Late Night Note On Passivism

I came across a comment on Free Northerner’s excellent (old) post on Passivism:

 

Augustina wrote:

It seems that the tenets of passivism are 1) become worthy 2) some things happen 3) accept power. Where people are disagreeing it seems is exactly what those “some things” are. Face it, throughout human history those “some things” are violence. Nature abhors a vacuum, and when one authority loses legitimacy and then becomes weak, minor strong men begin to assert power, fight with each other, and then through this process of violence a new authority is brought about. This can take several generations.

Oh, passivism. It has everything to recommend it but quickening the heart.  What follows is a short Q&A:

Q:  What are the “some things?”  Where will they come from?

A:  Who knows?  Probably some violence, probably some scandal.  Chaos.  Cleansing fire.  Things falling apart, the center not holding.  The passivist lets the chaos of the world be his weapon.  Some of it will be human-initiated.  Some of it will even be right-motivated!  But rest assured, it will come.  A self-contradictory world eventually collapses.  A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Q: This is supremely boring

A: Yep, like watching for a pot to boil.  If you’re looking for dopamine hits, I suggest regular calisthenics over politics.

Q: But what about ——————-(some variation of meme warfare or violence)?

A:  These things are unnecessary and only muddy the waters.  The system already unavoidably produces them, or at least the incongruities and discontent that produce them.  One is not a passivist to hasten a collapse—that will happen of its own, and when it occurs, even for the passivists it will get worse before it gets better—but for quickest possible recovery and cleanest possible transition after that.

Q: But then what should I spend my time on?

A:  Probably housework and exercise.

A Question for Readers

In my last post, I wrote that men should engage in endeavors both cooperative and solo to build themselves and each other up in ways that are not vulnerable to capture.  I want to mention a thing I did, but most of all I want to solicit reader opinion on things that would do what I was attempting, but more and better.

I had four guys over a few nights and we set up an assembly line to churn out egg-sausage-pepper-cheese breakfast burritos.  Near the end of our “shift,” I asked if anyone had seen the Gilette ad.  I then shut my mouth as various virtue-signaling things came out, but two guys stuck around and we had a three-hour conversation where I dribbled out some manosphere wisdom from my (surprisingly copious) store.

It was great.  Now these guys (and I) are eating good food, on the cheap, and we built male friendships.

Reader thoughts on other cooperative ventures I could do with other men that would bring mutual benefit, would be appreciated.

The Gaslight Discount

I just had to highlight this comment from Acksiom over at Dalrock’s

>No, they hate natural masculinity

No, actually they don’t. All this pathologizing of natural masculinity is a bargaining trick, a negotiating tactic. Men’s liberation is a threat to their bank balances, so they try to make everyone devalue and dehumanize men and boys, including men and boys themselves. This trains men and boys to accept less compensation for taking on their traditional roles, and trains normal, healthy people to more casually accept the devaluation and dehumanization of their own family, friends, congregations, and colleagues for similar benefits.

“Misogyny” has never really been a thing in western civ. There is virtually no real ‘hatred’ of women in western civ and never was. It was all a big gaslighting lie from the start. And the reciprocal characterization of male-bashing and -devaluing and -dehumanizing as misandry is just as false. They don’t hate men and masculinity. They hate having to pay men what their masculinity is increasingly worth.

(Aside for the PUA’s out there:  who has really been negged?)

Just because they don’t know it doesn’t make it untrue.  But the two are inseparable.  Men are like machines in a lot of ways:  put in respect, get out freeways, airplanes, electricity, medicine…  You can of course want the latter without giving the former, and you can even have that, but it comes with a rider attached:”Your civilization dies.”

One scripture I have been pondering lately comes from the Book of Mormon:

for I know that [God] granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life;

Sooner later, everyone gets what they want.  Whether they’ll like it once they’ve got it is another matter.

But away from schadenfreude and towards something useful.  What are men to do?  How does Acksiom’s comment change our understanding?

First, and most importantly, it highlights that there is a price to be paid.  True, it is no fun to not be paid what you’re worth—but it’s even worse to internalize it and believe you are only worth what you’re being paid.

Can you just send out a memo to the world and say, “Hey guys, I realized I’m worth more, start paying me my due”?  No.  Not usually.  You get what you negotiate, not what you deserve.

You can go on strike.  There’s a problem with this, though:  a strike means you’re not working.  And you should be working:

Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake…In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground;

Work is good for you.  It’s the power to affect the world.

The answer is to work, but for things that can’t be stolen.  Health, knowledge, good will, spirituality.  Moldbug wrote (somewhere…) that free trade is the weapon of the strong—we can generalize it and say that fungibility and transferability are good for the strong (because they can use what they take) but bad for the weak (because now they can be plundered).  We are not strong.

This suggests, by the way, one area that Reaction and the androsphere could improve on:  the fine art of tax evasion reduction.

Men should actively look for opportunities to cooperate with and help each other.  Group buying, loans, small companies, lectures—these sorts of things are how a group acquires power.

Will the world come, penitent, on hands and knees?  Focus on smaller goals.  By the time they do, after all, we (or our children) will wish we’d prepared better.

 

What Are Women For? Part 1

And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

They are for men.

 

This is not one of those self-satisfied posts that offers a cryptic saying and then stops.  Or rather, it is, but with the promise of more in the future.  A good way to put it is:  this post is meant to frame the question, where the question is: “What does that mean?”  Later posts will answer it.  God bless you and yours.

Complexity Tip: Stay In Your Lane

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a pretty interesting person.  It’s not like this blog is advertised—well, except on This Week in Reaction, but if you’re reading that, then you’re definitely interesting, so.

 

More than interesting, you’re probably interested.  This area of the internet tries, successfully or not, to cover it all: sociology, complex systems, religion, economics.  You can find well-written arguments on both sides of issues, as well as opinions to the effect that the real issue is…

 

It can be a lot.  Dalrock likens some of what you learn around here to wearing They Live glasses—and it really can be.  You sort of walk around looking at people and noticing dumb things they do, and you feel alone because you know if you spoke up about it there’d be an uproar.  And meanwhile maybe you’re asking yourself, “What is the proper Reactionary thing to have for breakfast this morning?”

So all of this stuff, the complexity of the world around you, and in you, can add up and be overwhelming.  And one who is overwhelmed is one who is losing.

Here is my solution: to stay in my lane.  It’s a false choice between “Fix everything and be overwhelmed” and “Retreat and let things go to hell around you.”  “Fix everything and be overwhelmed” isn’t actually an option—in practice, you fail at fixing everything and just get overwhelmed, which helps nobody.

On the other hand, the good you do for yourself, you can also prevent yourself from destroying.  You can sow, with some expectation of reaping.

Feelin’ good today, reader.  Good things ahead.