Jerks: The Natural Man
"La plupart de jeunes gens croient etre naturels, lorsqu'ils ne sont que mal polis et grossiers."
La Rochefoucauld's caustic observation on the false simplicity of young people who mistake crudeness for nature tells us that the cult of the primitive antedates both Rousseau and the Romantic writers who wrought so much mischief.
Society and civilization, say these nature-lovers, are artificial, and only savages in a state of nature are real and authentic. To discover this reality, one has to find an old knife-grinder with wisdom to impart or go live in the woods, as Henry David Thoreau actually did not: Thoreau built his cabin on the village pond and made the short walk home to eat his mother's supper any time he liked. Better still, one could follow Gauguin to the South Seas, but, again, Gaugin found the life miserable and invented a myth about his experiences that helped him sell his paintings.
We have all known the type, and many of us have been the type: the hippie, the beat, the bohemian, the footloose vagabond going down that long and lonesome road who leaves his sleeping bag rolled up behind her couch, who dares to break the commandments made for lesser men, the free and easy guy or gal who stays until it is time for you to go, the true American individual, Captain America and Billy who make the big score in order to live free. Yes, I have at one time or other known all these types and as a dumb teenager pretended to be one and might have been, if it hadn't meant wearing really stupid clothes and hanging out with the high school Harries who switched from beer and sit coms to smoke dope and read Hermann Hesse. Some of the girls were amazingly cute, until they opened their mouths and recited their bubblegum philosophy of life. "You know, man, like we're free, etc. etc." Even the SDSers were less boring, though, God knows, they were boring enough.
Naturalism is an affectation, and it is an act, in which success does not come easily or cheaply. French courtiers got it right, when they dressed up as shepherds and enjoyed an afternoon's frolic in the gardens of Versailles. "Man's nature is artifice," as an obscure scribbler observed not too long ago, and nothing is more phony--or more costly-- than the affectation of naturalness. Chesterton once conceded that he would have loved to lead the simple life but he just couldn't afford it. Only the very rich have enough money to pretend to go native.
Real primitives are generally ugly and dirty, and, unlike courtiers, students, and other animals in captivity, they do not have time and energy for endless fornications. To go native is not to live like primitive natives, who have to spend a good deal of their time and wits finding subsistence. No, in going native, one actually has to turn feral, like a junkyard dog. The ambition of the natural man is to unlock the beast that has been enchained by morality, manners, and custom. Alcohol, drugs, sex, extreme sports—they all have their uses in stupefying any finer impulses we might retain. This was understood by one of the deepest writers of the 19th century:
Enivrez-vous sans cesse!
De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise.
Only when drunk (or drugged) can we be deaf to reason and decency, only when drunk are we free to be "natural," not natural as an Apache, but natural as an intelligent man with a brain injury that makes him fit only for playing with children. This is what Dr. Henry Jekyll understood. Dr. Jekyll had two natures, one mild and charitable, the other filled with enthusiasm for the seamier side of life. He was, he assures us, not worse than other men who like to blow off steam occasionally by drinking spirits and bedding women, but his moral side was always repenting for the follies of his wild side. As a scientist, he hit upon the brilliant scheme of dividing his two selves:
"If each, I told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil."
When Dr. Jekyll did succeed in liberating the beast, Mr. Hyde did not turn out to resemble a Nordic god but something more like a Randian or Rand herself: short, dark, and ugly, a leering goblin too stupid, really, even to savor the evil he did. "Evil…had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome.
Since anyone even vaguely literate has read Stevenson's brilliant tale, I need go no further. In unlocking the unnatural natural man, Jekyll now had a dependable ally. "Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures," but inevitably the degraded servant seized power and enslaved his former master.
The rational individualism of the Enlightenment, like Dr. Jekyll, had its wilder side. Voltaire and his collaborators lived it up—imagine a more nearly human Hugh Heffner with above average intelligence. In the end reason had to be overthrown, if the party was to continue and reach even lower depths. The trends set by the Duc d'Orléans (aka Philippe Égalité) and his PR man Choderos Laclos (author of Les Liasons dangereuses) culminated in the life and works of Sade, who for all times epitomizes the fulfillment of the Enlightenment dream of individualism and the pursuit of happiness. Sade was to Enlightenment France what Charles Manson is to modern America: the mirror in which we can see ourselves, stripped of hypocrisy and affectation.
