Curt Doolittle

Theme: Sex Differences

  • “Women Do Everything Here” : The Absence of Chivalry In The Byzantines

    “I cook, I clean, I work, and my husband sits on the couch demanding beer. Women do everything here. We want to be soft. But we can’t be.” – Nikka.

    [C]hivalry is yet another positive western value constructed by the church. I often write how the church granted women property rights, and forbid cousin-marriage out to six or eight degrees, in order to make it more difficult for the clans to maintain consolidated property holdings and associated financial and political power, while at the same time making it easier for the church itself to acquire lands. But the forcible introduction of the myth and philosophy of Chivalry is as important to the development of the unique western character, in suppressing paternalism and tribalism, as the forcible implementation of property rights by the church. Humans have existed in excess since the advent of domestication of plants and animals. The germanic princes and their retinues were not as barbaric and predatory as secular fantasies argue. However, the militarism of the Carolingians and Vikings, and the power of the states that they constructed in western Europe were impossible for the trading states of the south, and the church to resist. So, just as the church had used its power of literacy and legitimacy to manage the Christian monarchs, they used the crusades and the myth of chivalry, to direct the energies of these professional warriors to productive ends. This ethic of chivalry conveyed status upon those who served christendom. It codified service of others as masculine. It could be obtained through demonstrated action, and spiritual reflection, as well as daily posturing, rather than the more expensive requirement of land holding, and was therefore more widely available to retinues. It also provided a code of conduct that the aspring classes could imitate, making the ethics pervasive. The need for commoners to rent land from land holders, participate as infantry, and to demonstrate their capacity for honorable hard work, before marriage and reproduction were possible, reinforced this set of chivalrous values – allowing laborers and craftsmen to also adopt the chivalrous ethic, and to demonstrate their status signals through conformity to it. THe corresponding delay of childbirth and consequential inclusion of women into the work force, as well as their possession of rudimentary property rights, worked along with suppression of the breeding of the lower classes to create the european universalist and commercial character. This code of chivalric conduct does not exist here in the east among the men. Service is immasculine. It violates the primary principle of manliness which is independence from external direction. Whether that external direction come from service to an employer or service to the commons – society. Manliness, and masculinity have not been hybridized. It is not even as mature here as it is among the peacock strutters of the mediterranean — even if it is less ignorant, brutal and barbaric than that of the Arabs, and less familial and hierarchical than that of the Asians. And while we will certainly argue that masculinity has been overly feminized in much of the west, so much so that lower class males are returning to their individualistic migratory roots, the ethic of masculinity through service remains — for now. There are a few lessons to be learned from this that westerners might want to remember: 1) The church made what is unique about the west, and did so without monopoly powers of violence that are possessed by the current secular west. 2) The west is unique for artificial reasons. it is not a natural social order. It was forcibly constructed by wit and wisdom due to the weakness of the church. Whereas the paternalistic orders in the rest of the world were forcibly constructed by violence. 3) The west is unique because we were a small, weak, poor minority in the world who relied upon technology to compensate for our numbers, and property rights and the denial of centralized power to any and all. WE were lucky to inherit from the greeks the tool of reason which allows warriors to debate and science to develop. But it seems we are reversing our trend and denying our history. As for the Byzantines: without the church, I see no means of introducing chivalry into the civilization quickly, and we must hope that the commercial society eventually provides men with the incentives to build a high trust society of service like that of the west. Affections to all. Curt Doolittle

  • “Women Do Everything Here” : The Absence of Chivalry In The Byzantines

    “I cook, I clean, I work, and my husband sits on the couch demanding beer. Women do everything here. We want to be soft. But we can’t be.” – Nikka.

