No one here seems to have addressed the subject of intra-sexual competition tactics among women.
Fertility and male-female relations are certainly worthy topics. But I was stricken by recognition of what I’ve experienced and observed. Yes, this is real, and vicious in a way that men can’t readily understand. Women too will deny it. If you know one who’ll discuss it, listen.
Your haircut looks great (marine cut on a 20-something woman.)
Your back would feel better if you had breast-reduction surgery. (This was possibly true but no regard to risks/actual outcomes was given. Still better in my opinion to teach posture, core strengthening exercises, and better bra-buying options)
So many more examples, and not recent ones.
Women can grow to be wary of advice from friends, even mothers, sisters, etc. And friendships with men may distort things too, but it does start with female-female influences. Thank you for highlighting this. Lord, have mercy.
Thanks, Steve. You’re a man who has daughters. If you can help them understand this, without leading them into bitterness and paranoid over-vigilance, you’ll help them better than most Dads have/do. A certain kind of lightness, backed by unassailable confidence in your knowledge, seems to work best. It’s still a hard road nowadays.
The thing is, there is no reason to believe that having fertility above the replacement level is the default setting that can only be "ruined" by suppressive ideology like feminism.
I think the opposite is true - in a state of anomic nihilism, a childfree society with below-replacement fertility is the norm and what will bring it up is an ideology (or culture, or religion, or emerging societal standard or even tribal narrative) that will boost it above replacement level.
The argument against my position is that even in the absence of cultural phenomena, the sex drive exists. That is true, but a sex drive is a myopic and reptilian thing. It is the sex drive, not the "produce a functional family while having children" drive. Unless the culture forms the sex drive in the appropriate way, you can fulfill it with casual relationships, masturbation, non-reproductive marriages, homosexual behavior or whatever stimulates the appropriate organs. The only thing keeping these non-productive forms of sexuality at bay is a cultural command that they are inappropriate.
Once the cultural repression goes, everything is fair game. A minority will have a personality that will lead them to forming a reproductive marriage. Meanwhile the majority will deviate. This will happen not because any single deviant temptation is so strong, but because in a society like ours, there is a temptation for every temperament. The sex addicts will have causal sex, the misanthropes will engage in porn and masturbation (so they don't have to deal with other people), the career-obsessed will marry but not have children.
This is the outcome of leaving things free. In such a state, below-replacement fertility rate is the obvious outcome. No additional repression (via anti-masculinism, feminism etc.) is even needed - although where it exists, it probably suppresses birth rates even more.
I'm not sure that your assumptions are correct here. Biology isn't dumb, and sex drives aren't aimless. Evolution has finely tuned desire to move toward the end of procreation.
It's mostly our technological interference that gets in the way of that. Take away abortion and contraception and even with porn and popularized homosexuality and even sexbots, I suspect you'd have a positive TFR. The design of our reproductive systems and drives, when functioning correctly, are meant to pursue intercourse with the opposite sex -- and most intensely when conception is most possible.
That might well be the most important question of the upcoming millenium. If you are asking what could be the alternative now, the answer is "probably nothing", especially if you want a solution applicable universally across modern civilization.
In terms of what could be the answer for small groups or individuals, you need a system of meaning that gives you a reason to have family and kids. It could be religious or ideological - practically speaking, what it *needs* to do is give a sense of deep meaning to what you do with your life.
Also to be clear one obvious answer is "return to traditional Christianity". I think that answer is somewhat compelling , but I hestitate to recommend it because:
1.) Although I believe in God, I haven't reached Christianity yet, so who I am to recommend that?
2.) This is the blog of Steve Skojec, a guy with professorial-level knowledge on the nature and pitfalls of traditional Christianity. I would feel a bit stupid trying to pontificate about Christian traditionalism in this specific context
Feel free to use this space to hash it out. I'll offer what I can, when I can, if necessary. But I want this to be a place where we can ask and try to answer these questions.
To be clear, I never was thinking you'd censor anything, I was (am) trying to low-key coax you to give your take on the topic. This is because I feel my take would just be an inferior version of what you would say, since I lack a lot of the knowledge and especially the experience you have.
I think the problem with "traditional Christianity" is quite a few of the pastors in this country that are pining for it would seem to be happy with some type of Christian police state. Maybe they are trying to go back to something like Calvin's Geneva back in the day, I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is , I understand why people want to bring this back, the chaos is everywhere but the people who seem to be leading the charge are not the most charitable let's say.
