Self' could never be either a thing of parts or part of a thing

Attached to the article on pañc'upādānakkhandhā→

For the puthujjana ... a 'self' exists, as an extra-temporal monolithic whole ('self' could never be either a thing of parts or part of a thing). Nanavira Thera
Grenier: 'What has parts and successions is repugnant to the very nature of our being.'

Without understanding this basic thing, Suttas below must remain incomprehensible.

“Suppose, bhikkhus, there was a king or a royal minister who had never before heard the sound of a lute. He might hear the sound of a lute and say: ‘Good man, what is making this sound—so tantalizing, so lovely, so intoxicating, so entrancing, so enthralling?’ They would say to him: ‘Sire, it is a lute that is making this sound—so tantalizing, so lovely, so intoxicating, so entrancing, so enthralling.’ He would reply: ‘Go, man, bring me that lute.’

“They would bring him the lute and tell him: ‘Sire, this is that lute, the sound of which was so tantalizing, so lovely, so intoxicating, so entrancing, so enthralling.’ The king would say: ‘I’ve had enough with this lute, man. Bring me just that sound.’ The men would reply: ‘This lute, sire, consists of numerous components, of a great many components, and it gives off a sound when it is played upon with its numerous components; that is, in dependence on the parchment sounding board, the belly, the arm, the head, the strings, the plectrum, and the appropriate effort of the musician. So it is, sire, that this lute consisting of numerous components, of a great many components, gives off a sound when it is played upon with its numerous components.’

“The king would split the lute into ten or a hundred pieces, then he would reduce these to splinters. Having reduced them to splinters, he would burn them in a fire and reduce them to ashes, and he would winnow the ashes in a strong wind or let them be carried away by the swift current of a river. Then he would say: ‘A poor thing, indeed sir, is this so-called lute, as well as anything else called a lute. How the multitude are utterly heedless about it, utterly taken in by it!’

“So too, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu investigates form to the extent that there is a range for form, he investigates feeling to the extent that there is a range for feeling, he investigates perception to the extent that there is a range for perception, he investigates determinations to the extent that there is a range for determinatios, he investigates consciousness to the extent that there is a range for consciousness. As he investigates form to the extent that there is a range for form ... consciousness to the extent that there is a range for consciousness, whatever notions of ‘I’ or ‘mine’ or ‘I am’ had occurred to him before no longer occur to him.” from SN 22 : 246

Flowers

At Sāvatthī. “Bhikkhus, I do not dispute with the world; rather, it is the world that disputes with me. A proponent of the Dhamma does not dispute with anyone in the world. Of that which the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, I too say that it does not exist. And of that which the wise in the world agree upon as existing, I too say that it exists.

“And what is it, bhikkhus, that the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, of which I too say that it does not exist? Form that is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, and I too say that it does not exist. Feeling … Perception … Determinations … Consciousness that is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, and I too say that it does not exist.

“That, bhikkhus, is what the wise in the world agree upon as not existing, of which I too say that it does not exist.

“And what is it, bhikkhus, that the wise in the world agree upon as existing, of which I too say that it exists? Form that is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as existing, and I too say that it exists. Feeling … Perception … Determinations … Consciousness that is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change: this the wise in the world agree upon as existing, and I too say that it exists.

“That, bhikkhus, is what the wise in the world agree upon as existing, of which I too say that it exists.

“There is, bhikkhus, a world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it.

“And what is that world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through? Form, bhikkhus, is a world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it. When it is being thus explained … and elucidated by the Tathāgata, if anyone does not know and see, how can I do anything with that foolish worldling, blind and sightless, who does not know and does not see?

“Feeling … Perception … Determinations … Consciousness is a world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it. When it is being thus explained … and elucidated by the Tathāgata, if anyone does not know and see, how can I do anything with that foolish worldling, blind and sightless, who does not know and does not see?

“Bhikkhus, just as a blue, red, or white lotus is born in the water and grows up in the water, but having risen up above the water, it stands unsullied by the water, so too the Tathāgata was born in the world and grew up in the world, but having overcome the world, he dwells unsullied by the world.”

SN 22 : 94

To err may be human, but to admit it isn't - selected quotes slightly misanthropic

From various authors.

To do an evil act is base. To do a good one without incurring danger, is common enough. But it is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds though he risks everything in doing them.
[Doing them he doesn't risk to be reborn in lower realms, and lack of self-respect]

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

To err may be human, but to admit it isn't.

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.

The only man who can change his mind is a man that's got one.

Light travels inconceivably fast until it encounters the human mind.

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

For most, life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

The praise of a fool is more harmful than his blame.

Blessed is he who has made it through University without being made a fool of.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

The scholar labours meticulously for years on end to produce his masterpiece - which the thinker destroys with a single sentence.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

A child miseducated is a child lost.

You can lead high school graduates to University, but you can't make them think.

Anyone who has ever been to school will always feel comparatively at home in prison.

Very few can be trusted with an education.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Never let your studies interfere with your education.

Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.

The average PhD thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

Truth may kill a man, but he dies with dignity. And if the human race goes extinct, let it be for truth and not for the cowardice of ignorance.

Nothing makes you as sure of yourself as ignorance.

Goodness plus ignorance makes one Devil.

Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice because it is not subject to the regulation of conscience.

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.

If you are dealing with a fool, dictate, but never argue.

The surest sign that you have no brains is to argue with one who hasn't.

Some of the new books are so down to earth they ought to be ploughed under.

What an author doesn't know usually fills a book.

The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.

If ignorance is bliss then a lot of people are going to die of joy.

The reason there's so much ignorance is that those who have it are so eager to share it.

To be a success in life all you need is confidence and ignorance.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

The man who listens to reason is usually thinking of some way to refute it.

Wit helps to play the fool with more confidence.

The human race's favourite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them.

The ignorance of most people gives one a rough sense of the infinite.

Nothing is impossible for anyone impervious to reason.

His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere.

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether people do.

Most fools think they are only ignorant.

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from wise men.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

There is no difference between a wise man and a fool when they fall in love.

You can't depend on anyone to be wrong all the time. Even a fool must now and then be right by chance, just as a broken clock is correct twice a day.

Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and the half-wise that are dangerous.

Infatuation is what makes an intelligent man look foolish to a foolish girl who looks intelligent to him.

Silence is the wisdom of the fool. To make a noise is to be found out.

Remain silent and others suspect that you are ignorant; talk and you remove all doubt of it.

The ignorant are aware of many mysteries and understand everything else, whereas the wise are aware of one mystery and understand nothing else.

Time alone relieves the foolish from sorrow, but reason relieves the wise.

When drunk, men often say sensible things which sound foolish to them when sober.

When the people applauded wildly, Diogenes turned to one of his friends and said "Have I said something foolish?"

If I was appreciated along with other men I would depreciate myself.

A man who has a million dollars feels as well off as if he were not a fool.

Some people gather a lot of money thinking it will make them worth more.

One should not seek to be of value to society any more than one would wish to be popular with a fool.

A practical man is a man who practices the errors of his forefathers.

To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

What men call good fellowship is commonly but the Virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm.

No two things in Nature have less affinity than violence and reflection.

No one ever thought to give awards for wisdom, which is a great relief.

Words are like leaves And where they most abound Much fruit and sense beneath is rarely found.

He writes quickly, with the fluency of the artist who has nothing whatsoever to say.

You should read it, though there is much that is skipworthy.

It was a book to kill time, for those who like it better dead.

The ordinary man would rather read the life of the cruelest pirate that ever lived than the wisest philosopher.

There are two common ways to avoid thinking: one is to never read, and the other is to do nothing but read.

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention.

Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.

Literature is an occupation in which you have to prove your talent to people who have none.
The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editions.

There is no worse robber than a bad book.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.

He who wields a pen is in a state of war.

Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do.

To write prose, one must have something to say; but he who has nothing to say can still make verses and rhymes, where one word suggests the other, and at last something comes out which in fact is nothing but looks as if it were something.

If you find writing prose too boring you can always convert to poetry by starting each sentence with a capital letter, and making each paragraph a stanza, with each line ending on the margin except the last one.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

A poet is a person who simply cannot keep his confusion to himself.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

He is a sheep in sheep's clothing.

To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.

The first among the flock is still a sheep.

Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him.

Only dead fish swim with the stream.

He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

Society is the process in which everyone fights all battles except the one that should be fought.

The length of life ought to be measured by the number and importance of our ideas and not by the number of our days. By this standard, some people have never been born.

I know of very few individuals who deserve to live.

Fame is proof that people are gullible.

"Be yourself" is the worst advice you can give some people.

All that I care to know is that a man is a human being - that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.

The greatest act of faith is when a man decides that he is not God.

It must be a very weary day to the youth, when he first discovers that after all he will only become a man.

"The way he (George Bernard Shaw) believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many believe in no God at all."

The only excuse for God is that He doesn't exist.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

We are the people our parents warned us about.

He who always finds fault with his friends has faulty friends.

With each friend you buy you get an enemy free.

Judge a man by his foes.

Know a man by the company he avoids.

The wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.

Have no illusions, people do not think about you, but of what you are thinking about them.

Vanity is the result of a delusion that someone is paying attention.

You can say what you want to around home because no one pays any attention to you.

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

While each man loves himself more than anyone else, he sets less value on his own estimate than on the opinions of others.

Most celebrated men live in a condition of prostitution.

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs less.

