Author's Note:
Sufficient Velocity's moderator accused me of improper attitude towards women, and the SFW version of the fic was banned.Because I wanted to use the 14th chapter as an argument against the ban, I published earlier chapters ahead of schedule.For which I deeply apologize to my patrons.
Important disclaimer:
In this fic, the words "women" and "men" don't refer to modern Western people. They refer to "women" and "men" as they have always been; to their general characteristics.
It isn't my fault that so many different concepts are still named by the same words.
Also, I'll clarify one of the fic's main points.
Until recently, primates and humans propagated mainly by analogs of a "dog-tail-waves."
Modern people can indeed control such "dog-tail-waves" by consciousness. But to do so, they require knowledge about their existence. How do you control something you don't know about?
Such knowledge, in imperfect form, provides this fanfic.
In other words, telling the author that he "shouldn't show women as biorobots" is preaching to the choir. About which this chapter.
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"Cecile? I really hope not," Sebastian added, giving me a questioning look.
"No," I reassured them. "At least not for the next... week." I paused, thinking about the next topic. "Now we're going to do Better Feminism."
"A what?" Sebastian blurted out.
"Feminism?" Kathryn and Annette echoed in surprise.
"No, not feminism. The Better Feminism.
You see, I want to make this world a... memento of my first universe.
But my first world is slowly becoming a VERY shitty place. Somewhat similar to the late 1920s and early 1930s, but at a slower pace. Mainly because of a demographic crisis created by inefficient feminism.
So, in reverse, if I want to make this world better than my first one, I should fix feminism, birthrate, demographic crisis, and many related problems."
"Demographic crisis?" Sebastian asked, "It doesn't sound like an awful problem. More old people, right? Doesn't that also mean more... maturity, too? Especially with the technologies you've shown."
I shook my head. "Alas. With age, ignorance and stupidity don't necessarily decrease; they often become deeper and more entrenched. And due to advances in information technology - they gain more opportunities to spread among ignorant and stupid people.
But let's start from the very beginning..." I paused, collecting my thoughts.
"Overall, the main problem of the 2020s was stupidity. Which, broadly speaking, worked like this...
Humans are primates. And therefore possess primate-like instincts. For the sake of convenience, let's use the term 'instincts' for all innate behavior-related traits. Everything from sneezing due to sexual arousal and widespread fear of darkness to defensive anger reactions and survivorship bias.
Of course, humans aren't typical animals. We can consciously control our instincts. Do not suppress them, which is unhealthy, but understand and use them as tools.
Let's suppose that such control exists on a scale from 0% to 95%.
0% control is pure animalistic behavior. And 95% is the theoretical maximum for a person ideally educated in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Also, let's say that, on average, modern people have 70% instinctual control.
In other words, they understand and can influence 70% of their own innate qualities. Still with me?"
Everyone nodded.
"Now, during my time, there was a very good analogy for what I just described.
Imagine a human head as a room. In this room are a steering wheel, a hyperactive monkey, and an adult.
The less the adult understands and controls the monkey - the more the monkey steers the wheel toward the nearest pleasures. Or just jumps on it. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU ) I said while tapping my temple, causing a few fleeting smiles.
"In this analogy, 30% uncontrollable instincts means not only that 30% of the time the monkey does monkey's things, but also that the adult doesn't see 30% of the monkey's actions.
At all. Only the results. Part of them.
We all know people who often do illogical, stupid, repetitive, detrimental, impulsive, and similar things, right? Mainly because they poorly know themselves. Poorly understand their own inborn qualities and instincts and don't take them into account during their own deeds. Controllable or not.
On the contrary, there are people who understand humanity's inborn qualities VERY well, and through that knowledge, themselves as well.
The so-called 'well-read people.' For obvious reasons, because before the Internet, books were the best source of information about humanity and its most common inborn qualities.
Before it became possible to unify such inborn qualities into lists with understandable examples.
Before the Internet made it possible to receive 'well-readness' without books.' Through two simple things:
First - via understanding of inborn qualities lists.
Second - via practicing and rooting that knowledge through role-play.
And through such steps, essentially turn stupid people into analogs of Benjamin Franklin, Roger Ebert, Stephen King, George Lucas, Isaac Asimov, Larry King, and so on. People who, depending on the situation, would suppress the most harmful inborn qualities and use the most useful ones.
Now, let's talk about feminism.
We have Cecile Caldwell. A very naïve girl.
How to make her more competitive than Sebastian? Or even a female version of the men I just mentioned? No, I'm fully serious, how to make a new Benjamin Franklin out of Cecile?
