Big Red Car here on the heels of a Texas thunderstorm of respectable proportions. Lightning, thunder, rain, wind — ah, we love the rain this time of year in Texas. Last night we got it. Big time. Let’s talk millennials, shall we?
So the Big Red Car has been thinking about Millennials, particularly the male of the species. They are coming in for a lot of criticism and the Big Red Car wants to provide some helpful suggestions of how y’all might slip the noose and bit. Not a very deep thought but it is Saturday morning.
Millenials?
Here goes.
What is the beef with millennials, Big Red Car?
The millennial male is coming in for a bit of elucidation as it relates to, say, their fear of chalk as evidenced by the wholesale panic set off at Emory University when some wags chalked “Trump 2016” on the sidewalks — in plain view, y’all, plain view — which, in turn, set off a protest that such behavior was a “racist microaggression.”
Yes, a racist microaggression, indeed. Check this link if you doubt the Big Red Car
Emory University Racist Microaggression, Trump 2016 Chalk Assault
What is a millennial to do, Big Red Car?
OK, you twisted my arm, here are some suggestions:
In the confusion as to gender, stake out “male” in the male v female v other sweepstakes. Be a man. Use the men’s room. Take a chance, piss in the grass and spray it around. You are a guy and the biggest privilege God gave guys was the ability to piss standing up. Respect, preserve, practice that privilege. [We are speaking metaphorically here. You got that, right?] Man. Up.
Stop watching porn and go meet a nice girl and ask her to do some play acting with you. Stop watching porn. Get a love life. With a girl.
Learn to dance. Learn to dance well. Dance with girls. Dancing is vertical foreplay. Pro tip.
Stop watching television and go back to reading books. It’s OK if the books are on your Kindle or other eReader. It is perfectly fine. But, take a lark and buy an actual paper book (used books are actually the way to go) and read the damn thing.
OK, here’s the other thing about reading — read GOOD books. Read inspirational literature and then use some of that inspiration to do some of the other stuff on the list.
Study American history. Know your tribe. Know this guy. Know how close we came to losing the American Revolution which would have been a really bad thing cause all of us would have become Englishmen though they would have treated us poorly.
Stop with the freakin’ whining. While you’re at it, stop comparing yourself to everyone else.
Newsflash: Someone will always be taller, smarter, better looking, richer, better with the babes, look better in skinny jeans — stop whining. Stop comparing. Get comfortable with yourself. You are UNIQUE. Celebrate that and stop with the whining. Actually, there is nobody exactly like you. Ever. Celebrate it.
Give your genitals a break and ration the skinny jeans. You look skinny and weak and spindly in them anyway but you won’t be able to reproduce — see the note about ceasing the porn obsession above — if you subject your gonads to that much pressure. They are going to rebel. You can wear them a few days a week but take guidance from your nuts. If they hurt, wear baggy khaki shorts for a few days.
On the subject of clothes, give it a rest. Wear what you like but don’t feel compelled to wear the Millennial Uniform. Stop obsessing about your clothes. Khakis, khaki shorts — start there. Polo shirts with real sleeves, short ones. It’s going to be fine.
Shave more often. On the subject of hygiene, let’s increase the frequency dramatically and a slight increase in the intensity. Get up to speed on the theory of deodorant. That stubbly little beardikins your Mom says looks “dirty?” Mom is right.
Entitlement — hey, Millennials, it’s bullshit. You are entitled to nothing. Sure, Bernie’s got you all worked up but your education is your problem. And, you, dear Millennial, are a problem solver. You don’t even have to worry about the freakin’ military draft, so the idea that you’re entitled to anything — pure baloney.
As to entitlement, ask a World War II vet to explain to you what he was doing at your age and then ask him about entitlement. You will enjoy the learning. You will also learn that you can’t hold your grandfather’s or your great grandfather’s jock. But you have the same DNA. Act like it.
Corollary of the entitlement rant — stop blaming the world for your not getting the shit you think you’re entitled to. A lot of this stuff is for sale. You have to get (earn) money to buy it. Go make some money and then buy the shit you want. Stop blaming it on everyone else. Stop demanding that someone else buy it for you. [Bernie didn’t get a job until he was 40. Still doesn’t have a real job, he’s a Senator. He’s the last person to consult about this stuff.]
