As we’ve seen again and again on this blog, misogynists love to talk about how much better men are than women when it comes to things like math, logic, and scientific thinking generally. Unfortunately, their posts and comments online – filled with breathtaking failures of logic, absurd unsourced assertions and magical thinking — do not seem to bear out this hypothesis. I would compare the scientific thinking of most manosphere misogynists with that of the creationists, but frankly that would be insulting to creationists.
A case in point: a graph – provenance unknown – posted in a recent MGTOWforums discussion of marriage. The standard line amongst the lady haters is that marriage is on the way out , because men are “waking up” to the evils of marriage in an allegedly feminist state and deciding to, well, go their own way. The reality: while the marriage rate has been falling fairly steadily for the last quarter-century or so, for a variety of reasons, most people do marry at some point in their lives; it would be silly to assume that a trend over the course of several decades heralds the death of a social institution that has lasted (and has had many previous ups and downs) for millennia.
Of course, that’s not the way the MGTOWers in question see it. Their proof that marriage is doomed – doomed, I say – lies in this little graph which charts with mathematical precision the exact date range within which marriage will vanish forever from this good earth:
Now, there are many problems with this little graph. For one thing, what happens AFTER the projected marriage rate goes to zero? Does the marriage rate bounce like a rubber ball back into the positive realm? Or does it go below zero, with unmarried couples divorcing one another – just in case?
Second, this chart is based on a tiny number of data points – a mere 25 year sliver of the millennia-long history of divorce. If you go back a mere century and a half – see the chart below, taken from a paper you can find here — you’ll see that the marriage rate doesn’t conform to any neat mathematical formula; it jumps up and down, affected not only by slow-moving cultural changes but by events in the real world – look at the gigantic spike in marriage after World War II.
But the main issue here is that there is simply no way you can come up with a neat equation to predict the future of marriage because THE WORLD DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. History isn’t math. It cannot be predicted in advance, and any attempt to do so — especially one based on a tiny sliver of data — is doomed to failure. (Well, certain aspects of reality can be predicted — like when Halley’s comet will next return (assuming it’s not eaten by a giant space monster we haven’t discovered yet). Orbits can be calculated with mathematical precision; social trends cannot.)
To illustrate the dangers of extrapolation, let’s consider the little chart below, prepared by a helpful assistant (who happens to have access to a scanner). The chart provides some interesting data on the age of a hypothetical cat named “Fluffy” and her projected life expectancy. As you can see, Fluffy was hypothetically born in 2001, making her ten years old today, with her age increasing by one every year. (Just pretend that the numbers line up properly; my assistant, despite her many other charms, is not big on precision, and may have been drunk when she prepared this chart.) Based on this data (which show Fluffy’s age increasing by one every year), we could project that by the time the next century rolls around our dear little cat will be 99 years old.
If projecting the future were as easy as drawing little lines on graphs, the world would be a much simpler, and much less interesting, place to live. Most of us realize this. MRAs and MGTOWers, not so much.
Don’t ya think the kids parents might do a little better job, Holly?
Not if they’re also racist frakbags.
Now answer my question.
NWO:
You are absolutely incapable of reasoning through a hypothetical, aren’t you. You know what, I’ma take a different track on this one. Yes, I actually am such a bigot that I need teaching not to be a racist. I grew up in a white neighborhood, with perhaps one or two black children attending my school. I never thought about race or racism becaue I didn’t know it existed. However, I was never taught that whites were superior to blacks, and in fact whenever the subject did come up it would be in the context of history (these people didn’t recognize this other group as actual persons).
If I had a different childhood, growing up in a white supremicist neighborhood, would I be racist? More than likely, yes. Would you? Again, more than likely yes. Children aren’t born into this world knowing about morality, it has to be taught. And a lot of families out there are bad teachers. This doesn’t mean I want schools to teach a rigid code of ethics that I decide must be true, but we do know more about morality than “oh everything is relative, you can’t really say one thing is bad or good.” We can teach that murder is wrong. We can teach that discrimination is wrong. We may not be able to teach that religion is wrong or specifically that abortion is wrong, but these are things that well-informed students can discuss outside the class. When we know more about what is moral and what isn’t, those things may slide into the classroom as well.
