Aaron Clarey, writing at Captain Capitalism, has a quirky, iconoclastic view of life, the universe and everything. His books bear that out. He’s opinionated, unafraid to challenge established views, and firmly opposed to much modern political correctness and social justice perspectives. He can come across as abrasive and rude at times, too . . . so much so that he’s named his business “***hole Consulting“, which tells you a lot, right there! He describes himself on his Amazon.com author page as follows:
Aaron Clarey is the world’s only motorcycle riding, ballroom dancing, fossil hunting, mountain climbing, economist. He spent 15 years in banking to learn that work sucks, life is short, and it was not meant to be spent in a cube suffering the idiots of corporate America. He left and has since pursued a career in writing, consulting, ballroom dancing, and hedonism.
I don’t agree with everything Mr. Clarey says, not by a long way, but he’s often thought-provoking. That’s particularly true of a recent essay on women and marriage. Here’s an excerpt.
The K-College education industry alone has spent trillions of dollars over the past 50 years indoctrinating women to become men, putting their careers ahead of family, their educations ahead of individuals, and their politics ahead of love. Certainly the lion’s share of all education budgets since the 1960’s has been dedicated towards actual education. But if you look at the feminist indoctrination young girls received in K-College to put their careers above all else, you can in an accounting-like-sense attribute at least a couple trillion towards a clear and obvious intent to make women want to be wage-slaves, while belittling, even criminalizing being a wife and a mother.
While trillions of actual dollars have been invested in turning women into NPC, leftist, worker drones, what about the trillions of human hours also invested in conditioning women to become NPC leftists? From teachers to guidance counselors to professors to government PSA‘s to media to women’s magazines to women’s studies departments to Jezebel and XOJane to even your own parents, it’s impossible to calculate how many millions of women (and men) spent thousands of hours of their lives, promoting and propagandizing hundreds of millions of women over the past 50 years to abandon being wives and mothers and instead be good, little, obedient, debt-laden careerist NPC democrats. Matter of fact, I can’t think of a single larger expenditure of time in all of the US that comes even close to the resources we’ve spent conditioning women to become NPC leftists. There has never been such a large, nation-wide, institution-wide push to form, program, and ultimately mold a people into something the powers that be want.
And I don’t even know how to begin to measure the total resources spent by media, marketing, and advertisers to sell women the “empowered-don’t-need-no-man-brave-executive” image all so women can buy $5,000 Prada handbags, $10,000 Chanel shoes, and $250,000 masters degree. Be it movies showing the strong independent woman, or Silicon Valley fawning over the latest female CEO hire, or all of the MSM worshiping Hillary Clinton during the election, the entire entertainment/media/social-media world only reinforces to women today that the ONLY thing that matters is your career, your leftist politics, and your feminism. Being a wife or a mother doesn’t even come up on the radar.
Now I could go on citing other instances where resources have been purposely spent on conditioning women to become NPC’s, but my larger point is how much has been spent on conditioning women to become good wives? How many trillions in education budgets have been spent on teaching women to be good mothers? And what institutions of our society (government, educational, media, corporate, etc.) actively promote motherhood and wifery?
And the answer is “none.” Not one cent, not one second, NOT EVEN BY THE PARENTS OF WOMEN THEMSELVES, is spent preparing, educating, explaining, or conditioning young women to be wives and mothers.
Of course, many women (being the conformist NPC leftists they are) will champion this. They will celebrate it, pointing out that they are now officially “free” to do what they want and are no longer shackled to the evil patriarchal expectations of being a wife and mother.
But that is not the point of this article. The point of this article is merely one of economics:
How much in resources has society spent on convincing women to be NPC leftist careerists?
vs.
How much in resources has society spent on convincing women to be good wives and mothers?
And what you will sadly conclude is that you get what you pay for.
