Perspective Makes a Difference

I fully intended my last post to be the final one until I return from holoholo. Then I came across this post and commentary over at Dalrock's...plans change.
 
The metaphor offered by Dalrock was good, but Anonymous Reader's addendum made it into a brilliant must-read. Since the commentary is buried in Dalrock's always massive comment threads, I've taken a page from the Private Man and am posting it here.




Dalrock's metaphor:

I don’t have time to really do this justice, but I’ll take a quick shot at it. I share your view in wanting marriage for both men and women. This is why I write on the topics I write about. Marriage is too essential to turn our backs on, even though it has suffered great violence from the culture, the state, and a treacherous church. The analogy I’ll offer isn’t perfect but hopefully gets the basic idea across.

Those of us who are happily married are sitting in a fine restaurant, enjoying our meals. Outside are a crowd of would be patrons, but the restaurant is full and they won’t be seated. However, the crowd outside decides to make the best of it. They set up a grill and hold an impromptu cookout. Some number of them comment that they wouldn’t trade sitting in our boring stuffy restaurant for the experience of cooking and eating in the outdoors with the company of the rest of the crowd.

While I think the restaurant is better, I’m not going to call out to them, to try to convince them that they really should regret that they didn’t get a table. Instead I’m going to focus what influence I have on making that option available to more diners. I’ll try to get the restaurant down the street to start following the health codes so they don’t poison people. But to do that first I have to take on the corrupt health inspector (the church), etc.

Besides, who am I to tell the people making the best of the cookout that they don’t really enjoy being there more than they would enjoy being in the restaurant? Not all of us have the same tastes. Given the lack of options, I truly hope that the cookout is what makes them happy. If someone wants to know how they can get a table I’ll offer the best advice I have on finding one, including advice on avoiding restaurants like the one down the street.

 The lack of open tables at the restaurant is visible in the data I’ve shown here, both in delayed marriage trends by women and in the kicking of fathers out of the home. Not everyone gets this “food poisoning”, but those who do can suffer immensely.

 

 Follow up comment from Anonymous Reader:

Dalrock, although your analogy is interesting, it is incomplete. You need to include the whole picture.

And that is, some number of couples in the restaurant suddenly leave; the woman stands up, shrieks to the management that her escort is simply beastly, and a couple of pug-ugly bouncers come, rough him up, take his wallet, beat the snot out of him, and throw him out the back door into the alley. She stays for a while, paying for the meal out of his wallet, and then slowly walks out the front door, to cruise around the barbecue grills for a while.

And everyone pretends nothing just happened, although some murmur of “what did HE do?” floats ’round the room. For some odd reason, there are more and more empty tables in this restaurant. Fewer customers are coming in the front door. Business is down.

The restaurant manager worries out loud that his business isn’t going well. But his bouncers continue to beat, rob, and eject men any time a woman demands it. Those men at the barbecue grills? More than a few of them used to eat in the restaurant. But after getting beaten up, robbed, beaten up some more and thrown away in to the alley, they don’t much care for restaurant food any more. They regard it as too expensive, one way or another.

There is another group circulating around the barbecue grills, and out into the street. These are women who alternate between snacking at the barbecue grills, and importuning men to take them into the restaurant. They insist they only want good restaurant food, as they wipe the grease from the barbeque off of their fingers.

Some of these women used to eat in the restaurant, but decided to have their escorts beaten and robbed. For some reason they find it a bit more difficult to get an escort back into the restaurant than previously was the case.

 There’s also a shadowy crowd out beyond the barbecue grills that most diners in the restaurant can’t see. This crowd is almost entirely men. Many of them are young, but some are middle-aged or even old. No way they get into the restaurant. Although some of them used to eat there, before they got beaten up, robbed, and thrown into the alley. And nobody wants them too close to the barbecue grills, either. The women who eat at the grills and want into the restaurant scorn them. These men exist in the shadows, chewing on a dried out piece of jerky.

Every once in a while, some fat guy from the restaurant management strolls outside, and hollers at all the men in the street: “HEY ! Why don’t you Man UP and find a nice lady to escort into this restaurant? The food is great! And if you get beaten, robbed and thrown in the alley it’s all your fault! C’mon in! Be a man!” Most of the women stand with him, and echo his “Man UP!” call, ululating in chorus. The barbecue crowd jeers at him. The men in the shadows gnaw on their dried out jerky and stare at him in utter silence. He goes back into the failing restaurant and tells everyone inside how great the service is. As he speaks, another male patron is beaten, robbed, and as he’s being ejected out the back door he grabs a knife in the kitchen, then stabs himself in the heart and dies in the alley. No one in the restaurant one says a word, everyone looks away and pretends nothing just happened.

I believe this fills out the scenario a bit. How one views the restaurant depends on where one stands. Sitting in a cozy booth in the back, with family all around, the restaurant is a great place. Standing outside by the barbecue grills, the restaurant may look too expensive, the dress code too stuffy. From across the street in the shadows the restaurant looks good, but seeing man after man being beaten, robbed, and thrown away into a dumpster-strewn alley leads to a different perspective on the restaurant than one might get in the cozy back booth.

