A lot of creative types and leaders are not the most obedient people, nor do they always pursue the goals society expects them to strive for. Many have mediocre credentials from your typical corporate or professional standpoint. However, what they do tend to have is a great deal of experience or native charisma — the kind you can’t measure with diplomas (a lot of them are highly intelligent as well, but that’s another matter).

Some of our greatest generals, such as Ulysses Grant and Dwight Eisenhower, had rather undistinguished performances at West Point, but went on to become essential to victory. Neither Steve Jobs nor Bill Gates finished college, and we all know what they went on to achieve. The examples go on and on, the point being that people can succeed and effect change through unconventional routes. And, given the great achievements of some of these unconventional types, it would be foolish to attempt to shut off all but the conventional paths to success.

Unfortunately, our society is becoming more and more obsessed with standardized credentials, even as there has been a broad devaluation of the credentials themselves. This means that although it no longer means all that much to have a higher degree (due to affirmative action, grade inflation and other factors), the degrees themselves have become more of a necessity for even entry-level jobs that require few skills beyond typing and filing. This is preventing plenty of talented people – mainly young men – from obtaining positions in organizations in which they could potentially contribute a great deal.

For example, the recently departed John Hughes, who directed a number of popular teen movies during the 1980s, got his start as a copywriter after dropping out of the University of Arizona at the age of twenty. After working on some successful ad campaigns, Hughes tried his hand at writing screenplays, eventually succeeding with films such as The Breakfast Club that those of us in my demographic grew up with.

Today, John Hughes likely wouldn’t have gone anywhere. He would have applied for a copywriting job and been passed over, most likely in favor of a young, single urban female with an MA in English. If he had eventually succeeded as a writer, it would have been in spite of the fact that he would have had to take jobs outside of the creative field, and probably later in life. It is doubtful that he would have enjoyed the same degree of success, even in the unlikely event that he did manage to support himself in a creative field.

Of course, there are fields where credentials are important, such as law, medicine and architecture, but even here we have a bit of a structural problem. Getting into these fields requires an initial four-year degree before specialization. Why not allow young people with two-year degrees to apply directly to law school or medical school? The truth is that the extra two years of college are redundant for those who go on to become high-level professionals, and might discourage unconventional types from following through and joining professions in which they could be quite successful. Additionally, most Americans do not obtain four-year degrees, and most that do do not need them.

All we are doing with this overemphasis on credentials is locking the door to talented young people and wasting the energy and money of others who could be gainfully employed or in training a couple years earlier than otherwise. For young men, many of whom are not suited to the culture of the modern educational institution, this is becoming an increasingly onerous burden. It is time to break the monopoly on young lives held by higher education, and cut it down to the proper size. We should give the young some more freedom to define themselves, and clear the path to a career and meaningful participation in society instead of shutting them off behind an ivy curtain.

What confuses me is why so many online media companies continue to hire clueless, technically incompetent PR girls with worthless communications degrees when they could hire on guys like Ferdinand to do the job four of them couldn’t. It’s almost like welfare. What are all these marketing chicks really adding to the economy? Are they really productive at all?

Frankly, I don’t think so. If I were some publishing bigshot, I’d hire smart young guys to handle the tech and SEO for online presence, and hire a few girls with communications degrees to fetch coffee and keep the bathrooms sparkling clean. If they proved some ability to write I’d give them a job doing so, but not without some real results first. Even these feminist websites with good traffic rankings, such as jezebel.com, couldn’t even come close to standing on their own. Jezebel sits on top of gawker.com, and the others are little more than tweeting fiestas that call Hannah Montana to mind. Here’s a Taki Mag example of a tweetfest in action: Tweet Fight.

Inane, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, until fathers around America, quit paying their daughters’ $1,200/year iPhone bills this will continue. Hopefully, this will happen sooner than people expect, slashing tween garbage sites like so much stubble after the harvest.

In the meanwhile, I’ll bet on smart young guys who know how to use all the tools at their disposal. You should too.