You are creating a global competition of victimhood and it makes you look like a ………………………………….. victim. You’re not. You’re a man. Write this one down. No more victimhood.
Go do something. Get off your Momma’s couch. Get dressed — note the hygiene comment above. [You can face the day without hair conditioner. Trust me on this one.] GET A JOB.
It will not be the perfect job that you think the Holy Ghost has been working on since the birth of Christ just for you. That may be job #5 down the road somewhere. Just go get a job and make some money and get off Mom’s couch. You’re embarrassing her and you’re ruining her brand. [Yes, Moms have a brand. No, actually, they do not. That’s another thing — everything is not a freakin’ brand. Sheesh.]
As to the couch business, stop sleeping so late. Stop sleeping so long. You don’t need that much rest when your main occupation is ……………….. resting. Get out of the fart sack and get to work. OK, that’s a little harsh, sure. Get up and get out.
Stop feeling like you know everything or that you need to know everything. You’re a twenty-something. You don’t know dick. No twenty-something knows dick. Even the Big Red Car didn’t know dick when he was twenty. Go get a job. Work for a guy named Dick. Learn dick.
And, don’t be so freakin’ insecure and sensitive about everything. Sheesh. You’re like a freakin’ girl. You don’t menstruate, so you don’t get to blame stuff on your own cycle of sensitivity. Girls do. You don’t. You come from the side of the gender pool that used to kill saber tooth tigers and those guys were real badasses which means you, by extension as a relative of killers of saber tooth tigers, are also a badass. Cowboy. The. Fuck. Up. Act like you’re related to guys who used to kill saber tooth tigers. You are.
On this idea that everything goes? No, it doesn’t. The concepts of right v wrong or good v evil — they are real. Stand the fuck up for right. Take a stand. Be a man. When you see something that is wrong, speak up. Get on the side of right and good. Then, stay there. Start with beheadings. Beheadings are wrong, evil. Work from there.
Some smaller stuff for you millennials to consider.
See stuff through to the end. Stop starting stuff, abandoning it, and then going home to play video games. Get in the mix of things and see it through to the end. Stop being a quitter. You think the saber tooth tiger guys could quit, tell the saber tooth tiger they’d had enough, and then go home and play video games? No. Stop being a quitter.
Realize that real opportunity looks funny. It looks like HARD WORK. It often is camouflaged in work clothes. [I would have said “overalls” but you have no idea what that means, do you?] Stop being afraid of hard work.
Stop making faces when shit doesn’t go your way. Stop being such a little bitch who cannot be happy for others. And stop spending all your time talking about what you hate and how someone else got something done because you are a victim. Look for the good in a situation. Celebrate it. Laugh. Smile.
Money. Make it. Save it. Stop pissing it away on expensive skinny jeans that are bad for your long term reproductive health. New flash — things are just things. Whether you have a FitBit or not is not going to make a bit of difference. When you save your money, invest it. Put it away for 50 years and ride that compound interest pony. Make your money work for you like a rented mule. Keep score. Make a damn budget — make the money first. Get that job.
Big ones.
Make a freakin’ plan for your future, please. No plan? Then any outcome is OK. Make a plan, Millennials.
“Oh, no, Big Red Car, that requires me to be an adult,” said the whiny, little bitch Millennial. “I am a Millennial, not an adult. That’s part of the culture. You are wrong here, Big Red Car.”
“No, Millennials, I am not wrong,” said the obnoxious Big Red Car. “Make a plan. Put it in writing. Set some objectives for yourself. Print it out. Show it to your parents. Go accomplish those goals. Goals. Plan. Objectives. Accomplish. Keep score. Now that, Millennials, is some scary shit, no? Do it.”
Here’s the thing, life is not “just around the corner.” Life is that dust angel under your Momma’s couch in the basement which is getting ready to jump down your throat and choke the life out of you. Strike first. Strike hard. Strike. Strike. Strike. For your future, cause today is yesterday’s future. Life is today. You can’t wait on it. It’s here and it isn’t going away.
