Damn. So freaking true. I have seen this pattern in my own life: law school where we white males had to finish top 10% to get the lucrative jobs, whereas our black peers could finish in the bottom half of the class and have multiple job offers from big firms; as a white man, finally getting a job for which I was wayyyy overqualified, in a government agency that had old white Boomers at the top, but all the lower echelons mostly filled with POC women, and the few white men among the lower echelons being consistently the top performers by all objective measures, yet never getting promotions, while unprofessional morons of color got all the promotions. In one example, I trained a guy on the job, and before he was even done with his training, he got promoted as a technical expert in the very area I was training him. At some point, the white men invariably quit or just say fuck it and do the bare minimum to keep their jobs, while putting their time and energy into personal projects. Exactly like the character Peter Gibbons from the movie Office Space.
But what is worse about this is not even what is being done to us white men, but rather it's the 180-degrees-opposite-the-reality agitprop we are forced to endure saying we are oh so privileged and have no right to complain about anything. Shut up and let women and POC speak, you privileged colonizer. And the same woke imbeciles who tell us that we cannot speak to racial or gender issues because we don't understand the lived experience of women or POC will then, with no sense of irony and zero self awareness, go on to tell us what our lives are like as white men.
At this point, I have almost zero buy-in for the American project. If the USA gets its ass handed to it in direct conflict with Russia and China (loved your analysis of why the US empire won't win WWIII, by the way), we may see a return to a culture that is forced to value competence over woke bullshit. If things stay the way they are, we've got a one way ticket to another Mike Judge movie: Idiocracy.
Thanks for doing this substack and being a voice of reason in the cultural wasteland of woke America. Goddamit, you don't know how much it means to read stuff like this and be able to breathe a sigh of relief: okay, I'm not just imagining it, I'm not crazy, this shit really is being done to us.
In concurrence with Daniel D, I’ll no longer withhold my gratitude. For whatever that’s worth, still more than turning an empty heart red, eh. I’m always favored to read a writer whose work is refreshing, inspiring, and thought-provoking, a writer who adds a touch of humor to serious context. And one undaunted by leftist tides and woke currents. Though I suspect that will gain you more applause and kudos than scorn and denunciations. Because I believe rightness and sound reason is still the silent majority growing louder. Anyway, I want you to know you are appreciated. Thank you for sharing.
Interesting read. I work in the trades with almost the exact opposite problem. Many professional tradesmen would love to mentor anybody with a pulse but it's hard to get anybody to show up and even harder to get them to give a shit if they do.
That's a serious problem - societal obsession with abstract labor has devalued manual labor, to the point where it's seen as low-status regardless of how well paid it is.
The material value of manual labour is suppressed by mass immigration (legal and illegal), while the experience of physical exertion is now reserved for most classes for sports and recreation. The cultural prestige of even skilled trades is eroded by the general immersion in dematerialised experience (infotainment and digitally-based forms of work) and the widespread reliance on machine-made goods. I suspect that the social value of labour is diminished by the reservation of low-status jobs for newly arrived illegals. Replacing a modern ethic (which involves a disenchanted view of labour) with a pre-modern one (with a distinction between honour-conferring labour and the alternatives) is a sure sign of a return to something akin to feudalism - cultural regression that we will all one day regret.
A friend who is a physician once worked with a Soviet trained former professor of renal medicine. The ex-Soviet guy related that an essential part of his education had been the experience of being sent to a collective farm in Central Asia to help with the cotton harvest. It gave him an appreciation of the dignity of labour that he would otherwise have missed out on. Ghastly as their system was, the Soviets got some things right.
That's why I'm generally in favor of universal military service, with no special exemptions for college etc. that rich kids can use to weasel out of it. A year or so of brutal physical labor in the infantry alongside comrades from every walk of life will give someone a profound respect for the fact that high-value people can be and are found everywhere. There's almost nothing more infuriating than an academic who's been inside the system since kindergarten assuming he's fundamentally better than a tradesman.
But but some guys will say the have bad genetics and not built for physical exertion. They need calmer occupations to rest their softer muscles on their twig arms or flabby limb. So we must be considerate. lol
The modern military requires a long and intricate logistical tail. I'm sure there's lots for the flabby to do. Besides, military service can knock some of the flab out of them.
I agree. My husband is a mechanic and he would love to mentor someone, but good workers just aren’t there. Those who show up are often incapable of complex tasks and very unreliable. It’s a struggle for sure...
I've experienced the same thing. Some of those people could be shaped into upstanding individuals but the amount of time and effort it would take to do so is untenable for small business owners. I can take a guy who struggles with complex tasks and screws things up as long as they want to do a good job. The desire to do quality work will overcome a host of deficits over time but most of the people I've tried to employ just want a paycheck.
“I can take a guy who struggles with complex tasks and screws things up as long as they want to do a good job.”> To a point. If they keep screwing up and never really advance in their ability it costs too much money for a small business to keep paying for their mistakes.
Jun 14, 2022·edited Jun 14, 2022Liked by John Carter
You have a unique knack of taking topics that are clear after reading but that seldom seem to be a matter of focus and making them accessible with generally compelling arguments. Your footnote three was particularly hard hitting, especially for readers of this Substack who, I expect, to a person match this footnote. Not sure what to do with that observation yet, but was right on point.
For the record, against loud groans, I have always insisted on a color blind/sex blind hiring policy. We have never had preferences of any sort and will not allow them. Having said that, we have about equal numbers of males and females at all levels and a polyglot mix of ethnicities unrelated to anything except talent. The people with whom you end up working using this strategy are all keepers -- not like the placeholders we now let into medical school over my loud objections because they fit the right demographic and SJW status.
It is a dismaying time. But person by person we can do our part. I am often frustrated by trying to mount more global pushback to some of the horrible things going on (e.g., Covid, transgender, whatever) but am glad that here is an area where in my tiny sphere I can still do the right thing. The more of us that do that, the better off we all shall be.
I don't think anyone pushing back against this wants racially biased hiring policies. Pure merit is what people want. If you don't get a job and you know it's because you weren't the best, that's easy to swallow; if you suspect it's because of immutable characteristics, that stings enough that it starts to hurt the soul.
Brilliant piece! You have the courage to address one of the truly great unacknowledged problems of our time.
The sincerity of boomer loyalty to their own individual sons is less significant than their absolute lack of interest in the welfare of the sons of others. Individual parents will always be invested in the wellbeing or success of their progeny. In civilised and cohesive societies, there is also at least a discernible degree of routine loyalty or concern about others. In the modern West the degree of cohesion, loyalty or asssabiyah is now so low, and what little remains is so perversely allocated towards ideologically-anointed surrogates, that the run of the mill young white male cannot expect encouragement or assistance from non-related elders.
This is in large part a generational problem. The boomers grew up in a world run by WW2 vets. The ethical consensus of that generation was born from the widespread, deeply felt, beliefs that emerged from mid 20th c welfare capitalism and the experience of war. Solidarity, concern for others and a belief that people should not be neglected or left to rot (as so many had been during the Great Depression) was widespread and informed a hots of decisions concerning education, training, mentoring, employment etc.
