Robin Hanson on monoculture; Marilyn Simon on male-female relationships; Greg Lukianoff on Martin Gurri; Vaishnav Sunil on the curse of conscientiousness
Fast quitting and stick-to-itiveness are both beneficial. It makes all the difference in the world in discerning which one to apply when. But like Arnold, I cannot even say with 20-20 hindsight which choices were the best ones and which ones I wish I did differently.
I chose to study Mechanical Engineering. In hindsight I should have studied Civil Engineering. For no other reason than the quality of the Civil Engineering program was superior at my school. I ended up taking many courses from the Civil Engineering department and the job I took in the Civil Engineering school paved the way to what became my career in computer programming. But for odd reasons I was stubborn I to earn a degree in Mechanical Engineering and I never switched. I have never used my college degree and probably would not have used a Civil Engineering degree either. But if I had been less stubborn I could have made better use of my college efforts.
Now an example of fast quitting. At one point in learning computers I was fascinated by computer graphics. And this fascination was the reason I decided to get into programming. In short time I realized I did not have a mind to do anything other than the most basic computer graphics. My talents were better suited for other programming challenges. I probably spent less than 100 hours not learning computer graphics algorithms. I am proud of myself for realizing so quickly that niche wasn't going to work for me.
My life experience is if you are persistent in working towards what you like to do, you will find it. This means you need to put yourself in the arena of work and then be flexible to adjust the work you do to fit the tasks that yield the most fulfillment. This is where fast-quitting can become an obstacle. If you quit too early you may miss out on the opportunity that was developing right in front of you.
A final thought. The most important consideration for enjoying work is to work with enjoyable people. I don't recommend quitting on the first on-the-job conflict. But a reason to quit sooner than later is if the people involved in the work make you miserable.
Arnold quotes Lukianoff on Gurri: "Understanding the crisis of authority as only being wrongfully destructive of expertise is to miss the fact that, frankly, we are often asking far too much of expertise and experts — and oversight itself has not been all that rigorous." This greatly understates the problem. What the last few years have revealed is that purported expertise is often not only hollow, but incompetent, corrupt, and dishonest, and that there are no corrective mechanisms of oversight. The supposed expertise that has been offered include the punditry opinion on the Russia collusion hoax, the public health officials' attempts to conceal the origins of the Corona virus (aided by the dishonesty of eminent virologists looking for grant money), and infamous letter on the Hunter Biden laptop signed by 51 "intelligence community" authorities. And there are many more instances. Is it asking "far too much of expertise" that it simply be honest?
"If I could be an older teenager or young adult in any era, I think I would pick the early 1960s ... The games of flirtation and romance at that time strike me as fun and challenging."
Oh my God, NO! Admittedly, I was an older teenager in the late 1960s, but the games were not at all fun, full of ignorance and lack of communication.
Commenting late again. Hanson’s culture analysis is very similar to the main thesis of Carroll Quigley’s The Evolution of Civilizations from the 1960s. Quigley’s was in my opinion by far the best Civilizations analysis ever. However, as or just after Quigley was writing, the social sciences collectively decided that comparative cultures / civilizations analysis was taboo (because it violated the “all cultures are equal” dogma) and no one with any academic credibility carried on this field from the late 1960s. A few writers have started to pick up civilizations analysis now, but mostly from a materialistic perspective, without grasping the importance of the more subjective elements under the umbrella of culture. Quigley’s work basically has become lost knowledge. I’m glad to see an analytical mind like Hanson’s once again returning to this topic, though Hanson won’t be able to bring the historical depth that Quigley did.
How would you feel about a physicist who walks into the economics faculty lounge, sits down, puts up his feet, and says “What are you working on? This should be easy! “
I hear that economics is a discipline often colonized by physicists. Biology is worse. It is often colonized by both physicists and economists.
I am a biologist. Hanson is not. He is being ridiculous. Cultures do not undergo evolution in the way he thinks. They do not experience selection in the way he thinks. There is not space hereto enumerate all the ways in which is wrong. He is being ridiculous. You should stop listening to him on this topic.
