Tom Wolfe's last novel wasn't very good. Its theme was that pornography was a menace to society when in fact pornography is the one saving grace, the medicine, the cure to the actual menace to society which is women's unwillingness to marry, settle down, have sex with men, and have children. What are men supposed to do? Castrate themselves so they no longer have any urges to procreate life? The male sex drive is potent, and it evolved to be potent, because it is good. It allows children to be brought into this world and women to be provided for while they do the important job of taking care of them.
If men cannot channel that sex drive into its natural, productive end, which is their wives, what are they supposed to do with it? Your only other alternatives would be prostitution or rape. Is that what you want? Is that somehow better?
Now, if you want to become a pornography critic, much like a movie critic, and say, 'some porn is tawdry and gross, it should be improved upon by artful, elegant, moving porn,' of course I agree. In fact that's already happened -- it's called visual novels. People should seek beauty and avoid ugliness in all aspects of life, and there's plenty of beauty to be found in sex and romance. Fictional versions of beautiful encounters with beautiful girls serve a plethora of useful ends, there's no need to roll in the mud of hard core disgusting crap, nor is there any need to spend inordinate amounts of time with it. As Aristotle proclaimed, moderation in all things. There is a golden mean. But that golden mean isn't 'castrate yourself.'
So yes, technically, the porn Tom Wolfe was castigating in the book fully deserved castigation. It was disgusting, overly public, overly crude, with no attempt to engage the heart strings, etc, etc. But it wasn't presented that way. The characters in the story never said, "Couldn't we find better porn elsewhere?" The choice was always binary, should there be this sort of porn or no porn at all. It was a false either or trying to weasel its way into the conclusion of banning all porn altogether.
Aside from that, we had a lot of rehashed situations from earlier books -- a girl thinking she had a boyfriend waking up to discover she was a one-night stand -- an innocent man being accused of racism and for no good reason hurting a black man -- men showing their cahones by winning fights or arguments with other men, etc.
This material might have been good if the earlier books hadn't already been written, but by now they're totally superfluous. If I wanted to re-read his earlier material I could just go re-read it. Why is it sitting here in what was supposedly a new book?
Which leaves the only good portion of the book, the very beginning, where a guy who is doing all the right things, checking all the boxes, suddenly gets floored when his family, his girlfriend, and his entire neighborhood suddenly betray and ostracize him. This I can sympathize with. You're going along one day, saying nothing but the truth, having never done anything wrong in your life, and boom, the whole world hates you and wants nothing to do with you. It's absurd, you're the exact same person as you were the day before, but boom! Out of nowhere! You lose everything for no reason. And it can happen to anybody. These sudden witch hunt paroxysms are now called 'cancel culture' but they've been with us for a long time. Perhaps the book is worth purchasing just for those early chapters. It's at least worth reading.
Charles Murray is a utilitarian, he believes in the greatest good for the greatest number, so he wants society to give access to as many people as possible what he calls 'fonts of wellness.' He also uses the term, 'valued places.'
'family, community, vocation and faith.' 'spouse, parent, relative, friend, neighbor, congregant, and colleague.'
I think these are certainly fonts of wellness, the relationships we treasure day to day. My complaint is that Murray's path forward isn't going to deliver any of those things. Saying we should 'celebrate' lifestyles that lead to these things in the media, by politicians, in churches, etc., isn't going to cut it. This is because women are selfish and they prefer to maximize their own self-actualization by foregoing family. So where will the spouse or parent or relative role come from? True friends are people you can be honest around, and so long as the truth is punished in this society it's impossible to have any true friends, so that's out. The same with neighbors or 'community.' You can't belong to a group you hate and despise, or hates and despises you. The same for congregant or 'faith.' You can't believe an evil book of lies or worship an evil, false God, no matter how many wonderful fellow congregants might be worshiping evil beside you. First you would have to found a good church, with a good God and a good scripture worth actual devotion. Fortunately I've already done that part in '100 Waifus,' but I don't see anyone lining up to be my fellow congregant so that's out.
As for colleague or 'vocation' all jobs are so thought-policed that you can't be honest in them either, so you can't have any true colleagues because they're actually Stasi spies waiting to report you to HR. I assume the job isn't so thoughtless and stupid that you could go all day never exchanging any opinions with anyone, perhaps communicating in nothing but gestures and grunts, because at that point I don't see what's so enticing about having said co-grunting 'colleague' anyway.
