The collapse of western civilization™ continues apace, and the handwringing intensifies. As MRAs (or MGTOWs or PUAs) we are neither surprised, nor particularly motivated to preserve the status quo. Most of society, however, is scared and confused. Which I suppose is hardly surprising considering the cracks are appearing from all angles. The problem is, to see the cause of the rot, one must take the Red Pill. And most people think the Red Pill tastes horrible.

For decades now, the sweet, sweet nectar that is the Blue Pill has been in abundant supply. We have accepted as a society, on faith, that ‘women never lie about rape’, that ‘domestic violence is overwhelmingly male on female’, that ‘discrimination has kept women down’, and even that women aren’t as sexual as men. The Blue Pill makes us feel powerful as men, and benevolent, as we bestow all these benefits and goodies on women, who surely deserve them as reparations for all the evil things other men have done to them (metaphorically speaking, of course).

We may not get the girl, but we’re demonstrably made of stronger, purer moral fibre by providing and protecting…are we not? It is, after all, what we were designed to do by nature, and what we are expected to do by society. And we sometimes get a pat on the head when we do it.

Of course, we have to accept certain punishments as well, to show contrition and that we really mean it when we abase ourselves, and present the freshest offering. We must accept that men are simple creatures, easily controlled via our sexuality. We must accept that female approval is the only measure for a man, and that it is best if women define masculinity for us since we got it so wrong for such a long time. We must allow women to pass us in every social sphere, that achieving success is every woman’s right, and that too many men is a reasonable phrase.

I could go on, however I believe we are all familiar with the litany. The point to take away is that the list of ‘reparations’ is ever-growing, ever more extreme. Some among the PUA crowd suggest this is a society-wide shit test. A suggestion that has a lot of merit, I might add.

The effect this increase in demands (along with a sharp decrease in the rewards for meeting said demands) has had on society is profound. This is not to say that direct legal / socioeconomic pressures alluded to here are the ONLY cause of The Collapse of Western Civilization(tm). Not at all. In some cases, they are merely the vector.

Let’s look at some of the issues facing North America today. The failing education system, coupled with a welfare state that discourages self-improvement (in accordance with ‘no child left behind, or let ahead’) is but one of the mechanisms used to create today’s mediocracy. Concern and fairness was cynically twisted to ultimately pick which group should succeed, and policy (if not Law) was adjusted to obtain those goals. Rather than treating all the students equally, and allowing natural ability to hold sway, educators pre-determined which children would succeed, based on their demographic group.

Those not in the preferred demographic group quickly learn to shut their mouths, and try and hold on as long as they can. This, over time, has led to an educational imbalance between the sexes. And this imbalance has led to, and will increasingly lead to, an Economic imbalance between the sexes. This has already begun to happen, and frankly the only thing making the imbalance less than glaringly obvious is the inclusion of the incomes of the Baby Boomers. Once they drop off the statistics, the true nature of this problem will be undeniable, and Government will no longer be able to hide the injustice. If only their White Guilt could drop off the RADAR as easily…

Currently, these issues are causing concern among the Intelligentsia. Such notables as Bill Bennett, Kay Hymowitz, and more have noticed that young women are having trouble finding suitable mates. And they are deeply troubled that men aren’t rising to the challenge, and throwing themselves into becoming the man some woman might want to marry. And, as usual, they believe that whipping out the old Shame stick is going to continue to force men into the required role.

But the problems go a bit deeper than that, since the refusal to marry is a logically sound choice. There’s quite a good case to be made that the level of risk, and the magnitude of the consequences for failure so great and long lasting, that marriage is a foolhardy choice, no matter your threshold. The potential rewards are irrelevant, since literally nothing is worth that amount of risk, in the eyes of a growing number of men.

Another of the main social ills we face is a result of these pressures, primarily through the vector of single motherhood. There is a reason why society frowns on this concept, and nearly every culture over all time has done so as well. Single mothers depend on charity to survive, and too many of them will bleed the society dry. The problem is, how do you deal with the problem once it’s begun? No one wants to see massive swaths of child poverty, and children in rags with swollen bellies on Madison Avenue. Someone has to take care of Mom and her kids…right?

This is where the heavy hand of the law and the heavy hand of social roles get together and shake. Multiple causes of destruction of society stem from this area, nearly all of them a product of overblown Paternalism. The tendency to view sexual competitors in a less than flattering light combines with a social, and biological, compulsion to protect the female at all costs, and her children as well if possible. This is Camelot, and the place is crawling with White Knights more than happy to remove the rights, and posessions, and even children of men in obeyance of the edicts of an ideology they haven’t even begun to grasp.

They rely on “experts'” for that sort of thing. Maybe a discussion panel on the evening news, or a blurb on page five. People to tell us why these tyrranical behaviours are needed, and just. To provide the sound bytes that encapsulate the meme (1 in 4!) that can then be used by the commoner to shut down anyone who questions them. So that the Beat may indeed Go On.

