Intelligent men I knew

I dislike modern culture.  If I was the only one, then I would assume the fault lies with me.  But three of the most intelligent men that I knew have done quite poorly in modern culture.  Part of my emotional motivation to start a CoAlpha Brotherhood is to save men like this.  Here are their stories:

One was a friend from high school.  I didn't know it at the time, but he is the son of a famous mathematician.  My friend was great at everything, especially math and chess.  Of course we were considered nerds in high school.  By 10th grade, he was completely bored with school and insisted on just taking tests, and by doing this, finished the next 2 years of high school in a few weeks.  He applied to Princeton, which rejected him on some technicality.  So he just sat in on classes there, and of course he was much smarter than the other students and teachers, so it was pretty much high school all over again.  Of course none of us nerds had girlfriends.  But at Princeton, he tried to date and was badly abused emotionally by the women.  In the end, this caused him to crack up.  It was incredible how he changed when he snapped, his face looked entirely different, more like a normal happy idiot instead of the intense intelligence that he had before.  My old intelligent friend was killed by women for all practical purposes.

James Fell was an artist that I met in New Orleans.  But he was interested in everything, not just art.  We were part of a group of people that formed around a coffee shop.  Everyone there was a drop-out from society.  This group was the most intelligent I have seen, certainly brighter than the Nobel Prize winners from my university, or venture capitalists, or successful financial traders.  We all had different opinions about most things, but the one shared opinion was that society is a disaster to be avoided.  James, like most of us, tried to put women out of his mind.  He had strong self-discipline, but he was older than the rest of us, so the accumulated stress must have had more effect.  At one point, his parents threw him out, forcing him to find a new place to live.  He decided it wasn't worth the trouble and killed himself.  I have no doubt that the outcome would have been different if he had had a girlfriend.

The others in this group were also very intelligent.  By intelligent, I mean people who without a doubt would get a perfect score on the non-verbal portion of any IQ test.  Most of these people just got by doing odd jobs.  None of them had girlfriends.  Eventually, I moved away, the coffee shop shut down, and I don't know what happened to these people.

Robert Tashbook worked with me at Nextag.  He worked in QA but was very creative.  Nextag's original business model made no sense.  Tashbook found the business model that made Nextag work.  He realized that there was an opportunity to treat comparison shopping as an arbitrage business, taking the profit in the difference between the cost of buying ads and price that we could sell ads to merchants.  If you look up Nextag, you will see that it was valued at $1.2 billion.  What did Tashbook get for making Nextag so valuable?  He is currently in federal prison for unlawful sexual conduct.  He tried to kidnap a girl using the Internet to be his sex slave.  While at Nextag, we never discussed our personal lives, so I didn't know this side of him, but I completely understand where he was coming from since I considered a similar option myself before deciding to try finding a girlfriend Mexico instead.  Luckily for me, I had better judgement than he did.  This side of Nextag's history is unlikely to make it into the popular media.

I wonder how much the collapse of these men you mention hinges upon the feelings of isolation they must have felt. I don't know if it is merely because they lacked girlfriends that they collapsed. I have personally come close to collapsing, but I've always been able to buffer myself by seeking out the catharsis and commiseration of the nascent MRA groups. Perhaps part of their collapse was just from feeling so miserably alone in the world? If they felt that the current culture did not make any sense to them - and there were no like-minded people to share these observations and revelations with - that might be just as damaging if not more-so than not having a good girlfriend.

Hence, another important impact of brotherhoods!

This is a very good point.  I think 3 things naturally tend to go together: difficulty finding a girlfriend, lack of trust between men, and anti-intellectualism.  All of these contribute to isolation.  Feminism means that men within a society compete for women, so men cannot trust each other.  A man never knows who will go after his wife/girlfriend.  You find this very true in decayed societies like Mexico where men are completely unable to trust each other enough to cooperate on anything.  Also, when men compete for women, women control what society values and women are naturally anti-intellectual.  All of these things harmed these 3 men, and all are helped by brotherhoods.

fschmidt wrote

This is a very good point.  I think 3 things naturally tend to go together: difficulty finding a girlfriend, lack of trust between men, and anti-intellectualism.  All of these contribute to isolation.  Feminism means that men within a society compete for women, so men cannot trust each other.  A man never knows who will go after his wife/girlfriend.  You find this very true in decayed societies like Mexico where men are completely unable to trust each other enough to cooperate on anything.  Also, when men compete for women, women control what society values and women are naturally anti-intellectual.  All of these things harmed these 3 men, and all are helped by brotherhoods.

