Consider the vast edifice of advice and aspiration for men concerning "marriage"; the question of the "how to get a girl" type - including all that "manosphere" stuff.
The problem is in the generic "a girl" - and that problem is not solved by narrowing the search to a particular sub-type of woman: the problem is that people are encouraged to seek a type, not a person.
And the problem is not that such advice does not work, the problem is that so many people actually agree with the quest for a category - internalize it, believe it, defend it. The problem is when this kind of thinking leads to people getting what they want.
If you want "a girl", the deepest problem is that you may get exactly that: a relationship with someone who is regarded as a member of a generic category.
The problem is that - like the arranged marriage of a monarch - you (as member of the category King) will marry a representative of the generic category of "young beautiful princess" - rather than any specific and actual human Being.
And the worst is when you are so shallow or corrupted as to be satisfied that this is indeed the ideal of your life!
Of course there is some truth in some generic categorizations; and it may be that marrying a woman of a certain category is better than not being married. But that is a "lesser of evils" argument, which can be used to justify anything (even voting in elections!) - not the basis of your life quest.
"A girl" is not what is needed - "a girl" (not even a particular sub-category of woman, tailored to your personal preference) will not and cannot satisfy our profound and inescapable spiritual aspirations and hopes and needs.
What is needed for marriage, and what ought therefore to be aimed-at, is not a girl but "the girl" - a particular person.
Now; this idea of "the one", or "the soulmate" has been much abused and is often ridiculed - often rightly so.
Because like all the highest of human aspirations - including the search for God - it may be corrupted into an excuse for selfishness, hedonism, spite, status-seeking, money-seeking, cowardice; or any other of the sins to which Men are prone.
Yet, when all has been said, and rightly said; in this world, if we do not seek the right goal, if we do not rightly direct our intentions and efforts; we are very unlikely to attain what we most deeply need (or anything like that) given our own weaknesses, and this world of so many and such adverse possibilities.
My point is that what we most need (and rightly need) as individual and unique human Beings in this mortal life, is specific and typically unique; not generic.
This applies to many thing - generically, one might say!
For instance; we don't need "a religion" (such as King Chas. III has so often recommended). Different religions offer very different things.
If we want what Jesus offers us (resurrected eternal life in Heaven) then we need "Christianity": we need to follow Jesus.
Or if, as Christians, we desire direct spiritual experience; then we ought not to seek this generically.
For instance, it is a mistake to seek to speak with angels - because angels are a category.
The proper aim is to have an experience of "an angel"; but a relationship with some particular spirit-Being. And, as such - as with Human Beings, from a motive rooted-in love of that Being... not in order to get something from an angel; such as help or advice.
(And the same with Saints - who I take to be resurrected Men.)
This is one aspect of the reality that creation is rooted in love, and love is (contrary to so many common and false conceptualizations) between particular Beings; and our highest and deepest life as loving (and creating) Beings is about actual, particular other-persons.
Any good and real marriage that fulfils our deepest yearnings and is a fundamental basis for our mortal life will be unique, as a fact; rooted in an unique and loving relationship between two absolutely specific human Beings.
The more generic the marriage, the more it conforms to an institution relating to categories of persons; the less it will satisfy our fundamental needs and hopes.
Because when we regard our-selves as primarily members of a category, and seek for a relationship with another person on the basis of their categorical membership - then we have certainly subordinated the status of love in our life, and we may have excluded love altogether.
So, we should be careful what we want and seek for. When we need some-thing specific, we err if we seek something generic. Especially because we may then get what we want: get that and nothing more.
People are imprisoned by their perception of the world. I believe the “manosphere” was essentially organized around taking advantage (or else defending oneself against) a perceptual sickness observed in many women in their categories of men — that one must playing-act being a certain type of man in order to be maximally attractive. I am unqualified to judge the extent to which this was common and the advice useful. Regardless, I can tell that when one begins to think like this and cater to illusions of other people’s perception, you are arriving in clown-world and the simple mating of animals begins to seem more dignified. I think of what Lear says,
ReplyDeleteWhen we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools
I understand that people need categories to organize the complexity human nature; and that people do indeed so often conform to categories. But to be free one must be determined by one’s true nature and not the impersonal forces which strive to produce mankind as though items in a factory. And if one is free then one should be able to see the freedom, or at least the potential for freedom, in others.
