Emergent Degeneracy?
Hedonism, Decadence, and the Red Light District in RW Politics. [Jul 03, 2024]
This post is, in part, a (very delayed) response to Walt Bismarck ’s article:
It would be helpful for you to read this before continuing on to the rest of my post, but frankly if you have been in the RW sphere of influence for long enough you really don’t need to.
I should also note that this is only “partly” in response to Bismarck’s post, because I have intended to make a post just like this ever since I read Bronze Age Mindset several years ago. Never really got around to it until now though.
I’ve always been attracted to filth and dirt, because something in me knew intuitively that it is only in the underseam of life as it exists today that you find the real “lacunae,” the “holes” where its reach is limited or weak. I always sensed there was some real freedom in the blackest of red light districts among whores and junkies, perverts, and worse, with whom I’ve always chosen to take my dinners when I had the chance. I like the stories they told me, some showed letters from delusional Spanish engineer who wanted to marry her, another told me story of miscarriage her friend had in old pervert’s bathroom, and how they flushed it down a toilet and then its name written on a piece of toilet paper. It’s in this world and almost only in this world today that you can start to polish the claws nature gave you, assuming it gave you any. Unfortunately it’s easy for a man with good antennae to see that even this world of shadows has at most a conditional existence. The truth is that they are allowing these “holes” because they, or the people who crafted the fabric in which the masters of lies operate, are smart enough to know you need these “free spaces”: they are of great use to a manipulator. See how the Japanese, so famed for their love of law and order, have nevertheless always allowed the yakuza to operate running prostitution and meth rings and even worse. Such things have a serious function in Japanese society, as the mafia and other institutions have had in Western society. Only a cretinous government will get rid of such a world entirely, and thankfully we have very stupid governments in the West now.1
This specific quote, which forms a core part of the first section of Bronze Age Mindset, reflects a sentiment that has been extraordinarily pervasive amongst Millennial RWers. In particular, so-called “Nietzschean Vitalists” (which Bismarck describes himself as), but we will get this connection later.
Where I Agree
I generally agree with the statement “We should stop being mean to slutty women” but for wildly different reasons than Bismarck (we will get to that later as well). I’ve thought about making a post to that same effect, but it really isn’t something that demands a whole post. I don’t know if there is enough there to even justify one of my shorter “Stumpside Chats” type posts. So I’ll just explain it here.
The simple fact of the matter is that there is an increasingly large amount of “slutty” women today. This is not a good thing, mind you, nor is it natural. It should definitely be reversed. But it’s a fact of life today and probably will be for a while. Until the next generation at the very least.
This means that if we, as men, were to collectively purity spiral and refuse to give promiscuous women the time of day, there would not be enough women to go around. This would, obviously, have a catastrophic effect on the already declining birthrates of 1st world countries. So we can’t do that, can we?
Now, I’m not ever going to tell anyone they should “settle” for someone. That doesn’t mean to punch above your weight, but you should never marry someone if you feel like it’s “settling”, that is just a recipe for disaster. I myself probably wouldn’t date a chick who wasn’t a virgin. It would gross me out.
To be fair though, I am a germaphobe. I have a much lower tolerance for disgust and a much harsher response to disgust than even most RWer (if you didn’t know, high disgust responses are strongly correlated with RW ideas2). I am also a Christian raised on the idea of sexual abstinence before marriage, and that premarital sex was sinful (read: dirty/impure). I have much more strict rules for these kinds of things than even most “Trad” types just because its in my psychology. BTW German culture is very “germaphobic” so to speak so you can’t be mad at me.
I can sympathize with people who don’t want to settle, and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you should settle while I myself get all the virgin tradwives in sundresses standing in wheatfields. But also, as many people have already pointed out/admitted, most of us are not really “deserving” of le virgin tradwife. Most young men are just as prolific as today’s young women, and the RW isn’t really an exception. Especially if you weren’t raised to be abstinent. So you can’t sit there and say that you, as a high body count man, “deserve” a virgin gf. Because you don’t.
If you find a nice girl who is a virgin and she likes you and you like her, then so be it. Good for you. But you don’t get to feel entitled to having a virgin gf. You lost that privilege along with your own virginity. Conversely, if you are a virgin yourself and you find a girl who is not but you like her, you shouldn’t let that stop you from dating her if it doesn’t really bother you. Just so long as you don’t feel like you’re “settling”, it’s fine.
So basically, I think that “We should stop being mean to slutty women” is true for functionalist purposes. We can’t alienate such a sizeable portion of women when birthrates are already declining, especially when so many men are not much better.
But this isn’t really groundbreaking information. Pretty sure we all known this, and aside from the unironic incels, we all already agree on it. That’s why I never bothered to make a post about it.
Where I Disagree
Oh boy. I disagree with basically everything with the title. There’s a lot of ground to cover here, and most of it really isn’t even exclusive to Bismarck himself.
