Saturday, February 16, 2002

Zenpriest #47 - The Future's So Bright, I've Gotta Wear Shades

QUOTE: "I almost get the feeling that you feel as though the future is rosy for men because more and more men are going their own way and because women have, to some extent, dug their own grave.

I view the future with increasing alarm given that women are gaining power across the board, particularly in terms of the fact that women are rapidly becoming the more highly educated and privileged class. This will not be without its benefits for women given that knowledge is power. It is no good thing that more women come away with more degrees than do men. In the UK approximately 2/3 of law students are women. Just think about the future implications that holds for men!

In my opinion George Orwell was right, he just got the phrasing wrong. 'Big sister' would be more appropriate."

It isn't that I expect the future to be "rosy" for men, but I don't think it will be any worse than the past was. Men made it through hard times before, I expect them to again.

The reason I can take a long view is because of my decision to drop out of the game. I have no vested interest one way or the other, so I can look at the issues slightly more dispassionately.

I agree that Orwell was right, and so was Aldous Huxley and so was Ayn Rand. The simple fact that the situation we find ourselves in today despite so many people having read the classic dystopian novels, gives a certain sense of inevitability to it.

I really don't think that the average man thinks or cares much about the issues, which is why there has always been a ruling class - because some people do obsess about the issues and crave power over others.

The value of a college degree is vastly over-rated these days. Most of them are absolutely worthless, and there are self-correcting mechanisms built into any system. Economics is no exception although it does have more than its share of people meddling in keeping this fiasco running much longer than it should have.

A factoid in absolute means nothing. It is just an effective means of manipulation. "They" always tout the value of a college indoctrination, saying things like "a person with a college degree will make an extra million $$$ in his lifetime." So an extra million $$$ passes through his hands as compared to another guy. But, where does it go to? Bigger houses? More "stuff" and consumer oriented shit?

I would argue that the quality of life of a corporate lawyer these days is not significantly better than that of a HVAC worker.

Women can have all the power and money in the world, but that won't get them what many of them really do want - a husband and kids - unless they become willing to marry men who make less than they do. In the end, many of them will.

This whole long battle between the sexes has been waged entirely in the corridors of power. Feminism is a movement of the white upper class women, and what it mostly amounts to for the average man is that the ruling classes now contain both men and women, and the women he has to deal with are far less pleasant. But, the mythology of the pleasant woman has been far over sold.

I think men have gained different kinds of power at the same time women have supposedly been gaining power. It all kind of washes out - that yin and yang thing associated with my internet personna.

Life has always been pretty tough for men. I once read an account of an ancient battle where all the losers got their penises cut off. There was summary by rank of how many "phalluses were collected" and the total was something over 13,000. A hundred years ago, men who were building the Panama canal worked 12-14 hours per day, six days per week - basically all the hours of daylight. The only reason they got the 7th day off was because religion was still a given for most people. Thousands of them died from malaria. Life must have been pretty tough back home to work that hard in such dangerous circumstances just to make money.

Compared to either of those 2 situations, and thousands more I could describe, I think men today live mostly a life of incredible comfort and safety.

College degrees are now starting people out under incredible loads of debt. The differential in what they earn in many cases will not offset the costs of their education in every case, perhaps not even most. The few extremely highly paid assholes really skew the statistics for the average guy.

A degree used to mean more money because it actually meant something - you got prepared for career in which skill had value - like medicine or dentistry. But, with degrees now in "queer theory", the only place for such people is in the massive sucking bureaucracy. The US is bankrupt, and very soon will not be able to afford to be the nanny state.

Men adjust better to adversity than women do, which is why I expect them to come through the years when things get really rough as well or better than women do.

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It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change. -- Charles Darwin

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Further Reading:

Zenpriest #23 – Marriage is Becoming the Social Edsel of the 21st Century

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