George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) is the leper of English Romantic literature. His life was short and tumultuous, defined by his eccentric, scandalous behavior. While his peers Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are still read widely today, Byron’s work has been forgotten outside of the echo chamber that is university humanities departments. And yet, Byron is in many ways greater than all of his contemporaries, as the persona he projected through his poems and personalities has shaped Western culture in profound ways. Byron was the greatest seducer of his time, and his life and work provides invaluable insights for students of game.
David Goldman, when he was still writing as “Spengler,” published the following in his review of Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption:
“Learn Greek, dear reader, and throw my translation into the fire!” wrote the first German translator of Homer’s Iliad, Count von Stolberg, words that Franz Rosenzweig placed as a superscript to the preface for his own translation of the medieval Hebrew poet, Judah Halevi.
Read Franz Rosenzweig, I should like to say, and hit the delete key, for the 100-and-a-score essays I have published in this space were an attempt to put fragments of his thinking before the English-speaking public.
I could argue that if people still read and understood Byron, you could stick myself and everyone else in the Roissysphere in the toilet and yank the chain, because there’s little you can learn from us that you can’t get from a sustained study of the “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” poet. Byron is unique among verse-makers in that his verses are actually enjoyable to read. After suffering through the likes of Milton, Pope, and Wordsworth, English literature got a poet whose writings flowed like good wine down the gullet. Even if you’re not a fan of poetry, Lord Byron makes for a worthwhile Sunday afternoon. As Thomas M. Disch wrote in his introduction to the Selected Poetry of Lord Byron:
…in which Byron found, for perhaps the first time in all poetry, the cadences of his own voice. Not the voice of The Poet, in its bardic or lyric vein, but the voice of the funny, flirty, snobbish, bawdy, brawling celebrity, rock superstar, and aristocrat that was George Gordon, aka Lord Byron.
Of course, it may simply be a mask, a persona, but the illusion that one is meeting a real person who has been transformed into ottawa rima is still compelling two centuries later, and once your ear is tuned to that voice the entire oeuvre begins to resonate.
For that reason Byron may be the most living of all the Dead White Males who wrote poetry. Keats will shiver your soul to a deeper depth, and Wordsworth elevate it to a higher attitude, but if you simply want to spend the night with your best friend, Byron’s the man.
Lord Byron is a great poet because his lines lack the bathos and pretention of other poets of the time. In particular, Byron told the unvarnished truth about women and what they wanted. His life experiences as a dissolute rake smashed to pieces every single pretty lie about women’s sexual desire that the English held so dear. See this article by Katha Pollitt in Slate (hat tip: Denis Dutton), which gets it mostly right:
It is easy to see Byron as a cad, a narcissist and, at bottom, a misogynist. But that would be unfair. Byron’s great insight, in an era where women were expected to be placid and insipid (not that they were!), was to see that women were much like men: They wanted sex and went after it eagerly, if secretly. Don Juan, his great satiric novel in verse, is a virtual catalog of passionate women who are anything but bashful, even if still virginal, and who are presented without condemnation, as human beings doing what human beings do. He understood, too, how limited was women’s scope for action. “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,” writes Juan’s first love, the married Donna Julia, from the convent to which she is confined when their affair is discovered. ” ‘Tis woman’s whole existence.”
Byron’s electrifying effect on women readers was inspired not just by his handsomeness, his woundedness, and the exciting hope of reforming him, which was poor Annabella’s undoing. It was also due to his frankness, that sense his poetry gave that he understood his reader’s secret rebellious thoughts and longings for experience, pleasure, a life beyond tea tables. It wasn’t only the Greeks who found in him a champion of freedom.
The reason the Lake Poets hated Byron’s guts is the same reason why losers hate on guys with game (hat tip: Roissy): his existence was a refutation of everything about women that they believed. To see this, let’s look at a Byron poem I posted last month:
To Woman
Woman! experience might have told me
That all must love thee, who behold thee:
Surely experience might have taught
Thy firmest promises are nought;
But, plac’d in all thy charms before me,
All I forget, but to adore thee.
Oh memory! thou choicest blessing,
When join’d with hope, when still possessing;
But how much curst by every lover
When hope is fled, and passion’s over.
Woman, that fair and fond deceiver,
How prompt are striplings to believe her!