So the idea is to have a system where writers can log in and post their material, just as one might with blogger or wordpress.com. It won’t be particularly difficult to do so, so I don’t foresee many problems with this. However, if contributors want, I can add some perks, such as personalized email handled by gmail and a google docs group for sharing files. Personally, I think this would be kind of cool and probably helpful for organization/coordination, but I’m not sure whether others feel this is necessary.

Basically, this publication will be an online structure that will allow us to have a larger impact than we can with a bunch of disparate blogs. Naturally, everyone should keep their own personal blogs for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the links they will provide to the publication, but having the ability to concentrate content on one site will greatly enhance traffic and exposure for our writing and ideas. It will also be a place to share ideas amongst each other.

Concepts that ought to be incorporated into the name include:

• Freedom
• Action
• Confidence
• Purpose
• Masculinity

A short name, preferably only one or two words, would be best. A name that would allow for a good logo would be helpful as well. Suggestions for names or additional concepts are welcome — I need some food for thought.

Many have blamed “chivalry” for the breathtakingly irrational and hypocritical actions and views of the American establishment when it comes to gender equality and justice, but that is an insufficient explanation. Chivalry, even at its most vile, is a mere juvenile sort of commingling of morality and sexuality — a youth’s fantasy of winning a fair maiden through acts of valor. However, for the aging man who sits on the bench and dishes out judgment, the gray-haired politician who casts his vote, and the polished executive in his suite, there is no fantasy of slaying dragons and storming castles, for he has already done those things. Yet there remains the smoldering desire for the maiden, and it is reciprocated.

Of course, it is natural for men to retain an attraction for fertile women throughout their lives, and this is recognized in all cultures. However, in America it appears to have become a pathology because of American family dynamics.

In my article on Carl Jung and Game, I quoted Jung and his analysis of American marriages. One theme that Jung found particularly problematic was the mother-son relationship of American wives to their husbands. Jung states:

[...] up to this time your American man isn’t ready for real independence in woman. He only wants to be the obedient son of his mother-wife.

Jung goes on at length about the dysfunctional husband/wife dynamic in American marriages, suggesting that something is seriously askew in our society’s management of sexuality. Jung focused on the damage this was doing to American women, and how they were wandering confused, unsure of what they really want or where they belong. But Jung did not address the effects this sexual confusion might have on men. It would be natural for a man, married to a woman he sees as a mother figure, to transfer his passion elsewhere, and this is what has happened in the American family and American society.

As the woman who becomes a wife becomes the mother figure, the husband’s passion – both emotional and sexual – is transferred to the maiden, who is the daughter figure. The American man, who is the “obedient son” in his marriage, becomes the lover in paternal relations with younger women, and the confused American woman (whether actually a maiden or not) develops a romantic attachment to men who are father figures.

This principle is illustrated by a number of American and British works of art. It may be Charles Dickens who, in one of the defining works of Victorian fiction, best demonstrates this dynamic at work. In Tale of Two Cities, Lucy Manette, the epitome of woman as doll on a pedestal, is depicted as having a very intense relationship with her father, Dr. Manette. Dickens’ portrayal of Lucy as pious, beautiful girl, whose father fondles a lock of her hair, is positively orgasmic. There is nothing unnatural about a father’s love for a daughter, but Lucy clearly plays the spiritual and emotional role of wife in her relationship with her father. It is ironic that Dickens transfers this very Anglo relationship to a French family, because there is typically a closer bond between father and son rather than father and daughter in France.

An even earlier rendition of this peculiarly British tendency exists in Tom Jones, one of the first English novels, written by Henry Fielding in the mid-18th century. In Tom Jones Squire Western has an especially close relationship with his daughter Sophia. Western, a boorish man with excessive appetites and a fondness for the hunt, is violently protective of his daughter, who cares for him and sings to him when he is drunk and sentimental. So we see that our American dilemma is nothing new, and was in all likelihood inherited from the motherland.