I bought both the 2014 and 2018 editions of Gurri’s book in the years published, so I confess that they triggered something of an interest into the many questions and tensions inherent in attempting to understand popular questions about the changing and varying degrees of legitimacy of various forms of authority and their associated institutions. I can thus credit Gurri with leading me to Frank Furedi’s 2013 book Authority: A Sociological History which I would highly recommend to anyone who might appreciate a much broader context and more scholarly treatment of the fundamental issues. Furedi inspired me to delve into Habermas’s books Theory of Communicative Action, The Legitimation Crisis, and Between Facts and Norms, in part in which “he fashioned a comprehensive vision of modern society and the possibility of freedom within it.” Thus, I would suggest that Gurri may be like the visible portion of an iceberg: what you really want to know goes far deeper.
What I would take to be the most important things to understand is that there is nothing new and the same theme of Eve taking a bite of the fruit of the tree of knowledge has played itself out over and over again through the centuries. And in so doing there have been countless revolutions in which new accommodations between opposing intellectual intuitions and societal forces have produced both progress and long periods of historical quietude and stability.
The gambit of “Blame the People” as a threat to that stability is historically uninformed and dangerous as well as fuels the paranoia that continues to grow ever more feverish into the cultish “preserve our establishment at any cost” mantra that so many erstwhile public intellectuals chant incessantly today.
“Following the War, ‘there was a critical revision of moden mass democracy’ by political theorists and policy makers . At this point Europeans ‘critically re-examined the idea of democratic citizenship, which traditionally was based on the rational capacity of participation and decion on the part of the citizen’. Public opinion was represented by as a synthesis of irrational myths and prejudice. This argument was forcefully presented by the American commentator Walter Lippmann in his influential 1922 study, Public Opinion, which declared that the proportion of the electorate that is ‘absolutely illiterate’ is much larger than one would suspect, and that these people who are ‘mentally children or barbarians’ are the natural target of manipulators. The belief that the public was dominated by infantile emotions was widely echoed in the the social science literature of the inter-war period, often conveying the assumption that public opinion odes not know what is in its best interests. As one American sociologist noted in 1919, ‘public opinion is often very cruel to those who struggle most unselfishly for the public welfare.’
“Harold Lasswell, one of the pioneers of the psychological turn of American political science, expressed a skepticism that charactarised his discipline’s attitude towards democratic political. ‘Familiarity with the ruling public has bred contempt’, he stated, and reminded his readers that the ‘public has not reigned with benignity and restraint’. Lasswell denounced people with democratic inclinations for ‘deceiving themselves’, and claimed that the power of propaganda to manipulate the masses called into question ‘the traditional species of democratic romanticism.” Through Europe and America, pessimism directed towards democratic institutions pervaded public life. Graham Wallas, a leading member of the British Fabian Society and author of Human Nature in Politics, provided a powerful critique of the capacity of democratic electorate to behave rationally.
“With the rise of fascism and the ascendancy of Stalin’s regim, the loss of faith in the public intensified. It was from this perspective that Walter Shepard, President of the American Political Science Association asked in 1935, ‘who are the People?’ In reply, he argued that ‘we have been impressed, more than we care to admit, with the practical failure of democratic in Europe’; and pointing to the ‘spread of fascism and the success of the communist experiment in Russia’ and the ‘breakdown of the capitalistic system and the prolonged economic depression’, he suggested that Americans had become a ‘nation of political skeptics’.
Shepard wrote as a matter of fact that ‘the idea that government springs from and is dependent upon the will of the people cannot withstand the analysis of modern criticism’. Although he recognized that the ‘electorate has its role to play in modern government’, that role was a matter of ‘practical expediency’ to be decided on pragmatic grounds, for ‘Is it not evident that the theory of popular sovereignty, the central idea of democratic ideology, cannot stand up under an objective critical analysis and must be frankly abandoned?” What Shepard proposed was a technocratic political system, based on planning and education and run by men with ‘brains’.”
