Addiction, Polygamy, and Neofeudalism

Authored by Serban V.C. Enache via Hereticus Economicus:

We shall see how chemical thralldom, cultural and class warfare lead to demoralization, disease, violence, and political instability.

More than 70 percent of societies studied by anthropologists allowed men to have more than one wife. Polygyny has seen a decline over the past centuries. But in recent times, it’s been on the rise, even in countries where it’s still technically outlawed. Four years ago, professor Valerie Hudson wrote a thoroughly convincing article on the threat to national security posed by polygyny. I’ve never been a fan of this marriage system, ditto for polyandry, and my instinct on this matter turned out in line with actual reality. It’s from Valerie Hudson I borrowed the most important points for this blog post.

Polygyny was legalized in 2013 in post-Gaddafi Libya, alongside the de facto resurrection of the slave trade there – thanks to the wonderful liberals and humanitarians in NATO. There are also factions in Tunisia who are pushing for the legalization of polygamy. Even in post-Soviet countries like Kyrgyzstan, polygyny is a hot topic on the agenda. Legalization attempts failed there in 2010, only because polyandry [a woman having multiple husbands] would have had to be legalized as well. Almost all the upper class men from Kyrgyzstan have more than one wife [between two and four, usually acquired around the age of 18].

According to a Gallup survey from 2015, 16 percent of Americans consider polygamy as morally acceptable; in 2003, only 7 percent held that view. Some analysts predict full legalization [of polygyny and polyandry] in Western countries in the next decades. This trend isn’t a positive phenomenon, in fact, folks should be alarmed.

Historically speaking, polygyny [a man taking multiple wives] is the most common form of polygamy. Research has shown plenty of problems directly created by the socio-economic and cultural system of polygyny. Maternal mortality rates are five times higher in societies with the highest rates of polygyny compared to those with the lowest rates. Women in these societies also have reduced life expectancy compared to monogamous societies, the difference being around 20 years in lifespan. Polygynous societies exhibit levels of sex trafficking and domestic violence [toward women] twice as high compared to monogamous or low-polygyny societies, while the risk of female genital mutilation in strong polygynous societies jumps by a factor of 100. And when it comes to children, boys and girls face a higher risk of malnutrition and receive less education, narrowing social mobility.

There’s more to it, though. Polygyny, at its core a rigid class system, is a threat to national security as well. It creates a strong imbalance between the wed and those unwed, seeking a spouse. If each man takes more than one wife, it leaves other men [usually from the lower classes], without any wives at all. Nearly half the boys in polygynous cultures need to be removed from their primary community at puberty in order to sustain this imbalance whereby few [older, wealthier, more influential men] claim a disproportionate share of women for themselves. Because these estranged boys tend to come from the poorer segments of society and are often left with less education and little social support, few choices are available to them, short of violence, to carve out their own destiny. A strong link between the number of greenhorns taken in by terrorist groups and the prevalence of polygyny has also been identified.

Greater competition among men looking for wives leads to unstable political situations – and as a consequence, increased government repression to contain the phenomenon. Highly polygynous societies sport rigid [unmeritocratic] hierarchies and despotic governments. Historian and anthropologist Laura Betzig studied 186 societies around the globe and found a strong correlation between polygyny and despotism. Compared to monogamous societies, these countries grant far fewer civil and political rights to their citizens, men and women.

Anthropologists also found strong links between polygyny and warfare. It fuels tensions between men who are seeking to reproduce, and those men or forces who deny it to them – “the first law of intergroup conflict [civil war].” Polygynous societies are more likely to engage in expansionist warfare as a means to distract low-status males without wives. Countries with higher rates of polygyny spend significantly more money on weapons. In studies examining more than 140 states, Valerie Hudson and her colleagues found that polygyny is strongly linked with lower levels of national security and political stability. A great many scholars across the social sciences, who studied the relationship between polygyny and violence inside and among groups, conclude the same. Real academic consensus exists on the critical subject matter of polygyny. These solid correlations hold true regardless of region, faith or culture. The negative socio-economic and political dynamics associated with polygyny are not bugs in the system, they are its features. The system’s math creates a pool of disgruntled young adult men who [rightly] seek to oppose the establishment. In these marriages, when the females suffer from structural inequality and subjugation, and this state of affairs is built into family culture, the boys who grow up into men under under this way of life, come to regard women as 2nd class citizens against whom violence is acceptable. Under this rotten script [the script authored by and for the select few men], polygyny generates ever-growing cycles of violence within and between individuals and societies.

This particular blight is growing in the East as well, in the former soviet republics. While the consequences of the one child policy, and of sterilization [population control policies inspired and sponsored by Western Governments and Western NGOs] are felt in countries like India, China, Vietnam, and Korea; where an imbalance in the gender population is causing a huge wave of child abductions due to a lack of women for marriage. Around 170 million women are ‘missing’ from the demographic count; they were never born due to State policy agendas, touted as humanist programs destined for humanitarian purposes.

The polytheist Romans and Greeks were wise enough to practice monogamy. For Europe, the USA, and other countries, monogamy is a legacy of our pagan ancestors and must be defended at all costs. Even the Zionist state of Israel has outlawed polygamy ever since 1977, despite the fact Judaism approves the practice. Israeli state planners understood the threat polygamy poses to the stability of the country.

Chemical thralldom and disease

In the US the situation is very alarming. More and more adolescents and young adults in the late 2010s compared to the mid 2000s suffered serious psychological breakdown: major depression episodes, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. The rate of individuals reporting symptoms consistent with major depression increased by 52 percent in adolescents from 2005 to 2017 and 63 percent in young adults from 2009 to 2017. The rate of young adults with suicidal thoughts or other suicide-related outcomes increased 47 percent from 2008 to 2017.