Not long ago, I watched a very American portrayal of the same dynamic at work. Lonesome Dove, the iconic American TV series about a great Western cattle drive, plays directly to the paternalist fantasy. In Lonesome Dove a couple of old Texas rangers, Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae, and Captain Woodrow Call, decide to drive a herd to Montana and establish the first ranch in the territory. In the most important subplot, former colleague Jake Spoon, who is significantly younger than Gus and Woodrow, decides to take the town hooker, Lorena Wood, to San Francisco. Gus has an ongoing relationship with Lorena, which combines both paternal and sexual elements. Jake Spoon follows the drive for a while, leaving Lorena for a time while he goes to town to gamble. Gus, naturally, has at her, winning rights to a “poke” through a card game, in which he cheats to win. Lorena apparently doesn’t mind so much that he cheated.

Lorena is stolen by an Indian named Blue Duck, and subsequently rescued by Gus. In the meanwhile, Jake Spoon takes up with some bandits, hoping to get some money out of the deal. Jake’s bandits turn out to be murderous bad men, and Gus eventually catches Jake Spoon after killing the bandits. Gus stoically hangs Spoon, acting as judge, jury and executioner.

The rivalry between Gus and Jake Spoon hinges on Lorena, who is a beautiful and very young woman. Gus plays the father figure to Lorena (despite having sex with her from time to time), while Jake is the husband figure. The climax of the subplot is clearly the hanging of Jake Spoon, which symbolizes the killing of the husband by the father. This act epitomizes the relationship of the paternalist power structure to the American husband and wife. It is, in essence, the father murdering the husband to assert his authority over and rights to his daughter. This act is played out in millions of divorces across America, sometimes quite literally. It is the secret, smoldering passion that drives the abuse of American men by the paternalist power structure.

This is why social conservatives often come off as inarticulate when defending “traditional” marriage. They may point to social benefits of marriage, and virtually everyone would agree, but when they attempt to find someone to blame, their finger always ends up pointed at young men, upon whom they heap abuses such as VAWA, summary arrests and dispossessions based on a woman’s crocodile tears, unconstitutional and coercive child support and custody laws, and slanderous accusations of sloth and effeminacy.

They are not driven as much by an altruistic desire to improve society as they are by the lack of sexual and emotional fulfillment in their own relationships with their mother-wives. They find fulfillment of these desires through an incestuous relationship, both symbolic and real, with the daughters of America, and they wage war against America’s sons with all the primitive passion of savages raiding a village to carry off its maidens.

1. More efficient browsing

In terms of exposure, this is probably the most important. There’s no doubt that several of us share a lot of subscribers, and it will be easier for our readers to browse one site than it is to hop from one domain to another. Additionally, those who might read us every once in a while but aren’t regulars will be more motivated to do so if it only takes one bookmark. Even devotees of jezebel and feministing, who probably browse our blogs from time to time, will likely find a central site much more convenient, and despite our differences we do want them reading us as well (they will link us and increase publicity).

2. Automatically enhanced SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is what pulls readers into a site through searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. SEO is not so much a fancy trick as it is a matter of lots of relevant text. With a number of contributing writers (and commenters), we wil have reams of text in fairly short order, and the blog will pop up in searches with increasing regularity. SEO helps establish authority online, and serves as a means to steadily consolidate a reader base.

3. Traffic

I suspect that if we put together all the readers and traffic in our men’s blogosphere, we’d already have enough for a pretty potent website. Therefore, if we can consolidate into one blog, we will be starting in a pretty good position. One of the main means of directing traffic to a website is through links, and I trust we’ll all link to any central blog. Increasing traffic is really our number one goal, because we want to increase exposure and influence. Furthermore, high traffic will allow the site to pay for itself in time, and then individual content contributors can use the site as a launching pad for their own published work (e.g. books, videos).

The above three reasons are the most important, but there are a number of other advantages: More writers and readers on the same blog will promote cooperation and activism; a larger, more popular site will allow more specific focuses to emerge, such as regional groups; more powerful people will actually start to notice us, and; it may even allow some people to make this into a profession rather than a hobby.