(Furedi, Authority, pp 352-353)
Despite Shepard’s apparent win and the ascendancy of the administrative state and an unconstrained judicial system in control of whatever tickles their fancy, the debate remains the same, and the same anti-democratic ideology continues to be spewed in ever increasing volume. Given the failure of the technocratic class to govern with any semblance of competence, is it any wonder we are being imprecated to kowtow anyway and just lower expectations?
Furedi sums up with “as our historical review of the uneasy relationship between public opinion and authority indicates, what some see as the source of authority others imagine as a fundamental threat to it. Experience indicates that it is far easier to claim the authority of public opinion that it is to institutionalise consent. Yet democratic public life cannot live without some form of authority; which is why the quest for an authority that is perceived as legitimate will continue into the indefifskItnite future [… …]
It is worth noting that the current demise of authority has not been paralleled by a greater cultural affirmation for freedom. The historic tension between authority and freedom lost much of its relevance. Indeed both ideas seem to have lost much of their meaning. Why this is so is the fascinating problem that emerges from our study of the history of the problem of authority.”
One possible answer to Furedi’s question is that the quest will continue and grow ever more divisive and intellectually stagnant until the possibility of a reformed political and electoral system admits the potential realization of the populist intuition’s priorities of peace, prosperity, and personal autonomy.
I've now read the Simon link and scanned a couple other of her posts and they are pretty thoughtful and certainly allusive. The Shakespeare reading was interesting, though it would make me sad to take that speech of Katherina's as artless and not humorous trolling. At the very least these pieces are Something Different. (To a secular audience; I would guess this sort of thing has formed the basis for a good deal of modern Christian self-help around marriage, but I wouldn't know about that.)
Ever since it came out decades ago now in convo with a dear friend, evangelical, that she used a type of contraception novel to me, which required a few hours advance planning, which was no problem because they operated on a schedule - I realized that intercourse - the intercourse of friendship among women that is - was not improved for me by touching on the subject of other people's arrangements in that department. Not that I think a schedule is inefficient or joyless - probably the opposite - I just didn't need to know it, nor that another friend's husband had a little habit (a game: I think.) of putting cash on the bureau afterwards.
As someone with an unfortunately darker temperament, invocations to spiritual joy leave me out. This would be true even were I religious. The novelty of the subject being dilated on in a C.S. Lewis vein, being blowjobs, doesn't really alter that (see preceding para).
Though he was no prude I expect Lewis would have a little Johnsonian feeling about being "cautious how we strip" life in re what we make subject of conversation, versus what we get on with doing.
But if we are going to look at things we needn't have bothered with, we ought to look at them whole. And the idea that there is joy in fellatio for a woman is a striking variety of the pretense that Simon rightly punctures elsewhere. She has there sunk into the kind of silly bs that even, so the internet reliably informs, Teen Vogue or Seventeen now promulgate thanks to the myriad contradictions and willed obtuseness of the sexual revolution.
If you've found a woman who cheerfully provides that service on the regular, then she has named her price and you have met it. Or perhaps she hates cooking even more: "good in bed". Whatever works, especially if the currency of the relationship is not primarily affection - but it is just part of the overall truth that few of us get through our allotted span without doing lots of things we'd rather not. Life, while not being stripped, shouldn't be adorned beyond all recognition. There is no joy in the practice for a woman; whether for some men that is not part of the appeal, I am unable to say, but why pretend, if like Simon you are positioning yourself as an antidote to feminism's own incoherence about sex (everything equal and equally enjoyed - only, no - oppression prevents that, forever; moreover what is edgier is ideologically acceptable while what is easy is problematic, thus leading to endless pretense and a curious lack of openness on the subject despite our conviction we are the most open ever)? It is wholly uncomfortable in a "please be over" sort of way; and you can bet that after you die, while she may miss many things about you, an end to that will be pure upside.