Stop drinking so much and stop smoking so much weed. First, it’s expensive and, second, you are not even remotely more interesting, creative, sexy when you’re fucked up. You are just an asshole. You can be an asshole much cheaper. Be frugal and stop drinking and smoking so much. Plus, it’s very bad for your health. Even PITA knows that.
Buy a journal. Get a 5mm fine tip black pen. Write down your dreams (sort of like the plan thingy above but different). Look at them the next day. Visualize them. Go make them happen. Warning — it will take work but you are related to the guys who used to kill saber tooth tigers, right? Remember that. [Pro tip: Your relatives wiped out the saber tooth tigers so all you really need to worry about is paper cuts and getting ink on your hands. They did that for YOU.]
One day a month, turn off the smartphone, tablet, ultrabook, laptop, desktop, big screen. Go to a park. Stand in the sun until it begins to burn. Breathe hard. Sweat. Commune with Mother Nature. Do not ask her if you can sleep on her couch cause she will kick your ass.
Write a damn letter to your grandparents, your parents, your siblings, that coach who took an interest in you, your favorite teacher, rabbi, parish priest. It’s OK if the letter is printed but, at least, hand address the envelope. No credit for email. A real letter.
OK, sorry. Just felt like it needed to be said. Now, it’s said and we can get back to our lives but you, dear Millennials, you cannot go back to bed.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a 50 year old Big Red Car. Be kind to yourself but remember the saber tooth tiger killer stuff. Cause THAT is who YOU are.
All of life in one post — gee.
Ah, notice the ice in the Delaware River — that was part of some, actual, severe global cooling, the Little Ice Age. It was also the main cause of the French Revolution — three years of crop failures in a row. And the cause of Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Moscow when some of his horses had their flesh freeze while walking.
Below I include a few, short remarks. “Few” and “short” considering the size of the whole subject. Still, a lot of this is what I very much wish Dad had told me but didn’t.
Alone
Being alone is not good. Growing up, you nearly NEED a family. Throughout life you need friends. Later you need a wife, children, and your own family.
The greatest prize life has to offer: You and your girl, as husband and wife, are in a house that you make into your home, being mother and father, with your children, your friends, your children’s friends, the families of your children’s friends, everyone busy, productive, and happy. Then you and your wife accumulate activities, accomplishments, memories, and traditions you both like a lot, don’t want to lose, can’t get anywhere else, and will bind you two together for life. Then be good as grandparents.
To some extent you can be alone or nearly so, especially for short periods, but in general terms the truth is — being alone is not good. There is an ocean of details on just why, and I’m omitting those here but do give some relevant references below.
Exercise: Research why being alone is no good and write a good paper, with good references, explaining the details.
So, in order not to suffer from being alone, you need to understand people, and for this there are two big cases — males and females. They are wildly different, and any claims otherwise are from ignorant to manipulative down to just subversive.
Understanding People
You need to have at least good, first level understanding of people.
Huge, shockingly surprising fact of life: A huge fraction of people are quite badly mixed up between their ears. Their abilities to do well in life are quite limited except often they can do okay in some circumstances under a lot of good leadership. Learn the basics for how to detect and diagnose such people. Then learn to avoid them. Sure as hell don’t marry one. To have a margin of safety, be sure the girl you marry is willing to follow your lead.
Any even tiny hint of anything at all like ‘feminism’ is an instant total disqualification. Feminists are at best weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree and in a few more generations are likely to be eradicated from the gene pool. The fall of the genes and attitudes that enabled feminism are now in likely the fastest change in the human gene pool in over 40,000 years.
One secret of picking a good wife: Look at the girl’s mother. Realize that a lot you are seeing is just acting. Look through the acting and look for anything wrong. Don’t be very surprised if some of what you see looks like evidence of some things just horrendously awful.
If you do marry her, expect that in your relationship you will have to continue to be in control and steer; your little ship of state, maybe just your little canoe in rough waters, won’t stay on course without your attention.
Girls 101
Already in the crib, girls are paying attention to people and boys, to things. The difference is really easy to see already by age 2.
