A tiny group of gallant men (and “their women”) go underground to fight the evil gynocratic overlords. Is this the plot of a terrible dystopian potboiler from 1971, or a description of how most MRAs see themselves, and the world, today?
Turns out it’s both. I found this pic in the Blue Pill subreddit, and now I really, really want to read this book.
Here’s a book review from someone who did.
RE: GNL
To create gender equality we need to slow the pendulums swings so that it can settle on equilibrium.
Yes, because as we all know, YOU know EXACTLY where that pendulum should end. And you are totally right and nobody will disagree with you.
RE: Bon O Bolishus
This site is quickly becoming exactly what I thought it was fighting…only worse because there are more people self emolating themselves repeatedly on the comment boards.
The hell are you going on about?
RE: vaiyt
Instead of asking “What if my parents had an abortion?” they should ask “What if my parents wished I wasn’t born?”. Because that’s what puts you in the shoes of an unwanted child.
The most hardcore pro-life man I’ve ever met was of this type. He was abused mercilessly by his mother, who also told him frequently that the only reason she had him was because abortion was illegal. He coped by hating abortion; I think it was how he survived, like the only way he could justify his own existence was by believing that all fetuses had a right to live too.
We ended up severing our friendship after he went on a rant about how gay marriage was the downfall of society, but I can’t really be mad at him. Honestly, I just kind of felt sorry for him. I know what it’s like to have so much trouble justifying your own continued existence. He used anti-choice politics; I used my role in my system.
@Cassandrakitty: And even if they aren’t dangerous, they’re unpleasant. Oh, I understand the violence issue all too well. A very large part of the world’s problems come from male aggression and violence (look at Iraq/Syria, where the battle between two groups of men partly encouraged by male-supremacist culture and religion, is causing untold death and misery to the women and children caught in the crossfire), and I believe you have to study how it is inculcated in order to figure out how to counteract it.
In my adolescence I began to experience a growing revulsion toward violence, which I had trouble understanding because it seemed like most other guys my age were just waiting to get out of high school so they could sign up for the Army. In college I came across Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, which taught me that femininity is a social construct — and thus masculinity must also be a social construct. I wish I knew why the social conditioning didn’t “take” in my case — I’ve thought about it a lot. My theory is that Western societies (and many others, of course) have been constantly involved in armed struggle for centuries if not millenia, and in that world the power of leaders has depended on producing a constant supply of cannon fodder. Simply put, young men are coercively optimized as soldiers and young women as the producers and nurturers of the next generation of soldiers and soldier-producer-and-nurturers. Obviously this conditioning has been weakening in recent times in countries where feminism has been able to take root, but it is still strong enough to produce plenty of dysfunctional and even dangerous men. Then give them nuclear weapons, WMD, and all sorts of other modern arms, and male aggression and violence are a threat to the continued existence of our species. (Are you listening, John McCain?)
The real genius of the system is how it has managed to persuade mothers to cooperate in the process. When I was growing up the fear of producing a (horrors!) gay son was pervasive. My first wife sure had it (although, as it turns out, it is our daughter who is gay). I remember snatches of a song by folk-singer named Carolyn Hester, who is best known for having been married to Richard Farina before he married Joan Baez’s sister Mimi. The song is called “Momma’s Tough Little Soldier” — unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a copy of the lyrics, but the part I remember goes “Momma’s soldier big and brave/ Not afraid of iodine/ … /Tough little soldier of mine.” When Sarah Palin says, “People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates.” she is playing the old game of shaming a man for lacking cojones. (Obama, of course, is too smart to fall for this game.)
Feminism has taken an occasional false turn, to be sure, and the movement often has not been as inclusive as it should be, but basically I attribute most of the progress that has been in tearing down traditional sex roles to feminism. The angry men have it dead wrong.
So in this book the family unit has been replaced by government institutions? Good on Cooper, he combined offensive fear mongering with dystopian cliche #56566. Is there any science fiction society where child rearing is handled collectively but not abjectly dystopian?
