A Hero of Our Time, part 2: Pechorin Reveals the Nature of Women

I will say only this: I have never read a more insightful or accurate description of women in a literary work than this. The greatest writers of history have rarely had much insight into women. Lermontov is an exception.

——————–

“I had dinner with them. Princess Ligovskaya eyed me very tenderly and did not leave her daughter’s side–a bad sign that! But Vera is jealous of Princess Mary. I have managed to bring about that happy state after all! What would a woman not do to hurt a rival! I recall one woman who loved me simply because I was in love with another. Nothing is more paradoxical than the feminine mind. It is hard to convince women of anything–they must be brought to a point where they will convince themselves. The means of supplying evidence by which they finish off their prejudices is highly original, and to get to know their dialectic one must rid the mind of all academic rules of logic. For example, the ordinary method is this:

This man loves me; but I am married; hence, I must not love him.

The feminine method is this:

I must not love him because I am married; but he loves me, and hence . . .

Here follows a pregnant pause, for reason is now dumb, and all the talking is mainly done by the tongue, eyes, and eventually the heart, if there is one.

What if these notes should fall into a woman’s hands some day? “Slander!” she will cry indignantly.

Ever since poets began to write and women to read them (for which they must be heartily thanked), the latter have been called angels so often that in the simplicity of their hearts they have actually come to believe in this compliment, forgetting that for money the very same poets exalted Nero as a demigod.

It might appear not quite right that I should speak of them with such malice–I, who have never loved anything else under the sun–I, who have always been ready to sacrifice my peace of mind, ambition and life for their sake . . . Yet it is not in a fit of annoyance or injured vanity that I try hard to draw aside that magic veil which only the accustomed eye can penetrate. No, all that I say about them is only the result of

The Cold reflections of the mind
And bitter insights of the heart.

Women should wish all men to know them as well as I do, for I have loved them a hundred times more since I overcame my fear of them and discovered their petty frailties.

Incidentally, Werner the other day compared women with the enchanted forest described by Tasso in his Jerusalem Delivered.

“You have but to approach it,” he said, “to be assaulted from all sides by ungodly terrors: duty, pride, respectability, public opinion, ridicule, contempt . . . You must not heed them, but go straight on. Little by little the monsters vanish and before you opens a quiet, sunny glade with green myrtle blooming in its midst. But woe to you if your heart quails when you take those first steps and you turn back!”

The Wandering Man: Lessons from Lermontov’s A Hero Of Our Time, part 1: Introduction

Lermontov’s novel A Hero Of Our Time, the source of my name, contains some perceptive observations on women, and a remarkable compelling portrait of the what a history of meaningless relationships, and a generalized nihilism do to a man. Its main character Pechorin was suspected to be a portrait of Lermontov himself – a claim to which Lermontov replied in his introduction:

“A Hero of Our Time, my dear readers, is indeed a portrait, but not of one man. It is a portrait built up of all our generation’s vices in full bloom. You will again tell me that a human being cannot be so wicked, and I will reply that if you can believe in the existence of all the villains of tragedy and romance, why wouldn’t believe that there was a Pechorin? If you could admire far more terrifying and repulsive types, why aren’t you more merciful to this character, even if it is fictitious? Isn’t it because there’s more truth in it than you might wish?

You say that morality will gain nothing by it. Excuse me. People have been fed so much candy they are sick to their stomachs. Now bitter medicine and acid truths are needed. But don’t ever think that the author of this book was ever ambitious enough to dream about reforming human vices. May God preserve him from such foolishness! It simply amused him to picture the modern man as he sees him and as he so often–to his own and your own misfortune–has found him to be. It’s enough that the disease has been diagnosed–how to cure it only the Lord knows!”

Some Defining Problems for the Blog

One basic inspiration for this blog is my attempt to integrate the effect of learning a decent level of game on the broader question of what life is about. Some have taken refuge in nihilism, others have asserted that banging hot chicks is a sufficient good. Here are some loosely connected thoughts, plus – at the end – a note on coming programming.

1. Involuntary celibacy broken by the odd relationship or by “getting lucky” is a miserable condition for men, particularly when other guys get whatever they want from women in return for nothing. It’s perfectly understandable that men threatened by this condition place the utmost importance on game.

