Counter-Currents
2,237 words 
Think of the last time you were out and you saw a clean, kempt, and attractive straight white couple under thirty years old with children–the parents have no tattoos, are polite, eschew cursing or acting obscene in public, are of healthy weight, and dressed appropriately? And the children also acted and dressed as they should in public. In other words, a family one would encounter in a pre-1950s America.
Really think about it. Unless you live in an exclusively white rural small town or a posh upper middle-class area, I would bet money you’d have difficulty recalling the last time you saw a such a family. Sure, being the white nationalist as I assume that you are, you would naturally place blame of the dearth of good white families on the influx of illegal and legal nonwhite immigration taking jobs from our men or feminism’s deleterious effect of white women.
On the contrary, I propose the primary reason is the failure of generation X and the boomer generation in raising strong, capable and stoic men. This colossal failure began primarily in the 1980s and early 1990s when younger boomers and gen-Xers had children (the millennial generation). This is a pandemic of which the consequences have shown to be catastrophic and I don’t think we have seen the worst of its destructive nature.
I for one am a direct result of this failure of fatherhood. My childhood was not a unique one for a millennial. I was an only child of a mother who divorced my father (who was an addict and alcoholic) when I was 3. She remarried to a soft, ineffectual man soon after the divorce (he couldn’t have children of his own). He has been (and still is) a doormat to my mother for their entire marriage. To call him a father is an insult to the institution of fatherhood. I did and still hold a strong contempt for who he is. He was no father figure to me.
Despite my middle-class cushy upbringing, I felt like I was missing something fundamental in my life. Later in my adulthood I realized what it was—guidance, advice, and parental bonding. I was treated like a piece of furniture in my childhood house. Don’t get me wrong, I was provided all that I required and not maltreated but that is as far as a relationship I had with either of my parents. I was taught nothing when it came to home and car maintenance, finances, or general adult obligations. And my parents, in so doing this, gave me little to no responsibilities which in turn engendered a prolonged immaturity in me. What’s more is my parents’ idea of a deep conversation was discussing our favorite sportsball team. Needless to say, no bond was ever formed between them and me. By the time I was to graduate high school, my parents’ genius advice when I asked them what I should do was to go to college. Eight years and thousands of dollars later, I had a useless history degree and a job as a pharmacy technician–not exactly a career in which I could support a family. Moreover, my mother never encouraged me to get married or have children. In fact, the topics of marriage and children were never discussed in my childhood home. My mother just nagged at me to get a better job while offering no constructive advice. A history degree gets one only so far, thus, my career opportunities were very limited. To say the least, I had to live with my parents until about the age of 25 until I moved in with my fiancé and made the mistake of marrying a career girl who didn’t want children.
Another five years went by and nothing much had changed. I was working a meaningless service job and was substitute teaching in public schools on the side. My life plan (to which I was only partially dedicated) was to earn my doctorate and teach at the university level. There was a silver lining, however, which would come in handy later when my primary plan backfired: I had acquired my welding certification as a backup. By the age of thirty, I was about to get a divorce, still somewhat immature, still at times relying on my parents financially, still at the meaningless service job—I was rudderless, and apathetic to life.
It wasn’t until I reached the age of thirty-one when I began to take initiative. I became black-pilled (after a few years of imbibing red-pilled content), attained self-knowledge, began working on many issues and bad habits I accrued from childhood, and abandoned my futile quest for a master’s degree for a career in machining and industrial maintenance. I am now thirty-eight, a born-again Christian, married again with two boys and very happy with my life. My family and I live humbly in a small rural home—it’s a nice quiet life.
I feel lucky. I am one of the few men from my generation who have achieved some semblance of a traditional Western style life–married to a conservative wife who stays at home with our children in a Christian, drug-free, and violence-free household. There are hordes of white males however throughout the Western world who aren’t as lucky; they are in the primes of their lives but remain ineffectual, directionless, and lack motivation. They all seem to be addicted to something (porn, drugs, food, video games) in the pursuit of filling a hole in their souls, lost in this wicked communo-capitalist, ethnically diverse society.
I see them everywhere, these directionless young men. I see them alone walking down the street in the middle of the day or behind the counter of a fast-food restaurant. Invariably they are either overweight or have a neck beard—or both. They look and sound defeated. It is a pathetic sight: a grown man without a family and working a job a teenager should have.
Some pursue the route of persistent partying or drugs. Some spend countless hours in front of screens playing video games. Some trade a life of socializing in the real world with socializing exclusively on the Internet. The ones who manage to find a woman rarely marry them. And when they do, they get financially raped by the family courts when it inevitably ends in divorce. And the women with whom these men enter into a relationship are slovenly, almost always have tattoos, and, if they made the poor decision to get a degree, have been indoctrinated by universities into being feminists and communists. If children are produced from these relationships, they often turn out worse than their parents, exacerbating the dysgenic problem in the white race.
In my intimate and professional milieus, I know some of these types of men. One is the son of a former supervisor of mine. We shall call him David. David is a tall, handsome thirty-three-year-old. He is from a good pedigree. His grandfather was a former college athlete, famous in this part of my state. David had everything going for him when he left high school. Now, however, (in a rebellious act towards his imperious father, in my opinion), he works in a pizza shop, is twenty pounds overweight, has a neck beard and is dating a “strong and independent” Marxist feminist school teacher who has sleeve tattoos and doesn’t want children. A far cry from the man who he should have been.
Another man I know, we’ll call him Adam; he is a coworker of mine and is much more of a lost cause than David. He seemed to have pathologized to a major degree the failures of his parents and trauma from school bullies. I believe he was coddled by his mother while being severely and relentlessly criticized by his father. This guy, who is thirty-five and severely overweight, is a virgin, a white knight, a complainer and has temper tantrums like a child. He lives alone in his dead grandmother’s home, has never had a girlfriend, and still goes on vacations with his parents. Much to my chagrin, he has confessed to me his porn addiction, his past suicidal ideations, his slovenly lifestyle, the hoarder-like condition of his house and other horrific aspects of his life. For God’s sake, this man owns over two-hundred movies in DVD format and subscribes to every streaming platform. He is a pop culture junkie. What’s more, is that he has created this narrative in his head wherein he is doing well for himself despite his pathologies and his inability to attract a mate. Also, in situations where he fails, he constructs excuses that make him to be faultless and the victim. When confronted about his addictions and poor lifestyle, he expertly explains them away.
It’s not as if he didn’t have potential—he’s tall, has a large manly frame, possesses a good memory and is overall a decently smart individual. But he is too far gone. I have encouraged him to lift weights and speak to women; I have shamed his white knight behavior; I have tried to point out the destructive nature of his addictions. It is no use. The man is lost in his vices and the specious paradigm which he has created for himself. It’s a pathetic situation.
And these are just a few examples. I know a half a dozen more men who are in worse vicissitudes than the two men I mentioned previous. Divorce, drug abuse, porn addiction, dating slovenly single mothers, major character flaws, no motivation: these plague the generation of men who are supposed to be the cream of the crop of our society and our people—our country’s inheritors and stewards of our traditions and way of life. We all know of the divorce epidemic which began in the 1970s and raged in the 1980s and 1990s. This easily explains the ineffectual nature of many of our millennial men. But the two examples above—Adam and David—their parents are still together. They had their fathers in their lives throughout childhood. So, what happened?
Dereliction of duty, that is what happened. Boomer men completely dropped the ball when it came to preparing the next generation. Case after case, these boomer men prioritized careers and their comfort over all else. Old boomers these days complain of the incompetence of millennials. Well, it was the failure to teach their sons any skills which led to their incompetence. Leadership, assertiveness, problem solving, stoicism are just a few of the qualities which all men should have and which boomer fathers failed to transmit to their sons. They were too busy working those fifteen-hour days, glorifying the grind of working hard, when in all actuality they spent most of their time drinking coffee in break-rooms instead of going home to their families–refusing to be the leaders their families required.