No, because most of these were written in the 50s and 60s, when red-baiting was still standard.
Zolnier, if you count before a massive genocide…
Airbenders in avatar and Jedi in the old republic?
Airbenders I’ll grant you, they seemed nice. Jedi though had an unfortunate habit of stealing babies and unhealthily suppressing normal emotional responses directing leading to one of their number helping to establish the empire.
Come to think of it restricting Jedi from reproducing really is dumb considering that it obviously runs in families. Though I’m probably putting more thought into this than Lucas did.
Actually years after he wrote Brave New World Huxley did write The Island, which was basically his attempt to make a sort of utopia using the same broad strategies as the World State. Including the collectivist child rearing, less so the whole production line and pavlovian conditioning stuff.
iirc the utopian society in Woman On The Edge Of Time had something like that. I don’t know if they had artificial wombs as well, though they did have men (cis men, that is) able to breastfeed their kids.
“Jedi had an unfortunate habit of stealing babies”
Aha! I spy one who has bough into the imperial propaganda machine! I kid. A lot of Jedi-stuff seemed rigged for a big, nasty mess sooner or later. It’s kind of half surprising they made it so long, honestly…
Unfortunately, I’m coming up empty for other examples. 🙁
Speaking of things Pavlovian:
http://mediacdn.snorgcontent.com/media/catalog/product/p/a/pavlovcatbrown_fullpic.png
B F Skinners “Walden Two” is intended as a utopia, although lots of people find it unpleasant. I actually like the society he describes there, would have no problems living there (at least if we suppose that Skinner’s psychological theories are largely correct, so that his society really works the way he believed it would work, which I agree is a big assumption. Let’s say that psychology works like this in the Skinnerverse). I can see why people find it scary though, but that, I think, is mainly because he’s a fairly crappy writer, and also loves to provoke for the sake of provocation. So you sort of have to sit down and think about what the actual facts of this place are in order to appreciate it. And they have fairly collective child-rearing.
Basically, the idea he’s built his utopia on is that all criminal, self-destructive and otherwise destructive behaviour is caused by people having been subjected to various conflicting messages and environmental influences when they grew up. Like, children are taught that they ought to be honest, but occasionally they will end up in situations where honesty is punished and lies and deceit rewarded instead, so they are sent mixed messages. They end up feeling torn between honesty and the temptation to deceive, and occasionally chooses the latter. The same thing can be said about any kind of “bad” behaviour – it’s basically caused in this way. If people just have the right kind of up-bringing, they’re gonna be both happy, harmonious and nice.
So he imagines this experimental little society where children are subjected to perfect environmental influences from day one. Firstly, when a child is born, she ought to encounter no resistance, no frustration, nothing bad at all – her entire life should be perfectly conflict-free in all ways. He imagined that this is best achieved if babies are kept naked (so nothing restricts their movements) in a sort of chamber with a soft and easy-to-clean floor, with perfect temperature, air pressure and so on, completely sterile so they’re not exposed to bacteria, and every single desire is immediately fulfilled by attentive people. Parents are allowed to go there and hang out with their babies as much as they please, so it’s not like they’re forced to depart from their babies. There’s nothing stopping parents from staying there 24/7 even, being one of the people who make sure that every baby’s needs are instantly met, if they want to. But unlike mothers in the real world Skinner lived in, no one was forced to take care of their baby all day and all night (this, he thought, was important, since he believed this leads to tremendous stress in mothers, and this in turn may cause them to mistreat their children).
Then babies are supposed to, very gradually, be exposed to more and more hardships, physical as well as psychological. Firstly, it’s just about getting used to having small amounts of bacteria around, and feeling like a few seconds of frustration before one’s need is satisfied. The hardships are upped so gradually that it’s never more than what the child can easily cope with (also very important to Skinner, that the people in this utopia, unlike people in the real world, aren’t suddenly faced with a huge-ass problem that is way too big for them and just leads to depression, anxiety and so on). By the time these babies have become teenagers they would be highly resilient to all kinds of diseases and also have the mental resources to adequately deal with all kinds of problems that might face them.
