Yesterday, The Starfire Codes posed an anthology of various recent discussions. One of these was the recent man vs. bear kerfuffle.
Demi expressed her feelings about the kerfuffle thusly:
I responded, “So bizarre. All of this seems so maladaptive and exhausting. I don’t even understand the compulsion to unpack it. No progress is made. It’s nonsense, and attempts to unpack it only seem to serve to generate more nonsense. It makes me want to go back to the early 90s. I understood the early 90s. 🤣”
I share that view. I did not even know about the man vs. bear meme until it had saturated far enough to get past my disinterested GenX shields.
But I do have strong feelings about the disastrous “war between the sexes”—which has lately become a cold war in which young people are simply not even bothering to try to have relationships anymore. So, half jokingly, I commented,
The women who are saying they would take a bear over a man won't have bears or men. All they will have is cats. Lots and lots of cats.
No man at their side to face life's storms.
No children helping them in their final years.
Just cats.
One commenter replied, quite reasonably, that men bear some of the responsibility for this phenomenon too. This is absolutely true.
I replied,
Yes, absolutely they bear (get it?) some of the blame.
And then there are also specific forces outside of the specific men and women—economic, social, cultural, political, technological, dietary, ideological. It is a toxic stew.
The men need to look in the mirror. The women need to look in the mirror. Then they need to look at each other. Then kiss.
Then they need to turn and stand shoulder to shoulder and, with righteous anger, defeat those external forces. Then they need to have thousands of babies and teach them to defeat them too. Enough is enough.
I am absolutely serious. The external forces impacting young people are tremendous.
Marxism-Leninism/Maoism launched an assault on the family that is being continued, in perverse new ways, by their ideological progeny.
Soy and other substances are impacting testosterone.
Video games and porn give men an easy, hassle-free outlet for some of their base urges.
Social media is a powerful distraction, and a warper of the mind.
Feminism—ninth wave, or whatever variant we’re on now—is making some women truly intolerable.
Various factors are making some men truly pathetic.
Priorities are shifting rapidly, and cultural pressures have changed.
We could go on and on with more examples, and I am sure we will in the comments. But whatever the pressures, men and women need to get over them. They need to avoid them. They need to fight them.
Hundreds of thousands of future babies are depending on them. Their own future happiness is depending on them. With birth rates falling below replacement rate across the world, the future of the species is depending on them.
I know it is easier said than done. But kids, you need to get it done.
Stop listening to your phone.
Stop listening to THEM.
Stop eating soybeans and chopping off your breasts.
Start listening to your heart.
Start listening to that voice that tells you what it means to be an actual human.
Men and women, turn toward each other. Look deep into each other’s eyes.
Kiss. Marry. Make babies.
Do it now.
Another thing you could do right now, if you are able, is buy me a cup of coffee so that I can keep doing my job here!
PS: I know the irony of using an AI-generated image here, and the problematic nature of AI in general. However, as a writer and editor of websites for 20 years, the ability to generate copyright-free images appropriate to the article is a real boon—one I cannot pass up right now.
With this one, I tried to get a bow and arrow in the wife’s hand, and to give them some teen children. And I certainly did not want a kid to be holding a sword by the blade! But whatevs. AI is still quite rudimentary.
Don’t worry, the boy just needs to work on his form. That’s a 16th century mordhau grip right there lol 😂
"Start listening to your heart." This is the real challenge. We're intelligent people who are forever trying to frame our world, we devise worldviews, we think our way into problems and then believe we can think our way out of them. Less thinking is needed. I live in my head, it doesn't do me any favours. I did some long distance running a few years ago and had a transcendental experience a few hours in where the love for my children nearly overwhelmed me. I've not had that profound feeling again since, I'm working on regaining it!