David and Adam have fathers who are masters of their fields and, like I said above, were (and still are) present in their lives. Both fathers are in industrial maintenance and possess many useful skills in all areas of their disciplines. Did they pass down their knowledge and expertise to their sons? Not at all. Not even an attempt. Neither David nor Adam possesses these skills. They don’t even know the basics—their fathers neglected to instruct them even on the fundamentals of their respective disciplines.
To those millennial men out there like Adam and David, I feel your pain. We never stood a chance. We were raised as latchkey kids as our parents prioritized their career. Our knowledge of the world came from our liberal female public school teachers and Jewish-centric television. Then we were pushed into the real world of adulthood, expected to maintain a complex infrastructure. Our parents forgot about us. And to make matters worse, we are continuously the object of ire and jokes from the media and older generations for our life’s follies. This is not a joke. What is at stake is our lives and the future of the Western civilization. The boomers treated their duty to be good fathers as trivial at best.
I am not sure what the solution to this is. In my experiences, people rarely change. Once someone reaches the ages of late teens to mid-twenties, their neuroplasticity wanes and the person they are, they will remain for the remainder of their lives. And for young white men to drastically alter their state of mind and to learn skills (both life and career) necessary to be the leaders our people need, is a virtual impossibility. What we have is what we have. I don’t think there is a short-term solution. Unfortunately, the next two generations will be worse. There are already exponentially increasing rates of mental disorders (homosexuality and transgenderism included) of those under eighteen years of age. Then if you include the fact that they will be more incompetent in all life skills, more indoctrinated than their parents, more addicted to media, and more morally subjective than their predecessors, the future will undoubtedly be very bleak. People of European descent have a long road ahead of them. It will be a harsh and violent world in the coming future. I just hope the few of us left who are aware of the endogenous and exogenous threats against our people can secure a foundation upon which our progeny is able to build a strong Christian and western-centric future.
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104 comments
I resonated very personally with this article, speaking as a man who also had to get to 30 before learning to take responsibility for myself. Our generation was given endless freedom to explore our personalities and identities through more entertainment and pop culture than any before us. Then you realize it was all a complete distraction from the things you want in your life to be meaningful and genuine.
I agree. Well said. Thanks for the read
“Dereliction of duty”. Spot on. A good, candid piece. I never had children because I knew what a bad father I would make. Also, I came from what the English used to call a “broken home”, and you carry that for the rest of your life like a back-pack full of rocks. Bravo.
Thank you Mark
The solution is to return to traditions.
It’s odd, isn’t it, that we have to “return to traditions”? They seem exposed as weak enough to have let us go in the first place.
The West began to deviate already at the dawn of the Renaissance. I’m reading Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola and hoping for a realistic solution.
Growing up in a home headed by a single, twice divorced, feminist Boomer mom and not having a real relationship with my dad until I was in my late teens, this hits too close to home.
It’s difficult seeing my mom squander the very substantial inheritance she received from her parents on vacations and home renovations and openly saying “my kids know they won’t get anything when I die”
All of my siblings bear the scars of this terrible mindset, and most have passed the same traits on to their kids. My brother’s daughter said to his face “your bloodline dies with me” because she wants a career above all else.
Wow, how awful. Feminism has destroyed our women.
That’s how the boomer mindset is. I know a boomer who said his only son won’t get a dime of his money because he earned his for himself and his wife. That’s how bloodlines die.
Feminism also birthed standpoint epistemology, the great curse of our age.
What is standpoint epistemology?
SE is (roughly) an adaptation of experience and truth which privileges the subjective rather than the objective world for its validity. It leads to statements such as “her truth” and so on. It’s pretty ruinous.
Your brother needs to negate her awfulness by continuing to reproduce.
Your brother’s daughter could possibly regret that decision when she is in middle age and won’t be able to get pregnant. As far as her concentrating on a career, she will endure a lot of stress and ill will in the business and corporate world.
This generation of maidens have grown up in a culture & especially a school environment which teaches them far more about sex & birth control than home economics, let alone the life satisfaction to be gained from having children. The refrain of “we need more women in STEM” coopts their desire to help others & an instilled desire for power & upending the patriarchy gives them a sense of mission. For the bright child the glittering career, for which she need only walk over the bodies of the White boys who stumbled & drowned in the mud, provides an alluring mirage of wellbeing.
It’s very hard work for a father to try to break into this sort of self-referential worldview once it is established.
Pretty discouraging and probably true. Almost wish I hadn’t read it.
Years ago I met and dated lots of single mothers and I noticed their children, mostly boys it seemed, were starved for male attention. They would show me their model planes and other things they did and just hang around and want to talk with me. Children, especially boys, have lots of energy and doing manly things with men is a healthy, productive outlet for that energy. Children really do need fathers, feminism to the contrary notwithstanding. I’m not sure whether daughters or sons need them most. Clearly both sons and daughters take away different things from good fathers. Young men derive more strength of character and confidence and young girls less need of promiscuity…or so I’ve read.
The question is, what do we do now? Churches arguably are one solution, at least for some people. The author seems to have found the answer to important questions in his church, his Christian family and community. I’m not a Christian (any more) but I understand its appeal and answers to many questions that are important to people.
What’s the other solution? White racial consciousness is part of it. It seems to be rising. More are speaking out explicitly in favor of “whiteness.” Is there still enough time for us to save ourselves? Only time will tell.
I should probably read this article a second time before posting this comment, but I’ve already written it and here goes.
“Years ago I met and dated lots of single mothers and I noticed their children, mostly boys it seemed, were starved for male attention.”
These children would have been better off if their mother had moved back in with her parents so that at least her kids would have experienced knowing a committed/loyal & cooperative relationship between their grandmother & grandfather.
Imagine the perspective of the kids– their mom already split from their own father, & now she’s introducing them to her adult male love interests. She’s devoting her time & attention toward cultivating a relationship with… her latest prospect, & not spending her time, energy & resources focused on them.
Do these little kids wonder: Could this man potentially be our new father? Could our mom marry this man? Is every dating break-up of their mothers another emotional loss for them? Must they be pulled along in their mother’s high-drama dating-life?
A lot of the time they’ll be grossed out that someone’s sleeping with Mom. This is particularly so if she has a revolving bedroom door going on.
“I am now thirty-eight, a born-again Christian, married again with two boys and very happy with my life. My family and I live humbly in a small rural home—it’s a nice quiet life.”
It’s nice to hear that the author feels content with the family life he was able to cultivate.
Personally, I’ve found that Methodist & Presbyterian Church leadership have worked hard to undermine my family in various ways. Just one example: my husband would take our sons to church on Sunday, & would get reprimanded by the cucked White male pastor for his remark to one of our sons, “Wow, son, did you comb your hair with chopsticks this morning? (A formal meeting incl. our minor son was actually called by the pastor to determine whether my son was being bullied by his dad at home. ?!)
I had no problem with my husband taking our sons to church to gain knowledge of some classic Bible stories, and to perhaps learn the words to historic & popular hymns. But, the Christian (all-White + liberal) church could not cease their misguided, diversity & gay glorifying, social justice activism. Fortunately, during covid they recorded all their Sunday sermons & put them on youtube. I made responses to many. I felt it was my personal responsibility to dissect all the suicidal/genocidal Israel-First social brainwashing. (My kids tried to assure me that they were not being brainwashed, because they were never paying attention to the sermons in the first place.)