Who'd want to be an adult in this world? The normal, relaxed, well-adjusted adult is constantly exhausting itself playing a thousand games - 250 of these are spent in frantic pursuit of what it wants; another 250 are spent trying to avoid what it does not want; a further 250 involve elaborate justifications, trying to give the whole process some semblance of respectability; and the final 250 entail the efforts of trying to appear normal, relaxed, and well-adjusted.

If a growing object is both fresh and spoiled at the same time, chances are it is a child.

We're all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.

By the time we arrive at middle age, we have settled on definite convictions, most of which are wrong.

People quiet down as they grow older, probably because they have more to be quiet about.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man.

It is a man's fate to keep growing older long after he is old enough.

Last will and testament: a pathetic attempt at immortality.

Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Nothing fails like success.

Nothing succeeds like failure.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Success in almost any field depends more on energy, drive and persistence than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.

In judging others people will work overtime for no pay.

The place where optimism most flourishes is in the lunatic asylum.

The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."

Dangerous exercise - jumping to conclusions.

Only the poor are forbidden to beg.

Time is money if you are willing to sell your life.

I cannot afford to waste my time making money.

To be clever enough to make a lot of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

Money costs too much.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up that makes us rich.

There are no dollar signs on tombstones.

No man ever said on his deathbed: "I wish I had spent more time on my business."

Money is the fruit of evil as often as the root of it.

The love of money grows as the money itself grows.

Nobody has money who ought to have it.

God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind person he selects to receive it.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Most people sell their souls and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.

The poor live the most independent lives of any.

Many people have character who have nothing else.

Confound these ancestors . . . They've stolen our best ideas!

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

Plagiarism is sometimes unrecognized originality.

Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism.

Everything has been thought of before; the problem is to think of it again.

I hold it a noble task to rescue from oblivion those who deserve to be eternally remembered.

The historian is a prophet looking backwards.

All history is the propaganda of the victorious.

The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.

There's only one thing that can continue to grow without nourishment: the human ego.
[Ego also requires nourishment, but its cultivation comes effortlessly.]

The man who lives by himself and for himself is apt to be corrupted by the company he keeps.

Some people have such open minds that nothing stays in them long.

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

He that hath ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton.

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.

The best way of answering a bad argument is to let it go on.

If someone says they agree with you in principle, it means they haven't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover about everybody's face but their own.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.
Somebody's boring me . . . I think it's me.

I am always embarrassed by compliments - I always feel that they have not said enough.

I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.

Never do today what you can do tomorrow. Something may occur to make you regret your premature action.

It is well to put off until tomorrow what you ought not to do at all.

Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Invention is the mother of necessity.

The line is often busy when your conscience tries to speak.

My duty is a thing I never do, on principle.

When a man claims that he is working toward the betterment of humanity - and humanity agrees - you can be sure he is not.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

If you are good, you'll be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you'll get out of doing it.

It is, no doubt, an immense advantage to have done nothing, but one should not abuse it.

Many a man holds both day and night jobs so he can drive from one to the other in a more expensive car.

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do with their time.

Work is a form of nervousness.

I do not like work even when another person is doing it.

The lazy man gets round the sun as quickly as the busy one.

Industry is the root of all ugliness.

The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.

Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

People who like to be referred to as dreamers are too often merely sleepers.

Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.

Actions lie louder than words.

People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering.

Everyone complains of his memory, but no one complains of his judgement.

You can make the average man mad by referring to him as the average man.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Nobody minds a clever man, as long as he does not impart his cleverness to others.

Take care that no one hates you justly.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

They who know _the truth_ are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

I have yet to see a problem, however complicated, which, when you look at it in the right way, did not become more complicated.

The superior man is distressed by his want of ability.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

If you think the world is against you - it doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.

In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.

What governs men is the fear of truth.

Children are afraid of being left in the dark; men are afraid of not being left in it.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

Judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made them.
Self-love seems so often unrequited.

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

The worst thing about war is that it seldom kills off the right people.

A nation is only at peace if it's at war.

A human relationship is what happens when you know you can rely on the other person to be as dishonest as you are.

The human race expresses great concern that everyone should express their abilities to the full, and never more so than when those abilities are non-existent.

One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none.

Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present.

Equality: It is easier to make people appear equally stupid than to make them appear equally clever.

A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

At one time I thought he wanted to be an actor. He had certain qualifications, including no money and a total lack of responsibility.

A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

Women of Substance Are Made, Not Born

When looking around at the quality of modern-day women, the majority would be considered by men to be utterly disappointing long-term material, their traits, their composure and their very nature are all entirely questionable if not downright undesirable. Society downplays, justifies and otherwise ignores the weaknesses of women with cultural ignorance that mislabels objective criticism as misogyny, whilst it simultaneously and quite ironically misrepresents women in a positive light by projecting all these unsubstantiated idealistic qualities onto them, claiming that such qualities are fundamentally innate merits of the universal female identity.

In all its unfounded perversity, this baseless bullshit is a type of religion, everyone believes blindly in “the goodness of women” because they have been raised to do so, contrary to the behaviour that women around them are actually engaging in on a daily basis. Even when said behaviour is found to be bad, it is always disregarded due to some baseless belief in female sanctity, which in reality is nothing more than an ideal, a projection, not an universal truth. It is this unfairly unrealistic deception, this hallucinogenic depiction of womankind that is presented to women, which leads men who begin to learn what women are like in nature to feel disillusioned and disenchanted, they feel this way because what they were taught to believe about women from a young age is far removed from who they really are. Whilst women are flattered by the bullshit pandering that they are sugar and spice and everything nice – men are crushed by the fact that they are indeed, not so.

In comparison to all the hopes and dreams men have been fed to expect from women, it’s this perverse Disney funded fantasy that makes men everywhere feel duped, let-down and even misanthropic when they find themselves ill-equipped to cope with the let-down which is the modern-day woman.

Those living in today’s Anglosphere and western European civilizations should typically expect very little of women, so few are worthy of anything more than a rumble in the hay simply because they haven’t been raised right, cue the malignancy of the single mother epidemic and the erosion of conducive moral, religious and family. Even good company and banter with such women tends to be a rarity as quite a many of them lack the ability to be mentally stimulating on a conversational level. Occasionally you may find yourself pleasantly surprised and in such a circumstance run the risk of falling very hard for the woman in question, as in comparison to her brethren she will shine out like a lighthouse in a sea of drudgery with imposing prominence, however no matter her beneficial difference, she is a woman like any other. She has the same psychological and most importantly, emotional needs and as such will run all the usual shit tests, making the same type of demands that the legions of broken women will, the question you will find yourself asking though, is this one worth it?

For those who decide yes, such a woman is worth it, and are in the right phase of their life to do so, you have a project on your hands, one that will require much mental investment. If you want yourself a desirable woman you will have to cultivate femininity and desirability into her yourself if you deem she has the necessary raw material to become a desirable lady worthy of raising a family with, wife material. Such is the inherent focus of the red pill woman project.

Red pill women are women on a quest to be “wife/mother material” to the perception of a man, they are works in progress, the counterpart to the red pill philosophy. Essentially, they are guided by a social network of traditionally minded matriarchs and if in a serious relationship, the desires and authority of the man she has pledged her allegiance to. For those of us who have neither the time nor the inclination to practice the patience required to effectively create our own red pill woman, indulging in the idea of red pill women is not an option for us. Women of all kinds require vast reservoirs of patience and love as it is the basis of their erratic emotionalism which leads them to be ever demanding.

Heed me when I say that all red pill women are trained by men, they are not magically born out of the womb, a “unicorn” is merely a high quality red pill woman raised, cultivated and overseen by men of value, integrity and intelligence. Whether that man is her father or later on, a serious boyfriend, she is trained and maintained by men to be a quality woman. To an extent she is trained by her mother also, who respects the strength of an authoritarian man and imparts the ideas of the father onto her daughter by proxy, but a mother who was unable to secure a strong man, in her bitterness and ineptitude, will typically not pass on conducive moral and sexual values that will lead to romantic success for her daughter. After all, she cannot do for her daughter what she was unable to obtain for herself.

Often a woman who is of quality from a young age, non-promiscuous, good-natured, talented, intelligent, humorous, not hateful of men and emotionally stable is a woman who has had a good relationship with her father. Her father having been what for lack of a better term is considered an alpha male, instilling positive traits into her psyche with a firm, loving hand, raising her to respect men and accommodate them in the social contract; rather than hold them in contempt and challenge them as adversaries like mainstream society would indoctrinate.

It is the job of the man who commits to such a woman romantically to then maintain the legacy that her father left, good girls will turn bad in the absence of a strong male figure, for it is woman’s emotional transient nature which causes them to stray from the path of romantic success. It is woman’s emotional nature whether she consciously desires it or not that necessitates her need for strong trustworthy leadership, so that she may absolve herself of responsibility in her inevitable moments of weakness, she wants someone to lean on but fears that the dissolution of that responsibility will be abused, a connection of trust to a powerful man is what women crave.

In essence, this is why women tend to look for “men who were like their fathers” they seek dominance in which they can trust, and it is this dominance which allows them to remain emotionally stable, offloading their neuroticism onto the stoicism of the man that they pair with. Good women are not only made by men, but must also be maintained by men. In the absence of such leadership, women take on detrimental qualities in the name of “freedom”, being poor leaders themselves (due to the erraticism of emotionalism) and in the absence of authority (typically a strong patriarch and an equally traditional matriarch) they become feral and pursue self-destruction, always chasing the nearest perceivable “emotional high”, rather than planning ahead for the days where the temporary adrenaline-filled joyful experience that short-term liaisons provide are no longer available to them as their sexual appeal evaporates with age, leaving them without legacy and family with a firm foot in spinsterhood.