How throbs the pulse, when first we view
The eye that rolls in glossy blue,
Or sparkles black, or mildly throws
A beam from under hazel brows!
How quick we credit every oath,
And hear her plight the willing troth!
Fondly we hope ’twill last for ay,
When, lo! she changes in a day.
This record will for ever stand,
“Woman, thy vows are trac’d in sand.â€
Sound familiar? To summarize: “Women are amoral and flaky. When they fall out of love with you, beware. Don’t trust them implicitly or put them on a pedestal.” Keep in mind that this poem was written in 1806. Byron knew the truth about the less-fair sex long before a community had to be formed in order to spell it out. To contrast, here’s a poem written by the Conor Friedersdorf of British letters, Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Love
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.
The moonshine, stealing o’er the scene
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!
She leant against the arméd man,
The statue of the arméd knight;
She stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.
Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene’er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.
I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story—
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.
She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
For well she knew, I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.
I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he wooed
The Lady of the Land.
I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another’s love,
Interpreted my own.
She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
And she forgave me, that I gazed
Too fondly on her face!
But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;
That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade,—
There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!
And that unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land!
And how she wept, and clasped his knees;
And how she tended him in vain—
And ever strove to expiate
The scorn that crazed his brain;—
And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay;—
His dying words—but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faultering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!
All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;
And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!
She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love, and virgin-shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.
Her bosom heaved—she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stepped—
Then suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.
She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.
‘Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly ’twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.
I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous Bride.
If you started nodding off during that wretched bit of bathetic brain-vomit, let me get you back up to speed. Coleridge not only worships women, he puts them up on a pedestal so damn high it stretches into space. He clearly believes in the supposed ability of women to civilize men. Not only that, Coleridge’s gestalt of romance is a stereotypically beta one. Instead of seizing the moment and taking what he wants, the nameless protagonist of “Love” cowardly beats around the bush in hopes that Genevieve will see the light and realize that he loves her (hint, guys: that approach doesn’t work). If Byron was the original badboy, Coleridge was the original nice guy.
As the original badboy, Byron invented the concept of the “Byronic hero,” the traits of which are as follows:
- high level of intelligence and perception
- cunning and able to adapt
- sophisticated and educated
- self-critical and introspective
- mysterious, magnetic and charismatic
- struggling with integrity
- power of seduction and sexual attraction
- social and sexual dominance
- emotional conflicts, bipolar tendencies, or moodiness
- a distaste for social institutions and norms
- being an exile, an outcast, or an outlaw
- “dark” attributes not normally associated with a hero
- disrespect of rank and privilege
- a troubled past
- cynicism
- arrogance
- self-destructive behavior
Again, ringing any bells? Women love it when men behave badly, and Byron lived that life to the extreme. This is a guy who had an affair with his half-sister that purportedly resulted in a child, was divorced by another lady because he sodomized her, made love to over two hundred women during just his time in Venice (source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition), and who died after going off to fight in the Greek War of Independence. You don’t have to start a revolution or bugger boys in order to get with women, but if you want to have more than your hand to entertain you, you better have a bit of an edge.
For another look at Byron, here’s another poem that I posted earlier, in which he gives advice to a lovelorn compadre:
Reply to some Verses of J.M.B. Pigot, Esq., on the Cruelty of his Mistress
1.
Why, Pigot, complain
Of this damsel’s disdain,
Why thus in despair do you fret?
For months you may try,
Yet, believe me, a sigh
Will never obtain a coquette.
2.
Would you teach her to love?
For a time seem to rove;
At first she may frown in a pet;
But leave her awhile,
She shortly will smile,
And then you may kiss your coquette.
3.
For such are the airs
Of these fanciful fairs,
They think all our homage a debt:
Yet a partial neglect
Soon takes an effect,
And humbles the proudest coquette.
4.
Dissemble your pain,
And lengthen your chain,
And seem her hauteur to regret;
If again you shall sigh,
She no more will deny,
That yours is the rosy coquette.
5.
If still, from false pride,
Your pangs she deride,
This whimsical virgin forget;
Some other admire,
Who will melt with your fire,
And laugh at the little coquette.
6.
For me, I adore
Some twenty or more,
And love them most dearly; but yet,
Though my heart they enthral,
I’d abandon them all,
Did they act like your blooming coquette.
