#esp considering the state of science and politics and social media

[yuwuta]

What is enmeshment?? Plss I don't have tiktok

Also, what the anon said about loving your opinions i agree!! I'm always nodding my head in agreement too. I wad about to send an ask just saying wow I wish I was well articulated like you :')

How can I be só eloquent help

first omfg thank you? i don’t know if i would say i’m well articulated, i often feel like my words and thoughts are mushy and repetitive so i don’t have any real advice other than to do what i do: hate passionately and ramble to who will listen 😭 it serves a cathartic purpose, but over time, you’ll also be able to pinpoint why you feel the need to say what you’re saying, and how to get people to understand you

in short, enmeshment is the concept where a family has no personal or emotional boundaries, and often the emotions of one person (usually a parent/caregiver) overwhelms the emotional and autonomous development/expression of the others. colloquially, you might see it as people who talk about “emotionally incestuous” caregivers or nightmare MILs. on tiktok, a woman shared her experience with her relationship and marriage, and how it ultimately ended because she believed her husband’s family was enmeshed and their involvement/intervening into their personal lives/marriage ultimately pushed them to get divorced

it’s a real thing that happens, but people have been taking that one woman’s story and chiming in about their experiences with their in-laws who might not be so pleasant, and blanketing it as enmeshment, too; but—and i don’t mean to sound like i’m invalidating other people’s experiences—more often that not, what people are describing is either a general lack of boundaries (NOT developmentally enmeshed) from the in-laws, the general inability of the storyteller to set boundaries and/or permanent external locus of control, or just plain bigotry from the in-laws. the latter two points are really what’s annoying me because way too often people hear about a term or an experience, and apply it to themselves and share with/influence others on social media without fully understanding the label they’re applying, or just misuing it all together. your bigoted in-laws aren’t hard to deal with because your husband’s family is enmeshed; it’s because they’re bigots 😭 application of psychotherapeutic concepts isn’t going to erase that 

[captainserval]

Sunset of the Great Ape

Looking back at history how did humans live some 2000 or 5000 years ago?

They lived in joint families of closely or loosely related by blood as the inner core. A few such cores formed a village or kabila. The men did all the outside work - farming, hunting, blacksmithy, pottery, protection; the women did all the inside work - child rearing, keeping the house, cooking, washing, building social networks, collectively looking after a pool of infants and kids. 

People rarely moved 100 miles outside of their birthplace in their lives unless forced by famine or war.

Life expectancy was around 50 years probably, but there was always a pipeline of younger boys and girls growing up to take the slack as adults aged out and died after brief illnesses. Men had total control over womens activities and bodies, but the collective pool of women including grandmas did give her a place to shelter and seek support if the husband treated her badly. These grandmas who were the mothers of these men exerted some influence on the clan as leaders and social bridges.

The next phase was development of technology which made all the tough physical outside work a bit easier from around1500AD onwards and more and more wars and migrations, which meant a lot of men died or were away for years but someone still had to cover the outside work.

Technology like machines for production and agriculture (stuff like power looms, power tools) meant more and more women could come out and work if there was a need (like in WW2 a lot of american women joined work in factories), or if  if the husband abandoned her or died.

The gender roles became a bit diffuse and much became part of a set of common tasks that anyone could do like running a printing press or sewing a bag. Women were still stereotyped into “womanly” jobs like secretary, sewing, midwife, maids, food industry and the “deep thinking/command and control” jobs like professors, tool makers, generals, politicians were nearly 100% men.

As water continues to erode rocks the diffusion of power and control continued. Monogamy got religious sanction and started to get enforced, thrashing the wife was no longer seen as a cool thing to do by the clergy which kept a section of men in line, while others continued to run wild and also philander. Education became the norm for women upto some basic level as countries continued to grow richer and richer…albeit education was mostly not in STEM but in “home science” type things to make a good wife out of her in her designated role -the designation matrix being entirely in the hands of men. 

