Polyamory: if you're overtly hostile toward monogamy, some people are going to be hostile toward you.

—————

What's your problem, J.Q.?  That video ("Sexual Liberation NOW") really is Melissa speaking her mind: she's not trying to convince you of anything, she's basically saying that she's pissed off about how things turned out for her.  She played the game by her own rules, and she's now 31, etc., worried about how her life is going to be from 31 to 41.  Why would you find this difficult to relate to?  Why would you find it insincere?  And, above all else, why leave an insulting comment (publicly stated) within my Patreon?

—————

I find it insincere because of the way she relays it. It does not seem authentic. What it appears to be is her trying to convince herself that this is what she wants. She appropriates your mannerisms, she tries to be emphatic, and she also tries to make the claim that this is what the audience should want. [Emphasis added by E.M.]  Her justifications are incoherent. Are we really to believe that having sex with someone is essential for intellectual and emotional connection? Does she really want to settle for someone who is only interested in what she has to say to the extent they want to fuck her? I don’t believe it. I would not want it to be that way. I would not settle for it and, frankly, I find it immoral.

I forgot to add that her attempts to be emphatic really fall flat. And that is a crucial part of what makes it so unconvincing.

—————

Re: "I find it insincere because of the way she relays it. It does not seem authentic."

IT IS AUTHENTIC.  THAT'S WHO SHE REALLY IS.  THAT'S WHAT SHE'S REALLY LIKE.  DEAL WITH IT.

You have some made up notion of who she's supposed to be in your head, and you're just wrong.

Re: "She appropriates your mannerisms, she tries to be emphatic…"

Neither of those statements is true: (1) her voice is nothing like mine, nor are her hand gestures (seriously, are you fucking crazy?) and (2) the point of the video IS NOT TO BE EMPATHETIC at all.  It's a series of "I want" statements.  She's talking about what she wants, and she's talking about how pissed off she is that (so far) she hasn't been able to get it in life.

You are seriously delusional bro: you're not just "mis-interpreting" the video, you're living in a parallel universe.

Re: "And that is a crucial part of what makes it so unconvincing."

What do you think the video is trying to convince you of?  That she's pissed off and wants things she can't have —or, at least, that she wants things that she hasn't been able to get during the last few years?  Why would you need to be convinced of that?

Re: "Does she really want to settle for someone who is only interested in what she has to say to the extent they want to fuck her? I don’t believe it. I would not want it to be that way. I would not settle for it and, frankly, I find it immoral."

That's on you, bro: she's telling you what she wants, and she's telling you what she's willing to tolerate (as a second rate substitute) if she can't get it.

Try watching it again without this pent up hostility: your whole attitude of "I DON'T BELIEVE IT" is utter horse shit.  There is nothing for you to believe or disbelieve in the video.

And again: she is not trying to be empathetic.  The video is very direct: you don't need "to read between the lines", you just need to set aside your hostility (and morally superior "disbelief") to hear what she's saying ON THE LINES.

Why is it hard for you to believe?  Do you think there are zero women on planet earth who want what she says she wants… or do you only believe that women with tattoos and dreadlocks want it?  Why would it be hard to believe her when she says she's only had sex with two men (!) and she wants to significantly increase her "body count"?  You can't relate to that?

How many sexual partners had you had by the age of 31?  You can't sympathize?

—————

The word I used is ‘emphatic’: she attempts to vigorously assert that this is what she wants, and it utterly fails to convey the emotion. It seems like she is acting. Badly.

You cannot see the way she mimics you because you are not really an audience member. It is incredibly obvious to anyone who has watched you for a while. 

She is trying to convince the audience that polyamory is the way forward, and she is a poor representative. You have spoken of her issues with jealousy in the past. This video is not helping her case. She may not be trying to convince the audience that this is what she wants, but her performance on screen is what I find unconvincing. Again, the delivery is very inauthentic.

