I guess this is what “Straussian reading” means. Something like postmodern reading—the text always says exactly what you want it to say, regardless of what it said originally—except that with postmodern reading the resulting interpretation is always left-wing, while with Straussian reading the resulting interpretation is always right-wing. :D
That is actually only a subset. The core thing is to solve self-hatred, to love one’s self well enough to retreat from the fantasy world and inhabit the real one. My martial arts solution is only a part of gaining self-respect. I also mentioned communication skills etc.
Having said all that, why is this “real men” thing even wrong? Why do intellectuals tend to hate it? I remember how intellectuals hated it around 1910 or so (at least in Europe, see Stefan Zweig etc.) but today science backs it up better—there are all sorts of casual relationships between prenatal and serum T and various other traits. To put it differently, things like courage and not being depressed seem to be related, although the causal chain is not clear.
Still, courage training, conquering fears, should not be something intellectuals should laugh on as something uncivilized, reactionary or barbarous.
And yeah, courage training, by its very nature, looks like that.
One more though and maybe I should put that in as an edit: basically nerds need to learn from feminists, it is basically the very same ideas for the very same set of problems—the lack of self-respect, confidence. The whole feminist stuff about how to feel empowered and confident and speak up and all that is 100% valid for nerds too. In fact I know women who do exactly this, who conquer their internalize suppression by communication training (Toastmasters), dressing professional, yes, even things like boxing, I know women who gain a feeling of empowerment and confidence from this kind of courage trainig, and it works.
So yeah, nerds need to become “real men” in the sense feminist women aim to become “real men”—or rather, “real persons”, who are not afraid, do not feel suppressed, but feel empowered and brave.
why is this “real men” thing even wrong? Why do intellectuals tend to hate it?
Men die younger because testosterone is harmful to health. See, even nature hates real men. We are just accepting the discoveries of natural sciences. :D
Okay, more seriously (still I feel that this topic inspires me to come up with crazy theories, some of which might incidentally point towards something profound), maybe it is a consequence of game theory and fragmentation of modern society. Think about it this way: if a random person X gains more strength, who benefits from this, and who loses? The person X and their allies benefit, their enemies lose. Maybe it is the structure of the society today that we have very few personal allies and a lot of competitors. Therefore, anyone gaining power is perceived as a loss to most people. In such environment, memes like “do not get stronger, that’s evil” flourish. (Maybe this is not necessarily the culture as a whole, just the subculture of social-science intellectuals, that has few friends and a lot of backstabbing.)
It was different in the past where people were divided into tribes, so when your neighbor become stronger you felt your tribe is becoming stronger, which was a good thing.
It is different for women, because feminism is a powerful tribe today, and when feminists speak about “women”, they usually mean “women who accept (or will accept) feminism”. -- To explain this: imagine the last time when you heard feminists speaking about how we need more women in politics. Did anyone mention Margaret Thatcher or Susan Palin as positive examples of women in politics? Probably no. But they probably mentioned Hillary Clinton. Just saying that “women” in certain contexts does not include literally all women, only those belonging to the tribe. Of course there are also situations where meaning literally all women is the convenient Shelling point, e.g. letting women vote.
Shortly: It is all about selfish motivation. If other people believe they will benefit from you getting stronger, they will support you to become stronger. Today intellectuals don’t believe this when they talk about men, which is why they discourage it.
nerds need to learn from feminists
Exactly this. However, it needs to be “do as I do”, instead of “do as I say” kind of learning. Nerds don’t need to learn feminist theory, because that is a theory constructed to support feminism, not to support nerds. Nerds need to learn feminist practice: supporting each other, constantly shaming the enemies, i.e. bulding a modern tribe. -- Okay, preferably with less mindkilling, if such thing is a real political option.
