grandmothers in history.
ReplyDeleteThank God somebody said it!
Hence, finding women who understand men is mostly a generational thing. Did the social-cultural climate include more interaction between male and female peers during development, or more toward segregation of the sexes?
ReplyDeleteOlder Boomers interacted with the opposite sex when they were teenagers, and particularly when they were young adults. But they missed out on a lot of that as children, which is a no less formative stage of development, because of the '40s and '50s climate of "girls over here, boys over here."
Silent Gen women I don't find particularly wise about men. They were the leaders of second wave '70s feminism, remember, and the ones who fought on the "all pornography is rape" side of the feminist sex wars of the 1980s.
Millennials are the re-incarnation of the Silents, and those chicks couldn't be more oblivious of what makes guys tick.
Late Gen X-ers and the mini-generation born through 1984 are pretty understanding -- but their minds are also forever warped by the date rape witchcraft hysteria of the early-mid 1990s, which struck their minds right as they were going into puberty.
Women who really get men -- whatever they like or don't like about it -- are born more or less during the 1960s, with some spillover into late '50s and early '70s births.
Right from the get-go, their developmental environment was moving away from mid-century sex segregation, a trend that would only intensify during the '70s and '80s, as they matured into adolescence and adulthood.
And their basic expectations about what men are like had gelled into place by the time the date rape hysteria hit. Like, they might have bought into it (or not), but it couldn't go back and re-wire their brain, the way it was influencing younger girls.
Let's not under-estimate the effect that boy-craziness has on female empathy. If they find boys boring, annoying, and no big deal, why try to figure them out? You'll get married and have kids for more pragmatic reasons, without having to empathize.
But if you can't help but be drawn toward them, you'd better know how they'll respond across whatever range of situations, i.e. what their mental programming is like. If you want to get married to someone you truly love and are head-over-heels for, you have to know how to win them over, not cynically trap them into a marriage.
It is definitely unsettling to someone who's 15 years younger to notice that women who are late Boomers or early X-ers are the easiest to relate to on an interpersonal level. But they do have a solid intuition about what makes people tick, including guys.
She had no business as the VP candidate, but Sarah Palin enjoyed huge popularity on account of being so socially savvy. Although now with a more respectable job, she was still a big-haired '80s chick inside. Someone who was easy to relate to, because she made lots of friends from childhood up through young adulthood, not staying sheltered like kids were in the mid-century or Millennial eras.
I think that those who were teenagers in the 70's generally have the clearest eyes today (late boomers, early Gen-x).
ReplyDeleteThere was nothing to believe in the 70's. The idealism of the 60's & civil rights era was spent.
Everything sucked, from cars to electronics to clothing styles and tv shows.
We just lost a war, Communism seemed the wave of some Orwellian future, and so on. The adults of the era had become completely unmoored by the 60's upheavals and provided little guidance or beliefs.
Very little in the way of belief/indoctrination systems during that era.
Interestingly, Ronald Reagan's largest margins were among those who were old enough to vote for the first time. Everyone wanted to believe in something other than the emptiness of the 70's.
Unfortunately, we're going to have the dumbest, most self-centered grandmothers in history.
ReplyDeleteAnd in my neck of the woods, Northwest Indiana, the loose skin hanging from their flabby arms will be heavily tattooed.
As others have mentioned, we already are living in a time of selfish, self-absorbed and generally clueless grandmothers. These are the women of the Diane Keaton, Cagney & Lacy, Kate & Ally generation. This is the generation that got intense exposure to flattery and pandering coming at them from the TV, glossy magazines and the silver screen. This is the age group that got liberalized divorce laws, "empowering" TV shows and "because you're worth it!" ads all around the time they entered their thirties. I think their view would be that trying to figure out what makes other people tick is for women stuck in the Fifties, it's up to everyone else to figure out how to celebrate them! Being feisty, prickly, combative, humourless, charmless and an all round drag were presented to them as being ideals to strive towards and a way for them to break out of the bad old days when they were forced to wear white gloves to church (or whatever their horror story happens to be). Now they pass this wisdom earned while watching MASH and All In The Family on to anyone within earshot.