The boomers took advantage of that consensus when they were growing up and getting established in their careers. When the WW2 vets retired and handed over institutional power to the boomers, there was a decisive and ongoing shift towards selfishness. This was camouflaged by the limitless bullshit of pseudo-progressive performative social engineering (the petri dish in which woke and diversity were cultivated). It has all been downhilll ever since.
One of the functions of woke-craft is that it stigmatises and disables loyalty, cohesion or cooperation between the disfavoured. The old hags club monitor the workplace to suppress this under the pretence of anti-discrimination, while enabling the nepotism and cronyism of the favoured. The suppression of competitive exams, IQ testing and evidence based assessment of performance further empowers the old hags.
To cap it off, the younger generation, raised amidst ever increasing anomie and atomisation, has no lived experience of the older forms of loyalty or solidarity. They are being disabled by social decay.
Yep. What boomers don't seem to get is that if they all create conditions that are hostile to young men who look like their sons, then their sons will have a much tougher time of it. Then they turn around and wonder why their sons aren't succeeding. Total failure to connect macro-level societal outcomes with micro-level behavior. "Why are the streets so dirty? Oh well guess I'll litter." Same mindset.
Jun 14, 2022·edited Jun 14, 2022Liked by John Carter
This is easy to explain. Jung believed that children live the unlived lives of their parents. One sees this at work in the frequency with which successive generations chose quite different careers. It is common enough for the children of successful professionals to go off and do something less demanding and more self-actualising. Parents without an expectation of ever seeing their kids work within their own professional sphere simply never focus on the problem of institutionalised hostility to young white males. Such people simply do not pay much attention to the welfare of anyone but themselves and what little attention they may show is reserved for their own immediate social group.
Being a Gen Xer, the old patronage system you and Rolo talk appeared to be out there when I grew up, but was rapidly disappearing. It was something the late Boomers still got but was gone by the time I finished my B.A.
I did have a few chance meetings that led to potential job offers, but all that rapidly disappeared in the changing times. Recessions gutted the networks, leaving the HR medusas in charge.
Academia is completely lost. And so is government. Until hiring the best candidates matters more than diversity, men are mostly left on their own.
So what is to be done? Every man should try to mentor young men in their circle and help them forward.
And, the old patronage system still exists but only full the PMC and the wealthy. Many of those midwits making policy in DC got there from this system. The rest of us have little to no chance.
Yeah that gets under my skin to no end. It's very obvious that the wealthy and connected use patronage to help their buddies; it's the rest of us who are subjected to HR. Equally clear that the boomers took full advantage of it, then turned around and tore the guts out of a functioning social technology. As usual, they got theirs, then did their level best to make sure no one else could.
Maybe somewhat distantly related, but I’ve noticed something odd amongst my daughter and her friends. All young teenagers. And all her friends have adopted a rainbow-alphabet identity. And I’ve puzzled over why. And perhaps it has to do with inflicting guilt on young white kids for being white, so their escape is adopting a group that gets not only attention, but preferential treatment. Or to even get attention anymore, they have to have some diversity qualification. Just a thought I’ve been kicking around. So this article landed pretty square in that theme for me.
You're exactly correct about that. They're trading a 'black identity' (in the Maoist sense) for a 'red' identity. It's easy enough: just take on the B in LGBTQP (you don't even need to do much as hold hands with a girl to pull that one off) and/or adopt a neopronoun. Boom. Instant oppressed brave victim status; instant teacher's pet; instant freedom from white guilt; instant social power over your peers.
Excellent piece! The success that I have had is a direct result of pushing others up over the last 40+years. Yes, virtually all them were white, and most were males, but guess what? I'm a white male surrounded by primarily other white males. It can be done just as successfully with both sexes and all races.
Remember my own time in American academia (I did leave). Same same as what you describe. And this was in your terms a generation (or so) ago. The senior faculty were highly eager to diversify the faculty -- at the junior faculty level. But replacing one of their own -- well, not practical, too expensive, etc..
So the one program I was with did a bunch of hires: a non-American post colonial scholar, a "local" so to speak up-and-coming African-American literature and cultural studies scholar, a lesbian feminist to cover gender studies and queer theory. All good. Except two things. First, as the senior faculty did not understand or accept, these people really did want to do their things -- they were not simply going along for ride. Second, the market for their services (say what you will) was highly competitive. So the new faculty members were not properly grateful, deferential, and "knowing their place" to the senior faculty who ushered them in. Within five years, all the new faculty had moved on -- all to better schools or positions.
So the process rebooted. Same same. No lessons learned. Senior faculty as diversity patrons -- out to preserve and redefine their "legacies."
Many many salient points in this article. Always an excellent read.
I'm a White Boomer with a GenX son, PHD Geology who's married to a chemical engineer working for baddie Exxon Mobile. When she got transferred from Houston to the Joliet refinery, my son was building the new research lab at the University of Houston. Upon the move they decided he would be the stay-at-home dad for my two grands. Once the kids got a little older, pre-school/elementary, he took an adjunct position at Joliet Junior college because the hours let him be home when the kids weren't in school/pre-school and when his wife was home from work. He was slated to replace the retiring professor in his department when Covid happened. Once classes finally resumed, over all enrollment was down enough that his promotion was put on hold. He now teaches at both Joliet and another nearby community college, still as a low paid adjunct, but class schedules still permit him to be home when the kids aren't in school. I don't think Community Colleges are quite as rife with the woke BS as Universities but any of it is too much.
Fortunately, his aspirations haven't been to climb the ranks of academia or I'm sure he would be a very miserable and frustrated guy. His PHD was funded through a full-ride scholarship, so no student loans. I'm happy he put his career secondary to his responsibility as a parent, but to be honest I don't think it was much of a sacrifice on his part. My daughter-in-law may be one of those "gotta meet the woke hire requirement", though she is a smart cookie. However, once she decided not to make the scramble to the top of her profession, she's been consigned to positions at the refinery that don't seem to have much to do with her chem engineering degree. Between the two of them they make a good living, live modestly, and plan to retire at the first reasonable opportunity.
He was probably just a step ahead of when the current atmosphere of punishing males for being both male and white began. When they retire, my d-i-l will pursue her crafting hobbies and my son will play golf. That is assuming there's still an intact US of A to live in. And they aren't dealing with messed up kids who think they are a different sex and ethnicity and have already transitioned.
Weird, bad, sad place this world has come to. A reckoning is on the way.
Feeling for you in that environment! Glad I'm not in academia anymore. Can see the bias against white men everywhere - smart guys missing out because of artificial quotas for minority groups having to be filled with basically whoever fronts up being driven by clueless woke HR staff. Travesty.
Jun 16, 2022·edited Jun 16, 2022Liked by John Carter
John, we all need to consider this from the perspective of the system itself, rather than from that of an abstraction like justice or fairness.
The deprioritisation of men, above all white men, is a necessity for the existing system, given the emerging family structure that has evolved to suit the needs of both the state and employers as we undergo the integration of economies across the planet.