No, frankly, this is a much older story, not something from the recent decades. Strains of European humanism rejected “macho” attitudes as far back as 1900-1950, I know it from reading authors like Stefan Zweig (E.g. The World Of Yesterday) or Erich Fromm (The Anatomy Of Human Destructiveness). The issue is, largely, that back then the problems to ponder were not the relatively peaceful ones pondered today, but major war and genocide was attributed to a rather bull-headed gung-ho spirit—and I actually think it was correctly attributed so. The European attitudes were basically so in this period that the world around you is full of spilled gas and you do NOT want any sparks to go into it. So it seemed there is so much aggression trying to break out, in major conflicts killing millions that all the sparks better be extuingished—so it is better for everybody to be a bit of a “limp dick” rather than to risk that. And this influenced European literature and intellectualism a lot.
The story was different in America where simply these attitudes were not so dangerous, however, the latest in the 1960′s this strain of European literature also hit America and influenced “hippie” attitudes—Vietnam played an important role in this, the desire for pacifism generate a desire to do away with traditionally masculine attitudes.
Meanwhile, from the 1970′s − 80′s on, there is the opposite trend. During the late Cold War it was understood that traditional war is not much on the table but either pressing the launch buttons or not, and probably nobody will be stupid enough to press those just to play macho. Thus, the world started to seem less dangerous and these attitudes were allowed to come back. Hippie music gave way to punk and Metallica, road movies to action movies, and so on.
However, intellectuals still resist it, because all they see is what Fromm saw—that it is hardly more than a celebration of destructiveness. So there is this apparent rule that to create is good and moral and anything tending towards destructiveness even a bit is wrong and immoral, we are supposed to make but not to unmake. So competition is bad, cooperation is good etc. etc.
This is sort of complicated to explain and understand but probably it is not simply not wanting others to become stronger.
I think overly “limp” intellectualism is connected with nerdiness. The issue seems to be that boys from kindergarten on engage each other in increasingly scarier and scarier challenges and competitions. As long as you keep up, it is sort of fun enough. If you take time out to read books, because you have intellectual interests, you fall back in this kind of thing and then it becomes something not exciting and challenging but rather scary. Then the bullying starts.
So overally it is the process I described about nerds, but I think the aversion to “real men” attitudes is largely the aversion to becoming like the bullies (who were often stupid and anti-intellectual) or an aversion to the fact that indeed there is something not properly developed in one’s own self.
Nevertheless, I think what needs to be done here is to try to formulate the view clearly that not everything that tends towards the destructive, the unmaking, is necessarily wrong. That a world intellectuals often dream about—where everybody is only creative and productive, and never destructive—is the social equivalent of cancer, runaway growth without keeping creating and destroying in balance. But this is not exactly easy to formulate in a generally acceptable way. Purely economically, it can be explained, perhaps, if people think endless economic growth endangers the planet, yet you don’t want to deny people the right to make things, then someone should unmake things, break windows, so to speak, and any group of people assigned that kind of role will obviously have, how to put it, rather “barbarous” morals.
So, essentially it is the reverse stupidity. We have seen that one extreme is harmful, therefore we must go to the opposite extreme.
Yet there are situations which require someone being on the middle of the scale—not a bully, but also not someone scared of conflicts. For example, when people are doing things wrong, someone has to tell them. If everyone is avoiding conflicts all the time, then one incompetent employee can ruin a company, or one incompetent government official can ruin a country. The conflict doesn’t necessarily have to be personal; one possible way of saying “your company is horribly inefficient” is to found a competing company.
However, it is not true that all aggressivity is frowned upon by intellectuals. The taboo applies more strongly to men, and covers only physical violence plus speech that feels like it would incite physical violence. Other forms of violence are tolerated. -- For example, if you hear some guy saying something politically incorrect, it would be unacceptable to slap him, but it is acceptable to call his boss, make him fired, and let his children starve. (That is: physical violence = not okay; social and economical violence coming from the right kind of people = okay.) Actually, if you were a women with the right kind of credentials, it would probably be even acceptable to slap him; and he would be frowned upon for fighting back.
By which I am saying, that the idea of “let’s make everyone unable to fight”, although it leads to some negative consequences, is actually just a facade for something more complicated, roughly “let’s make people unable to fight, unless they are members of our tribe”. Disarming your opponents is not a new idea; the original part here is the one which also calls for disarming everyone neutral. (People mostly don’t care about neutrals, they focus on their enemies. But it is more strategical to first disarm everyone using the memes of global disarming, and then find excuses for why your members belong to a different magisterium.)
