The Feminine Blur, Part II

The Chess Game by Sofonisba Anguissola, c. 1555

by Carl Nelson (February 2022)

It occurred to me after following a recent post on Facebook, about the youth of today having no reasonable notion of the wealth of opportunity and freedom they are heir to – that perhaps the kids nowadays aren’t as oblivious to the wealth of opportunities at their disposal as we older might think. But what the youth understand and have witnessed is that after people become famous for their riches in our culture, the next step of the wealthy is to become philanthropists/activists renowned for their nurturing.  So that, feeling safe economically, today’s youth spring (pole vaulting right over achievement) directly for the occupations of activist nurturers. They can manage this from college or even grade school and become more virtuous than anyone in their city, more nurturing perhaps than even their parents by perhaps channeling Greta Thunberg, “Swedish Activist”.  Out with the traditional lemonade stand – and in with “Greater Purpose Africa.”

“Something that’s bigger than us’: New Albany High School students launch new NAACP chapter.  …The whole idea was born from an assignment by her fourth-grade teacher, who asked each student to come up with a business plan for class (my emphasis); she wanted to help children in West Africa. … … She started collecting school supplies and raising money in April. Moore mentioned Greater Purpose Africa every day during school announcements. And Safiatou, (the now 10 year old Pickerington student), hung posters around the Pickerington school and in May launched a GoFundMe campaign in an attempt to raise $5,000.

So far, Greater Purpose Africa has raised $820 and collected 23 backpacks for the first shipment of school supplies, which arrived at Bowoun Djoungol Elementary School in Mamou on June 12.” – The Columbus Dispatch

Giving money is widely held as preferable to making money, throughout much of our media narrative.   People who create wealth are mocked as greedy egotists, whereas people who spend others wealth for virtuous acts are celebrated daily.

Business nowadays must not only be successful in terms of the bottom line (in order to exist), but they must also strive to be socially successful, ‘community’ oriented and work as engines to promote ‘diversity’, and to fight sexism and racism and inequities of every sort.  This is a lot to pile on top of selling widgets, and it takes a lot of governmental regulations, tax credits, funding, incentive props and intimidation to make it so.

Government no longer governs but nurtures.  But whereas governing has a budget, nurturing does not.  Nurturing spends whatever is needed, freely and broadly as cows poop.  In fact, think of it all as fertilizer.  Back when governments used to have a budget, they spent money.  There were trade-offs.  Now government invests.  And the governmental budget is like a beach ball – a diversely colored spinning ball of entitlement fascination to be kept in the air while the budgetary game is played.

The feminine mind, by itself, does not recognize a downside to spending and nurturing.  The return is coincident with the payment – and not necessarily with the result.  As a TV commercial might declare, “It’s what we do.”

The sexual dialectic doesn’t exist anymore (that is, has been cancelled) or has multiplied by whatever factor of the imagination is applied.  The culturally successful male is now defined in feminine terms as having developed the ability to express vulnerability, to empathize, to nurture, to be a responsible companion, and to support the woman in the traditionally feminine manner.  While the women now “lean in”  to outperform their counterparts at whichever of their roles they claim.

Our culture has pivoted likewise to favor the feminine over the masculine.  Women’s worldly accomplishments are celebrated, while men’s are more celebrated when they suit feminine ends.  Woman are celebrated from moving away from the home, while the men are celebrated for moving back in.  The leading men of business and political life are given their due, but only with the recognition that they are Feminine 2.0B oriented and that they support Feminine 2.0B goals, and that they live as yet within an imperfect world.

The vote has been extended increasingly to the vulnerable, the weak, the less mature, the less successful, but also the more criminal, in essence, those who are the most insufficient bulwarks of a sound society.  The vote is distributed less on the basis of competence, and more on the basis of presence, or even just … nominal existence (as you needn’t even be present to vote).  For the purpose of nurturing, the culture has ‘progressed’ to embracing losers over winners.

