Another Reason for Hollywood to Hire Historians

Good Lord, some director with a Latino name (and Hollywood sure has a crush on those) has decided to take a break from quirky sex dramas* and try his hand at historical movie-making. Considering Guillermo del Toro's Communist Manifesto-bashing (can't use a Bible) take on the Spanish Civil War in his fantasy crap, I find that asking for historical accuracy, or even borderline historical fairness, is too much to ask for. Still, it is maddening to encounter the lack of these things in "history" films.

So, here enters Alejandro Amenabar's "Agora", ostensibly a story about the murdered fifth century Neo-platonist philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria. The problem is, it's not a story about Hypatia, but about a Frankenstein monster created by Enlightenment prejudices. The actual Hypatia checks many the politically-correct boxes: female, philosopher, scientist. But the monster Hypatia has other attributes. She was "outspoken" and "was a pagan martyred for SCIENCE! By Christians!"

It doesn't matter that Hypatia was far more likely killed because she was involved in a factional fight between Christians. The fact that she might even be Christian herself escapes the notice of these Hollywood idiots. Like the Enlightenment fools who preceded them, they won't let hard facts get in the way of a good narrative.

*Yes, every Hollywood director with a Latin or Spanish name is Pedro Almodovar to me. I'm sure they wouldn't mind the stereotype. They spend enough time manufacturing them.

Proof that it is the Cult that births Culture

A German archeologist, working on a hunch and notes from an American archeologist almost 50 years old, uncovered a temple complex in Turkey that is over 11,500 years old, which he named "Gobekli Tepe".

What is the significance of this site? This site is older than Stonehenge, older than the Pyramids, and older than the Sumerians. As one archeologist puts it, there is more time past between this civilization and the Sumerians than there is between the Sumerians and us. Furthermore, this site is turning the socio-archeological timeline of human history upside down.

The common assumption, still taught in practically every school today, is that man first discovered agriculture, then settled in communities, then built cities, and then began organized religion. This site alters that sequence in a significant way that even the anti-religious "News"week could not fail to notice. The thesis of Klaus Schmidt, the archeologist who uncovered the site, is that the world's first complex society was born there, around the temple complex. Therefore, agriculture, the settlement, the city, all these were discovered after man began organized religion. Schmidt goes further and says that it is because of organized religion that man took to agriculture, and built the first settlement, and then the first city. Human culture began with the cult. The first human-built holy place gave birth to the first human settlement.

Where Man first reached for God's finger....

The true "Neolithic Revolution" began, not when man first began to plant his own crops (the world's first domesticated wheat, traced with genetic mapping, was put to ground in that area), but when man first reached for the hand of God. All else followed. As the "News"week writer put it:

Religion now appears so early in civilized life—earlier than civilized life, if Schmidt is correct—that some think it may be less a product of culture than a cause of it, less a revelation than a genetic inheritance. The archeologist Jacques Cauvin once posited that "the beginning of the gods was the beginning of agriculture," and Göbekli may prove his case.

It would be such sweet irony that man's progress to modernity began with what Dawkins and his malformed ilk dismiss as superstition. Life beyond the visible is something man has always instinctively grasped, even when he was nothing more than a roaming, cave-dwelling hunter-gatherer. True enough, in the Smithsonian article, Schmidt is quoted as indicating that the site may have been a funereal complex as well, where the dead hunters could look up onto heaven. (The prominence of vulture carvings suggest that they believe it is these creatures that carried them heavenward.)

Perhaps, Schmidt says, the site was a burial ground or the center of a death cult, the dead laid out on the hillside among the stylized gods and spirits of the afterlife. If so, Gobekli Tepe's location was no accident. "From here the dead are looking out at the ideal view," Schmidt says as the sun casts long shadows over the half-buried pillars. "They're looking out over a hunter's dream."

I wonder how these ancient men would have found Paradise, as some of the first men since Adam to glimpse it...

One more proof that Rousseau was wrong. The social contract did not come first.

65 years ago today...

Semper fidelis...

An Evil Anniversary

Yesterday was the anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto, source of some of the darkest doctrines in human history. 100 million dead, a significant portion in history's bloodiest century. Not even the prehistorics who went to war almost every month could concieve of such destruction. And for what? 

Let it be a reminder of man's capacity for inhumanity towards other men.

Five Questions for "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief" *spoilers*

I was bored yesterday, so I went and saw this contender for the Harry Potter sweepstakes. Mind you, all my impressions are from the movie. The book sounds interesting though. I might check it out. However, if it is anything like the movie, I will be asking the same questions.

Most of these are regarding the consistency of either its adaptation of Greek mythology or its own internal mythos.