Of course, there are always a few disadvantages. Managing a group of people is never easy, and this is why I don’t think anyone should even try. All of the bloggers I’m addressing here have already proven themselves quite capable of writing and posting material on their own, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

It may take a bit of trial and error for some to use WordPress (the CMS I plan on using), but I don’t see us as a bunch of technophobes. Maintaining the site may be a bit of a pain, but I’ve got a few years of experience doing this, and with the WP Codex I should be able to handle any issues without having to resort to outside help.

As far as rules are concerned, I think only one needs to be spelled out and enforced:

No copyright infringement!

As the domain holder I’ll be held responsible for this, and I can’t afford a copyright lawyer at this time. I think I’ll put up a private page for the benefit of writers that spells out how to avoid this. Contributions from attorneys or others with info on staying on the safe side here would be most welcome.

As for other guidelines, just use your own judgment and keep in mind that we will have thousands of readers, and hopefully, in time, many more than that!

All in all it will take some doing and a couple weeks to get it up and running, but once I get a commitment from enough writers (a half-dozen should do the trick for starters), I’ll go fetch a domain and start building the site.

Although there are definitely physiological differences between the races, social differences have the most weight in matters such as marriage, divorce, family creation and lifestyle. In no race is there as sharp a divide between the genders in terms of educational achievement as there is between black women and black men. Among whites, the achievement gap has been growing for some time but is still significantly lower than it is in blacks, and in Asians the genders are nearly even.

Furthermore, we see that black men fare poorly compared to black women on a number of other indices, such as life expectancy, where black women outlive black men by seven years, while white women outlive white men by only five, and incarceration rates, where black men are imprisoned at six times the rate white men are, while black women are only 3.5 times more likely to be in custody than white females.

Divorce rates are also different by race, being highest among blacks, followed by whites and finally Asians, who have the lowest rate. In fact, black men have largely given up on the idea of marrying black women at all, it being such a risky proposition.

So if we look at the big picture, black men have it hardest compared to their women, while Asian men enjoy something closer to gender equality in terms of quality of life and opportunity. Whites, where women clearly have it better than their men, but not to the same degree as black women, are once again in the middle.

When one considers long-term interracial partnerships, there must be something more than simple physical attraction keeping people together. I would argue that for men, a woman from a culture or social class in which men are treated better than in their own has inherently attractive qualities. Black men who prefer white women will often say that they like the more feminine, less challenging attitude of white women (certainly this is changing rapidly). White men will say that they appreciate the fact that Asian women will often behave more like a traditional wife. Both black and white women deride their men when they make these choices, but it would be disingenuous to claim that they are acting irrationally.

On the other hand, women may appreciate being in a relationship with a man whose social class gives them a greater status and degree of authority than they would have in their own. The Asian wife of a white man may find herself enjoying the fact that her husband does not take her efforts for granted, and gives her a wider, more authoritative role in the family. The white woman with a black man, for her part, may revel in the unprecedented power she has over the family, which is characteristic of a woman’s place in black families, which have become so dominated by women that fathers are often absent, marginalized creatures, hounded by the law and driven out of the home.

So I would argue that in interracial marriages, people are behaving rationally according to their self-interest. This is really what skews the rates in favor of black men marrying white women and white men marrying Asian women. In each scenario, individuals of both genders are making choices that they perceive as enhancing their quality of life. Although it may not be great consolation for the black women and Asian men who have difficulty finding partners, they can at least be thankful that their status in their own particular social class is higher than it is for those of the same gender in others.

In any event, society is changing rapidly, as usual, and it is likely that the behavior of different racial groups will change in ways that create new norms, shattering the current trend.

While conducting some online research, I happened across an article discovered by fellow-traveler Chuck Ross that he incorporated into one of his blog posts. Chuck has uncovered a very rich seam here (read the article online with free registration), as I will presently explain.

The article quotes Jung in its title, in which Jung says: “America [is] facing its most tragic moment. It will either master its mighty forces or be mastered by them.”