As Charles Murray has pointed out, 80% of working-class marriages now end in divorce. Few women today realistically expect to form a family in the traditional mode. The workplace regime enforced by the old hags’ club sustains the predominant family structure in existence (one which relies heavily on assistance from the state and other agencies to assist with the role once played by male breadwinners). Any reversion to the older model would directly threaten the established way of life of many, perhaps most, people. Women raising kids by themselves or women without kids will turn into the regime's 'sardaukar' the moment such a prospect gets raised.
The replacement of traditional family structures fortifies the elite’s interest in sponsoring forces hostile to inherited social and cultural norms (feminism, gender fluidity, LGBTQI). These forces form essential support for the status quo. Were reactionary men, especially white ones, to successfully frustrate their demotion in the social system, the regime would be overwhelmed by the challenge of meeting their expectations while simultaneously meeting the expectations of women and POC.
Furthermore, any return to meritocratic selection or organisational governance would scandalise or threaten the left and centre of the bell curve for IQ. This has obvious implications for social peace (especially race relations) and for the international image of the US. I suspect that you, John, may not fully appreciate how thoroughly and easily anyone like yourself (a physicist, I presume) threatens the left and centre of the bell curve. People of average and sub-average intelligence are viscerally antagonistic to those well to the right of the curve. Forget that and you'll regret it.
Grinding down the majority of white men into an athumotic or dispirited class of tax-slaves and precariously employed helots offers the system the path of least resistance.
So long as the current form of oligarchic state-capitalism (managed from the top by the allocation of capital through the federal reserve and the investment banks close to it and sustained by global capital markets) endures, the regime does not need to prioritise domestic productivity or even output as the system is on life-support from the bond-market. Mediocre levels of productivity can easily sustain the lifestyle of the pod-dwellers and the inhabitants of the emerging favelas.
>Grinding down the majority of white men into an athumotic or dispirited class of tax-slaves and precariously employed helots offers the system the path of least resistance
This is an important point. There's a lot of talk of 'white genocide' in right-wing circles, and while that's rhetorically useful it's not actually very accurate. White helotry is closer to the goal: reducing Europeans to a demoralized slave race.
There's also a lot of truth to your point about resentment..
The right are too often preoccupied with ideology and fixated on poorly understood history...also too often unwilling to acknowledge the fundamental kinship that underlies their rivalry with the left.
Helotry of a sort is already firmly established in South Africa and something akin to it is getting established in Europe, where the welfare system is providing tribute from the 'dhimmis' (subdued and subservient non-Muslims) to the true believers. My fear is that the normalisation of humiliation and bullying inherent in 'woke' will succeed to a degree, thereby establishing the political economy to sustain a caste system that provides race-based transfer payments, welfare and unearned privileges. Once these things get established, they are phenomenally difficult to reform, let alone abolish. And bullying (the weaponisation of neurochemistry) works individually and collectively.
Further to the subject of helots, you'd be interested in the latest development, which has not been covered adequately by the MSM. I've pasted a comment I made on Niccolo Soldo's Saturday Commentary #87 (don't like cross-posting, but this is critical).
One thing that is worth noting re SCOTUS decision. It is guaranteed to absorb attention. This should make everyone very nervous. When anything happens that focuses the attention of the public like that every level of the system takes advantage of the occasion and proceeds post haste with mischiefs that they had previously thought advisable to keep on hold.
The most momentous and sinister piece of mischief under way is the new law, just passed, that requires the Federal Reserve to take account of racial disparities in all its activities. This establishes addressing racial disparities alongside price stability and full employment as essential mandates for the Fed. This is of historic significance, every bit as significant as Nixon moving the US from the gold standard.
The law will ensure that the financial sector enrich a class of POC crony capitalists. Thanks to the Cantillon effect the greatest beneficiary of credit creation will be well-established POC owned private equity. Given US conditions, this is South Africa's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) on steroids. Biden is creating the material conditions for an expanded POC contingent within the oligarchy, a woke Second Estate with the means and incentive to perpetuate diversity, equity and inclusion for all time. This is the keystone domestic reform of Obama's third (albeit covert) administration. Now is the perfect time to attempt social engineering like this: the diversity agenda is supported by both sides of politics, private equity firms are guaranteed to do very nicely once the recession/depression bites and distressed sellers part with their assets and the energies of the people are focused on clown-world political spectacle.
Jun 16, 2022·edited Jun 16, 2022Liked by John Carter
So basically, we just need to end the fed?
On this point "People of average and sub-average intelligence are viscerally antagonistic to those well to the right of the curve. Forget that and you'll regret it", I don't know that this is true for even a majority of folks. A lot of people respect and admire smart people. To me, people seem to loathe, and rightfully so, people that look down on them. Rich people and highly intelligent people aren't so bothersome as long as they aren't looking down their nose at you. This attitude is what wounds ego and fosters resentment. A solution that legendary fighter pilot John Boyd learned from his mother was to have pride in integrity. You don't have to be particularly smart, and you can be dirt poor and still have integrity. This strategy makes it feasible to shrug off condescension and achieve your potential. The incentive here is that a sense of purpose, dignity, and self-worth are the foundations of building optimal human performance. Upon reflection, I think the type of person you indicate is prevalent in the ruling class with people slightly above average. People with imposter syndrome whose careers, wealth, and/or status are all a product of some degree of fraud. I'm of the opinion that a shrill vocal minority has convinced you that meritocracy isn't popular. I suspect there is a much larger silent majority that prefers the idea of people being selected for positions based on qualifications and ability over arbitrary demographic characteristics, especially in America. To address another point you made, I also don't know that we even have mediocre levels of productivity anymore. Capital seems to be sublimating to wholly counterproductive purposes fueled by these too long suppressed interest rates that won't ever be allowed to rise secondary to political pressure. I don't know that the current system will be able to limp along in the face of external threat to, for example, the dollars status as reserve currency.
The current social order is absolutely driven by massive infusions of fiat that fuel the control architecture necessary to maintain a non-meritoctatic, anti-white, anti-male, anti-human system that elevates low-competence people above those with ability. So you're absolutely correct that ending the Fed - destroying the central bank system more generally - would stop all of this more or less overnight.
Both you and Phillip make good points about the role played by resentment. My experience is that, when interacting with regular, working class folks of any ethnic background, they don't resent me in the slightest. I don't put on airs, and I treat them like human beings. It doesn't matter that I'm (much) smarter than most of them; whatever advantages I have are no excuse to be a jerk, and I act in the humility that they have their own advantages. There are things they're better at than me, things they know more about than me, and I respect that.
Where I do tend to detect resentment playing a role is in midwits promoted beyond their ability, who sublimate their imposter syndrome into fear and hatred of those above them in the bell curve. Such people also tend to enthusiastically punch down at their perceived social inferiors, and whatever working class animosity you see directed against the educated tends to be a reaction to this shitty behavior.