Essentially, all women have daddy issues (no I’m not going to qualify that as “most” or “some” but forthrightly tell you ALL), if he was a good father she wants a serious relationship with a man who was like her father, strong, compassionate, worldly, a badass, but with a soft spot unique to her, women love to feel special, in fact, they crave it. If she had a good father, as a man looking to date such a woman (a woman with a good father) your life has already been made infinitely easier by his diligence, he has already raised an appealing woman and then left the foundations in place to cultivate this valuable raw material into a long-term partner, a mother and a wife. However, the onus is on you to be strong enough to maintain the status quo, such a woman will not respect weakness and thus will not follow the lead of a man who is too inept to take charge, such a woman will hold you to the standard set by her father and as such will compare you both in starkness.

If her father was absent or otherwise a let-down, she wants her boyfriend to be everything he wasn’t, her mind has filled in the blanks with what he should have been, some of that of course will be complete fantastical bullshit. What she will want in this scenario is for a man to essentially fill the emotional void the lack of a father figure left her with, whilst perversely in simultaneity she will find it hard to trust men due to her sense of abandonment. Maintaining a healthy, loving and conducive relationship with such a woman will be exceptionally difficult. She will effectively be both her own as well as your own worst enemy, actively sabotaging everything you’re trying to build with all the irrationality of her delinquency manifesting itself in the present day as morbid insecurity.

This is why women with poor relationships with their fathers are a massive red flag. When eying up a woman for a prospective long-term romantic engagement, find out what her relationship with her father is like, the absence of a father or a negative relationship with her father are massive red flags as she is already set-up to be a poor romantic prospect, mainly due to how she was (or wasn’t) raised.

Single mothers quite simply are inept to raise quality children singlehandedly. The presence of a weak father is better than nothing, but typically you want her to have had a father who was a patriarch, a dominant man who taught her discipline so that her base schematic of “what men should be like” is healthy and isn’t formed from unhealthy feminist stereotypes and the ramblings of a bitter and romantically unsuccessful single mother. Still, even the presence of a patriarch in a young girl’s life isn’t always enough to ensure a quality woman; as the prevailing socially engineered cultural forces around her proactively do their utmost to undermine the will and intent that her father’s best interests have for her.

Red pill women are not “unicorns”, they are women capable of curbing their instincts whilst using logic to be more desirable in an effort to secure provisioning in their old age, effectively they’re investing in the long-game and have been made self-aware enough to realise that being a slut getting by on her sexuality and youth is not a gravy train that is going to last forever. They are women who will compromise and work with a man who is equally strong enough and patient enough to deal with them. Everything is a compromise with women, whether she’s a cunt, has BPD, is unintelligent or is as high-caliber and well cultivated as an emotionally stable and feminine red pill woman, the inherent difference between masculine and feminine nature leads to a process of unending compromise.

No matter the woman, she will test your patience; this is just women full-stop. Not got a lot of patience? Women are going to just piss you the hell off then. It does help however when a woman can offset this inherently annoying trait of trying a man’s patience by bringing more than merely a vagina to the table. As a man you should be informed that an inherently irrational being is going to do nothing but antagonise the patience of someone who thinks in logic rather than the cognitive cartwheels of reactive transient emotionalism.

The biggest flattery of all to women, which only an intelligent woman will realise, is that despite the sheer frustration and pain she causes him with her volatile emotivity, is that such a man still chooses to stick with her and provide for her despite her shortcomings. A female’s self-awareness of his sacrifice and a declaration of appreciation for that sacrifice goes a long way to help reconcile the huge fundamental differences in expectation that men and women have of each other, women being far more audaciously demanding and stringently needy by nature of their disposition than men are.

I’ll end this article on the following closing thought: it is somewhat insane how the appreciation of an intrinsically irrational woman within the paradigm of a relationship is valued so intimately by the romantic disposition of what is otherwise a rational man. It is often true after all that we value that which is hardest to obtain, and a woman’s appreciation is scarcely given in earnest.

Illimitable Man

Understanding Female Psychology

“One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

Contents:
1.) Introduction
2.) The Cultural Battle of the Sexes
3.) Solipsism’s Role In Femininity
4.) The Role of Rationalisation & Sophistry
5.) In Closing/Relevant Reading

1.) Introduction:

As I write this, I cast my mind back to a time I did not understand women. It is surreal to write on “how women work” when one so vividly remembers being a man clueless in such matters.

As a clueless man bereft of the knowledge my sanity demanded, I would ask men to explain women, I would ask women to explain women, and I would ask Google to explain women. Nobody really knew what they were talking about. The only answers I would get were gynocentric inanities mixed with general rhetorical platitudes such as “be yourself” and “be confident”.

The problem with the mainstream gynocentric viewpoint is it teaches men how to be a good slave, rather than a good master. It teaches men how to cater to women, rather than how to inspire a woman’s desire to cater to them. It actively suppresses truths related to women, whilst spreading vitriolic untruth about men. At this point it seems the system would prefer men are useful but ignorant, rather than enlightened and sovereign.

Men yearn to understand women, for they wish to attract them, as well as protect themselves from womanly predations. This knowledge is essential paramount sustenance all but crucial for the preservation of man’s sanity. And yet quite sadistically, this wisdom eludes most men no matter how earnestly they seek it.

Today, life changing truth is only readily available should a man happen upon a site such as this. Most men are unaware of women’s true nature, and the minority who are aware dare not discuss the elephant in the room, for doing so may come at incredible cost.

2.) The Cultural Battle of the Sexes:

The number of men aware of the realities inherent to female nature continues to dwindle, whilst the cultural hysteria touting “men are evil and women can do no wrong” reigns pervasively. Men are taught to worship women, whilst women are taught to distrust men. Men are taught to serve women, whilst women are taught to deceive men. Society believes it morally reprehensible for a man to dupe a woman, and yet bares no such disdain when the polarity is reversed, often going to extreme lengths to rationalise aesthetically pleasing justifications for immoral female behaviour.

Before the emergence of red pill philosophy, no meaningful infrastructure existed to support and educate men on matters of women, and this is why what we do is crucial. We educate boys and men on matters nobody else is capable of, and support them where nobody else cares.
Culturally there is a power imbalance where the masculine has become so weak and the feminine has gotten so out of control, that she threatens to destabilise civilization’s very core with a tyrannic power she is not fit to wield. The red pill (as well as this very publication) does to the extent of its reach, attempt to redress this imbalance by giving men the tools they need to exercise power and remain sovereign.

Red pill philosophy is effective, it thoroughly details female behaviour from numerous perspectives (sociologically, evolutionarily and occasionally, economically) to form a rich and comprehensive philosophy.

However, having internalised much of this “forbidden knowledge” over the years, I wish to do something I do not believe has been done before: unify the red pill understanding of women into a framework that depicts the relationships between the mechanisms that embody the feminine.
When I was clueless about women, I’d have killed for an article like this, so if that sounds like you, strap yourself in because you’re in for a treat. You’re going to learn what many men never learn, and what many others pay in pain and poverty to merely intuit.

3.) Solipsism’s Role In Femininity:

One cannot deny that women are vigorously interested in themselves and how men perceive them, yet regardless, this passion does not translate into a meaningful philosophical enquiry on womankind by herself. As such, a woman’s opinion of her sex is inseparably tied up with how she sees herself.

To simplify: whatever a woman believes to be true of women, is 99 out of 100 times, something she believes to be true of herself.

Solipsism leads women to believe the opinions they hold of themselves accurately represent the behaviours generalisable to their sex. Naturally most women are oblivious to their flaws, and are as a matter of ego, unwilling to even ponder the possibility they’re not intrinsically wonderful.
Most women do not realise the negative traits they possess should be rectified where possible or otherwise mitigated, because they do not recognise themselves as having said undesirable qualities to begin with. Simply put, women lack self-awareness, they tend to deny their shortcomings rather than fix them, and this is why there is a substantial lack of bodies in the women’s online self-improvement community.

If you talk about the general nature of women to a woman, but you do not distinguish between her and “most women”, she will almost always lump herself in with “most women” and fail to make the distinction between herself and women as a whole. This leads her to constantly miss the forest for trees, stating that “she was in a similar situation and she was never like that” when you generalise her sex.

Now, whilst it is certainly possible the woman you’re talking to may be the exception to something, it is more likely that she is not but believes in all delusional earnest that she is. Because she follows her feelings, and it feels better for her to believe she’s different than to be aware of her shortcomings, she will believe an aspect of her behaviour immune to generalisation even when her behaviours confirm the generalisation!

You may even remember a time when the woman you’re talking to embodied the exact generalisation you’re asserting, and yet like a crazy person with amnesia, she will claim to be nothing like that. This is another “function” of solipsism, a woman’s pre-occupation with the self is mirrored by an utter lack of self-awareness of what said self consists of.

And so it is only in the grand denial of a woman’s solipsism that if she believes there’s nothing “wrong” with her, then there’s nothing “wrong” with women either. If she believes she’s not like that, then she incorrectly concludes that most women aren’t like that either.

It is the observation that nearly all women will unironically say “not all women are like that” that gives away the feminine’s solipsistic point of reference, that a woman will attempt to differentiate herself as superior when in competition, but should you criticise women in general, suddenly her ability to make distinctions between herself and her group vanishes.

