Men crave power. How the laws and mores channel this impulse determines the shape of a given culture.
If you want men to join the legions, you make it so that the clearest path to power for a typical man will be to join up with the legions, serve his time, and then marry and be fruitful on his plot of land. If you want men to form households, you given them rights over those households and the families that issue from them.
Since the 1960s (and even before), the US has elected to instead channel male ambition into other areas. The state and its theorists achieved this by depriving fathers of patriarchal authority over their households. This was long-developing in both culture and law.
One of the key changes, heralded popularly by the advice of Dr. Spock (who was in turn heavily influenced by Freud), was the attribution of the physical disciplining of children and wives to the existence of all war and violence in society. This has also been echoed by the Swiss psychoanalyst, Alice Miller, who argued that the physical discipline regime prevalent in German-speaking countries directly lead to the rise of the Nazis and World War II.
Previous to this era, it was a common bourgeois saying in the US that ‘a man’s home is his castle.’ While this didn’t mean that the man was necessarily a sovereign on the level of a head of state, he was at least expected to maintain order within his household, and to discipline his children.
Men lost the right to use legal force against their wives and children in stages. In the early 19th century, laws against wife battery made it into law in the US and the UK. These regulations were further tightened, and have continued to be tightened, up until and including the Violence Against Women Act.
When most modern, educated, well-bred people tend to think of this trend, they tend to feel good about it. It seems entirely reasonable. After all, only low-class people beat their wives and children.
From another perspective, we might see that the disciplining doesn’t really go away from society. The switch is just passed on from the father to the policeman and the schoolmaster. The state’s hirelings retain the right to discipline children, although wives tend to be permitted to run wild, especially nowadays, restrained only by their desires and sense of self-interest.
The disciplining also changes from spanking to drugging, often heavy drugging of untested chemicals onto children. This sometimes includes powerful anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and various amphetamines. The side effects, not to mention the primary effects, can be quite severe — much more so than sore asscheeks.
Anyway, the reason why no one wants to be a patriarch today is that patriarchs have no more legal authority. They have no formal power over their wives or children. They only have influence. Influence is both fickle and distinct from power. When a child misbehaves in the modern world, there are only a few paths that a parent can take. They can verbally discipline the child (more likely to work in a higher-class household than a lower-class one), they can illegally or semi-legally beat them, they can take them to a psychiatric professional of some kind, or they can feed the kid to the justice system. Schools have their own corrections systems of varying levels of effectiveness.
Further, paternal heads of household can be deprived of their assets and children at any time at the arbitrary whim of their wives. The wife can commit adultery, and the man can still lose his property in the ensuing divorce. The children and the wife alike can be wildly disrespectful to the head of household, and the man has no recourse other than whining.
Naturally, this position holds little appeal to anyone sane. To the extent that a family attempts to hold the old form is the extent to which it’s in rebellion against the law and the dominant culture.
Returning to the beginning of this post, if we hold that men crave power, and if the role of patriarch no longer confers power, but instead vulnerability, we should assume that the male will to power will instead be redirected into other pursuits in which it’s still recognized.
Given that the basic attainment of family authority is out of reach for just about all men, we instead see more redirected energy outside the family, into corporations, the state bureaucracy, athletics, and various status competitions.
Men who aren’t very good at real competitions instead move into fake ones, to get the vicarious sense of power — video games, fantasy football, club sports, internet debating, science, blogging, forum-posting, and other safe outlets for power-jockeying unlikely to bring down too many consequences from anyone with power.
If you give men even a sliver of power, most become contented with that. When you deny them much of any power, the functional ones will set their ambition-engines running, but they will divert themselves away from family, because it confers no authority, while it once did.
“Given that the basic attainment of family authority is out of reach for just about all men, we instead see more redirected energy outside the family, into corporations, the state bureaucracy, athletics, and various status competitions.”
Motive, opportunity, means…the decimation of patriarchal power was a premeditated act.
There’s certainly a lot of documentary evidence for premeditation.
The rise of gangs is another outlet.
Good stuff.
It’s true that in the old days, plenty of patriarchs were unsavory characters, drunkards, gamblers and abusers who got fed with their family in a few years.