7.
No longer repine,
Adopt this design,
And break through her slight-woven net!
Away with despair,
No longer forbear
To fly from the captious coquette.
8.
Then quit her, my friend!
Your bosom defend,
Ere quite with her snares you’re beset:
Lest your deep-wounded heart,
When incens’d by the smart,
Should lead you to curse the coquette.
Anyone with any comprehension as to how game works will recognize these lines as being completely truthful. If you want to win over a woman, act disinterested (For a time seem to rove/At first she may frown in a pet/But leave her awhile/She shortly will smile/And then you may kiss your coquette), get another woman (This whimsical virgin forget/Some other admire/Who will melt with your fire/And laugh at the little coquette), and as Master Dogen pointed out, if your game still doesn’t work, move on (Then quit her, my friend!/Your bosom defend). Lord Byron, the world’s first seduction guru?
Finally, here’s the sequel to that poem, in which Byron gives up on Pigot:
To the Sighing Strephon
1.
YOUR pardon, my friend,
If my rhymes did offend,
Your pardon, a thousand times o’er,
From friendship I strove,
Your pangs to remove,
But I swear I will do so no more.
2.
Since your beautiful maid
Your flame has repaid,
No more I your folly regret;
She’s now most divine,
And I bow at the shrine,
Of this quickly reformed coquette.
3.
Yet still, I must own,
I should never have known,
From your verses, what else she deserv’d,
Your pain seem’d so great,
I pitied your fate,
As your fair was so dev’lish reserv’d.
4.
Since the balm-breathing kiss,
Of this magical Miss,
Can such wonderful transports produce,
Since the “world you forget,â€
“When your lips once have met,“
My counsel will get but abuse.
5.
You say, “When I rove,
I know nothing of love,â€
‘Tis true, I am given to range,
If I rightly remember,
I’ve lov’d a good number,
But there’s pleasure, at least, in a change.
6.
I will not advance,
By the rules of romance,
To humour a whimsical fair,
Though a smile may delight,
Yet a frown will affright,
Or drive me to dreadful despair.
7.
While my blood is thus warm,
I ne’er shall reform,
To mix in the Platonists’ school;
Of this I am sure,
Was my passion so pure,
Thy mistress would think me a fool.
8.
And if I should shun,
Every woman for one,
Whose image must fill my whole breast;
Whom I must prefer,
And sigh but for her,
What an insult ‘twould be to the rest!
9.
Now, Strephon, good-bye,
I cannot deny,
Your passion appears most absurd;
Such love as you plead,
Is pure love, indeed,
For it only consists in the word.
Any man who’s ever been LJBF’ed knows its a humiliating experience. Being platonic friends with a woman who you desperately want to bang will eat away at your soul. The very ground these relationships are planted in is poisoned. And following the “rules of romance” is a great way to get punked.
The leftist, feminist humanities departments of the Anglosphere are in love with Lord Byron, whitewashing the truthfulness of his anti-egalitarian, anti-feminist sentiments by claiming he wasn’t really into women. The Slate article I discussed earlier displays this delusion in full force:
Unlike Fiona MacCarthy’s terrific Byron: Life and Legend, Byron in Love makes little of Byron’s homosexuality, which was far more extensive than O’Brien chronicles. For MacCarthy, indeed, his frenetic heterosexuality was due at least partly to British sodomy laws, which carried the death penalty; his passions for women were brief, and his behavior to them cruel and capricious, because he really wanted to be with teenage boys.
This is the typical cry of women in regards to players and lotharios: “You don’t like being around us all the time? You’re a FAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGG!” In their solipsistic squealing, they fail to consider that men aren’t women, and don’t have the same impulses. Neither Byron’s bisexuality nor his purported misogyny diminish his status as a man who loved and was loved by many women, despite what the feminists claim.
This concludes Part 1 of my piece on Lord Byron. Subsequent entries will focus on his life in greater depth and detail. Part 2 will be coming…nah, I’ve learned my lesson. You’ll get Part 2 when I feel like it. (And if anyone’s wondering why this entry is two days late, my muse hates it when I drink heavily.)
For further reading, see Project Gutenberg’s collection of Byron’s writings, and John Dolan’s excellent essay on Byron from 2006.