The view from the backside of the restaurant, the alley? Standing outside, with empty pockets, black eyes, and a broken nose & fingers, the restaurant is a crooked deal, run by thieves, cheats, and liars.

Perspective makes a difference.



Yes, Anonymous Reader, it most certainly does. Well done. Now, to rip riff off of this metaphor courtesy of Dal and AR...

"No one in the restaurant one says a word, everyone looks away and pretends nothing just happened." 

There are a few of us restaurant patrons, sitting in our cozy booths enjoying our meals with our families...but we are also noting the way the management and the bouncers are mistreating their male patrons...we, the married manosphere denizens like Dalrock, Ulysses, Rollo, Alkibiades, Athol - we're not just sitting in the restaurant enjoying our meals, we're trying to warn other patrons about the dangers of the management, as well as telling the men outside the establishment that while the possibility of a great meal can be had inside, there is a lot of risks you run in coming to the table.

Everyman on the outside, whether you are eating at the barbecue grills or standing out in the shadows eating your dried jerky, has contemplated the possibilities of making a reservation and entering the establishment.

No man should ever make that reservation, unless he first consults the dining guide and makes an honest assessment of his potential dinner companion before entering the establishment.

Once you're in, do your best to enjoy your meal...but keep a wary eye out for the bouncers and choose your food with care to avoid food poisoning. A family meal in one of those booths can be a very rewarding and enjoyable experience...but that doesn't mean it's the only way to eat.


The only reason any man should ever get married in this day and age, is to have children...it's pointless to enter the restaurant to get a table only for two and stay there until your done eating. The only point you should ever eat at the restaurant is to get to one of those cozy booths. Even then, any man contemplating taking that route, MUST come to terms with the reality of how the Restaurant really operates before they decide if they really do want to make a reservation for a table. Otherwise you'd be better off sticking to the barbecue grills outside and avoid the management and their dastardly bouncers.

Oh, and by the way, this restaurant has a name. It's called "Brave New World Order," and it advertises a menu titled "Marriage 1.0." But here is the real menu, the ones the cooks actually use to make the food in the back.

Order your meal with great care, or stick to barbecuing or eating jerky.




ADDENDUM

Heh, some other well known commenters in the manosphere over at The Private man's and Dalrock's have also contributed their own thoughts on this great analogy.

Infantry:


More like takeaway from the Restaurant. The guy gets his food, but doesn’t have to escort a woman in. No risk of being roughed up and robbed. Doesn’t have to wait in the long long grill lines that are skipped by women who get served immediately at the grills.

Of course the women losing their chance at men who could possibly escort them in complain to the restaurant management to shut down the takeaway window. The management, seeing a chance at increasing their patronage with serving twice as many meals agrees with the women. No more takeaway, unless the men go into the dangerous alley and get the chef’s assistant to do quick illicit deals for food out the back door.

Still a good deal for the men not willing to wait in the long lines for the grills, even if they have to dodge the bouncers who occassionally check the kitchen.

Of course I’m one of the guys charming the ladies to buy me food from the grill so I don’t have to wait in the queues. At least until I can find someone worth taking into the restaurant.

M.W.:


And what has changed in the past few years? Someone installed a CCTV (the internet) in the alley, and now the men outside can see the beatings that previously happened out of view.

Days of a Broken Arrow:

The restaurant is getting bad reviews by online critics who say its the dining equivalent of a chick flick. So fewer and fewer men start attempting to go in. Alas, we have female diners reading magazines, self-help books, and watching “Oprah,” trying to figure out how to get a man to take them into the restaurant. A gigantic industry springs up teaching women how to get taken into the restaurant.

Soon after, people start missing the point, thinking that the very act of being taken to the restaurant is more important than the dining itself. Few people learn that in order to eat in a restaurant you need table manners, proper hygiene, and a knowledge of what food actually is. So on the rare occasion when women do get taken to the restaurant, things usually fall apart because no one knows how to make the dining experience work when they get in. Ordering everything for yourself and being a glutton is not the route to a good meal. Running up tabs you can’t pay is not good either. And flirting with the waiter or making it with the cook in the bathroom is also very bad.

When clergy catch wind of all this, the decide to back the restaurant and declare the fast food men now prefer as “sinful.” They begin shaming men for eating it, saying that it’s morally right to only eat in the restaurant. But the men have already read too many Internet reviews of the restaurant to believe the clergy anymore.

deti:

And the men in the shadows, persona non grata in the restaurant and at the grill, all talk about what REALLY happens in the restaurant.

The men at the grill eat the barbeque and occasionally talk to the men across the street about how the quality of the meat being grilled is steadily declining. But, the men at the grill continue to eat the ever-toughening and ever-cheaper meat, because they can, and because it’s what is available.

ballista74:

Remember most of us are not the ones eating happily in the restaurant. Most of us are the ones that never got to go in, got in, got beaten up, robbed, and thrown out, or the ones beyond the grills, or the ones that stood closeby enough to see all this going on and value our lives too much to even try going in.