And this embrace and cultivation of the feminine over the masculine has also had the effect of turning the culture topsy turvy. As Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez has declared, it is more important to be “morally right” than “factually correct.”  Vacuity is worshipped, while fact and substance have been ruled cold and hostile to a shared humanity.  And this could not be truer than of our current President Biden, a serial pooper, who is by any rational standard senile.  He might be incomprehensible, but he doesn’t do mean tweets.

Speech codes nowadays have shrunk from the First Amendment’s, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – to very nearly its opposite.  Rather than Freedom of Speech we have Freedom from Offence.  Speech must be community sensitive in that it must not offend, but rather also be supportive of various individuals within the community.  And speech which is found to offend must be suppressed and the culprit cancelled, while the putative victim decides the evidence.

Rules and the written, legislated laws themselves are not to be taken verbatim, but must be executed as interpreted within the context of the situation.  Nothing you see is as it appears but is blurred by the context in which we see it.  And so the laws themselves must blur with interpretation.  If someone stole from you, were they perhaps forced by circumstances to steal?  (For example, Press Secretary Psaki just suggested that the Covid Pandemic was the root cause for organized looting in the US.)  And if this is so, aren’t you more at fault for not offering what is so much more needed by them than you, since you obviously have more of it?  And perhaps, shouldn’t you be fined for your penuriousness?  Or imprisoned, even?  Surely we must judge the community climate prior to reaching a judgment and so interpret the law before executing it.  It would be the feminine manner to first get a feeling for the general consensus before announcing a verdict.  This is to prevent divisiveness and aggrieved feeling; again, feminine goals.  For example in a most famous court decision:

“Roe v. Wade is an important precedent. In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that women have a right to terminate their pregnancies. That right was reaffirmed in 1991 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, with Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter noting that an entire generation of women came of age relying upon their right to control their bodies and terminate pregnancies in most circumstances. The justices said it would be wrong to upset that expectation (my emphasis).”  – from The Conversation

So that when pregnancy is inconvenient, the living fetus in the Feminine 2.0B world has no legal standing if saving its life would “upset an expectation.”

Charity:  As Michael Shellenberger speaking about his book, “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities notes, “The San Fransickness that the title refers to, yes, it’s referring to the folks that are living in squalor on the streets, but it also is referring to a kind of compassion sickness, a compassion unchecked by discipline, by reciprocity, by personal responsibility, by the things that people need in order to improve their lives.”

 

Ending Poverty

 

He raised his voice to ask,

“You want the rest of that?”

before I’d even begun to eat.

In fact, while still walking.

 

But stopped.  Big mistake!

To look at him.

He was dirty, filthy in fact.

Looked as though he’d peed himself.

 

Was wrapped in a soiled and stained wool overcoat.

But it was his portly insouciance

with one eyelid turned inside out

that whispered of comedy –

that “sweet and sour dramedy”

we all respond to.

 

It began innocently enough

when I gave this fellow half my sandwich.

It was a pretty good one –

a toasted hot pastrami and ham, melted havarti

and a couple slices of vine ripened tomato garnished with basil.

 

Religion has probably suffered most from this modern turn towards the feminine.  Discipline dissolves where feelings trump Commandments, and where community feeling, as voiced in the media, is more sacred than the religious text.  The sermons become little more than a rehash of last night’s TV commentaries, while the congregation dwindles away.

American culture and the political conversation nowadays have descended to a quantum state, where words might mean this or that depending upon who spoke it and in what manner and situation. All is relative including the definitive which is selected for its fragrance, so that listening to a legacy media roundtable is like visiting with the Cheshire Cat.

The facts are that if we were to count only the votes of women in the 2020 election, the count would have been: Biden 462 electoral votes and Trump 76.  Mean tweets and $1.79/gal gasoline would lose hands down when up against a hundred days of government facilitated rioting, years of lockdowns, forced immunizations, open borders, failing businesses, rampant inflation and crime, and a contender who is obviously senile and who campaigned from his basement.  We have a proposed budget by the dominating Democratic party which ignores all the benchmarks of fiscal management.  They will tell us this infrastructure bill (which actually balloons with ‘cultural infrastructure’ costs) will cost us zero.  But on the other hand, we will also have to raise the debt ceiling, if we want to “build back better” (more nurturing).