While the author suggests, “fathers have failed millennials”, I’d say that mothers bear as much responsibility. They should have chosen better men to make babies with. In my opinion, our greatest obligation is to our minor kids. They never asked to be born. We made that decision, and they are totally dependent on our guidance.
Awesome. It’s good to have a right wing women’s perspective. One rarely hears one because so many modern white women are feminists. And yes, in my 20s I attended a Methodist church briefly and it was very liberal. Unfortunately, churches in the West have been infiltrated by this semitic mind virus.
A lot of different denominations have jumped on the social justice bandwagon. This includes denominations that have been traditionally conservative such as Baptists and Catholics. If BLM and Antifa were to burn their churches, they would probably excuse it because of racism.
“This includes denominations that have been traditionally conservative such as Baptists and Catholics.”
I know lots about Catholicism, not so much about the Baptist teachings. Catholics have been racially liberal for a very long time. They do believe in keeping marriages together, & in using no artificial contraception, which is conservative. My heavily Catholic birth state of Maryland, was even the first in the U.S. to legislate (back in 1973) that legal marriage can occur between only 1 man & 1 woman. And Catholic push back was what spearheaded the Hayes (anti- degeneracy) Code for Hollywood film productions from 1934 to 1968.
Unfortunately though, there were many Catholics who supported “civil rights”, affirmative action, discontinued freedom of association, etc.
This is a hot topic in my household right now because my STEM son in college, who’s home for Spring Break, has just announced to me that he’s decided to convert to Catholicism. I’ve been trying my best to talk him out of it. While it’s handy to be familiar with Christian cultural mythology as a minor child, I believe it’s only very rarely beneficial to adults. In my not-so-humble opinion, it’s a net negative for Whites in diverse areas.
I sympathize with your predicament. I’m not religious myself. I know that some counter-currents readers are Christian though, so I will try to be diplomatic about this. It’s the negative aspects of some of the dogma and how it’s weaponized against whites that I don’t like. This is being used against whites in Europe with Muslim immigration. It’s used against whites in North America with third world immigration. In other words, too many people in the clergy have misplaced compassion and it’s taking a negative tole on our race. Quite a few priests are practically radical leftists. American Renaissance had an article written by a teacher in a private catholic high school. It’s a few years old, but I’m sure you can find it on that website if you look hard enough. Anyway, the teacher talks about how the sermons are mainly about racism and social justice. She also talks about the fact that they admitted a lot of black, non-Catholic, athletes to improve the basketball team and the negative aspects that it’s had on the school. You may want to point out some of the scandals the church has been involved in over the years. I hope that you can convince him to see things clearly.
I found it. Great suggestion! I attended private Catholic schools from 1976-1988, & completely concur w/ the author! Every day was a battle, because although I’d memorized the Baltimore Catechism, I disagreed w/ the notion of original sin & transubstantiation. [Meanwhile, all the black students, (the only non-Catholics) weren’t required to attend religion classes or Friday masses, yet no White kids could opt out. ] Interesting side note: The only time in 12 years I heard any mention whatsoever of Holohoax/Anne Frank was from these non-Catholic black students!
How Blacks Changed Our [Catholic] School by George Holiday, American Renaissance, December 23, 2016 https://www.amren.com/features/2016/12/blacks-changed-school/
Not all Catholics are the same, as I mentioned to you in another thread, if your son chooses a conservative parish (preferably one that practices the traditional Latin Mass), chances are he’ll be surrounded by a lot of right wing people that share our sensibilities. The probability of this will be especially high if the parish has a lot of young people.
I was raised in an evangelical household and drifted away during college. When I started having children of my own (I have 4 now), I felt it was important to raise my children in a morally grounded community and chose to convert to Catholicism. I appreciate the formality of high church and to me Catholicism is the most connected to pre-Christian European traditions. Most of the protestant denominations stripped away the “pagan” elements to return to a more Bible-based (i.e. Hebrew) interpretation.
I know a lot of people in our circles despise Christianity but where else are you going to find a morally centered community in the real world? Most Europeans have been Christians for a thousand plus years. It’s not something that can be easily discarded. We can’t raise families on islands as individuals. If you want instill traditional family values, increase the probability that they’ll marry likeminded people and have children, what are the realistic alternatives for white people in the here and now?
4 kids? Very impressive! I really appreciate your thoughts & comments on the matter.
“Re: Catholicism is the most connected to pre-Christian European traditions. Most of the protestant denominations stripped away the “pagan” elements to return to a more Bible-based (i.e. Hebrew) interpretation.”
This is a really good point. Amazingly, there is 1 Latin mass service in the state just 10 miles away from his college. It’s highly unlikely to be packed to the gills with ESL Hispanics. : ) Ironically, he’s my 1 son who didn’t study Latin for his foreign language requirement during high school.
I know m-a-n-y Protestants are put off by all the rituals (drinking the actual blood of Jesus), superstitions, statues, & general gore (saints’ bones laid into the altars, etc.) of Roman Catholicism. But it is a community with very strong culture (even if you’re just a cafeteria Catholic). & If you’re in need an exorcism, they literally wrote the book on the subject.
I feel much less worried now Crux, thank you!
A lot of Ignatius Reillys out there I assume. This article is a tad on the whiney side. We were latchkey kids too. Sometimes you just have to figure it out on your own. Yes we were given the liberal bullshit education in school. Everyone did. You just have to pick yourself up by the boot straps and make your own way.
The problem is that you may not know what you’re missing until it’s too late to do much about it…
I am also a late bloomer with an aloof father—but I am a Boomer (1955 model). This trend really started after WW II. Our fathers came back from the war and handed us over to the “Jewish-centric media” and the leftist schools. While many fathers had been aloof in the past, working long hours and drinking heavily, society and its institutions were built to ensure boys became men, even those without a healthy male figure in their lives.
Of course, things are worse today—it is the culmination of several generations of increased feminization and cluelessness. But so many trends that contribute to today’s male fecklessness—higher divorce rates, hollow corporate culture, rootless suburbanization, left-wing thinking, fiminism, and so on—were happening in the 1950s and 60s while the Boomers were still in their formative years. The culture was being hollowed out since the 1920s, with such innovations as the switch from the wonderful culture-laden McGuffey Readers to the culture-free, empty Elson Readers (See Dick cuck). The West has been struggling for a long time.
Yours is an outstanding comment. There is good and bad in every generation, and the West has been in decline, brick by brick (probably the wrong metaphor!), for a very long time. The paleoconservative Thomas Fleming, from his Christocentric but still overall exceptionally erudite perspective, traced the roots of the West’s current difficulties all the way to the Renaissance, and some have gone as far back as the medieval nominalists. As with the initial decision regarding when to commence nearly any work of history, the “start date” for inquiring into the origins of a problem will usually be somewhat arbitrary.
That said, however, I think the tottering state of so many of today’s youth, along with many adults going all the way up to age 70 (!), really has its origin, like so much else, in the upheaval known as The Sixties. That was the radical decade that not only obviously racially ruined the West, but also destroyed those “traditional moral [and family] values” that had become traditional precisely because they were evolutionarily successful: those persons and societies who adopted them survived, thrived, and expanded. Even so, many people found their individual ways through the wreckage, some due to still-good parenting, others, superior genetics. Perhaps their descendants will one day evolve into a new elite, which will then lead to a new period of Occidental superiority and expansion.
