Comments on: North of the border

By: GerryP

GerryP — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:28:35 +0000

ridgerunner @ 140

Interesting thesis. Low energy prices, plus biological pre-set tendency for females to seek multiple partners, was what brought about the 1960s “free sex” revolution. Is that a fair summary?

If so, why didn’t, say, Saudi Arabia also have a big sexual revolution in the 1960s? They had cheaper energy, for domestic consumption, than anyone in the world. And presumably they are the same homo sapiens species as Americans – no real biological difference. So it would appear they should have had a sexual revolution even bigger than ours by that standard.

But it never happened. Why not? Maybe societal norms, culturally enforced, was why. The same thing that got thrown under the bus in the U.S. in the 1960s.

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:07:46 +0000

Human sexuality as with human social behavior is much more complicated than chips. We can learn about hominoid behavior from our chip hominoid “relatives” but the behavioral biologists deliberately simply the complexity of biology to advance their academic careers, as per my economists colleagues do with the complexity of economic systems.
Male and female infidelity is in the Hebrew Bible. Lets not forget the changes made in divorce laws in the 60′s. A wife can have sex with a male other than her husband and then divorce her husband to move in with the other man, who shares the loot the babe got from the divorce judge. In my time a divorced wife had to face social disgrace especially is it is known that she is at fault and her financial situation was not so good. If the woman had a child she had to depend on the ex for real child support.
The low classes did not provide child support except if the parents of their daughter raised the child.
I grew up in a government project that was safe when I was young. The stupid segregation was two white buildings next to two black buildings where the buildings where 40 feet apart. Most of the whites were Catholics and went to a Catholic elementary school. I went to a school that was almost all black. The black children from the project had a mother and father who took care of them plus relatives who would visit, many with cars (we could not afford a car). The blacks were optimistic that their life would improve. Births out of wedlock were very rare. The white hillbillies were different.
Then came the Ivy League elitist “reforms” and welfare became an industry and the worst elements of the black community became their “spokesmen”.
Read the story of Drudge of Professor “Skip” Gates getting arrested in his home near Harvard. I met this guy on a flight from SFO to Taipei. He kept his reading light on all night and our Business Class United seats were such that he kept me awake. So we talked. He was reading material for his talks in Taiwan. He was a high strung well mannered upscale black. When I told him my background he told me to write it up.
Later I saw him interviewed on CSPAN. He said that his mother hated whites (they were from northern West Virginia). Given my background I knew that he did not hate whites and that he could not be they way he is if she hated whites so much.
So he gets arrested for abusing the cop (as per the story) and he shouts racism. He is a fat cat Harvard prof who is a professional black.
This type of social conflict for profit is much more dangerous than young urban women who abuse men.
By the way I firmly believe that any woman who can have children and do not need mental help. And any woman who deliberately raises children by rejecting a husband who provides material and emotional support to the children is also sick.

By: ridgerunner

ridgerunner — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:44:33 +0000

GerryP
Societal norms and the range of behaviors outside those norms are set by the interaction between economic conditions and evolutionarily determined instincts. The sexual revolution of the 60′s was possible proximately because of the energy subsidy provided by oil, but ultimately for it to occur there had to be a substantial instinctual tendency for women to seek multiple partners (see Helen Fisher’s estimate that primeval monogamy was serial and only lasted circa 4 years per episode). Over the next few decades the reduced energy subsidy will likely put female adventurousness back in the box, so to speak.

By: heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn

heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:49:09 +0000

http://www.glennsacks.com/blog/

By: GerryP

GerryP — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:21:02 +0000

Ridgerunner @ 136

Right. But your experience was in the 70s and 80s – AFTER the sexual earthquake of the 60s had re-shaped the culture. It demonstrated rather than negated the great change in society from the sexual revolution of the 60s. Flirting has been a feminine pattern forever. Widespread flirting by openly offering sex is relatively new.

Young guys today are simply following the natural progression from that 60s earthquake, rather than making informed, wise choices about their sexual options. But what young guy looks far ahead or thinks in terms of what is good for society at that point?? It would take some new societal standards, persuasively enforced, to affect that.

My point is that choices by young guys also affect the choices of young women. That shapes the outlook of women in general, in many of the ways that Whiskey so deplores. They go together.

Society no longer protects young women. So they have had to adapt. Many of those adaptations have been very bad for society – and also for men and women, in general.

To change, society would need to re-instate the kinds of protection for young women that it threw overboard in the 60s. Better relations between men and women would then be more possible.