In juxtaposition, if something negative is said about men, most men can simultaneously weigh up whether the generalisation applies to men as a group, and if it does, if it applies to them. They do not instantly conflate opinions of their sex with opinions of themselves, and so unlike women, are not reflexively offended by negative statements made about their sex if an element of that statement is based in reality.

Naive men believe “women must be experts on women, because being women themselves they know all about women!” such a belief is folly, and no more than a reflection of a man’s naivety, for it assumes women are abstractive rather than solipsistic, that is, more interested in the truth than being purposefully ignorant in order to maintain an optimum level of happiness. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

When women talk about women, they project rather than investigate because they’re prone to emotional solipsism, not rational investigation. Solipsism is the core base of all female behaviour, it is the intrinsic way of being, the very foundation on which the female’s other psychological aspects spawn.

Women with little power and low self-esteem are solipsistic and prone to infantile narcissism, whilst those with high self-esteem and great power are grandiosely narcissistic, the latter meaning they possess a characteristically masculine air of arrogant detachment.

Where solipsism is her internal dialogue and mode of thought, its external counterpart is infantile narcissism, women’s insecurity of her relative inferiority to man, and dependence on men. If one analyses the thinking of the feminist movement for a second, a great part of it fixates on “empowering women by granting them independence.”

This suggests a few things, that firstly, women do not possess the ability or desire to take independence for themselves and so need powerful politicians to legally mandate it. And secondly, that the feminist fixation with independence is a macro manifestation of female insecurity. This to say, that women are all too aware of their reliance on men for both economic and emotional support, and that collectively, rather than be grateful for man’s magnanimity, a great deal despise it. The saying “no good deed goes unpunished” seems apt here.

Women are deadly, yet needy. They have always needed men, still do, and most likely always will. And yet it is in the infantile stubbornness of femininity that a resentment brews for this biologically ordained neediness.

Even the women who do well to provide for themselves end up requiring a man who earns more than they, who is mentally stronger than they, and so on. A woman is hypergamous by her very nature, and thus much to the disdain of her insecurity, requires male superiority in order to even find men attractive.

The topic of feminine infantile narcissism presents the perfect opportunity to explore why women are more inherently cunning than men. It is because women are so incredibly aware of their heightened neediness relative to men that they develop an intrinsic penchant for cunning. They are all too aware the depth and breadth of assistance they require from the opposite sex is greater than the inverse, and so it is this position in large part which fuels their motive for manipulating as a way of life.

Women are in a position of neediness, and yet they cannot fully trust men to give them what they need, so they manipulate men in order to give them what they want, but then resent the men who fall prey to such devices. This phenomenon alone should explain to you the mental hell women occupy, and explain much of their external craziness.

Even the sweetest, kindest, best raised woman is a cunning creature, for it is in the insecurity inherent to reliance that a woman protects herself via the impassioned practice of cunning. I believe that where nature gave man superior strength, women were bestowed pathological cunning. Unfortunately, what was granted to be used as a means of defence, is often in practice used for anything but.

Infantile as they are, women are ill-equipped to handle power, and that which is born out of the insecurity that a man may do her wrong, turns into an exploitative, predatory misuse of power that fuels grandiose narcissism, and thus masculinises her. The aforementioned relationships between the different aspects of the female psyche do not explain it in its entirety, but nonetheless, should accurately depict its root and core.

4.) The Role of Rationalisation & Sophistry:

In contrast to the prior section, this section will be quite short as many of the mechanisms relevant to this behaviour are aptly described in my distillation of solipsism. Whilst solipsism requires greater explanation because of its breadth as “something she is”, rationalisation requires less explanation because it’s merely “something she does.”

Rationalisation is the grand act of seeking justification or explanation for something that has occurred in order to flatter/benefit the person who performed the behaviour. It is not an honest attempt to understand what causes a behaviour.

Women often do not understand why they feel what they feel, because rationally verbalising primal impulses is difficult if not impossible. She cannot acknowledge that she doesn’t even know why she said or did something as she’ll look stupid. So to save face, she will come up with persuasive nonsense to reconcile the irrationality of her behaviour with the aestheticism of something that sounds convincing.

To simplify, she will find something that sounds reasonable to explain her behaviour, regardless of whether this is the true cause of said behaviour. As long as it makes her look and feel good, it is a sufficient rationalisation that serves the purpose she needs it to.

Women are far less concerned with communicating the truth about themselves than they are maintaining an acceptable image. Again, this is why it is folly to ask women about women. They’re less interested, capable and incentivised to understand themselves than men are.

5.) In Closing / Relevant Reading:

Here before you lies just a few of the aspects inherent to the operating system of female psychology.

It is incomplete, as a complete treatise on the topic is not merely substantial in depth, but likewise of breadth. Time permitting, it is my desire to pen a follow up piece that details other aspects inherent to female nature, linking them in with the aspects previously described in order to create a coherent framework.

Blog:
Fifty Shades of Red
Fifty Shades Redder
The AWALT
Misconception The Myth of Female Rationality – [Part 1] – [Part 2]
The Nature of Women

Book(s):
The Manipulated Man

Illimitable Man

Yamaka

Attached to the article on pañc'upādānakkhandhā →

On one occasion the Venerable Sāriputta was dwelling at Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s Park. Now on that occasion the following pernicious view had arisen in a bhikkhu named Yamaka: “As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed is annihilated and perishes with the breakup of the body and does not exist after death.”

A number of bhikkhus heard that such a pernicious view had arisen in the bhikkhu Yamaka. Then they approached the Venerable Yamaka and exchanged greetings with him, after which they sat down to one side and said to him: “Is it true, friend Yamaka, that such a pernicious view as this has arisen in you:  As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed is annihilated and perishes with the breakup of the body and does not exist after death’?”

“Exactly so, friends. As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed is annihilated and perishes with the breakup of the body and does not exist after death.”

“Friend Yamaka, do not speak thus. Do not misrepresent the Blessed One. It is not good to misrepresent the Blessed One. The Blessed One would not speak thus: ‘A bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed is annihilated and perishes with the breakup of the body and does not exist after death.’”

Yet, although he was admonished by the bhikkhus in this way, the Venerable Yamaka still obstinately grasped that pernicious view, adhered to it, and declared: “As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed is annihilated and perishes with the breakup of the body and does not exist after death.”

Since those bhikkhus were unable to detach the Venerable Yamaka from that pernicious view, they rose from their seats, approached the Venerable Sāriputta, and told him all that had occurred, adding: “It would be good if the Venerable Sāriputta would approach the bhikkhu Yamaka out of compassion for him.” The Venerable Sāriputta consented by silence.

Then, in the evening, the Venerable Sāriputta emerged from seclusion. He approached the Venerable Yamaka and exchanged greetings with him, after which he sat down to one side and said to him: “Is it true, friend Yamaka, that such a pernicious view as this has arisen in you: ‘As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed is annihilated and perishes with the breakup of the body and does not exist after death’?”

“Exactly so, friend.”

“What do you think, friend Yamaka, is form permanent or impermanent?” -

 “Impermanent, friend.”

“Is what is impermanent suffering or happiness?” - “Suffering, friend.” “Is what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’?” - “No, friend.”

“Is feeling permanent or impermanent?… Is perception permanent or impermanent?… Are determinations permanent or impermanent?… Is consciousness permanent or impermanent?” - “Impermanent, friend” - “Is what is impermanent suffering or happiness?” - “Suffering, friend” - “Is what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’?” - “No, friend.”

“Therefore, friend Yamaka, any kind of form whatsoever, whether past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near, all form should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom thus: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’

“Any kind of feeling whatsoever … Any kind of perception whatsoever … Any kind of determinations whatsoever … Any kind of consciousness whatsoever, whether past, future, or present,  internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near, all consciousness should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom thus: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’

“What do you think, friend Yamaka, do you regard form as the Tathāgata?” - “No, friend.” - “Do you regard feeling … perception … determinations… consciousness as the Tathāgata?” - “No, friend.”

“What do you think, friend Yamaka, do you regard the Tathāgata as in form?” - “No, friend.” - “Do you regard the Tathāgata as apart from form?” - “No, friend.” - “Do you regard the Tathāgata as in feeling? As apart from feeling? As in perception? As apart from perception? As in determinations? As apart from determinations? As in consciousness? As apart from consciousness?” - “No, friend.”

“What do you think, friend Yamaka, do you regard form, feeling, perception, determinations, and consciousness [taken together] as the Tathāgata?” - “No, friend.”

“What do you think, friend Yamaka, do you regard the Tathāgata as one who is without form, without feeling, without perception, without volitional formations, without consciousness?” - “No, friend.”

“But, friend, when the Tathāgata is not apprehended by you as real and actual here in this very life, is it fitting for you to declare: ‘As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed is annihilated and perishes with the breakup of the body and does not exist after death’?”

“Formerly, friend Sāriputta, when I was ignorant, I did hold that pernicious view, but now that I have heard this Dhamma teaching of the Venerable Sāriputta I have abandoned that pernicious view and have made the breakthrough to the Dhamma.”

“If, friend Yamaka, they were to ask you: ‘Friend Yamaka, when a bhikkhu is an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed, what happens to him with the breakup of the body, after death?’—being asked thus, what would you answer?”

“If they were to ask me this, friend, I would answer thus: ‘Friends, form is impermanent; what is impermanent is suffering; what is suffering has ceased and passed away. Feeling … Perception … Determinations… Consciousness is impermanent; what is impermanent is suffering; what is suffering has ceased and passed away.’ Being asked thus, friend, I would answer in such a way.”