I think some more could be added to this article. Many kids grew up being raised by single mothers who would demonize their ex-husbands for not paying child support. The fact that housing is more expensive than it’s ever been partially explains why many people are still living at home. Now automobiles are more expensive as well. The deindustrialization of America made all of this worse by moving good paying factory jobs out of the U.S. The American public was sold a lie that all you need to succeed is a college degree regardless of what degree you obtain. Another thing that I think needs to be examined is the role entertainment plays in this. I’m not talking about porn, that is a separate issue. You can have instant access to movies, games, etc. on your phone. Also, a lot of people socialize on social media. In the past there were only three channels, if you wanted to see a movie, you only had a limited time to see it because it would only be in the theatre for a few weeks. Needless to say, the internet wasn’t there. People didn’t have access to instant entertainment. People had to interact more, socialize more, and make friends. They didn’t find someone to date online. Some of F. Roger Devlin’s articles are good at explaining what is going on with the dating now. Women’s hypergamous nature excludes most men in the dating market and this is apparent on online dating apps. In the past men had to approach women and risk rejection. I’ve wondered what would happen in a grid down situation if people didn’t have access to social media and instant entertainment, even temporally. This is an issue that has a lot of different contributing factors.
I agree with you that the ‘still living at home’ phenomenon is mostly due to steep housing costs. It is not a reflection on the younger generation’s lack of competence. Many would prefer to have a place of their own if they could. Economics are bringing people back to living in one multi-generational home, as many people lived in past generations. The economics of our society are beyond the control of anyone who isn’t rich.
The one thing that is within control of most people is grooming and appearance. I can’t believe the amount of tattoos, piercings, neckbeards, and slovenly clothes I see on a regular basis. I am clean shaven, have a traditional masculine haircut and dress neatly and conservatively. I feel like I’m from another society or culture. I refuse to go with the degenerate flow.
Im with you. I feel out of place when going out. People have no decorum or self respect anymore. What’s more is that I loathe taking my boys out in public. I don’t want to expose them to the degenerates with sleeve and face tattoos or those who venture out of their homes in their pajamas. Not to mention the insane amounts of obese people.
I will never understand why people get tattoos on their face or an excessive number of tattoos for that matter. Piercings, especially an excessive amount of them, are another thing that contributes to a bad appearance. If I were going to pick the most extreme example, it would be tongue piercings.
White flight is ongoing phenomenon due to black criminality. Whites have had to pay higher housing costs just to live in safe neighborhoods. Before the civil rights era, this wasn’t much of a problem. Quite often, the house that you inherited from your parents is now in a bad neighborhood. As far as dressing conservativley and having a traditional haircut, there are still some of us that adhere to those traditional standards. You are not alone.
“They were too busy working those fifteen-hour days, glorifying the grind of working hard” Well how else are they gonna earn all that money they won’t be leaving you?
What is wrong with owning DVDs? Christianity is the problem, not the solution! 🥱
Nothing really wrong with it. I have a decent collection myself. I think what the author is trying to convey is an unhealthy obsession with pop culture and media at the expense of healthy and constructive hobbies and building a family etc. A recent article here made the same case for sportsball. It can be good but the obsession can go too far.
The DVD comment, like several others in the article, is typical of the pretentions to asceticism you see from many conservative Christians. Many on the right like to virtue signal about just how disconnected from consumerism and pop culture they are. There are valid reasons to advocate that, but the problem is that while it might impress some true believers, it alienates anyone who has any vestige of “normie” left in them. It makes the Right look like misanthropic prudes obsessed with rules that extend from healthy/sensible (anti-drug use) to marmish micromanagement (anti-DVD, anti-video game). This is a political loser strategically and one of the major reasons why I’d like to see WN become more of a single issue movement decoupling itself from the right wing.
I think owning 200 DVDs of films is stupid. I used to own them, my husband as well. I threw them out. We don’t even have a DVD player anymore. But the bigger point is why hoard that stuff? To watch it another time? Do you have that much time to watch some made up Jewish shit again and again? Are you you that bored? Do you need to be entertained? By the same thing again? By a classic? GTFO. I honestly find this disgusting and mind you I used to be a film-watcher and cinema-goer and all that time wasted on made up shit and literal mind-control. Why try to fit in with the normies? What’s the point? You have no other shallow thing to talk about beside a Netflix show? That’s really pathetic.
Sorry
To the author: great article. Stroke a chord with me – literally me and my husband’s as well. Very detached parenting and obviously no wholesome relationship between us and zero comprehension and empathy. Trying not to repeat this mistake with our kids.
I’ve said it in a reply to someone else – good article, author. It should serve as a cautionary tale to learn from our parents’ mistakes and not hope that things will just work themselves out like in Jewish romcoms or family movies. That “love conquers all” etc. You have to be active and be interested in your kid.
My example is that my parents decided to uproot us and move to an English-speaking country (us being from Eastern Europe) when I was twelve. And then a year later, my mum left my dad cos…he was just an asshole… But I mean, now looking back on it, he was always an asshole, you sort of suck it up and try to work it out. For the sake of the family. But she had money now from little jobs she did so no more needing my dad. Basically our little family dissolved; no deep conversations were had with the children who didn’t have friends or other family around… No skills or knowledge was passed on
Obviously being foreigners, speaking broken English, my parents lost most of respect in our eyes…so all the parenting was left to MTV (90s) and Jewish television. No skills or life know-how was passed on, only criticism.
Your experience responded a lot with me
My husband had a different story, but his dad was also doing no-fucks- given parenting: older father, widower, remarried after my husband’s mum had been dead for 1 year … Many such cases. And I look around, and we’re in Argentina btw… Lots of our friends with loser parents… Absent or alcoholics or womanisers
Christ is literally the way. Otherwise what’s the point of living if you’re not trying to get into heaven? Thank you Jesus, for revealing yourself.
Good stuff . Sorry for repeating myself, friend.
Christian?! Hahahahahaha
I’m sure Greg Johnson loves all the revenue to this site that he loses by Christians who unsubscribe after being shat upon in the comments.
The revenue or the number of persons who unsubscribe cannot be very large or he would delete the many comments critical of Christianity on this website. If this site ever becomes a bully pulpit for Christianity I will quit it in a heartbeat. Christianity needs a little criticism now-and-then, since it has been such an active force in the doom that we are slouching towards! 😎
Are you even qualified to judge the reality of their lives?
Well, just when the Boomers were coming of age, inflation began to sap a working man’s wages. Big Time. This meant that one had to work harder and harder to put groceries on the table and keep a roof over the head. Wages have not kept up with inflation since 1968.
At best, most Boomers have a home that they managed to pay off, which probably seems substantial because housing is now priced so absurdly high. And if you move Gramps into the nursing home, get ready to really pay the piper.
This idea of big inheritances that were somehow lost because of the fecklessness of the Boomers is nonsense. What class are you speaking to here?
My Dad did a good job nursing my Mother back to health when she had cancer, and also me when I got hit by a car and nearly killed. He was not an absentee anything. They are both still alive, and he is only mildly befuddled now ─ born into the Silent Generation just before WWII. They live extremely frugally and will have already spent most of their money on family once they pass. But none of the earlier generations had any estates to pass on to Dad.
My Grandpa had an eighth-grade education, and the most money he ever made was building small (by today’s standards) homes during the postwar housing boom. He was able to help my Dad and Uncle go to the University, and they were the first generation to get a college degree (degrees which were actually worth something in those days).
My experience is that kids today are not really very interested in paying attention and learning anything. They would be the last ones to accept the idea of any kind of mentorship, however important it might be.
For example, Amateur Radio operators have tried for years to get youth interested in electronics and their radio hobby, almost always without success. I am a Lifetime member of the American Radio Relay League, whose median age is 68, which makes me a youngster in the hobby.