Elitism
This post, like so many of Walk Bismarck’s, is just absolutely drenched in elitist verbiage. Constant slights against the middle and lower class. Half of the post is just dedicated to whining about the fact that poor people are allowed in Vegas, and this ruins it for him. But I’ve already written several posts on this topic and I simply don’t have anything more to add to it.3
This is a problem that is extraordinarily common among Millennial Right Wingers, especially the Nietzschean Vitalist crowd.
Red Light Districts as a Form of Social Control
A major component of this article, really the foundational premise, is that the elite are inherently degenerate risk seekers (read: thrill seekers). Essentially, that the elite like to take risks and in times of peace this usually means personal risks around degenerate acts.
The sort of men who rise to the top of society have an enormous desire for conflict and risk-taking. If you don’t give them a Vegas they will start a war and send your son into the trenches. If they can’t lose their fortune gambling they will take those sort of risks with their business, and soon your husband or father will be out of a job.
This is also repeated in Bronze Age Mindset and is the reason why BAP also argues that red light districts are crucial for social control. It’s a sentiment that is echoed by basically the entire generation of Millennial RWers, albeit each with minor modifications.
I can’t help but think of Frostpunk here (life is like bideo game).
By opening a brothel in Frostpunk, you can lower “discontent” at the cost of a small penalty to “hope” (the two main indicators of societal health in the game; reaching max discontent or 0 hope and not recovering in a few days are game-enders). Signing the “House of Pleasure” law also typically begets a few new event chains which make you choose between closing the brothel down, or loosing even more hope. For the uninitiated, discontent is a very dynamic and volatile stat whereas hope is generally very stable. Discontent rises quickly but it also falls quickly. Conversely, hope (if you aren’t awful at the game) falls slowly, but it rises even slower. In fact, without instituting religion in your city, hope is basically impossible to raise. Many such cases!
I think this is not terribly different from the ways red light districts can be used to control society. Red light districts allow for a “quick and dirty” (literally) way to blow off steam, but are ultimately not good for society as a whole. “Blowing off steam” by banging hookers, railing lines of coke, and losing millions at the high stakes blackjack table (learn to count cards for God’s sake) is not a good idea. That kind of lifestyle is extremely draining and hard to live. Young people feel like they are invincible and so they don’t recognize this, until they get old enough that they start to realize their mistakes.
But by this point, they have likely burned bridges with most people they knew, become addicted to hard drugs (probably chemically lobotomizing themselves in the process), contracted an STD or two, and found themselves in crippling debt. This is why basically every rockstar that doesn’t die young ends up having a (often literal) come to Jesus moment. Even if you are not religious, this sort of lifestyle is pretty objectively bad because it is unsustainably harmful. What happens in Vegas DOES NOT stay in Vegas.
So by allowing the upper class to engage in self-destructive habits (which they cannot control under even the best of circumstances), you are (shockingly) just letting them destroy themselves. Not only are you letting them destroy their bodies through drug abuse and STDs, but you are burning any and all social credit they might have either by trying to cover up their numerous scandals, or by doing damage control in the aftermath.
The only utility of red light districts is that they “lower discontent” (bideo game) faster than healthier outlets. But this is a literal Faustian bargain. They are trading away their future health (both physical and social) for short term gains. This is an emergent fact of Western philosophy and media, from Faust to Star Wars (where the Dark Side is the fastest path to power [not the best] but literally corrupts you physically).
I’m not saying that you should sweep these impulses under the rug, or that they don’t exist at all (I AM Christian after all), but I am saying that trying to feed these impulses in a controlled manner is naïve and dangerous.
The best ways to “blow off steam” are things like contemplative activities or physical activities, which simultaneously provide a healthy outlet for stress and enabling self-improvement. Mental activities such as meditation, prayer, or intense study are good at providing mental release. You can systematically deal with issues you have by simply thinking about how to fix them, “giving it to God” as they say, or by studying how other people dealt/deal with them. Physical activities like working out and hiking are good at providing emotional release. You want to punch things when you are mad for a reason, and the best thing to do in that scenario is find something you can safely punch. Not bang a hooker.
There is a reason why every religion ever has advocated for mediation and prayer in times of stress. It is cathartic. Simultaneously, there is a reason why the Greeks were so adamant about honing the physical body. They both represent a mastery over your baser desires.
Are Elites Risk Seekers?
I don’t think elites are risk seekers. Elites who seek risk just actively rock the boat. That’s how you get riots. That’s how the local nobles start plotting to have you assassinated. I think elites are neither risk seekers nor risk averse. They occupy a balanced middle ground where they simply respond accordingly.
A degree of risk taking is, very obviously, necessary in every step of the political process. All the way from getting into power in the first place to making major policy decisions, you have to take risks.
But you need to also know when something is too risky, or the risk simply isn’t worth it. Otherwise you just shoot yourself in the foot by taking unnecessary risks. This is, as Bismarck likes to say, an “unforced error” which only happened because you have a psychological need for adrenaline.
There are many members of the elite class, past and present, who were not risk seekers at all. Some of them even seem to border on risk aversion (though I think this usually just a product of their desire to pad their chances as much as possible). I can’t think of a US president who was someone I would call a risk seeker. Trump is probably the closest to this, but I’ve never seen anything to suggest he was actively looking for the thrill of risk. He just seems like any good businessman: willing to take the risk.