That was especially salient after the 19th century, when the good times meant much more men were able to afford a wife.
Then of course hate the sin and not the men; so instead of just killing bad people, they abolished patriarchy for everyone. So the bad people are still around; and the incentives for all men to contribute to society are dead.
This is really an interesting topic, about the relationship with the industrial revolution.
The argument used by Richard Lynn and some others, like Bruce Charlton, is that the industrial revolution was good for us materially, but has caused major genetic deterioration.
We also started to see in the 19th and 20th century many people who would have been somehow prevented from having children winding up in cramped tenements cranking ’em out. When people talk about ‘bad fathers’ they usually mean the fathers in the lower class — impulsive drunkards prone to running out on their wives and beating them up. Those people would not have been having children (at least in settled areas) in previous times. They would be more likely to be highwaymen or to have never been born in the first place.
This new population bulge also provided the manpower for leftism. Now, the demand for raw, undifferentiated labor is much, much lower than it was in the past. But the left still wants the votes, so it pays them to do nothing.
It would be interesting to get a complete picture of marriage life in the 19th century. I have conflicting stereotypes. There is the stereotype of the tenements, the Irish slums, the frontier town, where drinking, gambling, and wife abuse are rampant. But there are also the stereotypes of idyllic small town America, or idyllic Brooklyn ethnic enclave, where communal ties are tight, family life is strong, and abuse would be scandalous.
Which stereotype is more true? Were these idyllic communities so nice because they had such strong cultural institutions? Or because the riff-raff all set off to seek thrills in the city or on the frontier? Or because they were different ethnicity/genetics?
My sense is that in modern America, white folk have become a lot less violent, that white men are much better behaved. So that would be somewhat contra the industrial revolution genetic thesis. My theory is that the combination of anti-masculine schooling, plus much greater consequences for getting an arrest on your record, plus the rise of white collar work, has conditioned white men to have more self-control. A sales clerk at the Verizon store is going to be conditioned to speak well and not be aggressively masculine. A longshoreman, not so much.
I also wonder how much wife abuse would be a problem without the drinking. What if instead of checking a drivers license for age, everyone had a drinking license? Beat your wife, your drinking license is revoked.
I don’t think either licenses should be necessary, but then again, I support Carlyle’s suggestions to make capital punishment and flogging much more common. Sensible punishments are flogging, execution, and exile — crazy ones are attempts to bring about reform through long imprisonment and drugging.
Good points, otherwise. Also, the link to your Twitter account on your home page is broken.
Certainly flogging and exile I can get behind. The taboo against flogging seems insane, just amazing that people have come to believe that a bit of physical harm is so much worse than other forms of punishment. Execution is trickier – there may be something to be said about trying to maintain a Schelling point where it is really hard for the state to kill people, as a guard against the worst kind of reign of terrors.
The Twitter link is fixed, thanks for pointing that out!
Sure. I mostly just say that to agree with Carlyle and to be a little shocking. It’s a complex issue that could use a more focused treatment.
In the context of the current criminal justice system (which is insane), being gungho about capital punishment would be a muddled position.
Any time re: twitter fix
It is women and effeminate men who believe this most strongly and it is women who do the most voting. We will not have sane corporal punishment until we reestablish patriarchy and disenfranchise women.
“Men crave power. How the laws and mores channel this impulse determines the shape of a given culture.”
SOME men crave power. How his mental makeup and motives determines to what extent are they willing to share it or take it.
“Since the 1960s (and even before), the US has elected to instead channel male ambition into other areas.”
Actually, men themselves today channel their own ambitions, for their own purposes.
“While this didn’t mean that the man was necessarily a sovereign on the level of a head of state, he was at least expected to maintain order within his household, and to discipline his children.”
Agreed, but how he maintains order, how he disciplines his children is his OWN business. Thus, he is king, and assuredly does not need an outsider, such as yourself, to dictate that he is other than supreme leader of his own domain.
“Men lost the right to use legal force against their wives and children in stages.”
Those rights were determined by men collectively. There wasn’t anything lost, just redefined.
“The disciplining also changes from spanking to drugging, often heavy drugging of untested chemicals onto children.
” In some households, absolutely. But generally? No.
