My family is... Not a healthy or happy one. I imagine most people know this by now. Yet, for reasons that I honestly do not understand, my parents are still together. Toxic, painful, continuously arguing, but still together...
The same cannot be said for extended family. Divorces everywhere. A number of children out of wedlock. Painful intergenerational relations on both side. Lots of "not talking". Lost of... Honestly, relationships that are far more negative than they are positive. As the black sheep "loser" of the family, I can't tell you how shit my relationship with nearly all my cousins is, right now. I could, I suppose, blame myself for that, but I really don't think it is that simple...
I actually don't think this is that uncommon, where I live. Sure, most people don't have family quite as toxic as my own, however divorce is utterly ubiquitous. Siblings not getting along is probably more common than not. And honestly, it feels like people almost expect families to behave like this - not communicating, not really talking, and generally... Not behaving like civilised adults. At least amongst the majority "white" population, in addition to the "blak" population (among whom it is most definitely even worse, lol), this is... All too common.
Thoughts? What's it like for you lot, where you live? Do you get along with your extended family? Are you close to them? I realise that I am almost certainly an outlier, where my family are fucking shit, in addition to being the "black sheep loser to end all black sheep losers", but... I'm just curious.
I like the idea that "family is the people you choose to include in it", but I am yet to find my... "One". I'm honestly yet to really find anyone. So I don't have that to have as my "core". I'm sure it's very different for those that do. Unfortunately, though, I'm not sure I will ever even find that...
So yeah. Pretty blackpilled about "family", at the moment, after mounting betrayals, I have to be honest. Would appreciate some... Alternative insights, if your life experience differs in that way.
No, family disintegration is not the norm in society. The issue is that western civilization has completely demoralized, and the institutions are pushing anti-moralization, which is why the Christians are referring to it as "Satanic" and "Demonic". That's what those words mean from their perspective.
I've been talking about this stuff a lot. Fundamentally, we no longer know the basic foundations of how to build lasting relationships that are intimate and healthy. Our culture has been completely corrupted by Leftist presuppositions, which means that since all of our premises are wrong, all of our conclusions are going to be jacked.
I've only seen a few relationships carry on indefinitely. The success rate is minimal.
However, that doesn't mean that it can't be done, it just means that people don't know how to do it right. They are pre-disposed to fail because society, culture, and institutions have set them up for failure.
The reason toxic people stay together is twofold:
We can ignore the co-depenency part because there's not much to be done about that until they figure it out themselves. They're actually supposed to stay together for the sake of children, but it also requires them to continue to work on the relationship together and not burden the children with their relationship problems. They might argue, but it shouldn't involve the kids, even as older teens.
And yeah, the kids would be better off if the parents stayed together and worked on their problems, while protecting the kids from those problems.
I can't really afford to tell you my whole story, but I can tell you, you ain't no outlier.
No black-pilling.
I can tell you that my Libertarianism comes partly from my own lived experience. I really do try to live my principles, and it's not easy... but it did work. I realized that as I cut genuinely toxic things out of my life, you gain control over things you can manage, and then you build your strength up from there by taking more personal responsibility of what you can handle. It's a hard road, but I think it's the only one once you come to the conclusion that it's not (just) you, but your whole social & family network that's broken.
I can say that my life has improved, but I traded bad inputs for atomization. That's not a bad deal, but atomization is definitely not a good thing, so building that social community is next up on my list.
This is what I mean by wrong presuppositions.
You don't find "the one". That's Leftist bullshit because they think they are perfect, and they are instilling in all of us, the life goals of a 14 year old pretty-pink-princess girl.
You build relationships. You literally construct them from scratch. You don't find any one. You find people that can become your one.
Big difference.
I can't go crazy on detail at the moment, but I'll give you a basic run-down of the order of events.
That is how you get to the point of finding some one to have a relationship with.
Okay, yes, sure, it's a lot of work and you don't do any of it. I didn't either, how do you think I figured it out? I started doing it, it was incredibly difficult, and I'm still working on it.
So yeah, you're an uncivilized, savage, degenerate living in a burning husk of a civilization. Good. It'll make a great story to tell after you've won. Realize that no one's coming to save you, so you have to pick your bootstraps up with your own teeth and hurl yourself into the storm to become stronger, better, and wiser. You will fail repeatedly. Good, that's how you learn.
