Even as the same thought was brewing in my mind, a few of the bloggers I read, including Roissy, Novaseeker and Whiskey, have written about happiness recently. It strikes me that it’s become almost taboo, for men in particular, to ponder what it is that makes us happy. There is always the thinly veiled suggestion that – for men – seeking happiness and fulfillment is selfish. No, we are not supposed to be happy — rather, we should be dutiful drudges who shut up and take what’s handed to us. Or, if lucky, we can be characters in the fantasies of girls. It is a real inversion of the picture feminists have painted of the travails of women in days of yore, as the common man has been relegated to the supporting cast in the national drama.
Now, this isn’t entirely women’s fault — there is a certain species of man who is perfectly happy with this arrangement: the “masters of the universe” who control obscene amounts of wealth and power. One could make the argument that these guys and their feminist legions are creating a truly revolutionary situation. It brings to mind the end of the French monarchy, with the king, surrounded by ladies and gentlemen of high rank, slipping ever further from the common people as he moves entirely within a world of privilege built on the backs of miserable people.
Achieving happiness has been one of the most important goals of philosophers from the beginning of recorded history, and probably far longer. There have been countless methods proposed, and they vary greatly in kind. Some suggest wealth is the key, others the simple life. Some pleasure, and others asceticism. There are so many proposed methods to attain a state of satisfaction that one couldn’t possibly hope to try them all in a lifetime.
However, despite the wide variation in methods for achieving happiness, they all have the same goal. That is no coincidence, and one can state with absolute assurance that the purpose of philosophy has never been to achieve misery. So, as common American men, what is the point in accepting a situation that denies us the opportunity to pursue happiness? Isn’t it written in our own Declaration of Independence, after all, that we are entitled to the “pursuit of happiness?”
It’s time to start thinking in terms of what makes us happy. Every man ought to look inside himself and ask what it is about his life that satisfies him, and what does not. In time, I think we will find that although men’s preferences and joys are as diverse as the people of our country, those things that make of miserable will be remarkably similar. And this is the beauty of communication and movements for change — things really can be changed for the better once people find that they share a common impediment to their satisfaction with life.
9 responses so far ↓
1 novaseeker // May 8, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Definitely very true, Welmer.
It’s a coalition between the super-dominant and most of the women. That was the core engine that enabled feminism.
And precisely for this reason it is not sustainable. It cannot last, when most men are disinvested, disengaged and unhappy. That will run civilization down eventually.
I agree very much that it would be good for men to truly consider what makes *us* happy, and look at the obstacles that we face in common to achieving whatever personal happiness we wish.
More communication and comparing of notes among men is needed. We’re at the beginning of something big, I think. Even in the last few years the attitudes among men have been changing a *lot* in response to the current environment. All of that is good, and we have to keep it going, deepen it, and broaden it.
2 Lukobe // May 9, 2009 at 2:22 am
I’m all for this. One thing to remember, of course, is that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution — so we can’t fall back on the supreme law of the land. But yes. A land of unhappy men is itself an unhappy land, sooner or later. (Of course, the same goes for a land of unhappy women.)
3 novaseeker // May 9, 2009 at 4:36 am
I have to say that nothing is more disheartening than seeing some of the self-hating defeatism among younger men. It is a self-defeating guarantee of unhappiness, I think.
Welmer, I know you read Roissy from time to time. I’m thinking specifically of David Alexander there, not as his individual person, but as a representative of a certain mindset. Using PUA terminology, he seems to have convinced himself that no women are capable of loving anyone but an extreme alpha male, and that therefore any system which pairs beta males together with women is worthless – because he’s convinced himself that no women will ever love, want, or be happy with any beta male, and that the sex and love would be fake, false and worthless. And he seems to have convinced himself that himself and other men like him are far better off with porn and masturbation than they are with women, whom he assumes are simply incapable of loving a man like him. This is an example of what happens when certain general trends are absolutized and calcified into an unrealistically hardened model.
