Links to Consider, 6/13

Rob Henderson on the gender-equality paradox; Jacob Reynolds on neo-barbarism; Michael Strong on building a moral subculture; Tove K on relations between the sexes

Rob Henderson writes,

the psychologist Steve Stewart-Williams succinctly summarized the paradox: “Treating men and women the same makes them different, and treating them differently makes them the same.”

The more that women achieve parity in society, the more that male and female traits diverge. Even physical traits.

This gender gap has also been found for physical differences in things like height, BMI, obesity, and blood pressure. Across societies, men tend to be taller, heavier, and have higher blood pressure than women. But in rich and relatively equal societies, gender differences are particularly large.

Jacob Reynolds writes,

The barbarism of the present moment is anything but irrational. It is the product of a definite ideology – perhaps not fully formed or fully coherent (think queers for Palestine) but nonetheless ‘rational’ in the narrow sense of containing premises and arguments. 

At the level of theory, its underpinnings and articulations can be found in the deconstruction of what is called ‘Western civilisation’. Entire academic divisions are given over to ‘debunking’ the idea that there is any real distinction between civilised and barbarian (and indeed, they argue we have something to learn from the latter). Instead, what we call ‘the West’ is merely the product of osmosis from the non-Western Other. Further cottage industries are devoted to ‘queering’ or ‘challenging’ the binaries which provide civilisation with its essential boundaries: human and animal, adult and child, man and woman. The work of the sledgehammer is morally equal to the work of the sculptor.

And a hostage rescue mission is called a “massacre.” I would say that it is reasonable to blame every civilian death—every single one—on Hamas. It embeds its weapons and fighters within the civilian population. It started this war. And yet its supporters buy its “massacre” narrative.

Michael Strong writes,

I’m at the point at which I see the threat of relativism, hedonism, and nihilism as greater than the threat of religion.  Young people need to be raised among adults who have some kind of moral sensibility, some sense of moral conviction and direction, some shared belief in ideals, the heroic, and the sacred.  Without it they are prone to mindless political activism in part because that is the closest to something meaningful most have been exposed to.  They suffer from social media and gaming addictions because they have no sense of purpose. Those who are ambitious develop self control in order to achieve their ambitions.  The rest are lost unless they are raised in a particularly strong home or subculture.

Tove K writes,

[In Syria] essentially, many men behaved as if they themselves believed that they lacked self control. 

She writes about the tense male-female relationships in honor cultures. But are male-female relationships any less fraught in the west? Recall Aaron Renn.

I have a rule that I will not be 1:1 personal friends with anyone of the opposite sex.

Tove K also notes,

While honor is something rather simple that is decided by just a few very important parameters, social status is a sliding scale that comprises more or less everything.

In that sense honor culture never died. It only evolved. The notion of good people and bad people is very much alive in modern Western societies. We mostly don’t call them honorable and dishonorable. Instead, we put them all on a complex scale.

substacks referenced above:

@

Glamorizing Divorce

@

Making sense of honor culture

@

Why I Focus on the Importance of Subculture Creation

@

Civilisation and its malcontents

@

Why Young Women Are Becoming More Liberal Than Young Men: The Gender-Equality Paradox