You are kissed by an iron fist, and you will be sainted by the storm
No black-pilling.
I'm still not getting married in 2022 if a woman can easily just back out for alimony and child support without any societal or institutional pressure to keep her in check.
The pressure needs to be you. She may have incentives to leave, the question is why in God's name would she do that when she's with you?
I don't care about the legal structure around marriage. The behavioral pair bonding is what matters.
I alone have no authority, even the most trad woman will rationalize leaving her man for nothing
This is why you fail.
If you are a good man, you have authority over your lover because she relies on you to be her rock. Doubting that is the first failure.
authority is maintained through patriarchy such as the mosaic law, a man alone in a post modern world has 0 authority over a woman, its just his turn until she gets bored
Again, this is a statement about your relationship with other people, more than it is about societal structure.
Your relationship with your intimate partner is literally the closest relationship you will ever have. The fact that she's willing to "trade up" may be a condemnation of her, but it is also a condemnation of you. If you honestly think that bureaucracy and institutional procedures denote power, you are dangerously naive. Authority is maintained through individual relationships and other individual's deference to you. Everything else is just a persuasion mechanism, even loaded guns.
If your friends will disown you for not wearing a mask, it is because they were never close enough to you to trust you. If your woman is prepared to "trade up" and abandon the relationship she had with you, it is because she didn't ever love you. Genuine social and emotional bonds are always more important and powerful than bureaucratic incentive.
Trading up is female hypergamy, and this is restrained through patriarchy like it is currently in the Muslim world. Waiting for "the one" is a social construct created by movies and tv shows.
Losing a friend is easy to get over, but losing a wife can ruin you since the government will now force you to compensate for her flakiness via backed child support and alimony.
Honestly, it’s the opposite in some states. A lot of couples are having kids, working hard, and staying off social media. I live it a town that was edging towards purple pre-lockdowns but drastically changed to red thanks to the influx of blue state transplants. The numbers and information on white population do not add up to what I’ve seen and talked about to local hospitals. Might be different in bigger areas but smaller and predominantly white towns are exploding with complete families.
I have noticed the same thing. Every time I hear ethnonats complain about how there are no people having kids, and the kids they do have are being Trans. Then I go out in my town that is one of the largest in the state (about 40k-60k depending on the time of the year), and I see kids everywhere. I hear people talking about their kids and their families. The boys I see still like cowboys and guns. The girls I see still like dolls and princesses. And that holds when I travel to everywhere except the big cities in the state (and even they arent as bad as anything I have seen out of New York or California).
It also applied when I went on my roadtrip through the Plains last year (SD, WY, CO), which is also where I learned that Covid didnt exist the second you stepped outside of anywhere the Dems controlled. Because the only two places that I saw that even gave the mildest of a damn about masks was when we went to Mt. Rushmore (and that was still pretty mild), and Estes Park, CO (which did heavily enforce). But when I was in the Dakotas and Wyoming? I straight up forgot Covid existed for a few days.
And I dont see that changing any time soon. And its why I still think the US is worth fighting for and refuse to get blackpilled. Because the second you leave a Leftist stronghold and get off the internet, they cease to exist and the America I always loved abounds.
For my families road trip, we went to S. Dakota to hike in Badlands National Park, then we went to Mt. Rushmore and drove through the Black Hills. Then we went to Cheyanne, WY because I wanted to see the Union Pacific depot and rail house (unfortunately, the rail house was closed to guest at the time), and then we went to Estes Park to hike in Rocky Mountain National Park. While the Rockies were not strict on mask (not that it mattered, we wore them anyway because of snow and cold), but Estes Park itself had damn near every place being "mask required."
Which was quite the whiplash after having gone through SD and WY where there were many places that had so little of a damn to give about mask that they didnt even bother to put a sign on the door. When I say we almost forgot Covid was a thing for a few days, I meant it.
No. Same when we were in Badlands and Rushmore. If you were in one of the buildings they would make you keep a mask on, but the second you stepped outside they ceased to care.
