Breaking the neck of Western Individualism

Fast question: when was the last time you saw a good father figure in a movie?? A real father, in an important role. The guy who goes home to his wife and kids who love him and respect him.

Think hard. You’ll need a while. In TV series, the last occurrence of such a character was jack Geller, the father of Monica and Ross in Friends.
Before that? The clue being – an important character.
Colonel Potter in MASH.

Ever wondered how come most dads in the western media since the 50s onwards were naïve, doddering idiots, incompetents, then lazy, then just simply divorced?
It’s been going on since TV became a thing, and it moved slowly with the societal mores.
 Actually, it moved ahead of them.
The dads after WW2 went from being the patriarchs to doddering old fools whose wives and kids constantly ran rings around, alcoholics and basically good for nothings.

Why? Because until then the thought of a family without a Dad was unthinkable. Even if your dad died in the war, Grandpa or Uncle stepped in and kept the home straight.

But you see, then the movies and TV started telling people that dads weren’t that special.

It’s a funny thing that- adults know better but it’s not for adults. It’s for the kids. They know Beaver is smarter than his dad so somewhere in their heads they all think they’re Beaver.

It’s subtle and powerful. Within a decade divorces were through the roof. Because the public consciousness had been trained to accept that dads were nothing special and whoever needed them anyway?

The media is a very powerful tool in altering the public consciousness. People don’t realize it, but all civilizations need a mythos. We all tell stories and those stories shape our aspirations and dreams.

Normally, the mythos developed naturally by a society displays the actual values of that society. Pop culture is externally imposed mythos, and the purpose is to change the society’s moral landscape.

What else did we see? The demonizing of the loner. Loners are an integral part of any healthy society, and the West is built on individualism. But in the US mass produced pop culture, the loner went to being a potential villain and always someone you should stay away from.

The loner is always a loser.

The good “cool” people were the ones who ran with the crowd, weren’t they?

Oh, that “cool”. An artificially created term that came to embody everything the system wanted people to aspire to be. People? Not all people. Kids. The ones who will be the next obedient generation.

The cool kids didn’t listen to their parents. The cool kids didn’t care about school. The cool kids cared more about music and cars and making out than about respecting their parents and being good people.

The cool kids knew what they had to buy to be cool. What clothes, what cars, what drinks, what music.
“Cool” was a genius marketing move whose purpose was to take kids away from their parents’ example and influence and make them into little “cool” media obedient drones.

The kids. Movies through the 60s, 70s and 80s made it very clear that being a loner wasn’t “cool” and all you had to do to be happy and have friends was to obey and follow the crowd. The sinister and oft repeated stories of the bookish girl turned into a “pretty one” by the magic of makeup, skimpy clothes and giving up their glasses carried a heavy message- “nobody needs you to think or read, just follow the crowd and above everything, look like everyone else”.

This is nothing but weaponized peer pressure, and it goes further.

When was the last time you saw an actual hero in a movie? A real one? Someone with a purpose and training and goals who got people to follow him by his will and charisma alone?

You didn’t. The guys with the training and the goal? They’re the villains, and they always die. Our recent stories all have reluctant heroes, pathetic beta males thrown in the thick of action who somehow manage to make it by the skin of their teeth and incredible feats of luck while the real heroes die because, well, they’re in fact villains.

But… our natural European mythos praises the hero. Our heroes are not regular joes who got thrown into the fray and somehow managed after trying to run from responsibility. The West’s natural mythos has heroes like Achilles and Hercules, who knew who they were, who trained and did their quests, who had a purpose and followed it and eventually reached it. Our fairytales aren’t about cowherds who accidentally become heroes, they’re about princes and noblemen with a purpose.

The accidental hero trope is another deep manipulation of the western psyche into abandoning the long successful tradition of western individualism. What is the point in having a purpose and preparing when a joe nobody with weak arms and a big nose will always defeat you?

Heroes, the men with a purpose, became pathologised. Having a goal and ambition became a bad thing and the slacker became the hero.

Because if that guy who’s just like you in the movies can be a hero without never having to work for it then so can you right? What’s the point of working for what you want when obviously you’ll be thrown in a heroic story, make it to the end and get the girl through sheer luck?

This is how you breed meritocracy and individualism out of people. This is why our sons and useless and weak, falling behind in school, hiding in virtual worlds of anime and videogames. Because for decades the media has told them they didn’t need anything more to be heroes, and we allowed it.

The guys who trained for years got defeated by a scrawny kid whose old demented teacher uses him for unpaid yardwork. What worse message can you send to your boys if you want them to never achieve anything?

The tough guys that used to be the leaders of our mythos and who carved the European success out of a cold and hard world have been transformed into dysfunctional abusive and/or alcoholic bastards who always end up badly because they hurt the feelings of the oh so sweet and entitled heroine who couldn’t possibly do anything wrong even when she lied, stole and been basically one of the most disgusting creatures anyone would ever want to be around.

But no, we laughed at Lucy and how she lied and manipulated her husband, and we taught our daughters that wives should treat their husbands like crap, lie to them and get all they wanted at any cost… and then wondered why they ended up divorced at 35.

We took the glow of the hero away from the little boy’s eyes and made them feel that attempting to achieve anything will turn them into villains, while being a lazy loser is how you become the hero, then we wonder why they underperform and are unmotivated.

We took the authority of fatherhood away from them and then we wonder why so many kids are junkies, alcoholics and aimless.

And yes, we did it all, as a society. Every time you put your kids in front of the TV you stole their future from them.
Everyone who ever had a TV did.

This is why we’re weak. This is why, under assault by uncivilized savages, the middle aged westerners would rather allow their daughters and wives be murdered and raped than take a stand. Because they’ve been indoctrinated to believe having a spine is a bad idea, because their individualism was stolen from them.

By their parents, by their friends, by their society.

By everyone who ever owned a TV.

This is why France, a nation under siege who sees its children raped and murdered in the streets, who sees an innocent priest get decapitated in his church and every day attacks on its people can’t possibly gather together enough of a pair of balls to go and vote for the candidate who wants to stop the massacre because having your children murdered is a lot less painful than being called a bad name.

This is also why the first generation in 30+ years to stand and say no are the Gen Z, the aughts generation. The first generation raised without a TV but with the free flow information of the internet is going solidly right.

You want to do something for your children right now?
Put your foot through the TV and then throw it off the window.