Simply by giving her a better understanding of her feminine and human inborn qualities. So she has better control over herself and better understands other people. In one pack.
Which, because women have better empathy and emotional intelligence, should be even easier than if she were a man.
Simple and logical, right?
If it's so simple and logical, why feminism, instead of researching and discussing women's and human inborn qualities, do the exact opposite and claim that such things aren't inborn, but a result of cultural influence, and if not, just unimportant?
It's not a rhetorical question. What do you think?"
"The same as in our case with Cecile? Because this would make our use of her more difficult?" asked Sebastian.
"Jackpot," I said. "But let's start from the proper chronology.
Before the early 1970s, everything was on the right track. Feminism achieved a major victory with Legal Equality and began pursuing Real Equality. That could be achieved only via equal efficiency and provision.
Yes, men possess such a significant competitive advantage as testosterone's bonus towards initiative, and innovation as a form of 'aggressive change for the better.'
But women also had similar, mostly untapped advantages in empathy and emotional intelligence. Therefore, even in the 1970s, feminism could have prioritized the study of them, and other inborn traits such as better hearing, or better attention and memorizing of details.
But it didn't. Among many reasons, because the 1970s had a lot of prudes who despised the words 'human instincts.'
Religious prudes hated the idea that humans are primates.
Intellectual prudes were laughably similar because they saw themselves above nature and believed that instincts shouldn't be understood and used by anyone, but either suppressed or exploited for social-engineering projects. Which was horribly wrong for many reasons.
Female prudes feared that exposure of women's better emotional intelligence would lead to accusations of manipulativeness and mental violence. And wanted so that 'bestial' rhetoric was applied only to men. Despite the fact that everyone had already seen in schools how mentally nonviolent women could be. Especially toward other women.
And all such prudes, along with politicians, bureaucrats, and big business, didn't want to lose their control over 'pro-women' and 'social progress' rhetoric.
So instead of increasing women's real competitiveness, they used psycholinguistic theories to essentially claim: 'Women are already doing everything they can, so it's men who are thwarting their trying and who should be changed through Cultural Corrections, and Positive Discrimination!' Distracting public attention with such pseudoscientific nonsense as patriarchy theory and—"
"Wait, wait, what's wrong with patriarchy theory? You deny that historically men had more power than women?" asked Kathryn.
I sigh. And by a patriarchal patronizing tone said, "Kathryn. During the last millennium, power was controlled not by men but by religious traditions, which were avidly supported first and foremost by women. For an obvious reason: such traditions limited men through monogamous norms and stated that men would burn in hell if they didn't support their mothers, wives, and children.
But you are right that men indeed had more social power. But the reason for this was purely practical and economical.
Men could respond more efficiently to emergencies of that time, so they often did so without consulting women. Again, mainly for women's sake.
Also, men were more efficient in relation to typical environmental risks.
A simple example. Suppose very soon you will be teleported to the distant past. To an unknown place and time. You can take one helper with you, either a woman or a man with similar knowledge. Whom would you take?
Don't answer. You're not suicidal, so we both know your answer would be a man. Because his inborn advantages — plus 40% strength and aggressiveness slash initiative — in most possible situations would be more practically useful than another woman's help.
But if his characteristics are more useful to you than yours are to him, what exactly is wrong with the idea that he should also have a higher social status in an environment where his characteristics are more useful?"
For the sake of decency, I gave her time to answer. But what could she answer? Only appeal to the value of future children's help. That wasn't enough because of their enormous cost to the man's helper, too. Moreover, during his isolation from post‑Mesopotamian pro‑childbearing religious propaganda, which historically bound men to social obligations towards women, exactly in the case of such emergency situations as proposed.
"Patriarchy narrative is snake oil selling with anti-medicine barkers. A scam for people who don't know history and that diverts attention away from genuine solutions for improving women's personal competitiveness."
"A scam created by whom?" Kathryn asked skeptically.
"By people who profited from it.
During such a scam, 'pro-women' politicians still received women's votes because of 'women-oriented' narratives.
'Pro-women' corporations still got cheap women's labor and profits from more efficient women-oriented marketing tricks.
'Pro-women' feminists still could sell their books about bad men.
'Pro-women' prudes still could 'fight for equality by protecting women.'
'Pro-women' women could continue to believe that they are better than men because they don't reduce men's competitiveness, while aggressive and oversexualized big apes do.
Almost everyone received at least some profit, even despite the absence of potentially painful reforms. And wanted continuation of such profiting, much more than real equality.