Depends on the parents, NWO. Some parents are racists. Some are just really uninvolved and don’t teach their kid much of anything besides “make your own dinner and don’t bug me.”
It’s all very well to say “well, the parents should do better than that,” but a lot don’t, and there’s no way to fix that.
I answered your question spearboy. Are you so morally bankrupt you need to be taught morality by the State? It would appear you do.
So, NWO: Do you think a strong person has the right to rob and kill a weak person, with no consequences?
Thats all well and good to say Holly, but what if the State starts teaching something YOU don’t like. Say like the one child per couple rule like in China. Will you still say it’s OK?
(Again. this isn’t a Make The Other Person Answer More Questions game. This is an attempt to get you to question your own philosophies and possibly reconsider, or at least reveal enough of your own philosophies that we know who the hell we’re talking to. As it stands, you can’t possibly change our minds about feminism or government because if we suddenly became your biggest fans we still wouldn’t know what to change our minds to.)
Without a State, the weak person has no recourse to protect him/herself from attack. In that situation, the strong person has free rein to do whatever s/he wants.
So, no, you haven’t answered my question. If your ideal world is one in which a weak person can get killed with no consequence for the killer, then you don’t think there’s anything wrong with said murder.
NWO – No. When I say schools should teach morality, I mean good morality. This isn’t all-or-nothing and I would (in fact, have!) oppose a school that taught morals I found offensive.
Ruh roh… :O Vancouver scored :O
4-1 17:30 to go
“Imagine a world without government”. You know, I used to hang out with some nice leftist anarchist boys (some of whom were also *gasp* the gay), so I have in fact considered such a proposition and found it wanting. Here are a few issues to consider:
1. Definitions. How does one define government or a state? While this may seem like a silly question, it can get rather tricky. I have had an anarchist suggest that the only real political difference between him and a democratic socialist friend of mine was how they defined these terms. For example, is a council which settles disputes in a small (I mean very small, think more in the hundreds than in the thousands) tribe or group a government and a courts system? It fullfills many of these functions. It is not so clear when having a person or people settle disputes between group members moves from a “private” to “governmental” function. Some definitions of government are so narrow that certain nation-states could be said to have had no government, others are so broad as to make it near impossible by definition to be in a state without government. I have read political philosophers who suggested that your model of the family (the traditional modern western european hetero-patriarchical model) constituted a system with a government. Define what exactly you mean when you say “no governments”.
2. If your definition of government is not extremely narrow, you will find that governments do play organizational roles-roles which tend to have a comparable position cross culturally. There remains the question of how one deals with these issues without such a system. While it is true that some cultural norms can deal with certain issues less formally, you run into the problem of turning these things into a popularity and conformity test rather than actually seeking out dealing with the root of the problem. One of these issues is criminal justice. For example, the unpopular victim gets no justice because they are unpopular or hasty decisions are made where certain individuals can literally get away with murder because of their other perceived values to the group. While courts systems do not completely solve these issues, particularly when dealing with broader social issues, they often do a solid job at controlling for certain sorts of interpersonal animosity interfereing with equal application of the rules. Consider, NWO, if someone in your community accused you of a crime. Would you rather the issue be decided based on your individual popularity, or on a written system of rules which outlines how to determine guilt and punishment? I suggest to people also that they read up on the history of common law crimes, and look at the flaws of such a system, which are often replicated in anarchist situations. There is a reason that statutory legal systems have become so very popular-while they can be complicated, they do tend to function well.