Good point about smartness/respect. All I can say on substack is that in the course of my professional life I have seen plenty of midwits, halfwits and intellectually mediocre people behave badly to much more intelligent colleagues. It is an ugly phenomenon. Impostor syndrome was also a defining characteristic of a prestigious institution in which I worked a few years ago. In my experience, truly intelligent people are pretty relaxed about their abilities and do not look down on anyone. The vast majority of ordinary people are reasonable and have sound and sensible approaches. Unfortunately, the inflation in credentials and the fraudulent character of so many 'experts' ensures that there are many who feel insecure and touchy and these are a dangerous element.
As for the fed, my worry is that the use of monetary policy to finance crony capitalism is further etrenching a class of oligarchs. Worse still, the 'equity' preoccupation sweeping through the system is being used to create a cohort of oligarchs with a stake in maintaining a race-based policy agenda. When the petrodollar falls, the system burns. Unfortunately, vast numbers of decent people will suffer.
I've definitely seen the same thing. To a large degree that's what fuels the abusive orthodoxy of academia - midwits terrified of being rejected by the group, and so desperately cleaving to whatever it is that smart people are supposed to believe. They know they can't stand on the ground of their own intellectual ability.
No counterproductive economic order can survive indefinitely. When it comes down, it will be painful for a lot of people. Then again, it will also be liberating. The fall of the Roman empire raised the living standards of peasants almost overnight.
Wow. I have an AWFL aunt in New Hampshire that lost her twin sons to suicide. The first committed suicide at 18 with a shotgun, while his father was home. The second twin, just as you described, a man in his 40's who could no longer salve the gaping wound in his life, utilized police assisted suicide to terminate his pain.
My aunt is the greatest proponent of DIE, vaccines, the latest thing, or whatever media tells her. She has been very active politically. She was devastated by Trump and pushed hard for Hillary. I'm sure she is watching the "Insurrection" on CNN or where ever they are airing that clown show.
I never connected my cousins suicides to my aunts leanings. My uncle is a tyrant who can't live five seconds without his wife's presence and opinions. Their two girls did very well in life.
I still love my aunt, but glad that I am not AWFL.
It's not something that people want to see. Sabotaging the lives of your own offspring is a moral betrayal at the deepest level, one which eradicates anything else you might have done. To admit that one's own beliefs might have destroyed one's children is to admit that one is a monster. AWFLs especially, who are fueled entirely by the conceit that they are moral actors, are especially impervious to this realization.
That's a harrowing story, by the way. Sadly, it's also one that reinforces my thesis.
These events were devastating to the family. The oldest sister to the twins changed her last name and moved to France. She has written a book under a pseudonym. The older twin changed his name right after his brother's death. He blamed his father. I too have laid the majority of blame on my uncle. Thank you for causing me to rethink.
In cases like this, it's usually the case that there's plenty of blame to go around. If the family feels that the uncle carries much of the blame, that is likely to be the case. What I wrote here was intended as a high-level sociological commentary; the specific situations in specific families are in a different category.
Jul 17, 2022·edited Jul 17, 2022Liked by John Carter
Of course. Thank you for the clarification.
It is entirely possible that her affinity for all things leftist is an attempt to assuage her guilty feelings and her impotence to control her tyrannical husband's behavior towards their boys.
Spot on, John. You show me equity, I show you stakeholder capitalism with bigger hair and whiter teeth, wrapped in a rainbow and carnally enticing God's judgement.
Tammy Sepetis, a divorced Human Resources recruiter and the amalgamation of the old hag who thinks abortion is doubtlessly a human right, but only 'vaccinated' are actually human, the rest of us pyred into granny-killing lakes of dogmatic fire!
I agree with everything you’ve written and you will certainly be advanced that much faster even if completely inept if female or some kind of minority group. But as a straight white male, I don’t think it’s game over. I did once have an offer like you described from someone famous in my field that I’d worked under but it came with strings attached of good behaviour within the strictures of academia. To be honest I did the PhD largely because the world of graduate jobs was boring, I had a talent for the field and wanted to see how far I could go, plus I liked being left to my own devices most of the time. “Good behaviour” was never my top priority. Especially not for the conditions in academia. Now more than ever, there is a gap if you are not of the favoured background if you don’t choose the easy paths favoured by those of no real talent or toughness. Whether that’s your own business or something hot right now and for a while longer like AI/machine learning or Web 3.0, it doesn’t really matter. I actually think there are far more opportunities now than a decade ago as the skill bar for work is going up all the time and there are so many idiots promoted past their competence…
"To be honest I did the PhD largely because the world of graduate jobs was boring, I had a talent for the field and wanted to see how far I could go, plus I liked being left to my own devices most of the time. “Good behaviour” was never my top priority. Especially not for the conditions in academia."
Jun 16, 2022·edited Jun 16, 2022Liked by John Carter
Yes! I was left alone.
After I left academia I just pursued other ventures where I could also be left alone.
If I hadn't left academic research roughly 12 years ago (and stopped teaching about 7 years ago), I'd be completely rabid by now. 😂 I know academia has gotten sooooo much worse in that time span. I suspect it's unrecognizable now compared to then. I hadn't realized how bad it's gotten.
Honestly, my personal, direct experience generally hasn't been that bad. I'm left more or less entirely to my own devices, which is just how I like it. Of course, I need to walk on eggshells around colleagues (and tend to stomp on those eggshells when I'm drunk lol), and there's plenty of cringing at woke statements they make on the regular. But that's about the worst of it.
It's really been the last couple years where it's been rising to the level of intolerable. Vaxx mandates, diversity statements in job application packages, interrogations by diversity zampolit during interviews, and the expanding tyranny of HR overseeing it all. There's a big difference between 'being left alone to do your thing' and 'everyone hiding in their offices because they're too afraid to speak.'
Jun 16, 2022·edited Jun 16, 2022Liked by John Carter
I have a low tolerance for BS from even the ordinary bureaucracies. Things such as haggling with the uneducated secretaries in the purchasing office for 6 weeks over the specific nature of research supplies, as well as enduring very large proportions of grants skimmed off for overhead (for the purposes of putting new silky curtains and expensive leather furniture in some loser administrator's office, and the like), were too much for me. Don't even get me started on HR.
I'd rather live in a hut in the woods. I'd be pretty good at it and may end up doing so at some point.
Overheads are one of the greatest scams in the system. It's shocking to me that they're tolerated. Everyone knows how outrageous they are, and get funding agencies and scientists both meekly tolerate this rent-seeking by useless administrators.
Jun 14, 2022·edited Jun 14, 2022Liked by John Carter
In my lifetime I have seen the changes: be strong, stoic and a provider; be strong but make way for women, respect and serve them; get out of the way and emasculate, patriarchal, toxic-masculine, rape-culrural oppressor, and then see how you like it.
Meanwhile I have long been exploring the concept of sacred masculine.
Damn. So freaking true. I have seen this pattern in my own life: law school where we white males had to finish top 10% to get the lucrative jobs, whereas our black peers could finish in the bottom half of the class and have multiple job offers from big firms; as a white man, finally getting a job for which I was wayyyy overqualified, in a government agency that had old white Boomers at the top, but all the lower echelons mostly filled with POC women, and the few white men among the lower echelons being consistently the top performers by all objective measures, yet never getting promotions, while unprofessional morons of color got all the promotions. In one example, I trained a guy on the job, and before he was even done with his training, he got promoted as a technical expert in the very area I was training him. At some point, the white men invariably quit or just say fuck it and do the bare minimum to keep their jobs, while putting their time and energy into personal projects. Exactly like the character Peter Gibbons from the movie Office Space.