By: JFSanders031

JFSanders031 — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:51:34 +0000

Dang blert! When you put it like that. It makes me want to make a brain cake in a gas oven.

The breakdown of traditional society is and will continue to be a problem until we cycle through a significant number of generations. But the pendulum will swing the other way. Mostly because those with nontraditional cultural behavior tend to weed themselves from the gene pool.

By: ridgerunner

ridgerunner — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:26:33 +0000

GerryP/133
I agree that the sexual revolution has caused vast havoc, but the blame can’t simply be placed on young men refusing to date those who don’t put out. In the 70′s and 80′s, I managed several rent houses for a total of about 45 “tenant years.” To avoid complications with tenants, I maintained carefully disciplined communication with them–no joking around, no chitchating. Nevertheless about 15% of the female, mostly married and middle-class, tenants made sexual overtures, which I always brushed off. There is a female primate tendency to seek insemination from alpha males and it certainly exists in our species. If it did not, there never would have been a sexual revolution.

By: Fletcher Christian

Fletcher Christian — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:50:07 +0000

Increasingly? No. By the way, let’s use the correct term; “economic oligarchy” is semantically equal to “plutocracy”. And the USA has been that for 50 years – at least. Otherwise, why has every President in that period been a multi-millionaire or at least friends with such?

By: trangbang68

trangbang68 — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:43:38 +0000

no mo (not related to Hideo are you…never mind)

My problem with Whiskey’s posits are they are so over the top that any kernels of truth in them are lost in the haze. Obama’s a Muslim Secret Agent Man, He wants America to be nuked to appease his Kenyan ancestors, 100% chance America loses a couple cities to nukes in a week or so. I didn’t think that way when I was in a drug induced psychotic state of paranoia in the 70′s (well maybe I did, but I had an excuse).This stuff is Art Bell crazy “they’re coming to take me away,hey hey” nuts.
There are enough real issues to confront without crossing through checkpoint Charlie to the twilight zone.
As far as the hookup culture in urban America, I would attribute it more to the pornification of popular culture than some Obama metric. The answer in a lot of cases is young men need to man up and win the girls’ hearts instead of acting like spineless weenies.. I have hope for the youngbloods coming back from the wars that they’ll change the culture and be our future leaders.
Obama won because of a perfect storm of media fed war fatigue, Soros manipulated markets and the crap McCain campaign. Another storm is coming as young folks realize the government conmen have squandered their birthright and the working and investor classes get kicked to the curb. It ain’t going to be pretty.

By: GerryP

GerryP — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:28:20 +0000

Whiskey’s complaints do have some basis in truth. As a woman, I admit that.

But where did these things come from? My perspective differs from Whiskey’s because: 1. Boomer’s memories only go back so far. Mine go back a lot further. 2. I have counseled scores of young women about dating and marrying.

That makes me conclude:
1. Whiskey’s situation did not exist significantly before the “free-sex” revolution of the 1960s. After that, young women had little social support to deny sex to suitors before (or without) marriage. Young men also got more support for demanding sex before or without marriage. Or as a condition for dating. The underlying problem here is the inability of most young women to marry early, or at all. That is matched by the lack of incentive for young men to marry young and significantly more faithfully.

2. Alpha males could not play as much havoc with that older situation. Non-alpha males were almost guaranteed spouses. Most women were almost guaranteed spouses. Happily, that also meant most children were born to married fathers and mothers, living together.

2. That old system caused some kinds of harm for individuals, true. But its destruction gave rise to much more malignant damages.

First and foremost: fatherlessness soared from about 6% in 1960 to about 36% of all children now. That led to social disasters we are still discovering. One was a nearly-matching increase in crime rates. That turned out to come from a new criminal class drawn largely from the new pool of fatherless kids. (Most fatherless kids do not become criminals. But most felons do come from the pool of fatherless kids.)

My counseling experience leads me to strongly suspect that many of the behaviors among women that Whisky deplores now, can be traced to the refusal of so many more young men to commit to marriage. Or even to date without sex.

A young man’s “fear of committment” closes the best options a young woman has. What she does to adjust to that hard reality, are all worse options than young women had before. (When Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy)

Men and women both are paying heavy prices from the fall-out from that socially-approved “free sex.” Just another example of unintended consequences.

And what was it that unrepressed sex was supposed to bring? The famous bumper sticker said it – “Make Love, Not War.” Free sex was going to rid us of war and violence! And social and personal dysfunctions! How has that worked out?