    [C]hivalry is yet another positive western value constructed by the church. I often write how the church granted women property rights, and forbid cousin-marriage out to six or eight degrees, in order to make it more difficult for the clans to maintain consolidated property holdings and associated financial and political power, while at the same time making it easier for the church itself to acquire lands. But the forcible introduction of the myth and philosophy of Chivalry is as important to the development of the unique western character, in suppressing paternalism and tribalism, as the forcible implementation of property rights by the church. Humans have existed in excess since the advent of domestication of plants and animals. The germanic princes and their retinues were not as barbaric and predatory as secular fantasies argue. However, the militarism of the Carolingians and Vikings, and the power of the states that they constructed in western Europe were impossible for the trading states of the south, and the church to resist. So, just as the church had used its power of literacy and legitimacy to manage the Christian monarchs, they used the crusades and the myth of chivalry, to direct the energies of these professional warriors to productive ends. This ethic of chivalry conveyed status upon those who served christendom. It codified service of others as masculine. It could be obtained through demonstrated action, and spiritual reflection, as well as daily posturing, rather than the more expensive requirement of land holding, and was therefore more widely available to retinues. It also provided a code of conduct that the aspring classes could imitate, making the ethics pervasive. The need for commoners to rent land from land holders, participate as infantry, and to demonstrate their capacity for honorable hard work, before marriage and reproduction were possible, reinforced this set of chivalrous values – allowing laborers and craftsmen to also adopt the chivalrous ethic, and to demonstrate their status signals through conformity to it. THe corresponding delay of childbirth and consequential inclusion of women into the work force, as well as their possession of rudimentary property rights, worked along with suppression of the breeding of the lower classes to create the european universalist and commercial character. This code of chivalric conduct does not exist here in the east among the men. Service is immasculine. It violates the primary principle of manliness which is independence from external direction. Whether that external direction come from service to an employer or service to the commons – society. Manliness, and masculinity have not been hybridized. It is not even as mature here as it is among the peacock strutters of the mediterranean — even if it is less ignorant, brutal and barbaric than that of the Arabs, and less familial and hierarchical than that of the Asians. And while we will certainly argue that masculinity has been overly feminized in much of the west, so much so that lower class males are returning to their individualistic migratory roots, the ethic of masculinity through service remains — for now. There are a few lessons to be learned from this that westerners might want to remember: 1) The church made what is unique about the west, and did so without monopoly powers of violence that are possessed by the current secular west. 2) The west is unique for artificial reasons. it is not a natural social order. It was forcibly constructed by wit and wisdom due to the weakness of the church. Whereas the paternalistic orders in the rest of the world were forcibly constructed by violence. 3) The west is unique because we were a small, weak, poor minority in the world who relied upon technology to compensate for our numbers, and property rights and the denial of centralized power to any and all. WE were lucky to inherit from the greeks the tool of reason which allows warriors to debate and science to develop. But it seems we are reversing our trend and denying our history. As for the Byzantines: without the church, I see no means of introducing chivalry into the civilization quickly, and we must hope that the commercial society eventually provides men with the incentives to build a high trust society of service like that of the west. Affections to all. Curt Doolittle

  • “WOMEN DO EVERYTHING HERE” : THE ABSENCE OF CHIVALRY IN BYZANTINES “I cook, I cl

    “WOMEN DO EVERYTHING HERE” : THE ABSENCE OF CHIVALRY IN BYZANTINES

    “I cook, I clean, I work, and my husband sits on the couch demanding beer.” – Nikka.

    Chivalry is yet another positive western value constructed by the church. I often write how the church granted women property rights, and forbid cousin-marriage out to six or eight degrees, in order to make it more difficult for the clans to maintain consolidated property holdings and associated financial and political power, while at the same time making it easier for the church itself to acquire lands.

    But the forcible introduction of the myth and philosophy of Chivalry is as important to the development of the unique western character, in suppressing paternalism and tribalism, as the forcible implementation of property rights by the church.

    Humans have existed in excess since the advent of domestication of plants and animals. The germanic princes and their retinues were not as barbaric and predatory as secular fantasies argue. However, the militarism of the Carolingians and Vikings, and the power of the states that they constructed in western Europe were impossible for the trading states of the south, and the church to resist. So, just as the church had used its power of literacy and legitimacy to manage the Christian monarchs, they used the crusades and the myth of chivalry, to direct the energies of these professional warriors to productive ends.

    This ethic of chivalry conveyed status upon those who served christendom. It codified service of others as masculine. It could be obtained through demonstrated action, and spiritual reflection, as well as daily posturing, rather than the more expensive requirement of land holding, and was therefore more widely available to retinues. It also provided a code of conduct that the aspring classes could imitate, making the ethics pervasive.

    The need for commoners to rent land from land holders, participate as infantry, and to demonstrate their capacity for honorable hard work, before marriage and reproduction were possible, reinforced this set of chivalrous values – allowing laborers and craftsmen to also adopt the chivalrous ethic, and to demonstrate their status signals through conformity to it. THe corresponding delay of childbirth and consequential inclusion of women into the work force, as well as their possession of rudimentary property rights, worked along with suppression of the breeding of the lower classes to create the european universalist and commercial character.

    This code of chivalric conduct does not exist here in the east among the men. Service is immasculine. It violates the primary principle of manliness which is independence from external direction. Whether that external direction come from service to an employer or service to the commons – society.