So, for decades, things just freeze. Of course, still with some benign inertia from feminism before the 1970s. Which 'pro-women' people passed for their own achievements. When, in reality, things were essentially drowned in red herrings and inefficiency.
Children created by women. Women-related ideology named feminism. Therefore, problems with children should be resolved, at least partially, via feminism and its "women specialists."
They weren't. At all.
Instead, during the deterioration of the demographic transition towards demographic crisis, feminism aggravated demographic problems by deepening misunderstanding and distrust between women and men.
Fast-forward to the late 2020s. A period of social decline and perhaps the first stage of social collapse.
The median age in Western countries is around 46 years. And because half the population is child-free, it will soon be over 55.
Many women behave like men while simultaneously fearing men and masculinity. And many men seek femininity mainly in entertainment.
Almost every gender-related metric — except workforce-related — is deteriorating. Especially happiness. Partly because anti-men rhetoric has taken away from women and men many things that made them happy during the previous 300,000 years.
Society is becoming almost senile: forgetful, conservative, infantile, and erratically aggressive.
Culture is drowning in nostalgia and repetition.
Politics is dominated by elderly leaders incapable of understanding modern challenges.
Liberalism discredited itself through an insane sunk-cost fallacy regarding 'cultural corrections' and rather unliberal paternalism. There is a massive demand for conservatives who promise a 'return to the past' but who are fully incapable of controlling which parts of the past they actually bring back.
Economic growth stagnates under the combined pressures of demographic decline and social conformism. The resulting labor shortages are compensated via immigration and automation by corporations that, because of Reaganomics, are largely untaxed. Each comes with its own shitshows. Shitshows without alternatives because a growing number of old people want to compensate for a growing number of problems with larger pensions from dwindling pension funds.
And the best solution against such problems, the reduction of stupidity by widespread understanding of one's own nature? It becomes even less possible because of the rise of prudishness and conservatism."
"Like the cat hunts during the medieval plague..." said Annette.
"Yes, something like that. Not quite that bad, but moving in that direction without any impediments. As I already said, very similar to how it was just before the Great Depression and the Second World War." I said. "Of course, during such crises, feminism is dying too. If someone in the late 2020s tried to claim that all these problems needed to be resolved via feminism reformation, no one would believe it, because feminist rhetoric was largely out of date. Feminism has become forgotten. Irrelevant."
"Sorry. I don't get it. If feminism aggravated demographic crisis, that was the biggest problem of your time, how could mentions about it become irrelevant?" asked Kathryn.
"It's very simple. The more urgent problems - the less people are prone to think about long-term solutions.
Demographic crisis? Yep, let's fix it by migration and technologies. Especially technologies, because people are unpredictable and problematic, technologies aren't.
Feminism reformation for the sake of more children? Nope. Solutions that may yield results after a decade aren't solutions.
Also, because women overall lose relevance.
Women gained rights and power largely because the prospect of a +50% increase in the workforce promised enormous profits to anyone who could capitalize on it.
The demographic crisis; disgruntled men already with ever-improving digital catgirls; the destruction of traditionally women's jobs by Artificial Intelligence and robots, and other factors — including rising sentiments that the workforce and people no longer really need to make money — sharply reduced women's socioeconomic value and importance.
And because one of the solutions for the mentioned problems was artificial wombs — essentially gateways to feudalism — out of post-1970s feminism, women risk losing even what they had before feminism.
The greatest tragedies are indeed the greatest comedies..."
"And flying cars?" Sebastian asked, trying to lighten the mood.
"Yes," I replied with a faintly amused smile.
"But?" he asked warily.
"They belong to corporations and mostly operate as taxis and buses for the ultra-rich. Basically, more expensive and rarer helicopters."
"You really know how to kill the mood. Does the future have at least something good?" Sebastian said in a chagrined voice.
"Cheap big TVs and porn. And I'm not here to improve your moods. I'm here to clean up other people's shit instead of creating my own robo-catgirls like a normal person of my generation," I seriously stated to stop budding 'Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile.'
"Max, and what are we supposed to do about it?" Annette asked apologetically.
"The funny thing is that fixing feminism will require using something it already uses, just completely incorrectly. Essentially, we need to strip its 'cultural corrections' down to one core idea: the enormous social value of understanding oneself through knowledge about innate human nature.
Which is much harder than it sounds. Because the 1990s were the peak of feminism. When it was still almost like a religion.
So, if we just outright state that feminist prudes are playing for the other team, and for the sake of downplaying mental abuse and making rich people richer, millions of people would literally become hysterical. Despite any projections about just theoretical future problems. 2030s? Even if we are right, most of them would be dead by this point.