ReplyDeleteThe end result is that often Grandma is not a team player and is quite proud of it.
Pollack's 8000 word article on Yale coeds is strikingly lack in theory of mind terms when it comes to Yale men. They're pretty much ciphers. That's peculiar because she is a novelist in her later 50s and has a son.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, to lesbians, there’s nothing inevitable about feminine women in late middle age being as lacking in wisdom as Ms. Pollack. That’s real damage caused by marinating in decades of feminist ideology: feminism encourages self-absorption.
I think you have the causality reversed. "Feminism" is attractive to women who have a certain portfolio of personal shortcomings: a deficit of empathy, self-centeredness, and a truncated sense of personal responsibility; perhaps narcissism or borderline tendencies if you fancy clinical terminology.
My mother had occasion to complain that John Updike's female characters were paper cutouts, there to interact with his male characters but possessing no humanity; she thought that reflected how Updike himself viewed women. Well, that sort of problem is global. I do not think a cretinette like Kay S. Hymowitz is the way she is because she is marinated in feminism. She is attracted to "obligation masculinity" for the same reason Gloria Steinem was attracted to "feminism": the other 49% of humanity has no legitimate interests or aspirations or inner life as far as they can see - they exist to interact with women (and accede to them).
Hymowitz has at least one son, and is long married. I have seen the phenomenon up close with women in similar circumstances, one of whom had abrasive relations with all of the men proximate to her bar one brother-in-law. If your mind is ordered not to take responsibility for much, you do not learn much.
"Unfortunately, we're going to have the dumbest, most self-centered grandmothers in history."
ReplyDeleteThis is a marvelous insight - Steve puts his finger on a fundamental, revolutionary change that has taken place in society. Will children even be able to understand a fairy tale like Little Red Riding Hood, when their grandmothers have spent much of their lives getting wolf after wolf into their beds? A hallmark of living in an affluent society is that people feel free to ignore whatever lessons their failures and disappointments have to teach them. Experience no longer leads people to develop a sense of humor or feelings of generosity towards others. In its revolt against common sense, the US is the most radical society in the world.
>blatant grammatical errors and/or missing words/punctuation<
ReplyDeleteHey, quit giving Steve the raspberries. This post is clear and fairly clean.
Agnostic's take is interesting. Wonder if it holds true for men? Picture a man raised only by women in some isolated place. Would he be wise about ladies (e.g., would he be disposed to be a good husband)? A mama's boy seems worse than a daddy's girl.
My current position allows me some insight here. There are indeed many women entering and graduating hard-science/STEM programs in the USA. They happen to be Chinese.
ReplyDelete------------------------------
Is this because the "shrillness" of white women lends itself to degrees in the "Humanities"?
Mylie Cyrus vs Madame Wu.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteConservatives champion Christian values but love guns and tribalism.
Pat Buchanan is both a white nationalist and a Catholic moralist."
There is nothing contradictory in those positions, based on a pre-1970s understanding of Christianity in general or Catholicism in particular.
How much time do you think Mrs. Pollack has spent interacting with husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, etc., and how much time with unrelated males? That's what's led to her self-absorption.
ReplyDeleteEileen Pollack was born in 1956, a late boomer. What went wrong with her and right with Sarah Palin who was born in 1964?
Nothing could be more destructive of the development of wisdom than the baleful influence of ideology.
ReplyDeleteWisdom is the accumulated repository of noticing patterns across the full length of a human life. It is, in the domain of human relations, akin to "crystallized intelligence," where the analogue to "fluid intelligence" is the ability to notice patterns.
If your ideology prevents you from acknowledging a pattern, there's nothing to accumulate into wisdom. There exists instead only continued instructions from the Mothership of ideology.