Many US presidents, particularly the ones who favored a micromanaged administration such as Polk, did everything they could to mitigate risk. Polk was very obviously not a risk seeker, everything he ever did was planned to an almost autistic degree. But he did a lot of risky plays. I mean his initial bid for the presidency seemed very risky. He was considered dead in the water by most people at the time, and if he lost he probably would have been a national laughing stock. But he won.
Since risk seekers are so willing to take risks, they are pretty common among the elite. They just don’t comprise the entire elite, and they are literally never at the top of the food chain. They are far too volatile to get institutional (or popular) support. They get stuck as the elite equivalent of middle-managers; top tier administrative assistants and the like. That’s why they can crash and burn in Vegas and it isn’t a huge deal. They can be easily replaced, and their boss probably knew this was coming at some point. That’s why you typically hear more (real) scandals (not le 2 scoops of ice cream) surrounding people who are involved with presidential administrations than you do actual presidents. It’s always some senatorial aid caught having gay butt sex in the senate building4 not the senator themselves.
Are Elites Degenerate?
Well I already discussed how I don’t believe elites are particularly inclined to take risks (merely willing to take them), could they just be degenerate in general? As the title of this post asks, is degeneracy an emergent aspect of the upper class? The short answer: no, not really.
I think this is stupid and wrong. I think this is leftover baggage from the Millennial Right Wing crowd and their generally snobbish liberal backgrounds. I think they just come from liberal backgrounds where inhibitions are low and disgust thresholds are high, and they project this onto people of their socioeconomic class. There is some merit to this. Liberal elites are pretty degenerate. But conservative elites are not. Cue Nixon:
This shouldn’t be surprising. Neo-liberalism is very open, has loose (if any) morals, and no real accountability. They are decadent and hedonistic. Most importantly: they never grew up in an environment that enforced moral guidelines. If they had come from a family of “Church Ladies” as Bismarck calls them, or “moralfags” as others call them, they would have inherited these social values. They probably wouldn’t even step foot in a red light district to begin with, much less actually partake in their illicit dealings.
Now of course there are conservative types, and Christians, and whoever who get caught up in scandals. I’m not denying that, I’m just saying it is not nearly as common as in liberals. Again, I am a Christian after all, so I therefore believe in sin nature.
There are just a number of societal practices which can be utilized to effectively browbeat people into moral submission. Of course, this is a powerful tool and it can be very dangerous when in the wrong hands. Such browbeating is what the Longhouse Incorporated and its armies of HR mammies use to keep a brotha’ down. But when a 130+ IQ Anglo Savant controls the show? That’s a different story.
Everything Else
Beyond the two basic points (that elites are risk seekers which makes them degenerate, and that red light districts are good forms of social control), Bismarck makes a few others:
Elites (particularly men) find monogamy taxing.
This is tied in with general stuff about elites and degeneracy but it also stands out on its own because affairs are usually more common than Vegas scandals or whatever. This is untrue for similar reasons, but it is also important to notice who it is that actually committed adultery. Again, it’s almost always the liberal types. If you look at a list of presidential affairs, democrats will outnumber republicans 4:1, and the the democrats will almost always be compulsive skirt chasers while the republicans typically only have 1 or 2 throughout their life.
Trad is kinky or something (???).
This just struck me as some sort of coomer projection more than anything. I imagine that it stems from Walt’s ignorance of theology, which is the ultimate source for “trad chastity” in the West. It’s not really worth addressing beyond just making fun of him for saying it.
High openness is inherently good.
This is the most glaring in the long list of examples of Walt’s lib-coded beliefs. High-openness gets societies destroyed. That is literally what DEI is, and its why we import rapists and murderers by the millions. A discerning eye is good, not “high openness.” Mindless conservativism which avoids change at all costs is not good either, but it’s better than just being “open to anything” because it demonstrates an inability to be discerning. Once again, Walt is just betraying his liberal values.
Modesty discourse needs to be suppressed.
This is retarded. “Modesty” has been the norm for the entirety of history, and most women don’t really even find it objectionable. Insert “women have rediscovered modesty” meme here. Whores always exist, but that doesn’t mean that we should pander to them just because they might get even more mad if we don’t.
Anyways, the main thing here is that Walt is a crypto-liberal at best, and just a liberal grifter at worst. None of his beliefs are actually RW. What beliefs he can construe as RW are secondary premises that stem from something else. He believes in Human Biodiversity because it’s obviously true, but he doesn’t really support policy acting on it. He has made an number of posts, for example, about how we need to import Indians to America. LOL. He isn’t racist because he wants to preserve the racial health of Whitey, he’s not even racist to begin with!5
I won’t talk about this more in this article, however, because Walt is not special for standing out on this. In fact, Walt is archetypal of the more broad demographic of “Millennial RWer” which was so popular in the 2016 era. I’ll cover this topic more in my next post.
Montague et al. “Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors of Political Ideology” in Current Biology Vol. 24, Iss. 22 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.050.