2. Having numerous casual relationships with women runs into conflict with the natural desire for having a coherent life. I want my life to mean something, to accomplish something. Ultimately, what does not contribute to the final analysis of my life – no matter how pleasant – is wasted effort.

3. Suppose I could increase the attractiveness of the women I could typically get by one point on the ten point scale, from 7 (8 for a lot of guys, but I’m opposed to grade inflation) to 8. I would be very happy at the improvement, but would it really make me happy – not just happy for the moment, but happy at my life in its entirety? I can’t imagine lying on my deathbed wishing I’d had sex with more women, or even hotter ones. When I was 21 I certainly could have imagined this. Now I’ve had enough success to know that there are diminishing returns in this game. Momentary pleasure is not the ultimate human good – if it were we should all just get high on heroin all the time.

4. Marriage is the traditional answer to such situations, and it’s one that I have a lot of respect for, but the modern environment presents several obstacles. It’s not just that the legal system is particularly unfavorable for men, but also that I just don’t meet many women who seem to deserve a traditional husband. Getting married is a real sacrifice for a man, and I’m not sure if I’ll find the conditions that make it a good decision.

5. I don’t generally get attached to women anymore. That’s not to say I don’t still have emotions, even passion, but it’s a shallow passion. If a girl I think I really like starts to displease me, I don’t really care, I just stop really caring about her. It’s rootless passion, emotion without commitment. Some have suggested that this is actually the mature attitude, while traditional commitment is childish. I disagree.

6. Lest anyone think I’m playing into the tropes of “men with fear of commitment,” I haven’t observed many signs of real commitment from women, but only the wish to lock a man down for a while while they’re having a good time. Maybe women can start getting married “for better, for richer, in health, until I want to part.” Wanting a “committed” relationship is not necessarily a sign of commitment.

7. True love is always tied with the sense of the meaning of one’s whole life; it is about dedication. “I love you for now” is not love at all, although it’s a feeling easy to develop for someone who has pleased you for a time.

8. While it’s always been true that women were attracted to manly men, I believe that the remarkably easy success that men with game have today is possible only in a deeply flawed culture, one that has lost much of what made Western Civilization possible. Enjoying the decline is one option, but no man who takes this attitude can be truly happy. Happiness for men is power, achievement, victory, making a mark on the world. Making a mark in your bedpost is not enough.

9. My eponym, Pechorin, is taken from a literary character who faced – in a very different context – some of these same problems. Starting next week I’ll be running a series of excerpts from his story that illuminate various aspects of the condition of the morally serious red pill man.

Why Are Old Coffee Ads Smarter Than Modern Culture?

Frost has a great post up on and inner game of men in “sexist” coffee commercials. The fact is, our culture used to have a kind of realism about men and women that we’ve lost today. We tend to be too worried about what we’re “allowed” to say to have the free ranging discussions that kill bad ideas.

Take this commercial. A lowly commercial – the lowest form of expression – had this advice to offer women: “In real life, a girl has to work at living happily ever after. So first off our heroine decided to stay beautiful, slim, and attractive. So she went for long walks.”

That’s more maturity in a commercial than you can find in most young women today. What the hell went wrong? Why are such easy truths almost off limits in mainstream culture? Our problems aren’t the result of a “tragedy” or an act of god – they aren’t inexplicable and natural. They’re the result of intentional human actions and purposeful ideological movements. Fixing your personal life with game is rewarding, but if we want to fix our culture (rather than nihilistically enjoy the decline) we need to understand how we got where we are today.

September 11, 2001: In Memoriam

Ten years ago our nation was attacked by Islamic terrorists. No words can alter the facts of that day. No ceremony can undo it. Only through our actions looking to the future can we change the significance of that day. As Lincoln said at Gettysburg, it is for us the living to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us.

In the circles of our elite it is social suicide to speak of Islam as a civilizational threat. It is true that rhetoric of clashes of civilizations can be overblown. It is true that Islam is not a strictly monolithic block. But it is wrong that these facts should forestall serious discussion of the leading political-civilizational struggle of our day.

