"A feeling that it is profoundly morally wrong and personally disreptuable impose the cost one’s own fragility on everyone else - especially where you feel that fragility stems in part from something that is within your control, such as obesity or general unfitness;
The importance of never centering one’s identity around potential or real victimhood or vulnerability, even where you acknowledge those are considerations."
I consider these things to be viscerally true. Weakness. Is. Not. Laudable. Sometimes it is unavoidable and it isn't necessarily shameful but I don't see how any self respecting person could build their sense of self around a brittle passivity and expect to be praised for it. Perhaps that's a masculine perspective, but I don't think that invalidates it.
I think some of the stuff about revolving your life around having a mental illness or being neurodivergent or having a difficult childhood or being marginalized or whatever was simply a HUGE over-correction from how things were not too long ago. For example, I think there are aspects of the LGBT+ community expressing pride that are a bit over the top, but when I picture what it was like to be gay as recently as the 2000s, the over-correction checks out. Hopefully, things balance out at some point.
You're probably right about it as an overcorrection to the past environment. I wonder if that will shift with time or if the victimhood as status mentality will persist as a matter of culture.
I think (or at least hope) that it’s too exhausting, counter-productive, and pointless for it to continue. I think people will discover that fixing their lives is more satisfying!
Good essay. A complementary theme is often taken up by @Eugyppius, the successful 'Head Girl', selected for the qualities "conscientiousness, agreeability and conformity". Bruce Charlton argues, modern society is run by Head Girls types (of both sexes)
I must be an outlier. Female here and older! I thought it was all absurd and much of it virtue signalling. The restrictions were never going to do much - how could one prevent an airborne virus from going absolutely everywhere. I was in favour of The Great Barrington Declaration. Protect those who needed and wanted it and let the rest of us get with it. I was never going to go near the jabs either. The desperation to get it into everyone was highly suspicious to me and look how it’s all turned out.
My husband was much more of a rule obeyer than me. I couldn’t bear the nonsense when people would put in a mask to go into a café, wall 3 paces and sit down and take it off for half an hour. Then do the reverse when going to the loo. My husband also took a jab.
I think the difference between us was that I wasn’t afraid of the virus and didn’t listen to the constant fear mongering. BBC Radio 4 had been my constant companion for years but in March 2020 it was turned off and I’ve not listened since. I was never afraid and maybe older men were at more risk.
Anyway, the whole business changed me for ever. The only two people I know who feel like me are a female friend and my sister.
I hate to disagree, but in my experience of going on the anti lockdown marches from 2020 is that it was mostly women. Even now far more women are critical of the State impositions than men I know. This is anecdotal I know, but it was men who more willingly bowed down to be dominated by politicians; women stood up for what was right.
I noticed the same thing with entries for Out of Lockstep (www.OutofLockstep.com). I figured that was just self-selecting for people who are OK with sharing their photos and stories, though. It made intuitive sense to me that women were more into sharing a photo of themselves and being part of a project that emphasizes emotional stuff. Could be the same with marches-- women are more compelled to publicly seek that kind of community and self-expression.
Taking an economic look at it, is a female preference for more regulation a desire to counter male "externalities" from "too much" freedom that might disproportionately fall on women, or is it a classic free-rider problem where women don't incur the same costs (regulatory impact) of regulation that men do, and therefore want more regulation because they don't bear as many costs?
To put it another way, do men and women have different conclusions from cost/benefit analyses on regulation? If so, why?
I highly recommend the article "The Fuck Rate is about Implode" if you're interested in the current situation regarding relationships between the sexes. A darkly funny article.
Behavioral economics studies suggest that people aren't good at rationally responding to uncertain outcomes. People value $50 more than a coin flip on $100, even though those are mathematically equivalent. This preference is so strong that many people even value the certain outcome over one that has a higher expected value. Add to that a time preference that, at least for many people, overvalues benefits today, and doesn't discount future costs enough. Basically, if people know that something good or bad might happen, they would rather get it over with today, even if it means a lower benefit, or even a higher cost.
In the context of COVID, that means people would rather suffer a known amount now than possibly suffer an uncertain amount in the future. Which is why you saw all sorts of people take COVID shots, knowing that they would incur painful short-run side effects that were essentially the same as if they actually got COVID, rather than risk possibly having a bad case of COVID. Of course, never mind the risk of long-term adverse effects from the shot, or that we were told all along that much of the spread was asymptomatic (the ironies abound).
Anyway, to bring that back to men and women, my belief is that women are much more prone to this type of irrationality. It's not exclusive to women, but more common to them. The same applies to various forms of regulation beyond COVID protocols. Higher cost today is preferred over future costs that are uncertain, even if that future time-discounted cost is actually lower.
It is worth mentioning that political polls, that break out issues by gender, have shown significant differences between men and women for decades on basically every issue, regardless of party affiliation.