While there is a grain of truth that in a more “open” system, such as the one we have today, women tend to “drift up” towards the top men, in no way is this absolute, fixed, or inevitable. Not all women are slutting their way through their 20s hopping from one alpha bed to the next. There are plenty of women who only sleep in relationships, and plenty who have serial relationships with “beta” men, and end up happily married to one. It deeply concerns me that the worldview, and in particular the view of women in general, of people like DA is being formed based on a set of rules and assumptions that apply to the kind of young women who hang out in bars and clubs, and the priorities and assumptions of these women. PUA’s assumptions are as good as it goes for that setting, where the goal is simply getting laid. They are not very good for projecting out to society as whole in a general, hardened way.
This may be surprising coming from me, as I often talk about how the current system enables women to behave badly, leave their husbands for alpha men and so on. And all of that is true. Yet we have to remember that while the system is bad in allowing and rewarding this behavior, not all women engage in it. When you move from (a) the perspective that the system is bad in enabling bad behavior by women to (b) all women are corrupt and only want to screw certain men and use others for money … you begin to develop a worldview that is distorted and ultimately self-defeating, as we can see in a character like DA. This actually undermines happiness, and can be a huge stumbling-block for men.
I fear that men like DA are just consigning themselves to a life of unhappiness because of some seriously flawed assumptions. He speaks of anomie, of building a civilization without male investment being needed, or of an increasing feminization of “beta” males such that such men essentially are indoctrinated to put up with openly practiced polyandry. These kind of thoughts are not happiness inducing, nor are they realistic. Instead, they appear to be a convenient justification for personal inertia, combined with a healthy dose of self-pity.
As I said, this isn’t about the writer behind DA, but the mindset that it represents, which is not limited to him. It’s true that when men think the cards are stacked against them, many retreat from the system. This is not always a bad thing, because it gives a man space to consider what is really taking place, and what his options are. But if you do so harboring false assumptions about that reality, it can do more harm than good.
While I see great value in the PUA movement in bringing men together and teaching men how to deal with women in certain settings more successfully, I really shudder at some of the “hard and fastness” of it all. It can lead to intellectual dead-ends, which prevent men from seeing reality clearly and working constructively with themselves and other men to deal with the real issues – instead of seeing the current behavior of women in bars and clubs as indicative of all women at all times in history, and relegating oneself to a kind of dustbin. That’s no future for men – either collectively or individually.
I think I will make a post about this in my blog.
4 Welmer // May 9, 2009 at 5:21 am
This is the problem with blogging — lack of editorial assistance before one publishes a post. Sometimes I feel like I’m shooting from the hip to keep the content coming.
Thanks for noticing that. I didn’t mean to suggest that the law could help enforce the pursuit of happiness (it was just sloppiness, actually), but rather use it as an example of the kind of revolutionary sentiment that helps animate people to work for changing the situation.
I think it’s more destabilizing with unhappy men. That’s how you get wars. But unhappy women make unhappy men, I suppose, but then again very happy ones often do so as well. Probably calm women make the happiest men.
5 whiskey // May 9, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Nova —
It’s a question ultimately of game theory and economics. Most men want a woman they can have exclusive sexual access to, and just as importantly bond with. Which in turn requires relatively few sexual partners.
CERTAINLY not the model of a professional woman having lots and lots of sex partners and then happily settling down with some “beta male.”
The beta guy is going to be jealous and knows he’s the last not first choice of the woman, who would all things considered rather be in Philadelphia, banging Alphas. As a practical matter, most men in this situation will not bond with the woman, who will endlessly and rather openly compare him to past (and to her mind, superior) past lovers, and regardless the effect of hormones released during sex to cause bonding will be as degraded as the junkie on his/her zillionth high.
While DA is an extreme, he’s not unrepresentative of reality. Most men CANNOT be happy with women’s current situation. They don’t have exclusive sexual access. They are generally the 52nd served [Assume about 3 sex partners for a girl 16-18, about 8 in College, and about 4 per year, likely an undercount, ages 22-32.] Being a woman’s 52nd lover is … well you’re just another guy in line. Nothing special and very replaceable.
This describes, sad to say, most women. About 75% at least. Which means the majority makes the rules. There is no way for a guy to know if the woman in question is one with few sex partners, a relatively unjaded attitude, not a bad-boy addiction, a desire for Alpha dominance, and so on. So he’ll just treat all women like they’re on their 52nd partner.