The natural man is the Old Adam. He is not man as God created him, but a fallen creature who has failed, as my grammar school teachers used to write on my report cards, "to live up to his potential." He is not simply someone who enjoys his physical existence but a degraded being who rejects the higher aspects of human life. He despises not just good manners and decent clothes but any form of art that requires cultivation. He has a tin ear for any music that does not arouse his appetites, and, if he finds himself in a church, he scoffs as Lincoln did. Only a fool or a hypocrite would aspire to either the life of the mind or the life of the spirit. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him."
Entries(RSS)
La plupart de jeunes gens croient etre naturels, lorsqu’ils ne sont que mal polis et grossiers.
Could this condemnation of the "cult of the primitive" apply to those Pentecostal evangelicals who insist they are "not Catholic, not Protestant, just simply Christian" and, despite their devout attendance of church on Sunday, "not religious, just spiritual"?
Certainly the cult of the Youth Group tends to suggest that these places unwittingly perpetuate Jerkhood.
The trends set by the Duc d’Orléans (aka Philippe Égalité) and his PR man Choderos Laclos (author of Les Liasons dangereuses) culminated in the life and works of Sade, who for all times epitomizes the fulfillment of the Enlightenment dream of individualism and the pursuit of happiness. Sade was to Enlightenment France was Charles Manson is to modern America: the mirror in which we can see ourselves, stripped of hypocrisy and affectation.
The interesting thing, though, is that Laclos, though less frankly pornographic than Sade and far less libertine in his family life, seems to have provided a riper and rounder analysis of libertinism overall, and not simply for the reason that his writing is far more readable than Sade's: Laclos shows us plainly how libertinism survives and perpetuates by carefully shifting between its two faces: its raw nature and its sociopathic affectation, without the latter of which it could never survive because the result would be Sade, which is just too shocking for the vast majority of rank-and-file perverts. Les Liaisons dangereuses is in this sense the ultimate Satanic exposé.
Les Liasons dangereuses is a brilliant, though dangerously immoral book, and its author an energetic and forceful man, albeit a bit deluded on his boss's capacity for seizing the throne. Disappointed in his military career, he went to work for the Duc, but returning to military interests he invented the modern artillery shell. He was a degenerate but anything but a loser.
One of the most famous rationalist atheistic scientists, Richard Feynman, was briefly found in a moment of odd behaviour.
Sure, the man was disarmingly sharp, and could strip down the nonsensical arguments of the typical religious person today to the bare bone, while also being an honest and dedicated pursuer of his sciences - to the point that he discarded his own cherished hypotheses when he realized they simply did not work.
All the same, you can find a video of him banging on drums and shouting gibberish like a maniac. It's a kind of awkward behaviour that would turn off the average person, but the rationalist sceptic squad sees this footage and deduces that his spontaneous wild behaviour was a sign of a genius, a sign of getting back in touch with one's natural side.
What really is man's natural existence? An excuse for thoughtful, intelligent beings to behave in an unthoughtful, unintelligent manner?
”Man’s nature is artifice,” as an obscure scribbler observed not too long ago, and nothing is more phony–or more costly– than the affectation of naturalness. Chesterton once conceded that he would have loved to lead the simple life but he just couldn’t afford it. Only the very rich have enough money to pretend to go native.
I always look forward to camping trips, and when they are over, I am always more than happy to be in a real bed with a full bathroom - complete with shower, sink and flush toilet - just around the corner. I never go camping just to go camping, though: camping should only be done when necessary for practical reasons such as hunting, exploration or pilgrimage, and regardless of the fun and camaraderie I cannot say I am warm to the idea of sleeping in a tent longer than I have to to accomplish such ends.
Chesterton's insight is very telling. The natural place and lifestyle for a man is of course that into which he was born and raised. Anything else - vacation or otherwise - is an affectation and bound to be far from cheap.
This reminds me of the exaltation by contemporary radical social scientists and anarcho-primitivists of hunter-gatherer peoples and their blaming inequality and various -isms (especially sexism) on the development of agricultural civilization. Still, Dr. Fleming, do you think there might be some truth in the anthropological data for hunter-gatherer peoples providing an ideal worth emulating with regards to male cooperation (especially some measure of equality of participation in defense and government)and some form of republican self-government?