“Good, good, friend Yamaka! Now, friend Yamaka, I will make up a simile for you in order to convey this same meaning even more clearly. Suppose, friend Yamaka, there was a householder or a householder’s son, a rich man, with much wealth and property, protected by a bodyguard. Then some man would appear who wanted to ruin him, to harm him, to endanger him, to take his life. It would occur to that man: ‘This householder or householder’s son is a rich man, with much wealth and property, protected by a bodyguard. It won’t be easy to take his life by force. Let me get close to him and then take his life.’

“Then he would approach that householder or householder’s son and say to him: ‘I would serve you, sir.’ Then the householder or householder’s son would appoint him as a servant. The man would serve him, rising up before him, retiring after him, doing whatever he wants, agreeable in his conduct, endearing in his speech. The householder or householder’s son would consider him a friend, a bosom friend, and he would place trust in him. But when the man becomes aware that the householder or householder’s son has placed trust in him, then, finding him alone, he would take his life with a sharp knife.

“What do you think, friend Yamaka, when that man had approached that householder or householder’s son and said to him: ‘I would serve you, sir,’ wasn’t he a murderer even then, though the other did not recognize him as ‘my murderer’? And when the man was serving him, rising up before him, retiring after him, doing whatever he wants, agreeable in his conduct, endearing in his speech, wasn’t he a murderer then too, though the other did not recognize him as ‘my murderer’? And when the man came upon him while he was alone and took his life with a sharp knife, wasn’t he a murderer then too, though the other did not recognize him as ‘my murderer’?”

“Yes, friend.”

“So too, friend Yamaka, the uninstructed worldling, who is not a seer of the noble ones and is unskilled and undisciplined in their Dhamma, who is not a seer of superior persons and is unskilled and undisciplined in their Dhamma, regards form as self, or self as possessing form, or form as in self, or self as in form.

“He regards feeling as self … perception as self … determinations as self … consciousness as self, or self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in self, or self as in consciousness.

“He does not understand as it really is impermanent form as ‘impermanent form’ … impermanent feeling as ‘impermanent feeling’ … impermanent perception as ‘impermanent perception’ … impermanent determinations as ‘impermanent determinations’ … impermanent consciousness as ‘impermanent consciousness.’

“He does not understand as it really is painful form as ‘painful form’ … painful feeling as ‘painful feeling’ … painful perception as ‘painful perception’ … painful determinations as ‘painful determinations’ … painful consciousness as ‘painful consciousness.’

“He does not understand as it really is selfless form as ‘selfless form’ … selfless feeling as ‘selfless feeling’ … selfless perception as ‘selfless perception’ … selfless determinations as ‘selfless determinations’ … selfless consciousness as ‘selfless consciousness.’

“He does not understand as it really is determined form as ‘determined form’ … determined feeling as ‘determined feeling’ … determined perception as ‘determined perception’ … determined determinations as ‘determined determinations’ … determined consciousness as ‘determined consciousness.’

“He does not understand as it really is murderous form as ‘murderous form’ … murderous feeling as ‘murderous feeling’ … murderous perception as ‘murderous perception’ … murderous determinations as ‘murderous determinations’ … murderous consciousness as ‘murderous consciousness.’

“He becomes engaged with form, clings to it, and takes a stand upon it as ‘my self.’* He becomes engaged with feeling … with perception … with determinations … with consciousness, clings to it, and takes a stand upon it as ‘my self.’ These same five aggregates of clinging, to which he becomes engaged and to which he clings, lead to his harm and suffering for a long time.

“But, friend, the instructed noble disciple, who is a seer of the noble ones … does not regard form as self, or self as possessing form, or form as in self, or self as in form.

“He does not regard feeling as self … perception as self … determinations as self … consciousness as self, or self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in self, or self as in consciousness.

“He understands as it really is impermanent form as ‘impermanent form’ … impermanent consciousness as ‘impermanent consciousness.’

“He understands as it really is painful form as ‘painful form’ … painful consciousness as ‘painful consciousness.’

“He understands as it really is selfless form as ‘selfless form’ … selfless consciousness as ‘selfless consciousness.’

“He understands as it really is determined form as ‘determined form’ … determined nconsciousness as ‘determined consciousness.'

“He understands as it really is murderous form as ‘murderous form’ … murderous consciousness as ‘murderous consciousness.’

“He does not become engaged with form, cling to it, and take a stand upon it as ‘my self.’ He does not become engaged with feeling … with perception … with determinations … with consciousness, cling to it, and take a stand upon it as ‘my self.’ These same five aggregates of clinging, to which he does not become engaged and to which he does not cling, lead to his welfare and happiness for a long time.”

“So it is, friend Sāriputta, for those venerable ones who have such compassionate and benevolent brothers in the holy life to admonish and instruct them. And now that I have heard this Dhamma teaching of the Venerable Sāriputta, my mind is liberated from the taints by nonclinging.”

This is what the Venerable Sāriputta said. Elated, the Venerable Yamaka delighted in the Venerable Sāriputta’s statement.
SN 22: 85

* “This world, Kaccāna, is for the most part shackled by engagement, clinging, and adherence. But this one [with right view] does not become engaged and cling through that engagement and clinging, mental standpoint, adherence, underlying tendency; he does not take a stand about ‘my self.’  He has no perplexity or doubt that what arises is only suffering arising, what ceases is only suffering ceasing. His knowledge about this is independent of others. It is in this way, Kaccāna, that there is right view. SN 12 : 15

Nanavira Thera:

Nayidha sattūpalabbhati now presents no difficulty. The puthujjana takes his apparent 'self' at face value and identifies it with the creature: the creature, for him, is 'self'—Satto ti pacceti. He does not see, however, that this identification is dependent upon his holding a belief in 'self', attavād'upādāna, and that this, too, is anicca sankhata paticcasamuppanna; for were he to see it, upādāna would vanish, and the deception would become clear—

('Just so, Māgandiya, if I were to set you forth the Teaching, 'This is that good health, this is that extinction', you might know good health, you might see extinction; with the arising of the eye, that in the five holding aggregates which is desire-&-lust would be eliminated for you; moreover it would occur to you, 'For a long time, indeed, have I been cheated and deceived and defrauded by this mind (or heart—citta): I was holding just matter, holding just feeling, holding just perception, holding just determinations, holding just consciousness'.') MN 75

With the vanishing of belief in 'self' the identification would cease. The ariyasāvaka, on the other hand, sees the creature as pañc'upādānakkhandhā; he sees that upādāna is dependent upon these pañc'upādānakkhandhā; and he sees that the puthujjana is a victim of upādāna and is making a mistaken identification. He sees that since the creature is pañc'upādānakkhandhā it cannot in any way be identified as 'self'; for if it could, 'self' would be impermanent, determined, dependently arisen; and the ariyasāvaka knows direct from his own experience, as the puthujjana does not, that perception of selfhood, of an inherent mastery over things, and perception of impermanence are incompatible. Thus nayidha sattūpalabbhati, 'there is, here, no "creature" to be found', means simply 'there is, in this pile of pure determinations, no creature to be found such as conceived by the puthujjana, as a "self"'. The Alagaddūpamasutta (Majjhima iii,2 <M.i,138>) has Attani ca bhikkhave attaniye ca saccato thetato anupalabbhamāne... ('Since both self, monks, and what belongs to self actually and in truth are not to be found...'), and the meaning is no different. The words saccato thetato, 'in truth, actually', mean 'in the (right) view of the ariyasāvaka, who sees paticcasamuppāda and its cessation'.[a]

5. The next two lines (5 & 6) contain the simile of the chariot. Just as the word 'chariot' is the name given to an assemblage of parts, so when the khandhā are present common usage speaks of a 'creature'. What is the purpose of this simile? In view of what has been said above the answer is not difficult. The assutavā puthujjana sees clearly enough that a chariot is an assemblage of parts: what he does not see is that the creature is an assemblage of khandhā (suddhasankhārapuñja), and this for the reason that he regards it as 'self'. For the puthujjana the creature exists as a 'self' exists, that is to say, as an extra-temporal monolithic whole ('self' could never be either a thing of parts or part of a thing).[b] The simile shows him his mistake by pointing out that a creature exists as a chariot exists, that is to say, as a temporal complex of parts. When he sees this he no longer regards the creature as 'self', and, with the giving up of sakkāyaditthi, he ceases to be a puthujjana.

6. The final two lines (7 & 8) may be discussed briefly. It is in the nature of the pañc'upādānakkhandhā to press for recognition, in one way or another, as 'self'; but the ariyasāvaka, with his perception of impermanence, can no longer heed their persistent solicitation; for a mastery over things (which is what selfhood would claim to be; cf. Majjhima iv,5 <M.i,231-2> & Khandha Samy. vi,7 <S.iii,66> [7])—a mastery over things that is seen to be undermined by impermanence is at once also seen to be no mastery at all, but a false security, for ever ending in betrayal. And this is dukkha. (See DHAMMA.) Thus, when attavād'upādāna has been removed, there supervenes the right view that it is only dukkha that arises and dukkha that ceases.