No, we will present our alternative form of feminism as just an experimental student subculture with some Internet innovations.
The rough timeline would look something like this:
It all started when Kathryn read Annette's A Virgin Manifesto.
Kathryn tracked down Annette's email and called her a rabid hound of the patriarchy. A misogynistic bitch who impedes women from satisfying their natural sexual needs and makes them suffer because of it.
Which wouldn't make Annette so much angry as confused.
Because.
Annette.
Doesn't.
Have.
Those needs.
Annette asks Kathryn about it. And they both realize that they have absolutely no fucking idea what normal female sexuality is actually supposed to look like.
And if they don’t even know that much about women, what else don’t they know? And why?
So they will decide to create a project called Sex Atlas, dedicated to researching and publicly documenting every innate difference between men and women, both in natural and modern environments.
And to do so, they will need someone to build a website for them..."
"You," said Annette.
"Obviously. A brilliant programmer who just happens to have spent several years working on an innovative online forum.
Two of you — without any patriarchal contamination from my fragile masculinity — create a new manifesto and publish it on an innovative website funded by you."
"And what would be in the manifest?" asked Kathryn.
"At first, just a few inconsistencies about feminism.
For example, Kathryn states that before she started questioning feminism, she always implicitly believed that her sexual fantasies about sexual violence were a serious psychological deviation created by patriarchal propaganda. And asks women how abnormal this is and how many of them believe in mainstream feminism's position that such fantasies are the result of patriarchal culture rather than a biological norm.
Women's sexuality is almost fully about the future child's father's defense qualities and their symbolism. Only by this will we prove that mainstream feminism suppresses women's sexuality and essentially distracts women with bullshit.
To which you will propose to start scrutinizing and learning 'inborn norms.'
Using the previously mentioned logical reasoning about inborn qualities, self-understanding, self-control, stupidity, and women's competitiveness analogous to testosterone.
A small list of the most important innate traits.
And rules for roleplay that should help to see such traits from many perspectives and root such knowledge."
"I don't get why we should add 'role-playing?' At least from the very beginning," said Sebastian.
"Because that's exactly what will attract students' attention and help solve the demographic crisis.
We will present such a role-play via the evolution of wedding rings: a wristband made of two colored strips, tentatively called Elis, perhaps the same as our subculture.
The first strip indicates how well a person understands innate human inclinations, from basic anthropology all the way to a comprehensive understanding of inborn human nature. Indirectly, it would also signal how well someone controls their animal impulses, how their capacity for cooperation, and how trustworthy they are. And in fine print - how stupid they are.
The second strip indicates whether someone is looking for a partner and, if so, what kind. With some additional attributes, we could encode dozens of main preferences and hundreds of specific ones.
Also, simply wearing the wristband would signal that a person is open to consideration of social proposals. ANY social proposals," I said, pausing to emphasize the key point.
"Gamification... You're planning to replace dating with contracts?" Annette asked, beginning to see where I was going.
"Not exactly," I replied. "More like normalizing the social contract in any social interaction, but only among verifiably reasonable and trustworthy people. Make from modern shards of feudal and industrial norms a simple, voluntary, reliable constructor."
"And what would stop people from faking the wristband colors?" asked Sebastian.
"Simple questions and cross-checking answers with our brochures or via the Internet. Someday, through our site. None of those details is important right now. What matters is the big picture and the practical benefits for local students.
Right now, young women are dissatisfied that men bother them on the street. An alternative to this is the destruction of the most interesting parts of courtship for both sexes. So named 'Console At Home.' The proposed wristband solves that problem.
And if you see an attractive stranger, you have no idea how reasonable, or open to ANY proposals, they are. The wristband will solve this too. Drastically reducing the risk of rejection and increasing social engagement.
Degree of utility for sex flings? YES. Some people, of course, would overuse this. But typical human minds cannot just endlessly fuck with strangers without the constant risk of becoming attached to one of them.
In the long run, the wristbands would also help reduce social distrust, isolation, fear of strangers, the modern level of stupidity and different future manifestations of societal brain rot, and so on. At least within our subculture."
"And how exactly does that solve the birth-rate problem you mentioned?" asked Annette.
"Throughout most of history, the primary source of new children was teenage pregnancy. That, for many reasons, is just wrong. But to replace it, we require something BIG.
Mass production of smart people from stupid people by simple knowledge and frequent socialization events, during which they could fuck with almost zero social risks, is exactly such BIG thing.
Don't underestimate the social contracts I've proposed. Among other things, they could include any aspects of conception, pregnancy, and childcare.
