[Roosh]

A blogger publicizes new research stating that men of the past were selected not by women, but by parents of women. The men also did not choose their wives. The dysfunction we have today when it comes to marriage and family is in part due to women and men choosing their own partners. Humans, it turns out, never evolved the ability to select a good mate.

Quote:

Apostolou shows that in most societies in human history, and continuing in most modern societies outside of The West, individual men and women had very little choice of their mates - and that this choice was nearly always made by their parents. In other words, marriages were arranged by the parents of the husband and wife - especially the daughter's marriage, and usually by their fathers more than their mothers.

[...]

The characteristics parents prefer (compared with individual preferences) include good character, ability to provide resources (especially men), coming from a 'good family' - with high status and wealth, and pre-marital chastity (especially in women).

The characteristics individuals prefer (compared with their parents) include beauty and good looks (hair, face, figure etc. in a woman; muscular physique in a man), a charming and entertaining personality, the ability to provide sexual excitement and so on.

[...]

...modern men and women are not adapted to select a partner from an unscreened population - and not equipped with the proper instincts to assist their choice; so they are vulnerable to deception and exploitation.

Therefore human evolutionary history has left modern individuals, in a world where parental choice and control has been all-but eliminated from mainstream life, woefully ill-equipped to manage their sexual lives.

[...]

...men worry too much about attaining high status among men, and becoming a good provider - when these were selected for in a world where prospective in-laws wanted these attributes from men; but in the modern world they are an ineffectual strategy for getting a mate.

In sum (and in terms of their biological fitness) modern men are too worried about working hard, and not worried enough about meeting and impressing individual women.

The beta male strategy of getting a mate is actually about impressing the girl's parents, who used to select her husband. When women select their mates, this strategy no longer works, and we have an automatic 50% divorce rate in most Westernized countries where "love" reigns.

For a while I thought that women selected beta males because of survival reasons, but this shows that it was also (or moreso) because they didn't have much of a choice. This also explains how even in modern times, a girl with strong family values will seek parental approval of her husband, and that husband would have more beta traits than if the parents weren't involved in the selection process.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/201...rtant.html

[Guitarman]

More evidence to prove the damage "love" does to society in the west!

[Paracelsus]

I don't know about the blogger's conclusions:

Quote:

My point is that religion needs to be regarded as a cause, not merely a consequence, of sexual behaviour and selection pressure; in sum, religion (more exactly, some specific religions) is the only known antidote to the pattern of maladaptive modern sexuality which is trending towards extinction.

And yet: if parents are no longer controlling sexual matches, it could be just as easily argued that we are seeing the initial "survival of the fittest" phases of human evolution as Western men and women begin to learn how to choose their own marital partners, as those Western men and women who are reliant on their parents to choose their partners for them lose the genetic race.

The author also seems to miss the fact that, implicitly, Christianity in particular enables this "weakness". Adultery is forbidden, and Jesus explicitly said that marriage was for life, "what God has united, man shall not put asunder" and whatnot.

[PolymathGuru]

Is there evidence in traditional european civilizations and colonial america? Or pre-columbus americas? This would be ground breaking if these rules were universal without any cultural ties. Then man figured out a way to off set their weakness universally.

[N°6]

The strategy to impress the girl's parents was probably my earliest instinctive dating plan when I was in my teens.

I inevitably was left wondering why the girl didn't like me when her parents did, my parents and her parents got along and how so many other things seemed to match.

The only parental opposition against me was because girls' parents wanted their daughters to go to university and put education first.

I never completely believed in the PUA quasi-evolution theory that is is all about survival reasons. We are tribal beings and marriages in tribes were blood covenants (proven by the bed sheets) between families within a tribe. The only way out of blood covenants is death.

I also think there is a grandmother affect. Grandmothers seem to be the most critical against unrestrained female desire for attention whoring and misleading marriageable men.

[Mage]

It's obvious for anyone who has ever seduced women, that women have absolutely no instict or cognitive ability to choose what is best of them. Without parents guaidiance their sexual and relationship life is just a big russian roulette. And actually for women - their relationship life IS their life.

I would not say that men are unable to choose what is best for them. A smart man will choose a woman not only for her looks but also for her character, ability to submit, attitude towards family values, cooking skills and so on. The problem is modern men are raised by women and belive that love comes as an accident out of blue like it is for women who have no control over this. Men can surely fall in love much more consciously.