The pattern I have noticed is that whoever sets themselves up as the "deciders" of moral standards in a society, tend to not be all that charitable. There is also usually a minority (sometimes a majority) among this self-imagined moral elite who lean towards an out-and-out police state. It's been true for wokism, traditionalism, socialism, nationalism, secular liberalism - you name it.
You've written a lot, and I'm afraid I don't have time today to address even half of it, but I wanted to at least get to your opening salvo.
You call this a generalization, but that's like saying "women have menstrual cycles" is a generalization. This is baked into nature. Every healthy adult human engages in intrasexual competition instinctually. Obviously, people can become consciously aware of this and try to alter or sublimate these behaviors -- although I wonder about the degree of success anyone is capable of achieving in fighting such a fundamental drive.
But you asked what the fix is. And that's just the thing Dr. Sulikowski concedes near the end of the show:
"That’s the problem. I think it’s really hard, because it’s a little bit like saying, 'It’d be great if the rabbit grew wings so it could escape the fox.' But the rabbit isn’t going to evolve wings. It’s not going to happen.
You can’t implement solutions that rely on humans being fundamentally different from what they are. That greatly constrains what kinds of social engineering we can attempt, and limits the kinds of outcomes we can realistically hope for.
Take, for example, the theory of communism or Marxism. The utopian world it promises doesn’t work, not because it’s never been 'done properly,' but because it runs counter to human nature. You cannot change the fundamental nature of being human in a way that allows that kind of society to actually function. It’s just never going to happen.
And so, when I get asked, 'What can we do?' — honestly, I dislike that question. Because I don’t know that there is anything we can do. I don’t know that there’s anything inevitable we can avoid here."
All the other stuff you mention seems like it's non unimportant, but somehow peripheral to this. I don't want to keep women in cages (metaphorical or literal) so that they can't engage in destructive reproductive sabotage. But it does seem that beginning to recognize where and how this plays out across institutions and the social sphere is probably important if we want to foment any kind of resistance to this.
I worry that attempts to stop this will swing the pendulum back to outright misogyny; I see increasing frustration and vehemence from many men that women are destroying society (even if they don't identify the cause).
I feel like we need a lot more information -- including historical info about societies that have gone through this before and come apart at the seams -- before we can start getting prescriptive.
This is more like a cancer diagnosis than a treatment plan.
No one here seems to have addressed the subject of intra-sexual competition tactics among women.
Fertility and male-female relations are certainly worthy topics. But I was stricken by recognition of what I’ve experienced and observed. Yes, this is real, and vicious in a way that men can’t readily understand. Women too will deny it. If you know one who’ll discuss it, listen.
Your haircut looks great (marine cut on a 20-something woman.)
Your back would feel better if you had breast-reduction surgery. (This was possibly true but no regard to risks/actual outcomes was given. Still better in my opinion to teach posture, core strengthening exercises, and better bra-buying options)
So many more examples, and not recent ones.
Women can grow to be wary of advice from friends, even mothers, sisters, etc. And friendships with men may distort things too, but it does start with female-female influences. Thank you for highlighting this. Lord, have mercy.
These are littered throughout the podcast. The more you use this as the decoder ring, the more you see this behavior EVERYWHERE.
Thanks, Steve. You’re a man who has daughters. If you can help them understand this, without leading them into bitterness and paranoid over-vigilance, you’ll help them better than most Dads have/do. A certain kind of lightness, backed by unassailable confidence in your knowledge, seems to work best. It’s still a hard road nowadays.
The thing is, there is no reason to believe that having fertility above the replacement level is the default setting that can only be "ruined" by suppressive ideology like feminism.
I think the opposite is true - in a state of anomic nihilism, a childfree society with below-replacement fertility is the norm and what will bring it up is an ideology (or culture, or religion, or emerging societal standard or even tribal narrative) that will boost it above replacement level.
The argument against my position is that even in the absence of cultural phenomena, the sex drive exists. That is true, but a sex drive is a myopic and reptilian thing. It is the sex drive, not the "produce a functional family while having children" drive. Unless the culture forms the sex drive in the appropriate way, you can fulfill it with casual relationships, masturbation, non-reproductive marriages, homosexual behavior or whatever stimulates the appropriate organs. The only thing keeping these non-productive forms of sexuality at bay is a cultural command that they are inappropriate.
Once the cultural repression goes, everything is fair game. A minority will have a personality that will lead them to forming a reproductive marriage. Meanwhile the majority will deviate. This will happen not because any single deviant temptation is so strong, but because in a society like ours, there is a temptation for every temperament. The sex addicts will have causal sex, the misanthropes will engage in porn and masturbation (so they don't have to deal with other people), the career-obsessed will marry but not have children.
