>>Twelve years later, as anticipated, shame has entirely failed as a strategy to encourage more young men to get married.
In order to say that 'shame has failed as a strategy' I would have thought it would have needed to be tried. I only know anecdotally, from the individuals I deal with and the stacks I read etc., but I would have said we lived in the least 'shamed' generation since... forever. I see people complaining about being shamed (particuarly women) in regards to marriage... but their comment thread immediately fills up with 'you go, girl, don't you feel embarassed about not being married!' The young man who isn't married isn't constantly lectured, let alone socially excluded.
No, I would say that it isn't that shame has failed, it is that it hasn't been tried. Because the would-be shamers are doing remarkably little shaming.
Just wanted to say best of luck with the new forum! I missed the back and forth in comments on blogspot. Even though I would rarely ever contribute, it was nice to think I could & was the kind of place you could usually expect a thoughtful reply. Fingers crossed!
Hoo boy, Vox is gonna break Substack now. The “Substack has a nazi problem” crybabies will no doubt point and shriek. In all seriousness though Vox, you have a keen eye for good, cogent writing, even wrt leftist writers. I noticed that Freddy DeBoer is not one of the writers leaving Substack in a huff; indeed, he seems to be doing quite well and has been published elsewhere. Another principled leftist writer you recommend on the blog was Michael Hudson. Take care and thanks for all your hard work.
Hello Vox, thanks for answering. I think I understand what you mean by this. Let Betas be Bravos. I guess the aim being to reduce the urge to indulge in either alpha style chest beating, or clever boy sigma signalling, that typically leads to gamma sperg spiralling, when told to sit down and be quiet? MBGA!
The aim is to not confuse the Bravo rank, which is a high rank in the Sociosexual hierarchy with the term Beta, which refers to a low status or a loser male as used by the pick-up artists and others.
For example, if you were to refer to Owen Benjamin as a beta, this could readily be read as an insult.
In addition, clever boy signalling is Gamma trait.
Understood. Terrible writing by me - I was referring to Gammas signalling cleverness, to pass as sigmas (especially when lacking any alpha characteristics)
Destigmatising the Beta category may improve the signal to noise ratio, by giving them somewhere to go and sit quietly, without feeling the need to sigma signal how clever they are, or put on one of those histrionic displays that they think passes for alpha aggression...
On further consideration, that's unlikely though, isn't it? Gamma category presumably being practically defined by a lack of self introspection & hence a delusional inability to see oneself anywhere but the top of the hierarchy (as secret Kings, etc.)
No plans to de-stigmatise the gamma category, presumably ;-)
I did a graduate course once based on the SSH. Divided the class into tribes called Alpha, Delta, and Sigma. It remains the greatest thing I've ever experienced, Vox, and I have you to thank for the inspiration.
I still recall your article "spiting their pretty faces" from back in the day with WND. I'm afraid the pretty faces from the time you wrote that have now aged out of marriage and childbirth. You wrote that with wisdom well in advance of your years at the time.
Cultures and sub-cultures are either guilt-based, shame-based, or fear-based. Western societies are predominately guilt-based, Guilt is a more internal and private emotion than shame. Also I suspect that trying to shame men into relationships will be most effective with the types of men that most women don't want.
The Clown Regime is hostile to men and families, which are a competitor rather than a client. By now, I believe the content of most university degrees could be replaced by working through a set of books, and furthermore most of the degrees marketed towards women are useless. The institutions of higher education have beclowned themselves, as should be apparent from the recent case of Claudine Gay.
Additionally, there has been a massive overproduction of degrees to the extent that the degrees can no longer be even used as a proxy for IQ (see: https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64221). It is now common to see positions which require further employee testing in addition to a possible degree. The women who are malleable are taught perceive children or marriage as lower status, or they may stay in the system for too long in effect exchanging it for a husband.
The managerial complex will likely double down as is usual. This means trying to keep women in the system for as long as possible in addition to attempts to influence more laws or procedures mandating university degrees even on remedial and unnecessary tasks (such as mandating DEI bureaucracies); large corporations will likely require even more degrees and "vibrancy" being minions of the system. Yet, the complex is already overextended and haemorrhaging the traditionally powerful groups by design. As Vox says, make sure to be near the goal when the ball rolls by.
Awesome opening post, showing how badly one of the supports of civilization continues to crumble around us. No one seems to notice or care beyond whining about not being able to find a man, and that it's the mens' fault.
Apparently not everyone got the memo. You won't get young men to marry again until you curb the risk of doing so and put some controls on female behavior and sexuality. That's the future eventually although there's going to be a dark period before we get there.