Jung expounds upon the theme of mastery, covering the struggle between different races, the elements, and finally the struggle between the sexes. It is the last to which he most conclusively attaches the epithet “tragedy.”

I was pleased to see that, as I proposed in my recent post on the “American Dilemma,” Jung also explains the American character as a result of its religious heritage:

They chose the greatest abstraction of all, the idea of God, and they sacrificed everything to that idea. Countries went down before it, families were broken up by it, armies were slaughtered in the attempt to learn to think of God, and your puritans, the Huguenots, and all those to whom the idea of God was greater than anything else, learned to think so well that they left their own homes, and you are the descendants of those people. An abstract thought is always ruthless. It is the most dangerous one to think, and the most marvellous.

Having established the character of the American people, he sets about diagnosing the ailment:

I study the individual to understand the race, and the race to understand the individual. I ask myself, What influence has the building of America had upon the American man and the American woman of today? I find that it is a good subject for the student of pschoanalysis.

There is only so much vital energy in any human being. We call that in our work the Libido. And I would say that the Libido of the American man is focused almost entirely upon his business, so that as a husband he is glad to have no responsibilities. He gives the complete direction of his family life over to his wife. This is what you call giving independence to the American woman. It is what I call the laziness of the American man. That is why he is so kind and polite in his home, and why he can fight so hard in his business. His real life is where his fight is. The lazy part of his life is where his family is.

The diagnosis is clear: America is the land of the Beta provider.

If Jung appears to be merging with Roissy here, just wait, it gets even better:

I made many observations on shipboard. I noticed that whenever the American husband spoke to his wife there was always a little melancholy note in his voice, as though he were not quite free: as though he were a boy talking to an older woman. he was always very polite and very kind, and paid her every respect. You could see that in her eyes he was not at all dangerous, and that she was not afraid of being mastered by him. But when anyone told him there was betting going on he would leave her, and his face became eager and full of desire, and his eyes would get very bright and his voice would get strong, and hard, and brutal.

Because this was written in 1912, the modern equivalent to the betting parlor would be the TV screen and a football game, where even docile, beta husbands will yell like barbarians.

The final passage of the article, which offers analysis and the cure, is startlingly prescient, predicting decades in advance the wholesale collapse of the American family. In fact, this final passage is so illuminating that I’ll transcribe the entire thing on my blog, so that readers who don’t have time to register with the NY Times Magazine can read it right here:

American Marriages Tragic

You believe, for instance, that American marriages are the happiest in the world. I say that they are the most tragic. I know this not only from my study of the people as a whole, but from my study of individuals who come to me. I find that the men and women are giving their vital energy to everything but the relation between themselves. In that relation all is confusion. The women are the mothers of their husbands as well as of their children, yet at the same time there is in them the old, old primitive desire to be possessed, to yield, to surrender. And there is nothing in the man for her to surrender to except his kindness, his courtesy, his generosity, his chivalry. His competitor, his rival in business must yield, but she need not.

There is no country in the world where women have to work so hard to attract men’s attention. There is in your Metropolitan Museum a bas-relief which shows the girls of Crete in one of their religious dances about their god in the form of a bull. These girls of 2,000 BC wear their hair in chignons; they have puffed sleeves; their corseted waists are very slender; they are dressed to show every line of their figures just as your women are dressing today.

At that time the reasons which made it necessary to attract men to themselves in this way had to do with the morals of their country. The women were desperate just as they are today, without knowing it. In Athens four or five hundred years before Christ there was even an epidemic of suicide among young girls, which was only brought to an end by the decision of the Areopagus that the next girl who did away with herself would be exhibited nude upon the streets of Athens. There were no more suicides. The judges of Athens understood sex psychology.

