While I agree with the first sentence (there is much research, and many fine arguments that employ the idea of evolution to support this) doesn’t it seem more likely, in practice, that if a male cannot impress female X he will simply settle for female Y (who herself is simply settling for him, as she lacks the means or traits to garner attention from more ‘impressive’ males).
Also, as far as the aesthetic appeal of homosexual intercourse, couldn’t it also be argued that in the ancient world the practice of an older male adopting a younger male as a lover was done not for reasons of aesthetics (solely) but also contained with it a relationship underpinned by political power? In other words, by agreeing to homosexual intercourse, a younger male was not just gaining an older lover, but also a mentor and a provider of future political power? Is that not what Plato has Socrates basically argue, from which we derive the idea of Platonic love, being intimate friendship free from intercourse?
I wouldn’t doubt that sex as a means to something else has been around since the dawn of civilization. But sex for its own sake, that’s how I think one can identify a true heterosexual. A real, and dare I say ‘normal,’ sexual attraction affects us physically. In other words, its pretty realistic to say that a man who gets an erection in the presence of a hot woman, and not in the presence of another man, is a safe heterosexual, or at least bi-sexual. But getting an erection in the presence of the same gender wouldn’t happen unless that person was conditioned psychologically through a period of time.
What should be under scrutiny here is a question of physiology. How does the homosexual’s hormone regulation differ from a heterosexual’s? Is there an identifiable physical characteristic, or is the erection triggered in the homosexual a psychological and intentional event?
I think that unless there is a “gay” gene it will remain a mystery.
Another interesting way to look at it is like this. Ask a heterosexual man why he just doesn’t masturbate if sexual pleasure is only physical. Its much easier, right? Well then there shouldn’t be a sex drive in a male who has the opportunity to masturbate. He wouldn’t still seek out women, unless he wanted to mate of provide a service. Sex for its own sake is in question here. So then there must be a psychological urge to have sex and not just a physcial response to a sexual stimulus…like a hot woman. If a man didn’t want to mate, didn’t want to provide a service, and could masturbate, the logistics say that he would.
So some degree of the bio-psycho-sex-drive can be conditioned externally and therefore sexuality is not a completely genetic product. Men have been raised to “be attracted to women,” while also having ‘normal’ horomone levels.
Its hard to tell. There’s a big grey area here. Maybe that’s the essential question that modern neurology and psychology is trying to determine.
But yeah, I wouldn’t doubt that sex was used as a political means at all. Giving pleasure has always been a service I suppose.
Good point, GCT. Didn’t John Nash handle that one? Governing dynamics and game theory, perhaps. I don’t know the details but I have an understanding of the gist. What I believe is that although there will be as much mating, just as your point indicates, as unattractive or more ‘feminine’ men will, well, settle for less, where is the quality in that? Are not more and more men becoming mundane and mediocre? Are not more women losing their grace and beauty?
The balance maintained, or the governing dynamics, work out averages that prevent any sudden major change, such as the human species becoming extinct through a rise in homosexuality. But this moderation is only that, a moderation, and the type begins to decline because to compensate for the loss of heterosexual relationships, men become either gay or decadent, being attracted to, and attracting, mediocre women.
So if we look at this wholistically we might be able to say that homosexuality is indeed ‘normal,’ given the fact that it could either be a genetic defect, psychological condition, or natural reflex of the species during some kind of quality control or self-extinction process.
Let me say this in a conclusion. I’m not saying that the general case of homosexuality is any evidence that men only turn gay because they feel inferior to women, or that because women have become more masculine. But, like I said in Colinsigns Cock-Dude thread, there are many individual cases that involve that very logic. One needs merely to work from the other direction; if men were more masculine on average, there would be less cases of homosexuality in general. How about that?
And another thing. There shouldn’t be any mediocre women. Women are the most important counter-part to men. When one loses its quality so does the other, and the whole things begins to look like a Jerry Springer show.
There is also an interesting side matter to which I’ve alluded to and which, I think, relates directly to the subject matter.
This harmonization of mankind, I would say this homogenization and domestication of mankind, is structured around specific cultural ideals and moral frameworks.
Ideals, beliefs and morals that we take for granted and we unquestioningly consider reasonable and true, while forgetting their arbitrary and often delusional nature, and which result in particular modes of thinking, and as a consequence, of acting.
One such belief is the one concerning the inherit dignity of labour, for one. It is mostly used as a means of ensuring a disciplined slave/wage class in a culture which pretends to defend freedom.
We now misconstrue labour for creativity, and productivity for meaning when most jobs in our western world are devoid of any creative element and are only bureaucratic positions of control and efficiency and the only meaningful thing about production is that it enables the continuation of individual consciousness and it ensures some level of physical and mental health and social viability.