It’s a hypothesis. If there are any hormones or other biological pathways that are better predictors for being a “hero”, like, courage, confidence, emotional strength, fierceness in situations appropriate, then I am happy to use them.
Being the complete opposite of the neckbeard who hates himself because he was a coward to bullies and thus does not have the confidence to find a girlfriend—I think this is the primary reason of the suffering of nerds. But hey, isn’t it exacty what I explained in the article?
Me 20 years ago, I am 37. I sorta-kinda solved it about 70% during 20 years. Not efficient at all. Room for improvement. And yes, all the other “neckbears” we played AD&D with and obsessed over videogames—back then it meant Champions of Krynn—with. And their currently 17 years old versions. Mr “euphoric of my own intelligence”, if you seen the photo, if not google it.
… it can “fix” neckbeards who suffer, to become someone who does not suffer. This is also called compassion.
Also, I suppose that on an intellectual forum like LW, even if the majority is not nerds/neckbeards I think almost everybody has many acquaintances who are, because intellectuals cluster together. Maybe the typical LWer was the high school kid who was interested in physics and Linux, and the neckbeard guy was someone who was interested in superhero comics and D&D and they ended up hanging out together because it was less bad than hanging out the majority oafs who were only interested in fucking and fighting and sports on TV.
Hm, not necessarily, but it is not like I am Prometheus bringing the perfect solution from the gods. I direct attention to the problem. Propose an solution. I hope to get other people thinking to come up with better ones.
Well, so far I only get objections, hardly anything along the lines of what I expected like “wait I am actually a psychologists I have a better idea!!”
DeVliegendeHollander writes a post on how nerds could be protected from bullying and you interpret this to mean that:
?
This is the exact opposite of what he is saying.
I guess this is what “Straussian reading” means. Something like postmodern reading—the text always says exactly what you want it to say, regardless of what it said originally—except that with postmodern reading the resulting interpretation is always left-wing, while with Straussian reading the resulting interpretation is always right-wing. :D
Um, no, he writes a post on how nerds can become “real men” X-/
That is actually only a subset. The core thing is to solve self-hatred, to love one’s self well enough to retreat from the fantasy world and inhabit the real one. My martial arts solution is only a part of gaining self-respect. I also mentioned communication skills etc.
Having said all that, why is this “real men” thing even wrong? Why do intellectuals tend to hate it? I remember how intellectuals hated it around 1910 or so (at least in Europe, see Stefan Zweig etc.) but today science backs it up better—there are all sorts of casual relationships between prenatal and serum T and various other traits. To put it differently, things like courage and not being depressed seem to be related, although the causal chain is not clear.
Still, courage training, conquering fears, should not be something intellectuals should laugh on as something uncivilized, reactionary or barbarous.
And yeah, courage training, by its very nature, looks like that.
One more though and maybe I should put that in as an edit: basically nerds need to learn from feminists, it is basically the very same ideas for the very same set of problems—the lack of self-respect, confidence. The whole feminist stuff about how to feel empowered and confident and speak up and all that is 100% valid for nerds too. In fact I know women who do exactly this, who conquer their internalize suppression by communication training (Toastmasters), dressing professional, yes, even things like boxing, I know women who gain a feeling of empowerment and confidence from this kind of courage trainig, and it works.
So yeah, nerds need to become “real men” in the sense feminist women aim to become “real men”—or rather, “real persons”, who are not afraid, do not feel suppressed, but feel empowered and brave.
Men die younger because testosterone is harmful to health. See, even nature hates real men. We are just accepting the discoveries of natural sciences. :D
Okay, more seriously (still I feel that this topic inspires me to come up with crazy theories, some of which might incidentally point towards something profound), maybe it is a consequence of game theory and fragmentation of modern society. Think about it this way: if a random person X gains more strength, who benefits from this, and who loses? The person X and their allies benefit, their enemies lose. Maybe it is the structure of the society today that we have very few personal allies and a lot of competitors. Therefore, anyone gaining power is perceived as a loss to most people. In such environment, memes like “do not get stronger, that’s evil” flourish. (Maybe this is not necessarily the culture as a whole, just the subculture of social-science intellectuals, that has few friends and a lot of backstabbing.)