1. Why is there a daughter of Athena? Isn't Athena's virginity a significant part of her goddess profile? And considering that her daughter is barely post-pubescent, its not like she went the Athena route and sprang full-grown from her mother's head. So, what, did Athena just get hammered at a party and woke up with a take-home package?

"I'm never touching Apollo's shit again, ever!" *groan*

2. How come Medusa is alive again? Hasn't she been slain and decapitated before? Heck, her head is on Athena's shield. Couldn't they get another gorgon? Are there contract issues with the gorgon Union or something?

3. Why is a Fury doing a Harpy's job?

4. If, according to the internal mythos, the demi-gods' heads are "hard-wired for ancient Greek, not English", (which can be assumed they inherited from their Greek myth parents who should have the condition) how can a Fury in disguise teach Othello, which was written in English?

5. If, according to the book's internal mythos, the demi-gods inherit the god profiles of their divine parent (all of Aphrodite's daughters are Girls Gone Wild), why is the daughter of Pallas Athena, the virgin patron of Athens, suddenly all googly-eyed when confronted with a Theseus wannabe? Shouldn't she be the ice queen, or at least more guarded about her chastity? This is why it would have been better if she were made the daughter of Artemis instead. You circumvent all the "virginity" questions, get enought grrl power attributes to satisfy the stupid feminists in the audience, and leave enough room for her to fall in love with the hero.

Homeschooling Looking Better By The Minute

In the future, homeschooling will be heralded as the best and most innovative educational idea since public school.

Especially when public schools are turned into indoctrination centers by social engineers. If parents want to keep their children from learning the glories of an anal reaming, or the social justifications for suicide bombing, or whatever else a coercive ideological monstrosity of a government want to force feed their children, they will have to learn to teach their children themselves, just as it had been since time immemorial.

I surmise there are not a few politicians in this country who would absolutely love to turn public education into public indoctrination. Not even our enclave is safe.

Another Valentine's Special: The Myth of the "Naturally Monogamous Woman"

So, following my last post on relationship issues, let me further honor Singles Awareness Day (S.A.D.) with another.

We've all heard the charges before (at least, any of us with the wrong genitalia standing within spitting distance of a feminist). Men are naturally promiscuous. Men are naturally unfaithful. Men who are naturally promiscuous and unfaithful do nothing but hurt women who are naturally monogamous, faithful and suffering. Men are dicks.

I think I just summarized the syllabus of a Dr. (not the Dean) Toralba "Family" class. Day 1: Castration is your best friend....

That bit of UA&P arcana aside, what I'd like to avoid, for now, is discussing the truth or lack thereof) of the first half of the charge. For one, I've known too many dicks to not sympathize a little with this rather dim view of men. And another thing, such a generalization is already stupid in its own right, as there have been many good and faithful men as well.

No, what I'd like to do is attack the myth that women are "naturally monogamous".

This particular myth has deep roots. Watch our movies, and you will encounter woman as the perpetual martyr. Or for a change of pace, grrl power against those who would make them martyrs. Either way, the implicit assumption is that women are always being oppressed in relationships, and either they heroically suffer or get even.

How many times have our instincts inclined us to believe that in any break-up, it is the woman who is the aggrieved party until proven otherwise?

Reality paints a far bleaker picture of women and their so-called "natural monogamy". And this is most manifest in divorce statistics. In the United States, where nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, statistics show that two thirds of divorce proceedings are initiated by women. If you believe that two-thirds of divorce in America involves beastly men, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you. Furthermore, it can be seen that most women who initiate divorce do not do so for grave reasons such as husband infidelity, abandonment, abuse or fraud. A lot of it is petty stuff a woman of sterner character should have been able to overcome. The problem is, far too many women believe that their "natural monogamy" preserves them from the need to develop virtuous character.

Since women are twice as likely to initiate divorce as men, shouldn't it be high time we retire the myth of the "naturally monogamous woman"? For not only is it myth, it is not a harmless myth. Even the feminists have noticed.

This blog post by former journalist Laura Wood provides some excerpts from a book written by a feminist writer about female infidelity. (I quote her because I have not read the book. Ever try looking for books in this country?)

Michelle Langley in her book Women’s Infidelity takes a long look at the phenomenon at a time when women, unlike Mrs. Minder, readily divorce. She believes many of these divorces are caused by a combination of guilt, insensitivity and ignorance on the part of women. She writes:

…. young females are conditioned to believe that they are naturally monogamous and they carry this belief with them throughout their lifetimes. So when women experience feelings that deviate from this belief, particularly after they are married, those feelings can cause enormous internal conflict. Many women resolve the dilemma by dissolving their marriages.

