I'd like to share with you some choice quotes from classical authors who have thought out and articulated views which fit in perfectly with what we call "The Red Pill". The thought of doing this came from having read many blog posts written in the manosphere, which while certainly groundbreaking in the face of what the MSM has to offer, gifts wisdom to its readers which in fact has been has been garnished before - many, many years ago.
I will start with F. Nietzsche, who was my first approximation to counterrevolutionary thought, and might continue the "series" with other authors depending upon the level of traction this thread gets.
On Women
"The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so much respect by men as at present — this belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old age — what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of this respect? They want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife itself, would be preferred: in a word, woman is losing modesty. And let us immediately add that she is also losing taste. She is unlearning to fear man: but the woman who "unlearns to fear" sacrifices her most womanly instincts. That woman should venture forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man — or more definitely, the man in man — is no longer either desired or fully developed,
is reasonable enough and also intelligible enough; what is more difficult to understand is that precisely thereby — woman deteriorates. This is what is happening nowadays: let us not deceive ourselves about it! Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman strives for the economic and legal independence of a clerk: ''woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portal of the modern society which is in course of formation.
While she thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be "master," and inscribes "progress" of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite realises itself with terrible obviousness: woman retrogrades. Since the French Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has declined in proportion as she has increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipation of woman," in so far as it is desired and demanded by women themselves (and not only by masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a remarkable symptom of the increased weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts. There is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of which a well-reared woman — who is always a sensible woman — might be heartily ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the ground upon which she can most surely achieve victory; to neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons; to let-herself-go before man, perhaps even "to the book," where formerly she kept herself in control and in refined, artful humility; to neutralise with her virtuous audacity man's faith in a veiled, fundamentally different ideal in woman, something eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically and loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that woman must be preserved, cared for, protected, and indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, and often pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy and indignant collection of everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position of woman in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed and still entails (as though slavery were a counter-argument, and not rather a condition
of every higher culture, of every elevation of culture): —
what does all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly instincts, a de-feminising? Certainly, there are enough of idiotic friends and corrupters of woman amongst the learned asses of the masculine sex, who advise woman to de-feminise herself in this manner, and to imitate all the stupidities from
which "man" in Europe, European "manliness," suffers, — who would like to lower woman to "general culture," indeed even to newspaper reading and meddling with politics. Here and there they wish even to make women into free spirits and literary workers: as though a woman without piety would not be something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and godless man; — almost everywhere her nerves are being ruined by the most morbid and dangerous kind of music (our latest German music), and she is daily being made more hysterical and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last function, that of bearing robust children. They wish to "cultivate" her in general still more, and intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex" strong by culture: as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that the "cultivating" of mankind and his weakening — that is to say, the weakening, dissipating, and languishing of his force of will — have always kept pace with one another, and that the most powerful and influential women in the world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon) had just to thank their force of will — and not their schoolmasters! — for their power and ascendency over men. That which inspires respect in woman, and often enough fear also, is her nature, which is more "natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her naivete in egoism, her untrainableness and innate wild-ness, the incomprehensibleness, extent and deviation of her desires and virtues. . . . That which, in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat, "woman," is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more necessitous of love and more condemned to disillusionment than any other creature. Fear and sympathy: it is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in the presence of woman, always with one foot already in tragedy, which rends while it delights. — What? And all that is now to be at an end? And the disenchantment of woman is in progress? The tediousness of woman is slowly evolving?
Oh Europe! Europe! We know the homed animal which was always most attractive to thee, from which danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable might once more become "history" — an immense stupidity might once
again overmaster thee and carry thee away! And no God concealed beneath it — no! only an "idea," a "modem idea"! . . . "
A brief history of morality, from 18th Century America to the present, whitlestopping in the 1960's:
"A species originates, and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavourable conditions. On the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species which receive superabundant nourishment, and in general a surplus of protection and care.
immediately tend in the most marked way to develop variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in monstrous vices). Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say an ancient Greek polls, or Venice, as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of rearing human beings ; there are there men beside one another, thrown upon their own resources, who want to make their species prevail, chiefly because they must prevail, or else run the terrible danger of being exterminated. The favour, the superabundance, the protection are there lacking under which variations
are fostered; the species needs itself as species, as something which, precisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity of structure, can in general prevail and make itself permanent in constant struggle with its neighbours, or with rebellious or rebellion-threatening vassals. The most varied experience teaches it what are the qualities to which it principally owes the fact that it still exists, in spite of all Gods and men, and has hitherto been victorious: these qualities it calls virtues, and these virtues alone it develops to maturity. It does so with severity, indeed it desires severity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education of youth, in the control of women, in the marriage customs, in the relations of old and young, in the penal laws (which have an eye only for the degenerating) :
it counts intolerance itself among the virtues, under the name of "justice." A type with few, but very marked features, a species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reserved and reticent men (and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and nuances of society) is thus established, unaffected by the vicissitudes of generations; the constant struggle with uniform unfavourable conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a type becoming stable and hard. Finally, however, a happy state of things results.