Paramattha sacca →

Completely innocent fathers are now routinely accused of pedophilia and other sex offenses, purely in order to eliminate them from their homes and confiscate their children

 Family inviolability was never absolute, but the basic principle governed what traditionalists themselves insist is the unique and foremost purpose of marriage and family: raising children. The private family creates a legal bond between parent and child that allows parents (within reasonable limits) to raise their children according to their own principles, free from government interference. “Whatever else it may accomplish, marriage acknowledges and secures the relation between a child and a particular set of parents,” writes Susan Shell. “The right to one’s own children . . . is perhaps the most basic individual right—so basic we hardly think of it.”95This right has long been recognized as fundamental by the Supreme Court and other federal courts, as well as by centuries of Common Law practice. Numerous decisions have reaffirmed that parenthood is an “essential” right, “far more precious than property rights,” that “undeniably warrants deference, and, absent a powerful countervailing interest, protection.”96 “The liberty interest and the integrity of the family encompass an interest in retaining custody of one’s children,” according to one decision.97 Parental rights have been characterized by the courts  as “sacred” and “inherent, natural right[s], for the protection of which . . . our government is formed.”98For this reason, the married family, and particularly parenthood, is the guarantor of freedom for the entire society—a conservative cliché whose basis is seldom explored thoroughly. It creates a zone of privacy that is off-limits to the state and creates an authority that is the only exception to the government’s monopoly on coercive force.

Parenthood after all is politically unique. It is the one relationship, other than the state, where some may legally exercise coercive authority over others, which is why governments often try to undermine it and why state officials—social workers, family court judges, divorce lawyers, forensic psychotherapists, public school administrators—seek to prohibit or curtail activities by which parents instruct, protect, and provide for their own children without dependence on the state. Without parental authority, government’s reach is total.99

This principle has become largely a fiction, and the cutting edge is divorce. Shell summarizes principles that, until recently, were so universal as to be unstated among free societies: “No known society treats the question of who may properly call a child his or her own as simply . . . a matter to be decided entirely politically.”

No known government, however brutal or tyrannical, has ever denied . . . the fundamental claim of parents to their children. . . . A government that distributed children randomly . . . could not be other than tyrannical. . . . A government that paid no regard to the claims of biological parenthood would be unacceptable to all but the most fanatical of egalitarian or communitarian zealots.100

As a statement of society’s moral consensus, Shell’s points are unexceptionable. Yet they also provide an unintended commentary on the ignorance that pervades today’s debates. For divorce law in the Western democracies has rendered these statements both prescient as principles and factually false. What she regards as a dystopian nightmare into which “no known government” has ever ventured has today become precisely the routine practice of governments throughout the Western democracies. It is having precisely the consequences she predicts.

Shell observes the obligatory gender neutrality, but her principles  concerning marriage pertain to one parent far more than the other. The reasons for this go to the heart of current controversies over marriage. They also pinpoint and explain the ineffectiveness and futility of conservative campaigns on marriage, and why their failure to understand and confront divorce is fatal to any pretense about saving marriage. Indeed, this explains why, when it comes to family decline, conservative armchair moralists are probably doing more harm than good.

For all their eloquence over the virtues and benefits of marriage, conservative advocates have singularly failed to elucidate why the institution exists.101 Their main argument, usually directed at advocates for same-sex marriage, is that the purpose of marriage is procreation.102 But millions of single mothers attest that procreation is perfectly possible without marriage. This fallacious platitude is easily refuted by the homosexualists, who point out that fruitlessness of many heterosexual marriages.

The purpose of marriage is not procreation but fatherhood: marriage allows children to have fathers.103 Marriage turns a man from a sperm donor into a parent and thus creates paternal authority, allowing a man to exercise the authority over children that otherwise would be exercised by the mother alone. Feminists understand this when they renounce marriage as an institution of “patriarchy” and promote single motherhood and divorce as positive goods for their own sake.104 Instead of recognizing this truth, conservative sentimentalists labor the cliché that marriage exists to civilize men and control their promiscuity.105 If so, that is part of a larger function: to protect the father-child bond and with it the intact family. This point, potentially the strongest in their  case, is overlooked by traditionalists who argue that marriage under-girds civilization. For it is the presence of the father that creates both the intact family and, by the same measure, the civil institution itself. Thomas Hobbes attributed to married fatherhood a central role in the process of moving from chaos to civilization. In nature, Hobbes argued, “the dominion is in the mother”: “For in the condition of mere nature, where there are no matrimonial laws, it cannot be known who is the father, unless it be declared by the mother. And therefore the right of dominion over the child dependeth on her will and is consequently hers.”106 Only in civilized society, where “matrimonial laws” do operate, is authority over children shared with the father. It fact, for all the ink spilled over delineating the proper role of the state in marriage, the role of tax incentives, and so forth, it is probably fair to say that the only truly essential role of the state in marriage (and this shows why it does have an essential role, pace some libertarian advocates for complete privatization) is to guarantee the rights and authority of the parents, and especially the father.

Our legal system has long insisted that marriage, not sperm, designates the father. The legal standard was Lord Mansfield’s Rule, stipulating that a child born within wedlock is presumed to be that of the husband, because it enabled a marriage to survive the wife’s adultery.107 (Earlier ages had perhaps a more balanced assessment of the female and male tendencies toward promiscuity.)

The role of marriage in creating paternity is also seen in its absence. Today, the weakening of marriage produces fatherless, not usually motherless, homes. (Motherlessness often follows, but fatherlessness begins the process.) As out-of-wedlock births explode, governments have developed elaborate bureaucratic substitutes for marriage in their efforts to “establish paternity” for purposes of collecting child support and (it is claimed, usually disingenuously) re-connecting fathers with their children.

This helps us understand why the divorce revolution is much more subversive of the social order than a matter of excessive individualism. Here as elsewhere, a provision rationalized in the name of greater freedom is in reality a highly authoritarian attack on an institution that provides for freedom, an attack that permits sexual ideologues and gov ernment functionaries to rationalize the most intrusive and repressive government machinery ever erected in the English-speaking democracies.

“No-fault” divorce was a deception from the start. What lawmakers and the public were told would permit divorce by mutual consent in fact allowed unilateral and involuntary divorce: divorce that was not only without the consent or over the objections of an innocent spouse, but that forced the innocent spouse to bear the burden of the costs and consequences. In retrospect, it was nothing less than the boldest social and legal experiment ever undertaken in the Western democracies: the end of marriage as a legally enforceable contract, or what Maggie Gallagher called the “abolition of marriage.”108 Today it is not possible to form a binding agreement to create a family. Regardless of the terms by which it is created, government officials can and will, at the sole request of one spouse, automatically dissolve a marriage over the objection of the other. Then follows the inescapable authoritarian logic that no one will acknowledge or confront: government functionaries will then assume total control over the entire household—including the children and all property—and distribute them as they choose, to whom they choose.

Under no-fault, the spouse that divorces without recognized grounds or breaks the marriage contract through adultery or desertion incurs no liability for the costs or consequences. “In all other areas of contract law those who break a contract are expected to compensate their partner or partners,” writes Robert Whelan, “but under a system of ‘no fault’ divorce, this essential element of contract law is abrogated.”109 As critics pointed out, no sound judicial system can possibly operate on such a principle, because it undermines the very principle of justice itself. “There is fault on both sides in every human relationship,” Fred Hanson acknowledged when the new divorce laws were drafted. “The faults, however, are far from equal. No secular society can be operated on the theory that all faults are equal.” Hanson was the dissenting member of the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws, which presented “no-fault” laws to the states. “To do justice between parties without regard to fault is an impossibility,” he warned. “I wonder what’s to become of the maxim that no man shall profit by his own wrong—or woman either, for that matter.”110 Today we have the answer  to that question: when courts stop dispensing justice, they start dispensing injustice.

Few stopped to consider the implications of laws that shifted the dissolution of private households from a voluntary to an involuntary process. Unilateral divorce inescapably involves government agents forcibly removing legally innocent people from their homes, seizing their property, and separating them from their children. It inherently denies not only the inviolability of marriage but the very existence of a private sphere of life.

The implications were not debated at the time and have never been debated in the decades it has taken for the logic to work itself out to its nightmare conclusions. The result gave government officials—armed with no evidence of any legal wrongdoing and nothing more than a piece of paper and a spouse with a private grievance—the power to summarily force legally innocent people out of their homes, seize all their property, assume permanent and absolute control over their children, permanently separate them from their children, and—if they fail or refuse to cooperate in any way—to incarcerate them indefinitely without charge or trial. Through literally “no fault” of their own, legally innocent citizens found themselves turned into outlaws in ways they were powerless to avoid. No-fault divorce allowed the modern state to achieve its most coveted ambition: to control the private lives of its citizens.

Divorce today is very unlikely to be a mutual decision. It is usually a power grab by one parent, assisted by lawyers, judges, and other officials. By extending the reach of the state over the children and the forcibly divorced parent, unilateral divorce has turned children into weapons of not only parental but governmental power.

