patburgess

Violet Cabra recently posted an essay looking at a somewhat odd phenomena, the peculiar way in which much of the American counterculture despises Jack Kerouac, and many of the other men (and the occasional woman, but the realities of mid-20th Century American Society being what they were, it's usually men) who made their existence possible. In fact, making this even more interesting, it's not just the figures which they despise, but the entire history of the counterculture: to provide only one example, the efforts to erase the Beatniks from history get just as much support from the left trying to ignore their heritage as from the right's efforts to portray the 1950s as an idealized Christian Hetero-normative Utopia.

I find both the left and right as they exist today quite odious, but for different reasons; the issues I see with the right are somewhat more complex, but the core problem with the left can be summed up quite simply: the left is based around dreams which only make sense in light of a blind faith in Progress. When I attempted to discuss this with Violet on her blog, she pushed back, and in attempting to respond to her, I wrote much more than would be fair to post as a comment on her blog.

The point I attempted to make will be explored in at least four essays: this one, first making the case for the cultural left being interested in transcending human nature by looking at on example of the phenomena, next week's looking at the role that the Dream of Progress plays in this; the week after looking at how the cultural right has played into its own defeat by buying into the same story the left uses, and then a fourth one discussing how this helps explain the descent into madness we've witnessed in the past few years. This madness includes a very strange relationship to the past; one which is a macrocosm of the issues much of the left sees with Kerouac, and so exploring it will help explain part of what Violet called the “Kerouac Paradox”.

It's important to note that I'm talking about the cultural left, and not the political left here. The cultural left and political left are heavily tied together, but they are not the same things. Since politics is downstream from culture, the cultural left influences the political left; and given the power the political left holds, it influences the cultural left, but they are not the same. In fact, one of the most magnificent accomplishments the cultural left achieved was convincing the political right to allow many of its institutions to go unchallenged: the “apolitical” nature of the universities, colleges, mass media, and civil service comes to mind. Attempts by the cultural left lately to hijack corporations and use them the same way, to push the Woke movement, are ongoing, but running into fierce resistance, as the right seems to have finally caught on to this trick.

The cultural left, as I'm discussing it, is the broad range of “left-wing” social movements active in society; the political left also includes and is heavily shaped by an economic left, which in North America at least, has scored a great deal fewer victories than the cultural left. There's been a curious leftward tendency in North American society and culture, since 1945, which has not always been matched by a corresponding shift in economic terms: this shows up in a wide range of places, and I'd be remiss if I did not state outright here that many of the victories for the left have addressed serious injustices. Others, however, have created new social problems and damaged millions of people.

Curiously enough, quite often these are in fact the same movements and often the very same victories. I'll draw on feminism to provide one of many examples. In 1945, women faced a number of legal and social limitations on their lives. The dismantling of these over the following decades, and the changes in laws and norms to permit women to manage their own finances, pursue careers on similar terms to men, and legal equality with men, brought many real gains to women, and addressed a great many inequalities.

However, there was another major victory for the feminists which has created a number of social pathologies, and this is the Sexual Revolution. In order to explain why, it's necessary to note that human men and women are different, a point which was not controversial until quite recently. The differences are partially a matter of cultural conditioning, and partially biological. The core biological difference, however, is quite simple: women can get pregnant. This makes sex a much riskier act for women compared to men, and so women tend to be pickier about who they will have sex with and require a higher degree of security before being interested in having sex compared to men. This is true cross culturally, and also of other animals, which suggests that it's biologically programmed into human beings. In western society this kind of security used to be provided by marriage, which was difficult to break both due to legal and cultural limitations; and for the most part sex outside of marriage was socially, or even legally, prohibited.

The Sexual Revolution changed a great deal of these legal and social norms, and moved them away from traditions which had evolved over the course of centuries in order to balance the needs of the community, both genders, and children. This is not to say these arrangements were ideal, but human nature being what it is, there will never be a perfect arrangement. Limits, trade offs, and compromises in which everyone walks away somewhat unhappy are always going to be part of the human experience. The old, restrictive (by modern standards) attitudes towards sexuality are a case in point: there are many legitimate reasons to complain about them, such as how they trapped people in abusive relationships, or prevented people who enjoy having more partners from pursuing that opportunity.