So in fact, all of Murray's suggestions are hopeless. The fonts of wellness he recommends are all chimeras. They're all impossible to achieve in modern society. The actual fonts of wellness are more primordial than he assumes, all eudamonia streams from these: Truth, Beauty, and Love. If you can tell the truth and be understood, not punished for it, you can happily be yourself. If you can craft something beautiful and be appreciated, not disdained or ignored for it, you can happily do your best. If you can love someone else and that love is reciprocated, not betrayed or spat upon, you can happily die for them.
Everything requires the participation and aid of others. Man is a social animal. If no one else is willing to cooperate with you because they're all pure evil, absolute morons or infinitely gullible, what can you do? Where is your valued place now?
Luckily the internet exists, so it's possible to be in communion with people long dead, far away, via books, television, games, etc. It's possible to build a sort of phantom community in this way, but it's only one-way. You can love them, understand them, and appreciate them, but they'll never do the same for you. At best that's half a loaf.
The only way to provide the greatest good for the greatest number is to eliminate all the bad people such that the remaining good people can become fellow 'congregants, colleagues, spouses, parents, neighbors,' or whatever. If you kill and kill and kill and force and force and force, in other words, if you discard democracy and put fascism back in place, if you allow a totalitarian state to control everything everyone thinks, says and does, then these fonts of wellness would become unblocked and start showering joy upon the masses again. Then and only then. There is nothing a single individual can do to change their own life situation. Nor is there any amount of cajoling or persuading that could convince these selfish assholes, these sluts and career women, to get back to fulfilling their half of the social contract again. If it were possible, why is it everywhere impossible?
You can look across the entire span of the globe and you can't find one society -- white or Asian, Christian or atheist, conservative or liberal -- with a replacement birth rate. Hungary already celebrates family. So does Russia. It ain't doing shit. Finland offers huge subsidies and benefits for mothers -- again, nothing. Their fertility rate is tanking. All these countries have already celebrated the fonts of wellness and encouraged people to do the right thing -- to no avail! In vain! Each new year we set some new record for the least children ever born.
People only understand and obey force. Force! This world is moved by force upon an object. Freaking Newton already told us this -- the law of inertia, 'things at rest tend to stay at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force!' You can't ask a rock to fucking move. You have to kick it!
If you want people to be spouses, you have to force them to marry! If you want people to be parents, you have to force them to have children! If you want them to be congregants, you have to force them to believe in your religion! If you want them to be colleagues, you have to force them to work useful jobs! If you want them to be neighbors, you have to force them to stop playing loud music in the neighborhood or doing crime! If you want families to stick together, you have to force them not to separate! If you want friendships to form, you have to force homogeneity within the population, because like only attracts like!
Force, force, force! I've been advocating force towards all these noble goals for so long now. And this nattering, elderly, well-meaning, good-natured Charles Murray suggests that maybe we should 'celebrate' these things in the next Christmas movie and then we'd all get along and be happy again. We're past that point grampa! We are well and trulyyyyyyyyyyyyyy past that point! Look around you! The country is a series of armed camps trying to enslave and plunder each other! Nothing else! We have no other bond!
Okay, moving along, Charles Murray says another dumb thing in his latest book. That everyone should be humbled, even ashamed of themselves, for having any advantages in life. Like Obama, he says, "you didn't build that, your genes built that. It all fell into your lap. Your virtuous personality, your talents, your achievements, it was all destined since birth so you shouldn't value any of it. You should just feel guilty for your gene privilege and redistribute everything to the genetically disadvantaged."
This is absolute madness. It's a recipe for dysgenics. Why should we redistribute anything to the genetically disadvantaged? All that ensures is the perpetuation of those very disadvantageous genes! Why do you want those people to reproduce yet more genetically determined evil doers?
But never mind the results -- the logic itself is faulty. Who is to say that I am not my very genes, and thus I did in fact build all that? Why should I view myself as somehow separate from my DNA? Isn't my consciousness the living embodiment of this very flesh? It would be like throwing a touchdown and someone saying, 'you didn't throw that touchdown, your nervous system threw it, you can take no pride in it.' What the fuck? Are these not my nerves, my arms and legs, my genes?
Okay, enough about Human Diversity. Next I want to tackle 'A Man in Full.' Hopefully it will be a little more creative and original than Back to Blood and I can get more out of it.
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