Already at six months, the girls are using facial expressions and eye contact to build relationships with adults and elicit supportive and protective emotions. A girl of 4 commonly has her father wrapped around her little finger so that he can nearly never tell her “No.”. She plays him like a great violinist plays a Stradivarius. Meanwhile the boys are trying to hack the latch on the crib and install Linux and WiFi in the toy firetruck in the floor. That difference continues throughout life.
Understand that girls, age 4 and before, and for the rest of their lives, are just magnificent actresses. Indeed, in Hollywood, essentially all the good child actors are girls. They are such good actresses that it can be difficult to know what the real girl is, and, indeed, it can be that there really isn’t one, that there is nothing real there. That can explain the question that too few men can answer: “What does a woman want?”, and because often there really isn’t an answer. So, it’s fair to say that Mother Nature has designed females to get their ‘true self’ from others, from pleasing others. So, in simple terms, tell her that there is something you would REALLY like her to do; see her thrilled to hear that and work hard doing it; then praise her for being such a great girl, wife, etc.
Emotions
Girls and women are MUCH more emotional than boys and men. People can try to pretend or act otherwise, and a dog can learn to walk on two legs, also, but, of such struggles, none is good.
Point: To get along with a female, it is crucial to pay a lot of attention to her emotions. Or, with females, emotionalism over rationalism. Rationalism is your responsibility; emotionalism is her life.
Mommy Track
Here in simple terms is what Mother Nature has in mind for girls:
Step 1: From birth to puberty, the girls try to please others. E.g., in grade school, nearly all the teachers are women, and the girls are much better pleasing those women than the boys are. The girls are better at all of decorum, communicating with facial expressions, concentration, languages, manual dexterity, clerical accuracy, color sense, singing in tune, rote memorization, understanding of what will please a teacher, etc.
Girls notice that when they wear pretty clothes and act feminine, others smile at them and, in some cases, are willing to buy them more pretty clothes, and the loop continues.
Step 2: At puberty the girls are looking for strong men that will be good fathers and providers. Indeed, early in puberty girls can get wildly interested in horses essentially because horses have the big physical strength girls are attracted to.
Step 3: Moving right along here, soon, e.g., Lady Di, age 15, a girl can decide on her man and fall in love. She becomes awash in love chemicals, etc. and hopelessly devoted to her man. Elizabeth Taylor gave an excellent portrayal in the movie, with Spencer Tracy, Father of the Bride.
Step 4: Then soon Mother Nature wants her married and pregnant, and maybe not in that order.
Then she has children, starting at, say, 16, 18, 20, depending on the culture, say, 18, say, one child each 2-4 years until she has, say, 6. Why 6? Because 100 years ago she could have 14 with only 2-3 living to adulthood. So, we’re talking ballpark 18 years, and now she’s 36. By the time the youngest gets to be 18, she’s 54 and spends the rest of her life as a grandmother.
Notice that there isn’t a lot of time for her to get a graduate degree, or even go to college, have a career, etc.
Call that the Mommy Track.
That’s what Mother Nature has in mind. At times, society and the economy don’t agree, but Mother Nature still knows what she wants. Darwin mostly agrees.
It’s easy to argue that humans in the more advanced countries have changed almost not at all for at least 40,000 years. How? Take a person A of Western European descent and a person B from, say, Japan. Well, from some DNA analysis, the most recent common ancestor C was about 40,000 years ago. So, to trace the mutations, start with A, work backwards in time to C and then forwards in time to B. So, A and C are closer than A and B. And B and C are closer than A and B. So, since A and B are so close, both are still closer to their common ancestor C 40,000 years ago. Maybe there was a common ancestor hanging from a tree by a prehensile tail, but might have been 40 million years ago, not 40,000 years ago. Well, considering how little change there has been in humans in the past 40,000 years, except for the eradication of feminism as above, don’t expect a lot of change this century. That girl you are going to be with, in her basic biology, psychology, and emotions, she is just like her ancestors 10,000, 20,000, etc. years ago. In particular, she did just fine in grass huts, mud huts, tents from animal skins, and caves. And mostly what she did was have children — and keep house, scrape animal skins, make thread, cloth, and clothes, make soap, etc.
