"The best thing for a child is for their parents to be happy. That doesn't necessarily mean they should be together."
The preceding quote was taken from a random anonymous commenter from a reddit thread referenced by Rollo in his excellent post Maddonas and Whores. Rollo's analysis and breakdown of competing male and female mating strategies is well done, but I'm taking this one in a much different direction.
This quote "The best thing for a child is for their parents to be happy..." is one of the biggest loads of bullshit ever propagated by our regularly scheduled mass media programming. At it's root, this pervasive meme is based on myopic, narcissistic selfishness, and is steroids for both male and female rationalization hamsters everywhere.
It is one of the most pervasive and destructive memes, and is the single most influential whisper promulgated to effect the widespread destruction of families in order to shape our Brave New World Order's primary cultural paradigm. It is a primary contributor to the manufacturing of a populace weakened, damaged and dysfunctional, making them much easier to manipulate and control. Nothing creates the damaged psyche of easily manipulated and controlled people better than a family broken apart by a bitter, acrimonious divorce while the children involved are at a young age.
The entire rotten, crumbling edifice of what was once a civilized society, can be pinpointed to the promotion of leading people to think that the key to happiness is to focus on satisfying any and all of their selfish desires. In even simpler terms, it is a message influencing people to adopt a mindset focused on taking and receiving, and not giving and sharing. This attitude is especially corrosive in interpersonal relationships, of which marriage used to be one of the closest and strongest bonds ever created between two human beings....but it also applies to friendships and extended familial bonds as well.
This focus on selfishness is the very anti-thesis of true love.
That's because what most people think of as "LOVE" is nothing more than a feeling. Something you "experience." An abstraction. You'll know it when you feel it. And, oh yeah, without love, you cannot be happy.
This is a corruption of what love really is. Love is not an abstract noun...an ephemeral feeling. An experience like an intoxicating drug that is somehow sold to us as THE key to human beings achieving perpetual bliss.
Nope.
Love is a verb.
You can only receive true love by doing it yourself to people worthy of it...by loving people who will love you back. It cannot be forced, nor can it be something you do expecting it in return. And it doesn't only apply to marriages or "romantic" relationships. True friendships are founded on the exact same principle.
As the good Captain wrote in Enjoying the Decline:
What makes friends arguably the most important people in your life, is that they don’t have to hang out with you. They choose to hang out with you. Unlike the family you were born into, your friends aren’t “honor-bound” by blood or social mores requiring them to spend time with you. They consciously decide to spend some of their finite, precious time with you. That’s not only a great thing, that’s a very humbling thing. Out of everything in the world those people could be doing, out of everybody in the world they could be hanging out with, for whatever reason they consciously and purposely chose you over all those other things. This is why you should not only be incredibly grateful for your friends, but why they should play a pivotal role in your life. Because without friends, your life is quite hollow, which is all the more reason we need to learn how to appreciate them and incorporate them into our lives.
First, realize how unique and personalized your friends are. While you can’t pick your family, you can pick your friends. This effectively makes them your own “personally built family.” It also makes them the most important thing you’ll ever build.
What is true of friendship, is even more true for marriage. You want to "build" a family? Than you have to learn how to love, and to wisely and shrewdly pick someone to love, who will love you back in the same manner. And when you find that person to love, do they express gratitude? This is why some of the most popular advice for both men and women dating potential spouses are to watch how the other person treats waiting staff and service personnel. Carefully seeing how a person treats those "beneath" them when they are not consciously thinking about it will reveal their level of narcissism and lack of capacity to love another person more than they love themselves.
When Betty Friedan and her ilk spread their incredibly corrosive propaganda that a stay at home mother cooking and cleaning for her husband and her kids was a "slave" in a "comfortable concentration camp," she basically brainwashed generations of women that loving their families was slavery. That the key to "happiness" was to "love yourself first." This damnable lie has led millions of people into true slavery...enslavement to materialistic consumerism. That by "loving yourself" you can "have it all."
Want a good example of "true love?" Here it is, found in an old tale, The Gift of the Magi.
For those unfamiliar with the story, it's a tale of a young married couple who are in love but very poor. Both knows what the other really desires - she, a set of ornate, tortoise-shell combs for her long, beautiful hair, and he, a platinum chain fob for his expensive gold watch he had to use an old, worn out leather cord for a fob.
Unbeknown to each other, on the day before Christmas, she cut off her hair and sells it to a wig maker to get the money to buy the chain fob, while he goes and sells his watch to buy her the combs for her long, beautiful hair.
It's a tale of true love...love the VERB. A husband and a wife loving each other.
The best thing for a child -- or children -- is to have a Father and Mother who love each other. If they're fighting incessantly and constantly, and talking about divorce because it would be better for the kids to have two separated, but "happy" parents...chances are one or both of them are unhappy because they are not loving the other, but focused on "loving" themselves.