In the last decade, cultural trends have had a much bigger impact on young people compared with older generations. Higher levels of social media use are also believed to be responsible, especially in the case of teenagers. Youngsters are also sleeping less than previous generations.

Almost 80 percent of the global pharmaceutical opioid supply is consumed in the United States. The problem has spread to other countries as well, particularly among young adults. It seems that medical doctors get less and less knowledgeable on drug addiction, when it comes to causes and treatment; or perhaps more of them are earning commissions by recommending drugs to people who don’t need them. Drugs used for non-medical reasons is a global concern, primarily driven by the large and growing phenomenon of non-medical use of prescription opioids in young demographics. Prescription drugs are legal and are easier to procure than most illegal drugs. Most drug‐related deaths worldwide are caused by prescription opioid or heroin overdoses. A recent review has illustrated worldwide increased rates of deaths from prescription opioids. In Europe, prescription opioids account for three‐quarter of overdose deaths, which represent 3.5% of total deaths among 15‐39 year olds.

Non-medical use of stimulants and prescription opioids among adolescents and young adults is also linked to the increased [harmful] use of other substances. Greater social acceptance for using these medications as alternatives to controlled substances and the myth they’re safe may be a contributing factor to their misuse. There are negative consequences of sharing with others medications prescribed for our own ailments. Equally important is the need for medical practitioners and their staff to recognize patients who seek to consume substances for non-medical purposes, to consider and implement alternative treatments and closely monitor the medications they dispense to these patients.

The World Health Organization reports more than 1 million STIs are acquired every single day. An STI is a sexually transmitted infection that hasn’t yet evolved into a disease. Since the majority of STIs have no symptoms or only mild ones, most people have no clue they’re carriers. Mexico has the highest number of HIV cases in all of Latin America; and 60 percent of HIV carriers don’t know they have it. England, last year, registered a 5 percent increase in STIs. Gonorrhoea is at its highest in 40 years. Syphilis went up as well, at over 7,500 cases. A new high in STIs was reported in the United States too. Nearly 2.3 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis—200,000 more than in 2016, which was a record-breaking year in its own right. The Center for Disease Controlled said the country was going backwards, showing a steep and sustained increase in sexually transmitted infections in recent years. Growth from 2016 to 2017 is concerning, but the data from just six years ago is quite alarming. For instance, syphilis cases went up by 76 percent, particularly among men who have sex with men, albeit infection rates in women are also on the rise. We’ll see how quickly these STIs develop into diseases, given rising levels of substance abuse, pollution, lower quality food, hormone-ridden water, and depression all taking their toll on the body’s immune system.

Neofeudal economics and xenophilia

Ever since the Democrat and Republican parties moved away from their pro-labor platforms throughout the decades, becoming staunch supporters of the ultra rich [rent-seekers, usurers, and war profiteers] and their exclusivist economic agenda [of Globalization], the working class put up with the demise of the industrial economy and the rise of the service economy [mutated today into the gig sector] – while every aspect of human life was financialized. Value no longer shapes prices. Prices shape value. That’s how we end up with seemingly paradoxical situations like wages stagnating, despite unemployment going down, and the top 0.1 percent’s share of income growing while inequality [the GINI coefficient] is on the downward trend. Western public institutions are being systematically defunded. Even if the money sums may not show it, these essential public services are shrinking in real terms. Prison populations are exploding while the staff is downsized. In the UK, psychiatrists, nurses, teachers, and dentists have been reduced six times over, compared to ten years ago. Literacy levels are dreadful and only getting worse.

Class and cultural warfare are now waged on all levels, visible and invisible, directly and indirectly – because the working class has been divided and demoralized up to the hilt. Solidarity has evaporated; we pretty much only hear of it when it comes to a particular group’s self-interest, but never different groups working together on principle. Contemporary liberals and the so-called SJWs [Social Justice Warriors] have a profound disdain for the white working class, no longer viewing it as seminal for progress, but wishing it didn’t exist. There is more propaganda today than ever before in human history. The Western virus of addiction, degeneracy, and neo-serfdom is spreading like wildfire, despite populist resistance here and there. This ‘woke’ future is going to be a lot closer to a dystopia than anything else.

I’d like to close this article with George Washington’s thoughts on xenophilia and geopolitics from 1796. If you read between the lines, Washington was making the case against imperialism, and his insight remains strongly relevant to this day.

“So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak [country] towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.”

One may be tempted to conclude that two factions are at odds with each other: the pro-war xenophiles vs the pro-war xenophobes. But that view is incorrect. The Republican party just exploits the issues of open borders and outsourcing, feigning opposition. Their corporate backers want unlimited immigration and persistent unemployment in order to put downward pressure on wages and to squeeze extra labor for poorer working conditions and lower pay. You don’t like my terms? Get out. There are a thousand like you willing to take this job. They don’t want it reversed on them. Hey, are you going to give me a decent package? Because fifty other firms are willing to take me on.

The Koch Brothers are the perfect example on this issue. They promote this brand of ‘business conservatism’ who eats into the very flesh of working Americans and [ironically] their own customer base, and they also promote the deranged libertarian current, which is actually feudalism [and hedonism] with the word liberty thrown in to entice suckers at the bottom who foolishly dream that – one day – they too will become like Bezos [a self-professed libertarian], provided they work hard enough. And when they achieve that goal, they’ll also want Government “off their back” [aka. will want Government to subsidize them even more and protect them from the ‘dirty’ masses].