People from this small community still goes to college and university, and once they’re fully grown-up, engages in trade and stuff with the rest of the USA, since their community is too small to be self-sufficient, but no one wants to leave permanently for life in the “normal” world since life in Walden 2 is just so much better. And yeah, if psychology (and medicine) really worked that way, so that everyone is kind and sweet and happy and healthy all the time, I’d totally prefer that. I’m not one of these people who see something intrinsically valuable in having problems in one’s life – I’d gladly do without them.
That strikes me as an insurmountable issue.
How on Earth would you be able to socialize a kid without them a shit load of conflict occurring. Children fight amongst themselves over pretty much anything. My little sister and her friends can barely decided where to play tag or gang up without actually splitting into gags. Plus babies are kind of hard to read, though I am neither a parent nor a guardian so what do I know.
Yeah, I agree the whole thing is unrealistic. Still, the idea that psychological problems and destructive behaviour are caused by receiving mixed signals and alternately being rewarded and punished for the same type of behaviour strikes me as more plausible than, idk, ideas about how all girls want to have a penis and all boys want to fuck their mother and stuff like that. Skinner’s ideas may be hopelessly over-simplified, but there’s probably still truth in them.
…Gangs, I meant gangs, stupid typo fairy.
All of Freud’s wacky stuff about castration anxiety and so on always made me want to say “well, sir, perhaps that was true for you, but…”
If ever there was a candidate for “physician, heal thyself” it’d have to be old Sigmund.
Siggy, Siggy. Why are you so obsessed with penises, Siggy? And what’s all this stuff about your mother? I really think you should talk to someone about this, Siggy.
Huxley’s World State was pretty fond of Freud if I recall.
Regarding Brave New World I had several problems with it. Firstly, I really couldn’t sympathize with some people I got the distinct impression that I was supposed to sympathize with. Like, there’s a main character who’s in love with a woman whom he’s got absolutely nothing in common with, but she merely wants to party and have sex and have zero romantic interest in him. It’s like we’re supposed to think that this dude is so much more profound and good than this constantly-partying-and-fucking woman, when he’s actually worse than her, because he’s in love on the sole basis that she’s hot, despite having nothing in common with her, and then he’s all pouty about her not loving him back. (Huxley also wrote “Point Counter Point” featuring a dude who is in love with a woman who sleeps around, although she makes no secret of this and never promises him monogamy or anything. This dude at one point gets pissed off at her and rapes her, and this is treated as perfectly fine, and we should feel sorry for this poor dude for not having a monogamous relationship with her. So, draw your own conclusions about his view on women.) Also this “wild man” who struts around believing that he’s so much better than everyone else; couldn’t stand him.
I think the only protagonist who was somewhat likeable was this sort of alpha dude who was super intelligent and successful and got to fuck all the women, until he decided that he didn’t like it in their society and went into exile. The reason he was somewhat likeable is that he wasn’t all judgmental about other people and wasn’t whining about how no one can understand him because he’s so much more profound than other people.
Also, their society was stupid, because it was so incredibly fragile. As soon as the drug supply was momentarily cut off, it began to crumble within, like, five minutes, and there was so much that depended on cover-up and lies. If I were a brave-new-world dictator I could have come up with a way smarter and more stable system.
It is funny, though, that Huxley accurately predicted how all sports and hobbies would turn into equipment sports that require you to spend loads of money on the proper equipment in the future. He should have credit for that.