On Fifth Avenue I am constantly reminded of that bas-relief. All the women, by their dress, by the eagerness of their faces, by their walk, are trying to attract the tired men of their country. What they will do when they fail I can’t tell. It may be that then they will face themselves instead of running away from themselves, as they do now. Usually, men are more honest with themselves than women. But in this country your women have more leisure than men. Ideas run easily among them, are discussed in clubs, and so here it may be that they will be the first ones to ask if you are a happy country or unhappy. [Here Jung is clearly warning Americans that pent up sexual frustration will cause American women to effect potentially disastrous changes through activism]

It may be that you are going to produce a race which are human beings first, and men and women secondarily. It may be that you are going to create the real independent woman who knows she is independent, who feels the responsibility of her independence and, in time, will come to see that she must give up spontaneously those things which up to now she only allows to be taken from her when she pretends to be passive. Today the American woman is still confused. She wants independence, she wants to be free to do everything, to think everything, to say everything, to have all the opportunities which men have, and, at the same time, she wants to be mastered by man and to be possessed in the archaic way of Europe. [Today, since much of Europe has gone down the same beta American spiral, we find women turning to romance novels in which they are spirited away by sheikhs to some desert oasis]

You think your young girls marry European husbands because they are ambitious for titles. I say it is because, after all, they are not different from the European girls; they like the way European men make love, and they like to feel we are a little dangerous. They are not happy with their American husbands because they are not afraid of them. It is natural, even though it is archaic, for women to want to be afraid when they love [here's where Roissy's "shady character game" comes into play]. If they don’t want to be afraid then perhaps they are becoming truly independent, and you may be producing the real ‘new woman.’ But up to this time your American man isn’t ready for real independence in woman. He only wants to be the obedient son of his mother-wife. There is a great obligation laid upon the American people – that it shall face itself – that it shall admit its moment of tragedy in the present — admit that it has a great future only if it has courage to face itself.

The medicine Jung offers as a cure is as obvious as the diagnosis was: American men need to learn gender realism and game.

I have to admit that this article blew me away. I could hardly believe that I’d find a psychologist, ninety-seven years ago, offering the same advice we’re getting from the more lucid segments of the PUA community.

Carl Jung was something of an alpha male himself. He was married for over fifty years, and allegedly had a number of lovers on the side. I don’t doubt it. He also sends feminists into paroxysmal rages, which force them to write long, incoherent treatises on why and how Jung is wrong or should be “revised,” even as he attracts throngs of female admirers. I will certainly read more of Jung, but from what I have seen here, I believe it would be fair to call him the founding father of the theory of game.

He goes by “Charlie” in English, which he speaks very well, having spent some five years studying here in the states. Charlie is what one might call a “junzi” — a Confucian gentleman. In terms of status, a junzi is essentially the Chinese version of a knight, but scholarly pursuits and cultural refinement are far more important than in the Western tradition. Of course, feudal China has been gone for sixty years, but just as in the West, old tradition continues to resonate throughout the modern culture.

As a man, my friend is an admirable person. He is far from what one might consider a brash “alpha male” here in the states, but he has a sensibility and self-confidence that give him a great deal of success with women in China, and I would dare say that these traits would serve him well here — if he cared for American women (he doesn’t).

This got me to thinking about the differences between Eastern and Western gender relations, and what it is about China, which is the cultural center of East Asia, that allows men to maintain a higher status relative to women than they do in Western cultures.

Before I single out China, I should note that China is not the only country in which men have a higher status than they do in the West — in fact, cultures derived from Northwest Europe are unique around the world for elevating their women while affording no special status to men. However, I know a lot more about China than I do about India, the Middle East, Persia and other non-Western civilizations, so that’s what I’ll stick to here.

The difference comes down to Confucianism, which is the philosophy that serves as the basis for Chinese civilization. Confucianism proposes that a proper hierarchical structure of human relationships in the temporal world is pleasing to God (called “Heaven” in most Chinese texts). In this structure, each individual has a proper place. Fathers are above sons, officials above the people, rulers above the officials, etc. Of course, husbands are explicitly above wives.

Confucianism specifies five primary relationships:

• Ruler to Subject
• Father to Son
• Husband to Wife
• Elder Brother to Younger Brother
• Friend to Friend

The only one that specifies the female place in relationships is that of husband to wife. Even friend to friend is about male camaraderie, such as that Confucius himself expresses from time to time in the Analects. A wife’s duty is to submit to her husband, and the husband’s duty is to treat his wife lovingly. This is a very simple arrangement, and similar to Christian ideals concerning marriage.