Some years ago the dissectors-of-culture derived amusement, understandably, from a purportedly-sincere Stratemeyer Syndicate document listing "things that can't happen to Nancy Drew". One was that she couldn't be bound and gagged, presumably for its unsavory connotation (however lost on ten year-old girls, Nancy not being the reading of teenagers beyond thirteen, and generally younger).
A simpler explanation is that Nancy had a great life! A devoted, better-than-a-mother housekeeper and cook; a father who adored her and let her in on the secrets of his trade. A closetful of beautiful outfits, an unusually interesting hometown with an example of every kind of cool setting for "mystery". Every girl's hope, a boyfriend, in Ned; with Frank Hardy as a possible backup. Poise and beauty and a purpose. No one likes gagging unless as a peculiar fetish! Some people hate it most of all unlikable physical experiences - can hardly tolerate even going to the dentist. Gagging would seriously threaten the perfection of her life!
I guess the modern analog would be that Nancy can't suggest that any particular sexual practice is not her favorite.
"Following Sunil’s advice would have changed my life. For the better or for the worse is hard to say."
While you didn't quit grad school or the Fed after a year, you did quit a few jobs.
We tend to hear the stories of people who quit once or more before finding their success but we hear much less about people who quit and never find something better. When we do hear about them, we tend to dismiss them as losers, unmotivated, incapable, etc. instead of recognizing quitting is sometimes the only difference between them and many others who stuck with the same jobs.
There are positives of sticking with something too. I'm not saying which is better, just that it's almost always not at all clear which is better.
"The clearest proof of biologically maladaptive culture drift is fertility."
First you have to prove that culture drift is the reason for reduced fertility. I'm not sure you can. Fertility is also very much a financial issue. Also a technology issue. How much of the change is simply availability of more effective, more convenient, and cheaper contraception? Back to financial, there was a time that having kids was in part to gain workers for the household. True or not, it seems every day we get further from that end of the spectrum. Another way to look at it is to ask who has the highest fertility, the rich or the poor? If it is cultural, why does reduced fertility align so well with increased income within a culture/country?
I kinda wish I would have gotten Sunil's advice when I was that age. I went to work for a well-established company that was trying to break into a new market when I was right out of college because the manager there sold me on their ambitious growth plans and how much opportunity there would be for a young chap like me to move up quickly if the new venture took off. I should have realized way sooner that it just wasn't going to work and thrown in the towel. Instead, I stuck around too long and had to scramble to find a new job quickly when the company signaled (they never came right out and said it) that they were pulling the plug. Edit: the manager who gave me that sales pitch left maybe 18 months after I started, but like an idiot, I stayed, thinking new management might have more success.
Marilyn Simon is rediscovering Laura Doyle. And I clicked through to find out what Ashurbanipal has to do with anything, because I was hoping it would be related to my obsession with Nebuchadnezzar, but no link was revealed. ( referencing my post https://ishayirashashem.substack.com/p/thought-he-would-live-forever)
Would it be fair to call this "don't be conscientious" a "luxury belief"? (an idea that is popular in these parts)
Fast quitting and stick-to-itiveness are both beneficial. It makes all the difference in the world in discerning which one to apply when. But like Arnold, I cannot even say with 20-20 hindsight which choices were the best ones and which ones I wish I did differently.
I chose to study Mechanical Engineering. In hindsight I should have studied Civil Engineering. For no other reason than the quality of the Civil Engineering program was superior at my school. I ended up taking many courses from the Civil Engineering department and the job I took in the Civil Engineering school paved the way to what became my career in computer programming. But for odd reasons I was stubborn I to earn a degree in Mechanical Engineering and I never switched. I have never used my college degree and probably would not have used a Civil Engineering degree either. But if I had been less stubborn I could have made better use of my college efforts.
