Andrew Tate could be 100% thematically correct about what a man is and what a man desires, but still nobody should follow, adhere, and act in line with his perspective, simply because societies cannot be formed based on human animal instincts. Yes, in evolutionary terms we are an animal, and an animal has a set of coded base options, we could call them desires or evolutionary imperatives. They are what we are when we are an animal only. We have not come this distance, the distance between the first bipedal primates who could think and use tools, to the complex human in a technologically complex landscape, by sticking to base instinct. In fact we have defied our innate nature so as to thrive and better the lives of all persons, and therefore, by implication, better our own lives personally. The locust does not do this, it is the same insect that it always has been. Some might argue, John Zerzan does, that our development is at the cost of, and detriment to, the natural world. I would counter that by saying it does not have to be.
Civilisation is the opposite of natural desire, it is where there is a rational reason why you do not get what you want, and it is important that people do not get what they desire since the fulfilment of desire only leads to more desire. I desire, if I am honest, to have lots of sex with lots of young (adult) slim or athletic women that are open minded and unencumbered (free, not coerced). I desire not to be surrounded by people who deceive. I desire that the grotesquely wealthy people stop dominating the narrative of the human species. I desire to have the proportions of homosexual and ethnic minority people be properly represented in the media and film, and not shown as a majority in an effort of repair to society. I desire to see history in all its brutality, not whitewashed or re-imagined. I desire to not work at all at anything that does not make a worthwhile difference to a person or persons that have need of my labour. I desire not to be exploited in a capitalist game where I work hard so that someone can have a second yacht or a knighthood on behalf of what they own rather than what they do. I desire to view the real news not the sanewashed version that does not offend or upset. You might desire all these things too, but should either of us have all of what we desire, and what would it look like if we did?
My desires are in line with what would make me most pleased, but what impact would what pleases me have on everyone else? I suspect that for me to ‘win’ someone else has to ‘lose’, so I suppose I would have to cultivate the desire then to have no conscience at all. This would be a problem for me since it is my conscientious nature that drives my writing and my personal sense of who I am. I want what I want but I do not wish get to all that I want, just some of what I want, does that make any sense? It does in my head but it is hard to put into words why.
You can be factually correct and morally wrong at the same time. It’s relativistic to think that your desires are all that should matter in terms of the truth and correctness of things, that’s the muddy water of thought and self delusion we find rich people and politicians swimming in. A result of two factors, their power, and the way their power causes other people to treat their wishes. It’s not a new perspective however, history is littered with this sort of moral mapping of the desires of kings and emperors being the trajectory of ethical thought and teaching. The Greeks had a way of looking at things whereby he (and it usually was a he) who could get away with pursuing his desires and achieving them, even at the detriment of all those around him, was to be thought virtuous in his victory and admonished of all criminality because of it (it pays to be a winner). We still somewhat think like this today, we must, or else we would have risen in protest against those that robbed the country and then we may have nailed their hands to walls, or bagged them and deposited said bag in the nearest river. This was the method of dispatching those who tried to keep up the Greek way, but were using it far too late in the epoch to get away with it.
Is it moral wrong to take plaudits and prizes and rewards for making money out of human needs? I think so. From my perspective then, bestowing title upon, and drawing attention to, the rich owners of an NGO that lives off the government’s coin would be indication that the benefits of a relationship with the public purse are corrupt in their nature, if the controllers of the NGO became wealthy as the result of their involvement. I find this point arguable, that there is a necessity for capitalism to provide good to society, it is necessary that capitalism provides innovation and incentive yes, but what is good is the role of leaders, and we should never have mixed these two, leaders and businessmen, up as badly as we seem to be doing right now. We can go back to Kant for understanding, and state that this example cannot be morally good because of the self serving nature of it, whereby it would only be in place under the circumstances where a personal gain, in terms of power or money, was possible. For Kant, the doing of good moral deeds must be for the purpose that they are the correct things to do, not the ones that give the most to the doer. It is in sacrifice that we see something worth rewarding from a societal point of view. The OBE awarded to the charity worker then becomes much more valuable, in moral terms, than the Knighthood given to the guy that owns a business that holds lucrative government contracts for providing for needs identified but not met directly by government.