There are still some computer geeks ─ a different breed of cat to the radio electronics nerd, for sure ─ but mostly they are just interested in video games or whatever coding is necessary to keep the elf-avatars from crashing. The same is generally true of other hobbies, even perhaps something a little less nerdy, like hunting, shooting, or fishing.
My Dad did not have too many relatable hobbies. When he was not working, he was doing some kind of Church work ─ and hopefully I did not get dragged along into too many of those endeavors, but sometimes I was not so lucky. “We are going into the forest to gather firewood to sell for the Church food drive, so be rested up first thing Saturday morning.” (I used to stay up late to watch the creature-feature on Friday nights, and the last thing that I wanted to do was get roped into another Church service project on my day off.)
Neither my Dad nor I were interested in sportsball. He took me to a Church baseball game once as a boy, and we were both so bored that we agreed not to ever do it again.
We did go on quite a few family outings which were a lot of fun. My Grandpa had some patented mining claims in Colorado that he had acquired over the years as an amateur prospector ─ nothing to get rich on, but panning for gold and camping made for quite a few bonding memories, and sometimes involved fun for the whole family.
I sympathize, however. In my heyday there were many institutions that helped train boys into becoming men. The Boy Scouts. I missed Eagle Scout by one merit badge but that was my own fault. I had a lot of distractions going on just before turning 18.
Also as a teenager, I made it to cadet officer in the Civil Air Patrol and learned lots of stuff like Search & Rescue, old school navigation, and basic flight training. You could also meet a lot of comely girls who were the daughters of high-ranking military officers at some of these events. I wish that I had pursued more dates along those lines.
The highlight of my experience in the CAP was when we boarded a C-130 Hercules military cargo turboprop at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho and visited NASA’s Mission Control in Houston, Texas in the mid-1970s.
I was being groomed to go to either the Air Force Academy or to West Point, but my Dad was pretty anti-military after working for so many Defense contractors, and he was not too supporting of my doing anything else with my life but going to a Church school and on to a two-year Church mission ─ the latter of which I refused to do since I’m not a believer.
My nephew, however, had a Stepdad who was prior military service, and so he was encouraged to go to the Naval Academy, and he has done well as an officer who served on a nuclear submarine, and he also has a nice family (six kids or so). He is now studying to be a physical therapy doctor or something like that.
This is part of what I mean by not getting serious enough about personal career goals or using the mentoring that might be available, which may or may not come from your own parents.
Another institution worth mentioning is the Army, and the military should not be overlooked. In my day they were not activating National Guard and Reserve units like they did later to go fight Junior Bush’s imperial campaigns in the Middle East, which were arguably not bolstering the actual security of the United States, given that the 9/11 nonsense could have been prevented with secure borders and more vigilant immigration policies.
In any case, I never encouraged anyone to enlist out of patriotic fervor led by CNN or Fox News. But if I had it to do over again, I would have taken advantage of more opportunities provided by Uncle Sam than I did.
I ultimately got a Ham Radio License and used all that military and college electronics training to go into Broadcast Engineering. It was a good job ─ and with lots of cute but overworked TV girls to date, called the “talent” in the industry. I never had any talent, but income-wise and despite lots of overtime, being a Radio & TV Engineer never came close to what income my Dad was pulling in as an Aerospace and Nuclear Engineer straight out of college in 1960.
When I got bored with Telecommunications and Broadcast Engineering, I got a degree in History and pursued that hobby. Unless you plan to teach at the University level, that ain’t much of a living. I’ve worked my share of convenience stores and Video rental shops ─ remember those?
With a BA in History, it will be hard to even get into the door at the Public Library ─ but they usually take volunteers to shelve books, and then it is not too hard to get hired as a Page. Five years of that and maybe they will hire you at an academic Library, or you can start working on your Masters degree. I was not too interested in teaching.
There aren’t any easy answers, but I just did not take advantage of a LOT of opportunities that I could have, simply because I did not know any better. Goal-oriented thinking is not something that comes natural to most people; it is not easily taught, but somehow it needs to be learned.
And who was there to help me? My life was vastly different than my Dad’s and Grandpa’s ─ and I certainly understand that the lives of X-ers, Millennials, and Zoomers have been very much different than mine as well.
Even the birth of the Internet (1993) when I was on the cusp of Middle Age, meant a vastly different and new world than the one that came before. I remember a senior boss who was training me as part of a new job back in 1984 saying that he was going to retire the next year when he turned 65. He was in the Army Air Force in World War II and said that his birthday was in 1920 ─ and that seemed profoundly unreal to me then. Old people weren’t always Old.
I do agree that young people have to be more open to learning from their elders and investigating and pursuing some of the opportunities that are right in front of their noses. I don’t have a high opinion of Christianity but maybe that works for some.
🙂
Author was failed by family/society yet here he is knocking out traditionalist positions on counter-currents.com.
It seems to me that people find their path in life regardless of their upbringing and whatever disruptive ideas the mainstream is promoting at any given time.
Facing adversity and following your own path has never been easy and has always been the way to live a fulfilling life. The narrow, rocky road has always been avoided by the majority.
While it’s certainly true that many individuals rise above their circumstances, this is not true in the aggregate.
People shouldn’t have to be heroic just to lead a normal life.
“The aggregate” always have and always will be wide of the mark. Maybe things were different in the days of Atlantis but I suspect even then only a small percentage of people were awake. Even the allegedly all-loving Jesus makes it clear that consciousness and understanding are not for the mass of humanity. They will always be controlled by external events
It seems to me that people find their path in life regardless of their upbringing and whatever disruptive ideas the mainstream is promoting at any given time.
Bravo. Whatever happened to “Nature vs Nurture” in this article and most of the comments? For every white person who came from a shitty father-less (or bad-father) home and who “turned out” badly flawed, there is another who did good. It’s genes and Nature, folks. You simply never know what’s around the corner.
Nobody who is a supposed failure (according to Jesse) ever said during bedtime prayers, “O Lord, please make me lazy, fat and unmotivated and an all-round loser when I grow up!” Stuff happens in this world – entire generations slowly become weak no matter what. Some commenters here have correctly opined on this.
I have a question for you. Why do you think the left goes after children so much?
They like to recruit them when they’re young. Comrade Lenin himself said something like, “give me a child for a few years and he’ll be a Bolshevik for life.”
Very good, but I would like to point out that the Christians do the same thing, they want to get children before they turn six. I suspect that all successful ideologies work in this manner; they like to get them while they are young and defenseless. 🥹
Because they know that some children are inherently weak and needy and will glom onto their crap. Other children exposed to the same propaganda are not, or much less, affected.
Why might children even within the same family end up going full bore woke and others reject it? My answer is heredity/genes. I have seen this in my own close and extended family and other, nonrelated, persons, both long ago and more recently. How the children respond to their environment will depend on their inborn tendencies. We are born with a road map stamped on our cortex and, by God or by Your Favorite Pagan god, we will follow that map. People talk about how they felt powerless to make a conscious choice in some matter, that they just felt somehow dictated to get involved in something or other or behave in a certain way.
Some people who got plenty of “physical correction” (a favorite term of christian evangelicals) swear they will not treat their own offspring that way, but try as they might, they end up doing so. That person’s brother or sister got just as many beatings but did not respond with violence toward their children. Some people complete their prison term and go straight. Others just seem unable to help themselves and crime will be their way forever.
OK, that’s enough from me! I’ve never convinced anyone of anything but I did manage to get that out of my system, thanks to your question. It’s nice to be able to talk with people here at C-C whether we agree or not.
Every group of societal power possessors in history has been interested in indoctrinating the next generation.