Political correctness stifles discussion across society. Consider this graph from Google ngrams, measuring the frequency year by year of the usage of “Islamic threat” in a large collection of digitized books. Use of the phrase increases with the rise of Islamism, with the threats to Salman Rushdie, even with the first attack on the World Trade Center. Then, in the late 1990’s, a more organized and serious threat emerged, and attacked in turn the American embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, the USS Cole, and finally, ten years ago today, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

During these very same years, usage of the phrase “Islamic thread” stopped its rapid increase, and began to fall dramatically.

Not reacting blindly to threats is a virtue, one we could have used to avoid our misadventure in Iraq. Not reacting to threats is folly. Reacting to threats by stopping talking about them beggars description.

In the Company of Women

The Emancipation of Women. (I am not of course saying that this is a bad thing in itself; I am only considering one effect it has had in fact.) One of the determining factors in social life is that in general (there are numerous individual exceptions) men like men better than women like women. Hence, the freer women become, the fewer exclusively male assemblies there are. Most men, if free, retire frequently into the society of their own sex: women, if free, do this less often. In modern social life the sexes are more continuously mixed than they were in earlier periods. This probably has many good results: but it has one bad result. Among young people, obviously, it reduces the amount of serious argument about the ideas. When a young male bird is in the presence of the young female it must (Nature insists) display its plumage. Any mixed society thus becomes the scene of wit, banter, persiflage, anecdote—of everything in the world rather than prolonged and rigorous discussion on ultimate issues, or of those serious masculine friendships in which such discussion arises. Hence, in our student population, a lowering of the metaphysical energy. The only serious questions now discussed are those which seem to have a “practical” importance (i.e. the psychological and sociological problems), for these satisfy the intense practicality and concreteness of the female. That is, no doubt, her glory and her proper contribution to the common wisdom of the race. But the proper glory of the masculine mind, its disinterested concern with truth for truth’s own sake, with the cosmic and the metaphysical, is being impaired. Thus again, as the previous change cuts us off from the past, this cuts us off from the eternal. We are being further isolated; forced down to the immediate and the quotidian. –C.S. Lewis, Modern Man and His Categories of Thought

This phenomenon is now more destructive than ever. We spend more and more time in mixed sex company. Social activity is directed by the dictates of feminine whimsicality. The inability to settle basic questions early – who will be paired with whom? – degrades intellectual seriousness, which degrades civic seriousness, which degrades a nation. Is single-sex education a partial solution?

Ideology at the LSE

There’s nothing like feminist idiocy to get you to the front page of google news, as radical ideologues defend themselves against a man suing over discrimination:

Feminism makes some men very scared, others very angry. Tom Martin, who is taking legal action against the London School of Economics, risks being seen as falling into both of these categories.

Feminists will never tire or asserting that men are afraid of them. What is Mr. Martin’s complaint, anyway?

Martin alleges that the course material he studied during his six weeks at the LSE was systematically anti-male overlooked men’s issues, and ignored any research that contested a “women good, men bad” line of reasoning. Furthermore, Martin claims that the Gender Institute drummed into the students, with quasi-religious fervour, a simplistic view of women as victims and men as perpetrators.

Sounds about right. The author of the editorial wants to defend gender studies. Who is he?

Although I don’t know the specifics of Martin’s experience, I am a male academic active in gender studies, and was a researcher at the very institution that Martin is suing.

“I have a vested interest and don’t know anything about the case, but that won’t stop me from running my mouth.”

Don’t worry, though. Everyone’s welcome in gender studies, from manginas to trans-sexuals:

gender studies courses are extremely friendly and supportive environments. In contrast to the stuffiness and conformity of many academic settings, gender studies students and scholars are tolerant, friendly, and enlightened in their attitudes to race, sexual orientation and transsexuality. Gender studies is invariably more sociable than other academic settings, and all kinds of people are welcome, so long as you are willing to engage with people and ideas in a considered and respectful manner.

Heh. You mean, gender studies has no academic standards and welcomes anyone who will uphold its creed. Unlike all those science departments that won’t accept gay students.