I am 25 and have had 6 partners. I have a girlfriend now, and I don’t feel the need to sleep with anyone else because my sexual needs are met by my girlfriend. Maybe that will change in the future but, to me, sex is just sex. I don’t need to sleep with anyone to have a meaningful connection. 

—————

J.Q.,

Look at her hand gestures throughout the video.

It's only 5 minutes long: watch it again, focussing on her hands.

Now just pay attention to her voice.

Imagine how I would say it, if I were conveying the same idea.

She doesn't speak in the same manner as Eisel Mazard: NOT AT ALL.  Neither in terms of emotion nor intonation no vocabulary nor anything else.

Even the eye contact she makes with the camera is unlike me.  Utterly unlike me.

You have become committed to a delusion: you see something that isn't there.  A mirage.

Dude, you are not 50 percent wrong: you are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT WRONG about this.

That is Melissa's real voice: that's what she sounds like when she's pissed off.

She's not acting: you don't know her --and that's because you never made an effort to get to know her.

You've been watching my channel for five years, right?

You still don't know the first thing about her.  This is the realest video she's ever made and you think it's fake.

—————

Hahahaha I see. Because you don’t perceive it, it is a delusion.

—————

Dude, you're delusional: you've invented a story in your head (that Melissa is "acting", and that she doesn't REALLY mean what she's very clearly and directly saying) to deal with your own sexual inadequacy.

Why do you think you're so freaked out by the idea that someone who has only had sex with two people (at age 31) might want to reach the grand total of ten or twenty sexual partners by the age of 41?  Why would that be so challenging to your worldview that you've got to have this defensive reaction?

I know why.  You don't.

[Cf. Sky's reaction in our Valentine's Day interview.  Ultimately, he just admits that he would be too jealous to allow his much younger girlfriend to have the same freedoms he enjoyed when he was her age.  Many men react to this possibility defensively: they wouldn't be happy with "true monogamy", i.e., having just one sexual partner from cradle to grave, nor even one sexual partner for the decade of their twenties, but they expect women to be happy with it.]

—————

In what way would what she’s saying point to any sexual inadequacy on my part? It doesn’t freak me out at all, and it’s not a defensive reaction. You’re the one making up a story. Are you actually engaging in a dick measuring contest about the number of sexual partners either of us has had? You’re over 40 years old. You really should be ashamed.

I actually used to look up to you. Turns out you’re actually just a cruel, self-indulgent, narcissistic asshole.

The opposite of what you claim to be

—————

Dude, you are claiming that Melissa is being dishonest in that video: your "evidence" is nil (absolutely zero).  That is —fair and square— just a story you made up in your head.

You can go through that video sentence by sentence: Melissa means every single word of it.

The reality is that she's said the same thing again and again in numerous videos and livestreams, but never so bluntly (and it's often woven into the fabric of an hour long discussion of some other issue [or it's even part of a warning against the disadvantages and dangers of polyamory and open relationships]).  What she said in that video really should not be surprising to you, if you've seen the videos Melissa and I have made on the same subject (again and again!) for more than five years.

It's a five minute autobiographical statement, that contains the verb phrase "I want" many times: she's talking very bluntly about what it is that she wants —and you have made up a story to dismiss this as something unreal and fake.  There is absolutely nothing credible about that claim.

[In this respect —the prominence and bluntness of "I want" statements— the video reminds me of my own "manifesto" of almost a decade ago (titled "On Community").  In that video, I'm directly telling the audience what it is that I want —and that doesn't mean I'm ever going to get it!]

What motivates you to dismiss this video as fake?  Nothing she's saying is even implausible —not unless you have a truly misogynistic view of women (i.e., that it's impossible for a woman to be sincerely stating what she's just said, i.e., that no matter how good the sex is with one partner, she's not going to be happy having ONLY one sexual partner in the next ten years).  You regard that as wildly implausible and insincere for reasons you've made up in your own head.  It's believable, but you don't want to believe it: you refuse to believe it.  Why?