Necessary and Sufficient
For Mother Nature and Darwin, the Mommy Track is essentially necessary, essentially the least they can put up with. And, still for Mother Nature and Darwin, the Mommy Track is also essentially sufficient, that is, also about the most Mother Nature and Darwin care about. Anything much different is about like a dog walking on just two legs — at best wildly awkward.
Off the Track
If your wife is not busy on the Mommy Track, then she will tend to go off into no end of nonsense, some quite dangerous. So, she can go to save the whales, save the poor people, save the planet, run for Congress, go for social climbing, try to become a novelist, become clinically depressed and kill herself, try to sabotage your life to pull you down to her level, become really good friends with Jim Beam and Jack Daniels, surround herself with ‘purifying yoga crystals’, gain 150 pounds, go for affairs, or just stay in her bedroom 24 x 7 with several large dogs. Net, she doesn’t know what the heck to do.
Or, she’s bored. This is an old story with the wisdom “Idle hands do devil’s work.” Or she is none of “busy, productive, and happy”.
How unhappy? Well, there is the now classic
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, Chapter 1, “The Problem that Has No Name”
at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920960/
which can be seen as some brilliant and enormously destructive USSR sabotage of the US family and, thus, the US.
Career
Sadly, in our society not every man can be a husband, father, and parent, with a house, and a good family. Indeed, not every man with a lot in talent, determination, education, and hard work can have such success. To get such success, the main promising ingredients are:
(1) Try really hard to collect information on and understand what is important about making money, education, the economy, people, groups and organizations, and politics.
Point: Think, understand, be smart.
First hint: Some of the good answers change, likely significantly each 10 years.
Ten years? 200 years ago was 1816. Well, there’ve been a lot of changes since then — iron, coal, steam, iron ships, steel, railroads, chemistry, electricity, chemical engineering, the microbe theory of disease, anesthetics and surgery, understanding of nutrition, understanding of public health, antibiotics, electricity, oil lamps, electric lighting, electronics, steam turbines, gasoline and internal combustion engines, airplanes, aluminum in large quantities, mechanized agriculture, much better plant varieties and animal breeds, atomic power, plastics, synthetic fibers, jet engines, the transistor, digital computing, satellites, GPS, integrated circuits, the Internet, the Web. Well, that’s just some of the biggies from 50,000 feet up, but that’s 35 biggie changes. So, that is already an average of
35 / 20 = 1.750
biggie changes each decade for each of the past 20 decades, that is, the last 20 years.
So, expect some significant changes each decade. So, in understanding what is going on, you have to keep up.
There is also an implication for education: If you are going to stop your education before, say, age 24, then you will want that education to remain valuable for you for at least another 40 years, maybe 50 or 60 years. So, that’s through the changes of 4, 5, or 6 decades. So, much of your education should be in important but slowly changing fundamentals. E.g., you don’t want to devote your college education to just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Something important to understand that doesn’t change very fast? Sure, GIRLS! And people, mathematics, physical science, groups of people, the basics of politics, and the basics of economics.
(2) Work hard.
(3) Keep down spending and keep up savings. If you can save today, great, because there’s a big risk that for the next 10 years you won’t be able to.
(4) Have luck. For luck, keep trying and eventually the coin, dice, crumbling cookie will be in your favor and give you what you need. Be prepared so that when luck comes your way, you are able to take full advantage.
A basic fact is, it’s tough to have money enough for a house, home, and family as just an employee. Instead, if only an employee, then need some help, say, a license, some professional standing, a stable but specialized job, etc.
Exercise: Look around own neighborhood and town at houses that are homes with families and try to discover how they are making the money. Typically you will find a significant fraction are owners of successful local businesses. “Local” can be crucial: One of the best barriers to entry and, thus, business advantages is geographical. So, if are necessarily not in competition with anyone more than 50 miles away, then do well against competition in a radius of 50 miles and do well in absolute terms.
Warnings
The best on this planet is just magnificent stuff. But far too much of the rest is just about as bad as it can be and still exist at all. So, a major challenge is to filter out the bad stuff and go for the good stuff.
One of the main activities of others and threats to you, and maybe one of the main tools you need, is manipulation. Plenty of others are trying to manipulate you.
The media? The information you want and need? Rarely. Instead? Mostly just manipulation to get your eyeballs for the ads for the ad revenue. And 90+% of the content is from disgusting to much worse.