“No-fault” divorce introduced radical new legal concepts—including, ironically, unproven guilt. “According to therapeutic precepts, the fault for marital breakup must be shared, even when one spouse unilaterally seeks a divorce,” observes Whitehead. “Many husbands and wives who did not seek or want divorce [and who had committed no legally recognized infraction] were stunned to learn . . . that they were equally ‘at fault’ in the dissolution of their marriages.”111 So the “fault” that was ostensibly thrown out the front door of divorce proceedings re-entered through the back, but with no precise definition. The judiciary expanded its traditional role of punishing crime or redressing tort to  punishing personal faults and private differences: suddenly, one could be summoned to court without having committed any legal infraction; the verdict was pre-determined without any evidence being examined; and one could be found culpable for things that were not illegal. “No other court process is so devoid of recourse for a defendant,” writes Judy Parejko. “When one spouse files for divorce, his/her spouse is automatically found ‘guilty’ of irreconcilable differences and is not allowed a defense.”112Though marriage ostensibly falls under civil law, the new logic quickly extended matters into the criminal realm. What Parejko calls the “automatic outcome” effectively became a presumption of guilt against the “defendant.” Yet the due process protections of criminal proceedings do not apply in family courts, where formal criminal charges seldom arise. So involuntary litigants can now be criminalized and incarcerated without any action on their part and in ways they are powerless to avoid. In some jurisdictions, the “defendant” in a divorce case is the only party in the courtroom without legal immunity.113No-fault divorce does much more than allow families to self-destruct. It permits the state in the person of a single judge to assume jurisdiction over the private lives of citizens who are minding their own business and turn otherwise lawful private behavior into punishable offenses. Previously, a citizen could be incarcerated only following conviction by a jury for willfully violating a specific statute, passed with citizen input and after deliberation by elected legislators, that applied equally to all. Suddenly, a citizen could be arrested and jailed without trial for failing to live in conformity with an order, formulated in a matter of minutes from limited information by an unelected judge, that applied to no one but himself, and whose provisions might well be beyond his ability to obey.114 In effect, a personalized criminal code is legislated ad hoc around each divorced spouse, subjecting him or her to arrest for doing what anyone else may lawfully do.

Unilateral divorce thus places the family in a legal-political status precisely the opposite of the original purpose of marriage. Far from preserving a private sphere of life immune from state intervention, involuntary divorce opens private lives to unprecedented state control.

The logic reached its conclusion in measures devised by the Ameri can Law Institute (ALI).115 This influential practitioners’ group announced—on what authority other than their own will it was unclear—that the scope of family law would be extended to encompass jurisdiction over non-marital private arrangements such as cohabiting couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, and indeed all private homes.

Marriage defenders protested, but again they misunderstood the full implications. As they now argue with respect to same-sex marriage, traditionalists charged that ALI was undermining marriage by blurring the distinction between traditional marriage and cohabitation.116

But ALI was doing much more than this. Family law practitioners were using the toehold they had established in married households through divorce law to extend state jurisdiction into every household entailing an “intimate relationship,” regardless of whether that household was created through marriage. Divorce operatives were declaring that no home was too private to be beyond the reach of official government scrutiny. With breathtaking irony, an “intimate relationship” (which officials reserved for themselves to define) became not a status which is off-limits to government supervision, but precisely the opposite, one that gives government an entrée to exert virtually unlimited power over personal life. The “abolition of marriage” led straight to the abolition of private life.

ALI then went on to demand recognition of co-parenting agreements giving parental rights to the same-sex partners of custodial mothers, despite objections by the fathers.

The feminist-driven divorce machinery thus intertwines the personal and the political as nothing before, and its personal dimension is what disguises the intrusiveness of its political power. Divorce injects state power—including the penal apparatus with its police and prisons—directly into private households and private lives. “The personal is political” is no longer a theoretical slogan but a codified reality institutionally enforced by new and correspondingly feminist tribunals: the “family” courts. Through these feminist-controlled pseudo-courts men are subjected to punishments, including wholesale expropriation and  summary incarceration, based entirely on the conduct of their private lives, without having to be charged with any actionable offense for which they could be tried in a criminal court.

Family courts are thus unquestionably the arm of the state that routinely reaches farthest into the private lives of individuals and families. The very concept of a “family” court—whose rulings are enforced by plainclothes officials who amount to family police—should alert us to danger. Roscoe Pound once observed that “the powers of the Star Chamber were a trifle in comparison with those of our . . . courts of domestic relations.”117 Family courts routinely separate children from parents who have done nothing legally wrong, ignore due process of law, and even silence political dissent. Unambiguous documentation proves that parents jailed without trial in divorce cases have been violently killed in prison.118Family courts usually operate behind closed doors and do not record their proceedings. Ostensibly this secrecy is to protect litigants’ privacy, though it has precisely the opposite effect: it provides a cloak to invade family privacy with impunity. Intimate personal information coerced from involuntary litigants is then made available to anyone, including the media, where it can be used to defame or blackmail anyone who is tempted to criticize the courts.

Courts are only the centerpiece of the divorce industry, a massive and largely hidden political underworld consisting of judges, lawyers, psychologists and psychiatrists, social workers, child protective services, child support enforcement agents, mediators, counselors, and feminist groups, plus an extensive host of economic interests, such as divorce planners, forensic accountants, real estate appraisers, and many others. These officials and professionals profess concern for the “best interest” of other people’s children.119 Yet their services are activated only with the dissolution of families, the removal of parents, and the seizure of children and property by the government. Whatever pieties they mouth therefore, the hard reality is that they have a concrete interest in facilitating family break-up and punishing anyone who stands in the way. Virtually all their power and earnings derive from the harm that divorce inflicts on children. “Fights over control of the children,” reports one divorce insider, “are where most of the billable hours in family court are  consumed.”120 Harsh as it sounds, it is undeniable that these officials are united by one overriding interest: having children separated from their parents. Without the power to remove children from their parents—and first and foremost their fathers—this industry cannot thrive, and these officials will have no business. And so it must declare that the parents are criminals and that the fathers have “abandoned” their children, even when this is plainly not true. The first principle of the divorce industry, the basic premise without which it has no reason to exist and without which its operatives derive no earnings or power, the first item of business and the first measure taken when a divorce is filed and before anything is discussed is: remove the father.

Divorce instantly destroys fatherhood and, by extension, parenthood. The moment one spouse files for divorce, even if it is literally for “no fault” of the other spouse, the innocent parent enters the penal system: to raise his children as he sees fit according to his own values—to even be with his children without government authorization—is henceforth a crime for which he can be arrested and incarcerated indefinitely without trial. And there will be no record of the incarceration.

Few enterprises have forged so intimate and elaborate a public-private symbiosis. More than four decades of unrestrained divorce has created a vast industry with a stake in maximizing it. David Schramm cautiously estimated that divorce cost the public $33.3 billion annually in 2003.121 As one divorce lawyer forthrightly reveals,

Speaking as a lawyer, I am unalterably opposed to any change in our divorce act. Our divorce act has greatly increased divorces, crime, bankruptcy, and juvenile caseloads. Any change in our no-fault system would be a financial disaster for the bar and for me personally, as these type of cases comprise a majority of my practice.122Divorce and custody are the cash cow of the judiciary, constituting some 35–50% of civil litigation,123 and also bring employment and  earnings to a host of executive and legislative officials, plus private hangers-on. Divorce litigation fuels well-known lines of political and judicial patronage.124 “The judge occupies a vital position . . . because of his control over lucrative patronage positions,” according to Herbert Jacob, where appointments “are generally passed out to the judge’s political cronies or to persons who can help his private practice.”125 Divorce also fills state and local government coffers with federal money for a host of divorce-related social problems. So entrenched has divorce become within our political economy and political culture that even perfunctory critics seem to have developed a vested interest in having something to criticize. Hardly anyone has an incentive to bring it under control.

To recognize the power of these interests is not to engage in conspiracy theories. It is to recognize that the family is not only an institution that is integral to our social order (as the conservative platitude has it); it is also one that can only function in this role if we protect it from calculations of political power. By politicizing the family and inviting the state to assume control over the household through involuntary divorce, feminists opened a Pandora’s Box of opportunities for numerous interests to weaken parents, grab power, exploit children, and plunder and criminalize fathers.

Dickens’ observation “the one great principle of the . . . law is to make business for itself” is strikingly validated. Nothing requires a judge to honor the divorcing parent’s initial request to forcibly separate the other parent from his children. A judge could rule that the father has committed no infraction that justifies being forcibly separated, even temporarily, that he has a recognized constitutional right not to be separated, and that neither the mother nor the court has any legal grounds to separate them. Such rulings never happen. Judges who refused to reward divorce would be rendering themselves redundant and denying earnings to a huge entourage of hangers-on, who have a strong say in the appointment and promotion of judges. So the judges have little choice but to channel litigants’ money to the lawyers and others by maximizing litigation. “Boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem, went the old saying,” observed Walter Bagehot; “‘It is the mark of a good judge to augment  the fees of his court’, his own income, and the income of his subordinates.”126Having seized control of his children, the judge then presides over a feeding frenzy in which everything the father has and earns is doled out to cronies and clients of the court: attorneys’ fees, fees for guardians ad litem, child support, various psychological and custody evaluations, therapists, counselors, and others who manage to get their noses in the trough. It is no exaggeration to say that the driving principle behind divorce and custody proceedings is to loot the father and the taxpayer.

One especially striking example is the practice whereby involuntary litigants are ordered, on pain of incarceration, to pay the fees of lawyers they have not hired. In a kind of judicial shakedown, judges regularly order involuntary litigants to pay the fees of attorneys, psychotherapists, and other court officials they have not hired and jail them for failing to comply.127 What are described as “reasonable attorney’s fees” are not determined by the market forces of supply and demand but are set with the backing of the penal apparatus, with the police and jails acting as the attorneys’ private collection agency. There is thus effectively no limit to what can be charged.128

Such official thievery has become so rampant that even the feminist New York Times has reported on how easily “the divorce court leads to a jail cell.”129 In short, citizens completely innocent of any legal wrongdoing and simply minding their own business are ordered into court and told to write checks to officials they have not hired or they will be summarily arrested and jailed. Judges also order citizens to sell their houses and other property and turn the proceeds over to lawyers and others they have not hired.