First, you must understand that the !kung bushmen and pygmies have been evolving as long as we have. From an historical perspective, they might either be viewed as "primitive" or simply decadent. Naturally, when there is no division of labor and no stored wealth--not even food--there is no inequality except the inequalities found among apes--the strongest take what they want. In the unimmortal words of Robert Zimmerman,"When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose." One really stupid liberal anthropologist who loved the bushmen records their reaction to a cold driving rain. They sat there, huddled and shivering, literally too dumb to come in out of the rain. (Sapphire to Andy Brown in a wonderful episode: "Andy Brown, you ain't got sense enough to come in out of the rain." Andy: "Sure I is, I done it lots of times"--putting Andy, butt of all jokes, pranks, and cons, one step ahead of hunter-gatherers. The same foolish woman is the source of the claim that the bushmen are peace-loving, but on her own evidence, physical violence is at a very high level. It is just that you have a fairly small number of incidents in a human group of 30. Statistically, however, it is like Washington DC.
What is said of H-G societies, to conclude, is mostly lies, usually contradicted by the researchers' own evidence. If you are so socially and culturally retarded that you are incapable of making anything of value, all that is left of wealth is food and sex, but if you are too stupid to know how to store food--a breakthrough that took place in some cultures something like 8-10,000 years ago--there is almost nothing to distinguish one H-G from another. They do have one advantage over the rest of us: they barely hit a lick. To gain necessary nutrition requires perhaps a 20 hour week. They might as well be on foodsteps, living in a project. The welfare state has succeeded in dragging people who might be simple agriculturalists down to the level of gorillas. Marvelous.
One really stupid liberal anthropologist who loved the bushmen... is the source of the claim that the bushmen are peace-loving, but on her own evidence, physical violence is at a very high level.
Are you referring to the British woman I think you are referring to? If you are, I just wanted to mention that I had heard even worse: that she had observed this about gorillas and chimpanzees, not bushmen. I do know that this particular woman is somewhere on the spectrum of advocating for great ape personhood... she doesn't go as far as some do (she doesn't exactly advocate "equal" rights and a complete end to the practice of keeping apes in captivity), but a half-loon can sometimes be more dangerous than a looney loon.
I was referring to Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, a rather silly American anthropologist who wrote a good deal about the !kung. There is a long list of silly books on harmless tribes around the world. A student once told me about a wonderful people in the Philippines who had no property, no hierarchy, no conflict. He brought this up to contradict my rather hard-wired view of human nature. I said I was not familiar with the people, but I could assure him that it was either bad anthropology or a hoax. As it turned out, it was both--the hoax was created by the ministry of tourism and it took in some stupid anthropologists.
A student once told me about a wonderful people in the Philippines who had no property, no hierarchy, no conflict. I said I was not familiar with the people, but I could assure him that it was either bad anthropology or a hoax. As it turned out, it was both–the hoax was created by the ministry of tourism and it took in some stupid anthropologists.
I would've guessed it was a cemetery...
'As it turned out, it was both–the hoax was created by the ministry of tourism and it took in some stupid anthropologists.
What is it about so many cultural anthropologists that make them so stupidly gullible, or else (perhaps worse), subversive revolutionaries (Margaret Meade)?
I remember the Tasaday of the Philipines being given quite a bit of page space in one of my geography textbooks back in third or fourth grade. Something about it gave me a strange feeling, but of course if it's in a schoolbook, then it must be true, right? Well, wrong!
The pseudo-anthropologist jerks and their pseudo-scientific claims about primitive peoples are now echoed in travel and adventure shows, which I quit watching years ago. One can only stand so much silly praise of primitives and implied condemnation of all western culture and civilisation. They live in dirt and eat roasted spiders, therefore they are superior to engineers and astronauts? Come on, now!
A pseudonymous poster wonders why I am being easy on women. I'd gladly post his remarks, if he will register properly with his real name. The question sounds, to me at least, that it comes from one of the broken-hearted males that are so common these days. I think I took the trouble to explain that while feminists believed in acting like Jerks, there is a qualitative difference between their false assumption of masculine boorishness and the real thing, which can often be comparatively harmless, because it is an extension of otherwise harmless or even good qualities in the male nature.
The larger point, lost on too many, is that the female sex is physically smaller and weaker, and therefore the collective will of the male sex could end feminism very, very quickly with no viable resistance. That men even let it get this out of hand in the first place is scandalous. I'm not sure why so many men are willing to be feminists, but it might have something to do with hoping to attract women. In my experience, though, women do not like men with pro-feminist views.
Let us never forget that white males created and promoted feminism, that feminism is a male ideology. The women feminists were inconsequential eccentrics--compare the negligible influence of Mary Woolstonecraft with that of her lover Godwin, for example. Elizabeth Caddy Stanton and the other harridans they cite so often were regarded as freaks by both sexes.