There’s more at the link. It’s not comfortable reading, but it certainly challenges current societal assumptions, and should make all of us, no matter what our political, social, cultural or economic persuasion might be, consider whether he’s not asking a very good, fundamental question. Are we, in fact, getting what we’ve paid for in terms of relationships – and is that inimical to the traditional nuclear family, which is always and everywhere built around the wife and children?
As a pastor, I’ve lost count of the number of marriage and relationship counseling sessions I’ve conducted. A common denominator over many years is the complaint from many people, both men and women, that “I’m not getting what I expected/want out of this relationship”. They’re usually taken aback when I retort, “Well, what are you putting into it?” I think that’s germane to Mr. Clarey’s perspective, although it’s true for both sexes, not just one. I think men who want their wives to be merely “the little woman at home” are doing the female sex as much of a disservice as the NPC, politically correct extremists he castigates.
The lessons of Scripture are very clear, and apply to marriage and relationships as much as they do to anything else.
- Treat others as you want them to treat you.
- As you sow, so shall you reap.
- You will know someone’s true nature by the fruits they bear (i.e. the good or bad that they do/produce).
- We are all as much sinners as everyone else – no-one is “special” and above sin, so it’s pointless to pretend superiority on the grounds of sex, gender, race, or anything else.
I could go on, but those truths are eternal, and they still apply. If we’re raising our young people to think otherwise, to believe that they can “have it all” despite those basic realities, we’re deluding them and ourselves.
What do you think of Mr. Clarey’s perspective? Let’s keep the discussion going in Comments.
Peter
Peter,
He has a point. But here's the real challenge how do the young kids of today buck the massive indoctrination? That's the one dilemma I have't figured out and how to counsel the youth of today.
My very modest advice is to very seriously look at alternatives to post secondary studies. I would strongly recommend the young men to go into the trades. As for the women, they could go to certain trades (electrician is one I think they would be outstanding in). Better yet be an entrepreneur or a momtrenepeur they excel at that.
xavier
Marriage is 50/50 or 40/60 or 20/80 or 80/20 or 100/0….it depends on the circumstances, and it depends on the willingness to be thankful for life's blessings. Nobody can have everything, but everybody can have something. That something is to be unwilling to allow the wants in life to be more important than the needs. Our needs are simple, and our wants can be ridiculous.
“Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” – Titus 2:3-5
“Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands.” – 1 Peter 3:1-6
“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” – Ephesians 5:22-24
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” – 1 Peter 4:8
Do the math, xavier. Do a real budget. Except for the literal top handful of women, the rest wind up spending almost their entire gross pay on: extra taxes, child care, fast foods, emergency babysitting, therapy, additional medical care, retirement, guilt-driven toys and vacations, etc. This assumes that they aren't spending deeper into his pay for the rest.
This used to be part of home economics, but that's so Dark Ages.
I suspect the ROI for those trilions in resources is worse than at first glance. The assumption is equal distribution of women across occupations; in practice, very few enter or stay in wealth creating fields. Mores get into or stay in parasitic fields which absorb resources and create little in return: law, advocacy, medicine, education, counseling, etc. This absorbs resources that would otherwise allow men to compete for and get well-paying jobs which can support a family, in modest or better conditions.
None of this begins to examine the incalculable damage to individual souls, as young women are converted into sterile worker bees with steadily diminishing hopes of finding a good husband.
Begin with why. The rest follows.
For women, the problem with being a wife and mother is that you are dependent on a man being a good provider, and some men just are not. Society has conditioned women to be docile for zillions of years. Breaking out of that docility in order to compete in the marketplace takes some doing. If so many men were not such shits, women wouldn't need to be out in the job market.
"good wives"
Right here we run into a problem. What is a good wife? Is it the same definition across beliefs and cultures? Good wives?
No marriages, no need to define.
There is still a residue of old, when commercials for empowered professional women are portrayed saying "thanks mom for …"
I guess it starts by not aborting.
