In “the Princeâ€, Machiavelli observed:
fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.
Observe that Machiavelli is familiar with what we now call game, and takes for granted that his audience is familiar.
Roissy is rediscovering what was well known up to around 1830 or so, though he is now placing it on the sounder basis of evolutionary psychology.
Some time between 1830 and 1860, I have not pinned the date down exactly, a thick fog of what we now call politically correctness set in, obscuring the ugly truths about the differences between men and women, among many other things, and radically rewriting history. Over the years, political correctness became ever more extreme, ever more severe, and the rewrites of history ever more drastic, blatant, and outrageous. We think that people in the 1950s were politically incorrect, but people in the 1950s thought that people before 1910 were what we would now call politically incorrect, and people in the 1890s thought that people in the 1830s were what we would now call politically incorrect.
Trees don’t grow to the sky, and that which cannot continue, will stop. Since we have coined the pejorative phrase “political correctnessâ€, what we now call game is being rediscovered, and human biodiversity rediscovered, perhaps the end will soon be in sight. It is not in sight yet. Even those who revel in their supposed political incorrectness and indignantly ridicule the left will not tolerate some of the more disturbing truths.
They will perhaps tip their toe in the 1950s, but not go all the way. The 1890s, let alone the 1830s, are of course entirely unthinkable to them, yet from 1830 onwards, it is all lies, each lie leading to an even bigger lie.
Further, if one merely goes back half way, to the 1950s or the 1890s, one is in a logically inconsistent position. Political correctness logically requires ever greater political correctness. Being half politically correct is incoherent and internally inconsistent. One has to go all the way back to the cultural and historical facts that people before 1830 knew were true, for example that democracy does not work, that men were not created equal – which very few people are yet prepared to do.
Democracy tricks the citizenry into thinking the rulers are ‘us’ instead of ‘them.’ They then identify with politicians and thus start mimicking them. Was there a significant political system shift in England around 1845?
1832 Reform act.
The voters, reasonably enough, prefer politicians that give happy talk. Thus Reagan said “Trust but verify” which means the same thing as “Commies are lying bastards who cannot be trusted one inch”, but sounds so much nicer. It is a small step from happy talking people in power, which is fine, to happy thinking becoming mandatory, which is not so fine.
Yeah, that’s the one.
First, “take effectual Measures for correcting divers Abuses that have long prevailed in the Choice of Members to serve in the Commons House of Parliament.” That manages to be entirely meaningless yet still thunder against immorality, and indeed La Wik goes on to embarrass herself further – classic signs of underhandedness.
Second, it brought the number of eligible adult males from ~10% to solidly over 10%. [ http://scienceblog.com/46622/minority-rules-scientists-discover-tipping-point-for-the-spread-of-ideas/ ]
So between 32-60 it became normal for men to identify at least partly as politicians. They were in-grouped, and obediently started adopting group norms, such as lying their ass off, believing in insanity as long as it is self-serving, caring a great deal about appearances and privileging impressive rhetoric over facts. In general, normalizing severe belief/action disconnects.
Also on topic. SWPL 1870 edition. http://www.robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bouvard/idees.html Check out ‘imperial.’
There’s a lot of truth to what you say. The roots of PC run deep, very deep – the major pustules broke out, horrifyingly, in the 1960’s, but the virus had been incubating a long time. Can we still treat it? Maybe. But we have to realized that we’ve been sick a lot longer than we thought, and that we may have picked up this microbe in an unlikely place. In other words, it might not have been that crazy chick at that party in the ’60’s – it may have been that prim, proper Victorian girl back in 1845…
Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844?
The disease goes back a lot further as a political position, but in 1860 or so it was an orthodoxy that could not be openly challenged, political correctness in the modern sense. Darwin could cheerfully say disturbing truths about the human races in ways that horrify us, but when it came to sexual selection, his mouth suddenly became full of cotton wool. Of course, being Darwin, that did not altogether stop him, but his normal plain speaking became delicately obfuscated.
I’d be more impressed with “game” if it weren’t for the fact that, from a Darwinian standpoint, the two most most evolutionarily selected for strategies are donating sperm and marrying a religious fanatic.
Natural selection designs us for the ancestral environment, not the present environment. In the ancestral environment, game was reproductively effective.
[…] change anything within the larger system, as we saw with percentages less than 10." Read more . . . Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the populatio…e belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who […]