Another nice thing about Skinner’s utopia, btw, is how work is supposed to be divided. His little utopian community is fairly communist, with people working for the good of the community rather than for individual salaries. I don’t remember the exact details on how the economy would work here, but one thing I do remember, is that people would work, on average, twenty hours a week, and everyone would have two jobs; one more intellectual/white collar and one more manual/blue collar. Skinner believed that when people work forty hours a week at the same job, they’re pretty unefficient. If people got to switch jobs and work far less hours, they would work way more efficiently, so everything that needs to be produced could be produced with a twenty hour work-week. Plus people become much happier if they get to alternate between working with their body and working with their mind.
Also, the exact amount of hours each person would have to put in each week would depend on whether they had boring and/or hard jobs, or easy and interesting jobs. If a person chooses to work a boring and/or hard job, she has to put in even less hours, while people who chooses easy and interesting jobs (Skinner’s example of an easy manual job was gardener, whereas a hard manual job might be something like emptying latrines) would have to put in more hours. Skinner believed that people would have different preferences here; for some, having as much free time as possible in which to pursue hobbies and the like would be most important, whereas for others a fun job is most important, and thus all jobs that need to be done will end up being done by people who have freely chosen to do so.
This whole idea actually does not strike me as too implausible…
On the subject of iffy stuff in Brave New World, if I recall wasn’t there this “pregnancy surrogate” that women had to go through because apparently women who are never pregnant go crazy or something? And that darker skinned women had to have it done earlier ?
Zolnier, I don’t remember right now, but grabbed my copy and started flicking it through… and immediately struck on a page where the “wild man’s” mum tells how her son hated when she slept with different men, and at one time tried to MURDER a man for sleeping with her (note that all this sex is presented as completely consensual). And the impression I get is that we ought to sympathize with the wild man here, since obv it’s SO DISGUSTING with sluts who sleep around with different men, and worse of all’s gotta be if your mum does it, so obv you’re gonna get into a murderous fury on witnessing this.
Yeah, Huxley REALLY really really hated “sluts”.
So true, so true.
I was a student at Harvard just after Skinner retired, and his influence on the Psych Dept. was still great and IMO destructive. Skinner was a behaviorist who believed that there was no such thing as free will, that we have no choice about how we behave. If someone kills or rapes someone, that is a product of stimuli and conditioned responses for which he or she bears no responsibility at all. His last book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, argues that freedom and dignity are meaningless concepts. All his elaborate child-rearing regimen was designed to produce what he believed were the proper conditioned responses. I cannot prove that he was wrong — and I suppose he might be right — but I (and I think most other people) could not live with the belief that I have no choice between being a kind person and being a rapist and/or murderer.
Now there is nothing wrong with starting with the assumption that all human behavior is a result of conditioned responses as a means of investigating that behavior, but having done so you cannot use research based on this assumption to try to prove the assumption (the old begging the question fallacy).
There is a fascinating book “Harvard and the Unabomber” which, among other things, traces the contribution of the Harvard psychology department on a very young, socially awkward, math genius named Ted Kaczynski into a remorseless, conscienceless killer. The problem is that if you eliminate the concept of free will it is basically impossible to have a system of ethics (if you can’t choose, morality is irrelevant), and if you take a person who has difficulty feeling empathy for others and teach him or her that moral behavior is impossible, you are well on your way to creating a monster. I don’t believe that Skinner had any direct contact with Kaczynski, but I believe his influence on the Psych Dept. contributed to K’s development.
@Grumpy: That’s interesting – didn’t know all that.
I should add that I only read Walden 2 of Skinner’s books, not the rest, and the reason I read it was that Robert Kane refers to it in some of his writings. I’m a philosopher (so is Kane, btw), not a psychologist. Walden 2 does feature a philosopher who’s just a stupid strawman, really… I just laughed it off, thinking “okay, Skinner obviously dislikes philosophers”. Skinner also writes in Walden 2 that people have no free will because everything we do is a mere result of environmental influences (and possibly genes, too, but he certainly stresses environment above all else), but it’s clear that he doesn’t even know himself what he means by “free will”, so I sort of laughed that off as well. If the total confusion that Skinner seems to display in at least that book on philosophical issues did have that much of a destructive influence, though, it shouldn’t be seen as a laughing matter.
