The Western World seems on the brink of civil war. The factions appear to be two completely different conceptions of reality, or how to approach reality. One faction contends, essentially, that nothing is anything. Their opponents assert that some things, in fact, are something. As with many historical battles, it’s fundamentally a battle of masculine vs. feminine.
The feminine side states that nothing is anything. No truths can be known for certain. All is flux, therefore nothing is permanent for long enough to substantiate its existence. Because nothing is certain, there’s no point in being too strict about borders or boundaries. This side is what Alan Watts used to call “gooey” people.
The masculine side, by contrast, states that some things are something. There are such things as objective truths, and they can guide our lives. These truths are often fixed ideals. Such people often react with outrage to Nietzsche’s suggestions that there are no moral truths. This side is what Alan Watts used to call “prickly” people.
In the Clown World of 2023, these are the battle lines of the culture war.
The feminine side has no issue with the trans phenomenon. If nothing is anything, then women are not exclusively those with XX chromosomes. Therefore, femininity is a matter of what gender you “identify as”, or which gender you “represent”. Trans people are whatever they say they are, and the rest of us have to follow along.
The masculine side comes into opposition with this view. To the masculine, gender is fixed, and it’s more or less fixed to sex. Men are men and women are women. It doesn’t matter what you identify as, because there’s a determined and objective reality which itself reveals what you are. Thus, there is a particular bathroom to which you belong, and one to which you don’t.
A similar situation exists with nationality. To the ideologically feminine, nationality is like a mask, that can be put on, taken off, and replaced at will. It’s possible to become a member of a different nation simply by living there. Such a view sees no contradiction in having two or more passports and claiming to belong to more than one nation.
To the ideologically masculine, nationality is rooted in blood and soil, and therefore even people who have lived in a new country for 50 years aren’t members of the nation (although their children might be). Nationality, like gender, is fixed and not fluid. It’s comprised of kinship links that are as real as family ties.
In fact, this division is replicated in attitudes to biology. The feminine reject biological determinism, preferring to believe that anyone can become anything if given the right environment while growing up. Success is primarily a matter of will, and natural talents can be shaped in virtually any direction. This ties in with the modern globalist mindset.
The masculine, by contrast, reject Blank Slate Theory. They support hereditarianism. The masculine approach ties in with the modern nationalist mindset, because it’s concerned with the long-term effects of (e.g.) immigration on the nation’s genetic infrastructure. When some things are something, it tends to be permanently that way.
Complicating matters, sometimes one of the two sides is more correct than the other.
For instance, the masculine side is right when it says that intelligence is mostly genetic, but wrong when it says that mental illness is also mostly genetic. As such, it errs towards exclusion. The feminine side, for its part, is right when it says that mental illness is mostly environmental, but wrong when it says that intelligence is mostly environmental. As such, it errs towards inclusion.
Those who cannot overcome an inherent, entrenched masculine or feminine bias are why public discourse has now degraded to such a low level. Rather than talking to uncover the truth, people now talk to further the interests of their team. Those with the strongest biases are incapable of even perceiving their opponent’s position.
The correct course of action is to stop thinking in crude, black-and-white terms, and to try developing some intellectual nuance. Masculine thinking is useful when it’s necessary to delineate and discriminate, and feminine thinking is useful when it’s necessary to draw similarities. To have a bias towards either is a cognitive weakness.
In order to psychologically survive Clown World, it’s necessary to stand above forced, artificial battles that are designed to destroy your will and waste your mental energy. The simplest way to stand above is to not get sucked into inconsequential masculine vs. feminine debates that have been created by the mainstream media. Try to be, as the Confucianists say, the unwobbling pivot between yin and yang.
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