Now an example of fast quitting. At one point in learning computers I was fascinated by computer graphics. And this fascination was the reason I decided to get into programming. In short time I realized I did not have a mind to do anything other than the most basic computer graphics. My talents were better suited for other programming challenges. I probably spent less than 100 hours not learning computer graphics algorithms. I am proud of myself for realizing so quickly that niche wasn't going to work for me.
My life experience is if you are persistent in working towards what you like to do, you will find it. This means you need to put yourself in the arena of work and then be flexible to adjust the work you do to fit the tasks that yield the most fulfillment. This is where fast-quitting can become an obstacle. If you quit too early you may miss out on the opportunity that was developing right in front of you.
A final thought. The most important consideration for enjoying work is to work with enjoyable people. I don't recommend quitting on the first on-the-job conflict. But a reason to quit sooner than later is if the people involved in the work make you miserable.
Arnold quotes Lukianoff on Gurri: "Understanding the crisis of authority as only being wrongfully destructive of expertise is to miss the fact that, frankly, we are often asking far too much of expertise and experts — and oversight itself has not been all that rigorous." This greatly understates the problem. What the last few years have revealed is that purported expertise is often not only hollow, but incompetent, corrupt, and dishonest, and that there are no corrective mechanisms of oversight. The supposed expertise that has been offered include the punditry opinion on the Russia collusion hoax, the public health officials' attempts to conceal the origins of the Corona virus (aided by the dishonesty of eminent virologists looking for grant money), and infamous letter on the Hunter Biden laptop signed by 51 "intelligence community" authorities. And there are many more instances. Is it asking "far too much of expertise" that it simply be honest?
"If I could be an older teenager or young adult in any era, I think I would pick the early 1960s ... The games of flirtation and romance at that time strike me as fun and challenging."
Oh my God, NO! Admittedly, I was an older teenager in the late 1960s, but the games were not at all fun, full of ignorance and lack of communication.
Arnold
About life choice.
Seems to me that the modern focus on money, status or position has hindered finding satisfaction.
Think historically . . .
Augustine went from lawyer to philosopher/priest. Changed west permanently.
Boethious from Roman consul to translator of Aristotle and philosophy. Huge impact for thousand years.
Rashi, a vintner, overwhelmingly influenced Judaism and Christianity.
Maimonides, a doctor, still important for entire western civilization.
Saul of tarsus, trained under gamaliel, turned tent maker and overturned Roman culture.
Alfred the great, king of England , translated parts of bible into English. Set direction of English society.
Copernicus, catholic canon, wrote mathematical explanation of solar system , at direction of church. (And wrote about evils of inflation).
And probably most interesting, Micheal Faraday, only finished grade school. Apprenticed to book binder a youth. Also read the books.
Then started working for Davies cleaning laboratory.
Eventually overturned Newton’s theory of matter.
Fields vs points.
Foundation of modern science, quantum theory.
Invented electric motors, capacitors, electrolysis, generators, etc., etc..
Now, of course many academics important - anselm, Aquinas, Occum, Galileo, Abelard, Scotus, Bacon, Maxwell, etc., etc..
But, even Einstein couldn’t work in at beginning. Patent office.
So, believing academia essential seems contrary to evidence.
Or as Solomon appealed to his son . . .
“Happy is the man who finds wisdom
And the man who acquires discernment;
To gain it is better than gaining silver,
And having it as profit is better than having gold.
It is more precious than corals;
Nothing you desire can compare to it.
Long life is in its right hand;
Riches and glory are in its left hand.
Its ways are pleasant,
And all its paths are peaceful.
It is a tree of life to those who take hold of it,
And those who keep firm hold of it will be called happy.’’
It’s life long learning that’s valuable, not academic achievement.
Thanks
Clay
"I do appreciate that they want to play with male-female differences rather than endorse a mission to erase them."
Refreshing and wise!