3. Collective defense/sharing of resources. One of the benefits of an increased organizational structure is the ability to cooperate when aggressive outside groups or natural disasters occur. Consider what happens when one deals with thousands of un-united small communities when an aggressor enters. It can often take one after the other with relative ease, whereas it could not take the group, or would have extreme difficulty (look at, for example, some of the Roman Empire’s European campaigns and note that more organized monarchies like the Picts fared far better than disorganized small tribes). Also, imagine a government that is functioning well in regards to disaster relief (if you live in the US, you need to imagine that one, certain other parts of the world, not so much). Having that organizational structure can expediate distrubiting aide and rearranging resources do deal with catastrophe much more easily. Take a look at how much Department of Agriculture structures have improved the results of droughts or disease in small farming communities, or, alternatively, take a look at the difficulties surrounding disaster relief in areas with governmental collapse. Pooling resources can also result in managing expensive/high resource projects that would be difficult to impossible to do alone. For example, I as an individual or as a member of a small community lack the resources and collective knowledge to do the kind of medical research the NIH does. Government acting as an organizational system can save time, lives, and redundancy and make collective work easier.
4. No non-anarchist thinks that all governments are well functioning and good ones. I do see this mistake made often by anarchists. Certain problems can derive from a specific governement or type of government that are not inherant in all government. To give a nearly tautological example, the problem of having a king with a terrible personality is a problem unique to monarchies. Well designed governments (or at least what they think are well designed governments) are what non-anarchists want, not just any random government. Not all cars are the Ford Pinto, and not all governments are the Third Reich. Pointing out a functioning flaw in a single nation state’s government does not prove all governments share that flaw (though the latter could be proved in other ways).
Sidenote: how much the US borrows from the fed does affect the deficit, NWO, because the deficit merely represents a negative difference between income and money owed. For example, if the government “earns” (taxes, revenue from loans it gave, etc.) 100 but owes (in promised grants, loan debt, etc.) 101, the deficit is 1. So, every dollar owed contributes towards the deficit issue.
“So, NWO: Do you think a strong person has the right to rob and kill a weak person, with no consequences?”
I really don’t know why this question is so important, but my answer is NO. Guess what? The State didn’t teach me that.
NWO:
Following you idea of a debate. What if the state started teaching history you didn’t agree with? Or science you thought was faulty? Can schools no longer exist now? Is everything up to the parents?
I’m a rare Canadian who doesn’t care one whit about Hockey. I honestly couldn’t care less.
No offense.
Vancouver scored! But maybe not! The goal light didn’t come on…
Post! Prolly won’t be a goal… need better angles… xD
NO GOAL
I’ll repost, since you didn’t see it.
Without a State, the weak person has no recourse to protect him/herself from attack. In that situation, the strong person has free rein to do whatever s/he wants.
If your ideal world is one in which a weak person can get killed with no consequence for the killer, then you don’t think there’s anything wrong with said murder.
NWO – It’s not about who “taught” you that, but without a state, the stronger can… well, they can eat the weaker if they feel like it. We need some sort of state just to prevent the eating.
@Spear no problem 🙂 I’m doing this for fun :3 And keeping ppl updated if they can’t get the game…
@Holly
And the spitting… Dear Lord the spitting…
@NWO:
Urk.. And even if you think schools should teach something to their children, how the flying holly berries would such a school exist without a government?
OK, somebody help me here, because my head is spinning.
A few pages back, several people were demanding what NWOSlave’s perfect world was like. FInally he gave a real answer: no government.
People immediately started pointing out that this was: 1) anarchy – the strong rampaging at will, robbing, raping and murdering without fear of consequences. 2) Impossible – people start to organize in one way or another if there are more than a few together at one time. 3) Highly undesirable in other ways, in that many of the services government provides (plowing and salting roads in the winter was the example offered) would disappear. It was also pointed out that this would unmake marriage entirely, and would make it much easier for women to get abortions.
He answered the abortion question by declaring that if women weren’t being indoctrinated by…the government? Planned Parenthood?…into believing that abortion was a good thing, they wouldn’t want abortions (which…didn’t even cavepeople expose infants that were undesirable in some way?). And the roads thing he insisted was paid for by “gas taxes” instead of “big daddy” – which, I don’t see the distinction, and after that it somehow turned into a debate on what was legitimate to teach in school. With a sideline about the national debt (see here; it goes to a lot of different places, actually, not one central bank).
Did I get it all?
Oh…and as far as I can tell, the objections I noted are the only ones he answered.