No matter your opinion on millions of years of human evolution, or God creating women for men, either way leads to an inescapable genetic level preference for specific gender traits that are simultaneously different and complementary.
We may think of ourselves as removed and superior to hunter gatherer and/or agrarian societies, but in truth, humans are still fine tuned to thrive within those patriarchal and trad wife systems.
Immediately after suffrage in 1920 and 1928, women, during "The year of the woman", elected Herbert Hoover as President. He would later go on to create the dust bowl and great depression, which took alot of wind out of women's political sails. Interestingly, the main reason cited by many women for voting for him was that he ran the Food Administration during WWI, and organized the public to minimize and ration food consumption to feed Europe. Many of the rationales for the "voluntary" food restrictions were strikingly similar to Covid-19 restrictions. There are more than 100 years separating the two events, and very different women drove both through similar types of social pressure for similar reasons.
I think that people need to be mindful that men and women do view things through different lenses, and arrive at different solutions from different starting points. We need to recognize each others strengths and weaknesses and play to the strengths. Historically, men, aided by women, build great countries from nothing, women demand equality, women eventually achieve equality, the country collapses within a few generations, men read history and connect the dots, and then men, aided by women, build a new great country from nothing. Rinse and repeat in perpetuity.
Good article, although it's grating to read institutions like public health departments be described as "respectable spaces". These places are fraud and groupthink ridden theatres in which actors parade around in white coats demanding to be taken seriously. They are about as respectable as a college fancy dress party and 0.01% as fun. I think I know what you're getting at, but obviously, as an anti-woke tech bro I'm not going to accept that framing.
I don't think it means anything to say that places like UFC complied with the health regulations. They'd have been shut down and destroyed if they didn't. That's the nature of totalitarianism, you can't read anything into compliance.
Wife is also conservative, though I am actually right wing politically, a motherless child voter in compliant US cultural colonial state. Would love to be able to vote for Fratelli, Legs, or Reconquete. Even PP in Spain. We both complied as a way of being in solidarity. I have said to her no more boosters for me, and she understands but will herself take them. A lovely former work colleague has had her health and life destroyed by her very first vaccine shot. It is not a "far right myth", I am personally aware of two other such cases. The lie about side effects being zero was the Biggie. Every vaccine has them, full stop. Have acquaintances who were COVID absolutists but whose 2 children I know for a fact have not had MMR, cox much vaccines.
"A feeling that it is profoundly morally wrong and personally disreptuable impose the cost one’s own fragility on everyone else - especially where you feel that fragility stems in part from something that is within your control, such as obesity or general unfitness;
The importance of never centering one’s identity around potential or real victimhood or vulnerability, even where you acknowledge those are considerations."
I consider these things to be viscerally true. Weakness. Is. Not. Laudable. Sometimes it is unavoidable and it isn't necessarily shameful but I don't see how any self respecting person could build their sense of self around a brittle passivity and expect to be praised for it. Perhaps that's a masculine perspective, but I don't think that invalidates it.
I think some of the stuff about revolving your life around having a mental illness or being neurodivergent or having a difficult childhood or being marginalized or whatever was simply a HUGE over-correction from how things were not too long ago. For example, I think there are aspects of the LGBT+ community expressing pride that are a bit over the top, but when I picture what it was like to be gay as recently as the 2000s, the over-correction checks out. Hopefully, things balance out at some point.
You're probably right about it as an overcorrection to the past environment. I wonder if that will shift with time or if the victimhood as status mentality will persist as a matter of culture.
I think (or at least hope) that it’s too exhausting, counter-productive, and pointless for it to continue. I think people will discover that fixing their lives is more satisfying!
Good essay. A complementary theme is often taken up by @Eugyppius, the successful 'Head Girl', selected for the qualities "conscientiousness, agreeability and conformity". Bruce Charlton argues, modern society is run by Head Girls types (of both sexes)
https://www.eugyppius.com/p/once-more-on-renowned-fool-emily
I must be an outlier. Female here and older! I thought it was all absurd and much of it virtue signalling. The restrictions were never going to do much - how could one prevent an airborne virus from going absolutely everywhere. I was in favour of The Great Barrington Declaration. Protect those who needed and wanted it and let the rest of us get with it. I was never going to go near the jabs either. The desperation to get it into everyone was highly suspicious to me and look how it’s all turned out.
My husband was much more of a rule obeyer than me. I couldn’t bear the nonsense when people would put in a mask to go into a café, wall 3 paces and sit down and take it off for half an hour. Then do the reverse when going to the loo. My husband also took a jab.
I think the difference between us was that I wasn’t afraid of the virus and didn’t listen to the constant fear mongering. BBC Radio 4 had been my constant companion for years but in March 2020 it was turned off and I’ve not listened since. I was never afraid and maybe older men were at more risk.
