A 16-year-old male needs sex for sanity as he needs food, water, or air for survival. For all of human history, there have been families and clans to guide us to adult roles and help us find mates while we’re still young. Anyone would have taken it for granted that in return for their contributions and obedience to the customs of the tribe, the tribe would in turn give them a place.
In mass societies, however, there’s always been a steady stream of losers who get nothing in return. If we tried to imagine a chief denying the tribe’s young men sex and status, we know he wouldn’t be alive much longer. For a tribe to exist in peace the needs of most of its people must be met. When there is no bread, there are bread riots. When men have no hope of wealth, family, or even of getting sex they withdraw their loyalty to the existing social order and turn to desperate measures. Predictably, across time and place, ‘losers’ will defect.
China has long had a class of men called “bare branches” with no prospects. Whenever this class got too large, mass defection was the result—a result we see on a grand scale during the decline of the last dynasty, the Qing. The Taiping rebellion, one of the biggest wars ever, was started by a man who failed to pass the civil service exams after multiple attempts. Even this war was just one of several massive rebellions caused by masses of rootless men. Around the same time, organized crime in south China grew so big it threatened the state itself as desperate men joined in droves.
In the Middle East, a region known for polygamy, there are many loser males. As we see anywhere in the world, when young men despair of being part of society they quickly to turn to desperate measures and radical ideologies. Today, in America, boys are taught from youth that no one owes them anything, that they must prove themselves by “pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.” They have to prove they aren’t ‘dogs’, ‘pigs’, ‘rapists’, ‘creepers’, or ‘peter pans’ but never is there as single mention of what they get in return.
The trouble with this lesson is that interdependence is society. Without people helping each other, especially when elders fail to guide the young, there is no society, only a zero sum hell of all against all. And that is where Western society is now. If we were to lose all our money tomorrow, we’d all be living on the streets. No one owes us anything, after all. And if you do have a steady supply of money, it’s still up to you to figure out everything yourself. No one in early life trains you or gives you useful information; you just go to school where you’re kept conveniently out of sight most of your young life. Growing up, everything we’re told about the most important things in life are lies, yet the social order still expects unquestioning obedience. The reality is that a tribe that fails to initiate its young men has rejected them and cast them out.
A tribe that fails to set up its young men with women keeps false faith on its side of the social contract. If they won’t get you a woman they’re telling you you’re worthless—that you don’t deserve to pass down your line. They don’t want you. A group that values you makes sure you have sexual relationships that bind you to your people and give you a stake that you’ll be willing to defend when the going gets tough. Because they value you, they want your genes in the next generation
A group that does nothing to help, or outright cockblocks you, is just a parasite that feeds on itself. It becomes a society of death that prevents reproduction, setting the sexes against each other, tearing them apart. It becomes like a planet with an acid atmosphere and crushing gravity; a place hostile to human life.
Helping men find their place and a good woman is the difference between a healthy culture and a pathological cult. The culture reciprocates, enabling its valuable cooperators to thrive. On the other hand, the cult parasitizes, tricking its men into becoming castrated worker ants while the leaders take all the women. The cult elders expect a young man to contribute decades of labor, to march into battle without complaint, but cannot even offer him sex.
If you are past your mid-teens with no family, no sex, no social role is in sight, do not fool yourself—you’re the “lost boys” of the Mormon polygamist splinter sects. The elders are actively malicious towards their boys. Just a few are chosen as successors, the rest cast out like unwanted pets. The polygamist elders at least are straightforward and honest. They send away boys they don’t want into another society that just might give them a chance. They don’t lead them on for decades lying to them while feeding on their labor and loyalty.
When the tribe throws out a young man to live as a stray animal, he can no longer pretend he’s one of them. Their traditional food, pastimes, language, and values become those of a distant and foreign culture. He finds himself inhabiting an arid wilderness where once he believed he lived in a ‘civilization’ of abundance and mutual aid. His only hope is to begin anew. It’s a crushing and fearful reality, but to live a life of self-deception enslaved to The Many is a fate worse than death.
