Outside of the West the notion of romantic love was something foreign. Before the adoption and/or exportation of romantic, chivalric love into other societies -- arranged marriages, or marriages selected by one or both partners based on mutual utility and benefit to the community were the norm. Love and marriage were not seen as synonymous things, they were most often separate.
Marriage, sex and love most often did not go together. No more than they go together now, or have ever.
Sex within unions was for the purpose of procreation, and sex for enjoyment as well as love commonly existed outside unions. Marriage was a working, familial or tribal relationship; a business-like social contract. It was not seen as something to emotionally or sexually fulfill the individuals involved, but as an obligation and duty to secure and/or progress society - also in the case of men, a way to secure a legacy by the only legitimate way to create linage.
This idea of marriage and love being intertwined had been foreign to the West as well prior to Medieval times during which the 'ideal' of chivalry began to be promoted -enforced, even- intitally by the Church as a means of social control directed at Knights. It later extended its sphere of social conditioning to the masses as the common man grew in power, all culminating in the Romance period and coinciding with industrialization.
The fact that the Romance period of Europe and rise of industrialization coincide is not simple coincidence. The lies of marital bliss and emotional, personal as well as interpersonal completion inherent in matrimony, women being mans 'natural partner' as well as the 'angelic nature' of femininity fed to men helped fuel the economic engine needed to power and spread industrialization in its early days. In truth, unions between man and women were and always had been a job, of which, men were once keenly aware as they were advised such.
The powers needed people consuming and reproducing: Men spending massive amounts of wealth on women and their families, women spending massive amounts of mens wealth (most often on themselves), and last but not least they needed more humans than ever before as laborers, which would in turn also further expand human consumption.
Thus we had a population explosion, a new middle (worker/consumer) class, the exploration, colonization and exploitation of the world to feed this hungry machine designed to exploit the nature of both men and women, as well as their natural, yet divergent desires which they sought from one another.
It was a system which appealed to the worst in both men and women, our basest, most narcasstic and primitive biological imparitives. Its fairy-tale promises appealed to our infantile, base desires which we were once expected to be discarded, and in many cases needed to dispensed -or at least reigned in- for the safety and security of society, since when life was a great deal harsher neither people nor their societies could afford people well past childhood running around with childhood fantasies and delusions. Man or woman, you either got -entirely- real or you died.
In this new order, those once dangerous --and childish-- aspects of man and woman once held in check were feeding right into the system tailored to them. It was quite productive; however, a system reliant on an unhealthy form of production appealing to base human desires will create a society based, rooted and principled in those very same malignant ideals.
Today's modern societies are a reflection of those tools which were used to create it. In short, in these early days they needed capital, human capital being the most essential. In our post-industrial age this lead to its inevitable conclusion. We have this old model designed for expanding industrialization to thank for our current human existence: Work, provide, consume, reproduce, die. For men, there's the occasional 'fight, die' thrown in.
It has lead to our current situation, and this was the basic intent all along, it worked brilliantly and did exactly what it was intended to do. Now, in the post-industrial landscape society is consuming itself. With women being both deliberately angled as well as naturally inclined towards primary consumption (gatherers), society is being consumed by this aspect of female nature run rampant, a nature which men were conditioned to encourage as well as support long ago. Now, with the surplus having dried up - society is consuming itself.
Allow me to use Japan as a model with which to further illustrate the destructive nature of this system, as it was the first and most successful non-western country to adopt this system:
In Japan, the Meiji reformation (1868-1912) urged industrialization in order to protect Japan from being colonized by Western nations. Throughout most of Japans industrialization, unlike in the west, the divorce rate actually decreased even despite an increasing number of working women.
The reason for this was due to the changing ideas and ideals of Japanese society. Divorce was initiated by the old idea of "mutual consent" which the wife seldom refused; attitudes toward divorce among the people, especially women, contributed to a decline in divorce rates throughout the industrialization period.
Japan was spared the typical pattern of rising divorce during industrialization due to deliberate political decisions and legal acts, based on the ideology of the Meiji reformers. New legal codes imposed the family patterns of the samurai on all Japanese. Japanese leaders were well aware of the threat of industrialization as they went abroad to assimilate the entrepreneurial culture and technology which the Western nations possessed.
Prior to the reformation of marriage and divorce in rural regions --like any pre-modern society-- the situation looked precisely as it did in the West before the state began to control marriage unions during the industralization process. Japan, as in Western nations, had rural-agrarian customs that predominated and divorce was uncommon. In rural farm villages, polygamy and sexual liaisons were the norm and monogamy or a marriage system itself was seldom practiced.
Essentially, prior to the start of modernity male-female 'unions' in the West as surely as in Japan looked practically indentical to what many in the MRM (especially MGTOW) propose as the ideal.
The Japanese government did not intend to accept the Western ideology of industrialization as they knew the dangers it would pose to their society. They simply wanted only to learn and apply what was necessary to be on-par insofar as industrailization without the modernity that followed in the western model. This is called “Wakon-Yosai”, which means Japanese spirit combined with Western learning.
In short, Japan saw how Western society had been consumed and did not want theirs to suffer the same fate, so with great, stubborn intent they remainied a medieval society but with industrial infrastructure. Their society remained frozen at the stage prior to undergoing the catalyst that sowed the seeds of what would become the fruit we all now enjoy as modernity.
Fast forward...
In and around 1970-1980, with Japans industrial power reaching levels which rivaled the 1900s (their industrial revolution), the Japanese economic explosion soon occurred.
At such an advanced stage of industrial power and this time without a great war to cause women to seek shelter behind men (by way of the state since the rest were busy dying), the sustainability of “Wakon-Yosai”' or 'Japanese spirit' with 'Western learning' began to diminish in many ways. But the ways I am referring to are those which checked womens hypergamous instinct. The spirit of the samurai wife and mother with its sense of loyalty to family and communal duty began to give way to the spirit of modernity.
In the subsequent economic collapse of the 1990s the divorce rate sharply increased to record highs. This is not at all surprising: during the economic boom Japan became more individualistic than it had ever been, one of the results was freeing women from most of their social mores and expectations whereas mens in comparison remained firmly in-place.
When the collapse occurred and Japan suddenly had what women would have seen as broke men, and with their new found individuality and absence of "Wakon-Yosai" these women, naturally, were not interested in such men. These very men who went broke for the very benefit of said women, their children, and the society which nutured and protected them were now derided and discarded.
Many wives left their now struggling husbands and took their children with them as well as avoiding struggling men which was perfectly acceptable as the ideals and expectations of men, unlike theirs, remained. Indeed, a far cry from the honor and dedication possessed by the wives of samurai, no?
Additionally, women in Japan as in nearly every industrialized nation of time were cushioned from hard economic times and joblessness as they were disproportionately represented in the drone-model jobs which paid well enough but produced little. Why would these women want a man dragging them and/or their children down, after all?
Also, why chance spending money on men when they could spend it on themselves? Is it not convieniant how well this works for the system? It ensured that it remains fed. If women put too much money into their families or communities during such times, the system would starve. Horray for industrail-styled individualism?
Getting back on track:
These drone-model jobs reserved as the role for women did, however, keep the engine running as was the intention. They were unimportant insofar as production, yet in a way were more valuable to the system than mens jobs -on a base level- as they prevented the total collapse of the system.
Men not only naturally prefered to avoid these jobs due to favoring grander ambitions, but also this was also exactly what was expected of them under duress of overbearing social pressure. Womens new place in their industrial society had become that of maintaining the most basic functioning of industry, while men empowered and fed the industry. Sounds familiar, yes?
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