"Unfortunately, we're going to have the dumbest, most self-centered grandmothers in history."
ReplyDeleteAnd alot of them won't even be grandmothers, or even mothers, and will have no clue as to why.
Oprah wouldn't bit the bill for the coming Old Lesbian Advice Giver-Outer show. She's not obviously a lesbian.
ReplyDeleteHow the heck do you turn out so much material without repeating yourself? I'm impressed. I quoted your ladies and science Takimag article here, and extracted a quote and made a graphic.
ReplyDeletehttp://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/10/science-ladies.html
"So, it's women who've had extensive relationships with males *outside* of the insulating nuclear family bubble who have the sharpest sense of what makes men tick (for better or worse."
ReplyDeleteTrue. My father & brothers are my father & brothers first; males second (even when I haven't liked them much, at times.)Even uncles and cousins fall into this unique category for me. I know that's not logical, but I'm sure that many men feel the same about mothers, aunts and sisters. They're relatives first, representatives of their gender secondly.
One thing you never want to hear from someone you really fancy in a certain way, is "you're like a sister (or brother) to me."
As for the feminism thing, not all feminists were nuts. The ones that kept it up and kept it up beyond its shelf life became nuts. They did have some valid points--I know, I was there. But things change. Same with racism. Enough already. It's over--at least for those most accused and who are the most innocent of the charge.
"There is nothing contradictory in those positions, based on a pre-1970s understanding of Christianity in general or Catholicism in particular."
ReplyDeleteIn other words, the whole thing's been contradictory from the very beginning.
It's like Founding Fathers were confused.
On the one hand, 'all men are created equal' and universal principles for America; on the other hand, the 'posterity' stuff.
Trying to have it both ways is just part of human/animal nature.
It's like all animals wanna eat but don't wanna be eaten.
"Unfortunately, we're going to have the dumbest, most self-centered grandmothers in history."
ReplyDeleteThere's gonna be a lot of old white women WITHOUT grandkids.
Or the grandkid will be like this one:
http://www.amren.com/news/2013/10/teenager-beat-71-year-old-to-death-after-she-took-him-in-to-help-him-escape-life-in-a-troubled-home/
"And a lot of them won't even be grandmothers, or even mothers, and will have no clue as to why."
ReplyDeleteExactly. Thank you, Mr. Anon. Far more striking than their inability to give useful advice will be the fact that nobody would be there to receive it even if they could.
How many young people see a weird old-woman-loner in their apartment building and say "I think I'll ask that elderly crank for advice?" Not in books, but in real life? Very few, I imagine.
"Well, at least their great-granddaughters will be able to find jobs- someones' going to have to service all of those wealthy Chinese men stuck with a deficit of women who will be buying up America. Hey, looks like Ms. "women don't get to dress sexy enough" WILL beat the bulldyke in the end after all." - China at that point will be more or less in the grips of a demographic collapse. You'll have to look elsewhere for your new superpower 100 years from now.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the essence of wisdom?
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's the balance of the need to think, be critical, and judge AND the need to realize that one's truth may not be the final truth, to understand that other people have different views borne of different experiences and conditions, and to forgive others for their mistakes as nobody's perfect.
To be totally loving, non-judgmental, and forgiving isn't wise. Any dog can feel and act that way. Forrest Gump was not wise. He was just a human dog who loved everyone. Nice may be nise but it's not wise.
To be totally critical and judgmental isn't wise for it's vain, narcissistic, and so cocksure of one's own feelings and truth.
Beethoven was a great composer but his powerful self-righteous ego is written all over his music, so I never much enjoyed it.
Richard Dawkins is smart but unwise because he's not only so totally sure of himself but turns up his nose at everyone who's below his intellect and knowledge, as if his way of thinking is the ONLY way of thinking. Even if he may be correct on all his points, he's very unwise about the human condition and realities.
John Simon, erudite as he is, isn't wise because he gets a high out of his opinions and narrow prejudices.