The relationship of self-worth and work is so intimate, in our capitalist civilization, that we often judge others and ourselves by the jobs we do or the careers we pursue. Our profession becomes integrated into our overall persona and we are associated with it to such a degree that it often becomes a substitute for our name.
This ‘dignity of labour’ coupled with the association of consuming with happiness and consumer choice with liberty are the driving forces behind capitalism and the foundations of our western Democratic ideals.
Another such cultural belief is that which pronounces the inherit dignity of human life, as a whole.
This is how Nietzsche, who spoke so eloquently about such matters, put it:
This sanctification of human life and of life in general, might appear to raise the value of the living and to promote respect for all living things, at first.
In fact it has the reverse effect, if one considers its long-term effects.
In environments where life hangs on a precarious balance and where death and misery are ubiquitous, respect for life, especially for ones own, is more prominent.
Within dangerous and uncertain circumstances one gains an appreciation for existence, not only of ones own but for ones companion and ally but also for ones adversary or prey or enemy.
In more primitive cultures where food, for example, was scarce, the act of taking nourishment included a thanksgiving to the unknown forces that made it possible and a deep respect for the very beast that died for our own survival.
If I’m not mistaken, Native Americans preyed to and honoured the spirit in the animal they killed and ate, as a way of acknowledging their own participation in the chain of life.
Today, when food is in such abundance that we must force ourselves to not eat it, disrespect for our privilege has replaced acknowledgment and the mystical in nourishment has been replaced by a ‘taking for granted’.
This same respect and spirituality has been expressed in other ways as well.
In past times of warfare and battle, it was not rare for a warrior to pay homage, not only to his fallen comrades but to his enemies also.
There was a reciprocal connection between victor and vanquished and honour and dignity were offered to both as an acknowledgment for their efforts, and pains and spirits.
Today, in this world of human rights and undiscriminating Christian compassion and love, the very concepts of dignity and of honour have been diminished and the ideas of love and compassion have been degraded due to their universal application.
What is the value of a thing that is offered to someone or something based entirely on a characteristic it is not wholly responsible for or offered without discrimination and selection?
Through the practice of offering a presumed dignity to all life, no matter the circumstances, and to all humans, no matter their character, we have, in actuality, taken away the essence of what this means.
There is nothing inherently dignified or noble about life or about labour.
What makes them so is how they are applied and used by each individual entity.
It sounds like you believe that hapiness, for guys, can be found when we act more closely to our classic/‘primitive’ nature. I know you said that you weren’t interested in personal questions, but I like your theory, and I would like to know how you apply your philosohpy to your life on a practial level. How much do you as a person give in, relative to your perception of guys, to pressure to conform against your nature, and do you think that is related to your hapiness?
Is there any person that is well known or famous that you feel is making headway in promoting and changing society to be more supportive of what you think men’s nature is? JacK Nicholson, Mick Jagger, perhaps?
Do you try to change society in order for it be more supportive of the nature of man?
Do you think it is possible for a society ever to support man’s nature, or are society and man’s nature so opposed to one another that they cannot exist together? If you could live in any society, which would it be?
It’s just that the current circumstances are closer to female nature and female nature is mostly contented in adapting to whatever circumstances it finds itself in. It is less antagonistic.
Being social, in general, requires a feminine dispositions.
The larger the social group, the more feminine the disposition.
Female psychology, which males also possess by the way, is more interested in harmony and cooperation and fitting in, which coincides with group cohesion and social interests.
This, and their sexual power, is what makes them ‘genetic filtering systems’, as I’ve explained in the original text.
Like everyone else I am confronted with the daily choice of “giving in†or facing the social consequences.
This every day choice is directly related to my contentment and my sense of well being. In other words, I have very little of it.
My mind tells me what is the reasonable choice but my soul screams out for a relief from that choice, for an alternative, for confrontation and resistance.
When someone threatens me, for example, or pisses me off, I desperately want to unleash my fury upon him, knowing what pleasure this will give me, my every molecule screams out for it. Yet, my mind considers the implications, the social consequences and I begrudgingly repress my instincts.
This is the root for many anxieties and mental disorders. This repression can build up over time and express itself in other ways.
The choice is between allowing one drive to be expressed and risking all future expressions of many other drives or between a genuine self and well-being. .
The system is set up in such a way so as to result in a reasonable decision, which forces adaptation or quarantine or extinction.
We are dependant on society and so we are bound to social rules.
We live in a distinctly “reasoned†culture. A culture defined by its optimism concerning rationality, an “Alexandrian/Socratic†world Nietzsche called it.
Weber called capitalism and the industrial revolution, the “rationalization†of society.
Within it efficiency and productivity become paramount and all spirituality, and artistry are diminished. The mystical is defamed and instinct slandered.
Bureaucratic facelessness is the end result. A system governed by the indifference of numerical values, where everything, even individuality, is given a number.