It was different in the past where people were divided into tribes, so when your neighbor become stronger you felt your tribe is becoming stronger, which was a good thing.
It is different for women, because feminism is a powerful tribe today, and when feminists speak about “women”, they usually mean “women who accept (or will accept) feminism”. -- To explain this: imagine the last time when you heard feminists speaking about how we need more women in politics. Did anyone mention Margaret Thatcher or Susan Palin as positive examples of women in politics? Probably no. But they probably mentioned Hillary Clinton. Just saying that “women” in certain contexts does not include literally all women, only those belonging to the tribe. Of course there are also situations where meaning literally all women is the convenient Shelling point, e.g. letting women vote.
Shortly: It is all about selfish motivation. If other people believe they will benefit from you getting stronger, they will support you to become stronger. Today intellectuals don’t believe this when they talk about men, which is why they discourage it.
Exactly this. However, it needs to be “do as I do”, instead of “do as I say” kind of learning. Nerds don’t need to learn feminist theory, because that is a theory constructed to support feminism, not to support nerds. Nerds need to learn feminist practice: supporting each other, constantly shaming the enemies, i.e. bulding a modern tribe. -- Okay, preferably with less mindkilling, if such thing is a real political option.
No, frankly, this is a much older story, not something from the recent decades. Strains of European humanism rejected “macho” attitudes as far back as 1900-1950, I know it from reading authors like Stefan Zweig (E.g. The World Of Yesterday) or Erich Fromm (The Anatomy Of Human Destructiveness). The issue is, largely, that back then the problems to ponder were not the relatively peaceful ones pondered today, but major war and genocide was attributed to a rather bull-headed gung-ho spirit—and I actually think it was correctly attributed so. The European attitudes were basically so in this period that the world around you is full of spilled gas and you do NOT want any sparks to go into it. So it seemed there is so much aggression trying to break out, in major conflicts killing millions that all the sparks better be extuingished—so it is better for everybody to be a bit of a “limp dick” rather than to risk that. And this influenced European literature and intellectualism a lot.
The story was different in America where simply these attitudes were not so dangerous, however, the latest in the 1960′s this strain of European literature also hit America and influenced “hippie” attitudes—Vietnam played an important role in this, the desire for pacifism generate a desire to do away with traditionally masculine attitudes.
Meanwhile, from the 1970′s − 80′s on, there is the opposite trend. During the late Cold War it was understood that traditional war is not much on the table but either pressing the launch buttons or not, and probably nobody will be stupid enough to press those just to play macho. Thus, the world started to seem less dangerous and these attitudes were allowed to come back. Hippie music gave way to punk and Metallica, road movies to action movies, and so on.
However, intellectuals still resist it, because all they see is what Fromm saw—that it is hardly more than a celebration of destructiveness. So there is this apparent rule that to create is good and moral and anything tending towards destructiveness even a bit is wrong and immoral, we are supposed to make but not to unmake. So competition is bad, cooperation is good etc. etc.
This is sort of complicated to explain and understand but probably it is not simply not wanting others to become stronger.
I think overly “limp” intellectualism is connected with nerdiness. The issue seems to be that boys from kindergarten on engage each other in increasingly scarier and scarier challenges and competitions. As long as you keep up, it is sort of fun enough. If you take time out to read books, because you have intellectual interests, you fall back in this kind of thing and then it becomes something not exciting and challenging but rather scary. Then the bullying starts.
So overally it is the process I described about nerds, but I think the aversion to “real men” attitudes is largely the aversion to becoming like the bullies (who were often stupid and anti-intellectual) or an aversion to the fact that indeed there is something not properly developed in one’s own self.