For men there are two stratgies: beta men are equpped to impress the girls parents and alfa men are equipped to impress the girl. Depending on society one of the strategies might be more sucessful at a certain age. In our society in our age where parents don't even have rights to gently slap their children for extreme misbehavior much less to veto their relationships, the alfa strategy is absolutely superior.

[Mage]

(11-25-2015 09:22 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

I don't know about the blogger's conclusions:

Quote:

My point is that religion needs to be regarded as a cause, not merely a consequence, of sexual behaviour and selection pressure; in sum, religion (more exactly, some specific religions) is the only known antidote to the pattern of maladaptive modern sexuality which is trending towards extinction.

And yet: if parents are no longer controlling sexual matches, it could be just as easily argued that we are seeing the initial "survival of the fittest" phases of human evolution as Western men and women begin to learn how to choose their own marital partners, as those Western men and women who are reliant on their parents to choose their partners for them lose the genetic race.

The author also seems to miss the fact that, implicitly, Christianity in particular enables this "weakness". Adultery is forbidden, and Jesus explicitly said that marriage was for life, "what God has united, man shall not put asunder" and whatnot.

This is why Islam has so sucessfully outbred everyone else.

In polygamy there is both the parent's approval for daughters to marry a well situated man and there is also no breeding of weakness because when a strong man with many resources marries an n amount of women, an n-1 amount of men remain without wives assuming a 50/50 initial gender ratio. These leftover men go then and blow themselves up in Jihad hoping to get that afterlife pussy. That's natural selection for you. Or they go and conquer other cultures and take wives from other cultures. This is a well oiled mechanism for both selection and world domination.


You say women start to learn how to choose their marital partners. I don't see it. They learn nothing. Evolution takes a long time to develop a new skill.

Also in every animal species the males impress the females not their parents. Humans are actually pretty unique in that they impress the parents, they take care for their parents and that the parents stay alive many decades after their reproductive ability has been diminished to tutor the young children. You take that away and we become more like animals. That is not evolution, that is devolution.

[R_Niko]

(11-25-2015 09:18 PM)Guitarman Wrote:  

More evidence to prove the damage "love" does to society in the west!

I guess "love" is just a euphemism for hypergamy..

[262]

(11-26-2015 09:41 AM)Mage Wrote:  

I would not say that men are unable to choose what is best for them.

Not sure about that.

As smart as I think I am, I'd be remiss if I didn't give my parents some credit, in guiding some of my key life decisions, when I was too young to assess them on my own.

You could argue that I was basically a boy and not a man at that time, but then you could say the same thing between girls and women.

Of course, when it comes to "male potential fulfilled meets female potential fulfilled," males are going to be more man than boy than females are going to be more woman than girl.

Which is probably why female sexuality was more restricted than male sexuality (though both were restricted for the advancement of society).

[ColSpanker]

A good friend from Egypt, a coptic christian, told me that when he wanted to get married he wrote to his family and asked them to go find someone. He met his wife three days before they were married.

[ishwri]

Thats why in alot of eastern cultures they still practice arranged marriages. They are not really "arranged", but parents are the primary choosers of the childs mate, because as a young man or woman, have an inability to choose a longterm partner that is benificial to both families. The primary responsibilty of a man is too be the provider and protecter. Think about how much time as a man we spend on GAME, and not on creating wealth and infrastructure. "Love" in western society is a romance that is overly promoted to manipulate people, which we have an over 55% divorce rate, and 80 percent of divorce is because of money issues.

[N°6]

(11-27-2015 08:38 AM)ColSpanker Wrote:  

A good friend from Egypt, a coptic christian, told me that when he wanted to get married he wrote to his family and asked them to go find someone. He met his wife three days before they were married.

My brother-in-law is a good ol' boy dairy farmer who asked his mother to help him find a wife. She did her networking and found out about my sister still living at home with our parents. The first date was pretty much arranged and my sister's conclusion of it was, 'He's not the type of man I usually go for but I like him.'

Now he has a house which he and my sister built on his family's land and two children.

When I think of my semi-anonymous existence in a city where the average domestic real-estate prices are 13 times the average salary, what my beta-provider brother-in-law has achieved would be impossible for me despite me being many times more adept and comfortable with women and meeting more of them.