But what is worse about this is not even what is being done to us white men, but rather it's the 180-degrees-opposite-the-reality agitprop we are forced to endure saying we are oh so privileged and have no right to complain about anything. Shut up and let women and POC speak, you privileged colonizer. And the same woke imbeciles who tell us that we cannot speak to racial or gender issues because we don't understand the lived experience of women or POC will then, with no sense of irony and zero self awareness, go on to tell us what our lives are like as white men.
At this point, I have almost zero buy-in for the American project. If the USA gets its ass handed to it in direct conflict with Russia and China (loved your analysis of why the US empire won't win WWIII, by the way), we may see a return to a culture that is forced to value competence over woke bullshit. If things stay the way they are, we've got a one way ticket to another Mike Judge movie: Idiocracy.
Thanks for doing this substack and being a voice of reason in the cultural wasteland of woke America. Goddamit, you don't know how much it means to read stuff like this and be able to breathe a sigh of relief: okay, I'm not just imagining it, I'm not crazy, this shit really is being done to us.
Excellent comment. Agree 100%.
In concurrence with Daniel D, I’ll no longer withhold my gratitude. For whatever that’s worth, still more than turning an empty heart red, eh. I’m always favored to read a writer whose work is refreshing, inspiring, and thought-provoking, a writer who adds a touch of humor to serious context. And one undaunted by leftist tides and woke currents. Though I suspect that will gain you more applause and kudos than scorn and denunciations. Because I believe rightness and sound reason is still the silent majority growing louder. Anyway, I want you to know you are appreciated. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks, man. That's worth quite a bit.
I think the silent majority is growing less silent as it realizes it's a majority. There's a preference cascade on the way.
Amen, this is why I read. I feel a little better every time I read this column. Watched this my whole career in state service.
Interesting read. I work in the trades with almost the exact opposite problem. Many professional tradesmen would love to mentor anybody with a pulse but it's hard to get anybody to show up and even harder to get them to give a shit if they do.
That's a serious problem - societal obsession with abstract labor has devalued manual labor, to the point where it's seen as low-status regardless of how well paid it is.
The material value of manual labour is suppressed by mass immigration (legal and illegal), while the experience of physical exertion is now reserved for most classes for sports and recreation. The cultural prestige of even skilled trades is eroded by the general immersion in dematerialised experience (infotainment and digitally-based forms of work) and the widespread reliance on machine-made goods. I suspect that the social value of labour is diminished by the reservation of low-status jobs for newly arrived illegals. Replacing a modern ethic (which involves a disenchanted view of labour) with a pre-modern one (with a distinction between honour-conferring labour and the alternatives) is a sure sign of a return to something akin to feudalism - cultural regression that we will all one day regret.
A friend who is a physician once worked with a Soviet trained former professor of renal medicine. The ex-Soviet guy related that an essential part of his education had been the experience of being sent to a collective farm in Central Asia to help with the cotton harvest. It gave him an appreciation of the dignity of labour that he would otherwise have missed out on. Ghastly as their system was, the Soviets got some things right.
That's why I'm generally in favor of universal military service, with no special exemptions for college etc. that rich kids can use to weasel out of it. A year or so of brutal physical labor in the infantry alongside comrades from every walk of life will give someone a profound respect for the fact that high-value people can be and are found everywhere. There's almost nothing more infuriating than an academic who's been inside the system since kindergarten assuming he's fundamentally better than a tradesman.
But but some guys will say the have bad genetics and not built for physical exertion. They need calmer occupations to rest their softer muscles on their twig arms or flabby limb. So we must be considerate. lol
The modern military requires a long and intricate logistical tail. I'm sure there's lots for the flabby to do. Besides, military service can knock some of the flab out of them.
I agree. My husband is a mechanic and he would love to mentor someone, but good workers just aren’t there. Those who show up are often incapable of complex tasks and very unreliable. It’s a struggle for sure...
I've experienced the same thing. Some of those people could be shaped into upstanding individuals but the amount of time and effort it would take to do so is untenable for small business owners. I can take a guy who struggles with complex tasks and screws things up as long as they want to do a good job. The desire to do quality work will overcome a host of deficits over time but most of the people I've tried to employ just want a paycheck.
“I can take a guy who struggles with complex tasks and screws things up as long as they want to do a good job.”> To a point. If they keep screwing up and never really advance in their ability it costs too much money for a small business to keep paying for their mistakes.
I‘ve met several people over the years that wanted to mentor me in mechanical trades. Problem is, they can’t pay me enough for me to be happy.
You have a unique knack of taking topics that are clear after reading but that seldom seem to be a matter of focus and making them accessible with generally compelling arguments. Your footnote three was particularly hard hitting, especially for readers of this Substack who, I expect, to a person match this footnote. Not sure what to do with that observation yet, but was right on point.
For the record, against loud groans, I have always insisted on a color blind/sex blind hiring policy. We have never had preferences of any sort and will not allow them. Having said that, we have about equal numbers of males and females at all levels and a polyglot mix of ethnicities unrelated to anything except talent. The people with whom you end up working using this strategy are all keepers -- not like the placeholders we now let into medical school over my loud objections because they fit the right demographic and SJW status.
It is a dismaying time. But person by person we can do our part. I am often frustrated by trying to mount more global pushback to some of the horrible things going on (e.g., Covid, transgender, whatever) but am glad that here is an area where in my tiny sphere I can still do the right thing. The more of us that do that, the better off we all shall be.
I don't think anyone pushing back against this wants racially biased hiring policies. Pure merit is what people want. If you don't get a job and you know it's because you weren't the best, that's easy to swallow; if you suspect it's because of immutable characteristics, that stings enough that it starts to hurt the soul.
And good for you. We need more like you.
Brilliant piece! You have the courage to address one of the truly great unacknowledged problems of our time.
The sincerity of boomer loyalty to their own individual sons is less significant than their absolute lack of interest in the welfare of the sons of others. Individual parents will always be invested in the wellbeing or success of their progeny. In civilised and cohesive societies, there is also at least a discernible degree of routine loyalty or concern about others. In the modern West the degree of cohesion, loyalty or asssabiyah is now so low, and what little remains is so perversely allocated towards ideologically-anointed surrogates, that the run of the mill young white male cannot expect encouragement or assistance from non-related elders.
This is in large part a generational problem. The boomers grew up in a world run by WW2 vets. The ethical consensus of that generation was born from the widespread, deeply felt, beliefs that emerged from mid 20th c welfare capitalism and the experience of war. Solidarity, concern for others and a belief that people should not be neglected or left to rot (as so many had been during the Great Depression) was widespread and informed a hots of decisions concerning education, training, mentoring, employment etc.