Remember JFK's most famous quote? "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
JFK was talking about love. Loving your country. It's the exact same thing in a marriage, or a friendship or any other relationship based on mutual love.
Ask not what your family can do for you, ask what you can do for your family.
THAT is the best thing you can do for the children...not getting a divorce and destroying your child's family because you're
17 comments:
Thing is, people can learn to be happy. Happiness is a state of mind. I think it was Abe Lincoln who said, "People are about as happy as they set out to be." Which is true. All people have ups and downs, but some people are still happier despite the downs. Hey, if people have learned how, and written about, being a happy Jew in a Nazi concentration camp... certainly learning to be happy in Friedan's "comfortable concentration camp" would be easier than that.
Most of life is hardship. Choosing to be happy or positive is just that, a choice, much like love is a verb - so is being happy a verb.
Gratitude and appreciation instead of contempt. And, enough is as good as a feast. As Warren Zevon once said, "Enjoy your sandwich."
I wonder if another factor that may be contributing to the "unhaaaappppyyyy-ness" many people feel is their poor diet. At the top of my head I can think of a few examples. For instance magnesium, which most people are deficient in it, helps achieve peace of mind. A proper omega-3/omega-6 is also important for good functioning of the brain.
Your post talked about a subject very important to me. As a child I was the victim of my "unhappy" (BPD housewife) mother who divorced my father. The divorce went on for 10 years. Now that I am starting my own family (recently married and already expecting our first child), I am all the more determined to maintain a loving harmonious relationship with my husband and provide the best environment as possible for our baby.
Growing up I heard a lot of people say that exact phrase, that the divorce "was best for the children." Today I know that's bullsh*t. Keep raising awareness on this issue Keoni, you're doing a great job.
@ Edwin - "Most of life is hardship. Choosing to be happy or positive is just that, a choice, much like love is a verb - so is being happy a verb." Excellent point, Edwin.
@ Bob - "Gratitude and appreciation instead of contempt. And, enough is as good as a feast."
Aye! Attitude really is under your own control.
@ Anon - "I wonder if another factor that may be contributing to the "unhaaaappppyyyy-ness" many people feel is their poor diet. At the top of my head I can think of a few examples. For instance magnesium, which most people are deficient in it, helps achieve peace of mind. A proper omega-3/omega-6 is also important for good functioning of the brain."
Absolutely! Depression, post-partum depression, ADD, ADHD, ODD, and a whole host of other illnesses are intrisically realted to diet and the artificial, industrially manufactured fats and oils, as well as all the additives like MSG, artificial colors and artificial flavors all play a role in mental health and well being...and oh yeah, let's not forget Vitamin D deficiency from solarphobia.
Anonymous, Zinc and D3 are critical for good brain function/smooth moods. Take your prenatal vites, modern diet no matter how high quality can be deficient and pregnancy can suck it all out of you. After baby, take care to get your iron, zinc, Mg, Mn, and D3 levels up.
Congrats on the pregnancy!
KG, excellent work as usual.
There was a japanese philosophy that I can't for the life of me recall the name of, but it taught the perspective that anything anyone does for you is a gift. Everything in life is a gift.
Your employee working for you is a gift, the child's smile a gift, the friendship of a person is a gift. the anonymous people working to keep things running, a gift. The food you eat, a gift.
Often I hear from people and especially women "I deserve this, I deserve that." It is from a place of selfishness.
That word, deserve is a word of entitlement. It is a demand upon another person or entity, it lacks gratitude.
As for the gift of the magi, Dave, it is one of my favorite stories, but it is bittersweet, for I can count on one hand the number of women I have know that were capable of the love described and most of them were old.
And the idea of what love should be often gets twisted in a way to make men slaves to the system. If you only loved more, loved unconditionally, selflessly . . .
Yes Ra Al Ghul, you are absolutely correct, which is why specifically and deliberately emphasized this part of the post:
"Than you have to learn how to love, and to wisely and shrewdly pick someone to love, who will love you back in the same manner."
"Everything in life is a gift."
Meister Eckhardt: "If you the only prayer you say in life is 'thank you,' that is enough.
Yes, everything is a gift.
Keoni:
"Love is a verb. You can only receive true love by doing it yourself to people worthy of it."
You may not be aware of this, but this was quoted nearly verbatim by Dr. Sigmund Freud. What's interesting was the context in which Freud used it: he was debating against some Marxists who claimed that 'Universal Love' would be the fruits of Socialism.