I’m quite surprised this was still a thing in National Parks anywhere…
As shit as Aus has been, it hasn’t been enforced in places like that for literally months…
So I suppose it depends on when in the year you are both talking about, but still, seems pretty crazy to me that any sort of place like that is even attempting to enforce it, at this point, Navajo or otherwise…
To be fair, it was in 2021, when Biden was the one telling the Park Service what to do, before general public opinion had really heavily turned against the Covidians, and it was still far less enforced than you would expect when the Covidians were in charge. The places around the parks on private/state land was the most different of anywhere. Like I said, in S. Dakota, when we were in a small town near Mt. Rushmore to have dinner (elk burger, btw, Surprisingly good), no business anywhere in that town had a mask requirement. And while you occasionally saw people where masks, it was pretty rare.
Meanwhile, when we were in Estes Park at the base of the Rockies, almost everywhere had a mask requirement, and we even got some dirty looks just walking down the street without mask on.
But it makes total sense to me. Rural Dakota is going to be fairly conservative, and in general still has that "Fuck the Feds" attitude going on and still telling people to live their lives as they saw fit. Estes Park on the other hand is one of the most Left-wing parts of Colorado, and I cant tell you how many people I saw that looked like every stereotype of SJW's and Hippies you have ever heard of, and they were usually the ones getting in your face about the mask.
Ah, fair. I thought this was a more recent occurrence than it was…
Fairly similar to here, then.
And yeah, I’ve been to Boulder, lol. I get it. I’ve seen the Colorado you speak of, and smelled it too, ha…
See, I figured Thomas Sowell's "Cultures and Immigartion" would have a point. Immigrants don't just bring the culture of some general place, they bring the culture of a specific place, at a specific time. And voluntary migrants are different than mass migrants.
As I recall, that's a political divide, and it's a severe one. Conservative white families are having 2.1 children per household on average as I recall.
... Left leaning white families have an average of 0.1
If you want to talk about demographic replacement... that's it right there.
2.1 is sadly still barely above replacement rate, though…
Need more kiddos than that if society is even going to survive, let alone thrive, lol…
You're not wrong, but I think most of that is still the prevalence of leftist cultural narratives pushing fewer children as empowering for women, and wealth building for families, when it is the opposite.
One thing the right really needs to do is entirely re-orient it's discussion on women.
We need to point out that children are wealth-building for familes (as every population of poor people ever have shown in history), and that it's the most important, honorable, and praise-worthy thing any woman can do. We need to re-moralize motherhood.
This is what I'm trying to work on now. The problem seems to be that I don't know what a healthy relationship looks like (and few others do either). I was also left on my own while my parents worked from the age of three until starting kindergarden, so I often can't tell if people are behaving normally, socially, or are acting out some kind of negative behaviour instilled by toxic social institutions.
This leads, on several ocasions, to building a relationship only to have it collapse later. Sometimes it's obvious why, but in other it's hard to tell what the problem was because, as you mention, I don't have good presuppositions.
How do you determine what is working and what isn't?
In my life, truth is always a good indicator. Few people start with total honesty, but you know something is going wrong if lies, deceptions, misstatements, or omissions become involved. We live in an era of lies, and so truth is a radical concept, that people try to avoid. Truth forces healthy communication, and an honest assessment of yourself and others. The more you deviate from constant truth, the more of a problem you've created.
That being said, most relationships don't last forever. Relationships typically form when you fit into a specific role that fills a gap in someone's life. As time goes on, you'll move from that gap, or change such that you don't fill that need. At that point, the relationship needs to change, or you need to slowly part. The point is that while you were in it, you conducted yourself well, and honestly.
Some people will destroy their relationships with you. That's kind of on them, and you shouldn't take it too hard. They can't really co-exist with you because of their problems, so you'll have to move on and find a different relationship that covers the gap they used to fill. You'll have to know when they aren't worth keeping anymore.
I've found that though honesty and integrity keeps you vulnerable, it keeps you generally out of digging your way into trouble, and if you need correcting, you'll have it, but you'll need to acknowledge that you did something wrong, and work to earn back the trust you may have violated.
In short, I've found that being honest, doing the right thing, and taking responsibility if I was wrong was a better way of growing and developing; rather than studying a problem for too long, waiting to act forever, and never actually getting it right.
You will know that a relationship is working with both parties are benefiting, and the effort to maintain is basically equal to the benefits you receive.
I know it's vague, but you didn't give me too many specifics.
You do know what a healthy relationship looks like. Do you know what it means to be respectful to another person?
The real question is -- do you know how to communicate?