New tools of social control of women were devised - religious texts, historical norms, lack of strength, lack of brains, lack of 100% attention to kids/husband if working being a thoughtcrime, media projecting a certain image of what made a woman happy, laying a guilt trip on her …. times changed , tools and levers of control also changed from physical thrashings and social ostracism to more subtle formats aimed at “shaping” and “funneling” her tastes into the right funnels. why do we need to fight someone if you can control their educational and career choices by more subtle means? winning without a war is the best victory…

Moving to the late 20th century, there are almost no physically demanding jobs left in the rich countries, everything being highly mechanised. Of those that are left, womens nutrition is now enough they are no longer stunted and can handle such jobs easily. the fraction of jobs barred to women is reducing all over the world including the developing countries. Last barriers like active military service have fallen. in all of the highest paying jobs like law, finance, judiciary, medicine, design, electronics, software, automotive, academics …. there is little need for any physical strength or great mobility. any of sound mind can work these and indeed physically challenged people also do.

in parallel the rich nations diverged two ways

The Nanny State - a cradle to grave support system. the northern european model of high taxation but high social benefits including a guaranteed old age pension, child bearing tax benefits and aid, unemployment aid, subsidized housing, subsidized higher education . reduce the rich poor living std gap to extent possible and take care of the bottom 20% by taxing the top 20% heavily. This is built on the accumulated wealth of 500 years of colonial resource grab from other countries and 800 years of relative peace in europe permitting universities and knowledge to be sustainably built. It is perhaps not sustainable over next few decades with a declining population, hostility to immigration and losing the technology lead to other parts of the world.

The “Anglo” Model - trade off social benefits and economic regulations in favour of higher growth, higher take home income and let the “market” and “competition decide” what happens. This has corralled the bottom 20% in a circular loop of no economic mobility across generations and poor benefits, with the kind of jobs they could have done exported to the “third” world esp china and central america. the top 20% make good money and compete to send their kids to the best universities for their perpetual occupation of the commanding heights in the most lucrative sectors. pious homilies are spun about “opportunity” and “affirmative action” for the underpriviledged and every politician wants to “fix the schools” and “let none be left behind”. the anglo block of usa, canada, nz, aus, and partially uk seem to follow this model.

The poorer nations including India are in two buckets

those that are living in the middle ages wrt to opportunity for women relative to the leading edge - almost the entire 58 or such countries of the islamic block, most of africa, most of central & south america and rural pockets of many nations incl india and eastern europe

urban pockets all over which generally follow a hybrid anglo model - less money than anglos, and less taxes than nanny states, as nobody has a pile of looted colonial era money or the political capital to have a northern europe nanny state - population is too high in the tropics. increases in cost of living has forced women to work from high to low - whether a maid supporting her security guard husband, or a IT managers wife doing a job to increase savings and pay down huge EMIs, all are on the treadmill now. and the treadmill never stops. 

if we consider it as a rope, the head of the rope is northern europe, middle is america and tail is the developing world.

And what do we see in northern europe/america?

young people have abandoned organized religion enmasse. 

young people have no real interest in slogging decades through marriage and raising kids , separation rates are at record highs

more and more are willingly childless or are stopping at below replacement fertility rate(1.3 children/woman) - an example is japan , italy 

there is rejection of intermarriage with the growing number of african and muslim migrants due to religious and racial fault lines

the nanny state continues to look after people , whether single, separated, widowed does not matter…

In developing nations?

many conservative societies continue to be a pressure cooker about women’s freedom of opportunity and free speech, desperately trying to exist like a oil droplet and survive by the cosy old mores of male control.But the steam is periodically now coming out as the triple talaq issue shows, or the change in ways of such women once they move out of the male dominated milieu into the wider world despite the strong early childhood indoctrination

in less conservative societies, only the lack of a nanny state and money is holding back millions and millions of women from walking out of rather unhappy marriages - people may wax eloquent about sanskriti and sanskari naari but give people the guaranteed support of a nanny state and see the effect.

its very hard to find a young educated woman these days who definitely wants 2+ kids on her own unless the husband has a fetish for 2+. even in the generation now in late 30s and 40s, many many stopped at 1, driven by economic reality -wife has to work to generate savings, lack of grandparents support for childcare and career aspirations meaning most people now move to other places to work.

Some arguments can be made

Everyone by biological nature tries to maximise their advantages - if the male dominated order held the leash earlier, the emergent women’s networks have found ways to destroy and discredit the dominant gorilla male chimps even if belatedly but with lethal network effects like the #metoo revelations. None are in jail yet, but their position in public life and the income streams attached to that have become untenable and these men will only be able to retire into quiet anonymity at best - a crushing blow to the ego of public figures used to the heady drug of being in limelight and popular

Freedom once attained is rarely if ever voluntarily relinquished

The nature of work is almost totally going to be unisex 

Life is become safer both from physical violence and microbial infections - urban middleclass+ women no longer need a “protector” type man hovering around to lead their day to day life unless they inhabit a lawless region. conveniences are increasing, the app based delivery model being a recent one.