Anyway, the whole business changed me for ever. The only two people I know who feel like me are a female friend and my sister.
I hate to disagree, but in my experience of going on the anti lockdown marches from 2020 is that it was mostly women. Even now far more women are critical of the State impositions than men I know. This is anecdotal I know, but it was men who more willingly bowed down to be dominated by politicians; women stood up for what was right.
I noticed the same thing with entries for Out of Lockstep (www.OutofLockstep.com). I figured that was just self-selecting for people who are OK with sharing their photos and stories, though. It made intuitive sense to me that women were more into sharing a photo of themselves and being part of a project that emphasizes emotional stuff. Could be the same with marches-- women are more compelled to publicly seek that kind of community and self-expression.
Taking an economic look at it, is a female preference for more regulation a desire to counter male "externalities" from "too much" freedom that might disproportionately fall on women, or is it a classic free-rider problem where women don't incur the same costs (regulatory impact) of regulation that men do, and therefore want more regulation because they don't bear as many costs?
To put it another way, do men and women have different conclusions from cost/benefit analyses on regulation? If so, why?
I highly recommend the article "The Fuck Rate is about Implode" if you're interested in the current situation regarding relationships between the sexes. A darkly funny article.
Behavioral economics studies suggest that people aren't good at rationally responding to uncertain outcomes. People value $50 more than a coin flip on $100, even though those are mathematically equivalent. This preference is so strong that many people even value the certain outcome over one that has a higher expected value. Add to that a time preference that, at least for many people, overvalues benefits today, and doesn't discount future costs enough. Basically, if people know that something good or bad might happen, they would rather get it over with today, even if it means a lower benefit, or even a higher cost.
In the context of COVID, that means people would rather suffer a known amount now than possibly suffer an uncertain amount in the future. Which is why you saw all sorts of people take COVID shots, knowing that they would incur painful short-run side effects that were essentially the same as if they actually got COVID, rather than risk possibly having a bad case of COVID. Of course, never mind the risk of long-term adverse effects from the shot, or that we were told all along that much of the spread was asymptomatic (the ironies abound).
Anyway, to bring that back to men and women, my belief is that women are much more prone to this type of irrationality. It's not exclusive to women, but more common to them. The same applies to various forms of regulation beyond COVID protocols. Higher cost today is preferred over future costs that are uncertain, even if that future time-discounted cost is actually lower.
It is worth mentioning that political polls, that break out issues by gender, have shown significant differences between men and women for decades on basically every issue, regardless of party affiliation.
No matter your opinion on millions of years of human evolution, or God creating women for men, either way leads to an inescapable genetic level preference for specific gender traits that are simultaneously different and complementary.
We may think of ourselves as removed and superior to hunter gatherer and/or agrarian societies, but in truth, humans are still fine tuned to thrive within those patriarchal and trad wife systems.
Immediately after suffrage in 1920 and 1928, women, during "The year of the woman", elected Herbert Hoover as President. He would later go on to create the dust bowl and great depression, which took alot of wind out of women's political sails. Interestingly, the main reason cited by many women for voting for him was that he ran the Food Administration during WWI, and organized the public to minimize and ration food consumption to feed Europe. Many of the rationales for the "voluntary" food restrictions were strikingly similar to Covid-19 restrictions. There are more than 100 years separating the two events, and very different women drove both through similar types of social pressure for similar reasons.
I think that people need to be mindful that men and women do view things through different lenses, and arrive at different solutions from different starting points. We need to recognize each others strengths and weaknesses and play to the strengths. Historically, men, aided by women, build great countries from nothing, women demand equality, women eventually achieve equality, the country collapses within a few generations, men read history and connect the dots, and then men, aided by women, build a new great country from nothing. Rinse and repeat in perpetuity.
Good article, although it's grating to read institutions like public health departments be described as "respectable spaces". These places are fraud and groupthink ridden theatres in which actors parade around in white coats demanding to be taken seriously. They are about as respectable as a college fancy dress party and 0.01% as fun. I think I know what you're getting at, but obviously, as an anti-woke tech bro I'm not going to accept that framing.
I don't think it means anything to say that places like UFC complied with the health regulations. They'd have been shut down and destroyed if they didn't. That's the nature of totalitarianism, you can't read anything into compliance.
Wife is also conservative, though I am actually right wing politically, a motherless child voter in compliant US cultural colonial state. Would love to be able to vote for Fratelli, Legs, or Reconquete. Even PP in Spain. We both complied as a way of being in solidarity. I have said to her no more boosters for me, and she understands but will herself take them. A lovely former work colleague has had her health and life destroyed by her very first vaccine shot. It is not a "far right myth", I am personally aware of two other such cases. The lie about side effects being zero was the Biggie. Every vaccine has them, full stop. Have acquaintances who were COVID absolutists but whose 2 children I know for a fact have not had MMR, cox much vaccines.