The comments on the article are overwhelmingly anti-feminist. Even readers of the guardian have figured out what’s up. Feminism is dead, and though its death throes will take decades, remaking relations between the sexes is possible.

Women Are Always Projecting

I happened to meet up recently with a girl I knew slightly in college. She just graduated this year and doesn’t have a job, and was plainly insecure about it. She wasn’t worried about money – she was worried that I would think less of her, projecting onto me what her opinion of a jobless man would be.

Another recent graduate I talked to had a job, but was living at home. She had the same insecurity. But why would I think less of either of them? I knew both of these girls already, so having a job wouldn’t prove to me that they were capable – I already knew that they were. Living at home just tells me she’s frugal, probably has a good relationship with her family, and is unlikely to be a status and lifestyle whore. All traits which improve my opinion of her, rather than the contrary.

Not Slutty Enough to Unmake Human Nature

New York divorcee Juliet Jeske reports that after leaving her husband (no word on whether she had cause for breaking her marriage vows) dating hasn’t been quite what she envisioned. It turns out that men aren’t all that eager to commit to an aging woman with a history of violating her commitments.

She calls herself a “committed relationship kind of girl.” By which she apparently means “committed until I decide to break that commitment.” Unfortunately for her, men seem perfectly happy to take the uncommitted sex that other women are offering. She describes her experience of dating:

• The guy will call or text when he wants to hookup but that is about it.
• You are supposed to be on call to wait for the opportunity to see him
• Don’t reveal too much about yourself, but listen to him complain
• Don’t expect commitment, or exclusivity
• Don’t expect any emotional bonding
• Don’t expect much effort on his part to impress you
• Don’t expect him to make you feel important in his life

Nonetheless, she’s anxious not to sound judgmental. Immediately following the passage I just quoted, she writes “everyone is different and for some people this situation is ideal.” She even endorses the behavior of slutty women:

I do not judge others with different lifestyles. If a polyamorous life of multiple lovers or a string of emotionally detached one-night stands with perfect strangers is satisfying to a person, then they should be doing exactly that.

Now, it’s obvious that one of the main reasons she can’t get men to commit to her is the promiscuity of other women. The other reason is the lack of true commitment that she and other women have demonstrated.

It’s not hard to guess why she refrains from any self criticism, but why is she so afraid to judge other women for their promiscuity? The immediate cause is probably her conformity to prevailing opinion, but what is the underlying logic of prevailing opinion? What ideology forbids passing moral judgment?

One great liberal thinker said that we were free to do anything that did not harm others. Yet promiscuity clearly fails this test, for the promiscuity of New York women has hurt her. It turns out that society matters, and individual behavior is not so easily separated from the common interest. Yet modern individualist liberalism responds to this challenge (if it deigns to acknowledge it) by dropping Mill in favor of a principled unprincipledness. “You can’t judge people” is the only principle we now maintain.

Women wanted to be freed from traditional views of women, wanted to be able to act on whim, and not to have to be anything special. They can hardly be surprised that men have started to respond by treating women as though they are nothing special.

UPDATE: it turns out she left her husband because he was gay (after 9 years?!). Accusation of frivolous divorce withdrawn.

Youth, Beauty, and Marriage: Hans Baldung Versus Modern Culture

Women are at their most attractive when young – this is known to everyone with common sense, except the industry designed around misleading women. Yet truths are not automatically translated into action, and most women today aren’t seriously looking for marriage while they’re at their most attractive (i.e. during college and the years immediately after). People don’t easily act in accordance with what they know to be true. Repetition helps to drive the point home, but ultimately it takes a culture that reinforces the truth. Today we have the opposite of that.

Imagine if instead of TV shows like Sex and the City and books like Eat Pray Love, we had paintings like these on billboards around the country, reminding women that youth is short. (All three paintings are by Hans Baldung.)

What does it say about our society that we can’t collectively accept the facts of the human condition? It’s easy to say that it’s from feminism run awry, but there’s clearly more than that going on. I suppose slacker films are the equivalent for men. Somewhere, in the aftermath of the cultural revolution of the 1960s, we lost the ability as a society to face reality.

If we want to fix this, somehow we need to remind women that spiritual love grows out of love of beauty. How to do that, god only knows.