Commenting late again. Hanson’s culture analysis is very similar to the main thesis of Carroll Quigley’s The Evolution of Civilizations from the 1960s. Quigley’s was in my opinion by far the best Civilizations analysis ever. However, as or just after Quigley was writing, the social sciences collectively decided that comparative cultures / civilizations analysis was taboo (because it violated the “all cultures are equal” dogma) and no one with any academic credibility carried on this field from the late 1960s. A few writers have started to pick up civilizations analysis now, but mostly from a materialistic perspective, without grasping the importance of the more subjective elements under the umbrella of culture. Quigley’s work basically has become lost knowledge. I’m glad to see an analytical mind like Hanson’s once again returning to this topic, though Hanson won’t be able to bring the historical depth that Quigley did.
How would you feel about a physicist who walks into the economics faculty lounge, sits down, puts up his feet, and says “What are you working on? This should be easy! “
I hear that economics is a discipline often colonized by physicists. Biology is worse. It is often colonized by both physicists and economists.
I am a biologist. Hanson is not. He is being ridiculous. Cultures do not undergo evolution in the way he thinks. They do not experience selection in the way he thinks. There is not space hereto enumerate all the ways in which is wrong. He is being ridiculous. You should stop listening to him on this topic.
I bought both the 2014 and 2018 editions of Gurri’s book in the years published, so I confess that they triggered something of an interest into the many questions and tensions inherent in attempting to understand popular questions about the changing and varying degrees of legitimacy of various forms of authority and their associated institutions. I can thus credit Gurri with leading me to Frank Furedi’s 2013 book Authority: A Sociological History which I would highly recommend to anyone who might appreciate a much broader context and more scholarly treatment of the fundamental issues. Furedi inspired me to delve into Habermas’s books Theory of Communicative Action, The Legitimation Crisis, and Between Facts and Norms, in part in which “he fashioned a comprehensive vision of modern society and the possibility of freedom within it.” Thus, I would suggest that Gurri may be like the visible portion of an iceberg: what you really want to know goes far deeper.
What I would take to be the most important things to understand is that there is nothing new and the same theme of Eve taking a bite of the fruit of the tree of knowledge has played itself out over and over again through the centuries. And in so doing there have been countless revolutions in which new accommodations between opposing intellectual intuitions and societal forces have produced both progress and long periods of historical quietude and stability.
The gambit of “Blame the People” as a threat to that stability is historically uninformed and dangerous as well as fuels the paranoia that continues to grow ever more feverish into the cultish “preserve our establishment at any cost” mantra that so many erstwhile public intellectuals chant incessantly today.
“Following the War, ‘there was a critical revision of moden mass democracy’ by political theorists and policy makers . At this point Europeans ‘critically re-examined the idea of democratic citizenship, which traditionally was based on the rational capacity of participation and decion on the part of the citizen’. Public opinion was represented by as a synthesis of irrational myths and prejudice. This argument was forcefully presented by the American commentator Walter Lippmann in his influential 1922 study, Public Opinion, which declared that the proportion of the electorate that is ‘absolutely illiterate’ is much larger than one would suspect, and that these people who are ‘mentally children or barbarians’ are the natural target of manipulators. The belief that the public was dominated by infantile emotions was widely echoed in the the social science literature of the inter-war period, often conveying the assumption that public opinion odes not know what is in its best interests. As one American sociologist noted in 1919, ‘public opinion is often very cruel to those who struggle most unselfishly for the public welfare.’
“Harold Lasswell, one of the pioneers of the psychological turn of American political science, expressed a skepticism that charactarised his discipline’s attitude towards democratic political. ‘Familiarity with the ruling public has bred contempt’, he stated, and reminded his readers that the ‘public has not reigned with benignity and restraint’. Lasswell denounced people with democratic inclinations for ‘deceiving themselves’, and claimed that the power of propaganda to manipulate the masses called into question ‘the traditional species of democratic romanticism.” Through Europe and America, pessimism directed towards democratic institutions pervaded public life. Graham Wallas, a leading member of the British Fabian Society and author of Human Nature in Politics, provided a powerful critique of the capacity of democratic electorate to behave rationally.