You’d be justified in saying this if each subsequent generation since the Boomers had the same opportunities and lived during similar economic environments but the culture, both economically and morally, have been deteriorating since the 1950s. Millennials and their younger counterparts are experiencing crippling inflation, high housing costs, dwindling job opportunities and the demoralization of their civilization, something their elders didn’t have to contend with.
Boomers remember lower levels of technology & consequent material discomforts which they experienced as a “hardship”. Also the ever present shadow of nuclear war. Then there was Vietnam followed by stagflation before the 1980s boom.
One’s own troubles are always more salient than those of others but a steady diet of secular rugged individualism in westerns & war movies along with egalitarian oneworldism have left the men with even less pity for the travails of the “weak” (of their own race).
You sound like a guy, who has managed to get through a minefield, dismissing concerns over minefields.
I’m actually saying that picking your way through the minefield is the path to self-knowledge and understanding. No minefields, no opportunity for growth.
In esoteric circles it is claimed the “angels” (or whatever you choose to call entities which exist at a higher vibration) are in awe of humans. They are born complete and experience only bliss. Our suffering and the emotional and intellectual growth which come from it give us a depth of understanding they cannot experience.
If you look at your life objectively you will see that without unhappiness you can have no real happiness. Happiness emerges from unhappiness. Do not hope that there are no minefields. Hope instead for the strength and wisdom to navigate them. cheers
I’ve noticed that people on the right tend to really underestimate or just outright ignore the effects of capital on culture. I am not a Marxist but I recognize that in many respects culture is downstream from capital. By capital I mean the material realities imposed on people by technology, the nature of work, and so on. Culture, and by the same token, social norms, are shaped by the material realities in which people live and which are created by capital. History is replete with examples of cultures being erased by the transformative forces of disruptive capital. What happened to the knightly virtue and graceful courtships of the antebellum South? Methodically overwhelmed and finally crushed by the inhuman power of the machines of the North. What happened to the cowboys? Outmoded with the closing of the frontier. Where have the samurai and their noble warrior philosopher ethos gone? Made irrelevant and extinguished practically overnight by contact with the brutal forces of transnational capital. All rich cultures among many others erased by capital, among many.
If you are conservative or traditionally minded and your way of life is being destroyed, it’s likely because material conditions are rapidly changing around you and you can’t just “culture harder” to fix the issue. It ignores the reality of the situation and it ignores how people make decisions. Then you end up demoralized because you can’t understand why everyone is making decisions you think they shouldn’t be making and you feel like everyone has betrayed you. And demoralization is also just losing your culture but with a few extra steps.
Simply telling fathers to “man up” ignores why they aren’t manning up in the first place and what changes led to entire generations of fathers suddenly not manning up.
Yes. The biggest single factor in the fall of western man is simply the ease and comfort of late industrial and post-industrial society. Most men are not heroes and will only struggle as hard as they need to.
Agreed.
I also felt I lacked guidance and had to raise myself. Career-wise that was fine, and I don’t think I’d have ever been interested in doing my father’s trade, nor do I think he would ever have been interested in mine. That kind of guidance is hit and miss.
But what every parent should pass on is expectations about the overall arc of their children’s lives – the big picture: their role in society, when to marry, whom to marry, how to find them, what to expect from marriage, when to have children. Of the many things my parents never told me, that’s what I regret lacking most.
You should never waste time with someone who isn’t even potentially spouse material, or who doesn’t want children. You should marry young, despite the crappy US laws (for men). If the marriage lasts a couple years, you should waste no further time before having children. If you’re a young man, you should seek a practical trade with room to grow. If you’re a young woman, you should seek a good husband who will provide for you and the kids, and you can work on a career if you really want one after the kids (multiple) are in school. Aim for three kids at a minimum.
I wasted a decade chasing the wrong kind of woman. Then I wasted another decade refusing to marry a decent woman who wanted to marry me. My parents should have slapped me for that. By the time we did get married, the hour was late… We have two kids, but I deeply regret that we can’t have more.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Adam. Who you choose to marry & make kids with is the most important decision in life.
Re: “We have two kids, but I deeply regret that we can’t have more.”
Stay optimistic. I went to my high school reunion last year & the mother of my carpool classmate was in attendance. She had 3 kids which all graduated high school between ’87-’90, and now, she has FIFTEEN grandchildren from those 3 kids! (My classmate was married w/ kids, became a widow & remarried another man with several young kids, + her sister hit the jackpot w/ fertility drugs.)
I live in a supermajority white upper/middle class liberal neighborhood just outside of NYC. Intact nuclear families are the norm and most fathers are very engaged in their children’s lives. Very few people have tattoos and most households are duel income. While it’s a rather idyllic place to raise a family, it’s quite noticeable how weak (physically and mentally) the men below 45 are (I’m in my 30s). Nearly all of the men I interact with are subservient to their wives. They are terrified of having conversations about meaningful topics. I’ve been asked on more than one occasion to keep my opinions quiet when I’m around their wives.
I know there are a lot of people on this site who are critical of Christianity (much is warranted) but my traditional Catholic community (I attend Latin mass) is not plagued with effeminate men. Most are married with 4-8 children and are right wing. And the unmarried zoomers in this community are even more right wing. I’m very open about my stance on jews, WWII. white replacement, etc. and I can’t think of the last time I received any push back. While I think many Christian denominations are a lost cause, you’ll be hard pressed in America to find a higher concentration of right wing men outside of traditional Christian communities.
Agreed.
I’m curious. — Does your “traditional Catholic church” happen to be pre-Vatican II Sedevacantism?
The mass form follows the 1962 Roman Missal, which I believe was the last year they produced a daily missal in accordance to pre-Vatican II tradition. My church is not a heretical offshoot and is a full participate in the diocese. I know this type of relationship varies depending on the political leanings of the Bishop. Ours fully supports the parish, which is the most active and well attended in the diocese.
The men under 45 are weak and afraid of their wives but your church is not plagued by effeminate men. Could you please expand on this apparent paradox.
Adherence to the traditional gender hierarchy. The verse below is still read in the Novus Ordo mass (post Vatican II). This traditional understanding echoes Medieval European values. Europeans have generally given more rights to women relative to other civilized races. The verse below describes that symbiotic relationship. While men are commanded by god to be the leaders of their family, they are not to be tyrants.
You don’t have to be a Christian to recognize the practical utility of this aristocratic arrangement. As someone who recognizes that all men are not created equal, there must be a just hierarchy that regulates the relationship between men & women & the upper & lower classes. That’s why religion has been such an important component to the civilizational advancement of mankind.
—-
Ephesians, 5:21-25
[21] Being subject one to another, in the fear of Christ. [22] Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: [23] Because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the saviour of his body. [24] Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their husbands in all things. [25] Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it:
I think I misinterpreted your OP. I was confusing your still functional but effeminate bourgeois neihhbourhood with your more based trad. Catholic congregation.
Regarding Ephesians etc. & the manifold repetition of this injunction to the flock over a lifetime one can readily understand that the Catholic church was the greatest enemy of the “Enlightenment”.
The church I attend is not located in my immediate neighborhood. And given its unique offering, the congregation is from all over the county and neighboring state.
”Unfortunately, the next two generations will be worse. The future will undoubtedly be very bleak. People of European descent have a long road ahead of them. It will be a harsh and violent world in the coming future.”
That’s why I’ve been researching whatever possible places might still be less bad than the USA in the future, because I’m 37 years old (Never married, no children) and I don’t want to spend the rest of my days living through what you described on the North American continent. Honestly, I knew as far back as the 1990s that something was very wrong, and it turned out to be true
One of my close childhood friends moved to Uruguay 2 years ago. It definitely wouldn’t be my first choice, but from what he tells me, approximately 70% of the population is pure White and not Mestizo, and that while it isn’t a 1st world country, it has fair courts and elections, and low on the corruption scale
I might have to join him one of these days before things get unthinkably bad here in America. I can’t take anymore of this
Uruguay is the wokest country in Latin America.