Re-read the post. My point, both in 2012 and 2024, is that shame, in a Western culture, has considerably less force than hypergamy or socioeconomic factors. Shame does not and cannot work.
As for calling men who are self-admittedly too afraid of something to risk it, what else can you call them besides "cowards". That's not a pointless attempt to shame them, that's just the literal definition of what they are.
I can see your point however the term "coward" is commonly understood as a shaming term. The white feather society did the same thing to shame men into joining WW1. The "too afraid to risk it" statement is a pretty broad term in this instance. To assume it is only or predominantly cowardice I believe is incorrect. I do not go to Las Vegas and gamble with the expectation of striking it rich for the same reason as I don't believe my chances of success warrant the loss of all my funds in the attempt. A "happy marriage" has a smaller chance of Vegas odds in the West today. Very few would describe this as cowardly although by the definition you proffer that would seem to meet the case.
All this being said I concede that a man avoiding marriage who is only concerned with losing transient material stuff, that is indeed cowardly. Unfortunately men in the West lose a lot more than this including children, family, friends, freedom (jail), years of humiliation/slavery at the hands of the family court. Many have seen loved ones and friends go through this and it is far worse than you what you often usually present. The case you showed on your blog recently highlights this worst case and even though the writer said he would do it again I would say to get the complete picture one should check in on him 5-10 years from now to see how he feels. He was just starting the process of walking through hell when he wrote to you and everything is still quite new.
Regardless of any agreement or lack thereof thank you for your blog and your writing. For the most part I find your opinions quite valuable and insightful and I particular enjoy your fantasy fiction.
Coward is a word used to describe someone who refuses to fight for something worth fighting for, that he has a responsibility for fighting for. The civilization that raised us, gasping and dying though it may be, is worth fighting to rebuild in some sort of future nation. And, I would argue, something we're responsible for fighting for.
Besides, the satanists have shown they'll chase us down anyways. They weren't happy kicking people out of the cities to the burbs. Why does anyone think they'll be happy with flight to red states or rural areas? They want us dead.
If someone wants working toilets and electricity, have children. Give them something to build and work towards after the ashes cool. Which means having a wife and raising them right. Otherwise, unless they need to take vows of chastity and literally plan on dedicating life and all the fruits of their labor to God and others, they're a dead end.
Again I have no issue with your definition I just think we have a bit of a category error here. The young men I know aren't avoiding relationships and marriage because "they are kraven cowards!!!!" rather they are simply doing a cold ROI analysis. And the ROI of modern women to marriage is quite poor. Even if you don't get divorced you still have an excellent chance of being in an unhappy marriage where the man is expected to do 95% of the work and she does little if anything. These are the stories these young men are relaying and their responses are not being driven by fear. A good book on the subject (I'm a numbers guy) is "The book of numbers analyzing the ROI on the pursuit of women" by Aaron Clarey.
Your appeal to Western civilization is also going to fall flat with the younger set. I'm older so I do remember how nice it was growing up in a mostly white suburb. Young men of today however see (correctly) that the civilization they are in now absolutely hates them and they are happy to see it die.
While I too would like to see a return you will not accomplish this by telling average males to "just get married" or to "just find a nice girl". Those boomer canards are akin to the WW1 English army insisting on buying a better horse as a solution to German machine guns. The pool these men have to chose from is something like 50% single mothers raising ork babies and dreaming of Pookie on death row. If by some miracle they do "find a nice girl" with no deal breakers (like another mans children) great but my advice is for them to immediately get her the hell out and away from any major city or town and ideally out of the US altogether. The less contact with the current Western world the better. Eve started out perfect and even she fell so the less you court her with the devils temptations the better.
Eve made a choice, but is Adam's responsibility to guide to heaven. So too, are the daughters of Eve.
Look, the world is crumbling around us and there's no running from it. Historically, running doesn't work. It didn't work to run to the burbs. It didn't work in South Africa. It won't work to hunker down in the rural south or red states. A secession movement won't work. Breaking away won't work. Moving to a BRICs country won't work.
War is coming. It's foolish and craven to think you can run, and wise to pick where, with whom, and for what you're going to make you're stand. Before the choice is made for you.
As far as a woman, the whole MGTOW thing is dishonest as the whole career gal thing is. Most men, Most being the key word, will want more in life by the time they die. To lead them on and tell them otherwise, to convince them not to commit and it's not worth it, I see as a travesty in the same manner as the other. It's a mirror problem, and one that is foolish when a man can find a good woman and his chances are extremely high of making it work if he is intelligent about it.
