First, congratulations to the influential blogger Rollo Tomassi on the release of his long awaited book. I have no doubt it was a lot of work.
I’ve already ordered 2 copies, one for myself and one as a gift. I’ve been a reader since day 1 of the blog so I’m not sure I’ll encounter too much new in the book, but I wanted to give my support with a purchase plus it will be a good reference. I’m old school and I like physical copies of books that I can highlight.
I’ve actually been a reader of Rollo for far longer than that. I got divorced a little under 10 years ago, and that experience with HER in particular and OUR history (and really my entire history with women both successes and failures) led me to a point where I knew there was something very big I was missing. I had begun to realize that much of the messages I received growing up and in young adulthood were lies as they were wholly inconsistent with my life experience. There was no way to square the circle.
So I went in search of answers….on the Internet. I couldn’t tell you exactly when and what website I first came across this Rollo Tomassi guy, but reading him it all began to make sense. The pieces of the puzzle of my life with respect to women began to come together. The “accidental successes” I had made sense once I knew what I had accidently did right. I’ve always been a theory guy…I need to know the foundational principles of something. Rollo was the first person on the Internet I read that I can recall explaining in great detail these foundational principles of intergender dynamics.
I’m sure this is the book I wish I had read at 13, or 14, or 15. I’ve lived the life I have…in a sense no regrets…because I am in a good place now, and I think my life experience got me to this point. That said, there is no reason for young men to have to learn by experience and mistakes when this knowledge is available. This is a book every young guy should read. I actually think it can be useful for young women as well as a tool to understand their programmed, subconscious motivations that they may not be fully or even partially aware of at a deliberate, introspective level. Posts like War Brides explain observed behavior that isn’t always pretty to look at with a spotlight.
Which leads me to my final point. There is something called the is-ought distinction. People often conflate the two, and mistakenly assume that someone who is analyzing and describing how something IS is advocating how it OUGHT to be.
” However, Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between descriptive statements (about what is) and prescriptive or normative statements (about what ought to be), and it is not obvious how one can get from making descriptive statements to prescriptive.”
In my opinion, 99% of what Rollo does at Rational Male is explain WHAT IS and WHY. The most hostile critics will make the leap to OUGHT because what IS disturbs them so much viscerally.
Again, congrats to Rollo. Time will tell, but I suspect things are about to get interesting. Now go order the book if you haven’t already.
Awesome, and, finally.
eBook version ASAP please.
Shipping to ye olde worlde takes too long. And anyway, what is this old-fangled paper ye speake of?
He seems to have a very good understanding of female psychology. But I do have some “complaints”: his style is too theoretical to the masses. I mean, “solipsism” in itself is an academical term which few people out there will be able to understand. He doesn’t explain, for instance, how “solipsism” has something to do with some women preferring to return to an abusive boyfriend. I think that “megalomania” is a more didactical than “solipsism” because it accounts also for the cultural influence of feminism. He still seems to justify all of women’s behavior in an unconscious remote past. Can men count with the same argument, to justify their behavior, in all circumstances? That said, a new good addition to the blogroll expanding the knowledge of truths that even though not universal or necessarily dogmatic, we are conditioned to not like them just because it ought not be like this.
I like the fact that it’s reasonably priced so that virtually anyone that wants it can afford it.
It’s $9.49 on Amazon for the paperback and $6.99 for the Kindle version. The Kindle version will be especially good for overseas people to avoid large shipping fees.
That was the plan actually.
As an overseas customer, I thank you.
@Morpheus, Rollo:
I want to thank you for putting up this post about the release of Rollo’s book; like Han, I too really am psyched about the very affordable price point Rollo’s put on the book in both versions; it’s long been my view that Red Pill knowledge about these things should be readily available to any Man who wants it, and again, I tip my Kangol to Rollo on it.
Looking very much toward us doing up a “JFO” on the book after we’ve all had a chance to read it!
Best of luck to you on the success of the book, Rollo – may it spend years on the NYT bestseller list…
O.
The is/ought distinction actually originates with Machiavelli. See Prince 15.
I think in the end it is untenable for various reasons.
The is/ought distinction actually originates with Machiavelli. See Prince 15.
I think in the end it is untenable for various reasons.
Escoffier, can you expand on that last part. Maybe I am misunderstanding the distinction.
Perhaps more generically, what I was trying to point towards is the difference between descriptive analysis and prescriptive recommendations.
Thanks for the comment.
.
Is/Ought is usually a manipulative technique. If you describe something, or predict something as a result of an action, others will accuse you of wishing it or supporting it.
Suggesting prudence for women is characterized as rape apologist.
Pointing out that low intelligence people don’t do as well as the better equipped is said to be promoting social Darwinism.
It’s like an accusation of racism; meant to derail the discussion which the other side is losing. Or, perhaps, the other side is so psyched about something or other that practically anything can set them off.
As James Taranto said, if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.
But the accusation comes back against the speaker.
Sure, or, I will try.