The boomers took advantage of that consensus when they were growing up and getting established in their careers. When the WW2 vets retired and handed over institutional power to the boomers, there was a decisive and ongoing shift towards selfishness. This was camouflaged by the limitless bullshit of pseudo-progressive performative social engineering (the petri dish in which woke and diversity were cultivated). It has all been downhilll ever since.
One of the functions of woke-craft is that it stigmatises and disables loyalty, cohesion or cooperation between the disfavoured. The old hags club monitor the workplace to suppress this under the pretence of anti-discrimination, while enabling the nepotism and cronyism of the favoured. The suppression of competitive exams, IQ testing and evidence based assessment of performance further empowers the old hags.
To cap it off, the younger generation, raised amidst ever increasing anomie and atomisation, has no lived experience of the older forms of loyalty or solidarity. They are being disabled by social decay.
Yep. What boomers don't seem to get is that if they all create conditions that are hostile to young men who look like their sons, then their sons will have a much tougher time of it. Then they turn around and wonder why their sons aren't succeeding. Total failure to connect macro-level societal outcomes with micro-level behavior. "Why are the streets so dirty? Oh well guess I'll litter." Same mindset.
This is easy to explain. Jung believed that children live the unlived lives of their parents. One sees this at work in the frequency with which successive generations chose quite different careers. It is common enough for the children of successful professionals to go off and do something less demanding and more self-actualising. Parents without an expectation of ever seeing their kids work within their own professional sphere simply never focus on the problem of institutionalised hostility to young white males. Such people simply do not pay much attention to the welfare of anyone but themselves and what little attention they may show is reserved for their own immediate social group.
Being a Gen Xer, the old patronage system you and Rolo talk appeared to be out there when I grew up, but was rapidly disappearing. It was something the late Boomers still got but was gone by the time I finished my B.A.
I did have a few chance meetings that led to potential job offers, but all that rapidly disappeared in the changing times. Recessions gutted the networks, leaving the HR medusas in charge.
Academia is completely lost. And so is government. Until hiring the best candidates matters more than diversity, men are mostly left on their own.
So what is to be done? Every man should try to mentor young men in their circle and help them forward.
And, the old patronage system still exists but only full the PMC and the wealthy. Many of those midwits making policy in DC got there from this system. The rest of us have little to no chance.
Yeah that gets under my skin to no end. It's very obvious that the wealthy and connected use patronage to help their buddies; it's the rest of us who are subjected to HR. Equally clear that the boomers took full advantage of it, then turned around and tore the guts out of a functioning social technology. As usual, they got theirs, then did their level best to make sure no one else could.
As usual.
"obese Shoggoths in HR"
you /really/ have a way with words that makes unavoidable evil worth laughing at.
Maybe somewhat distantly related, but I’ve noticed something odd amongst my daughter and her friends. All young teenagers. And all her friends have adopted a rainbow-alphabet identity. And I’ve puzzled over why. And perhaps it has to do with inflicting guilt on young white kids for being white, so their escape is adopting a group that gets not only attention, but preferential treatment. Or to even get attention anymore, they have to have some diversity qualification. Just a thought I’ve been kicking around. So this article landed pretty square in that theme for me.
You're exactly correct about that. They're trading a 'black identity' (in the Maoist sense) for a 'red' identity. It's easy enough: just take on the B in LGBTQP (you don't even need to do much as hold hands with a girl to pull that one off) and/or adopt a neopronoun. Boom. Instant oppressed brave victim status; instant teacher's pet; instant freedom from white guilt; instant social power over your peers.
Bingo. That summed it up perfectly.
Excellent piece! The success that I have had is a direct result of pushing others up over the last 40+years. Yes, virtually all them were white, and most were males, but guess what? I'm a white male surrounded by primarily other white males. It can be done just as successfully with both sexes and all races.
It's a winning strategy. The only people who aren't allowed to use it are white guys.
Remember my own time in American academia (I did leave). Same same as what you describe. And this was in your terms a generation (or so) ago. The senior faculty were highly eager to diversify the faculty -- at the junior faculty level. But replacing one of their own -- well, not practical, too expensive, etc..
So the one program I was with did a bunch of hires: a non-American post colonial scholar, a "local" so to speak up-and-coming African-American literature and cultural studies scholar, a lesbian feminist to cover gender studies and queer theory. All good. Except two things. First, as the senior faculty did not understand or accept, these people really did want to do their things -- they were not simply going along for ride. Second, the market for their services (say what you will) was highly competitive. So the new faculty members were not properly grateful, deferential, and "knowing their place" to the senior faculty who ushered them in. Within five years, all the new faculty had moved on -- all to better schools or positions.
So the process rebooted. Same same. No lessons learned. Senior faculty as diversity patrons -- out to preserve and redefine their "legacies."
Many many salient points in this article. Always an excellent read.
I'm a White Boomer with a GenX son, PHD Geology who's married to a chemical engineer working for baddie Exxon Mobile. When she got transferred from Houston to the Joliet refinery, my son was building the new research lab at the University of Houston. Upon the move they decided he would be the stay-at-home dad for my two grands. Once the kids got a little older, pre-school/elementary, he took an adjunct position at Joliet Junior college because the hours let him be home when the kids weren't in school/pre-school and when his wife was home from work. He was slated to replace the retiring professor in his department when Covid happened. Once classes finally resumed, over all enrollment was down enough that his promotion was put on hold. He now teaches at both Joliet and another nearby community college, still as a low paid adjunct, but class schedules still permit him to be home when the kids aren't in school. I don't think Community Colleges are quite as rife with the woke BS as Universities but any of it is too much.
Fortunately, his aspirations haven't been to climb the ranks of academia or I'm sure he would be a very miserable and frustrated guy. His PHD was funded through a full-ride scholarship, so no student loans. I'm happy he put his career secondary to his responsibility as a parent, but to be honest I don't think it was much of a sacrifice on his part. My daughter-in-law may be one of those "gotta meet the woke hire requirement", though she is a smart cookie. However, once she decided not to make the scramble to the top of her profession, she's been consigned to positions at the refinery that don't seem to have much to do with her chem engineering degree. Between the two of them they make a good living, live modestly, and plan to retire at the first reasonable opportunity.
He was probably just a step ahead of when the current atmosphere of punishing males for being both male and white began. When they retire, my d-i-l will pursue her crafting hobbies and my son will play golf. That is assuming there's still an intact US of A to live in. And they aren't dealing with messed up kids who think they are a different sex and ethnicity and have already transitioned.
Weird, bad, sad place this world has come to. A reckoning is on the way.
Feeling for you in that environment! Glad I'm not in academia anymore. Can see the bias against white men everywhere - smart guys missing out because of artificial quotas for minority groups having to be filled with basically whoever fronts up being driven by clueless woke HR staff. Travesty.
It isn't just academia. Seems to be the same in any large bureaucracy - government, corporate, doesn't matter.
John, we all need to consider this from the perspective of the system itself, rather than from that of an abstraction like justice or fairness.
The deprioritisation of men, above all white men, is a necessity for the existing system, given the emerging family structure that has evolved to suit the needs of both the state and employers as we undergo the integration of economies across the planet.