Terrible truth: most people don't know how to communicate properly at all, to anyone. Social media isn't helping with that, either frfr no caps
Yeah I did that.
I now have a back injury because I was put on harder work since my work was higher quality than my peers. Meanwhile the lazy ones get less difficult jobs, and still make the same money as I do.
Cool, so when do I start succeeding? Because right now I'm worse off than when I was a teenager. My life has basically imploded in the last nine months. I've lost my independence, my mojo, my health, and I haven't seen daylight in weeks.
I keep hearing about how you have to fail repeatedly to succeed, but I don't see a light at the end of this tunnel.
No black-pilling.
That sucks, but being higher-quality is not the same as just being given bad tasks. Higher quality involves being that reliable and dependable worker regardless of the specific task. It also involves you understanding that your work should be properly rewarded, and choosing to leave when you are not rewarded properly. It also means not just searching for any job, but making sure you look for jobs and companies with good people as your primary objective. You're interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.
Do not worry about what other people's lives look like. Mine doesn't look the same as others, and if I spent any more time comparing and contrasting them, I'd be missing the fact that I'm not working on improving my position. Stop giving a shit about how other people did better than you at whatever, for whatever. Your purpose is to improve your life.
Each victory is a success the moment you declare it. You're worrying about some macro level line on a graph about what you think you should have given some abstract demographic information. That's not relevant. Statistics aren't case studies, and you're the case study. Your victories come one day at a time, with each minor success building off one another. You have your goal for the day, if that's too long, then have it for the hour, or the half hour. Set your objective on some immediate thing, address it, recognize your victory, and then set your next objective. The success you're dreaming of is the emergent result of a million smaller continual efforts.
None of those thing are really true. You gave up on your independence, you demoralized your mojo, you abandoned your health, and you didn't go outside. These are not things you actually "lose". You didn't drop your independence and misplace it. You're not asserting the independence you already have. You've actively committed to the demoralization that you think is hurting your 'mojo'. Your health is tarnished because you were demoralized and didn't take care of yourself. You haven't seen the sunlight in weeks because you didn't go outside. You built yourself that prison, no one built it for you. It's your choice to stay in it.
It's got to be nearly daylight right now. Here's your goal for the hour. Go outside and be in the sun. Maybe you're bed-ridden or something. Ask someone to help you go outside. Well, maybe later isn't an option, assert that you need to go outside this hour, because you haven't seen the sun and if you don't get help going outside, then you're going to literally drag yourself through the halls to go outside whether they like it or not. Your victory will be the warmth of the sunlight (which also happens to be a contributor to your health).
I think the selfishness of women is at an all time high, and that such a thing makes coherent family units difficult to produce and maintain. Curtailing so called women's rights severely is one of many necessary steps to restoring a functioning civilization.
I think that finding and gathering the like minded is paramount, moreso than tolerating any blood relatives who are leftist scum. My based friends are more my family than my sack of shit brother. I'd drop everything and cross the country to help them, I wouldn't piss on my brother if he were on fire.
I think it's past due that real Americans start sticking together, and that means expelling fake Americans from your life and social circle.
As for my extended family, I don't speak to most of them and they're well aware of why. I publicly disown leftists. Anyone who thinks that merely being a blood relative should get someone off the hook for being a traitor also goes straight to the permanent shit list. The rest of my family has shown themselves worthwhile.
Pretty harsh but based and increasingly a mentality that I think might be necessary.
I'm in a happy marriage for now, I've come to the conclusion that is incredibly rare and I was extremely lucky. Most women now are extremely toxic, a lot of self-entitlement and little compromise. I see it among my wife's friend, they offer little and expect much and then they are depressed while asking why their relationships do not work. They think that I'm something special but the truth is I'm an average guy but my wife is great by todays standards. A lot of guys are also kind of shallow and expect not to change once married. The wife needs to find the man useful and impressive, if not relationships do not work.
I hope it will change but currently, western society is not in a great place.
Feminism and the sexual liberation movements have allowed women to sexually emancipate themselves from having to depend on men to provide for them. Women are now in a pre civilized state where they just form harems around the top 5% of men who are genetic chads, which leaves a large portion of men in the dust since they have nothing to offer women anymore because they don't have the looks and women can easily provide for themselves instead now.