Women are generally happier in networks of other women,than trying to fit into some male “bro” culture like golfing, fishing, tall tales and old school buddies meeting over old monk rum and debating over school crushes  … their topics of life interest are vastly different. No woman in india probably has any interest in what are the political dynamics of the syrian civil war or the finding of a new species of tortoise in patagonia under a rock. Some men could debate for hours on it . Every village has a troop of old men who sit under a tree reading every newspaper, talking and giving comments to everyone passing by … nobody will notice a troop of old women doing that.

The “desire” for sex as men think of it (conventional penetrative sex) likely bores to death some 95% of women as they never reach a climax through it unless the man lends a hand to it (pun intended) after the act, rather than roll over and snore loudly, though 95% of men think its ok, and access to sex is a core need and a entire huge industry (porn industry) is built around that thoughtsphere. For women its probably as important as say a mildly interesting monthly project like cleaning the chest of drawers or getting a visit to a new salon. So if men think their ability to provide sex on demand (mostly to mens benefit) is going to “glue” the cracked pottery together, I think they are much mistaken. Women in general can get by very well pleasuring themselves or entering into mildly LGBT type relationships for that 5% slice of the round pie chart that defines all of a persons “needs in life”. Men might want sex every day if they can, a single good session can last women a long time.

The fabric of the organized monogamic nuclear family with religious sanction is fraying and the rips are growing larger.

Where does the rabbit hole lead to? 

I think it leads to groups of women, who might be siblings, relatives or friends rearing a pool of children and working together as in the old clan days but with no or very few men around permanently. Some variant a matriarchal system, or whatever you may call it, but 4 generations of women could be living under a mutually supportive network with the men being ghar jamai for limited time to donate their seed and then pack it off back to lone tusker mode until let back in to get another bowl of the cream on some occasions. 

The fact that women cope with old age and maintaining social relations much better is well known. A old widow will manage and retain social contacts, a old widower will soon be a shambles and fall apart. Groups of women living and growing old together is very much probable, whether men are totally out of scene or a limited presence. in any rich country, women always have greater average lifespans and much less prone to the self abusive and indisciplined patterns of behaviour that cut men’s lives short by years and sometimes decades. 

Men become cranky with age and revert to being children, women continue to gain wisdom and stature and become matriarchs.

It is also inevitable that genetic engineering will soon find ways to make the “seed” (mens last remaining trump card) artificially in the laboratory. rubber -a natural product, was synthesized in the lab by germany to meet wartime shortage and british control of malaya and so will this precious “seed/beej” and that will be the last glacing blow sending men into a kind of irrelevance. The world needs lot of rubber but maybe only a few large vats of seed per annum to keep things um ticking over. And things can be manipulated at genetic level far better in the lab through splicing and editing to edit out the “bad” and usher in the “good” traits of the day - like a potential high earning biochemistry Phd who also runs 100m in 10.5 seconds, does not smoke and is a great cook - all programmed at birth.

Nature is wise and many ancient animals live in this mode, the most promiment being the large mammals who live decades like whales, elephants - some arctic species have lifespans much longer than humans - under wise matriarchs while the huge and violent males are let inside the door only when babies are needed and then “managed out” on some performance improvement plan. 

One difference from 1:1 monogamy (almost everyone gets a chance to mate) is that probably the top10% of the males get 90% of the “opportunity” in the non-human world and have a disproportionate genetic footprint vs their “weaker” male rivals. The “weak” ones slink around trying to find a gap in the fence + avoid being killed if intercepted, or plot and collude to depose the incumbent king. And find it hard hunting or gathering food alone, which matriarch led herds of juveniles and mature females do far more safely and efficiently.

The age of the male ape having first right to all resources including women is over. The sun has set on it on parts of the world and the shadows are creeping into our longitudes too. Just as our kids will all drive EV cars not fossil fuel cars, I am no longer sure of many things…

I am not saying its “fair” or even the best thing to happen, but I am saying thats where the ball is rolling.