Andrew Sarris had a more even personality--at least in print--, but he tended to fall for theorizing, and if one falls for a rulebook, one comes to care more about fences than what is inside the fence. His adherence to auteur theory and notions about mise-en-scene/tracking shot made him, at one time, to declare LOLA MONTEZ the greatest film ever made. Never mind the acting and storytelling are pretty hollow. (A wise person appreciates the need for ideas and theories without accepting any single one as the final or only law for all times and all places.)
Kael wasn't wise cuz she was too much a slave to her emotions and passion.
The late Stanely Kauffmann was one of the wisest critics. He watched with a sharp keen eye and was one of the most judgmental critics, but he was also one who tried most to step outside his personal prejudices to at least understand where the artist was coming from.
Though a lifelong liberal/leftist, he was one of those Jews who came to see, early on, the dangers of Soviet communism and totalitarianism.
I suppose in politics--hardly a wisdom-fostering endeavor--, wisdom is judged by the balance of being in the fray and above the fray.
ReplyDeleteWashington was said to be wise cuz he was a politician but was also above politics.
Lincoln was said to be wise because he was both a savvy politician who wheeled-and-dealed but also kept a certain distance from the day to day affairs.
Eisenhower's reputation grows higher and higher because he had the balance between involvement and detachment. Same has been said of Reagan as well though in a reverse way. Eisenhower was moderate in ideas, but when push came to shove, was firm in the positions he took.
Reagan was strong in his ideas, but when push came to shove, knew when to soften his stance and shake hands with the likes of Deng and Gorby.
Clinton, Bush II, and Obama have the STYLE of political wisdom--in the fray and above the fray--, but style isn't substance.
PS. the great irony of history. GOP is the Party of Lincoln, but the toughest critics of Lincoln are to be found among GOP voters while Democrats love Lincoln.
GOP was once the party of urban industry and Democrats were the rural party, but now Dems are the urban party and GOP is the hick party.
Some might say Buddha, Socrates, and Jesus were wise, but look how they ended up. Buddha, out of grace, died from eating food that he knew would kill him. He didn't want to offend the host.
ReplyDeleteSocrates got tried and executed(or pushed to suicide).
Jesus got it worse.
On the other hand, their ideas came to change the world. But the world has always been controlled by the unwise. Unwise Christians ruled over Christian sheep. Unwise Greeks ruled over Greek sheep. Unwise Buddhists ruled over Buddhist sheep. Tibet, prior to communist takeover, was no Shangrila. It was run by the Buddhist Mafia who were quite ruthless and devious.
Confucius didn't come to a bad end, and he was said to been wise. I guess it's all relative. He doesn't sound very wise today, but maybe he was when China was torn apart by wars.
Wisdom can serve the good, but it can be amoral. Many people who are wise about the ways of power may use the secret rules of power to manipulate others.
ReplyDeleteLook at the general in Paths of Glory. Very keen and wise about power. But what an a-hole.
"Eileen Pollack was born in 1956, a late boomer. What went wrong with her and right with Sarah Palin who was born in 1964?"
ReplyDeleteLate Boomers only go back to about '58 births, maybe '57. I don't know why, but they do. There's a pretty noticeable change between early or mid-'50s births and late '50s / early '60s births. (Right Steve?)
I'm sure Eileen Pollack would have wound up weird no matter what generation she was born into. But being farther away from the sweet spot generationally must have made it way worse.
One example of how her development would have been different from Sarah Palin's -- Pollack was fully 8 years old during the year of Beatlemania, whereas Palin grew up in the wake of Beatlemania, when boy-craziness and playing with boys was more taken for granted than a shocking new thing that somewhat older girls had to adapt themselves to.
Some people can be very wise one way but very extreme in other ways. Eric Hobsbawn could be very wise as a historian. But on the subject of fascism, he was willfully blind as a bat. And he was a lifelong member of the communist party even after realizing that communism got it all wrong.