Why did men create feminism? If we put the question to Godwin, Laclos, and Sade, they would say--if they were honest--that liberating women from control of fathers and husbands made them more vulnerable to seduction and exploitation, and that was certainly the foundation of the Playboy philosophy, and it has been said explicitly. Capitalists would have added that by liberating women, they could lower wages and make more money--remember it was the Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce that came up with the equal rights amendment and "Equal pay for equal work."
But libertinism and capitalist exploitation are not the root of the problem. Feminism is an outgrowth of Renaissance anti-Christian individualism that makes of every son, daughter, sister, brother, wife,. parent nothing more than an interchangeable algebraic entity. Throughout the 18th century, the unreflecting encyclopedists and their disciples asked stupid questions like, "Why should one religion be preferred to another," and "Why should aristocrats have social privileges not enjoyed by peasants," and "Why should men have rights that women don't have?" The most obvious answers are the ones we give to children when they ask why they can't stay out till midnight or eat in the living room. BECAUSE YOU CAN'T. Why, daddy? BECAUSE I SAID SO.
In other words, challenges to the natural order of things must be met with exertions of authority, not with ingenious arguments. But, no, stupid white European males who could not see beyond the end of their nose--or perhaps another organ would make a more appropriate metaphor--destroyed, one by one, the foundations of a decent and normal social order. So-called conservatives were content to wring their hands or, more often, go with the flow which they tried feebly to slow but never halt, much less reverse course.
I admire Jefferson but sane men at the time should have said, "If you think I am going to fight a revolution based on a preposterous theory that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, you are crazy."
Feminism is an outgrowth of Renaissance anti-Christian individualism that makes of every son, daughter, sister, brother, wife,. parent nothing more than an interchangeable algebraic entity.
If you think I am going to fight a revolution based on a preposterous theory that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, you are crazy.
Yet, we have doubled our defense budget in the last ten years, lost 6000 American lives, spent 1.??? trillion dollars and God only knows what else under the rubric of spreading this very idea from sea to sea and desert to desert. Meanwhile the few remaining American families consisting of husband and wife, who raise their children, attempt to educate them, pray to their God, and feel some obligation to their local communities's, are instructed by the likes of Eric Cantor, Barney Frank, Little Lindsey Graham, and other leaders of our dear duopoly that "we" need to do more by " cut domestic spending, approve same sex marriage, contribute to the sustenance of unlimited immigration while increasing our national defense."
Who in his right mind could take such issues seriously?
Throughout the 18th century, the unreflecting encyclopedists and their disciples asked stupid questions like, “Why should one religion be preferred to another,” and “Why should aristocrats have social privileges not enjoyed by peasants,” and “Why should men have rights that women don’t have?” The most obvious answers are the ones we give to children when they ask why they can’t stay out till midnight or eat in the living room. BECAUSE YOU CAN’T. Why, daddy? BECAUSE I SAID SO. In other words, challenges to the natural order of things must be met with exertions of authority, not with ingenious arguments.
Well put. There are indeed logical arguments to be advanced against the "Enlightened," but as you imply, men who must ask such stupid questions as you listed are in no position to understand the answer.
Thanks for the fascinating and enlightening exchange, gentlemen.
~ Bob Sale
Yes, I am one of the broken-hearted males. But I've survived, except for a smashed windshield, relatively unscathed. What I feebly tried to say in reguards to Feminism, is that after millenniums of smooth interaction between men and women in a decent and normal social order, marriage stopped working. The way divorce laws are written, the women is the person controlling the relationship. The outcome often resembles winning the lottery, this country is filled with men living like slaves out of fear of losing everything. I may be a bit off subject, but what can I do.
"I think I took the trouble to explain that while feminists believed in acting like Jerks, there is a qualitative difference between their false assumption of masculine boorishness and the real thing, which can often be comparatively harmless, because it is an extension of otherwise harmless or even good qualities in the male nature."
Female jerkiness, their "false assumption of masculine boorishness", is certainly more harmful than the male variety. It could hardly be otherwise, what with the starting point for women having been so much closer to the home and family than men's. The hand that used to rock the cradle does much greater damage to society when it abandons that role to rock the world. And that plus the fact that what is perceptible as "feminism" to today's male is predominantly female in its administration, means one can't really blame men for focussing their anger on the unfair sex. If one came of age being harangued, accused and insulted by the likes of Friedan, Steinem, Greer, et al, and remembers the feral glee with which their horrid sisters stopped traffic throwing bras over the Michigan Avenue bridge, invaded one formerly all male refuge after another, and raised their consciousnesses to such lofty heights that they could see all men, everywhere and in all times, as evil, it's too great an effort to look past all that for the bad men in feminism's closet. That's my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking to it.