“Anyway, the reason why no one wants to be a patriarch today is that patriarchs have no more legal authority.”
In reality, today’s men are patriarchs. They decide for themselves how they will govern their relationship and household. You are assuming that because they neglect to make decisions YOU believe they OUGHT to make that men no longer desire to be patriarchs.
“The wife can commit adultery, and the man can still lose his property in the ensuing divorce.”
Depending on the circumstances, it is possible.
“The children and the wife alike can be wildly disrespectful to the head of household, and the man has no recourse other than whining.”
The man has a number of options at his disposal. To say he has “no recourse other than whining” is observably false.
“Given that the basic attainment of family authority is out of reach for just about all men…”
Based on the argument YOU created, yes. Except your position is based exclusively on how you see things, not as how they are. You defined what is the “family authority” and how it is “attained”, then proceed to state that for all men, they are unable to attain being authoritative in their household. Today’s men certainly do need YOU to define for themselves their role in their own home.
“Men who aren’t very good at real competitions instead move into fake ones, to get the vicarious sense of power…”
Again, your argument is predicated on YOUR own artificially crafted position, making it seem that this observation is true. “
Sensible punishments are flogging, execution, and exile.” To YOU, they seem sensible. To most men, no.
There are very good reasons to not be a father these days, a quick perusal of any manosphere blog will provide ample examples.
Tldr: The predatory meat mincer of family law.
But that’s a given.
What’s interesting is that even dyed-in-the-wool progressive men, those men who lecturer us on the wondrous nature of the salt of the earth liberated women, and how choreplay is really a good thing, are finding their own non-red-pill reasons to reject fatherhood too.
It’s easy to suggest these chaps are just being selfish, maybe, but I think the average progressive male’s clear signs of cognitive dissonance betray their real fears.
That part is interesting. Marriage is becoming a niche taste among younger men. But all the women want to get married eventually. Something has to give, there, because that market isn’t clearing and won’t be clearing.
For every liberated woman who leans in, there is one less man in a job making him worthy of marrying up to.
This creates an interesting paradox, where women expect more, they actually receive less.
Whenever I see some “conservative” media outlet post an article admonishing men to “man up” and get married without acknowledging any of the points you have listed (and such articles invariably never do), I see a huge red flag.
It’s the same red flag that goes up when I am told the Iranians are an existential threat we must do something about now.
It’s the same red flag that goes up when I hear that Goldman Sachs is creating tons of jobs and wealth for our glorious economy, and I should support financial deregulation because of this.
It’s the same red flag that goes up when there is a plea to open the borders and let all that hard-working, family-oriented, third world human capital rush on in.
That red flag is simply when TBTP make an appeal to the conservatives to proudly sacrifice their interests/energies in the service of society, without considering precisely how those energies will be spent, or how their interests will be served.
The red flag of mindless sacrifice is the hallmark of establishment conservative (i.e. controlled opposition) media, and its message is falling on increasingly deaf ears.
The message is still being pumped out though, and it leads me to wonder. What do you think, Henry? Is it more that they are becoming increasingly out of touch, or that there is still a sizable enough crop of suckers who still believe the crap they shovel?
The answer to this question has a distinct bearing on what policy the the neoreactionary movement should follow.
Our friends at Goldman actually have a major brand perception problem (not that they actually sell anything or have anything to do with most consumers caught up in such surveys — it just matters for how they might be regulated by the government).
What we should take from this is not that people don’t want to sacrifice for something. They do — they more or less have a need to submit and sacrifice. That need is just being channeled into dysfunctional practices. We don’t believe that we can change human nature all that much, so it’s better not to complain that men have this tendency to self-sacrifice. That’s male nature.
TPTB are becoming more out of touch (the information that they’re getting back to them is noisier). The pool of suckers is, indeed, shrinking, and it’s becoming unmanageable. Martin Gurri has a book on this topic from a responsible technocrat’s perspective which I haven’t finished yet. By every reliable metric we have available, people in the US are becoming less trusting of the authorities. The key term sometimes used is ‘revolt against the elites.’
NRx, at least the writing around it, is an elitist revolt against the elites. This is usually misunderstood by populists. They like that we go after the same targets, but don’t like the suggestions of what to supplant them with. The Tea Party / Occupy Wall Street are populist revolts against the elites.