Frankly, that’s because of how White it is.
I used to live in quite a nice part of south London, and can recall seeing families within the last few years almost as you describe, except that the parents tended to look about 45 – 50.
I tend to be shocked by the number of young people who can’t drive (much less do very basic auto maintenance), can’t write a check, don’t know cursive, etc. Maybe some of it isn’t relevant to them, but overall they seem pretty lost. “Adulting” didn’t used to be a word until fairly recently; that seems telling.
You pulled yourself out of a rut, and I’m confident that others can, if given proper motivation and self-reflection. (“You know, being a neckbeard addicted to anime kind of sucks…”) If it were up to me, there would be remedial life skills classes which teach that “adulting” thing.
Wahhh…milennials are be biggest cry baby wimps that have ever plopped forth from the earth. Life not to your satisfaction? Whatever. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps (or in this case, your panties) and do something of strength and value for your life. The world, and nobody in it, owes you shit.
Is this an attempt at parody? Hard to tell these days.
Yeah I’m not sure if this is parody or not either. I hope it is because he’s dead wrong otherwise
How is that commenter wrong? Even from a Christian, let alone atheist, standpoint the world truly owes nothing material to anyone. If I were Christian, I would incline towards belief in natural rights (to liberty, property, identity, a life-preserving biosphere, maybe some other things), but no one owes other persons, especially ablebodied ones, any sort of material wellbeing. Each man is expected to achieve his own life.
And as Chesterton expressed the matter long ago, “By the age of 30 a man is responsible for his own face.” While I agreed with many of the strictures and recommendations in the essay, to act as though passive fathers (a questionable and certainly overbroad claim in itself) are an excuse for the failures of men long past the age of majority absolutely merits being called “crybabyism”. Social conditions may play a role in personal failure. I, and I bet at least some of CC’s writer-scholars, might have had satisfying academic careers, only we knew the academy was closed to prowhites, no matter how objectively qualified, so we had to pursue other, less than ideal forms of employment.
But paternal child-rearing failure, even where present (almost all of my friends’ grown sons are quite admirable young men – and, I’m pleased to say, most range ideologically from MAGA/conservative to white nationalist), is only one variable causing an entire generation’s inadequacy (again, way too broad of a claim). In terms of your focus on marriage and reproduction, I would say feminism, and the female hypergamy that almost inevitably trails in its wake, is vastly more responsible for the lack of young adult family formation than the alleged paternal poorly parenting of Zoomers. And even if the Zoomer generation did have disproportionately low quality dads, well, that’s an excuse for being a shiftless douchebag? Your whole essay has the smell of egalitarian, in particular, ‘environmentalist’ liberalism. Most of us at CC, however, are solid hereditarians.
Just sidestepping the point of the article, point is Boomers didn’t pass down anything . They gave utterly no guidance which I can’t see how you can argue that is hereditary, but what’s so obnoxious about your generation is the complete lack of empathy and arrogance about problems you neither care to understand much less help solve for younger generations. Your schtick gets tiresome and preachy. Beliefs are malleable and they aren’t inherently genetic and it’s the responsibility of the parents to help pass that down by actually being involved. You types grew up in a great environment and talk down to people complaining that they don’t have it as good also loving to imply it’s just millennials are that incompetent har har then proceed to claim innocence for your generation when it comes to their negatives. All the positives were your doing and none of the negatives are your fault. Got it.
There is something astonishing about the generation that had the greatest opportunities simply gifted to them being wedded to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” rhetoric when confronted with the fact that they have failed to pass on these opportunities to subsequent generations.
I never claimed that boomer father’s were the singular force that is to blame for the vicissitude of millennials. If I were to write about everything that blighted our generation, I’d have to right a book. I thought people would be able to infer this but some aren’t so sophisticated I guess.
Secondly, if you are strictly a hereditarian then do you claim that no amount of environmental forces shapes a person? Personally I believe both environment and genetics plays a large part in a person’s outcome.
Not sure what your are getting at with the egalitarian charge; you do such a good job at failing to make a counter-argument.
Moreover, I said on my article that fathers should pass down knowledge to prepare their sons for the world. Are you saying that parents have no responsibility or obligation to pass down anything (monetary, wisdom, etc) to their children? So people can recklessly have children and not care for them? If nothing is owed to the child, how are your precious ideals, like the natural rights your mentioned, passed down to the next generation. That’s a strange argument. Are you a libertarian?
I have a father and I am a father. My father only had so much influence upon me. Despite any aspirations on your own part, you will soon come to realize you only have so much control over which directions your kids will go. We can all aspire to be good role model, but that is not enough. And kids capable of greatness often arise out of deplorable upbringing.
I neither find it helpful or too accurate to externalize blame for modern times. Sure there is blame to go around, but inspiring people to show some meddle is more likely to give the results needed. As various peoples, we have been through worse over the centuries. I’m glad to hear the writer’s positive turn in life. When reading that he was thinking of getting a PhD in history I was thinking, oh no, don’t do it, just have a day job and write the damn book. You made it yourself and congratulations.
Thinking back to the 25 people I knew and hung about with in high school, mostly born around 1990, only 9 had their fathers present ( who were mostly born in and around 1960) , and of those 9, 1 was an acid casualty who barely left his room and more recently committed suicide, 3 were extremely old (born c. 1940) even back then and were quite distant figures, and 1 was a guy who had big health problems and alcoholism and eventually died from that in recent years.
So about 1/5 of them were actually present and engaged and healthy in a normal, traditionally understood sense. Which sounds like that’s probably also the national norm.
I think the boomer/X generations still had a social expectancy to marry and have kids; even Kurt Cobain, king of the Gen x nihilists, married and had a kid. It was a simulation of traditionalism. Yeah they had the marriage and the kids but they didn’t do either properly. Nowadays, the millennial and zoomers, we don’t even have the marriage and the kids.
I guess the Boomer meme is getting stale, time to move on to Gen X to start placing blame. Watch out millennials, in a few years you’ll be getting blamed for something too.
Let me guess, you were born before 1975
In 10 years, will the birth year be moved to 1985 for the blame?
Can’t take criticism, huh?
Oh, did I miss something? I thought you were the one who wrote this article, the theme of which it was I, in fact, who was doing the criticizing.
The person it seems you need to be blaming for your upbringing (if in fact blame is to be had) is your father. I’m not your father, and my own sons are doing just fine. My 25 year old son is married to a beautiful young woman who he started dating in the 10th grade. My youngest son is a musician and is in honors at his high school. I do not share the burden of blame for the failings of other fathers, of any generation.
Traditional and responsible patriarchy has been lost in both the family and at the head of State, where lies the power to lead or mislead.
“Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.” ― Camille Paglia
“Patriarchy is a designated driver, designated by nature in its evolutionary creation of man and his roles of responsibility to his family and others around him since the beginning of time, and noted in the oldest written texts. It is in the nature of man to meet this responsibility for the well-being of his family and to feel the natural pain of his failure to provide it when he cannot. As an individual growing up in a family culture driven by honor, I feel that the fault is ours as men for the extreme changes which have been allowed to dominate the course of our recent social evolution and its resulting crisis’s. These crises are increasing in every aspect of human life; crisis’s also caused by the demise of patriarchy and family structure in growing cases where the family is now broken.”
“The emasculation of male slaves using their females did not end with the civil war, but has increased in numbers and in its practice among all manners of courts, laws, social norms, and across all racial divides”.