"when a man can find a good woman and his chances are extremely high of making it work if he is intelligent about it."
This statement especially in America is as factually incorrect as if you were attempting to do this in the ancient city of Sodom right before GODs judgement came upon it. And what did GOD advise Lot to do? Stick around and make it work? No. Also in Revelations when it speaks of Babylon what do the angels advise? "Come out of her my people" not "Stick around and wife up that ho".
I am for marriage but not in the West where even if we accept the generously lowered divorce rate of 35% (which is so low only because marriage itself is now happening so infrequently - go ahead and increase the base number and watch what happens) that is still not the complete picture. What men want is a *happy marriage* and of the 65% remaining how many of those are happy? To hear men tell it less than half so please stop making it sound like this is some easy assignment for young men - it isn't it's dishonest and the boomer canard of "just find a nice girl" was a joke in 1980 and completely ridiculous today.
Your odds of a successful marriage are MUCH better than your Vegas odds, especially if you apply the right standards and don't apply the wrong ones. The women who are most inclined toward divorce don't tend to get married now. Only 1/3rd of marriages fail now, and the number is even lower if only first marriages are included.
Most college attendees were there due to programming or expectations. Feminism led to programming women to be independent of men. Interestingly enough most women site their education and career are needed in case their husband divorces them (in my limited experience). Also note women initiate 2/3 of the divorces. Women are taught to dislike kids, but then rush to take care of pets. The mothering instinct is there. Even with droves of single and divorced women frustrated with their lives they are unable to take a step back and question their assumptions. I will say I had to adult for about 20 years before beginning to notice the contradictions and it took another 10 to really begin to question things.
>>Twelve years later, as anticipated, shame has entirely failed as a strategy to encourage more young men to get married.
In order to say that 'shame has failed as a strategy' I would have thought it would have needed to be tried. I only know anecdotally, from the individuals I deal with and the stacks I read etc., but I would have said we lived in the least 'shamed' generation since... forever. I see people complaining about being shamed (particuarly women) in regards to marriage... but their comment thread immediately fills up with 'you go, girl, don't you feel embarassed about not being married!' The young man who isn't married isn't constantly lectured, let alone socially excluded.
No, I would say that it isn't that shame has failed, it is that it hasn't been tried. Because the would-be shamers are doing remarkably little shaming.
I think you'll find this demographic comparison of American generational and "gender"-ational groups interesting. (Certainly not "good," but interesting.) All brought to us by public education and modern academia. https://www.prri.org/research/generation-zs-views-on-generational-change-and-the-challenges-and-opportunities-ahead-a-political-and-cultural-glimpse-into-americas-future/
Just wanted to say best of luck with the new forum! I missed the back and forth in comments on blogspot. Even though I would rarely ever contribute, it was nice to think I could & was the kind of place you could usually expect a thoughtful reply. Fingers crossed!
Vox's writing skills continue to improve. That's not surprising given how much Vox writes every day.
Still nice to see though.
Hoo boy, Vox is gonna break Substack now. The “Substack has a nazi problem” crybabies will no doubt point and shriek. In all seriousness though Vox, you have a keen eye for good, cogent writing, even wrt leftist writers. I noticed that Freddy DeBoer is not one of the writers leaving Substack in a huff; indeed, he seems to be doing quite well and has been published elsewhere. Another principled leftist writer you recommend on the blog was Michael Hudson. Take care and thanks for all your hard work.
Hello,
Anybody know why Beta = Bravo now, pls?
Asking for a friend...
To avoid confusion with the pick-up artists' binary Beta.
Hello Vox, thanks for answering. I think I understand what you mean by this. Let Betas be Bravos. I guess the aim being to reduce the urge to indulge in either alpha style chest beating, or clever boy sigma signalling, that typically leads to gamma sperg spiralling, when told to sit down and be quiet? MBGA!
Azamat Baghatov,
The aim is to not confuse the Bravo rank, which is a high rank in the Sociosexual hierarchy with the term Beta, which refers to a low status or a loser male as used by the pick-up artists and others.
For example, if you were to refer to Owen Benjamin as a beta, this could readily be read as an insult.
In addition, clever boy signalling is Gamma trait.
Understood. Terrible writing by me - I was referring to Gammas signalling cleverness, to pass as sigmas (especially when lacking any alpha characteristics)
Destigmatising the Beta category may improve the signal to noise ratio, by giving them somewhere to go and sit quietly, without feeling the need to sigma signal how clever they are, or put on one of those histrionic displays that they think passes for alpha aggression...