[Mage]

Here in Latvia our folk songs contain a lot of information from our pre- christian and christian past about how to look for a bride. There are instructions in songs to look at how tidy she keeps her (parents) home and how industrious she is and how big dowry that is her her "portfolio" of knitten woven things is and how willing to help out she is. There are tips to ask rumors about local girls from neighbours when traveling to learn to know them and such.

There is for instance a custom described that a man who looks for a wife travels around country - enters the gate of a households he visits and asks for a water to drink. The master of household will surely send for a daughter to bring water and while the guest drinks it he observes her from feet to head (as in a motion where you raise your eye level from down to up when the cup becomes more empty). If he likes what he sees he can ask to see her dowry (things she has made with her hands as a sign of her skill and industriousness) and after that ask the father for her hand. Then there is of course a deeper conversation with dinner so that the man can test her cooking while father interrogates the man about his own virtues. He can estimate his wealth from his horse/horses, his cart or sled, but he also is intrested in what kind of a man he is. If the father agrees he will then will ask the daughter if she agrees. There are tales about men at certain traveling quite far looking for a bride. So it was not arranged, it was literally choosing.

From this I conclude that men did have the ability to choose their wife at past at least in this culture and they made their choice themselves independant from parents altrough with their advice as imbued in these songs. The women also had their say but of course their father had the first word and only at the very end the woman had to say her choice altrough if she would dislake the man she suredly would have found ways to make it apparent in this whole process. But since generally she was the one being qualified she had no incentive to play games.

[iknowexactly]

This is a very interesting idea, that individual selection is faulty yet preferred in modern society.

What better way to explain the undeniable fact that advanced societies are committing genetic suicide? Via mass immigration and low fertility.

How can we call our civilization "advanced" when we suffer from de facto collective sterility?

How does a society evolve such that it's members basically stop reproducing? Genetic suicide. How can a population select for factors that work against their basic biological function?

I disagree the solution is religion, as once people understand science there's no going back, except to some pagan level like one sees in the Philippines, where joy in children is in fact like a religion.

Something not mystical like religion, but physical and real: like offspring.

I'll hazard to say for me the year I spent in the Philippines actually in effect resulted in something like a religious conversion for me: a perception of something deep and non-intellectual, a perception of primal joy in being close to one's children, and a feeling that having children is a basic purpose in life for me.

Adding to what No6 pointed out ("13 times average income") The New York Time has an article which has tons of "red-pill" information in it relating to this and it seems supporting this to some degree.

One very interesting fact they point out is that while roles are more egalitarian ( men doing more housework) many fewer young men make enough to support a family.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/opinio....html?_r=0

It's as if the economy is trying to prevent marriage and kids.

You can see it in the subway/commuter trains, the late 20s "6" girl, sitting sadly on the way train from work, written on her face: "I'll never get married."

"The goal of capitalism is to reduce all human interaction to the cash nexus."

[iknowexactly]

(11-29-2015 06:11 AM)Mage Wrote:  

Here in Latvia our folk songs contain a lot of information from our pre- christian and christian past about how to look for a bride.

+1 great incorporation of folk wisdom.

If we listened to teenagers too much we'd believe the wheel was obsolete.
Although at this second, billions of wheels are functioning producing what we want.

If we listened to players enough, we'd believe marriage was obsolete.
Although at this second, hundreds of millions feel happy lying next to their spouse.

Do wheels work well in the swamps of Lousiana? Does marriage work well in the legal quagmire of current-day America?

[262]

That NY Times article is just another propaganda piece advocating more socialism - AS IF we didn't have any social spending already.

In fact, what the article PURPOSELY glosses over is that over the time period discussed - basically after WW2 to the present - social spending as a % of GDP has increased.

Has it worked? No. In fact, the article itself asserts that inequality INCREASED during that time period!

Also, in line with the article being a socialist propaganda piece, it's also a feminist propaganda piece (since feminism is just socialism for women).

The article correctly asserts that marriage is beneficial for everyone (men, women, and their kids). It also asserts that women want to marry men who can provide incomes that they can't provide themselves.

But then the article basically says, screw that, we're not turning back the gender revolution. Again, one that the article PURPOSELY glosses over - one that redistributes income from men to women, by tax or by policy, such as affirmative action.

[WestIndianArchie]

(11-26-2015 09:41 AM)Mage Wrote:  

It's obvious for anyone who has ever seduced women, that women have absolutely no instict or cognitive ability to choose what is best of them.