As Charles Murray has pointed out, 80% of working-class marriages now end in divorce. Few women today realistically expect to form a family in the traditional mode. The workplace regime enforced by the old hags’ club sustains the predominant family structure in existence (one which relies heavily on assistance from the state and other agencies to assist with the role once played by male breadwinners). Any reversion to the older model would directly threaten the established way of life of many, perhaps most, people. Women raising kids by themselves or women without kids will turn into the regime's 'sardaukar' the moment such a prospect gets raised.
The replacement of traditional family structures fortifies the elite’s interest in sponsoring forces hostile to inherited social and cultural norms (feminism, gender fluidity, LGBTQI). These forces form essential support for the status quo. Were reactionary men, especially white ones, to successfully frustrate their demotion in the social system, the regime would be overwhelmed by the challenge of meeting their expectations while simultaneously meeting the expectations of women and POC.
Furthermore, any return to meritocratic selection or organisational governance would scandalise or threaten the left and centre of the bell curve for IQ. This has obvious implications for social peace (especially race relations) and for the international image of the US. I suspect that you, John, may not fully appreciate how thoroughly and easily anyone like yourself (a physicist, I presume) threatens the left and centre of the bell curve. People of average and sub-average intelligence are viscerally antagonistic to those well to the right of the curve. Forget that and you'll regret it.
Grinding down the majority of white men into an athumotic or dispirited class of tax-slaves and precariously employed helots offers the system the path of least resistance.
So long as the current form of oligarchic state-capitalism (managed from the top by the allocation of capital through the federal reserve and the investment banks close to it and sustained by global capital markets) endures, the regime does not need to prioritise domestic productivity or even output as the system is on life-support from the bond-market. Mediocre levels of productivity can easily sustain the lifestyle of the pod-dwellers and the inhabitants of the emerging favelas.
>Grinding down the majority of white men into an athumotic or dispirited class of tax-slaves and precariously employed helots offers the system the path of least resistance
This is an important point. There's a lot of talk of 'white genocide' in right-wing circles, and while that's rhetorically useful it's not actually very accurate. White helotry is closer to the goal: reducing Europeans to a demoralized slave race.
There's also a lot of truth to your point about resentment..
The right are too often preoccupied with ideology and fixated on poorly understood history...also too often unwilling to acknowledge the fundamental kinship that underlies their rivalry with the left.
Helotry of a sort is already firmly established in South Africa and something akin to it is getting established in Europe, where the welfare system is providing tribute from the 'dhimmis' (subdued and subservient non-Muslims) to the true believers. My fear is that the normalisation of humiliation and bullying inherent in 'woke' will succeed to a degree, thereby establishing the political economy to sustain a caste system that provides race-based transfer payments, welfare and unearned privileges. Once these things get established, they are phenomenally difficult to reform, let alone abolish. And bullying (the weaponisation of neurochemistry) works individually and collectively.
Further to the subject of helots, you'd be interested in the latest development, which has not been covered adequately by the MSM. I've pasted a comment I made on Niccolo Soldo's Saturday Commentary #87 (don't like cross-posting, but this is critical).
One thing that is worth noting re SCOTUS decision. It is guaranteed to absorb attention. This should make everyone very nervous. When anything happens that focuses the attention of the public like that every level of the system takes advantage of the occasion and proceeds post haste with mischiefs that they had previously thought advisable to keep on hold.
The most momentous and sinister piece of mischief under way is the new law, just passed, that requires the Federal Reserve to take account of racial disparities in all its activities. This establishes addressing racial disparities alongside price stability and full employment as essential mandates for the Fed. This is of historic significance, every bit as significant as Nixon moving the US from the gold standard.
The law will ensure that the financial sector enrich a class of POC crony capitalists. Thanks to the Cantillon effect the greatest beneficiary of credit creation will be well-established POC owned private equity. Given US conditions, this is South Africa's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) on steroids. Biden is creating the material conditions for an expanded POC contingent within the oligarchy, a woke Second Estate with the means and incentive to perpetuate diversity, equity and inclusion for all time. This is the keystone domestic reform of Obama's third (albeit covert) administration. Now is the perfect time to attempt social engineering like this: the diversity agenda is supported by both sides of politics, private equity firms are guaranteed to do very nicely once the recession/depression bites and distressed sellers part with their assets and the energies of the people are focused on clown-world political spectacle.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-woke-mandate-for-the-federal-reserve-racial-equity-congress-house-joe-biden-11655659047
So basically, we just need to end the fed?
On this point "People of average and sub-average intelligence are viscerally antagonistic to those well to the right of the curve. Forget that and you'll regret it", I don't know that this is true for even a majority of folks. A lot of people respect and admire smart people. To me, people seem to loathe, and rightfully so, people that look down on them. Rich people and highly intelligent people aren't so bothersome as long as they aren't looking down their nose at you. This attitude is what wounds ego and fosters resentment. A solution that legendary fighter pilot John Boyd learned from his mother was to have pride in integrity. You don't have to be particularly smart, and you can be dirt poor and still have integrity. This strategy makes it feasible to shrug off condescension and achieve your potential. The incentive here is that a sense of purpose, dignity, and self-worth are the foundations of building optimal human performance. Upon reflection, I think the type of person you indicate is prevalent in the ruling class with people slightly above average. People with imposter syndrome whose careers, wealth, and/or status are all a product of some degree of fraud. I'm of the opinion that a shrill vocal minority has convinced you that meritocracy isn't popular. I suspect there is a much larger silent majority that prefers the idea of people being selected for positions based on qualifications and ability over arbitrary demographic characteristics, especially in America. To address another point you made, I also don't know that we even have mediocre levels of productivity anymore. Capital seems to be sublimating to wholly counterproductive purposes fueled by these too long suppressed interest rates that won't ever be allowed to rise secondary to political pressure. I don't know that the current system will be able to limp along in the face of external threat to, for example, the dollars status as reserve currency.
The current social order is absolutely driven by massive infusions of fiat that fuel the control architecture necessary to maintain a non-meritoctatic, anti-white, anti-male, anti-human system that elevates low-competence people above those with ability. So you're absolutely correct that ending the Fed - destroying the central bank system more generally - would stop all of this more or less overnight.
Both you and Phillip make good points about the role played by resentment. My experience is that, when interacting with regular, working class folks of any ethnic background, they don't resent me in the slightest. I don't put on airs, and I treat them like human beings. It doesn't matter that I'm (much) smarter than most of them; whatever advantages I have are no excuse to be a jerk, and I act in the humility that they have their own advantages. There are things they're better at than me, things they know more about than me, and I respect that.
Where I do tend to detect resentment playing a role is in midwits promoted beyond their ability, who sublimate their imposter syndrome into fear and hatred of those above them in the bell curve. Such people also tend to enthusiastically punch down at their perceived social inferiors, and whatever working class animosity you see directed against the educated tends to be a reaction to this shitty behavior.
Re the Fed, check out.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-woke-mandate-for-the-federal-reserve-racial-equity-congress-house-joe-biden-11655659047
If you are interested, I made some comments on this development further down the thread.