So, let me delve a bit deeper into this free will business: There’s not one, uncontroversial definition of “free will” or “freedom” or “having a choice”. There are different ideas in the philosophical literature of what these things mean, and what research has been done into ordinary people’s ideas of these concepts have turned up mixed results. Therefore, you can’t just say “there’s no such thing as free will” (or, for that matter, that people do have free will) without providing a definition of what you mean by “free will” when you say this. Otherwise, your statement is about as meaningful as saying, e.g., that there are no democracies in the world, and when people ask “but… there seems to be… what do you mean by democracy, really?” you just go “uh, you know, democracy! You know!”. Without a clear definition it’s not a scientific hypothesis, but an empty slogan.
SO: According to one line of thought, being free basically means that there’s nothing restricting you, forcing you or compelling you. Having a free will, then, means having a will that is unrestricted and uncompelled – this also means being free from inner compulsion by, e.g., serious addiction or neurosis. However, this idea of a free will is completely compatible with the will being caused to choose this rather than that, since there can be causation without compulsion. This idea of a free will is even compatible with all of Skinner’s theories being true. Perhaps I think to myself, upon seeing a beggar in the street, that I ought to give her some money, because she’s desperately poor and I’m not, and I believe that I have a moral obligation to do so. I choose to give her some money, and I do so. In this situation, nothing constrained or compelled me, not even inner factors like addiction and neurosis, and so I did this out of my own free will, according to the conception of a free will that we here consider. But all this is compatible with my thoughts being caused by earlier events where thinking about morality, giving away money and so on was followed by pleasant consequences, thus conditioning me to choose in this way.
Now, arguably this is all the free will we need for morality to make sense. If nothing compels me to do one thing rather than the other, if I still have to think about reasons and make up my mind in order to decide what to do, morality can play a role in my thinking about reasons and subsequently in what I decide to do. The fact that all my thoughts and decisions will have been caused, does not entail that they are superfluous, and that I could just as well sit down and wait to see what previous condition, genetics and so on will cause me to do. (To make a very crude comparison: When the printer at my job spits out paper, this process was caused by earlier events happening in my computer. But the fact that everything the printer does has a cause does not entail that the printer is superfluous and can be cut out of the process. No printer, no print-outs. Likewise, even if all my reasoning and decision-making were caused by earlier events, it is not the case that we can cut that out, stop thinking and stop making decisions and expect my actions to proceed as normal.) As long as we must think about reasons and make decisions in order to act, morality can play an important part in that process.
OBVIOUSLY a comment on Manboobz is not the place to really dig down into the philosophical debate on whether all of morality, parts of it or none is still justified if all our decisions have earlier and perhaps even deterministic causes, but let’s just say that most philosophers (if not all) believe that at least much of morality still is.
Now, according to another line of thought, the above isn’t sufficient to really have free will; it is also important that our decisions are caused in the right way; perhaps our decisions need to be, in important ways, indeterministic (it should be noted that science has not at all ruled out that they are), or there must be some special kind of causation etc. If real free will requires all that, Skinner’s theory might, arguably (note: still only arguably) rule out free will. There are also philosophers that argue that some kind of fancy free will is required for morality.
Philosopher Al Mele, who likes to dig into empirical science as well as the beliefs of lay-people regarding the free will issue, has noted something really interesting: He believes that the best research on lay-people’s ideas about free will show that most of them think of free will in line of the first conception that I explained above; free will as lack of compulsion and coercion. However, many empirical scientists interested in free will have very fancy ideas about what free will is (like, they think of free will as something more or less supernatural). Therefore, many empirical scientists like to declare that there is no such thing as free will. However, what if lay-people read that science has disproved the existence of free will – and interpret this as meaning that science has proven that we are, actually, always compelled in some mysterious way to act as we do? That genes and environmental influences somehow forces us to do what we do not really want to do all the time? That’s pretty problematic.