{ 23 comments… read them below or add one }
You have written an inspiring post. Well done. I would start a poetry blog if I had the time, but instead I’ll just follow your links.
This time I’ll remember to “plug my friends,” or at least my role models.
In response to Byron’s couplet:
“Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss.”
I offer Shelley’s “Masque of Anarchy”:
I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:
All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.
The reason why rakes like Byron are useful for men to understand is because these guys understand the women guys are marrying, too, because in many cases they have bedded them, or at least turned down the dangling offer to do so. Pollitt is right, of course, that female sexuality is an unruly force. She’s wrong, because of her feminism, in thinking that unleashing this unruly force is a good thing, even for women themselves (it does not appear to make most women happy, long-term, to indulge their sexuality). But for men, in a culture which no longer restrains this significantly, it is critical to understand from people like Byron and his present-day analogues just how women, even married ones, behave sexually when the “right guy” comes along.
The Coleridge may be a bad example of how to get the girl, but it’s still good poetry.
BTW as a general rule, oneitis tends to produce better poetry than game. Eg. Dante
Ferdinand,
You’ve made me a fan of Byron. He reminds me of myself.
it does not appear to make most women happy, long-term, to indulge their sexuality
Indeed, men, even under our current regime, are getting happier, while women are getting unhappier. I’ve said it before, 90% of women chasing 10% of men isn’t a recipe for female happiness.
Ahhhh…. very satisfying post. Excellent!
Excellent post. I was not aware of Lord Byron’s poems before reading your blog and this has been very educational for me. It would be worthwhile for every red blooded heterosexual male to read these poems and your analysis / commentary and take it to heart.
Keep up the good work ; keep these excellent postings coming…
if byron was a latent homo (or a true blue bisexual, however rare they are) then that might explain why he was better able to ignore women’s beauty and see them for what they are — his bisexuality may have innoculated him from the brain-muddying power that female beauty has over straight men. byron was, in short, following commandment 10 of the 16 commandments of poon.
Indeed, men, even under our current regime, are getting happier, while women are getting unhappier. I’ve said it before, 90% of women chasing 10% of men isn’t a recipe for female happiness.
How does this make the average man happier?
“if byron was a latent homo (or a true blue bisexual, however rare they are)”
I find it unlikely, considering his behavior and upbringing, that Byron was gay. Most closet cases in history didn’t run around seducing chicks all over the place. Byron was gay in the way the 300 Spartans were gay – out of conditioning, not instinct.
“The Coleridge may be a bad example of how to get the girl, but it’s still good poetry.”
If you think hackneyed cliches make for good poetry. Truly, there is no accounting for taste.
Thursday–
But for men, in a culture which no longer restrains this significantly, it is critical to understand from people like Byron and his present-day analogues just how women, even married ones, behave sexually when the “right guy†comes along.
Married women feel strongly PULLED to act that way when the right alpha male seducer comes along- they aren’t irresistibly driven to, any more than men are to cheat in marriage, and actually probably a lot less than alpha men are. As well for women it is although some (normonal) push, it’s more pull. The conventional strategms to maintiain female fidelity tend to work. They involve not spending alone time with an attractive other man etc.
The trouble is that women need social support and props to resist the pull of infidelity once the marriage is a few years in, or that sure helps them whole lot, and feminist American culture supplies them with the opposite. It tells them if they’re feeling the urge it must be their husband’s fault. Women are no longer scorned for having affairs; but men are now more than ever.
Marriage has become disgustingly one sided against men in every way I can think of in our feminist culture today. Save one. The kids are still usually named patriarchially, as a sort of lone survival. That’s about it. Woop.
The traits of a Byronic hero are almost perfectly in line with that of a sociopath. I know because I dated one. They are excellent at seduction.
I agree. I am far more appalled by the unfairness of marriage today, than I was even 3 months ago.
The average man has a shrinking list of reasons to even fight to protect or sustain this civilization.
I am going to post this periodically, because I want everyone to read it and internalize it. This is above and beyond all the other costs of the divorce industry (dehumanization of men, damage to children, declining birth rate in Western Civ, etc.)