the enormous tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no mere enemies among the neighbouring peoples, and the means of life, even of the enjoyment of life, are present in superabundance. With one stroke the bond and constraint of the old discipline severs: it is no longer regarded as necessary, as a condition of existence — if it would continue, it can only do so as a form of luxury, as an archaising taste. Variations, whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuberance and splendour; the individual dares to be individual and detach himself. At this turning-point of history there manifest themselves, side by side, and often mixed and entangled together, a magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving, a kind of tropical tempo in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary decay and self-destruction, owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly exploding egoisms, which strive with one another "for sun and light," and can no longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance for them-
selves by means of the hitherto existing morality. It was this morality itself which piled up the strength so enormously, which bent the bow in so threatening a manner: — it is now "out of date," it is getting "out of date." The dangerous and disquieting point has been reached when the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life is lived beyond the old morality; the "individual" stands out, and is obliged to have recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-
deliverance. Nothing but new "Whys," nothing but new "Hows," no common formulas any longer, misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other, decay, deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled, the genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad, a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and Autumn, full of new charms and mysteries peculiar to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied corruption. Danger is again present, the mother of morality, great danger; this time
shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and friend, into the street, into their own child, into their own heart, into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and volitions. What will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have to preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the end is quickly approaching,that everything around them decays and produces decay that nothing will endure until the day after to-morrow, except one species of man, the incurably mediocre. The mediocre
alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves — they will be the men of the future, the sole survivors; "be like them! become mediocre!" is now the only morality which has still a significance, which still obtains a hearing.—
But it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what it is and what it desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly love — it will have difficulty in concealing its irony!"
"Chicks dig Jerks" (Heartiste)
"A Don Juan is sent to hell: that is very naïve. Is it noticed that in Heaven all the interesting people are missing? Let this be a warning to the ladies"
Red Pill morality
"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome."
I'll leave it at that, as I think those four quotes will give novices a flavour for this thinker, and might serve a useful refresher for those who haven't visited his books since University. Also, this is my first post, and I don't want to get banned for posting walls of text.
One last thought: I read Nietzsche before I had even heard of the manosphere. And frankly, after having found the manosphere and spent an inordinate amount of hours perusing the different blogs which constitute it, it seems to me that most of its key kernels of truth had already been thoroughly and masterfully articulated in centuries past, and that this whole movement is a collective (and very timely) instance of what Plato called anamnesis - "Un-forgetting". In others words, Red Pill blogs can be seen as a footnote to thinkers like Nietzsche, which adjust ancient wisdom to the very specific problems Western men face in the early 21st century.
I will start with F. Nietzsche, who was my first approximation to counterrevolutionary thought, and might continue the "series" with other authors depending upon the level of traction this thread gets.
On Women
"The weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so much respect by men as at present — this belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old age — what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of this respect? They want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling; rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife itself, would be preferred: in a word, woman is losing modesty. And let us immediately add that she is also losing taste. She is unlearning to fear man: but the woman who "unlearns to fear" sacrifices her most womanly instincts. That woman should venture forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man — or more definitely, the man in man — is no longer either desired or fully developed,
is reasonable enough and also intelligible enough; what is more difficult to understand is that precisely thereby — woman deteriorates. This is what is happening nowadays: let us not deceive ourselves about it! Wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman strives for the economic and legal independence of a clerk: ''woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portal of the modern society which is in course of formation.
While she thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be "master," and inscribes "progress" of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite realises itself with terrible obviousness: woman retrogrades. Since the French Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has declined in proportion as she has increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipation of woman," in so far as it is desired and demanded by women themselves (and not only by masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a remarkable symptom of the increased weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts. There is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of which a well-reared woman — who is always a sensible woman — might be heartily ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the ground upon which she can most surely achieve victory; to neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons; to let-herself-go before man, perhaps even "to the book," where formerly she kept herself in control and in refined, artful humility; to neutralise with her virtuous audacity man's faith in a veiled, fundamentally different ideal in woman, something eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically and loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that woman must be preserved, cared for, protected, and indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, and often pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy and indignant collection of everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position of woman in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed and still entails (as though slavery were a counter-argument, and not rather a condition
of every higher culture, of every elevation of culture): —
what does all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly instincts, a de-feminising? Certainly, there are enough of idiotic friends and corrupters of woman amongst the learned asses of the masculine sex, who advise woman to de-feminise herself in this manner, and to imitate all the stupidities from
which "man" in Europe, European "manliness," suffers, — who would like to lower woman to "general culture," indeed even to newspaper reading and meddling with politics. Here and there they wish even to make women into free spirits and literary workers: as though a woman without piety would not be something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and godless man; — almost everywhere her nerves are being ruined by the most morbid and dangerous kind of music (our latest German music), and she is daily being made more hysterical and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last function, that of bearing robust children. They wish to "cultivate" her in general still more, and intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex" strong by culture: as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that the "cultivating" of mankind and his weakening — that is to say, the weakening, dissipating, and languishing of his force of will — have always kept pace with one another, and that the most powerful and influential women in the world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon) had just to thank their force of will — and not their schoolmasters! — for their power and ascendency over men. That which inspires respect in woman, and often enough fear also, is her nature, which is more "natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her naivete in egoism, her untrainableness and innate wild-ness, the incomprehensibleness, extent and deviation of her desires and virtues. . . . That which, in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat, "woman," is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more necessitous of love and more condemned to disillusionment than any other creature. Fear and sympathy: it is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in the presence of woman, always with one foot already in tragedy, which rends while it delights. — What? And all that is now to be at an end? And the disenchantment of woman is in progress? The tediousness of woman is slowly evolving?