This lack of trust can extend into spheres and activities that have nothing to do with sex, either. Take education, for example. I am currently studying under one of the best professors I've ever had, a Dr. Melley (Ph.D. in philosophy). He often bemoans the current state of American intellectualism. He is widely traveled and often compares other societies to America, which tends to be sobering to students who are only aware of American culture. He wonders why it is that Americans almost seem to fear and distrust Americans. In private, he has expressed his discontentment over the lack of free intellectual debate in an academic environment due to feminism. I have not gotten the chance to speak to him openly or in-depth about feminism, though I would very much love to.

But he can't trust other males - be they teachers or students - in an academic environment to not "blow the whistle" on him, for example, if he were to start discussing ideas or attitudes that are critical of feminism. Not within the academy, anyway. (This is why the internet is great - you can voice opinions from a position of relative safety compared to the "real world," and it may yet be our hope in the fight against feminism. That is, until they start tracking IP addresses and hold everyone accountable for statements on the 'net, as well. Hopefully we beat them before they develop the draconian measures to do this!)

fschmidt wrote

The others in this group were also very intelligent.  By intelligent, I mean people who without a doubt would get a perfect score on the non-verbal portion of any IQ test.  Most of these people just got by doing odd jobs.  None of them had girlfriends.

This puzzles me. If they were so intelligent, why did they not build careers, make lots of money and use that to attract women?

Johannes wrote

This puzzles me. If they were so intelligent, why did they not build careers, make lots of money and use that to attract women?

Building careers is mostly about dealing with people, not intelligence.  In fact intelligence is generally harmful to employment because it makes you a freak and makes your boss feel threatened.  The ideal corporate employee is stupid and docile.

Yes, the practical benefits of intelligence in this armpit of a society are generally overrated.

Well, why didn't they get rich from startups or investments?

Johannes wrote

Well, why didn't they get rich from startups or investments?

Not everyone has the opportunity to do that.

Johann, you seem to think that making money = intelligence, and being poor = stupid.

That is stupidity.

Van Gogh among a million others doesn't seem to have taught you anything. Whatever, when one decides money defines everything there's nothing to do. It's at the core of the religion of idiots, of modern culture. That modern is the measure of intelligence.

It is not, period.

If you think one can't be intelligent if poor, then you're a fucking idiot. Period. I just can't comprehend one being so foolish.

Franklin put it awesomely and with a cold blood I do not often possess. For a traditional career, stupidity and complacency is required, and intelligence can only prevent it. It's fucking OBVIOUS, one shouldn't have to point that out.

Such idiotic concepts/myths unnerve me too much to be able to reply calmly. One has got to be stupid to think money is the measure of everything, or all that important. You need it to eat and live, and that's all. It has no other meaning or relevance to intelligent and moral people.

As for startups, intelligent people do not put BUSINESS above LIFE. Life isn't business. Business is a mean, not an end. Business today is empty, a way for stupid people to be "busy". Talented people have better ways to use their talents than obscene "business". Talent isn't there to make money. Talent is there to MAKE, create and invent things. You obviously do not possess those talents, since you put money and business above everything else, like nothing else could ever matter more.  

Smart and talented people up to geniuses, are only bothered by having to make money to survive. They only want to create stuff that has inherent value or use independently from the money factor. They aren't interested enough in business and by the way, business today requires such an investement of energy and time you can do nothing else and your life becomes just that. CAPITALISM IS NOTHING BUT A FORM OF SLAVERY. In business, you don't accomplish anything: MAKING MONEY ISN'T AN ACCOMPLISHMENT, it's just something selfish one does for himself, it is not USEFUL TO MANKIND. Too hard for you to understand?

That is why smart people are often poorer. Have you never seen the Simpsons? Do you know Homer's much smarter hobo brother? You don't get it, right? It's not just a joke...it's how the world works, idiot.

People who think poor people have got to be stupid are the DEFINITION of stupid.

You really think so? If you do, you know what I think: you're an idiot.

purpleduck wrote

As for startups, intelligent people do not put BUSINESS above LIFE. Life isn't business. Business is a mean, not an end. Business today is empty, a way for stupid people to be "busy". Talented people have better ways to use their talents than obscene "business". Talent isn't there to make money. Talent is there to MAKE, create and invent things. You obviously do not possess those talents, since you put money and business above everything else, like nothing else could ever matter more.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with using intelligence to make money with a start-up, either because the start-up is doing good stuff or the money you make allows you the leisure time to do good stuff later. It is just that getting a start-up off the ground requires various conditions - being in the right time and place, access to funding, a job to go back to if it doesn't work out etc. If you don't have these things, which are largely beyond your control these days, you don't get the chance to bring whatever intelligence and talent you might have to bare.

purpleduck wrote

Johann, you seem to think that making money = intelligence, and being poor = stupid.

I don't. I thought that intelligent men have the ability to make money. fschmidt and Cornfed corrected me.