What is it about Melissa's sexuality that's so challenging to your ego?  Yeah, bro, THAT IS THE PROBLEM: your reaction indicates insecurity and inadequacy on your part.  You want to believe that it's impossible for any woman to feel what she feels, and (thus) to sincerely say what she says.  You're retreating behind the insistence that what she's saying (in such a plainly worded, five minute video) can't possibly be true.  That denialism on your part directly reflects YOUR "gender issues" and YOUR sexual inadequacy.

Polyamory does not just exist to cater to a male fantasy: it's fundamentally misogynistic to imagine that women and men are SO DIFFERENT that there is no woman in the world who'd want what Melissa said she wants out of the next ten years of her life.

[Footnote: his argument is even more absurd when female bisexuality is included in our considerations.  I have been in several relationships with female bisexuals: you shouldn't expect them to pretend to be straight for the sake of monogamy!]

Re: "You’re over 40 years old. You really should be ashamed."

No, I should not be ashamed.  Melissa, also, should not be ashamed —the whole point of that video is her refusal to be ashamed of this.

Re: "Turns out you’re actually just a cruel, self-indulgent, narcissistic asshole."

No: forcing women into Saudi-Arabian style monogamy is cruel, self-indulgent and narcissistic.

Let me add, in parallel, even if it is redundant: forcing women into the orthodox Jewish style of monogamy is also cruel, self-indulgent and narcissistic.

Monogamy as such is cruel, self-indulgent, and narcissistic.

You can listen to the Valentine's day livestream: I'm joking around a lot in that interview, but it's making a serious point.  It really would be immoral for me to insist that Melissa live the rest of her life without having a single sexual partner other than myself (and, again, she's only had two sexual partners in the first 31 years of her life).  That would be a kind of injustice —no matter how good the sex is within our relationship (HINT: IT'S REALLY GOOD) —no matter how much intellectual substance there is within our relationship (HINT: WE'VE GOT A WHOLE LOT OF INTELLECTUAL SUBSTANCE).

Your reasons for rejecting this hypothesis are, from my perspective, cruel, self-indulgent, and narcissistic.  I mean that sincerely, JaQuan: imagine if our positions were reversed, and imagine if I were a 31 year old male who'd only ever had two sexual partners, with an older female (more than ten years older, who'd had more than ten sexual partners, let's say).  It really would behoove that older female to have some "openness" toward her younger male partner having SOME OTHER sexual experience (in the space of a decade) instead of enforced monogamy, if the relationship is going to last.

There are profound reasons for it: Melissa herself manages to state (in a pissed off, five minute long video) that she wants to have meaningful relationships with people, and not just sex —but she also states (in her own terms, not mine) that people of any intellectual substance are scarce so she may have to tolerate "just sex" (with people who don't sincerely care about what she has to say about politics, history, etc.) as a second rate substitute.  That's the grim reality most people have to face up to at some point: the vast majority of people are shallow, and either have no veneer of intellectual interest at all —or they have the veneer as a mere contrivance in the pursuit of money, fame, power, respect and sex —not necessarily in that order.

When I was at Cambridge, England, every day (because my wife was studying there) being "a full time intellectual" in-and-out of the library, attending lectures and giving lectures, etc., do you wanna know who talked to me?  Women who wanted to have sex: PERIOD.  Zero interest from any heterosexual male in the life of the mind, and the females who pretended to be interested in the life of the mind were soon enough revealed to be interested in sex only —but bro, seriously, the majority of the women were ONLY interested in me sexually, and had zero interest in my research, writing, etc. (and these were women enrolled in PhD programs).  I am not saying "every woman at Cambridge wanted to have sex with me", what I am saying is, "Nobody even talked to me unless they wanted to have sex with me".  How do you think that compares to my experience in Thailand, including (and especially) white people in Thailand?  Bro, I've got to tell you: of the two, the women at Cambridge were shallower, and more obsessed with sex, by far.