“With the rise of fascism and the ascendancy of Stalin’s regim, the loss of faith in the public intensified. It was from this perspective that Walter Shepard, President of the American Political Science Association asked in 1935, ‘who are the People?’ In reply, he argued that ‘we have been impressed, more than we care to admit, with the practical failure of democratic in Europe’; and pointing to the ‘spread of fascism and the success of the communist experiment in Russia’ and the ‘breakdown of the capitalistic system and the prolonged economic depression’, he suggested that Americans had become a ‘nation of political skeptics’.
Shepard wrote as a matter of fact that ‘the idea that government springs from and is dependent upon the will of the people cannot withstand the analysis of modern criticism’. Although he recognized that the ‘electorate has its role to play in modern government’, that role was a matter of ‘practical expediency’ to be decided on pragmatic grounds, for ‘Is it not evident that the theory of popular sovereignty, the central idea of democratic ideology, cannot stand up under an objective critical analysis and must be frankly abandoned?” What Shepard proposed was a technocratic political system, based on planning and education and run by men with ‘brains’.”
(Furedi, Authority, pp 352-353)
Despite Shepard’s apparent win and the ascendancy of the administrative state and an unconstrained judicial system in control of whatever tickles their fancy, the debate remains the same, and the same anti-democratic ideology continues to be spewed in ever increasing volume. Given the failure of the technocratic class to govern with any semblance of competence, is it any wonder we are being imprecated to kowtow anyway and just lower expectations?
Furedi sums up with “as our historical review of the uneasy relationship between public opinion and authority indicates, what some see as the source of authority others imagine as a fundamental threat to it. Experience indicates that it is far easier to claim the authority of public opinion that it is to institutionalise consent. Yet democratic public life cannot live without some form of authority; which is why the quest for an authority that is perceived as legitimate will continue into the indefifskItnite future [… …]
It is worth noting that the current demise of authority has not been paralleled by a greater cultural affirmation for freedom. The historic tension between authority and freedom lost much of its relevance. Indeed both ideas seem to have lost much of their meaning. Why this is so is the fascinating problem that emerges from our study of the history of the problem of authority.”
One possible answer to Furedi’s question is that the quest will continue and grow ever more divisive and intellectually stagnant until the possibility of a reformed political and electoral system admits the potential realization of the populist intuition’s priorities of peace, prosperity, and personal autonomy.
I've now read the Simon link and scanned a couple other of her posts and they are pretty thoughtful and certainly allusive. The Shakespeare reading was interesting, though it would make me sad to take that speech of Katherina's as artless and not humorous trolling. At the very least these pieces are Something Different. (To a secular audience; I would guess this sort of thing has formed the basis for a good deal of modern Christian self-help around marriage, but I wouldn't know about that.)
Ever since it came out decades ago now in convo with a dear friend, evangelical, that she used a type of contraception novel to me, which required a few hours advance planning, which was no problem because they operated on a schedule - I realized that intercourse - the intercourse of friendship among women that is - was not improved for me by touching on the subject of other people's arrangements in that department. Not that I think a schedule is inefficient or joyless - probably the opposite - I just didn't need to know it, nor that another friend's husband had a little habit (a game: I think.) of putting cash on the bureau afterwards.
As someone with an unfortunately darker temperament, invocations to spiritual joy leave me out. This would be true even were I religious. The novelty of the subject being dilated on in a C.S. Lewis vein, being blowjobs, doesn't really alter that (see preceding para).
Though he was no prude I expect Lewis would have a little Johnsonian feeling about being "cautious how we strip" life in re what we make subject of conversation, versus what we get on with doing.
But if we are going to look at things we needn't have bothered with, we ought to look at them whole. And the idea that there is joy in fellatio for a woman is a striking variety of the pretense that Simon rightly punctures elsewhere. She has there sunk into the kind of silly bs that even, so the internet reliably informs, Teen Vogue or Seventeen now promulgate thanks to the myriad contradictions and willed obtuseness of the sexual revolution.