Some women find it easier to think they married the wrong guy than to see themselves as some sort of shameful freak of nature. Their erroneous belief in a monogamous predisposition prevents them from becoming aware of their natural sexual tendencies in the first place. This unawareness can cause a chain reaction that ultimately destroys their marriages.

Heck, read the rest of her post, which will likely be more insightful than this one.

If you're still here, my point is that this myth of the "naturally monogamous" woman is gravely dangerous to both men and women. It prevents women from owning up to their own inadequacies, and often blinds good men to the shortcomings of women, the aftermath of which is the tendency to blame themselves for everything that went wrong in a relationship.

Women believing they are immune from cheating impulses are comparable to soldiers who believe they are invincible. The soldier gets shot. The woman will hop the next train to the next man (or woman) on the road to romantic thrills. In the end, both are destroyed.

Now, I will have to qualify. After all, did not the late Pope John Paul II believe that a predilection for faithfulness is part of the "feminine genius"?

I am not disagreeing with the Pope. A greater capacity for faithfulness does exist in the feminine genius. However, it is probably helpful to view this from the perspective of a bell curve. In terms of intelligence, the female bell curve is tighter than the male one. It means that there are plenty of average and above average intelligent women, but most of the stratospheric geniuses are men. Men also form the bulk of the morons. None of this means that men are "naturally more intelligent" than women.

In terms of the bell curve, I think that the reverse is true when it comes to relationship commitment. Because men's natural wants and goals in a relationship are much more limited, his commitment bell curve is tighter. Women expect a whole lot more from a relationship commitment, hence they are more likely to seek it, and more likely to break it. Their bell curve is wider. This means that they have a greater tendency to greater commitment, as well as a greater tendency to breaking commitment, than men. While this suggests the predilection for commitment in the feminine genius as elaborated by John Paul II, it does not mean that women are "naturally monogamous".

In the end, what makes relationships and societies work are men and women working together to overcome their individual faults. One of the great flaws of individualism is that it fails to see that man is not alone. And this cooperation is not served by a distortion offered up by ideology to soothe our easy sense of aggrievement.

Happy Valentine's Day!

***

PS

You might be thinking, Oh Jon, you're showing your inner mysoginist again. Another anti-feminist post?

I would like to remind you that today is V-day. In this holy day of obligation for those Gaia-worshipping femi-nazis, we're all talking vaginas now.

Some dick has to speak up.

We Should Have Gone Nuclear

We will be visited once more by the horrors of a limited and antiquated power supply.

We should've built nuclear power plants ages ago. But no, we had to politicize nuclear power.

Maybe these blackouts are signalling the arrival of Noynoy Aquino. Didn't his mother leave a legacy of rotating blackouts?

Valentine's Day Special: The Return of the Cave Man, or Why Women Prefer Bad Boys

Earlier in the day, my friends Joem and JV were discussing the question as to why women prefer the so-called "bad boys".

They had been exchanging theories, ranging from "women want bad boys to nurture into good boys" to "women want one wolf to drive away the other wolves". While all these theories are plausible, it does not explain completely why they go for "bad boys". After all, a shy good guy can be nurtured into something better too (quite akin to how many snazzy-dressing husbands are actually dressed by their wives), and a good guy can be as good a deterrent of "other wolves" as a bad guy. In fact, I think a good guy would be a more motivated defender. After all, bad boys often "fire and forget".

So, when I joined the discussion, I chimed in with the missing piece: sex. A 'bad boy" is an aggressive, hypermasculine (or faux-feminine, depending on taste), confident animal whose biggest charm is the ungodly amount of sexual appeal he can muster. This is his sole advantage over the good guy, who is generally nicer, more respectful, harder working and often richer than the bad boy. Sure, there are rich bad boys, but most are of middling income and none the worse for wear in the women-hunting game. Women go for bad boys because of sex.

One thing the "game" theorists got right is that women have changed, and the rules governing the relations between men and women have changed.

Historically, women have entered relationships with men for three primary reasons: marriage (the creation of a stable environment for the raising of offspring), romantic love (emotional fulfillment) and sex. Their reasons have always been a mix of all three, with one aspect predominating depending on the cultural milieu.

A brief summation of this development is implied in this excellent essay by conservative Australian blogger Mark Richardson:

Relationships can be oriented to sex, to romantic love and to marriage. In most cultures, there is an element of each, but the balance can change.

For much of Western history, culture was directed primarily toward marriage. A man in such a culture will be looking for a woman to be his life partner and a mother for his children. He is therefore likely to value a woman for her beauty, her intelligence and her good nature. In upper class culture it was also important for a wife to be of equal social standing, of good reputation and to be suitably accomplished.