Its over.
women still require men to survive. they just force us to provide through government.
men have no authority over their family but must assume all responsibility for the family. the woman can leave at any time and there are no consequences.
the best woman will probably divorce you when you get older anyway. there are no consequences for doing this, only upside. half your retirement. you have no say. she'll just wreck your life and move on for no other reason than it's profitable to do so and she's kind of tired some days of being around you.
I know my wife is from a divisive family. Her brother is heavily medicated by state order and can turn into a Batman villain when not. When we were watching Avatar the last Airbender my wife sat up and said, "Azula is like my sister!"
My mother in law loves all the drama because then she can be spiky. Imagine Roseanne and you're getting close.
My brother hasn't spoken to me for five years because his wife went insane. My family has never looked forward to a funeral, but that's one.
What I suspect is that pregnancy causes mental health problems, and can be exacerbated by previous mental problems. Women are not told about this, and instead are taught this is them breaking free. The entire push started at women and then expanded to what it is now.
Meanwhile the spiky types rebel in the drama and actions.
I saw almost everything being pushed now in highschool in the 90's. It's the reason why so many faiths started to declare the importance of families then. Red leaning rural areas were talking about women working as equals, and left leaning inner cities were saying the same thing and meaning sexual deviancy and retaliation for the past.
What I've learned from it is sometimes I have to yell back at my wife. She's caught up in drama and can't get out. When the episode ends, she's my wife again and realizes her mistakes. If I had just let her bulldoze me with spikiness it would just get worse. She's accustomed to Batman villains as family members, so I need to adjust to help her get away from those thoughts.
I see the same for the world and all it's spikiness.
I get along pretty well with extended family. I wouldn't say I'm close with most of them. I don't even talk to most of them outside of family gatherings where I see them annually at best. A couple cousins I text with and see more often than that. One who's teenage son is like my own kid to me. With the close ones it wasn't always this way. I decided a few years ago to make an effort and spend time trying to get to know some of them. Some of that didn't stick, others did. The key point being I had to specifically try.
So, the answer is it varies from barely talking to really close. Most are married and have stayed married. Although none of our parents remain married of any of my cousins on either of my parents side. Maybe learned from experience growing up? Who knows. There can be a lot of dysfunction too, but that's also more-so with the generation above me and not my own. So among my own generation we do a lot of talking about how nuts our parents generation is and how they are always fighting.
It’s true that a family like you see on Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best is the ideal I think that is something to strive for but yes reality paints a different picture. I had a pretty decent upbringing and as an adult I’m even closer to my parents and siblings. I have a large extended family and with them it’s hit or miss.
I remember my dad saying that he would watch leave it to beaver as a kid (he grew up in the 50s and 60s) and while he know it wasn’t realistic he loved seeing a happy family.
I think a much more significant part of the problem, particularly in the US, is how overworked, overtaxed, underpaid, and utterly difficult it can be to not only support a family, but have the time, money, and sanity to raise a healthy and thriving family.
To make things even worse, liberties we have enjoyed for decades, if not longer, are under constant threat. Elected officials in our governments no longer represent its nation's citizens. And there is an imminent dystopia looming on our doorstep.
Sorry, I may have gone off-topic and too blackpill there for a moment. My first paragraph though is the cusp of what I'm getting at though. Financial troubles, stress, and generally unhappy and unhealthy modifiers just wreck a lot of potential for a good family environment, and it often cycles and perpetuates.
And I think what maybe makes these issues more pertinent than it may have been throughout most of history when families were always fighting to survive is that we have a LOT more on our plates from modern life that occupies our time, causes us more stress, etc. Humans are very intelligent and adaptable, but we're trying to keep up with far more in life than our brains and lifespans are realistically capable of. And that distractability is probably not especially helpful for emotional health or for honest communication between people, particularly families.
I don't know. I'm a little all over the place, but ultimately I think while it is somewhat probable for families to be a bit of a mess today, something's gotta give. I don't really think that things will really slide back into "the good old days", but this mass-psychological state is simply not going to be sustainable. Especially not with the direction the economy's headed.
There will always be infighting between families. You need to work with the ones who share the same values as you.
The majority of my family is the opposite of what you describe. All of my crappy relatives are left out of get togethers. Crappy family will all be different but mine were defined years ago during a fight for inheritence. So the lines were clearly defined.