On the plus side, you won’t have to hear conflict on the evenings’ news.  In fact, you’ll hear that things are going well save for a few scattered hold-out anti-vaxxers and dissent from the ranks of white supremacists.

We have a Secretary of Defense who warns our enemies if we are likely to attack, an Attorney General who declares that objecting to a school boards’ actions in an acrimonious manner is domestic terrorism, and an FBI Director eager to help enforce these feminine thrusts.  And as a country and a society our pre-civil war situation is dismissed as growing pains.  You have to break a few eggs to build that omlette back better.  But we dare not debate this as such divisiveness has been moved outside of the Overton Window of the Feminine Blur.

 

Traditionally, the masculine has boasted that it makes all of the big decisions, while it leaves the feminine to make the little ones.  In practice, it has often happened that by the time comes to make that big decision, the situation has already settled.  In this way the feminine quietly preens, while the male is pleased to have gotten that problem off its plate; a happy marriage.  Things have often reconciled this way throughout the centuries, but now the cart appears to have gotten ahead of the horse.

So what has driven us off-course?

It would seem that men have relinquished their role.

“A man’s role in a relationship is to lead. And to create a positive environment of mutual respect and teamwork.  

The man shows leadership by making the first approach, opening up a conversation, asking for a telephone number, and soon after asking for a date.  

He builds attraction by demonstrating strong values about himself and his attitude towards the relationship and his girlfriend. He’s not jealous or needy. He has a purpose in life that drives and satisfies him. He wants a relationship, not to complete him, but instead to share the exciting experiences he creates for himself. 

These behaviors allow him to lead naturally. The new woman in his life is excited to follow him through his life experiences, and he’s confident to follow her through hers. 

This mutual respect ultimately turns into teamwork, with the couple supporting and fighting for each other, and a natural sense of balance in the leadership roles.”[i] 

And what would happen if men took back leadership?

Well, children, while still in grammar school, would likely not be encouraged to “change the world”, but rather told to finish the dishes.  Teenagers and illegal immigrants would likely not be given the vote.  And something might be said about Murphy’s Law, government interventions and how changes are far more likely to be for the worse, with a few pithy maxims about trade-offs tossed in.   Our youth might be tasked with accomplishing something amazing and note how that of itself may change the world, just as doing the clean-up will change the kitchen.

Our youth might be raised to admire responsibility as the equal of philanthropy – and to not have them start off in life trying to be Santa Claus or a Global Savior.  Have you pulled your weight? Did you meet your commitments?  Did you do what you said you would do?  Children developing these character traits would benefit society much more than will the giving of their lunch money to a global initiative.

And as our children mature, we might emphasize that the first step towards helping the poor is not to be one yourself, (to paraphrase a conservative cabinet official who was promptly sacked).  And we might also ask, that without the free will that wealth allows, how can virtue exist?  And without the failure and foolishness that freedom allows, how can we be free to learn and how can our best lead?  And without the wherewithal to argue/debate amongst ourselves, however are we to chart the best course?  They needn’t afford college, or even perform well on their college entrance exams, to begin mulling these questions.  All they need is a male head of the family who practices leadership.

We should train our youth to be more than a warm pair of socks for whatever misdirection rears its head, and leave nurturing and charity their natural territories – actions of the heart led by common sense and wisdom.

 

Wife Poem #23

Normal Life

 

On cold mornings,

she bundles up like an Eskimo;

a woolen oblong with mittens and a red nose.

There’s a careful watch for ice,

a penguin walk to the car.

We criticize the weather.  Kiss.

 

The sky is ice blue.

The birds dart

between stark branches.

The light is flat and washed out.

 

Otherwise, it’s a day

like any other.

She will do her job,

knowing I am here.

And I will do my job,

knowing she is there.

 

[i] Understanding The Mans Role In A Relationship https://www.thekewlshop.com/blogs/news/why-men-must-lead-a-relationship-to-avoid-losing-it

 

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Carl Nelson is currently working on a book of memoirs and poetry celebrating his current area of Appalachia titled Become Remarkable. To see more of his work, please visit Magic Bean Books.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast