Men Going Their Own Way have a keen eye when it comes to spotting subtle injustices that the rest of us often miss.
Like, for example, the terrible injustice that is … fat chicks dating dudes who aren’t themselves fat.
One Reddit MGTOW recently reminded his comrades just how pervasive this terrible injustice has become in the contemporary world.
Preach it, brother!
Others in the MGTOW subreddit reported their own findings.
He THOUGHT he was happy. Just as the German citizens under Hitler THOUGHT they were free!
Little did he know that his life could have been snuffed out in a moment had his girlfriend — *shudder* — decided to sit on him. We have lost too many men, cut down in their prime by hambeast girlfriends who thought it might be “funny” to pretend that their boyfriends were chairs.
Another MGTOW Redditor applied some powerful STEM logic to the problem:
Can society long survive with the attractiveness ratio so far out of whack? What kind of world is it when dudes who are EIGHTS are saddled with level 5 plain janes? Or when men who are average joes find themselves trapped in completely voluntary relationships with level 2 hambeasts, some of whom are quite angry and/or stern.
It is the thoughtful ovendice — we’ve met him before — who brings real clarity and wisdom to this difficult issue.
I can’t argue with that! Mainly because I have no idea what he’s talking about. How does working hard prevent men from being pigs?
Here’s a song I don’t think MGTOWs are going to like very much.
NOTE: This post contains
I missedited my comment to a POIsonous snack above, the “@FrickleFrackle” and “@Pandapool” should have been included in the quotes because those were responses to them and not me responding to them.
@Brony, thank you! I’m more familiar with it as the Dual-Process Theory; it’s fascinating stuff and very useful in figuring out just why people behave the way that they do.
And I’m entirely certain that emotion is involved in both modes. Thinking and emotion, in my estimation, are inextricably linked. It’s more a question of how those emotions provide weights to the various potential outcomes of the network, as far as I understand it. I am not an expert, though!
@Scildfreja
Yeah, I’m basically talking about dual-process theory. It’s amazing how many places it’s getting implemented.
The dichotomy might be something like “impulsive emotions” versus “mindfully and contextually constrained emotions”. I’m not quite happy with the latter name though. Like a spectrum from “fight/flight”-type reactions taken without external reference to local context to “approach/withdraw”-type reactions that are more carefully considered and able to consider why one is reacting a certain way and if it’s the best reaction.
@Scildfreya and Brony,
Brilliant, the both of you. Thanks as always for such an even-handed thought-provoking response.
@Brony,
My intuition is that it’s less about “mindful, contextualized emotions” and more about a productive balance of hormones preventing any lower-level reaction system from interfering with the higher-level cognitive systems. Enough adrenaline to keep the episodic and semantic memory systems going, not so much that the fight-or-flight system starts activating; enough dopamine and oxytocin to engage the executive functions and reward success, not so much as to mask proper outcomes by the generalized reward system, etc, etc. I am not a neurologist, but that’s where my intuition is.
@Plaatsvervangende Schaamte,
Thank you!
Fear is intrinsically tied with weakness. It’s an expression of weakness, and in a twisted way it also causes weakness. The presumption is, since people in a position of weakness experience fear, that only people in a position of weakness experience fear. Therefore, if I’m afraid, I must be weak, and my belief that I am weak makes it true.
It’s laughable that the United States, the world’s only current superpower, would be weak, and yet that’s what people like our troll are saying with nonsense like this:
This makes sense if – and only if – the United States is weak. If the US is strong and powerful, then no individual in Canada need be feared. So what the troll is saying is that the US is weak.
Incidentally:
The United States already invaded Canada once. The US lost. Sorry to break it to you. There’s no reason to think it would go better a second time. Our military is waaaaay more powerful now, but since Canada is the #1 US trading partner, invading Canada would be like invading California. Only a person with a really profound level of ignorance would even suggest that would be a good idea, let alone that the Canadians are actually lucky that we don’t go through with such a ludicrous plan.
@POM,
Thank you! A really good insight. Frankly, if the US really is worried about their northern border – that’s fine! It’s a huge border and we don’t have a bottomless pool of money to fund security. We do what we can. The US would be better served by, you know, helping? Since we’re friends and all?
This is what I meant by the whole “unable to do anything beyond threat assessment” thing, @Snack. We’re your friends and your first reaction is “be lucky we don’t invade you!” Everything is a threat to be neutralized, not a problem to be solved.
@Brony,
Funny thing, today during work I set in on doing some white paper reading, and in my stack is a paper using the hot-cool system to assess willpower and delay of gratification! I have moved it to the top of the “possibly useful” stack. Here’s hoping that I get to use it!
To a large extent, the Cold War was a result of the combination of the immense border characterized by difficult terrain in many locales that the USSR shared with multiple unfriendly neighbors, and the lingering trauma of Hitler’s invasion in 1941. Stalin fully expected an invasion at some point, but he didn’t believe that Hitler would choose that particular moment to start one. The whole idea that Germany would voluntarily open a second front before the first front was secure was so irrational and out there that Stalin proactively punished the officials who tried to convince him that an invasion was imminent. Germany took six months to get their shit together and get the invasion started, and there were lots and lots and lots of reports back to the USSR about it. Stalin literally sent a couple of dudes who brought him this news to Siberia, and after that people were weirdly cautious about bringing it up to him.
Until the early 1980s, all of the highly-placed party officials in the USSR were aging WWII veterans who remembered all too well the danger posed by Russia’s unguardable border, and who remembered perfectly how Hitler’s words and actions were wildly different. They also remembered – as Americans typically do not – the vast, vast, vast numbers of soldiers and civilians who were killed in the course of that invasion.