On further consideration, that's unlikely though, isn't it? Gamma category presumably being practically defined by a lack of self introspection & hence a delusional inability to see oneself anywhere but the top of the hierarchy (as secret Kings, etc.)
No plans to de-stigmatise the gamma category, presumably ;-)
Higher education also means stronger leftist ideas, head filled with undesirable images of patriarchy and any notion of male dependence.
I did a graduate course once based on the SSH. Divided the class into tribes called Alpha, Delta, and Sigma. It remains the greatest thing I've ever experienced, Vox, and I have you to thank for the inspiration.
I still recall your article "spiting their pretty faces" from back in the day with WND. I'm afraid the pretty faces from the time you wrote that have now aged out of marriage and childbirth. You wrote that with wisdom well in advance of your years at the time.
Wow, that's some old school content! I'm afraid you're right.
Welcome to Substack!
Alright, now let's get practical. How can I influence young boys SSH development in ways that will benefit them?
I think that merits its own article. If I don't get to it within a week, ping me again.
Thanks!
Cultures and sub-cultures are either guilt-based, shame-based, or fear-based. Western societies are predominately guilt-based, Guilt is a more internal and private emotion than shame. Also I suspect that trying to shame men into relationships will be most effective with the types of men that most women don't want.
Welcome to the substack Supreme Dark Lord!
The Clown Regime is hostile to men and families, which are a competitor rather than a client. By now, I believe the content of most university degrees could be replaced by working through a set of books, and furthermore most of the degrees marketed towards women are useless. The institutions of higher education have beclowned themselves, as should be apparent from the recent case of Claudine Gay.
Additionally, there has been a massive overproduction of degrees to the extent that the degrees can no longer be even used as a proxy for IQ (see: https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64221). It is now common to see positions which require further employee testing in addition to a possible degree. The women who are malleable are taught perceive children or marriage as lower status, or they may stay in the system for too long in effect exchanging it for a husband.
The managerial complex will likely double down as is usual. This means trying to keep women in the system for as long as possible in addition to attempts to influence more laws or procedures mandating university degrees even on remedial and unnecessary tasks (such as mandating DEI bureaucracies); large corporations will likely require even more degrees and "vibrancy" being minions of the system. Yet, the complex is already overextended and haemorrhaging the traditionally powerful groups by design. As Vox says, make sure to be near the goal when the ball rolls by.
(See https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-black-lives-matter-equal-opportunity-corporate-diversity/ for corporate hiring trends).
Awesome opening post, showing how badly one of the supports of civilization continues to crumble around us. No one seems to notice or care beyond whining about not being able to find a man, and that it's the mens' fault.
So shame doesn't work right? That's now finally been settled?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSaFryXWdMs
Apparently not everyone got the memo. You won't get young men to marry again until you curb the risk of doing so and put some controls on female behavior and sexuality. That's the future eventually although there's going to be a dark period before we get there.
Re-read the post. My point, both in 2012 and 2024, is that shame, in a Western culture, has considerably less force than hypergamy or socioeconomic factors. Shame does not and cannot work.
As for calling men who are self-admittedly too afraid of something to risk it, what else can you call them besides "cowards". That's not a pointless attempt to shame them, that's just the literal definition of what they are.
I can see your point however the term "coward" is commonly understood as a shaming term. The white feather society did the same thing to shame men into joining WW1. The "too afraid to risk it" statement is a pretty broad term in this instance. To assume it is only or predominantly cowardice I believe is incorrect. I do not go to Las Vegas and gamble with the expectation of striking it rich for the same reason as I don't believe my chances of success warrant the loss of all my funds in the attempt. A "happy marriage" has a smaller chance of Vegas odds in the West today. Very few would describe this as cowardly although by the definition you proffer that would seem to meet the case.
All this being said I concede that a man avoiding marriage who is only concerned with losing transient material stuff, that is indeed cowardly. Unfortunately men in the West lose a lot more than this including children, family, friends, freedom (jail), years of humiliation/slavery at the hands of the family court. Many have seen loved ones and friends go through this and it is far worse than you what you often usually present. The case you showed on your blog recently highlights this worst case and even though the writer said he would do it again I would say to get the complete picture one should check in on him 5-10 years from now to see how he feels. He was just starting the process of walking through hell when he wrote to you and everything is still quite new.
Regardless of any agreement or lack thereof thank you for your blog and your writing. For the most part I find your opinions quite valuable and insightful and I particular enjoy your fantasy fiction.
Coward is a word used to describe someone who refuses to fight for something worth fighting for, that he has a responsibility for fighting for. The civilization that raised us, gasping and dying though it may be, is worth fighting to rebuild in some sort of future nation. And, I would argue, something we're responsible for fighting for.