I think that the modern misinterpretation of 'love' has some strong connections to the general Marxist debasing of our language and culture. You'll notice that every year around the Holiday Seasons that we're bombarded with propaganda about how it's an act of unselfish love in helping the so-called 'less fortunate'---most of whom probably deserve a hangman's noose for a Christmas gift more than anything else---but the point is its a completely impersonal expression of 'love' with no context of deserving it.
And that's an example of how the Marxist Dialectic has debased the idea of love. They try portray an earned or deserving love as a selfish and anti-social act, while love for the undeserving is noble. In a lot of ways, feminized society has followed the same paradigm by encouraging women to eschew deserving men for relationships and pursue worthless dirtbags instead.
http://www.no-maam.blogspot.com/2009/02/bonecrker-10-women-choosing-scum.html
Wallace:
I have noticed that a lot of Manosphere blogs---while they talk a lot about sex---rarely talk about love. This is especially noticeable on the blogs run by so-called 'Red Pill Women'. You don't hear them talking about love much at all; though they give ample space to 'tingles' and 'submission'; speaking of all those things as if they were some burdensome obligation placed on the female gender. If love were talked about more as Keoni describes it---the women wouldn't have to force themselves to do any of those things.
Another great post, I especially liked the Gift of the Magi reference. We get so caught up in presents and not presence. I think constantly looking to improve self as well as staying present and accountable in your marriage go hand in hand. Those who let themselves go and let their screechtard wife rule the roost wonder why their marriage suffers. Meanwhile, those of us who are red pill aware and understand hypergamy can at least begin to work at shoring up our weak areas. We may not have the most perfect "happy" marriages, but we stand a lot higher liklihood of making it last. KG's post on red pill from a couple of years ago ( on his marriage) was the first I read which started a chain reaction in my life. My wife and I will continue to provide a loving and structurally sound environment for our kids, even if we do fight sometimes and are sometimes unhappy in life and with each other. Our love for each other will continue to persevere and cut through the crap like a knife through butter.
Ask not what your family can do for you, ask what you can do for your family.
That is just lovely. It is not a modern sentiment, though. Everyone is concerned with not being inconvenienced by their families, but blood is thicker than water and God ordained that we should live in families.
Ask not how nationalist sentiments can define your world view, ask how you can define your world view through nationalist sentiments ...
Sure, sure, not all governments are like that ... and neither are families.
Don't love what doesn't love you back.
“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
-Victor Hugo
Mr. Hugo, had the net existed during his lifetime, could have written volumes for the 'sphere. He had a profound understanding of the human spirit, especially as it applied to men and our pursuit of aforementioned happiness.
While I agree with him in part, I disagree with the following quote (also from Les Miserables):
"To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
That there is no greater happiness of life than being convinced we are loved is true, but it requires an equal reaction to take effect. I must confess that I have neither felt nor seen a greater sorrow in men than having that love for another, knowing it was unrequited. You love and love (verb) and despite your efforts, you understand it will never come back in equal measure. The Gift of the Magi is such a touching story because James' love for Della and vice versa is unconditional to the point of absurdity. Their love ultimately comes at the expense of their most prized possessions. In the end, their loses were merely possessions, while their gains were the convictions of love Hugo spoke of.
In the real world, men can only read such stories (as a previous commenter noted) and hope the possibility of such unconditional love still exists. Sadly, after your heart ,and maybe your wallet, are ransacked enough times you only regard these stories as the fictions they are. But....hope springs eternal right?
That being said, I leave you with another Hugo gem:
"Men like me are impossible until the day when they become necessary."
Be your own man: watch, read, learn, plan, adapt and set your own standards. Be impossible.
Love yourself first and foremost. If you are loved for this quality, you owe the same love back.
it's not neccessarily the divorce that makes kids end up like that. IT's likely more correlation than causation.
" I wonder if another factor that may be contributing to the "unhaaaappppyyyy-ness" many people feel is their poor diet. At the top of my head I can think of a few examples. For instance magnesium, which most people are deficient in it, helps achieve peace of mind. A proper omega-3/omega-6 is also important for good functioning of the brain. "
I am fairly convinced that many college students' mental orientations (including my own at the time) were strongly due to the extremely fucked up health lifestyle of typical American colleges - horrible mass-produced food, copious alcohol consumption, bizarre sleep schedules including semi-voluntary sleep deprivation. I wonder how many visits to the campus counseling office could be prevented or helped by giving college students decent meat-and-veggie diets, some Omega 3 supplements, and sleep monitoring apps for their phones.
Y'know, maybe it's just me, but I always thought the husband in the Gift of the Magi got the short end of the deal: his watch was gone forever, but her hair was going to grow back. Also, as Roosh writes, men LIKE long hair, so it was a DOUBLE sacrifice for him.
If you want an O'Henry story about love, the kind only a man can give, read The Last Leaf.
And Happy New Year, Dave.
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