____________________________________
It is extremely important to consider the economic costs of the divorce industry. I want anyone who is a fiscal conservative, who believes in entrepreneurship and incentives, to read this :
Wonks debate endlessly whether the top marginal tax rate should be 39.6%, as it was under Clinton, or 35% as it presently is for another 16 months. The debate about incentives, marginal tax, etc. is fierce, even though we are talking about just 4.6% more or less on the max.
There is also endless discussion on how high tax states like CA (with a 9.3% income tax rate) steadily lose businesses, capital, and labor to lower tax states like AZ, NV, or TX with 0% income tax rates.
So again, 9.3% is apparently a big deal.
What about the fact that millions, perhaps tens of millions, of American men, are suffering under a marginal tax rate of 70% or more.
Under ‘no fault’ divorce, a woman can be entitled to years and years of alimony and child support = alimony, without having to prove any wrongdoing on the part of her man. Even if HE doesn’t want a divorce, he still has to pay. A pre-nup CANNOT affect child support, which is why FeminOrcs lobbies to get the child support percentage of income award to be absurdly high, far higher than the cost of a full-time nanny.
So many men, after Federal, State, and FeminOrc taxes, pay out 70% of their income. The child support tax accrues even if he loses his job.
Now, if a significant percentage of American men have a 70% tax on marginal income, why will they start companies? Why would they invent anything? Why would they moonlight on the side?
If tax rates affect incentives, which I believe everyone reading this agrees with, then having 10%, 20%, or 30% of the male workforce under a ruinous 70% tax rate CANNOT be good for the economy.
Think of the inventions that are not invented due to a lack of incentive. Think of the businesses not started. Men are the only people who invent new technologies, of course.
It is quite possible that a decline in US innovation and entrepreneurship started at along the same time as child support payments were raised in the early 2000s.
Note that unlike published IRS or State tax rates, no one gets to vote on child support percentages or alimony laws, or the ability of a judge to reject pre-nups. The public does not get to vote on the decision-makers of these laws. In fact, the public is not even informed of them.
But aside from the dehumanizing unfairness and society-destroying social implications of the out-of-control divorce industry, there is a huge economic opportunity cost as well.
Why debate whether the public should have a top tax bracket of 39.6% vs. 35%, when 10% to 30% of the US workforce is under a whopping 70% tax bracket.
Fiscal cons, take notice on how the left bypassed you altogether, and got this silent specter of leftism enacted right under your noses.
Scale back the absurd percentages assigned to child support = alimony, and the economic supercharge that a tax cut creates will begin in earnest.
My latest post showing basically, just that, and the very sad young women obviously chasing a few men, would indicate that is true. It’s based on the photos a Polish photographer took in Cardiff over four years every Saturday and Friday night. The young women, all in very revealing and scanty clothing, after a night of clubbing, with friends or alone, look incredibly sad.
The men look little better, many falling asleep in trash heaps with their own vomit beside them.
However, women FEEL that they will be happier with an Alpha and will chase him for a long, long time.
It is remarkable how few women understand the odds of success, and how quickly their attractiveness drops once their years post-30 AND their partner-count add up.
A huge miscalculation on their part. That is what grandmothers are for – to keep the girls on a path of long-term success, but that linkage is now gone from society.
The Fifth Horseman–
Some might say in response to your argument that perhaps there’s nothing wrong with upper middle class highest tax bracket family men who have children retaining only 30% of their income after contributing to the less fortunate in society and taking care of their own children. Some will say that.
The more fundamental problem is the husband’s loss of power and control that occurs immediately upon marriage, and once again and more upon having children, in today’s feminist America, as a result of feminist lobbied legal changes most only a few decades old, and all of fairly recent origin, as well as feminist media inspired cultural changes.
Note that this happens primarily to successful men, who whether being beta or alpha, are also high earners, which usually (if sure imperfectly, everything human or social is imperfect) means they’re contributing greatly to society at large. The thuggish/gangsterish alpha has earnings which tend to be episodic, boom and bust, and mostly at least under the table if not fundamentally criminal, and hence cannot be readily legally attached by the feminist divorce theft industry. Included in this number are entreprenuers as well as high achieving doctors, engineers (some of whom may become entreprenuers), lawyers, executives and so on. Some among them are the inventive types who will develop not only new technologies and products but better and mroe efficient ways of organizing and doing things. Women tend to lack the driving push to do such things in mass numbers (always with some exceptions), but instead tend to be staffers, and bureaucrats both low and very high, some diligent and effective, some can’t easily fire them because they’ve got a uterus shirkers, but almost all followers, rather than rebels or really going somewhere leaders.