If you've found a woman who cheerfully provides that service on the regular, then she has named her price and you have met it. Or perhaps she hates cooking even more: "good in bed". Whatever works, especially if the currency of the relationship is not primarily affection - but it is just part of the overall truth that few of us get through our allotted span without doing lots of things we'd rather not. Life, while not being stripped, shouldn't be adorned beyond all recognition. There is no joy in the practice for a woman; whether for some men that is not part of the appeal, I am unable to say, but why pretend, if like Simon you are positioning yourself as an antidote to feminism's own incoherence about sex (everything equal and equally enjoyed - only, no - oppression prevents that, forever; moreover what is edgier is ideologically acceptable while what is easy is problematic, thus leading to endless pretense and a curious lack of openness on the subject despite our conviction we are the most open ever)? It is wholly uncomfortable in a "please be over" sort of way; and you can bet that after you die, while she may miss many things about you, an end to that will be pure upside.
Some years ago the dissectors-of-culture derived amusement, understandably, from a purportedly-sincere Stratemeyer Syndicate document listing "things that can't happen to Nancy Drew". One was that she couldn't be bound and gagged, presumably for its unsavory connotation (however lost on ten year-old girls, Nancy not being the reading of teenagers beyond thirteen, and generally younger).
A simpler explanation is that Nancy had a great life! A devoted, better-than-a-mother housekeeper and cook; a father who adored her and let her in on the secrets of his trade. A closetful of beautiful outfits, an unusually interesting hometown with an example of every kind of cool setting for "mystery". Every girl's hope, a boyfriend, in Ned; with Frank Hardy as a possible backup. Poise and beauty and a purpose. No one likes gagging unless as a peculiar fetish! Some people hate it most of all unlikable physical experiences - can hardly tolerate even going to the dentist. Gagging would seriously threaten the perfection of her life!
I guess the modern analog would be that Nancy can't suggest that any particular sexual practice is not her favorite.
"Following Sunil’s advice would have changed my life. For the better or for the worse is hard to say."
While you didn't quit grad school or the Fed after a year, you did quit a few jobs.
We tend to hear the stories of people who quit once or more before finding their success but we hear much less about people who quit and never find something better. When we do hear about them, we tend to dismiss them as losers, unmotivated, incapable, etc. instead of recognizing quitting is sometimes the only difference between them and many others who stuck with the same jobs.
There are positives of sticking with something too. I'm not saying which is better, just that it's almost always not at all clear which is better.
"The clearest proof of biologically maladaptive culture drift is fertility."
First you have to prove that culture drift is the reason for reduced fertility. I'm not sure you can. Fertility is also very much a financial issue. Also a technology issue. How much of the change is simply availability of more effective, more convenient, and cheaper contraception? Back to financial, there was a time that having kids was in part to gain workers for the household. True or not, it seems every day we get further from that end of the spectrum. Another way to look at it is to ask who has the highest fertility, the rich or the poor? If it is cultural, why does reduced fertility align so well with increased income within a culture/country?
"Following Sunil’s advice would have changed my life."
Sunil's advice would mean you probably never get vested for matching 401k contributions...
I kinda wish I would have gotten Sunil's advice when I was that age. I went to work for a well-established company that was trying to break into a new market when I was right out of college because the manager there sold me on their ambitious growth plans and how much opportunity there would be for a young chap like me to move up quickly if the new venture took off. I should have realized way sooner that it just wasn't going to work and thrown in the towel. Instead, I stuck around too long and had to scramble to find a new job quickly when the company signaled (they never came right out and said it) that they were pulling the plug. Edit: the manager who gave me that sales pitch left maybe 18 months after I started, but like an idiot, I stayed, thinking new management might have more success.
Marilyn Simon is rediscovering Laura Doyle. And I clicked through to find out what Ashurbanipal has to do with anything, because I was hoping it would be related to my obsession with Nebuchadnezzar, but no link was revealed. ( referencing my post https://ishayirashashem.substack.com/p/thought-he-would-live-forever)