    Manliness, and masculinity have not been hybridized. It is not even as mature here as it is among the peacock strutters of the mediterranean — even if it is less ignorant, brutal and barbaric than that of the Arabs, and less familial and hierarchical than that of the Asians. And while we will certainly argue that masculinity has been overly feminized in much of the west, so much so that lower class males are returning to their individualistic migratory roots, the ethic of masculinity through service remains — for now.

    There are a few lessons to be learned from this that westerners might want to remember:

    1) The church made what is unique about the west, and did so without monopoly powers of violence that are possessed by the current secular west.

    2) The west is unique for artificial reasons. it is not a natural social order. It was forcibly constructed by wit and wisdom due to the weakness of the church. Whereas the paternalistic orders in the rest of the world were forcibly constructed by violence.

    3) The west is unique because we were a small, weak, poor minority in the world who relied upon technology to compensate for our numbers, and property rights and the denial of centralized power to any and all. WE were lucky to inherit from the greeks the tool of reason which allows warriors to debate and science to develop. But it seems we are reversing our trend and denying our history.

    As for the Byzantines: without the church, I see no means of introducing chivalry into the civilization quickly, and we must hope that the commercial society eventually provides men with the incentives to build a high trust society of service like that of the west.

    Affections to all.

    Curt Doolittle

    Source date (UTC): 2012-10-11 13:55:00 UTC

  • MEN AND WOMEN HAVE DIFFERENT REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGIES AND THE NUCLEAR FAMILY SOLV

    MEN AND WOMEN HAVE DIFFERENT REPRODUCTIVE STRATEGIES AND THE NUCLEAR FAMILY SOLVED THAT CONFLICT UNDER AGRARIANISM

    But we are seeing, especially in the lower classes, the degeneration of the nuclear family. As a consequence we are seeing polarity in the democratic political systems. Systems that were designed for nuclear families under the property rights system of agrarian production.

    There would never have been a progressive president without the female vote. All we are seeing in politics is the conflicting moral codes which are distributed disproportionately between the genders expressed as divisiveness. While we thing of this as a way of life, or a vision of the future, and to some degree it is, what the statistics show is that it’s little more than who is married or unmarried to whom at what age.

    The other thing it shows is that males are checking out of society as fast as single mothers are becoming politically active. Males will be the minority voters for the foreseeable future.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-09-01 01:29:00 UTC

  • PERILS OF PROLETARIAN OVERBREEDING Are you sure that women have a natural right

    http://scienceblog.com/56182/sea-life-facing-major-extinction-shock/THE PERILS OF PROLETARIAN OVERBREEDING

    Are you sure that women have a natural right to reproduce? Why?

    And why should we subsidize proletarian inbreeding and overbreeding?

    There is no environmental problem. There is an overbreeding problem.

    Not only is overbreeding dysgenic, but it’s environmentally catastrophic.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-08-21 09:49:00 UTC

  • Why Does Racism Exist And From Where Did It Originate?

    For a set of reasons:
    1) Mating selection is determined by both genetic markers (physical properties) and status signals (social properties).
    2) There are differences in desirability between the races due to different morphological attributes, despite the near universal human preference for a set of attributes. 
    3) There are different DISTRIBUTIONS of certain talents across the races. (linguistic intelligence, and spatial intelligence in particular.) This difference in distributions causes the development of different norms and preferences within groups, which in turn alters the complex signals we both observe and send.
    4) Because of this economy of signaling, Status Signals ‘within group’ are lower cost than status signals ‘across groups’. (Partly because we have just have higher familiarity within the group). Each of us is more likely to get more positive, and fewer negative status signals within group than across groups. And those signals are richer and more complex.
    5) These signals affect our relationships and the trust that can develop in them.  Where that trust is necessary for relaxed interaction, goal determination, task coordination, and risk taking.
    6) In the working and lower classes, external racial groups usually will work for less money or will displace them in their earning capacity and therefore also deprive them of status signals.  Racism is a means of forming political solidarity themselves, as well as with their elites, for the purpose of preserving their advantage – or gaining their advantage.
    7) In the middle and upper middle classes, racism is a vehicle for maintaining political power (law) and social power (norms) and assets (their own accumulated status signals) for themselves and their groups.