*TPTB
I have no complaint against the assertion that men are given to sacrifice, and I also find no objection to the idea that when channeled properly, this tendency can be very beneficial. The ability and will to sacrifice is often one of the primary sources of a civilization’s achievements.
However, I would make the case that the dynamo of noble sacrifice is neither a first cause, nor an inexhaustible resource. Something must exist to spark it and maintain it. I would posit that this will to sacrifice is catalyzed by a precious few types of macro and micro-cultural phenomena, including beauty, kinship, tradition, identity, and trust.
Without the elements on that list, the inborn capacity for determination and sacrifice lies dormant. I suspect those pushing the buttons on the establishment conservative propaganda machine are cognizant of this, but refuse to acknowledge it because it would give away too much – namely that they are working with the establishment left to actively undermine those elements. Instead of managing and sustainably harnessing the capacity for sacrifice, they appear to wringing out what they can from what little remains. It’s like watching someone intentionally drive a car (into oblivion) while refusing to provide it necessary oil changes and other maintenance.
Moving to the next issue you pointed out, NRx may be an elitist movement at heart, but support from a significant part of the general population is an indispensable part of any political movement’s power and viability.
The Tea Party and Occupy movements, as many populist revolts do, suffered from a lack of ideological coherence, and were accordingly divided and dispersed because of this. Exactly as you have said, they didn’t like the New Right’s (NRx’s) suggestions of what to supplant the current power structure with, likely because they are both still wedded to the egalitarian mythos underpinning that current power structure. The problem for Tea Party and Occupy however, is that while they disliked NRx’s suggestions, they hadn’t truly formulated any workable plans of their own.
In retrospect, I should have rephrased the question at the end of my previous comment. Both the out of touch nature of TPTB and the decreasing trust of the masses are readily apparent and almost one in the same when you think about it.
The real question is one of: Just how receptive is at least a physically and electorally significant portion of the general population to the ideas of NRx?
With higher general discontent and lower trust in established institutions, that receptivity grows, but is it enough to establish a functional power base?
If there is not enough support, NRx must remain an ideological backwater, subtly nudging the next generation of conservative leaders toward its ideals. If there is enough support, NRx can push to the forefront of political debate. This puts it in a dangerous but potentially advantageous position, where it will have to clarify and possibly re-conceptualize its platform for wider consumption.
Certainly the failure of the Tea Party and Occupy movements cannot be chalked up to the issues that created them simply going away. That pool of popular resentment has definitely increased. Leaders who see the value in the NRx platform will have to find a way of harnessing that reservoir without destroying the functionality of NRx concepts in the process.
Not so. Any study of family dynasties (business and political dynasties, not aristocratic dynasties) shows that it’s the transmission of values that keeps them together over time.
If you look at northern Italy, where family businesses dominate the industrial sector, you’ll see the same names cropping up since the Renaissance. Clearly, there is something going on that’s keeping them prospering over many generations, even during periods when they’ve lost their physical wealth.
These aren’t businesses created by people who take a switch to each other to keep everybody in line – what they have in common is the ability to articulate a clear family mission, with an emphasis on identifying and growing talent, and giving successive family members a role to play.
These dynasties thrive and prosper even when the male line fails and you get a generation of women taking over, as has happened at various times historically and is happening right now.
This has been extensively studied in the international business literature. In not one case study does the author recommend that the patriarch be given the right to beat (sorry, “correct”) his kids or wife. In countries like France and Italy, this kind of behaviour would be seen as dysfunctional and leading to the downfall of the family, rather than strengthening it.
You’re taking a single point, applying it to a separate context unmentioned in the article, and then proclaiming the rest it to be invalid based on this rhetorical sleight.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you,
“The state’s hirelings retain the right to discipline children, although wives tend to be permitted to run wild, especially nowadays, restrained only by their desires and sense of self-interest.” But wait… Why did wives need someone to restrain them in this way in the first place? If having nobody but the state above them was good enough for men, why not for women? There must be something I’m missing here… Moreover, women in developed countries today also increasingly favor education and carreer over marriage, which is not explained at all by this piece.