We cannot turn back the clock. Men are going to be unhappy, vastly disconnected and pretty hostile to women, and will indeed take petty and ugly revenge on women, particularly those past attractiveness, with every opportunity.
Pretty much everything else besides marriage and family is icing on the cake for men. And now due to women’s unlimited choice, women are completely uninterested in most men, making marriage and family a thing for men’s fathers, not them.
That’s “a pre-revolutionary condition” according to the Marxists.
What seems to be the case is that in one sense, DA is CORRECT. Women, given unlimited freedom DO NOT WANT MOST MEN. Not as sex partners. Not as husbands. Not as anything but “gay pals” who support them emotionally and do not ever , EVER express messy and icky sexual desire for them.
Now, the corollary for that is the “Silverado Moment.” Where Kevin Kline realizes that pal Linda Hunt cannot be hurt if bad guy Brian Dennehy is in fact, dead.
Most men will realize, in order to be happy, women’s freedom, economic and sexual, has to be curtailed. This means most men, in order to be happy (a family and wife of their own, not shared by other men, and “safe” from at-will divorce) MUST overturn the Welfare State and with it, women’s freedom. Forcing them out of the workplace and with the choice of marriage or poverty.
Now, that’s remarkably ugly. An ugly choice for an ugly world. But that’s where we are at.
DA is pretty spot-on regarding the fantasy of women actually having genuine love for men who are not Alpha in the current situation.
What he fails to grasp and what most men probably will, is that women are flexible enough to feel genuine love for men who are the only barrier between themselves and disaster, poverty, and misery.
The other alternative of course is simply thug it up, or PUA it up, somewhere between Roissy and Fifty Cent. If I had to put money that’s where it would lay. And most women would be perfectly happy with that.
After all, the woman with the face transplant says she still loves her ex-husband and might consider getting back together with him. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Buffy loved Spike, all the more AFTER he raped her. And no matter how much star Sarah Michelle Gellar loathed that storyline with the heat of a thousand red-hot suns, it was probably socially realistic. Buffy’s female fans, loved that storyline and the Spike character even more after he raped Buffy.
Adam Smith said there was a lot of ruin in a nation, and I expect we will find out exactly how much. I’d lay odds 80% most men will be halfway between 50 Cent and Roissy, and a side bet of 20% that men will simply push women out of public life and into the nuclear family.
6 Lukobe // May 11, 2009 at 12:47 am
52? Which women are you hanging out with?
7 novaseeker // May 11, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Yeah, I just think it’s not reflecting reality to say that 75% of women have 50+ sex partners. Women can’t pull that off, Whiskey. Not 75% of them.
The professional, average looking women I know in real life who are 35+ are more in the 10 or less category. I know of one exception to that, and she’s likely 20-30 based on what I have observed over the years. But your estimates are way, way high. The number of women who sleep around like that, at least in the 35+ set (and I mean when they were younger) is much much smaller than you’re estimating there.
I would say that the prettiest girls are slutting around, many of them, because they can. But that’s not most women. Far from it, actually. Four different men per year — not very many women 35+ lived like that in their 20s.
I will allow that it may be different for this generation of 20-something women — I do not know many of them personally, and it could be that almost all of them, regardless of appearance, are bedding men left, right and centre. I have my doubts, but again I do not know many women in that age bracket very well. But the 35+ set did not behave that way in their 20s — at least not most of them. There was that segment, but it was less than 50%.
I also do not think it’s true that most women do not want most men. I think PUAs have convinced themselves of that based on the preferences of women in bars and clubs. In those settings, YES, the women are going for the top men — that’s the kind of woman you meet there. But in no way is that the case across the board. I know many women who wouldn’t give those guys the time of day, honestly. Not that these women are any better off – their pickiness has left them single and childless in their mid-40s. But they’re not out banging thugs, that’s for sure.