    This set of facts is demonstrated by our demonstrated universal preference to work (largely) and live (largely) with people who share our same ethnicity and social class. The data illustrates that preference over and over again.  In simple terms, we are ‘judged’ more easily, and therefore included more easily among those with whom we share physical, intuitive, conceptual, and habitual similarities. However, at the extremes, the very successful and prosperous tend to form a worldwide-class and the lower classes seek mates more opportunistically, and there are social signaling benefits to certain racial groups (a mating between a below average white woman and an above average black man may increase the social standing and quality of mates of both. So the racial norm is a majority-middle preference. 

    While there is a noticeable rise in the inbreeding going on between asians and whites,  women still seem to demonstrate an extraordinary preference for men within their race (men are less discriminating) of upwards of 80%.  But this preferences is a middle class statistic obtained from dating sites. And it becomes very hard to make the same statements about the lower classes outside of what’s stated in the census (about 15% intermarriage).  The reason is that some races are pretty indistinct (black/hispanic) because of high interbreeding already.

    I hope this was helpful. This is only a sketch of a complex topic. But it’s enough of a trail of bread crumbs that it might help answer your question.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-does-racism-exist-and-from-where-did-it-originate

  • the hormonal influence of ovulation, women delude themselves into thinking that

    http://gizmo.do/h4Yq”Under the hormonal influence of ovulation, women delude themselves into thinking that the sexy bad boys will become devoted partners and better dads. When looking at the sexy cad through ovulation goggles, Mr. Wrong looked exactly like Mr. Right.”

    Unfortunately, men are wearing testosterone goggles all the time. And so ‘crazy’ is a lot harder to resist. Except that ‘crazy’ doesn’t go away with motherhood. It expands exponentially to fill all available space. sigh.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-15 18:21:00 UTC

  • Pew Research: Republicans are More Informed And Open Minded Than Democrats

    (From Pew Research.) If Republicans skew male, and Democrats skew female, and men accumulate more economic and political knowledge than women, and women have fewer and less diverse friends than men, then isn’t the fact that Republicans are better informed and more open minded than Democrats simply an artifact of the distribution of men and women between the parties? The classical liberal system was designed to create separate houses for different classes of males. It has not survived the addition of females to the electorate. We should not have eliminated the class division of houses, we should have added to it. Then we could compromise rather than conduct ideological warfare, class warfare, and gender warfare. And the results of these polls would be obvious.

  • MUCH TROUBLE CAN I GET INTO WITH THIS POSTING? 🙂 (I BET IT’S A LOT.) If Republi

    http://times247.com/articles/pew-republicans-better-informed-more-empatheticHOW MUCH TROUBLE CAN I GET INTO WITH THIS POSTING? 🙂 (I BET IT’S A LOT.)

    If Republicans skew male, and Democrats skew female, and men accumulate more economic and political knowledge than women, and women have fewer and less diverse friends than men, then isn’t the fact that Republicans are better informed and more open minded than Democrats simply an artifact of the distribution of men and women between the parties?

    The classical liberal system was designed to create separate houses for different classes of males. It has not survived the addition of females to the electorate. We should not have eliminated the class division of houses, we should have added to it. Then we could compromise rather than conduct ideological warfare, class warfare, and gender warfare.

    And the results of these polls would be obvious.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-23 10:07:00 UTC

  • NOT A CHANGE IN WOMEN, IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID We need to get these men working.

    http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/young-women-are-more-career-driven-than-men-now/IT’S NOT A CHANGE IN WOMEN, IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID

    We need to get these men working. That’s what the numbers say.

    The survey results are an aggregate numerical effect, not one that belies any change in male preferences or behavior.

    Factors:

    a) wider distribution of male abilities than female abilities means the lower part of society is male, plus males are disproportionately affected by the ongoing ‘Man-recession’.

    b) fewer men going to college

    c) lower male workforce participation rate

    d) ongoing effect of the recession

    e) the tendency of men to state what is possible as a preference.

    f) the fact that males mentally mature more slowly due to how we enforce education today.

    Basically:

    1) the lower quintiles of males affect the aggregates.

    2) The abandonment of the workforce by increasing numbers of men below 30 and above 52.

    3) The remaining mailes can’t compensate for the other two groups.

    We are not going to have the wonderful world everyone imagined post 1950. The lower classes are abandoning the institutions that made us a ‘society’. Marriage, and the nuclear family will be signals of wealth. And wealth is uncommon. Males will do here, what they have done in the rest of the world when they are no longer bound by marriage.

    That’s what they’re doing. That’s what we’re seeing. It’s just data.

    Does it matter?

    Unemployed disenfranchised women don’t really matter to a polity. Unemployed disenfranchised men create an infinite number of problems. Not the least of which is that they’re a precondition for revolution.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-04-20 07:37:00 UTC