The core change induced by the Sexual Revolution is the radical reshaping of sexual norms away from this compromise in favour of a pattern in which most people behave closer to the male ideal: much less commitment, more casual sex, and a far more open attitude towards sexuality in general. For those who are not interested in commitment, enjoy having more than one partner, or are in abusive relationships, the changes to society that allowing these kinds of more casual relationships which are easier to break brings about are positive.

The Sexual Revolution got started by the 1950s, as evidenced by the declining marriage rates, rising divorce rates, rising teen pregnancy rates, and a dramatic increase in STDs, but would eventually have stopped without two external changes: the first was the birth control pill, and the second was the legalization of abortion. The reason why is simple: if every time a woman has sex she risks getting pregnant, for obvious reasons, people, especially women, will continue to be quite careful about who they have sex with, and when; meanwhile, the norms about having children out of wedlock ensured that unmarried couples remained far less willing to risk having sex than they would if pregnancy was not a risk. This is why the Sexual Revolution went into overdrive once the pill was invented: freed from that risk, people felt a lot more comfortable having much more casual sex; and one of the main arguments against casual sex vanished overnight.

Here, however, is where we run into a rather serious problem: human nature does not do well with the pattern of behaviour which the sexual revolution created. At first glance, of course, this seems like it should work reasonably well: freed from the risks of unwanted parenthood, sex ought to be nothing more than meaningless fun, and for some people this works. Given the nature of human biology, this usually works better for men than women, but one of the core flaws that many feminists have made is that they have lost track of the fact that the differences between men and women are not merely culturally conditioned, but also have a biological component.

The reasons that the Sexual Revolution proved so destructive are simple. For women, the problem is that security and intimacy is still a necessary condition for many of them to enjoy sex; and social and cultural pressures are convincing a great many of those who need security and intimacy for sex to be enjoyable that the problems, the reasons they find sex unpleasant or don't want it, can't possibly be that they desire a more committed relationship, or that it might relate to the sense of insecurity so many people have as most traditional forms of social support have been removed. Further, even if they are in a committed relationship, the social norms and laws make it much easier for their partner to walk away; where divorce was once rare, difficult, and stigmatized, today it is common, easy, and socially acceptable. The result is that even the most committed relationships can become unstable at a moment's notice, and this instability results in reduced sex drives for many women.

This strikes me as quite likely a major factor behind the rise in mental health issues among women, the rise in women choosing not to have relationships at all, and also in the rather striking hostility which many feminists have for male sexuality. Simply put, for a good many women, not dating and not having sexual contacts with men at all are the best way to deal with the current situation, where most if not all relationships will be unsatisfactory. Given this, it makes perfect sense that many feminists would identify the problem as male sexuality, since male sexuality is catered to while what many women need in order to enjoy their sexuality is not being provided at all. Meanwhile, for those who do pursue relationships, the lack of security makes sex feel less pleasant and at a deep, subconscious level, more dangerous than it did for the equivalents before the sexual revolution, who could count on getting support if they got pregnant. Even a woman's husband, after all, can choose to walk away if she gets pregnant and he'd rather not have a child when it happens. She'd still likely get child support, but money is a poor substitute for a partner.

For men the problems emerge somewhat differently, but they unfold from the same dynamic of sexuality freed from the traditional constraints going off the rails. The problem emerges from the fact that women tend to be choosier than men, and so a great many men will not measure up to the standards women desire. In the culture which existed before the sexual revolution, this was less of a problem: high quality men tended to be taken out of the dating pool quickly by becoming married, which meant that men of average and even below average attractiveness could find dates easily: the high quality members of both genders paired off, and so those of lower quality had to choose from among each other. Without marriage being permanent, however, these high quality men remain available, and can monopolize many women's romantic attention. When one of these men tire of his current date, he can rather easily get a new one, assuming he was committed to someone in the first place instead of engaging in casual dating, keeping several women occupied. The result is that a large number of men are unable to get dates with anyone other than the least attractive women, since most of the rest are not interested in dating, partnered with higher quality men, or trying to get one of them to pay her attention.