In the supposed safest, most wealthiest, most free nation in the world, it confuses me how we have the highest rate of criminality, violence, penitentiary institutions, one parent families, parentless children, and highest rate of divorces and spouses running to escape each other, more than in any other time in history or place in the present day world. The more freedom we seem to have in our free society, the greater the fears and the threat we seem to feel to our own growing selfishness. In the land of “milk and funny” one must ask what kind of conscience or conscientiousness has been nurtured here in the past several decades? Perhaps Middle Eastern Societies fear “our type” of society as a dangerous immoral threat that is being imposed on them, even more than the economic and violent military takeover of their society that we present. (Reflection – Guzziferno)
As the many comments attest, this article hits very close to the bone. I hope to comment more extensively this weekend. For now I will confine myself to remarking that I believe my parents did their best to raise to me and remain, to this day, very willing to help me should I ever need them. They are both “silent” generation, born 1937 & 1941. And yet I floundered through much of my life, have only recently embarked on a real profession (for which I have no passion, I just do what I have to), and I am unlikely at this point to marry or have children, now that I’m in my early 50s, despite being reasonably handsome, fit, educated.
My sense is that my father was himself very disoriented by the changing cultural seas and felt like he didn’t know how to guide me as a young man, apart from muttering generalities. He sent me to college because that’s what one was supposed to do. A practical man, he didn’t like that I majored in History, but he didn’t press me to study math or science.
As recently as the 1800s, most young men followed their fathers into the same trades and the same workplaces, or worked the same fields to raise the same animals and crops. That was one of the central bases of paternal authority. Once fatherhood was separated from serving as the effective “master” of the son qua apprentice in a trade, the ability of fathers to guide their sons began its steep decline.
One solution might be a return to something like “castes,” whereby sons are born into the same line of work as their fathers, unless they demonstrate truly exceptional abilities in school, warranting special promotion. How to harmonize this with a modern “knowledge” economy and ever-increasing automation is anybody’s guess. Perhaps a two-tiered society, the lower returned to tradition, the elite resolutely scientific, as foretold by G Faye.
Did you ever see those memes which contrast black and white men raised without a father? The blacks kids brandish guns and the white men are effeminate. White guys seem to be more intelligent and less instinctual, so they need guidance more. Their genes still determine most of their identity, but fathers probably give men confidence in taking action and feel a sense of duty for their actions.
Passing down technical and vocational skills has become increasingly difficult in both blue collar and white-collar professions due to rapid technological changes. Men who worked as auto mechanics in the 70’s and 80’s are not necessarily equipped to work on today’s fully computerized automobiles. These days, my “auto mechanic” uses a laptop to diagnose a problem. If the computer diagnostic he runs does not tell him why my car suddenly shut down at a red light, then he doesn’t know what to do. There are few, if any, “loan officers” at big banks. Decisions about whether you qualify for a loan are made by algorithms. In the legal profession, the way you conduct research today is completely different from the way in which it was conducted pre-2000. And, given the way in which businesses are so heavily reliant on email and automation, a lawyer conducting discovery now is heavily reliant on technology so that he can receive/produce, review, and systematize terabytes of electronic data. This is not the way law was practiced 30 years ago.
There are, of course, many skilled professions that have remained largely static (e.g. masons, carpenters, plumbers, etc.). But technological disruptions have impacted so many trades and professions that it is more likely than not that if a man teaches technical skills to his son, those skills will be of little use when the son actually takes up the same profession or trade.
With respect to a father’s obligation to demonstrate and teach the importance of living a virtuous life, I agree with you wholeheartedly — though (sadly) it seems that oversocialization and obedience may bring the average man more conventional success than virtue.
>Unfortunately, the next two generations will be worse.
I don’t think this is entirely true. The trend is generally downward, but you have to realize that the Boomer -> Millennial households were the worst of it. Gen X, raised by relatively humble Silent Generation parents, were much more normal.
Eras get defined by who is young at the time. Please understand that Boomers didn’t get indoctrinated by what was going on during the 70’s, they were the forces of liberalism at the time. Gerontocracy is an illusion. Likewise, the time period of roughly 2008–2024 was the era of the Millennial. The great progress the right has apparently been making in the past year is the result of Millennials getting old and hapless, while Gen Z (children of Gen X) grow into themselves.
It is true that the “families” that Millennials make are generally wretched. The so-called “Gen Alpha” is mostly the sparse children of Millennials plus huge swaths of immigrants.
Now is the pivotal time for our civilization. Zoomers are doing well, but they, too, will age out of controlling the Zeitgeist in 10–15 years. Great effort must be made to stabilize things before the hugely incompetent and dysgenic Gen Alpha age up.
“Lost cause” is an appropriate phrase. If an unmarried, directionless, 35-year old man were instead a dog, he would be in line for “retirement” at kill shelter. Research learned helplessness One should hardly bother themselves with these types of people. They can and will do nothing to help themselves nor civilization (except perhaps by voting). Research learned helplessness. If you want to put effort into helping society, help a young man.
I have long been of the opinion that Generation X (1966-1979) are the ones who will lead the charge for anything, if any charges are to be made
They would be more equipped than either Boomers or Millennials. I won’t even mention the utterly humiliating cohort of adults whom we refer to as Gen Z
Resting your hope in a generation past its prime? How folly. The future is the youth, always. I read this comment and immediately knew you were a millennials with a shitty life. Your helplessness is pathetic. You’re exactly the type of lost cause I was referring to. You want flee the country? Find some backwater nominally white place to retire in mediocrity? Good, those who care to live a life of dignity will stay and fix their homeland.
The general weakness and poor demographics of Gen Z is greatly outweighed by the Will and the discontent concentrated in a few young white men. Gen Z will make up for your failures. Or you can grow a spine and join them.
According to superficial logic, the young generation in a society where few children are born should be relatively rich (for example, because the parents’ property is not divided among multiple siblings or because young people inherit property from distant childless relatives). But clearly this does not apply in our situation, or not to the extent that it plays any significant role. It’s perhaps due to the longevity of the boomer generation and due to high inflation.
Parents have less to give their children in inheritance as we experience a declining economical system of distribution, in increasingly manipulated market monopolization. To a lesser degree, smaller generations, or populations of children with less numbers of siblings do end up inheriting more from fortunate parents. The problem with these privileged children is teaching them how to budget or save their inheritance.
I own more than 500 DVD discs. It’s a hobby, as some collect stamps or firearms. I’m 32 by the way.
Thank you for writing this, Mr. Holliday. It hits close to home. I grew up with no sense of healthy boundaries, and parents who when in doubt go to the doctor for more meds, when it comes to life’s challenges. A close friend, and my sister, both died of cirrhosis of the liver in the past five years. But I strive to make my family proud. None of us are perfect. And never doubt the future is bright for our people. As Dr. Johnson says: We’re saving the world.
Thanks to Mr. Holliday’s article and the comments. In my mind, blame is broadly irrelevant. Dysfunctional bachelors like myself have nobody to blame. My father ate seed grain as a kid and his other sons turned out well.
Parents who struggle to make ends meet have it good. Guess who survives: The childless person with no mortgage and access to capital or a man with an intact family on the verge of bankruptcy? To this audience, the answer is self-evident.
As Holliday said, it’s easy to spot guys like me. I worked to maintain a bit of a poker face in jail but I could never hide the insecurity in my eyes. Only my violent instability and intellectual instinct kept me from being raped.
I just can’t blame it on my father. Our parents weren’t taught to deal with the break in social infrastructure that damaged family formation. Why would we single them out for blame when our own loss of virtue is the proximate cause?
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