It’s really a long treatise, but, as short as I can make it …
The original conception of political/moral life is normative. Tribal man thinks of things as good-bad, right-wrong, etc. He has no conception of nature or the transcendent, and perhaps some conception of the divine. Mostly things are good or bad or right or wrong for the tribe, for “our way.” This is not thought through deeply but it is natural to man, that is, once man is conceived of as a thinking being, the being with deliberative speech. (This is basically a condensed statement from Aristotle’s Politics.)
Now at a certain point certain men discover “nature.” Nature is the given, outside of what men can direct and control. It is the environment, rules and background we did not cause and cannot change. Certain particularly contemplative men, perhaps travelers, notice the wide variety of “nomoi” (conventions or laws) among the various cities and tribes, each of which think they know and act according to the right way. But in many respects the various nomoi contradict. They can’t all be right and every tribe’s claim to have the right way can’t be simultaneously true.
Now, there are two fundamental ways out of this dilemma (a third emerges much later with modernity, which is tied to Hume’s view). The first is to concluded that all nomoi are false: nature has nothing to say about the political or moral law. Men make things up because rules are necessary for society. But those rules have no grounding in anything but men’s will. Men lie to themselves, delude themselves, into sanctifying their nomoi or else no one would follow them. Besides, there appears to be a religious impulse that is natural to man as man: he is always going to believe in something, some conception of the transcendent or divine.
The second response is to conclude that it’s imperative to investigate nature and see what, if anything, it has to say about nomoi. Perhaps the basis of political life’s starting point—that there is good and bad, right and wrong—is correct based on a proper understanding of the nature of man. It’s just that men being flawed, the get a lot of the specifics wrong. But if we look into it maybe we can get it right or at least make progress in that direction.
The second response is the foundational basis for Socratic philosophy and really all Western philosophy until Machiavelli. (I would say these concepts are in Eastern philosophy as well though I know that tradition much less well.)
So, the “twin towers” if you will of the Western tradition—philosophy and the Bible—both take an unabashedly normative approach to man. The “ought” is no less a fact, no less grounded in nature, than the “is.”
Now, this is not to say that the ancient philosophers did not recognize the frequent gab between man’s aspirations and ideals on the one hand and his actual behavior on the other. Of course they did. The ancient texts are full of this (as is the Bible). Indeed, there is no true insight of the “red pill” that I have found that was not perfectly well known to the classical philosophers (or to Machiavelli). See, e.g., this close analysis I did of a passage from Xenophon:
http://veritaslounge.com/2013/06/08/xenophons-wisdom/
What explains man’s falling short of the ought is sin (the Bible) or the passions and appetites (philosophy). Men are perhaps not perfectible but they can be made good through character education backed up by good laws and the right kind of incentives. “The ought” is therefore both true simply—it exists as part of nature, as core to the nature of man—it is also a useful ideal. It is the standard to which we should hold ourselves and to which we should look to craft the right laws and formulate morality.
Modernity though flips this and says “No more making the ought the standard. The ought is false. More than that, it’s harmful.” Machiavelli speaks of the “effectual truth” and says that we need to pay attention to how men do live and not to how they ought to live (Prince 15). He means to make the “is” the standard.
Even then, Machiavelli’s prescriptions are still normative, just at a lower level than classical philosophy. But once the idea of a naturally grounded, genuinely metaphysically TRUE ought is discarded, it is (philosophically) all downhill. From there you go to the state of nature, to “rights,” to contract theory, to the noble savage, to “history” and finally to nihilism. No more virtue, no more duties, no more formal or final causes.
In other words, it really depends on what is meant by the “is/ought” distinction. Do we mean simply the gap that sometimes (often) opens up between aspiration and action, between the ideal and actual? Or do we mean that only the “is” truly is, is truly a fact. The “ought” is always a value, not grounded in anything beyond preference or will.
Modern philosophy culminates in concluding the latter, which has become the un-thought background assumption of our time.
I have written more about it elsewhere:
http://veritaslounge.com/2013/02/12/guest-post-escoffier-on-the-problem-of-modernity/
http://veritaslounge.com/2013/09/10/athens-and-jerusalem-in-dialogue-i-laffaire-king/
And here, but only in the comments, the first post is not mine:
http://veritaslounge.com/2013/09/18/athens-and-jerusalem-in-dialogue-ii-the-reformation-and-its-wake/
I have another one ready to go that Nova has not posted yet.
Thanks Escoffier….your comment got caught in the filter originally probably because of the number of links.
If you describe something, or predict something as a result of an action, others will accuse you of wishing it or supporting it.
Suggesting prudence for women is characterized as rape apologist.
Pointing out that low intelligence people don’t do as well as the better equipped is said to be promoting social Darwinism.
It’s like an accusation of racism; meant to derail the discussion which the other side is losing.
Yes, I’ve observed this myself quite often. Perhaps some/many/most? people instinctually make this association. The expression “don’t shoot the messenger” must have originated for some concrete reason. The messenger brings bad news THEREFORE he is bad.