The Man-Child Delusion

Well - sometimes it doesn't take a lot for one to feel fed up by something. So could I feast a lot longer on a finely prepared meal, than I could on horse manure. And no, I haven't tried the latter ... but it's one of those things I don't feel bad remaining ignorant about.


But sure. This does, in a sense, highlight a particular mentality - one, I assume, we all come to in one way or another - that could be considered wrong in certain circumstances. The issue at play is mostly one of familiarities. Matters of upbringing that instill certain values and worldviews in the mind would lead to certain adverse reactions unto certain other things. And yea, this is also where the debate around acceptance of Queer people comes into the frame.

And so does Fake News or Propaganda. And/or.

What now is or isn't Fake News or Propaganda ... should be regarded in the light of that which isn't. Propaganda, in its most rudimentary sense, tries to produce some kind of national identity - instilling a sense of hopefulness, optimism and loyalty to this abstract idea called nation, profoundly generated by a government's reach. Or - per chance - billionaire money. This, so, in contrast to an inexistence of said values and beliefs. Something that people would loose sight on - if it for instance is as though it had always been there.
And other times the issue isn't that abstract. Other times there are just 'truths' - objective reality - versus what people are taught about it.


When it now comes to delusions, I want to at first introduce the matter of 'intellectual substance'. This kind of substance does not need to be true, or representative or reality. It can be utter horseshit. For all intents and purposes is it merely stuff that keeps our synapses busy. As such, it can become part of our worldview - or one's worldview - where to any worldview any piece of information can be thought of as existent at a relative distance to it. That distance being a matter of how much effort it would take for that individual to understand it. Another quality of it were weight. That, to describe how easily it will integrate into "the worldview's" understanding.
So - 'intellectual substance' can hereby make the comprehension of things more difficult to us - for once by increasing the worldview's distance to it - and also by making it more difficult to integrate.

So, in the idea: Provided with a certain item - the rational mind will atempt to reason towards it. That being the matter of distance, requires the individual to "chew through" some amount of intellectual substance. In the process, or at the end, the individual will most likely close with a quality judgment. This would in part depend on the intellectual analysis; And in part on pre-existing biases. That being the weight; And ... it pretty much comes on its own. Conversely the individual will have to be self-critical - of their own biases - to properly engage with the provided information.


Which, by the way, is one reason why I shifted from focusing on "evidence for God" style argumentation and presentation to a "pragmatic wisdom" style of argumentation and presentation. I mean, 'evidence for God' is already ... a difficult subject and it's easy thereby to get lost chewing through miles and miles of intellectual substance - and one ends up piling up mounds and mounds of philosophy and figures and theory. I eventually found it to be tiring and not all that useful.

There also is a certain kind of hubris that comes with it. It's like the best way to get lost in one's own. I mean, for once does it come easy to be convinced of certain philosophies - these in turn fuel further argumentation so that one is eventually left with a wildly hypothetical "opus magnum" of "an idea" - and through a growing conviction, in tandem with the esoteric nature of it all, I think one also ends up with a very large authoritarian bias that would take its own bullshit for the gospel.
And I'd also argue that it's ... exhausting ... to argue with these "ideas" - as so the lines between objective reality and one's own philosophical construct were to shift and blur the larger it gets.
In the religious context this eventually attains the problematic aspect of religious authoritarianism; Where now the philosophical construct eventually attained Godhood - as per the one presenting it.

Conversely, there's the rudimentary side of this. The questions of how to find God? How to communicate with Him? And if not taken proper care of, one would end up back in the philosophical construct - explaining how it's the right point of view or authoritative position of God. But alas ... in as far as there are answers to that end - they all ought to come from God. So rather than trying to speak of what it is that I think God taught me - I'd try to speak of letting God do the teaching.
So - to come straight to the point of where the individual mind; At any point in time; Would need to start moving forward from.


So is there, these days, here and there, the talk of the "Man Child". Or more generally the matter of how "Nobody doesn't work anymore" or "Gen-Z doesn't know how to apply themselves". This idea of how now decades of liberal politics have led to an infantilization of men, ignorant of true virtue; With feminism being just one off the cuff bogeyman that lends itself to further analysis of this implied perception.
So would it not only be infantilization, but emasculation or feminization that would be blamed. Though with that one also moves the goalpost a little. For - we don't need feminism or "the LGBTQ+ Agenda" to come up with a few hot takes of how children are infantilized/prevented from "growing up".
And not all of that is necessarily 'wrong'. I mean - the matter of 'growing up' is something that older generations would judge in terms of their own maturity. But we live in drastically different times - and it would be fair to blame the things we have now that we didn't have back in the day for kids to turn out ... differently - to say that the 'modern man' is grown into 'modern things' - with a much higher probability than the "classical" man. But so does the critique of the "classical" man then direct itself against these 'modern things' - insisting perhaps that we get rid of them so "men can be men again".

This does happen - and it happens with a certain insistence on these 'outdated' ways of life; To the point that it does become a barrier that prevents the 'modern man' from growing into an individual autonomy of the caliber that is expected of them. Thus ... well ... infantilizing them.


And yea, this does also have an impact on gender relations. Or so is there a probably ancient dichotomy between "the established man" and "the rebel"; As two success stories that the feminine woman can take as examples of what to expect from the other sex. And if "the patriarchy" only cares to promote "strong men" - in the classical sense - then, well, it isn't too surprising that we'd end up with men who don't fit into that ideal and subsequently feel left out; As also bypassed by women that get taught that these disenfrachised men are just worthless dorks.
It's ... a vicious cycle of doom, that is.
And yea - alternatively there are the rebels. And to find a high quality rebel ... might be akin to finding a Unicorn.


Another thing worth considering is some kind of inter- and intra-sexual solidarity. I mean, part of this previously described cycle of doom - people eventually do become hyper fixated onto "dating success" in a way that is very dog-eat-dog~ish. So, hyper sexual toxicity and competitive reasoning, for instance; Where intra-sexual solidarity is rather a matter of a mutually agreed upon ceasefire - and also rather hostile towards intra-sexual solidarity. That because every member of the other sex is one potential candidate to compete over - and any battle won then also needs to further be defended. And ... that doesn't sound like it's all the fun it's made out to be!

Hmm ... there was somewhere else I wanted to go with this ...


But I guess I can ... just leave it at that for now.