These past traumas informed their foreign policy, which was built on fear – the fear of invasion and the fear of a border that could never be adequately controlled. Of weakness, in other words. The Cold War was a story about the weakness that the Soviets perceived in their own position in the world, and the weakness of the United States to ICBMs. The US had never previously been in serious danger of attack from anywhere outside the Americas, and no country in the Western Hemisphere could pose much of a threat, let alone an existential one. The US suddenly felt weak in the face of ICBMs, and that feeling of weakness results in fear.
The Cold War has a long shadow. A lot of the fear that our troll is expressing lies under that shadow. Interesting how that works out, isn’t it?
@Plaatsvervangende Schaamte
Thank you. I’m glad that to be able to provide something of value.
@Scildfreja
That would be the cell and transmitter level explanation that would complement my psychology speculation. What got me thinking about that is how the polarized thought and other kinds of cognitive distortions happen in terms of experience becoming memory that is later retrieved in a manner consistent with hot or cold cognition. I want to understand “the enemy” as a pattern of thought because I’m hoping some new solutions are there.
Bigoted thought looks like when someone was having the concept of people created they did so under hot/intense cognitive rules. So later when they pull the information back out they get these categories and stereotypes that are resistant to being modified by the present context or new information because it feels like, and I’m not sure. Dangerous? That would explain the fear and the way that so much is utterly ignored by such commentators in favor of simple conflict behavior. I’m still absorbing the information and trying to play with it as I try to internalize it.
However it works it looks like objectification of people.
Interesting paper. I’m going to read that because it’s relevant to me with respect to the ADHD. I recently started reading about hot and cold cognition because I’m trying to better understand some other parts of my psychology better, Oppositional Defiant Disorder. I don’t think I would qualify for the diagnosis today, but when I was younger it might have been a possibility.
The impulses still echo in my head though, I just have other choices that I can make, unless it’s useful to be oppositional. It gets a little depressing seeing myself in the people I argue with all the time, but I guess it makes sense because as you said above, it’s still the same system.
@POM, I agree – there’s a very strong thread that links Cold War siege mentality, fascism, and the current state of the alt-right. Frankly I’m sure it goes deeper, to the roots of nationalism itself. All about fear and clearly identifying in-group versus out-group.
It looks like our snacky friend is gone, though. I guess we asked him some questions he wasn’t able to answer.
These dudes’ pairing of people by looks seems naive to me. I feel like that’s how I thought as a young child of 5, like “these two people ‘match.'” (Or how you think two of your teachers should marry each other based solely on the fact that they’re both teachers you like. Regardless of if either of them is already married or partnered.)
I feel like anyone who knows how people work would understand that it matters way more what’s on the inside. Personality and common interest is likely why we see a lot of these “mismatched” couples. Plus attractiveness is purely subjective.
I’m sure there would be no complaints from these guys were they to be “mismatched” with someone considered more conventionally attractive than themselves.
I feel really sad for the lot of them because they are destroying their own chances for happiness.
@policy of madness
Excellent post, and excellent analysis of the Cold War.
Bravo!
I thought when I first read the OP that “a short ugly hambeast gamed him and got him” sounded like a line from a poem, and for some reason inspiration struck today (when I have TWO deadlines I should be working on!) So here you go.
(NB the third stanza is perhaps a bit rapey – no more so than the “gaming and getting” in that line from the OP, I think, but just thought I’d mention it in case. And the fourth is a little unpleasant as well.
Also, a disclaimer: the rhymes all work in my accent but I can’t guarantee they will in anyone else’s!)
The Ballad of the Tall Handsome Athletic Silent Guy and the Short Ugly Hambeast
O list to the tale of my unhappy friend!
‘Tis the salutary tale of his unlucky end
Though a fine HB10 Nature’d allot him
A short ugly hambeast gamed him and got him
To tell of his fitness – oh where to begin?
Tall, handsome, athletic, silent and thin
Whoe’r’d date under 7s, you’d say it was not him!
Yet a short ugly hambeast gamed him and got him
Who can determine what rendered him, luck off,
Unable to tell the short hambeast to fuck off?
Still, something brought down what was needed to pot him
And a short ugly hambeast gamed him and got him
You might think this terror would last just one night,
That he’d come to his senses before any blight
Could result from the efforts to warp him and rot him
Of the short ugly hambeast that gamed him and got him!
Alas, yoked to this hambeast (for over three years!)
He felt no proper shame when beheld by his peers
He’d be smiling and laughing whenever you’d spot him
With the short ugly hambeast who gamed him and got him
But the worst: when we asked how he was, his replies
He said he was HAPPY, “no really, you guys”
Wait, we thought he was suffering – seriously, what, him?-
With the short ugly hambeast who gamed him and got him?
So please heed the lesson of this sorry tale
And refrain from all discourse with any land whale
Or else – though I really don’t mean to upset you!-
A short ugly hambeast may game you and get you
@Neremanth
http://persephonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/psych-shawn-gus-thats-dope.gif
@Axecalibur – Thanks! 🙂
In Indian society it is fairly common to see conventionally unattractive / mediocre looking men paired with conventionally attractive women. But that dynamic has a widely acknowledged explanation: Arranged matchmaking focuses on women’s beauty and men’s providing ability. Consequently, a common young Indian women’s woe is the high likelihood of ending up with a not-so-attractive husband.
The same phenomenon applies here: In the dating/ hooking up culture, it is a lot more common to see overweight women dating and hooking up with relatively attractive, lean, fit guys, than the other way round. As a result you’ll come across more than a few guys expressing their woes regarding this matter. Nothing surprising.
Dammit! Now I want you to write that book about superheroes, so that I can read it! ; )