...

By the end of the 1800s, Western culture was more oriented to romantic love than it had previously been. What does a man focused on romantic love look for in a woman? An idealised feminine beauty, grace and goodness.

By the 1970s, second wave feminists began to demand sexual liberation. What this meant, in its historical context, was the pursuit of relationships by women without regard to marriage or to male expectations of romantic love.

One may ask how men figure into all this. I have always maintained that when it comes to the pursuit of women, men have always been reactive. Even those pick-up artists who claim to be "proactive" in the woman hunt are only reacting to a set of presuppositions and calculations about the wants and desires of the women they pursue.

For all the feminist belly-aching about the lack of power they have relative to men, it is the women who have always had the power when it came to setting the terms of a relationship. Men simply react to them. Even the worst cases of abuse of women by men can be seen in light of this reaction. Wife-beating, for example, can be seen as a manifestation of "investment protection": he agreed to the terms and expects the bargain to be met. If not, he responds with violence.

Where women are taught to seek marriage, men had to make themselves marriageable: gaining status, wealth or some form of economic or social stability before winning the hand of the woman he is courting. Some cultures manifest this expectation in practices such as forced servitude (think the biblical Jacob), or the payment of dowry. Even where the payment of dowry is to the husband, it is in expectation that the dowry is necessary for his achievement of social or economic stability for the sake of his wife.

Where women are conditioned to seek romantic love, men are compelled to match the female masculine ideal with the male feminine ideal. After all, a woman expects the full force of her idealistic love to be returned with a similar force. I am reminded of Whittaker Chambers' observation of his father's marital failure, which was rooted in his inability to match or accomodate the force of his wife's devotion.

Where women are conditioned to seek sex, men react by reverting to the cave man. You know, the guy who hits his prey over the head and drags her to the cave. And the woman who is thus encultured loves every burn mark.

Why did the balance of feminine motivations shift from predominantly marriage to predominantly sex? There are many factors. To name just a few...

The rise in the quality of life and, more importantly, the economic independence of women brought about by the great social shifting of the 20th century ensured that women would find marriage less and less necessary to their well-being. The rise of the modern welfare state ensured that the state could replace the loss of a husband's income. Thus, there is no need to search for marriageable men. Why settle for the paunch and the balding head just because he works hard? She doesn't need him anymore.

The romantic ideal was untenable precisely because it was an ideal. The weakening of romance in the three-way balance is the result of a billion little disappointments, from forgetful boyfriends to the failure of most men to look like Fabio the Scottish Laird (or a sparkly vampire). Men often found themselves feeling the same loss, but have often been castigated and ostracized when this resulted in abandonment. However, things were different when the abandonment became mutual.

With the loss of the ideal and the obsolescence of the necessity, the major factor left is sex. Now, men have always had sex at the top of their motivations when it came to relationships. It was because women wanted something different that the complimentary natures of the genders came into play. After all, men have always been economically independent (widespread "failure to launch" is a more recent phenomenon), and are not built for emotional ideals. (How many men watched "Failure to Launch"?)  When women themselves wanted sex, then all the man had to do in order to satisfy his most pressing want is to revert to his old state, stripped off centuries of politesse and social obligation, and become the "bad boy".

The result is the complete and utter triumph of men (as seen in this bit of satire). At least, of some men. Not all men can easily strip themselves of civilized behavior.

The result is that women end up competing sexually for the attention of roughly 10% of the male populace. The competition is not even close. For every Samantha (Sex and the City) who manages 41 hook ups in the span of a decade, there are several Tucker Max types who can score twice that number in one-tenth the time. And when these women have been used and discarded like so many play things; as they lose the youthful beauty that had been their best bargaining chip, they will settle for the balding guy with the paunch who works hard and meets his obligations. What's even worse, she will have lost the ability to form strong emotional bonds with her sex partner (something the "bad boys" have either never had or have long discarded), which is patently unfair to the poor, hard-working schmuck who married her (and probably still nurses that highschool infatuation of her) and the children who will expect to be raised by parents who love each other.

While this post is not to excuse the part men played that led to our current state of affairs, it is an attempt to expand the blame to the other party in this mess. The modern woman is unhappier. The cave man, be he the CEO, the pool boy or the jobless biker deviant, is back and is here to stay. Chivalry and the ideal are dead. And modern women, I believe, have lost the right to complain. Far too many of them are actually enjoying it, and the complaints of those who cannot anymore ring with the hollowness of sour grapes.

And they said feminism would save women. Advanced Happy Valentine's Day!

Hipster what?

There's such a thing as hipster porn?

Umm....okay.

So, what are these, NSFW Zooey Deschanel photos?

Weird.