Good point about smartness/respect. All I can say on substack is that in the course of my professional life I have seen plenty of midwits, halfwits and intellectually mediocre people behave badly to much more intelligent colleagues. It is an ugly phenomenon. Impostor syndrome was also a defining characteristic of a prestigious institution in which I worked a few years ago. In my experience, truly intelligent people are pretty relaxed about their abilities and do not look down on anyone. The vast majority of ordinary people are reasonable and have sound and sensible approaches. Unfortunately, the inflation in credentials and the fraudulent character of so many 'experts' ensures that there are many who feel insecure and touchy and these are a dangerous element.
As for the fed, my worry is that the use of monetary policy to finance crony capitalism is further etrenching a class of oligarchs. Worse still, the 'equity' preoccupation sweeping through the system is being used to create a cohort of oligarchs with a stake in maintaining a race-based policy agenda. When the petrodollar falls, the system burns. Unfortunately, vast numbers of decent people will suffer.
I've definitely seen the same thing. To a large degree that's what fuels the abusive orthodoxy of academia - midwits terrified of being rejected by the group, and so desperately cleaving to whatever it is that smart people are supposed to believe. They know they can't stand on the ground of their own intellectual ability.
No counterproductive economic order can survive indefinitely. When it comes down, it will be painful for a lot of people. Then again, it will also be liberating. The fall of the Roman empire raised the living standards of peasants almost overnight.
Wow. I have an AWFL aunt in New Hampshire that lost her twin sons to suicide. The first committed suicide at 18 with a shotgun, while his father was home. The second twin, just as you described, a man in his 40's who could no longer salve the gaping wound in his life, utilized police assisted suicide to terminate his pain.
My aunt is the greatest proponent of DIE, vaccines, the latest thing, or whatever media tells her. She has been very active politically. She was devastated by Trump and pushed hard for Hillary. I'm sure she is watching the "Insurrection" on CNN or where ever they are airing that clown show.
I never connected my cousins suicides to my aunts leanings. My uncle is a tyrant who can't live five seconds without his wife's presence and opinions. Their two girls did very well in life.
I still love my aunt, but glad that I am not AWFL.
It's not something that people want to see. Sabotaging the lives of your own offspring is a moral betrayal at the deepest level, one which eradicates anything else you might have done. To admit that one's own beliefs might have destroyed one's children is to admit that one is a monster. AWFLs especially, who are fueled entirely by the conceit that they are moral actors, are especially impervious to this realization.
That's a harrowing story, by the way. Sadly, it's also one that reinforces my thesis.
These events were devastating to the family. The oldest sister to the twins changed her last name and moved to France. She has written a book under a pseudonym. The older twin changed his name right after his brother's death. He blamed his father. I too have laid the majority of blame on my uncle. Thank you for causing me to rethink.
In cases like this, it's usually the case that there's plenty of blame to go around. If the family feels that the uncle carries much of the blame, that is likely to be the case. What I wrote here was intended as a high-level sociological commentary; the specific situations in specific families are in a different category.
Of course. Thank you for the clarification.
It is entirely possible that her affinity for all things leftist is an attempt to assuage her guilty feelings and her impotence to control her tyrannical husband's behavior towards their boys.
Spot on, John. You show me equity, I show you stakeholder capitalism with bigger hair and whiter teeth, wrapped in a rainbow and carnally enticing God's judgement.
Tammy Sepetis, a divorced Human Resources recruiter and the amalgamation of the old hag who thinks abortion is doubtlessly a human right, but only 'vaccinated' are actually human, the rest of us pyred into granny-killing lakes of dogmatic fire!
https://youtu.be/WkKHupWzB-g
It's the gun, the bottle, or the way which has always been beneath your feet, Folx. Godspeed.
I agree with everything you’ve written and you will certainly be advanced that much faster even if completely inept if female or some kind of minority group. But as a straight white male, I don’t think it’s game over. I did once have an offer like you described from someone famous in my field that I’d worked under but it came with strings attached of good behaviour within the strictures of academia. To be honest I did the PhD largely because the world of graduate jobs was boring, I had a talent for the field and wanted to see how far I could go, plus I liked being left to my own devices most of the time. “Good behaviour” was never my top priority. Especially not for the conditions in academia. Now more than ever, there is a gap if you are not of the favoured background if you don’t choose the easy paths favoured by those of no real talent or toughness. Whether that’s your own business or something hot right now and for a while longer like AI/machine learning or Web 3.0, it doesn’t really matter. I actually think there are far more opportunities now than a decade ago as the skill bar for work is going up all the time and there are so many idiots promoted past their competence…
"To be honest I did the PhD largely because the world of graduate jobs was boring, I had a talent for the field and wanted to see how far I could go, plus I liked being left to my own devices most of the time. “Good behaviour” was never my top priority. Especially not for the conditions in academia."
This. Right here.
That was pretty much what drove me, too. Interesting work, I'm good at it, and I don't do well with bosses bossing me around.
Yes! I was left alone.
After I left academia I just pursued other ventures where I could also be left alone.
If I hadn't left academic research roughly 12 years ago (and stopped teaching about 7 years ago), I'd be completely rabid by now. 😂 I know academia has gotten sooooo much worse in that time span. I suspect it's unrecognizable now compared to then. I hadn't realized how bad it's gotten.
Honestly, my personal, direct experience generally hasn't been that bad. I'm left more or less entirely to my own devices, which is just how I like it. Of course, I need to walk on eggshells around colleagues (and tend to stomp on those eggshells when I'm drunk lol), and there's plenty of cringing at woke statements they make on the regular. But that's about the worst of it.
It's really been the last couple years where it's been rising to the level of intolerable. Vaxx mandates, diversity statements in job application packages, interrogations by diversity zampolit during interviews, and the expanding tyranny of HR overseeing it all. There's a big difference between 'being left alone to do your thing' and 'everyone hiding in their offices because they're too afraid to speak.'
I have a low tolerance for BS from even the ordinary bureaucracies. Things such as haggling with the uneducated secretaries in the purchasing office for 6 weeks over the specific nature of research supplies, as well as enduring very large proportions of grants skimmed off for overhead (for the purposes of putting new silky curtains and expensive leather furniture in some loser administrator's office, and the like), were too much for me. Don't even get me started on HR.
I'd rather live in a hut in the woods. I'd be pretty good at it and may end up doing so at some point.
Peace is worth something.
Overheads are one of the greatest scams in the system. It's shocking to me that they're tolerated. Everyone knows how outrageous they are, and get funding agencies and scientists both meekly tolerate this rent-seeking by useless administrators.
In my lifetime I have seen the changes: be strong, stoic and a provider; be strong but make way for women, respect and serve them; get out of the way and emasculate, patriarchal, toxic-masculine, rape-culrural oppressor, and then see how you like it.
Meanwhile I have long been exploring the concept of sacred masculine.
This is a worthy talk too about young men, Jordan Peterson with Dr Warren Farrell. https://youtu.be/lAqCISsZEM4