Besides, the satanists have shown they'll chase us down anyways. They weren't happy kicking people out of the cities to the burbs. Why does anyone think they'll be happy with flight to red states or rural areas? They want us dead.
If someone wants working toilets and electricity, have children. Give them something to build and work towards after the ashes cool. Which means having a wife and raising them right. Otherwise, unless they need to take vows of chastity and literally plan on dedicating life and all the fruits of their labor to God and others, they're a dead end.
Materially and spiritually. Dead.
Again I have no issue with your definition I just think we have a bit of a category error here. The young men I know aren't avoiding relationships and marriage because "they are kraven cowards!!!!" rather they are simply doing a cold ROI analysis. And the ROI of modern women to marriage is quite poor. Even if you don't get divorced you still have an excellent chance of being in an unhappy marriage where the man is expected to do 95% of the work and she does little if anything. These are the stories these young men are relaying and their responses are not being driven by fear. A good book on the subject (I'm a numbers guy) is "The book of numbers analyzing the ROI on the pursuit of women" by Aaron Clarey.
Your appeal to Western civilization is also going to fall flat with the younger set. I'm older so I do remember how nice it was growing up in a mostly white suburb. Young men of today however see (correctly) that the civilization they are in now absolutely hates them and they are happy to see it die.
While I too would like to see a return you will not accomplish this by telling average males to "just get married" or to "just find a nice girl". Those boomer canards are akin to the WW1 English army insisting on buying a better horse as a solution to German machine guns. The pool these men have to chose from is something like 50% single mothers raising ork babies and dreaming of Pookie on death row. If by some miracle they do "find a nice girl" with no deal breakers (like another mans children) great but my advice is for them to immediately get her the hell out and away from any major city or town and ideally out of the US altogether. The less contact with the current Western world the better. Eve started out perfect and even she fell so the less you court her with the devils temptations the better.
Eve made a choice, but is Adam's responsibility to guide to heaven. So too, are the daughters of Eve.
Look, the world is crumbling around us and there's no running from it. Historically, running doesn't work. It didn't work to run to the burbs. It didn't work in South Africa. It won't work to hunker down in the rural south or red states. A secession movement won't work. Breaking away won't work. Moving to a BRICs country won't work.
War is coming. It's foolish and craven to think you can run, and wise to pick where, with whom, and for what you're going to make you're stand. Before the choice is made for you.
As far as a woman, the whole MGTOW thing is dishonest as the whole career gal thing is. Most men, Most being the key word, will want more in life by the time they die. To lead them on and tell them otherwise, to convince them not to commit and it's not worth it, I see as a travesty in the same manner as the other. It's a mirror problem, and one that is foolish when a man can find a good woman and his chances are extremely high of making it work if he is intelligent about it.
"when a man can find a good woman and his chances are extremely high of making it work if he is intelligent about it."
This statement especially in America is as factually incorrect as if you were attempting to do this in the ancient city of Sodom right before GODs judgement came upon it. And what did GOD advise Lot to do? Stick around and make it work? No. Also in Revelations when it speaks of Babylon what do the angels advise? "Come out of her my people" not "Stick around and wife up that ho".
I am for marriage but not in the West where even if we accept the generously lowered divorce rate of 35% (which is so low only because marriage itself is now happening so infrequently - go ahead and increase the base number and watch what happens) that is still not the complete picture. What men want is a *happy marriage* and of the 65% remaining how many of those are happy? To hear men tell it less than half so please stop making it sound like this is some easy assignment for young men - it isn't it's dishonest and the boomer canard of "just find a nice girl" was a joke in 1980 and completely ridiculous today.
Your odds of a successful marriage are MUCH better than your Vegas odds, especially if you apply the right standards and don't apply the wrong ones. The women who are most inclined toward divorce don't tend to get married now. Only 1/3rd of marriages fail now, and the number is even lower if only first marriages are included.
He's right. Everything in life has risk
Not everything in life has the same amount of risk, or reward.
Most college attendees were there due to programming or expectations. Feminism led to programming women to be independent of men. Interestingly enough most women site their education and career are needed in case their husband divorces them (in my limited experience). Also note women initiate 2/3 of the divorces. Women are taught to dislike kids, but then rush to take care of pets. The mothering instinct is there. Even with droves of single and divorced women frustrated with their lives they are unable to take a step back and question their assumptions. I will say I had to adult for about 20 years before beginning to notice the contradictions and it took another 10 to really begin to question things.
Women have to stop trying to become the man they want to marry.