“Deserves” is a childish word

“Deserves” is a childish word and the people concerned with what they “deserve” are often childish, if not outright narcissistic. The topic arises cause a guy I know is with a woman whose aspiration in life is to get married, it seems. Not BE married, GET married (the difference matters). She doesn’t want kids. Weird, right? Why bother with the marriage except for social status and kids? She doesn’t want the “kids” part of marriage, the part that really matters, so it’s pure social status for her, I guess. If that weren’t enough, my buddy (we’ll call him Steve) has read and been ensorcelled by the sex club book, so he wants to try non-monogamy. Steve has good communication skills, so he’s been negotiating out what the life with him and the woman should look like, since they want different things. He’s talked to her and not come to a final conclusion, in part probably because the girl fucks really well and is hot, two things known in combination to beguile men. There are FDA warnings about such women.

They were talking and the girl said she “deserves to get married” and “deserves to be excited about getting married.” I say “said” instead of “argued” because “I deserve to get married” isn’t an argument. Adults know that people don’t get what they deserve all the time. People also often don’t get what they do deserve, to the extent any of those things are computable at all.

I’m not opposed to people “getting what they deserve…” justice and fairness are based partially on those lofty goals. But “deserve” has so many dimensions that trying to compute them, let alone talk about them, seems futile. “Deserves” may not even be a linear system, so something like linear algebra may only be useful for approximations, not the real thing. The real world has very large, maybe infinitely large, matrices that include many variables for “deserve.” Does someone who works hard and makes a lot of money but is an asshole “deserve” the money? Does someone who is a good person who gives away too much value “deserve” to get that value leeched? I don’t know, and a person could generate an infinite number of such questions, with no final answer. Life is not solvable.

Adults figure this out and mostly don’t talk about what they “deserve,” and instead work to make the world and their world a better place. Adults talk about what we’ve earned. Xbtusd heard about this story and observed that he “doesn’t deserve shit.” That’s cause he’s a guy who earns things. That attitude is one small but important reason he fucks, while a lot of guys whine. Losers whine about their best, winners go home and fuck the prom queen (that link goes to an excerpt of a movie made before Hollywood became woke and boring). Imagine if I went around telling people that I “deserve” to fuck “hot barely legal teens.” They’d laugh me out of town, I’d have no friends, and I’d deserve the laughter and derision I’d get.[1]

There’s a key male-female difference here, in that men mostly have to earn our value while women get it delivered via puberty. Eggs are scarce and sperm is common. Women invest vastly more in reproduction than men, and thus are the pickier sex, and from that basic asymmetry springs a whole panoply of sexual behaviors and game theory. Fertile women who manage to be height-weight proportionate, get enormous and near-automatic sexual market value delivered to them between puberty and their mid to late 30s. Men have to develop and master skills to get sexual-market value. Men who fail to do that often wind up genetic losers. Our society and media is endlessly concerned with any problems or discomforts women might face, no one gives a fig about male losers. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m saying it’s true. There are many opportunities for guys who earn our value, in a world with lots of whiners in it.

In THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING Gandalf says, “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.” He gets that “deserve” is tricky. That’s the famous quote. When Boromir is trying to steal the One Ring from Frodo, much like a man might unfairly try to steal a woman’s virtue, he says, “It is not yours save by unhappy chance. It might have been mine. It should be mine. Give it to me!” He doesn’t use the word “deserves” but that’s what he means. He gives Frodo an out, “You can lay the blame on me, if you will. You can say that I was too strong and took it by force.” No, Boromir, the world does not work on a “deserves” basis. Ukraine does not “deserve” to be invaded by Russia, but it has the misfortune of being located next to a country ruled by a mad and power-hungry dictator, so there it is. Ukrainians managed to throw off the yoke of oppression in 2014, a period when the average American guy was most concerned about whether his graphics card was fast enough to play Halo. Think about that.

There’s a funny passage in a book called STRAIGHT MAN,

My daughter likes television, too, and I suspect that her thought process has been corrupted by advertising. Like many Americans, she no longer understands the meaning of simple words. She sees nothing absurd in the assertion “you deserve a break today” when it’s applied across the entire spectrum of society. She believes she’s worth the extra money she spends on her hair. Several of her friends have big houses. Doesn’t she deserve one too? Is she worth less than her friends?

Naturally, the male narrator is describing his daughter, not his son. The Last Psychiatrist has much to say about advertising, too, “Luxury Branding The Future Leaders Of The World” and “Advertising’s Collateral Damage” are good places to start. The more you read THE LAST PSYCHIATRIST (but you don’t, because you lack the attention span, it’s okay, I understand), the better you will understand modern culture. Most people are so immersed in bullshit advertising that we no longer even recognize that we are. What can we do to get away from that? Read books, lol, no, too busy, I have to update my Instagram.

The male narrator of STRAIGHT MAN  understands the “deserve” and “worth” are somewhat absurd words. Who protests that something “isn’t fair?” Usually, children. Adults learn life’s not fair. We should try to make it fairer, whatever that means. You might notice a lot of socialists talk a lot about what’s “fair” or “deserved…” they’re also work-shy. There’s been a gathering of lazy people at a site called “antiwork,” which is where people magically think they “deserve” things, things that’ve been earned by the rest of us. Elon Musk might think humanity deserves to go to Mars, but the only way to make that happen is by building the rockets that’ll take us there.

Steve’s girl is drifting. I don’t want to get into details, but she’s hit her late 20s and is still doing a dubious, worthless form of school, although one that is fortunately being paid for by her parents, so she won’t become unmarriagable through student loans. Colleges and universities have become huge grifters. Her friends are not entirely dissimilar, in that they are wandering, pointlessly. She wants a dog, not a child, like many dysfunctional contemporary people. Like a lot of modern urban women, they’ve not managed to have families. So what do they do when they’re not working / “working?” Idly scroll Instagram, go out and do a little partying… not much of anything, really. Indulging in narcissism. The girl’s not bringing much to the table, apart from her pussy. That’s a dangerous position for a woman.

She’s fantasized about “getting married” but has little conception of what “being married” entails. She gets to the other side of the wedding and honeymoon and…then what? That’s life. She’ll become disaffected and bored. She’ll think she deserves more excitement in her life than her husband can give her. Like many teens indulging fantasies of how mental illness and body dysmorphia will transform their lives for the better (hint: it won’t), she’s not sure. Building a life together often isn’t glamorous. Soulful, beautiful, etc., yes, but not glamorous. Does she think she “deserves” excitement? When another girl’s boyfriend broke up with her, Steve’s girl said, “She doesn’t deserve this.” Doesn’t “deserve” to get broken up with? What?! Girls dump their boyfriends all the time, do the guys “deserve” that? Not being a jerk is good, but many men are labeled “jerks” for having boundaries, pursuing our goals, and so on. Many people break up for all sorts of reasons.

Wanting to “get married” is like saying you want to “be successful.” What’s that even mean? Does it mean you’ll start a startup? Become a Navy SEAL? Open your own construction company? Be emotionally stable? Who knows? “Success” lacks sufficient resolution to discuss properly. Steve’s girl is smart in some ways but poorly motivated and doesn’t realize life isn’t something that happens to her, it’s something she does. I don’t know what Steve is going to do… like me, he’s probably historically been focused on too short a time horizon, but that may now be changing for him. Not all questions have right answers. Life’s not a math test. Usually.

If you’ve read Red Quest for a long time you’ll have learned that the germ of this work is getting laid, but the ultimate purpose is how to think about life in a world adrift of meaning and purpose. Getting laid is a base level, but there are many above it.

[1]DO I deserve barely legal teens? Of course, but that’s besides the point.