Nevertheless, I think what needs to be done here is to try to formulate the view clearly that not everything that tends towards the destructive, the unmaking, is necessarily wrong. That a world intellectuals often dream about—where everybody is only creative and productive, and never destructive—is the social equivalent of cancer, runaway growth without keeping creating and destroying in balance. But this is not exactly easy to formulate in a generally acceptable way. Purely economically, it can be explained, perhaps, if people think endless economic growth endangers the planet, yet you don’t want to deny people the right to make things, then someone should unmake things, break windows, so to speak, and any group of people assigned that kind of role will obviously have, how to put it, rather “barbarous” morals.
So, essentially it is the reverse stupidity. We have seen that one extreme is harmful, therefore we must go to the opposite extreme.
Yet there are situations which require someone being on the middle of the scale—not a bully, but also not someone scared of conflicts. For example, when people are doing things wrong, someone has to tell them. If everyone is avoiding conflicts all the time, then one incompetent employee can ruin a company, or one incompetent government official can ruin a country. The conflict doesn’t necessarily have to be personal; one possible way of saying “your company is horribly inefficient” is to found a competing company.
However, it is not true that all aggressivity is frowned upon by intellectuals. The taboo applies more strongly to men, and covers only physical violence plus speech that feels like it would incite physical violence. Other forms of violence are tolerated. -- For example, if you hear some guy saying something politically incorrect, it would be unacceptable to slap him, but it is acceptable to call his boss, make him fired, and let his children starve. (That is: physical violence = not okay; social and economical violence coming from the right kind of people = okay.) Actually, if you were a women with the right kind of credentials, it would probably be even acceptable to slap him; and he would be frowned upon for fighting back.
By which I am saying, that the idea of “let’s make everyone unable to fight”, although it leads to some negative consequences, is actually just a facade for something more complicated, roughly “let’s make people unable to fight, unless they are members of our tribe”. Disarming your opponents is not a new idea; the original part here is the one which also calls for disarming everyone neutral. (People mostly don’t care about neutrals, they focus on their enemies. But it is more strategical to first disarm everyone using the memes of global disarming, and then find excuses for why your members belong to a different magisterium.)
I’m puzzled by your fixation with testosterone. It may be the thing that gives you and me our nether parts, but testosterone does not a man make.
It’s a hypothesis. If there are any hormones or other biological pathways that are better predictors for being a “hero”, like, courage, confidence, emotional strength, fierceness in situations appropriate, then I am happy to use them.
Why the interest in heroism?
Being the complete opposite of the neckbeard who hates himself because he was a coward to bullies and thus does not have the confidence to find a girlfriend—I think this is the primary reason of the suffering of nerds. But hey, isn’t it exacty what I explained in the article?
Who being the opposite? You?
Me 20 years ago, I am 37. I sorta-kinda solved it about 70% during 20 years. Not efficient at all. Room for improvement. And yes, all the other “neckbears” we played AD&D with and obsessed over videogames—back then it meant Champions of Krynn—with. And their currently 17 years old versions. Mr “euphoric of my own intelligence”, if you seen the photo, if not google it.
Being the complete oppositse of a neckbeard is of interest to others because...?
… it can “fix” neckbeards who suffer, to become someone who does not suffer. This is also called compassion.
Also, I suppose that on an intellectual forum like LW, even if the majority is not nerds/neckbeards I think almost everybody has many acquaintances who are, because intellectuals cluster together. Maybe the typical LWer was the high school kid who was interested in physics and Linux, and the neckbeard guy was someone who was interested in superhero comics and D&D and they ended up hanging out together because it was less bad than hanging out the majority oafs who were only interested in fucking and fighting and sports on TV.
Are you saying that the only way to fix ones neckbeardism is to become the complete opposite?
Hm, not necessarily, but it is not like I am Prometheus bringing the perfect solution from the gods. I direct attention to the problem. Propose an solution. I hope to get other people thinking to come up with better ones.
Well, so far I only get objections, hardly anything along the lines of what I expected like “wait I am actually a psychologists I have a better idea!!”
There’s already quite a lot of self help material on this site.
Of this kind?
No, but that cycles back to the question of who this is aimed at.
Intellectuals who personally may not be neckbeards but probably know some.
You’ve switched back to talking as though you are only offering generic advice, not a very soecific scheme for becoming ultra macho.