This is the outcome of leaving things free. In such a state, below-replacement fertility rate is the obvious outcome. No additional repression (via anti-masculinism, feminism etc.) is even needed - although where it exists, it probably suppresses birth rates even more.
I'm not sure that your assumptions are correct here. Biology isn't dumb, and sex drives aren't aimless. Evolution has finely tuned desire to move toward the end of procreation.
It's mostly our technological interference that gets in the way of that. Take away abortion and contraception and even with porn and popularized homosexuality and even sexbots, I suspect you'd have a positive TFR. The design of our reproductive systems and drives, when functioning correctly, are meant to pursue intercourse with the opposite sex -- and most intensely when conception is most possible.
what system are you proposing as an alternative to 'leaving things free'?
That might well be the most important question of the upcoming millenium. If you are asking what could be the alternative now, the answer is "probably nothing", especially if you want a solution applicable universally across modern civilization.
In terms of what could be the answer for small groups or individuals, you need a system of meaning that gives you a reason to have family and kids. It could be religious or ideological - practically speaking, what it *needs* to do is give a sense of deep meaning to what you do with your life.
Also to be clear one obvious answer is "return to traditional Christianity". I think that answer is somewhat compelling , but I hestitate to recommend it because:
1.) Although I believe in God, I haven't reached Christianity yet, so who I am to recommend that?
2.) This is the blog of Steve Skojec, a guy with professorial-level knowledge on the nature and pitfalls of traditional Christianity. I would feel a bit stupid trying to pontificate about Christian traditionalism in this specific context
Feel free to use this space to hash it out. I'll offer what I can, when I can, if necessary. But I want this to be a place where we can ask and try to answer these questions.
To be clear, I never was thinking you'd censor anything, I was (am) trying to low-key coax you to give your take on the topic. This is because I feel my take would just be an inferior version of what you would say, since I lack a lot of the knowledge and especially the experience you have.
I think the problem with "traditional Christianity" is quite a few of the pastors in this country that are pining for it would seem to be happy with some type of Christian police state. Maybe they are trying to go back to something like Calvin's Geneva back in the day, I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is , I understand why people want to bring this back, the chaos is everywhere but the people who seem to be leading the charge are not the most charitable let's say.
The pattern I have noticed is that whoever sets themselves up as the "deciders" of moral standards in a society, tend to not be all that charitable. There is also usually a minority (sometimes a majority) among this self-imagined moral elite who lean towards an out-and-out police state. It's been true for wokism, traditionalism, socialism, nationalism, secular liberalism - you name it.
Agreed.
Yup. And coercion will backfire
You've written a lot, and I'm afraid I don't have time today to address even half of it, but I wanted to at least get to your opening salvo.
You call this a generalization, but that's like saying "women have menstrual cycles" is a generalization. This is baked into nature. Every healthy adult human engages in intrasexual competition instinctually. Obviously, people can become consciously aware of this and try to alter or sublimate these behaviors -- although I wonder about the degree of success anyone is capable of achieving in fighting such a fundamental drive.
But you asked what the fix is. And that's just the thing Dr. Sulikowski concedes near the end of the show:
"That’s the problem. I think it’s really hard, because it’s a little bit like saying, 'It’d be great if the rabbit grew wings so it could escape the fox.' But the rabbit isn’t going to evolve wings. It’s not going to happen.
You can’t implement solutions that rely on humans being fundamentally different from what they are. That greatly constrains what kinds of social engineering we can attempt, and limits the kinds of outcomes we can realistically hope for.
Take, for example, the theory of communism or Marxism. The utopian world it promises doesn’t work, not because it’s never been 'done properly,' but because it runs counter to human nature. You cannot change the fundamental nature of being human in a way that allows that kind of society to actually function. It’s just never going to happen.
And so, when I get asked, 'What can we do?' — honestly, I dislike that question. Because I don’t know that there is anything we can do. I don’t know that there’s anything inevitable we can avoid here."
All the other stuff you mention seems like it's non unimportant, but somehow peripheral to this. I don't want to keep women in cages (metaphorical or literal) so that they can't engage in destructive reproductive sabotage. But it does seem that beginning to recognize where and how this plays out across institutions and the social sphere is probably important if we want to foment any kind of resistance to this.
I worry that attempts to stop this will swing the pendulum back to outright misogyny; I see increasing frustration and vehemence from many men that women are destroying society (even if they don't identify the cause).
I feel like we need a lot more information -- including historical info about societies that have gone through this before and come apart at the seams -- before we can start getting prescriptive.
This is more like a cancer diagnosis than a treatment plan.