Many men are unwilling to settle for the low quality dates available to them, and the ensuing subcultures have created movements such as the incels. The same dynamic has also resulted in the normalization of porn. If most men do it, after all, then social pressures to restrict its use will tend to collapse given that most people dislike being hypocrites, and a good many men have turned to pornography as a way to address a very real problem in their lives: the utter lack of sexual contact and a complete lack of hope for changing the situation.

This also explains why so many men have given up on even trying to be attractive: attractiveness can be varied by a good many habits, but some of it is innate, and even what can be changed usually takes a great deal of effort over the span of months and years. A man who's of average attractiveness, or even well below average, and willing to invest time and effort on the task can usually become quite attractive; but will almost certainly never reach the top percentile. Since for most men the standards which most women currently hold are beyond their reach no matter how hard they try, they never bother to try to improve attractiveness.

Meanwhile, the other way for men out of this trap is to figure out how to be attractive to women in ways which are easier than pursuing the generic version of attractiveness, a trick which requires experience figuring out what women find attractive, experience which most men never get, since so many men are unable to get dates in the first place. The result is that a good many men are stuck, unable to get dates because the skills they need to acquire dates are unavailable; and so many spiral into porn addictions.

All of these pathologies unfold from a frankly idiotic attempt to ignore human nature, and ignore the fact that men and women are not identical. Simply put, in an ideal world the Sexual Revolution would work, and it would be both possible and easy for people to express an ideal sexuality. Instead, what happens is that human nature expresses itself, and massive amounts of resources and energy needs to be directed towards the cause of trying to make human beings (mostly women) act in ways which run quite counter to our biological natures. Witness, for example, the massive amount of energy spent on ensuring abortion and the pill are accessible and the enormous amount of propaganda in popular culture: massive media campaigns which try to display a female sexuality which runs counter to human nature, and convince women that there is something wrong with them if they aren't interested in sex under these toxic conditions are a common occurrence in today's world.

This example displays the facts which make the cultural left so distinct, in fairly clear light: the first that the cultural left sets its goals on making human beings act in ways which are quite far from how we are naturally predisposed to behave as a social primate with some clever tool using capabilities, and the second is that it is possible, after a fashion, to make human being behave in such ways if you have enough resources to throw at it.

This is the uniting thread between the numerous strands of left-wing thinking: the dream of erasing cultural, ethnic, or religious bigotries; the desire for pacifism and a world where violence is a thing of the past; the dream of a society lead by the people who know enough to make good decisions, and not the people who are the most power hungry. These will never work. Bigotry is wired into human minds because identifying members of the tribe, and who is outside of it, is important to survival for social primates and thus merely changes into forms which have clever camouflage against the efforts to root it out; violence is part of the human condition, and ignoring it means being at the mercy of those who know how to fight; and handing power over to experts only guarantees that that power hungry will become or corrupt the experts.

I could write a post on any of these issues, or others, noting how the transformations that have occurred as a result of the attempts to remake human nature into something else have not worked, but rather have created a host of new problems which are then addressed with various kludges. Human nature remains human nature, and attempting to remake it does not work: instead it creates various pathologies and causes immense harms. Further, each step of the process costs more in terms of energy and resources and causes more and more harm.

Trying to remake human sexuality, to say nothing of the various other projects the cultural left has embarked on in the 75 odd years since World War II ended, would not be possible except in a society which has access to more resources than any other in human history. The other side of things, however, unfolds from the fact that the cultural left has won victory after victory for 75 years, and convinced itself that it is the irresistible force of Progress driving this; and even convinced much of the cultural right of the same thing.

We'll start to talk about that next week.

1: https://violetcabra.dreamwidth.org/232644.html