I see this kind of talk as being something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: men want the hottest women, find these women only want the top men, and then conclude that all women want the top men. I think men look past a lot of average looking women who would be good partners because the men themselves only want the hot women, and don’t really care to date or marry an average looking woman who isn’t thugbait. Now I very much believe marriage to any woman is dicey because of the family law today, but still … of first marriages, over 50% do not end in divorce. The number is even lower for first marriages with kids (between 30 and 40% end in divorce, which means 60-70% of the time the marriage lasts). This means that the stereotype that PUAs and other MRAs tend to throw around that almost all women marry beta males to support them and then divorce them to go back to thugbeds is really more hype than reality. Does it happen? Hell yes, it does. Many of us who are active in these circles have been burned by it. But statistically that situation is outnumbered by marriages that actually last. I’m not saying everyone is very happy in those marriages, but they are not playing along a story line that says every woman behaves exactly the same, can’t wait to go back to thugbed, and divorces and fleeces her husband. The issue is that the law permits this, so some women *will* do it, and that weakens fatherhood and society overall. But that’s quite different from saying that all women are doing it, when statistics don’t bear that out, especially when there are kids involved.
I don’t think it’s productive for men to exaggerate the issues. It just dilutes our credibility. The issues are real — in divorces, men get screwed, and kids get screwed out of their fathers. That needs to be fixed. But it clearly is not the case that all women are doing this, and in fact it’s a minority of first marriages with children that end in divorce. These women are staying married, and I don’t think they are married to alphathug.
8 c noir // May 19, 2009 at 6:12 pm
It strikes me that it’s become almost taboo, for men in particular, to ponder what it is that makes us happy. There is always the thinly veiled suggestion that – for men – seeking happiness and fulfillment is selfish. No, we are not supposed to be happy
Welmer, I don’t think this is the fault of women. If anything, it’s men who shut other men down when they want to discuss their *holds breath* f.e.e.l.i.n.g.s. I can recall attempting to engage the men on roissy’s blog in such a discussion and I was shut down very fast.
9 Epoxytocin No. 87 // May 23, 2009 at 3:30 am
@Novaseeker
How old are you, Novaseeker?
If you’re a middle-aged guy who hasn’t been on the prowl for a while, you’d be shocked at how much things have changed just in the last 25 years.
Usually the most flagrant slutting-around is done by girls in the second and third tiers of “prettiness”, who aren’t quite desirable enough to secure commitment from an alpha but are plenty good enough to secure a one-night stand or brief fling.
The prettiest ones still slut it up, sure, but not as much. At least on average.
“The 35+ set” was the last demographic raised by parents who came of age before the massive upending of traditional values that was the Sixties.
Given this, it is reasonable, if not to be expected, that “the 35+ set” will have little in common with later generations.
It’s different now.
Way, way, way different.
Bars and clubs are more important than they were in previous generations, because of the steady dwindling of other venues in which to play the mating game.
Corporate workplaces are no longer viable places for non-alpha men to meet women, since “sexual harassment” legislation has criminalized mere flirting by men deemed unattractive.
Most urban and suburban churches, once a solid hunting ground for conservative family-minded young women, are becoming a bad joke. How many marriage-minded churchgoing women in coastal cities are under 25 and reasonably attractive?
For many men in coastal cities, working typical corporate work schedules, bars and clubs are THE place that’s left. These guys can try their luck at “day game” on the weekends, of course, but the kinds of environments at which typical boomer couples met are mostly rural relics of Americana.
–
Don’t ignore the effects of urbanization.
In rural areas and small cities, you’re probably right.
In the rapidly burgeoning urban coastal areas – which, unfortunately, is where the jobs are for most young upper-middle-class men these days – you’re not so right.
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Nova, I don’t think there has ever been a single social movement, in the entire history of mankind, that has succeeded WITHOUT “exaggerating the issues”.
Not one.
Consciousness is not raised, let alone altered, by milquetoast statistics such as “hey, over 50% of marriages still last, so, yeah, there’s a problem, but it’s still a problem of manageable magnitude”.
It just isn’t.
If we don’t exaggerate the issues, we will sit on our asses until the problem DOES become unmanageable.
As much as I hate to say it, this is one thing that we MUST learn from feminists: Exaggerate, exaggerate, exaggerate.
Feminists engineered what has probably been the most successful and influential (and pernicious) social movement in history, by using NOTHING but exaggeration, hyperbole, and pure whole-cloth fabrication.
We can’t fight that with purely rational dialogue, Nova. We can’t.
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