{snip}

also for her character, ability to submit, attitude towards family values, cooking skills and so on.

Women of great character are often seduced because women have no instinct or cognitive ability to choose what is best for them.

Character is no defense against seduction. It's why seduction works.

WIA

[madmax2]

There is actually a TV show with arranged marriages. Not sure how legit it is, but it's on fyi.com I think. It's probably fake though because it's TV. However, it shows you that with arranged marriages you learn to love a person, instead of going the BS route of "romance".

[MrLemon]

I don't agree at all with the OP.

There is a powerful genetic mechanism that all mammals share. It's based on billions of years of evolution. Your genes "speak" to the woman's via smell and sight and etc. The Sicilians called it "the Lightning Bolt". It's when you see a woman and you know, instantly, that she is your woman. You instantly want her and her alone, and you dream of the children you can make. It's all genetic communication. Read "the Selfish Gene".

It's true that some cultures arrange marriages. Other cultures...I think the healthiest...arrange for young men and women to have good values, and arrange events for these young men and women to meet and pick mates.

The greatest societies -- like America, Canada, Australia, etc -- used to have dances, and meetups, and parties, and etc. They had those events so their teenage kids could meet other good matches and pair up.

Yes, the parents helped too. Matchmaking was a great art.

But when the parents choose exclusively and the couple doesn't even meet first... I don't agree with that at all. That's when you get ill-bred kids and inbred, stupid, ugly people.

You can tell when a man and a women were a really good genetic match. Their children are beautiful, smart, and healthy. They glow with health. That's not an accident, it's a good genetic match.

Another good reason for marry other races. Whites and asians. Whites and Indians. The kids are gorgeous.

This is why Americans in the past were the strongest, the healthiest, and the smartest on the planet. Because we are mixed breeds and we have a culture of freedom in which young people make their own choice of mates.

[defguy]

The Troubadours and "Romanticism" emerged in Southern France, Spain, and Northern Italy from 1100 to 1300. In a time where economic and political agendas dictated pairing and marriages, the Troubadours openly opposed centuries of tradition with the idea the coupling could arise from choices of the heart. Troubadours were akin to traveling jesters who wrote often graphic and comedic love poems to admirers, often married noble women. While marriage was still arranged by economic and political agendas, adultery was common and almost celebrated in the twelfth century and eventually the Catholic Church took to extreme measures to enforce morality on the public - even training knights in a code of chivalry (at this time knights were hired mercenaries with no code of honor). By the end of the twelfth century the Catholic Church through the Spanish Inquisition cracked down on all forms of heresy including banning poetry. I would say this point in history is where things started to change, you could not marry for political reasons and openly love on the side as morality was strictly enforced by the Catholic Church charging nobles with heresy, seizing property, imprisonment and even execution. My assumption is the Catholic Church in enforcing morality over time devolved marriage to selecting a mate you would not cheat on. Now we all marry for "love."

[ishwri]

i guess it works out better for the elites of the westernized countries, if society values everything "intrinsic" when pertaining to building family, culture, traditions, and wealth. So much time and resources are spent on gaming women and catering to her, Everything is totally romanticized, like the diamonds for marriage. what the hell does a diamond have to do with a strong marriage? Nothing, just makes a small percent rich beyond belief.

[Caractacus Potts]

I read an article online once about this. Unfortunately I don't have a link. I remember the author stated that the term "boyfriend" did not enter the lexicon until after the First World War. Prior to that young men were always referred to as "suitors".

He stated that the men of the family (father, uncles, brothers, etc) decided who would be allowed to court their daughter/sister/niece. The older women would then advise the young lady on who they felt was the best match. But the ultimate decision of who to marry belonged to the young woman.

I see the value of this system. The adults look for an honest and hard-working young man for their female relatives. They keep the players and the cads away.

If a cad did manage to bypass the male relatives and get to the young woman the older women recognized him for what he was and would caution her about how he was going to love her and leave her. They would bring the power of the herd to bear.

The young woman ultimately chose who she wanted to marry but it was from a pool of preselected young men who the family trusted to make a good spouse. The older I get the more value I see in this system. I chose my ex-wife primarily for her looks.

After witnessing so many marriages destroyed by divorce I can see the value in picking a spouse from a group who share the same background and values, i.e., ethnicity, religion, race, upbrining, etc. I'm not saying that people from varied backgrounds can't make it work but why make it more difficult than it needs to be?