The Grapes of Tantalus: Revolt, Delusion and Sexual Anomie

King Tantalus...

In Greek mythology, King Tantalus was tortured for his cruel deeds by a terrible punishment in Hades. A lake of wine surrounded him, while a vine of grapes hung just above his head. Every time he stooped to drink the wine, it ran from him. Every time he reached up to eat the grapes, they swung tantalizingly out of his reach. And so he was doomed to suffer terrible hunger and thirst, for all eternity. As we shall see, this tale reflects the lives of most Anglo-American males. Unlike Tantalus, however, their punishment is no fault of their own.

  

From birth to puberty, most Anglo-American men tend to ‘swallow’ the myths of childhood. That is, they grow up believing that the world is a ‘fair’ place; that adults ‘knows best’; and that organized religion – in its various forms – approximates truth.

At puberty, various physical/hormonal/psychological changes kick in. For most males, these shatter the old pre-pubescent world-view. As Professor Richard Lynn observes, the sudden spurt in IQ at this time leaves most self-aware young people either atheist or agnostic. The ‘class-blindness’ of childhood gives way to an awareness of socio-economic distinctions – and the piercing revelation that life is NOT fair. It is no surprise that the disenfranchised typically ‘switch-off’ education at this time, clearly perceiving the vast socio-cultural obstacles they face in pursuit of upward mobility. For adolescent males, the emergence of a sex-drive replaces childhood pursuits with deep, carnal yearnings.

In sum, the self-aware youth has his world-view completely restructured in the space of a few years. This transformation typically occurs without any meaningful guidance from any quarter save the mass media. Indeed, ‘mainstream’ Western society continues to peddle pre-pubescent themes to young people long after adolescence – with ever-diminishing returns. Perhaps this is yet another expression of the Anglosphere’s latent Puritanism and fear of adult sexuality? But I digress...

The Fruits of Adulthood...?

The media, of course, has always been quick to exploit the changes associated with adolescence. The West’s ‘youth culture’ is really a ‘post-pubescent youth culture’, after all. Video games, popular music and films all bombard the young with images of a sexualized, liberated ‘adult’ world that waits beyond the pre-pubescent confines of school and the parental home. Rap and rock music videos, for instance, invariably parade hordes of nubile, scantily-clad women as ‘available’ appendages to 'adult life'. These images raise the adolescent male’s expectations of adult sexuality to priapic dimensions. In good faith, he truly thinks that armies of sexualized women await him in the adult world, eager to be plucked like fruit from a tree…

Women, women everywhere...

Well, they do if he is a swaggering plutocrat or sadistic thug, or blessed with outstanding good looks. For the vast majority of males, of course, they don’t. And so many young men suddenly find themselves as confused and challenged by adult life as they were by adolescence. In childhood, they were told a pack of convenient lies that they discarded at puberty. They then find that the ‘adult’ world-view they adopted in adolescence was a pack of lies, too. Like Tantalus, their wine and grapes have been snatched away - again.

And this is the root of the ‘male crisis’ that stalks the modern western world: a breakdown of certainty, a failure of trust. Having been deceived twice in rapid succession by the social order, Anglo-American men are increasingly distrustful of all received wisdom and advice. Hence, the explosion of the online manosphere...

Indeed, it must be admitted that much ‘manosphere’ activity represents an attempt to manage the disappointment and alienation of Anglo-American men. On the one hand, the PUA gurus offer Incel men ‘restorative justice’ – a way to realize the ‘adult’ dream of effortless sex that haunted their adolescence. On the other, the MGTOW crowd present a more radical alternative: complete rejection of a deceitful social system. Last but not least, the conservative MRAs promise retribution against women and a social order that allows them to indulge in selective hypergamy. However, at base, all these responses are designed to redress the justified sense of betrayal that currently besets all but a small minority of Anglo-American males.

Tantalus: Forever Cheated...