Reason is cold and soulless and, as we are now discovering, unable to fully offer explanations for the universe and existence. It, and its product science, now reverts to artistry to describe quantum phenomena. Superstring theory is a highly artistic interpretation of things beyond our capacity to fully comprehend.
Famous people are caricatures and creations of image making machines and not real people.
Since, I don’t know either Nicholson or Jagger personally and only know of them and their pop personas, I cannot comment on their real nature.
All the ones that have not had the self-control or the mind to make that reasoned choice, I mentioned before, are either incarcerated or dead.
Kaczynski comes to mind, but he had the audacity to believe he could change things and the idealism to care.
The maleness I describe thrives in frontiers.
There are none left, which are accessible yet. So, this maleness, hibernates in us all.
Man’s nature is the product of a more challenging, austere and dangerous environment. Man has also evolved to participate in and feel more psychologically attached to smaller social groups, than the present ones.
Evolution works at a snails pace, so we can say that human nature is being slowly affected by current environments and that ‘feminization’ is this adaptation of the individual to more affluent, safer, easier circumstances. The term ‘feminization’ can be replaced with the term ‘domestication’, if you wish.
The discontentment many feel, the sense of not belonging and of alienation is often the consequence of this slow alteration, as the repression of the parts in us which are considered unwanted from a cultural perspective, burdens us with the constant necessity of keeping ourselves under the control of reason and only express instinct in small bursts [pressure releases] or within particular areas and under special circumstances.
In this slow change of psychology, environmental circumstances as they are culturally [in other words rationally] defined, impose themselves upon us.
For those with more docile, passive personalities, the adaptation to the change is less painful.
Pre-Socratic Hellas because they found that balance between reason and instinct [Dionysian/Apollinian] and they enjoyed the sense of tragedy/comedy this invokes or amongst the natives of North America before the white man came because they exemplify a man living within nature, with both awe and respect, or amongst the Norse because of their mythical prowess.
Perhaps what you are really addressing here is a male frustration that women do not have to be “mirrors” any longer?
For one, your argument builds upon the past which was completely controlled by patriarchy, where women were property, and they had no choice about their lives; they had to be mirrors. Man MADE woman be his personal looking-glass. Now the mirror is smashed and men must truly define themselves, with no advantage of feeling immediately superior to half the population. Thus, what your argument really points out is the male NEED to feel dominant by thinking of women as weaker, less intelligent, more conformist, and controlled.
As long as sex is used to procreate, women will be genetic filters who define the future by buying into ideals.
As long as there is no frontier to require male characteristics and technology makes individual traits, such as intelligence, physical strength or whatever obsolete, then gender will be irrelevant and the feminine, more docile sex will become dominant and preferable.
Males, females are becoming indistinguishable from one another and are converging into asexuality, not because they are the same or because they have ever been so, but because technology and culture has made any differences irrelevant and obsolete.
I am between tears and rage at this wonderful revelation, Satyr. I was just watching ‘Mad TV,’ my favorite show, and as you know they have a guest band play a song between the skits. This band was called the “Stokes,” if I remember correctly, but you should have seen these skinny little fuckers.
They had the whole “my life is miserable and I’m suffering because nobody understands me so I’ll sing a depressing song to express my sentiments, which will be sold as a product to miserable people everywhere who don’t know the difference between finger-nails across a chalk-board and an actual piece of music.” They exhibited the the new modern retro/goth/beat-nik style, you know, the sports jacket over the t-shirt, the tight jeans with holes in the knees, the messed up ‘bed-hair,’ the ‘druggy’ look, etc., etc., and they played some of the worst shit I have ever heard.
The song was composed of a couple chords, and of course it was in the predictable and mundane 4/4 time signature. It was absolute trash. In addition, the band members were ‘posturing’ with their instruments, the drummer had this look of intense concentration on his face, you know, the “if I make this look more complicated than it really is, people will think the song is better.”
Now get this. The audience was actually grooving to the music, but it wasn’t sincere. It was the “oh, this must be the part where we are supposed to support the band by swaying back and forth to the beat” deal.
What do I see here? I see the spirit of the age. I see the signs of decline in this ‘art.’ These guys weren’t ‘men’ or ‘women,’ they were some kind of empty automaton product, some kind of robot created to make fat men rich in the music industry.
Anyway, I thought I might share this with you. You have a very profound and sublime knowledge of things to come, Satyr, and I see it perfectly, especially on TV. The commercials, talk shows, sit-coms, all of it, geared to hypnotize a world of mindless consumers.
You and I might just be the last men standing on Earth, my friend. And its funny to think that the larger percentage of ILP are these people who I describe and they think to themselves “no way, detrop isn’t talking about me, just because I wear body-spray, have accessories all over my car, and listen to ‘hip-hop’ doesn’t make me a disaster.”
I speak too soon. These people are not ready for their destiny.