So this is the worst thing about what’s currently developing that betas object to. It isn’t that mid level betas have such a hard time getting dates with attractive or even average girls in their twenties, much less that bottom quarter omegas do. (As for the later, I essentially take a social Darwinist view and stay too bad, or in many ways good, unless the really unattractive omega in question is brilliant and actually MAKING PRODUCTIVE USE of his brilliance. But then he ought to be some kind of beta, in almost all cases.)
the worst thing is that the upper HALF of men are today being incented to do focus on the wrong things for society.\
The worst thing is also the divorce rate and the single mother rate of child birth, which has just reached 40% in the US overall for the first time ever!! Up from the single digits overall in 1960, and the low single digits among white girls then. The result when combined with the divorce rate and lower female remarriage rate is that a majority of American children are now growing up through most of their childhood in single parent mother only households. A solid, very large majority soon will be with these twin feeds into the phenomenon.
You see we need men in the workplace. Women are often better at the repetitive tasks, or anyway are if they’re sufficiently disciplined, which they are in high tech factory work but often aren’t in ever protected class litigation threatening American office environments, private and especially governmental. We need men to actually invent things and shake them up. To change them. Not just to invent electronic gadgets or biotech cures, but also new ways to organize supply chains, and so on and so forth. Ambitious, warrior men, battling it out. For the best females or to keep the one they have impressed, or a least based upon those atavistic but key to human progress impulses.
In war and mating men are expendable. Not all men, but many of them. In mating one of the “ideas behind” sexual reproduction is to throw away bad genes by throwing away defective or non competitive males, as a cheap method. Evolution could have chucked defective females too and does in extreme cases, but not otherwise cause that way is too species niche filling and competitive expensive. We need those mommy’s running their baby factories. One man can impregnate just as many girls as two men can, if the other guy is neutralized in some way.
In the world of work however females are expendable, and inherantly of second rank in importance, generally speaking. Grenerally speaking, if properly motivated AND DISCIPLINED women can grease the wheels often better than men can. that is be deligent about accurately following the best practices path. But they rarely invent the new stuff, methods or practices, which challenge the accepted current best practices. They rarely wage aggressive war, or even aggressively defensive way, including in the economic sphere.
Whiskey–
However, women FEEL that they will be happier with an Alpha and will chase him for a long, long time.
If we step back and look at things from a “what’s best for the whole society” perspective, we come to certain conclusions. Or i do. Admittedly I’m not coming from hunger, and am coming from an older perspective, though I think with some learned idea of what’s currently going on among 20 somethings, not to mention 30 somethings, in part by being involved with each. But also through lots of talking and reading and places like the Roissyshere.
From that overall rather than individual down in the trenches some kind of beta perspective, it isn’t so bad, but rather evolutionarily good that most women are attracted to alpha men and more than the upper half with varying amounts of lack of realisim, but often great amounts, wish to hold out for one. The problem comes from three things I think: 1) the current lack of shaping or contraining as to their perception of what constitutes an alpha male, or one that’s acceptably within as opposed to outside the pale; 2) how long they hold out; and 3) what they do while they’re holding out, and what that does to likelihood of a good and stable child raising marital/family unit when they do settle down.
It is after all rather a good thing that while males focus first and foremost on beauty in casual and even long term mates (traditionally within class, economic, and where it came up by proximity racial or ethnic constraints), which beauty is apparently in part a proxy for good health and likely health preserving genes; women focus on markers and predictors of social achievement – social status, dominance and leadership charisma, and resources.
In every society beginning with primitive hunter gather bands at the time of first indications of cultural efflorescence e.g. more advanced tools and other cultural artifacts and cave and other first art, perhaps first occurring not long after language reached more or less it’s current level of brain wiring sophistication ~75 – 50k ya and the urge for religion as a kind of plastic cultural social glue arose, mate selection has been culturally and socially guided as well as being a matter of wired urges. Gina tingle has been influence in its expression by human culture at least since we became sapiens. Unconstrained or socially shaped gina tingle takes us back to our primate ancestors.