It's a cold world, bro: most people live within the remit of their biological instincts, and never "evolve" beyond them —most people never develop "a life of the mind" above and beyond what serves the immediate "life of the body".

Deal with it or don't: what Melissa is saying in that video is that she's rolling up her sleeves and dealing with it —and that she doesn't want to lie about it anymore (neither within our relationship nor in her "relationship" with the youtube audience).

Nihilist Satirist: Nihilist Antichrist

[A reply to an email from a Patreon supporter.]

Catholicism is one thing: "the opposite of Catholicism" cannot possibly be one thing —the negation of Catholicism must lead off into many different directions (I would say "creative directions", but I would have to admit that there are also "destructive directions" and various mixtures of the two).

Communism is one thing: the negation of Communism, again, cannot be thought of as a single direction.

What does it really mean to be a nihilist, in the 21st century?

What does it really mean to be a nihilist, dissident intellectual, living in "a paper democracy" such as Canada or Mexico?

There cannot possibly be one answer, and there cannot possibly be one model: each of us must start thinking about many different directions "radiating out from" every point of negation.

These many different directions will be taken by different people simultaneously, but they can (also) exist within one man's life in succession.

Canadian democracy, Canadian Christianity, and Canadian culture generally: is it really so hard for people to understand how (and why) a dissident intellectual could end up researching Cree and Ojibwe (as languages, and as political histories) as one route "leading away from" the thing being negated?

At the same time, the very same man concerned with the same negation might become interested in Theravada Buddhism and the politics of Cambodia for all the same reasons.

Frankly, even the most "conformist" (and seemingly "conservative") of my research interests follow this pattern: a man can go looking for something better in Thucydides and Sallust in the same way that he might end up looking under a rock in Cambodia.  What am I looking for?  No, not something to believe in.  I am looking for raw materials: I believe in them as little as a carver believes in wood.

Believers cannot understand any of this: they assume that I became a Buddhist because there was some book (containing some great truth) that I subordinated myself to —as if the new direction I took with each chapter of my life could only be explained as a kind of enslavement to some dead author or another (as Marxists relate to Marx, and so on).

It is utterly eyeroll-and-scoff-inducing to see these believers "interpret" my engagement with Cree and Ojibwe in the same way: as if I believed in Buddhism before, and then had some kind of "spiritual transformation" and thenceforth started believing in the magical powers of tobacco ceremonies.

My current engagement with comedy: is this, also, some new god for me to worship?  Does comedy have its own code, its own precepts, and its own afterlife?  Was that what the study of the Chinese language (or Chinese politics) meant to me before?  It is all —equally— tobacco smoke.  It is all —equally— as absurd as chanting in Pali to relieve the pain of childbirth.  And nevertheless, it is all (also) as useful as a solid piece of wood in the hands of the right carver.

It is your own blank sheet of paper that you should believe in: even if you leave it blank, without ever setting down a single word, it's better than the constitution of the country you're living in, and it's better than the bible as well.

It's the book that nobody else can write but you: it is your heaven and hell —there can be no other.  It is the emptiness that existed before you were born along with the emptiness to which you'll eventually return.

I went with my blank sheet of paper to Cambodia, and I went with it to Saskatchewan (to study Cree) as well (these are just two examples, of course, I will not attempt a full list of such places).

From the perspective of the believer, nothing could be more pathetic: I arrive neither as a missionary (trying to compel the Cambodians and the Cree to accept my beliefs, whether they be religious beliefs or Marxist ones, etc.) nor do I arrive —penitent— hoping to receive my new bible (my new beliefs) from them.

I neither give nor receive: I create and destroy.

I did not go to Cambodia for my salvation, nor for theirs: I did not go to learn from them what I ought to believe, nor did I go there to teach them what they ought to believe (as something I presumed to already know myself).  I went there to press into the unknown, and I came back knowing something nobody else had known before —and this mystifying statement could be equally true of Pittsburgh or Preston, there's nothing especially magical about Cambodia.