However, there are some big differences between Confucianism and Christianity, which is the most influential philosophical force in the West. Perhaps most importantly, Confucius does not profess to know the Word of God, but rather suggests that observing the laws of nature can give one a sense of Heaven’s intent. Therefore, there is no real concept of heresy in Confucian thought; however, impropriety takes on far greater significance than it does in Christianity. For example, failing to be virtuous and improperly following rituals can bring down the wrath of Heaven in the form of great disasters and social upheavals.

Christians may be equipped with the Word of God, but they are left to figure out hierarchy and order in the temporal world by themselves through clues in scripture and the structure of the early church. Part of the reason for this is that early Christians came from a marginalized community that had no real hope of ruling the state. To them, the order was clear: Rome rules, leaving their primary concern as the community’s relationship with God. Confucius, for his part, was speaking directly to rulers — he was explicitly trying to influence governance.

So today, when neither Christianity nor Confucius are officially canon, but both have a strong, essential influence on the civilizations they founded, we can find the most confusion in terms of hierarchy in places where the Word of God (i.e. divine authority) has the most weight in relation to concepts of temporal order (including ecclesiastical order). This is why Southern and Eastern Europe, with their respective Catholic and Orthodox sensibilities, have retained more of the traditional order than the parts of Europe and the United States most strongly influenced by the egalitariam Protestantism that democratized the Word of God, sweeping away whatever order may have existed in the barbarous marchlands of Northern Europe and settlements of Colonial America.

A further tendency to identify with the early Christians in Palestine through a common contempt for Rome tends to lend a strong iconoclastic streak to the American nature. This contempt for the conventional has been the source of much American progress – both moral and material – over the relatively brief existence of the American people, but it is also one of the sources of our present confusion in gender relations. America has repeatedly justified itself on divine authority despite a lack of consensus on how divine authority is to be interpreted, and even over what constitutes such authority. So one can see the strange phenomenon of Americans, even if they proclaim atheism, behaving as though there is some sort of irrefutable weight to their beliefs, which must be sanctioned by some force or the other (perhaps Darwin has become a spook?). Justifications through scripture have also become increasingly odd and divorced from reality, such as Governor Sanford’s attempt to use scripture to ameliorate his shameless adultery. Wouldn’t it have been better for him to simply say that he was only sating a hunger, reprehensible though his behavior may have been? No, not here; he had to make an attempt to sanctify it somehow.

It is this fragmented, febrile and often myopic interpretation of divine authority (how could it be otherwise?) that leads to an utter lack of consensus on propriety in American culture. In this bubbling cauldron of opinions and ideas, where every heresy has equal weight, there can be no lasting sense of order that sustains society. Rather, the survival of the state itself has become orthodoxy in America, and the impermanence, turnover and anarchy of society has become its corollary — or perhaps even the necessary ingredient of this orthodoxy.

We see the converse in Chinese civilization, where it is assumed that social order undergirds the state, and divine favor is granted through the preservation of that order. The state that fails to do so loses this favor, and is eventually crushed. So in China one gets the sense that the people and their customs survive and prevail despite the periodic failures of the state, whereas in America today it is taught that the state survives and prevails despite the periodic failures of the American people. This is really the essence of the term “propositional nation,” or “creedal nation.”

The current situation in America is not unprecedented — not even in China itself. The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 saw social order turned on its head in China. Mao, in a bid to reestablish power following a temporary fall from grace in the early 1960s (resulting from the disasters of the Great Leap Forward), drew from his base – largely young devotees of his personality cult – and declared a state of perpetual revolution. Students as young as 12 denounced and disciplined teachers, and doctors and experts of all sorts were dragged from their professions for being counter-revolutionary and hauled before criticism committees, where they were slandered, humiliated and beaten. The inevitable result was the breakdown of China’s society, which had profound implications for millions of people whose lives were put on hold, or worse, for a decade.