In mass societies, however, there’s always been a steady stream of losers who get nothing in return. If we tried to imagine a chief denying the tribe’s young men sex and status, we know he wouldn’t be alive much longer. For a tribe to exist in peace the needs of most of its people must be met. When there is no bread, there are bread riots. When men have no hope of wealth, family, or even of getting sex they withdraw their loyalty to the existing social order and turn to desperate measures. Predictably, across time and place, ‘losers’ will defect.
China has long had a class of men called “bare branches” with no prospects. Whenever this class got too large, mass defection was the result—a result we see on a grand scale during the decline of the last dynasty, the Qing. The Taiping rebellion, one of the biggest wars ever, was started by a man who failed to pass the civil service exams after multiple attempts. Even this war was just one of several massive rebellions caused by masses of rootless men. Around the same time, organized crime in south China grew so big it threatened the state itself as desperate men joined in droves.
In the Middle East, a region known for polygamy, there are many loser males. As we see anywhere in the world, when young men despair of being part of society they quickly to turn to desperate measures and radical ideologies. Today, in America, boys are taught from youth that no one owes them anything, that they must prove themselves by “pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.” They have to prove they aren’t ‘dogs’, ‘pigs’, ‘rapists’, ‘creepers’, or ‘peter pans’ but never is there as single mention of what they get in return.
The trouble with this lesson is that interdependence is society. Without people helping each other, especially when elders fail to guide the young, there is no society, only a zero sum hell of all against all. And that is where Western society is now. If we were to lose all our money tomorrow, we’d all be living on the streets. No one owes us anything, after all. And if you do have a steady supply of money, it’s still up to you to figure out everything yourself. No one in early life trains you or gives you useful information; you just go to school where you’re kept conveniently out of sight most of your young life. Growing up, everything we’re told about the most important things in life are lies, yet the social order still expects unquestioning obedience. The reality is that a tribe that fails to initiate its young men has rejected them and cast them out.
A tribe that fails to set up its young men with women keeps false faith on its side of the social contract. If they won’t get you a woman they’re telling you you’re worthless—that you don’t deserve to pass down your line. They don’t want you. A group that values you makes sure you have sexual relationships that bind you to your people and give you a stake that you’ll be willing to defend when the going gets tough. Because they value you, they want your genes in the next generation
A group that does nothing to help, or outright cockblocks you, is just a parasite that feeds on itself. It becomes a society of death that prevents reproduction, setting the sexes against each other, tearing them apart. It becomes like a planet with an acid atmosphere and crushing gravity; a place hostile to human life.
Helping men find their place and a good woman is the difference between a healthy culture and a pathological cult. The culture reciprocates, enabling its valuable cooperators to thrive. On the other hand, the cult parasitizes, tricking its men into becoming castrated worker ants while the leaders take all the women. The cult elders expect a young man to contribute decades of labor, to march into battle without complaint, but cannot even offer him sex.
If you are past your mid-teens with no family, no sex, no social role is in sight, do not fool yourself—you’re the “lost boys” of the Mormon polygamist splinter sects. The elders are actively malicious towards their boys. Just a few are chosen as successors, the rest cast out like unwanted pets. The polygamist elders at least are straightforward and honest. They send away boys they don’t want into another society that just might give them a chance. They don’t lead them on for decades lying to them while feeding on their labor and loyalty.
When the tribe throws out a young man to live as a stray animal, he can no longer pretend he’s one of them. Their traditional food, pastimes, language, and values become those of a distant and foreign culture. He finds himself inhabiting an arid wilderness where once he believed he lived in a ‘civilization’ of abundance and mutual aid. His only hope is to begin anew. It’s a crushing and fearful reality, but to live a life of self-deception enslaved to The Many is a fate worse than death.