Some women want a child exactly from Sebastian and want to raise that child with another heterosexual woman? Well, if all parties could control their own head monkeys, and everything was voluntary, they could just ask each other."
"And who will guarantee consent and compliance with the contract rules?"
"At the start, no one. Then we implement public profiles and ratings on our site.
Of course, there would be problems. Even water kills hundreds of thousands of people each year. But such sideways problems would be self-regulated by the fact that we essentially will make our Mensa with the best 'Blackjack and Hookers' ever possible, but without overspecialized, rigid, impractical morons.
At some point, we would simply throw to our people part of our profits, and they would start competing with each other for this money in related investigation ratings."
"Still no good, man... you're basically trying to take our job," Sebastian sighed and mock-whined. "But this is still kind of funny. You're offering Kathryn exactly what she wanted in the movie by taking away the only thing she's good at."
"Wait..." Kathryn said, staring at Sebastian before suddenly looking at me with wide eyes. "You want everyone to understand emotional manipulation too... so nobody can use it anymore?" she asked in awe.
"No. I want everyone to understand all innate human traits, including emotional vulnerabilities and emotional manipulation... and start using them within voluntary entertainment frameworks. In the same way as it happened with entertainment derivatives of hunting and war.
I want to take paltry rock tools that women use today for the sake of petty goals and create a safe sandbox where they can productively for anyone develop their natural advantages and competitiveness.
And overall, increase the complexity of socialization and sexual and non-sexual role-play to such a dramatic degree that it becomes one of the primary drivers of humanity's self-awareness, rationality, and progress."
"But it would still just be games, wouldn't it?" Sebastian pressed.
"More like steering people in a constructive direction. Look, I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong.
Consider it this way: right now, yes, you can 'for real' seduce virgins.
But how many of the smartest New York virgins will ASK you to seduce them according to rules you have publicly published? Zero, right? Because so far, such things could happen only with the help of very large amounts of money, or never.
How many 'players' are better than you in New York, and how easy is it for you to find them and arrange a safe, mutually enjoyable game? Sexual and not.
Today, you can hire a prostitute who almost certainly will just lie in bed and do nothing.
Thirty years from now, you might walk up to a woman wearing the right wristband, offer a similar amount of money, and with substantial possibility, she would perfectly play whatever personality archetype or scenario you want. Perhaps for free, for the sake of her own enjoyment, and to train her mental competitiveness.
Moreover, because of such a proposal, many people would call you a great feminist who decided to spend money not on corporate goods but on developing her self-awareness, improvisation, cognitive capabilities, competitiveness, thereby advancing rational humanity in a humane way.
You and Kathryn are just two amateurs surrounded by amateurs. Analogs of pre-industrial hunters. I'm talking about an industry that would start creating stealth bombers and Carrier Strike Groups by millions of people with the mental capabilities of the best modern representatives of humanity and dozens of sexual and not Leonardo da Vinci.
All the technological progress I've shown? All of it would be part of the proposed ecosystem."
"And if my fetish is stupid people?" he joked.
"Then you will have your stupid people because there would never be a shortage of them, despite any of our efforts."
"Fine. Let's assume it works. How exactly are we supposed to make money from this? By selling plastic wristbands?" Kathryn asked, clearly tired of the theoretical discussion.
"We don't really need to earn money from this... philanthropic project, because I have a long list of profitable ideas for other functions of my site.
But because, for anyone else, everything related to feminism would be your and Annette's part of our business, you would indeed make some money 'by selling wristbands.'
New York and Boston have enormous numbers of universities and students. And I, from many other worlds, would have a lot of scenarios.
So we combine them...
Full self-organization.
Students will test each other on inborn knowledge and assign knowledge tiers to each other that would determine their pay rate.
Will play 'scenarios we bought from other students' before the public and on camera.
Will rate videos and, if needed, reshoot with better decorations for commercialization.
Then we would sell the best results on our site — small downloadable teasers and full versions — and pay the most successful students from our profits.
At the same time, we would pick the best of the best for our teams and for more profitable stuff.
Young brains. Plus a complete understanding of human nature. Plus improvisation skills. We will flood our team, and later the USA, with geniuses, guys, money just makes itself from this."
"And time? I mean, what you've described so far needs years," sighed Sebastian, perhaps already feeling future headaches from the enormous amount of future work.
"As I already said, soon money wouldn't be a problem, and neither would good candidates, so delegate and speed things up."
"Money from what exactly?" asked Kathryn, also in a strained, fatigued voice.
"From a tag search engine with Akinator algorithms, of course," I said seriously, prompting Kathryn to start rubbing her temples.