ReplyDeleteAlbert Speer was not without intelligence and wisdom, but he was also a careerist, opportunist, and self-serving liar.
Inspiration is about foresight and useful to the ambitious young.
ReplyDeleteWisdom comes with hindsight after the party is over.
When the party is over, a person can lose oneself to bitterness. But if one can rise above such bitterness, one can look back on life and be wise about it. The woman in SUNSET BOULEVARD is just bitter that her party is over. She goes on as if she still is the life of the party.
The Joseph Cotten character as an old man is both wise and bitter. He looks back on life and has learned a lot of things; and he was wiser than Kane even in youth. But he is also still bitter about the feud between himself and his old friend. He sort of got over it, sort of didn't.
Has the internet undermined people power?
ReplyDeleteBefore the internet, only the big media had control over information.
The internet was supposed to empower everyone. But if everyone has his own website, page, blog, twitter, and etc. everyone gets drowned out by millions and millions of others. People power will drown in the sea of peopleness. Also, as 99% of news on the net is celebrity oriented, it seems the internet has spread mindlessness more than mindfulness.
One has to be stupid on purpose to fit in. Not a gender specific problem.
ReplyDeleteThis is the real lesson taught by compulsory public schooling.
When women had less power and weren't in the game, they viewed the game of power from afar and had a wider/wiser perspective. (Wisdom is related to passivity. It's when you finally let go(of will to power) that you feel more peace.)
In other words, women used to be nerdier.
She's a whiny bitch.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, people like her say and insist and demand, "we don't want you men telling us what we womyn should do!! we will make our own choices." But then she bitches and whines, "why didn't you tell me to do such and such?"
She's like a child who tells her parents to shut up and not tell her what to do. But after messing up, she complains that her parents didn't tell her the right thing to do.
Emotionally, she isn't different from the insufferable younger sister in NEWLYWEDS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WESDw95RiWk
(I wanted to her kill her. My teeth were gnashing whenever she was on screen. The character of Caitlin Fitzgerald, one of the loveliest actresses in the business, was raked over coals by the no good skankass ho. Interesting that so many Irishmen look like hamfisted bully boy thugs while so many Irish women have such strong features.)
If Pollack really loved science/math, she would have pursued it of her own accord.
No one had to tell Steve Jobs to go into computers. No one had to tell Bill Gates to start up microsoft. No one had to tell Zuckerberg to chase after facebook dream. Some even got started in the garage.
But Pollak cannot let go of something that happened long long long ago. If she's a bum without a dime whose life was ruined for not becoming a scientist, I can sort of sympathize(even if not agree), but it seems she found considerable success in her own field in English lit. So, what the eff is she bitching about?
Btw, maybe she wasn't such a great intellect in the science/math field anyway. I mean coaches in sports don't tell EVERY athlete on the team to try out for Notre Dame football, let alone the NFL draft.
Isn't one successful career enough? But I'm thinking... had she become a science/math professor, she would be bitching... 'why didn't someone tell me get out of science/math and take up something more PASSIONATE like the humanities?' She's a constant nagger who needs something to be hysterical about all the time. What she calls 'passion' is really just hysterics.
The old feminist narrative used to be "men told us we can NOT do it, but we did it anyway."
Now that such obstacles no longer exist, it's "men didn't tell us to do it, so we were denied!!! Waaah!!"
Sensible, men and women, should tell Pollack to go jump into lake. Hopefully one with lots of piranhas. We can nobly serve nature by being food for the fish.
Not just dumb. Delusional, as well
ReplyDeleteBlack women and Jewish women have something in common:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/m1AGCqYbv-w?t=2m52s
I think they are confused because they cannot resolve victim mentality and victor mentality. And of course, second wave feminism was largely a Jewish affair.
On the one hand, both Jewish politics and feminism have been defined by the notion of powerlessness and victim-hood. It was about the powerless taking on the powerful and being empowered.