Oh Europe! Europe! We know the homed animal which was always most attractive to thee, from which danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable might once more become "history" — an immense stupidity might once
again overmaster thee and carry thee away! And no God concealed beneath it — no! only an "idea," a "modem idea"! . . . "
A brief history of morality, from 18th Century America to the present, whitlestopping in the 1960's:
"A species originates, and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant unfavourable conditions. On the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species which receive superabundant nourishment, and in general a surplus of protection and care.
immediately tend in the most marked way to develop variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in monstrous vices). Now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say an ancient Greek polls, or Venice, as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of rearing human beings ; there are there men beside one another, thrown upon their own resources, who want to make their species prevail, chiefly because they must prevail, or else run the terrible danger of being exterminated. The favour, the superabundance, the protection are there lacking under which variations
are fostered; the species needs itself as species, as something which, precisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity of structure, can in general prevail and make itself permanent in constant struggle with its neighbours, or with rebellious or rebellion-threatening vassals. The most varied experience teaches it what are the qualities to which it principally owes the fact that it still exists, in spite of all Gods and men, and has hitherto been victorious: these qualities it calls virtues, and these virtues alone it develops to maturity. It does so with severity, indeed it desires severity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education of youth, in the control of women, in the marriage customs, in the relations of old and young, in the penal laws (which have an eye only for the degenerating) :
it counts intolerance itself among the virtues, under the name of "justice." A type with few, but very marked features, a species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reserved and reticent men (and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and nuances of society) is thus established, unaffected by the vicissitudes of generations; the constant struggle with uniform unfavourable conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a type becoming stable and hard. Finally, however, a happy state of things results.
the enormous tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no mere enemies among the neighbouring peoples, and the means of life, even of the enjoyment of life, are present in superabundance. With one stroke the bond and constraint of the old discipline severs: it is no longer regarded as necessary, as a condition of existence — if it would continue, it can only do so as a form of luxury, as an archaising taste. Variations, whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuberance and splendour; the individual dares to be individual and detach himself. At this turning-point of history there manifest themselves, side by side, and often mixed and entangled together, a magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving, a kind of tropical tempo in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary decay and self-destruction, owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly exploding egoisms, which strive with one another "for sun and light," and can no longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance for them-
selves by means of the hitherto existing morality. It was this morality itself which piled up the strength so enormously, which bent the bow in so threatening a manner: — it is now "out of date," it is getting "out of date." The dangerous and disquieting point has been reached when the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life is lived beyond the old morality; the "individual" stands out, and is obliged to have recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-
deliverance. Nothing but new "Whys," nothing but new "Hows," no common formulas any longer, misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other, decay, deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled, the genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad, a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and Autumn, full of new charms and mysteries peculiar to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied corruption. Danger is again present, the mother of morality, great danger; this time
shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and friend, into the street, into their own child, into their own heart, into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and volitions. What will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have to preach? They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the end is quickly approaching,that everything around them decays and produces decay that nothing will endure until the day after to-morrow, except one species of man, the incurably mediocre. The mediocre
alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves — they will be the men of the future, the sole survivors; "be like them! become mediocre!" is now the only morality which has still a significance, which still obtains a hearing.—
But it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what it is and what it desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly love — it will have difficulty in concealing its irony!"
"Chicks dig Jerks" (Heartiste)
"A Don Juan is sent to hell: that is very naïve. Is it noticed that in Heaven all the interesting people are missing? Let this be a warning to the ladies"
Red Pill morality
"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome."
I'll leave it at that, as I think those four quotes will give novices a flavour for this thinker, and might serve a useful refresher for those who haven't visited his books since University. Also, this is my first post, and I don't want to get banned for posting walls of text.
One last thought: I read Nietzsche before I had even heard of the manosphere. And frankly, after having found the manosphere and spent an inordinate amount of hours perusing the different blogs which constitute it, it seems to me that most of its key kernels of truth had already been thoroughly and masterfully articulated in centuries past, and that this whole movement is a collective (and very timely) instance of what Plato called anamnesis - "Un-forgetting". In others words, Red Pill blogs can be seen as a footnote to thinkers like Nietzsche, which adjust ancient wisdom to the very specific problems Western men face in the early 21st century.
