Jay D. Cartere

Every author who uses "it went over the audience's head" as an excuse deserves to be beaten with his own keyboard until he is no longer capable of inflicting his nonsense on the rest of us. The first, most basic, and most important responsibility of an author is to make a clear and engaging story. And that is where all the talent lies. Any asshole can write a bunch of gibberish that makes multilingual puns, or references Platonic theory of forms, or something. I could dash off page after page of that slop on any given Tuesday. The real trick is to make the idea so clear to the audience that understanding it doesn't even feel like work. That's what actually distinguishes good writers from poor ones. Good writers don't write to show off how smart they are, they write to get a point across, in the clearest and most accessible language that can still contain the idea. "It went over the audience's head" isn't an excuse at all. It's a confession. A confession that the author sucks at throwing. Your work should not need the audience to have read volumes six through seventeen of the Sermons of St. Ungo the Well-Endowed, in the original Aramaic. Instead, it should make the actual idea clearly understandable to people who have never heard of St. Ungo, and never will. The nature of the point you were trying to get across is utterly immaterial if you fail to actually do so. Will everyone understand you? Inevitably no. Lots of people out there, and they are all different. But if your message doesn't land on a large portion of your target audience, that's on you.

I didn't go to college until I was 30. This gave me a chance to see it with the perspective of an adult. One lecture in Industrial Psychology, in particular, I will never forget. The professor spoke about how an effective job description focused on concretely measurable tasks, not vague instructions, or characteristics. For example, "maintain an 85% or greater average on customer feedback surveys", instead of "be cheerful and upbeat", or even "interact positively with customers". This means that goals are clear, and performance is measurable. A job is to do something, not be something. Once some of the students had wrapped their minds around this concept, the professor decided to do a class exercise. He asked the female students to come up with a job description for "husband". At first, this went fine. The girls noodled around a bit with things they wanted their husbands to be (tall, etc), but he was able to gradually steer them towards describing what they wanted in terms of actions. But then he asked the male students to define a wife in the same way. And all the girls became upset. Some of them had full-on meltdowns. Every single thing that a male student wanted, or expected, from his hypothetical future wife was sexist, oppressive, old-fashioned, misogynistic, patriarchal, etc. They were literally screaming. Some of them in tears. And I realized something pretty quickly. It wasn't the actual, concrete responsibilities of the female role that they objected to. It was the idea of there being a female role at all, with any attached responsibilities. These women didn't want to be wives. They wanted to be pets. What's a pet? Well a pet is not a wife, or a friend. A pet is a creature of instinct, which you bring into your home because you like how it naturally behaves. You get a cat because you want to behave like a cat, and do things a cat naturally does, like play with string, and purr when you pet him. If he's smart, he'll adapt to you somewhat, but he doesn't have responsibilities other than "be a cat". If you get a wife, you get a wife so she will do things for you, specific things that are the responsibilities of wife, like care for your home, bear and raise your children, cook nutritious meals so you don't have to eat processed slop, look after your emotional well-being, and so on. These girls didn't want to be held responsible for those things. As married women, they might have anticipated doing some of them, but only some of the time. Only when they felt like it. The cat chases the string if and when it wants to, not because chasing the string is its job. These young millenial women didn't realize it, but they wanted to be pets. And that's what they were in their college relationships. They hung out with guys when they wanted to, had sex with them when they wanted to, broke up with them for someone new when they wanted to. Their relationships had no element of reciprocal responsibilities. They were perfectly at home with the idea of men having responsibilities to them, but they would repay those men if they chose, and how they chose, not how the men actually wanted. And as I've said twice already, someone you have responsibilities to, but who has none to you, is a pet, or a child. Since our ancestors, in a moment of foolishness and weakness, allowed women to vote, it is no longer legal to dole out the corrective spankings a great many of them both need and read pornographic novels about. Therefore, the corrective measure, for any man who finds himself with a pet instead of a wife, is to withdraw from any husbandly duties and start actively searching for alternatives. This can either result in a correction of the behavior, or the end of a relationship that offers no value. Either is acceptable. This may strike some of you as dishonorable, but there is no honor in keeping a broken pact, or in serving those who despise you. Men must have the pride and self-worth to say "I will be honored and respected, or I will depart to a place where I can be, even if I must be alone there." Men must honor and respect themselves.

"Compatibility" is a shibboleth of postmodern mind sickness. The post-ww2 generations, from Boomers on forward, schooled in postmodern nihilism, prize freedom from responsibility above all things, and despise the very idea of any unchosen obligation. So they seek "compatible" mates. But what compatible means is, to them, is "my natural, uninfluenced, behavior fulfills my mate's needs". Sometimes they express this as "he accepts me the way that I am". Which is, of course, a palatable way of saying "I don't want to have to change or do work". This falls into the gap between a friend and a pet. A pet is a companion animal who lives with you because its natural behavior pleases you. A cat is naturally cute, quiet, clean, and low-maintenance. A dog is naturally boisterous, affectionate, and loyal. A bird is naturally loud, destructive, and shits all over everything. You don't get a cat so you can teach it to fetch a stick. You get a cat because you like the amusing way is already inclined to chase a piece of string. A friend, unlike a pet, can understand your state of mind and react to your needs by changing his behavior. If you desire a husband who places no obligations on you, who doesn't want you to work or change, who places no demands upon you, but is "compatible" with who you already are, then you do not want to be a wife, you want to be a pet. In truth, sex roles are hardwired into human beings, and we are born into the unchosen obligation to fulfill those roles. Relationships, before postmodern nihilism, worked because people understood that "husband" and "wife" are jobs, with defined roles and responsibilities. Do the proper thing, act the proper way, and your spouse will love you. The Boomer divorce rate was 50% precisely because they rejected sex roles and sought "compatibility" instead. If you are trying to date by seeking "compatibility", looking for a girl who shares your love of video games instead of one who is feminine and kind and keeps her apartment clean, then dating is not a progressive process that leads towards marriage. It is a series of random dice rolls, wherein you pull a random person off the stack, chosen because she likes video games or something, then see if it works out. If not, try again at random. The generations who shunned any and all obligations ended up the unhappiest of all, because they did not understand that happiness does not come from idleness and the absence of obligations. It comes from the pride and satisfaction of fulfilling them.