A fixed belief has one direction (as with submission to Islam) but the negation of belief has innumerable directions —simultaneously or in sequence.

People train themselves to believe in the future of Canada, to believe in the future of Mexico, and so on, in the same sense that they "believe in" the future of their own marriage, and the future of their own sons and daughters.  The vast majority will die without ever realizing the profound contradiction implicit in believing in something unknown: this is not some shallow riddle, it's a devastating error that results in millions of people using up their little scrap of blank paper to merely sketch out a second rate imitation of something established in one bible or another —instead of singing their own song, they live as a pathetic echo.

And the result is this: the future they believe in is (irony of ironies) an imitation of the past.  All their futurologies reek of nostalgia.  Elon Musk's dreams contain nothing new, but recycle fantasies from science fiction he'd been exposed to in his youth: how much more backward are the utopias that religious Jews and Muslims believe in?  Oh, let's be honest: even the people who believe in democracy are "living in the past" when they dream about the future.  In parallel, people try to have a marriage that imitates their idealized notion of how their own grandparents lived, or some fictional family they saw depicted on a television show (the sitcom has become yet another "bible" in our times).  All of these are beliefs: all of these are tobacco smoke.

One religion, one marriage, one education resulting in one career, and then one identity that can be summarized by stating the person's profession, marital status and creed: that is the model of a life built on belief, and it is demonstrated everywhere around us.  Those who believe the most are supposed to benefit the most.  What about a life with many different directions, believing in less and less with each direction you take, pressing into the unknown, learning something never known before, and being transformed by it with each twist and turn?  Who will demonstrate that model?  Who will demonstrate a life without belief, the freedom and the duty it entails?

What does it really mean to be a nihilist, in the 21st century?

What does it really mean to be a nihilist, dissident intellectual, living in "a paper democracy" such as Canada or Mexico?

Peanuts. This is peanuts.

Hi _____,

I would be willing to have "a phone call" with you (meaning an internet-based call, of course) but I would really just regard it as a conversation in which we were trying to become friends (trying get to know each other better, etc.)…

…you will probably be astonished at the extent to which Melissa and I (both) do not need help from anyone, and we don't need "mental health" support of the kind you're describing.

Other people would need that, we don't.

What I say in my own videos really is true: I don't just preach this philosophy, I really practice it…

my problems are (still now) what I said in "Desperate Cry for Help" and the recent video about the contrast between comedy and research (I'll give the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu1tSzIZM0)…

this is the stuff I really struggle with, this is what really causes me suffering, etc.

I'm not wearing a mask and talking about "false problems" while concealing what my real problems are.

And my political problems are, in part, emotional: Oct. 7th happens in Israel and nobody talks to me about it —nobody cares (about what I think or feel).  I've given examples recently about Joe Biden and Iran.  That is a huge emotional problem for me, not just "an academic problem" of a dry, theoretical kind.

I really need to have intellectual colleagues involved in my life, and I really am suffering terribly because of the absence of them (and I've said that on youtube for many years).

I can't learn Chinese without other people helping me, and I can't be a comedian or film-maker totally alone, etc. etc. —I certainly can't lead the vegan movement alone, I can't be involved in atheism as a movement alone, I can't influence the course of climate change / ecological politics alone, etc. etc.

[Another example: I can't make a documentary movie alone —although that would require fewer people co-operating than a comedy film, or narrative fiction of any kind.]

These are huge problems in my life: I am not "faking it" when I say that the cheating girlfriend scandal "is peanuts" (untranslatable English idiom) compared to the enormity of this.

Some people have the raw intelligence necessary to understand that I'm being sincere in saying this: MOST ARE NOT.

I've never been a coward, I'm not gonna learn how to be one now.

You have made of my strength a weakness.

Re: virtues and vices (our virtues become vices because they allow women to ruin us) consider the following phrasing: "You have made of my strength a weakness, by imposing upon me an immoral burden that I am strong enough to bear, but should not be."