@Adam. Yes.
ReplyDeleteOf course, all errors that become in any degree popular can only do so because they contain elements of truth; and this applies to various of the manosphere perspectives and insights, but also applies to the mainstream leftist perspectives that the mansphere is reacting against.
My observation is that this categorical way of thinking is that once established it tends to feed upon itself, and get more extreme; and becomes self-fulfilling. Perhaps especially so when reinforced by social interactions (including quasi-social interactions online).
Thus, even honest and informed generic advice and insight does not have a care for that which is unique and free in each of us - and we should not expect that it does.
What is strange (and may be an pathological inversion of modernity) is that while people seem almost eager to recognize that the life-advice of those who love us as individual persons (such as our parents or siblings), has its limitations and may be self-interested; many people are absurdly credulous and trusting when it comes to the life-advice of people (online pundits, journalists, professionals...) who neither know nor care anything about us, and for whom we are just category members!
When I first encountered manosphere ideas I found them highly disgusting/disturbing - I’m not sure exactly why, as I had never felt any affinity to the feminism against which it reacted; perhaps it was because I found the ideas compelling but at the same time destructive of noble sentiment and aspiration. I can accept them now with more equanimity since I see them as being true but only as an expression of biological/racial degeneracy, perhaps unique to our time period where, for example, strength and intelligence are viewed as incompatible qualities (hence the American film stereotypes of the “jock” and the “nerd”). (At least I doubt that such ideas would be comprehensible to the ancient Greeks or the Hebrews or the Aryans - I was thinking the other day even that what we call “cringe”, they would not have had an equivalent concept). I have no way of proving this thesis, and as this is a very complex and obscure matter it can hardly be complete, except that it did give me satisfaction on an issue that had been troubling me for some time.
ReplyDeleteBruce,
ReplyDeleteThis really distills it! In almost every aspect of life it is exactly this. I have recently been thinking about how much I love praying now and how much I didn't like praying when I was a young man and it comes down to the spirit of your post. When I was young I was taught to pray a certain generic way. Now when I pray it is a very individual conversation with God and I can feel the warmth and love of God radiating through me. I understand why and how monks can spend all day praying. Before I thought they must be suffering because I sure would have been.
@Adam, "Regardless, I can tell that when one begins to think like this and cater to illusions of other people’s perception, you are arriving in clown-world and the simple mating of animals begins to seem more dignified."
Great line. Yes, it is no use play acting because you're selecting for traits in others that don't suit you.
@Adam - "When I first encountered manosphere ideas I found them highly disgusting/disturbing "
ReplyDeleteMe too. I suppose it was because it was teaching salesmanship and manipulation and applying it to transcendentally important relationships.
Plus, a good deal of it is half-baked and pseudo-fake evolutionary biology, which was my main scientific focus for a long time.
Later, I realized that - to my mind - there was a fair bit of psychopathology (of several kinds) evident among the authors - some struck me as having roots in personal afflictions, eliciting a certain sympathy; others seemed to display psychopathic traits; others were merely pandering in hope of making money/ gaining status.
As I've often written, the modern ideas of publicly-celebrated "masculinity" strike me as actually feminised and indistinguishable from what was normal in homosexual culture - especially the emphasis on looks, style, fashions, creating an instant impression, weight training, hormones etc.
But I have come to believe that this is probably underpinned by generational biological (probably genetic) changes - the "mouse utopia" idea of deleterious mutational accumulation. https://mouseutopia.blogspot.com/
Which is something with which we are All and increasingly afflicted (manifesting in many and differing ways), and a problem for which there is essentially no answer.
@Rich - Thanks for the endorsement, and the interesting account of your experience.
ReplyDelete