It loves to see itself as the victim.
But Jewish women are among the biggest winners in America. I'll bet an average Jewish woman is much richer than an average white gentile male. And lots of Jewish women make as much dough as Jewish men. And many Jewish women are in all sorts of elite fields. Now, one even took over the Fed. There are two Jewish women in the Supreme Court.
And Pollack is successful herself. She is a VICTOR. But she feels uncomfortable with it since Jewishness and feminism have been defined by eternal victim-hood.
So, she isn't so much a sore loser as a sore winner. She feels robbed of her victim-hood since she's successful and her kind--Jewish and feminists in academia--are so powerful and privileged. She feels deprived of her victim-ness, and so, she goes looking for some victim narrative by bitching and whining that she could have been a successful scientist than a successful professor of writing, BUT she was denied such honors by a MAN!!!!
It's like GOP has gone out of its way to praise and respect and revere Jews, but Jews only say not enough is being done to protect poor helpless little Israel(with 300 illegal nukes) from Iran(with no nukes at all).
It's getting pathetic.
Similarly, Michelle Obama is a sore winner. She was given all sorts of favors because of her blackness and moderate intelligence, but she feels wronged by the world all the time because she feels she was denied everything she done demand.
When pigs who eat up all the sausage but then complain that they weren't offered all the hamburgers as well, it's downright disgusting.
Neocons like Jennifer Rubin is no different. Richwine was a lone voice in the conservative landscape but she insisted he had to go to. I guess his truth was too oppressive to a powerless victim like her.
Unless white Americans break free of such personalities--that abound in the Jewish community, American conservatism is hopeless.
Blackadder: I seek information about a Wisewoman.
ReplyDeleteYoung Crone: Ah, the Wisewoman... the Wisewoman.
Blackadder: Yes, the Wisewoman.
Young Crone: Two things, my lord, must thee know of the Wisewoman. First, she is... a woman. And second, she is...
Blackadder: Wise?
Young Crone: You do know her then?
Blackadder: No, just a wild stab in the dark which is, incidentally, what you'll be getting if you don't start being a bit more helpful. Do you know where she lives?
Young Crone: Of course.
Blackadder: Where?
Young Crone: Here. Do you have an appointment?
Blackadder: No.
Young Crone: Well, you can go in anyway.
Blackadder: Thank you young crone. Here is a purse of moneys... which I'm not going to give to you.
One might say nice guys finish last, but wise men have the last word.
ReplyDeleteBut it's not always easy to say what is and isn't wise. The quarterback guy in Dazed and Confused is relatively wiser than most of his peers. Though a jock, he hangs around a whole bunch of different types. He's athletic but also has a mind. He's also more principled than most.
But his principle turns him into something of a prig. In the scene in the truck between him and Benny(a borderline thug), he seems to stand for principles whereas Benny just wants to win the game as a senior. But there is wisdom in what Benny says too: everyone's signing the pledge(not to do drugs and etc) as a formality; they know it doesn't mean anything. What really matters is they all grew up together, rely on one another as friends and teammates, and sometimes you gotta give a little for the good of the team. Benny slams the truck door like a jerk, but what he said stings because there's truth to it. The quarterback guy, though principled, is being somewhat self-righteous and selfish.
That's what's great about D&C. Everyone has a bit of truth.
Maybe the current and upcoming crop of grannies are a write-off but there are signs of hope coming from the younger generation?
ReplyDeleteFrom the Daily Mail:
Pop sensation Lorde accused of being RACIST because hit song 'Royals' mentions Cristal and diamond-encrusted watches
The song and video are quite good too.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/celebrating_a_movie_the_critics_hated.html
ReplyDeleteWomen and power.
ReplyDelete@Blogger gubbler of the church of reformed chechenism said...
ReplyDeleteGreat comment as usual.
"Late Boomers only go back to about '58 births, maybe '57. I don't know why, but they do. There's a pretty noticeable change between early or mid-'50s births and late '50s / early '60s births. (Right Steve?)"