Having successfully asserted the power to remove children from legally innocent parents, the courts then preside over other violations of basic constitutional rights and civil liberties. The entire divorce regime is nothing less than a massive assault on every major principle of the English Common Law, the United States Constitution, and centuries of Anglo-American principles of freedom and limited government.130 The logical conclusion of the system is that fathers are routinely jailed, for as much as five years, for criticizing judges.131 To enforce these punishments, the divorce apparat has created extensive cadres of feminist police: child protective services, domestic violence operations, and child support enforcement agencies. These political police do not wear uniforms, target men almost exclusively, and operate largely free of due process protections.

The growth of this feminist gendarmerie did not follow but preceded—in other words, it itself generated—a series of hysterias against men and especially fathers so hideous and inflammatory that no one, left or right, dared question the accusations or defend those accused. To the abandonment hoax was added the nonpayment of “child support,” whereby fathers whose children had been confiscated by the divorce courts were required to pay for it through instant “obligations” they had done nothing to incur and that could well constitute 60–100% of their income and even more. Any arrears are quickly collected by predawn raids at gunpoint. Wild and patently fabricated accusations of wife-beating, child abuse, and pedophilia turned the father into a monster and a pariah with whom no one dared associate. This government-propagated hysteria rationalized its own funding and expansion. While American family law is ostensibly the province of state and local government, Congress began subsidizing family dissolution with a panoply of lucrative federal programs to replace fathers with functionaries by doing precisely what fathers themselves were already doing in their homes before being evicted from them by the divorce judges: protect and provide for their children. Legislators invariably approve these measures by near-unanimous majorities, with no debate and without listening to any dissenting viewpoints, out of fear of being accused of being soft on “batterers,” “pedophiles,” and “deadbeat dads.” In each case, no public demand or outcry preceded the new law-enforcement powers; they were enacted entirely under pressure from feminists and their allies. (Yet neither did they meet any challenge by “pro-family” advocates.) Each of these hysterias originated in welfare policy, each is propagated largely by feminist lawyers and feminist social workers who receive the resulting federal funding, and each expanded dramatically because of involuntary divorce and child custody.

The criminal aspects of these witch-hunts will be examined shortly. The point here is that each one has dramatically exacerbated and even created the very problem it claims to address. Child support is popularly understood to be a mechanism for forcing men to pay for the children they have sired and abandoned. Once the abandonment myth is exploded and single-motherhood is revealed as a feminist rebellion against “patriarchy,” child support can be seen for what it is: a windfall subsidy on single-parent homes that pays mothers to create more of  them by looting the father. Women are thus paid to have children without fathers or to divorce, ensuring precisely the explosion in fatherless children that we now see. Even more astoundingly, in the United States—the epicenter of these developments and the country where criminalization is most advanced—federal taxpayers pay into state government coffers according to the amount of child support the state collects. This gives state governments a financial incentive to create as many single-mother homes as possible. They accomplish this by first evicting fathers from their homes and then setting child support burdens at preposterously high levels, not only causing hardship for and criminalizing more fathers but increasing the incentive for more mothers to raise more children without them.132Trumped-up accusations of child abuse and domestic violence have a similar effect. The myth of the perverted and violent father provides a silver bullet for eliminating fathers who have been convicted of, tried for, and charged with, no crime whatever. It is also effective for cowing lawmakers and judges into submission to feminist demands and for ensuring that no trouble is caused by ostensibly “pro-family” conservatives and Christians, who likewise live in terror of being accused of defending “sex offenders.”133Completely innocent fathers are now routinely accused of pedophilia and other sex offenses, purely in order to eliminate them from their homes and confiscate their children. Yet it is firmly proven in the scientific literature that a miniscule number in fact ever perpetrate these crimes.134 Instead, through the lobbying of the same sexual radicals, the real pedophiles are becoming legal adoptive parents.

95. Susan Shell, “The Liberal Case Against Gay Marriage,” The Public Interest 156 (Summer 2004), 7.

96. May v. Anderson, 345 U.S. 528, 533 (1953); Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923); Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645 (1971). See Donald C. Hubin, “Parental Rights and Due Process,” Journal of Law and Family Studies, vol. 1, no. 2 (1999), 123 and passim.

97. Langton v. Maloney, 527 F. Supp. 538, D.C. Conn. (1981).

98. Quoted in Bruce C. Hafen, “Children’s Liberation and the New Egalitarianism: Some Reservations about Abandoning Youth to Their ‘Rights,’” Brigham Young University Law Review (1976), 615–16.

99. Mike Donnelly, “Religious Freedom in Education,” International Journal for Religious Freedom, vol. 4, no. 2 (2011).

100. Shell, “Liberal Case,” 5–6.

101. The best effort is Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson, “What Is Marriage?” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, vol. 34, no. 1 (Winter 2010), 245–87. Of course, all these arguments are directed against same-sex marriage.

102. The best formulation is Allan Carlson, “The End of Marriage,” Touchstone, September 2006.

103. Once this is recognized, it is clear that gender-neutral marriage is a contradiction in terms. Moreover, the homosexualists can have no answer, because even fruitless marriages can adopt, and the children will still have a father. Other benefits are rightly claimed for marriage by its advocates. But in the end, the central one is this, to establish fatherhood. Once this is understood, everything else about the current problems of marriage and the family falls into place. And once this is understood, same-sex marriage is revealed as not simply an absurdity, but an ideological attack on civilization’s most basic institution.

104. Jyl Josephson, “Citizenship, Same-Sex Marriage, and Feminist Critiques of Marriage,” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 3, no. 2 (June 2005), 275.

105. E. g., Leon R. Kass, “The End of Courtship,” The Public Interest 126 (Winter 1997).

106. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, part II, ch. 20 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), 254 (emphasis added).

107. Frederick Pollack and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law (2d edn., 1968), 398–99. For the feminist manipulation of this principle, see O’Leary, Gender Agenda, 32.

108. Gallagher, Abolition of Marriage.

109. Robert Whelan (ed.), Just a Piece of Paper? (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1995), introduction, 3.

110. Quoted in Judy Parejko, Stolen Vows: The Illusion of No-Fault Divorce and the Rise of the American Divorce Industry (Collierville, Tennessee: InstantPublisher, 2002), 52.

111. Whitehead, Divorce Culture, 70–71.

112. Judy Parejko, “No Fair Process in Divorce Laws,” Middletown Journal, 27 January 2004.

113. McLarnon v. Jokisch, 431 Mass. 343 (2000).

114. Hubin, “Parental Rights,” 136.

115. Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations (Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 2002). Josephson’s contention (“Citizenship,” 270) that the privacy of marriage is “not accorded to those who do not or may not marry,” while theoretically logical, is therefore diametrically wrong. Cohabiting couples have enjoyed privacy denied by divorce law to the married, which is precisely the freedom ALI seeks to curtail.

116. The Future of Family Law: Law and the Marriage Crisis in North America (New York: Institute for American Values, 2005).

117. David Heleniak, “The New Star Chamber,” Rutgers Law Review, vol. 57, no. 3 (Spring 2005), 1009.

118. Baskerville, Taken Into Custody, 157–58.

119. For critiques of “the best interest of the child,” see Baskerville, Taken Into Custody, ch. 1, and Schlafly, Who Killed, ch. 4.

120. Parejko, Stolen Vows, 99.

121. David G. Schramm, “Counting the Cost of Divorce: What Those Who Know Better Rarely Acknowledge,” The Family in America (Fall, 2009) http://familyinamerica.org/journals/fall-2009/counting-cost-divorce-what-those-who-know-better-rarely-acknowledge/#.WBSfnS0rL3h.

122. Quoted in Alex J. Harris, “Why Divorce is Missing from the Political Agenda in America: A Comprehensive Treatment of the Obstacles to Reform,” George Wyeth Review, vol. 4, no. 1 (Fall 2012), 34, and Mike McManus, How to Cut America’s Divorce Rate in Half (Potomac, MD: Marriage Savers, 2008), 38–39.

123. Helen Alvare, “Types and Styles of Family Proceedings,” Report of the United States to the XII World Congress, International Association of Procedural Law, 2003, 1, cautiously cites the lower figure.

124. Jerome R. Corsi, Judicial Politics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984), 107–14, and Richard Watson and Rondal Downing, The Politics of the Bench and the Bar (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1969), 98, 336.

125. Herbert Jacob, Justice in America: Courts, Lawyers, and the Judicial Process (4th edn., Boston and Toronto: Little Brown, 1984), 112.

126. The English Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 144.

127. Graves v. Graves, 4 Va. App. 326, 333, 357 S.E.2d 554, 558 (1987).

128. Baskerville, Taken Into Custody, ch. 1.

129. Paul Vitello, “When the Divorce Court Leads to a Jail Cell,” New York Times, 15 February 2007.

130. Baskerville, Taken Into Custody, ch. 2.

131. Ibid., and Schlafly, Who Killed, 116–17.

132. Baskerville, Taken Into Custody, ch. 3.

133. Ibid., ch. 4.

134. Leslie Margolin and John Craft, “Child Sexual Abuse by Caretakers,” Family Relations 38 (1989); Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, “Child Abuse and Other Risks of Not Living with Both Parents,” Journal of Ethnology and Sociobiology 6 (1985).

THE NEW POLITICS OF SEX

The Sexual Revolution, Civil Liberties, and the Growth of Governmental Power

by

Stephen Baskerville