God - you’re such a cynical guy!! I dare sya this band “Strokes” are generic pish, mediocre showmanship and marketed for cliched depressive youths…but really your tone of self-righteousness, self-elevation…is a cliche tantmount to the pish you are so cynical of…
Ignore what I am saying - most thing’s are never meant.
But pretentiousness seems to be part of the human condition and what makes civilization work.
I mean how many people do you know or have heard about claiming to prefer Belvedere’s Vodka over Smirnoff?
I actually saw a 20/20 special on it.
They taste tested a few “specialists†and connoisseurs of Vodka who swear on a particular expensive brand of alcohol.
None of the…NONE of them…could discern between the different brands even if they had a cost difference of 50%-100%.
Remarkably most considered their ‘preferred’ brand inferior to the other ones in a blind taste test and when one considered that few drank their Vodka ‘neat’ and without some fruit additive the results became more remarkable.
Then they had, so called, artists commenting on works of at, some of which were created by elephants and three-year-olds.
Most artists and art critics thought the splattering of children were abstract art worthy of museum space.
Then when they were told the truth most laughed it away or tried to insinuate that the children were “gifted†is some way.
One actually admitted that most of modern art depends on pretentious rich people wanting to display their worth and culture with works they neither comprehend nor can ever appreciate.
This got me thinking about name-brands and marketing and the pretentiousness they feed on. A pretentiousness prevalent in the music industry, as you mentioned.
Most can’t tell crap from crepes and yet they display a pretentious refinement of taste and discrimination which is supposed to display their sensitive palates and culture or their refined tastes and uniqueness. So they pay a few extra bucks to play the part, when they can’s really tell and they buy those Gucci sunglasses and that luxurious car and those name brand Blue-Jeans or that expensive bottled water, thinking this will raise their esteem and worth and how they appear to others, all the while making absolute idiots of themselves to anyone with an eye for such stupidity.
Can we not say the same for careers and diplomas?
The thing I’ve discovered is that most things thrive of pretentiousness and appear to be more or less than what they really are.
There’s an image associated with certain acquisitions and behaviors and this image is built on bullshit and cultural prejudices and facades.
Our “civilization†depends on weak-minded imbeciles wanting to pretend they are more than they are or that they are capable of more than they rally are.
You can see evidence of this, on this very forum.
You see detrop most of today’s civilization is based on bullshit and morons wanting to show themselves to be more than morons.
What they do is buy expensive, overpriced stuff, objects things which is supposed to represent they value, by its sheer overpricing and the image associated with it.
We get old-farts driving sport scars and twits with university diplomas pretending the image, associated with the job or label or marketing, is actually who and what they are.
Hey bueatiful! I’ve been reading and writing and intoxicating, for the past few weeks! I really should reply to the orignal post I placed upon here a few weeks ago…maybe I will…
I thought you acted so righteous because you felt inadquate, one of those net people who have terrible social skills and huge intellectual capabilities: which is actually the equivalent to being an IDIOT.
But, my darling, everything that is real is rational!
I am neither for nor against you - I am, perhaps, beside you.
I have no friends, my family hates me, I can’t, or won’t, keep a job, and I haven’t been laid in months.
But I refuse to turn gay, so keep your hands off of me, toots.
The intellectual capabilities which I am stricken with, in this sesquipedal life, marks the torpidity of my spirit. The Gods have cursed me with too much knowledge, Colinsign, and for this the world calls me a monster.
Well, so says Hegel. But I’m a Kierkegaardian, and Hegel’s words are lemonade twaddle. Marx took anything decent and relevent out of it, so stick with him.
Actually - I took the phrase - “Everything that is real is rational” - from Italo Calvino, who in turn, may have lent from Hegel! I an no reader of Hegel any man who’s name rythmes with bagel is suspisous to me, for purely irrational reasons.
Re-your post on the “poor taste of tasters” analogy of a dead culture eating dead cultures. I too I am symptom of such a time - though I vary on one level perhaps - that I know my limitations - that i am The Idiot. I do not want to be naked and famous.
If had was a view I.Q. higher I reckon I would kill myself…thank God I am stupid enough to stay alive!
My God - my MASSIVE - grammar and spelling errors have only confirmed my idiocy, that’s something! What the final sentence should have read (as I am sure you already deduced was
“If my I.Q. was any higher I would probably kill myself…thank God I am stupid enough to stay alive…”
Anyway, I fear, I have taken over this thread with little more than WIND.
As it was, so it is, so it will be…
People were morons, people are morons, people will be morons…
(you gotta love Ecclesiastes)
“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” or,
“Vapor of vapors, all is vapor.” or perhaps,
“Absurdity of absurdities, all is absurdity.”
“And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. Does wisdom make people happy? For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
“I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.”
“He that loves silver will not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loves abundance with increase: this is also vanity.”
“As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.”