When listening to and trying to work with others? Always look for the hidden agenda.
Human females, starting at age 2 or even younger, are just magnificent at manipulating others and only improve that ability with age.
Warning — Bored Women
Girls and women are very easily bored. One reason to have a girl pursuing flute, violin, viola, or piano is to keep her in a good crowd and not bored.
Be warned: For a wife with children, by the time the youngest is in the first grade, too likely she can conclude that she really doesn’t have anything to do that she much cares about doing. To too many women, helping that youngest child through grade school, high school, and college and into a good marriage and/or career just doesn’t occur to them. And maybe one reason is, such help has been important only in the last few decades and before that for at least 40,000 years wasn’t very important.
One reason to marry a bright, well educated girl is that she can stay busy home schooling the children. Even then, it’s too easy for her to get bored.
If she gets a job that becomes successful, she can suddenly decide that she just doesn’t care about her marriage, state:
“I want my own life.”
and just leave, sometimes to just anything different, even if it is just miserable.
In an old movie there is a line that is too close to reality:
Friend: So, what happened to your daughter’s mother, your wife?
Father: She departed.
Friend: You mean she died?
Father: No, just departed.
It can be as if Mother Nature has a three year alarm clock in her: She has to have a new love or new baby at least each three years or Mother Nature will have her become unhappy and eager to leave to just anything different, even something obviously miserable, as if the only goal was to have her become pregnant again. And if out there on her own she can’t make it, then, for Mother Nature and Darwin, so much the better: She will become poor, tired, cold, hungry, and maybe sick and, then, eager to be really nice to a man who can take care of her, and then maybe she will get pregnant again. Yup, crude, cruel, but unfortunately too often too close to the truth.
Political Correctness
Definition: Political correctness is the norm that no one should ever feel uncomfortable, and if someone does feel uncomfortable then all of society is guilty and is obligated to correct the situation.
Of course, political correctness (PC) calls for something impossible. So, PC at least spreads guilt that as long as anyone is uncomfortable we all are vulnerable to being made uncomfortable or worse and, thus, should have anxiety and should correct the situation for the one feeling uncomfortable.
Of course, with much PC, society is seriously blocked from making effective decisions and, often, from functioning at all since nearly any action can be seen as politically incorrect for someone.
My guess is that PC has been a brilliant sabotage of US society, maybe by the old USSR.
Sources
For understanding people, emotions, love, marriage, anxiety, and religion,
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving.
For more on anxiety and, e.g., detecting anxiety in others,
David Shapiro, Neurotic Styles.
If the girl’s mother shows any of those symptoms, then ASAP LEAVE.
For more on how people act in public
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.
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Strong. Very strong.
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Cowboy. The. Fuck. Up.
This made me really smile!
How about: Stop. Whining, Bitch. Boy!
Your whole piece very well played.
Thanks again BRC!
I’ve printed out the quote you have about showing up early, staying late, and biting the ass off a grizzly and have it displayed above my desk. Thanks for the push!
Epic rant. Made my entire weekend that much better.
+1 for books. Reading challenging, good, worthwhile books is a surefire path to self improvement. May I suggest “The Liberation Trilogy” from Rick Atkinson? Covering one campaign per book (North Africa, Sicily/Italy, Western Europe), it will open one’s eyes.
+2 for calling out the scourge that is dudes in skinny jeans. Lord have mercy.
.
I have that Trilogy on order myself.
Yeah, skinny jeans. Ouch.
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Well said, I have a bumper sticker that says “Competition drives Innovation” looking in the rear view at university millennials reading that I am surprised at how many reject competition as a driver. This seems to me in conflict with the local Lean fail fast tech community meme.
We sharpen our selves against stone and test our metal in the arena! This is fun, fulfilling and universal in nature, College tries to educate this out of folks, it creates personality conflicts inside. For all the video game battle games this generation fails to enjoy striving, sweating, being out of control! ergo the weed, booze, virtual reality in all experiences!
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Are Millennials coming in for undue scrutiny and criticism? What does the Big Red Car think?
https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/millennial-males-modern-men/
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
#millennials