Here we have uncovered one of the major problems with capitalism, that it mirrors the innate nature of man, this is what links it to people like Tate, why he is both a product of it and a driving force, regardless of what he actually sells. Capitalism allows a few of us to act toward our own desires and meeting them, beyond what is reasonable or sustainable or what can said to be good in a societal sense. Greed takes over individuals, it becomes an ideology as these individuals help each other to extract more power and create more dominance through wealth and control. The desire for money and the things it can buy is quickly replaced with the desire to dominate the lives of others through power and influence, and even these do not bring satisfaction. The desire for admiration develops, and when that is met it changes the capitalist in a psychological way where they start to see their power as a moral aspect of society (what is good for them is good for all). The capitalist may wish to then buy the rights to space or the deep oceans, we are actually seeing this now, where they no longer simply fund what they are intrigued by, they become the focus of the energies put in, the reason for exploration is their desire to be noticed. The Gates Foundation did not have to be called the Gates Foundation, it could have been called any number of other things, it is called the Gates Foundation to draw attention to the guy that made it. That sounds cynical yes, he may say that his name was used to draw attention to the good things the society was about, but I don’t think that is the case, I may be wrong. These human desires, these animal instincts, are not conducive to a harmonious society, and the Greeks and Romans knew this long ago, intelligently trying to build their societies so that the sort of unequal relations, between those that have things and those that do things, had not such wide gulfs that they might break the fabric apart.
To support the current trajectory of right wing politics, the populism offered by businessmen, is right in line with the output of someone like Tate, because it is drawn from the same part of our psychological self that holds desires and wishes to dominate. Yet it is not a desire for ourselves, we for the most part are too weak to realise our own desires, we prefer to applaud those that can. People favour strength in others because they wish for strength in themselves that they do not have, so to join, or to hoist a flag for a cause that you yourself cannot argue for, and that you yourself wouldn’t take action for, is to feel participation without participating. People often think of themselves differently in the hypothetical than they would in the actual, even if they have experience to correct them. My Grandfather came from a time when times were harder, so he was likely hardier, and although he was not a participant in the Second World War, he was of the generation that lived through it. That generation fought a tough enemy and won out, we cannot say of ourselves that because we are the grandchildren of those persons that we would have done what they did, but we can imagine that we would have.
We cannot also say of ourselves that we would act the life that Tate describes even if we are the most ardent followers of his output, but by adhering to what he says in agreement rather than deed we are helping him and his ilk to realise their power, we are participating without benefit to self other than psychologically. He may say to dominate your woman, but your woman may have too much psychological strength and self worth to be dominated by a skint mental weakling like yourself, so you harbour the thought that he is correct, yet you do nothing in the same fashion as him because your circumstances are not the same. You may believe that in his circumstances you would also act as he does, but this is not likely true since there is nothing but you holding you back from trying to be the man he is. If that is what you wish to be then just be that and see what happens I say. What I am indicating is that people often lack the courage of their convictions, and that is a paradox that I am not unfamiliar with since I am a participant in things I fundamentally disagree with too, the difference is that I am not supporting them in rhetoric and would not support them in deed if I had a choice, I have bills to pay.
It is in the seeing of such desires realised that we recognise that we too have desires, but it is in the resisting of those desires that we form relations that have greater benefits than that which is derived from power. I’m not talking about abstinence from pleasures, I am talking about the pursuit of power over people. To dominate people is a seductive thought, but to collaborate with people is a truer form of relation because it lacks power, and any friendship or love affair that is based on fear or manipulation by power is an obvious falsehood that would not exist in the absence of that power. My question would be then, which would you prefer, to have you desired by them, or to have your power appreciated by them and the way they feel about you merely a relation of that power?

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