So the real problem currently with respect to (1) above is that women aren’t currently being effectively shamed against screwing thugs, and/or screw up no account assholes during their unmarried adolescence (now extended through most inf not all their 20s), if they ever want to marry socially respectable men, or even more important to shame if they don’t ever want to or end up doing so.
The real problem as well (2) is that girls today go for so long not married but sexually interested and almost always active before marriage, most of that time also unconstrained by any significant amount of family pressure. Extended adolescence goes on forever and those attitudes often extend in part into marriage, for both sexes.
The real problem finally (3) is that girls who will eventually at around age 30 wish to present as decent and respectable fiances to men (betas) whom they wish and in fact militantly insist be loyal, steadily hard working, upwardly mobile and utterly faithful husbands, with all the weight of feminist media scorn and feminist divorce theft threat behind them, so often feel free to slut themselves in their fun fun mad heartbreak fun chase of elusive alphas throughout their 20s, who are all to ready to f*ck them, but not to marry so far beneath what they can pull on their best days. Meanwhile their inherently diligent and loyal future husband beta remains sexually oh so frustrated throughout his 20s and not inclined to be indulgent towards female sluttery.
Doug1,
Indeed. The misandric laws are encouraging exactly the wrong behavior, and punishing exactly the right behavior. It is apparent how the misandric laws are an incredibly big, yet concealed, trojan horse of leftism in society. If the public were informed of this and allowed to vote, 75% would easily see that these laws are unfair and damaging to society. But they can’t vote on it, and therein lies the problem.
I used to think that despite all the talk of ‘decline’, that it would take many decades to see a real decline in America. Now, given the perverse incentive structure in place, and the HUGE hidden footprint of socialism/leftism that the divorce industry acts as a trojan horse for, a real decline will happen just 10-15 years from now.
The decline will be worse for women than for men, however. That much is clear to me, though not to women. The tax base and silent acceptance of mistreatment that the entire feminOrc Mordor is built upon, is propped up by a relative small group of highly productive men. They will either disengage, expatriate, go Sodini, or invent technologies that restore some semblance of balance in sexual relations. These 4 factors are the Four Horsemen of Male Vengeance.
The misandric divorce laws are a huge footprint of leftism onto society, and has been done in a trojan horse fashion. If the public were informed of this, and allowed to vote on it, about 75% would see how damaging this is, and vote against it. But they cannot vote on it, and therein lies the problem.
I used to think that societal decline was several decades away. Now it is clear to me that it is only 10-15 years away. The decline will be worse for women than for men, however.
The entire edifice that feminism is built on requires a certain slice of men to accept mistreatment and high taxes in return for very little. Soon, that group of men will either disengage from marriage/taxpaying, expatriate, go Sodini, or invent new technologies that restore the balance to a more equitable level (remember that the balance got this bad due to technologies that men invented to begin with, like the vacuum cleaner, washing machine, etc.).
Nice post. It is interesting to note that Byron did sort of settle down towards the end of his short life with one woman, at least from what I can remember. I could be wrong though. You are correct to say that all we know about women could be summed up in Byron. I would throw in his ancient counterpart, the great Roman poet Ovid as well. If you put those tow together you have all you will ever need to know about women.
Byron’s poetry is certainly the most masculine and vigorous of all the Romantics. It displays the influence of Pope and the Augustan’s, and, next to Pope, there is not a better satirical poet in English than Byron. You can really feel the metrical vigor in his lines, a perfect vehicle for his biting wit.
There is an old fashioned strength to his verse which makes Byron, at least for me, the best of the Romantics. Some of his lyrics are timeless for their power, intensity and feeling. That his life was a testament to an unbridled spirit seeking pleasure and revenge, adventure and enjoyment wherever he could find it, only adds to the greatness of his poetry. Everyone today seems to like Keats the most out of the Romantics but I always found his poetry a bit too sentimental. Byron is pure alpha power expressed in the highest quality verse.
And I think Coleridge could at least blame his foggy and sappy notions of women on his opium addictions. I never get tired of reading Kubla Khan.
I wrote a short piece on my blog a while ago about poetry and Byron; I was unaware you had written this on him but I will have to update that post with a new one and cite this post. The more we can get people interested in good poetry the better, I believe. And Byron is a a great place to start.
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