And it’s largely worked while men lost their careers to trumped up harrassment charges, and went to prison because rape means a lot of things these days, most of which aren’t illegal unless she feels they should be. The constant men are evil drumbeat from the domestic violence industry has made it all too easy to believe that men are all rapists underneath as well, and where there’s smoke, there’s fire after all.

We are then told it’s better to err on the side of caution, as if the imprisonment of an innocent man is somehow of less concern than that a woman might not be automatically believed.

Is that Blue Pill losing some of it’s sweet, sweet flavour? A lot of men in society are starting to answer yes to that question. They may not have found the Red Pill yet, but they know they’re not big on the Blue Pill anymore.

So a lot of guys have started to withdraw from society. They’ve given up on an education system that obviously has no interest in serving their educational needs – and no, they don’t want to ‘deal with it’, they want value for their money thank you very much. Like Marriage, Education is turning into a losing proposition where the cost far outweighs any possible benefit. Both in the teaching, and in the learning, women have begun to dominate, and thus their concerns have taken precedence over mens. And now college age men need to worry about being accused of sexual assault, since they can lose their career with the flimsiest of evidentiary standards used to determine their future. At least the presumption of innocence hasn’t been reversed…yet. And the majority of students (ie, women) are more than happy to see Civil Rights trampled. As long as the right people are trampled, and for the right reasons.

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s in Society’s best interest to grow, at least slightly, in population over time – at least in general. And an unintended side-effect of giving women so much power with Unilateral Divorce was a precipitous drop in the Marriage Rate (which continues to this day, by the way), so when Dan Quayle objected to the Murphy Brown storyline, he was (to the chagrin of many) dead right.

A lot of women opted to ‘go it alone’, either via Divorce, or the increasingly popular Single Mother by Choice ‘movement’. As of the time of this writing, 42% of all children in the US are born to unmarried mothers. In some demographics, that figure is as high as 70%.

And someone has to pay for their upbringing. Being a Mother is the Hardest Job in the World(tm) after all, so it’s hardly fair to expect a woman to be a Mother AND feed and clothe her kids herself. It’s not the child’s fault if Mom got pregnant via an anonymous one-night stand, and since someone has to pay, the Law says it should be the ‘father’ – or anyone willing to take on the role, willingly or not – that pays. No excuses, no mercy.

Except that same Law also denies these same men the right to decide if they want to become a father at all, even while holding them responsible for any children born against their will. There is literally nothing he can do if a woman decides he would make a good ATM…er ‘father’…for her. Oh, and her kids.

The only way for a man to protect himself from this happening with any degree of certainty is to avoid women altogether. Or get a vasectomy and never get too close. This social pressure has pushed men away from women in anything but the most facile of relationships, reducing the value of relationships to mere sexual transactions…a bit of release and some bodily fluids exchanged, then back to the daily…

The resulting lack of intimacy has spurred a feeling of ‘being used’ in a lot of women. Which is fair enough, since it’s largely true – although I would maintain this is precisely because women have steadily allowed themselves to be reduced to having no value in any other area of life. Indeed, they have been tricked into becoming a danger to men…something best avoided.

Women have allowed themselves to be worth not much more to the average man than a zipless fuck. And a lot more dangerous than the average wolverine.

Wow, now that’s Progress. Feeling empowered ladies? Men now have to be enslaved by the State to do the things they used to willingly, and gladly, do for their families. And every encounter with you carries the risk of Prison in a he said/she said courtroom.

So men withdraw further.

As intended so long ago.

So, now we have a society with a large portion of it’s males in Prison (more than the USSR in it’s heyday), the ones that remain in society are highly undereducated and lacking in prospects for employment. In many western societies, upwards of 20% of the young men are considered unemployable, as in not likely to ever hold a job. 1 in 5. How’s that for a scary sound byte?

We have failing relationships, a crumbling Marriage Rate, social instability from rampant single motherhood and fatherless children, incarceration further limiting the prospects of an ever greater segment of society, and whole generations of men who see literally no benefit to being a member of the society they live in…just a lot of bills to pay for everyone else’s stuff.

None of the things I talked about here are denied, and in fact many of them occupy the intelligentsia quite a bit. They are very real problems, and they ‘concern’ a lot of people. And by ‘concern’, I mean not at all. Because they all, every last one of them, fail to ask the one question they would ask immediately if these issues were facing women:

“What are we doing, as a society, to cause this?”

I suppose that’s because the answer would make them confront some beliefs they don’t want to confront. The urge to ‘justify’ it all, based on an illogical ‘Theory’ based on falsehoods and prejudice, may prove too great to deny. But until they do, these problems will continue to get worse. And, I suspect, that too is intentional.