Finally, in 1976 Mao’s death and the devastating Tangshan earthquake, which killed hundreds of thousands, were widely seen as signs of divine disfavor, and the Chinese began to slowly return to tradition and the ancient social norms. Today, the Cultural Revolution is known as Mao’s greatest error, and seen as a great offense against the natural order of society. This, as I mentioned before, is the Chinese version of heresy.

Naturally, having been around for 2,200 years, unified China has seen many periods of dysfunctional government that eventually led to dynastic collapse, the most recent of which occurred less than a century ago. Like the current American state, Chinese governments have always done their best to survive, and in doing so have upset the natural order countless times. The fact that such a strong notion of tradition exists in China is testament to these repeated failures, which have tempered the Chinese people and civilization through periodic trials and tests.

Perhaps we Americans are on the verge of such a trial — we may even be in the midst of one today. When the state takes precedence over the people, it bends the people to suit its needs, and this is why we are observing such a radical departure from established norms. America’s national philosophy, which is still not fully formed, does not need to be done away with, but it is becoming clear at this point that adjustments must be made. Our radical individualism has taken us to a point where our country cannot hold together without the rigid system of law and regulation that stifles rather than promotes freedom. So we find that our lack of consensus and rejection of any common, unifying philosophy and spirituality has come to imprison us in a rigid institution that grants us all a cell of our own, but does not allow the uplifting and liberating experience of living in a true national community with a common purpose.

This is why we live in such contentious confusing times. It is why so many have no idea of, or appreciation for, their natural place in our world.

Sometimes it seems that American politics almost guarantee that no progress can be made, because everything bad that happens to a person is always viewed as something bad happening to whatever group the individual belongs to rather than to society as a whole. We’re all guilty of this to some extent, but if you look around, it seems that it is the only thing that works well: you identify what group you belong to and rally people to its defense by airing grievances. This has worked for women, minorities, homosexuals, you name it…

As identity politics have come to dominate the country, making noise has become one of the most effective ways to gain any measure of fair treatment. If you don’t scream, holler and carry on, chances are that nobody will care when the cops arrest you for something pointless like failing to show the proper respect to an officer. You’ll go to jail and probably get fined and sentenced to community service. At this point, Gates’ charges have been dropped, yet he is still demanding an apology for being subjected to what befalls hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of Americans every year. As a Harvard professor, he’ll probably eventually get one.

As distasteful as Gates’ behavior may seem, one has to look at the results. What he did was the most sensible thing to do as an individual and as a member of his group (blacks). Police will now be more careful about arresting black men for disorderly conduct, which is often a bogus charge used to justify arresting people who happen to annoy the officer, and the Cambridge Police Department will probably be extra-sensitive about bothering Professor Gates.

This brings me to men’s issues. As we know, men go to jail all the time. Fathers are thrown in jail for losing work and falling behind on child support, men are thrown in jail over false domestic violence allegations — often merely for defending themselves from violent partners, and men are also arrested and jailed for trying to contact their children despite ex parte restraining orders. What’s the difference between these men and Professor Gates? They mainly keep their mouths shut. They suffer in silence.

Perhaps this is an aspect of cursed chivalry; that stoic tendency to bear injustice without complaint. But is it doing anyone any good to give injustice a free pass? Is it good for children when their fathers don’t put up a fight for the right to be an equal parent? Maybe part of the problem is that men don’t know who to complain to. They may complain to a judge or the police, not realizing that it is these people’s job to coerce them into shutting up and doing as they are told. Instead, they should be out in the streets, calling radio talk shows, calling representatives, getting on TV, writing blogs, talking to reporters, etc. They should protest and make noise, preferably in large groups. If they do get arrested, they should try to get the story in the news. That’s what works here in America.

So, men, I say go out there and make a nuisance of yourself, just like Professor Gates. Demand apologies, rail about injustice, and make plenty of noise. If you don’t, you’ll just be sitting in front of that judge all alone, and too many of us are all too familiar with that.