ReplyDeleteI don't have the footnote, but I remember some years back seeing some statistics about late 50's/early 60's cohort.
Those birth years had a large spike of many types of dysfunction (criminality, drug use, etc) compared to both those than were born earlier and later.
Haven't ever seen a good explanation or even a "just so" story about this phenomena.
"gubbler of the church of reformed chechenism said...
ReplyDeleteIt's like GOP has gone out of its way to praise and respect and revere Jews, but Jews only say not enough is being done to protect poor helpless little Israel(with 300 illegal nukes) from Iran(with no nukes at all)."
While I have no quibble with your post, I would take issue with your characterization of Israel's nuclear weapons as "illegal". There really is no such thing as "international law". Weapons make the law legal. In a very real sense, nuclear weapons ARE the law. If you have them, it's legal, unless someone with more of them can disarm you.
Same goes for Iran too, BTW.
Not a problem. All these old white women who are turning out unwise will soon be replaced by a herd of 'wise' latinas.
ReplyDeleteIf you saw any news photos of the folks who showed up at the rather pathetic demonstration for amnesty on the national mall, you would notice that better than half were fat old white women. I refer to them as Berkeley douches -- old women who dress like slobs, show up at town meetings to insist that council members take a stand on foreign policy, and aggressively push their way in front of you at the Cheeseboard. And they will key your Mercedes if you park to close to their jalopy held together by hope and change bumper stickers.
Delete"candid_observer said...
ReplyDeleteNothing could be more destructive of the development of wisdom than the baleful influence of ideology.
If your ideology prevents you from acknowledging a pattern, there's nothing to accumulate into wisdom. There exists instead only continued instructions from the Mothership of ideology."
Quite true, and well said. People with that ideological filter will never wise up. It's as if they were incapable of forming memories.
ReplyDeleteIt's like GOP has gone out of its way to praise and respect and revere Jews, but Jews only say not enough is being done to protect poor helpless little Israel(with 300 illegal nukes
Oh, and you've read the intel reports. While we are at it, how can Israeli ordnance stored in Israel be 'illegal'?
Steve,
ReplyDeleteI think you're onto something about male relatives, though I don't discount what Agnostic says. I think he's more or less correct about the older generation: fathers, uncles, etc., but doesn't give enough credit to brothers and cousins. Your siblings are the hardest people to please of all and being "attractive" isn't going to get you anywhere, but you do want to get along with them for sure.
I believe the most important things that help with empathizing with, not just the opposite sex, but with everyone are those things which turn down our Ids and thus our selfishness.
Agnostic pointed out one thing, a more outgoing environment, but there are others: more siblings, less money (usually cause by more children and starting at a younger age), instilling beliefs that value togetherness, etc.
When I was a young teen, in the early 90s, my mother and I were discussing my half-brother who was born in 1983 and was probably not yet ten. He was spoiled rotten. My mother observed that a change in parenting beliefs had occurred, of which my brother was an extreme case. These parents, she said, only put value on materialism and they believe that the moral values will just take care of themselves. My mom wasn't very conservative like a lot of baby-boomers, but she still valued empathy, doing for ones-self, etc. The parents of Millenials were far more likely to say things like, "I want more for my kid", "I only want one, may be two 'cause we didn't have a lot growing up", "I want my kid to be able to go to college and make something of themselves unlike me", or "My kid is in the Gifted program which will help with getting him into a good college". On the last, the parents of my generation were split down the middle. So many said things like, "They wanted to put my kid in Gifted, but I said, "no", because I worry that will make him snobby and think he's better than the other kids".
Boomers are self-indulgent, but at least there were countervailing forces to keep them somewhat in check so many of them do have a lot of wisdom to give. Many learned things the hard way and did not forget.