Another factor to consider- "career women" don't average nearly enough children (2.1 kids per woman) to keep the population from shrinking. Delayed childbearing for eduction and career is a huge factor.
If every woman on earth was a "career woman" the human race would slowly go extinct.
And Chuck- cut the crap, this garbage is driven by feminism not men.
I have come to believe that the primary effect of feminism was to increase the number of sexually available females, particularly to beta males and lesbians.
If I was cynical, I might think it was by design.
z
Motherhood doesn't mean dependence, not here in the US. Over 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. Uncle Sam is the provider for an ever increasing total percentage of people here in America.
One word that I wouldn't use for American women is 'docile'. You go right ahead with that one, Mr. Pergiel, but please tell me when and where first – I'll be taking video and selling popcorn.
It was a real eye-opener to watch how our two-income family changed when we went to one income. After the expected bump, having one stay-at-home and one working resulted in about the same net available income, once not driving so much and new cloths for work and eating out was taken out of the equation.
Yes, many have to have dual incomes to live current lifestyles, but stepping back to one decent income and economizing, frugalizing (as my wife calls it) and being better at budgeting will help overall.
Especially in this overly consumer oriented society. I see too many young people broken both by student debt and by wanting to buy new cars, boats, campers, fancy toys and equipment and eat out like successful upper middle class or upper blue collar class workers, when they aren't successful or upper middle or upper blue.
A return to one person home, to watch the children (and hopefully homeschool the little monsters) makes for a better family. Whether it's the man who stays at home or the woman, one needs to be home, well, at least till the teenage years.
Gentlemen, I'm not your doormat or punching bag, no matter what the writings attributed to Paul said.
Who is going to support me and my children if the father of my children decides not to honor commitments, becomes lame or dies? You? I sincerely doubt it! Therefore, I got the skills that allowed me to support myself and my children.
I live in an imperfect world filled with imperfect people. My daughter is going to have the skills needed to feed herself and any children she might procreate, cause you just never know what the future will bring.
When my parents got married about 1950, taxes were low enough for a husband to support a family and buy a house. That began to change, and my mother and her sisters resorted to part-time work, or home-based work, to make ends meet. That situation continued to accelerate in the 60's due to the "great society" bull from LBJ. Originally, raising children offset the income tax rate, essentially making it zero, but that went away.
Most of my sisters made early decisions to not pursue children, even after marriage. I was told this was in response to watching our mother deal with marriage. The one who really wanted children paid a price for resorting to adoption to fill her home.
We used to be be a single paycheck family. We also were homes schooling.
But, after so many years of "no inflation" and, yet, we kept having to cut back because, somehow, our paycheck was becoming less sufficient.
Is the destruction of the family (a) planned or (b) an organic evolution of modern society?
I lean heavily on (a) with some of (b).
Rural life is the last bastion of tradition and voting patterns, I think, bears it out.
> Gentlemen, I'm not your doormat or punching bag, no matter what the writings attributed to Paul said.
Paul's writings do not make women into doormats or punching bags.
But as you train your daughter to be her own man, you can rest assured she will get everything that entails.
Men die alone and unloved, childless and forgotten. Equality includes equality of failure.
I read that one at Cappy's early this morning. Guys in Europe making excellent money, staying fit, and wondering why they can't find any women they would take to meet their parents, let alone marry?
Stay righteous, my friends. But for the grace of God, that could have been my lot as well. Instead, I married at 30ish a woman as sexually inexperienced as myself and have two bright and normal children. I take no credit for making it happen myself. Not being too damaged to make things work helps immensely, though.
You want to get married if you want to have kids. However, I don't think its necessary for those who don't want to have kids. My case is the exception. My wife and I have been married for 18 years. We do not have kids. Our marriage is good because A) we respect each other and B) our "irrationalities" match.
Well said. I would argue that wanting the little woman at home opened the door for feminist indoctrination. Certainly, it goes both ways.