Millenials on the other hand... they grew up in families where they may not have had a sibling, let alone one of the opposite sex. And even if they had, the parents may have put a t.v. and video game console in their bedroom. Everything about their growing up was geared toward satisfying their every whim, and the only thing demanded of them was studying.
We're going to have the lowest birth rates on record for awhile and I can't imagine what wisdom they'll ever give. Whining forever!
Late Boomers only go back to about '58 births, maybe '57. I don't know why, but they do. There's a pretty noticeable change between early or mid-'50s births and late '50s / early '60s births. (Right Steve?)
ReplyDeleteWell observed. '57 was the demographic peak of the Baby Boom, and the Oil Crisis hit in 1974, just as those kids reached adulthood. So, late boomers entered a weaker and more crowded job market, and they didn't overcome their poor economic start until the 1980s.
On the cultural side, the rebellious phase of the '60s had burnt itself out by 1974. Looking at highschool yearbooks, the late '60s yearbooks are full crewcuts and prom coiffeurs, with the odd hippie rebel; by '74-'76, it's long hair, jean jackets, the natural look. The sexual revolution was over. I remember how odd it was to find girls in Europe who weren't quite sure they should be having sex, an attitude found only among religious shut-ins where I grew up. And the music was crap.
But roll back time five years, to the early or mid boomers, everything had been different. Still, despite its depressive aspects, I felt it was a time of freedom and hedonism, and so while it probably corrupted me, I'm glad I lived through it.
I take back what I said about Millenials will have nothing to offer in the future. Just as those late boomers and early Gen x's took the value of their upbringings for granted and focused on materialism in their own kids, so I hope and believe the Millenials will feel a hole in their own lives and want to emphasize virtues and character in their own kids.
ReplyDeleteMy little brother has wrecked four cars and each time, had it replaced immediately with a brand new one which is just the tip of the iceberg of how spoiled he is. But I now see in him such an intense craving for "authenticity" and being respected as a man. He's gotten into country music and lists the Bible as a favorite book on his Facebook page and has even started going to Mass. Sure, he's still shacking up, but he's orienting himself in the right direction which is difficult for someone who has never had to before in his life. He gets put down as a "poseur", which I think is unfair, but I suspect he'll raise his children far differently than he was raised.
>> Israel(with 300 illegal nukes)
ReplyDeleteout nukes are illegal, but yours are "legal"?
How do you figure that?
The article by Pollack is the new entertainment - better it is the new mythology. There is a perceived demand for it by editors, those editors think it is clever and a certain class of people like reading or thinking about that kind of crap. Outside the university, no one can even read it. But this is the kind of pure manure that gets you an A in a university or even prep high school in the US now. Naturally she indulges in it - that is how you are taught in the US. It is a religious doctrine - like arguing about angels on pins. But I would guarantee in her personal advice to family, she sounds a bit different, when it comes to real choices. This is no different than a Hollywood screenwriter writing about a brave inner city public school where they play chess and learn math - he still sends his child to a private prep school.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, the whole thing's been contradictory from the very beginning.
ReplyDeleteThinking like the quoted commenter's would seem to confirm Steve's theory of binary-oriented mental impairment.
But with 'men' like Bush II, Quayle, McCain, Scott McConnell, Walter Russell Mead, and etc, where are wise conservative men?"
ReplyDeleteQuayle was wise.
"out nukes are illegal, but yours are "legal"?
ReplyDeleteHow do you figure that?"
Oh, that one's easy: in the same way "diversity" is a disaster for you but a boon - according to you - for everyone else.
Mr Anon, when you're given lemons make lemonade. Their nukes are illegal because people buy that idea, so use it and thereby prime people to be more receptive to more substantive critiques.
"And a lot of them won't even be grandmothers, or even mothers, and will have no clue as to why."
ReplyDeleteThe demographic hit to the lunatic brigades is one of the few bright lights of the cultural catastrophe. It's a real pity they were able to take so many good people with them though.
"Quayle was wise."
ReplyDeleteYou're pulling a Quayle.