It’s been a month since I started this blog, and two people have remarked on my chosen name for it, In Mala Fide, and the fact that “mala fide” translates into English as “bad faith.” The first was she-dissenter and pseudotroll sparky in this comment, and the second was Lawrence Auster in his critique of my critique of him. Neither seem to think very highly of my choice. In Mala Fide has a deeper meaning beyond being a snappy blog title - I didn’t choose it at random, but after a considerable bit of thought.
Two bloggers I read recently posted on this subject. First, Kamal S. posted an essay entitled “You Can’t Survive Without Being A Rebel.” An excerpt:
Just the other day, a really fine example of the Contemporary American Illiterate (Ilitteratus Americanus Contemperaneous) accused me of being a natural born rebel.
While this accusation didn’t exactly strike at the center of my sense of self worth nor drive me to contemplate suicide — it did cause me to begin thinking about what causes individuals to rebel against society at large.
What immediately struck me is how difficult it would be to survive *without* being a rebel. If one were to attempt to survive by following the rules of society as officially stated, the natural evolutionary laws would give the offender quite a punishment.
The essay goes on to describe how the rules of contemporary American society effectively force people to break them in order to stay afloat, using college sexual harassment codes, our Kafka-esque tax laws, and violent crime statistics as examples. It concludes with this:
If you want to reproduce, succeed economically, or merely stay alive in modern America, you *must* become a rebel. Your other option is to be a meek virgin who spends all of his or her time indoors (afraid to go out, for fear of being robbed, raped, assaulted or murdered) filling out those 4,000 pages of IRS forms and sending your money away to a government which can’t protect you from anyone but yourself.
Next, MarkyMark recently posted an article entitled “Bitter Boys.” Here’s a sampling:
The word “bitter” is such a loaded term in our society that most people are afraid to ever admit to experiencing the emotion. Well here’s a fact that the world will never tell you: It takes a man to admit that he’s bitter – at least to himself.
The truth is, it is impossible for prudent, intelligent, red blooded, heterosexual men living in feminist countries not to be bitter once they realize the truth about WW & divorce laws because that sobering reality basically means the death of their hopes and dreams for ever having a family in their home country.
When you think about it, those are devastating realizations. For most of us, it means pretty much having to completely reevaluate our life’s goals and what we are living for. This is not an easy thing to do. It also means having to “get over” something that is deeply instilled in most of us (the desire to marry and have our own family).
Bitterness, like mourning, is a necessary part of grieving after a tragedy and realizing that you can’t marry and have a family unless you’re certifiably insane is a tragedy of the highest order. Bitterness only becomes a problem if you allow yourself to wallow in it for too many years.
We all know that society is sick and civilization is waning, but how is an individual supposed to react to this? Once you’ve learned that following the rules is a sure way to get screwed over, you can’t go back to being Boobus Americanus (to borrow from Mencken). Western civilization, in its politically correct, feminized state, demands that you bend over and grab your ankles in order to be a good citizen, and breaking the rules will earn you the contempt of society at large – and yet, breaking the rules is the only way to survive. There’s no proper ethical code in existence that requires people to submit to tyrants who seek to bind them in chains. Much like how the Christians of the Roman Empire refused to worship the emperor, sane Westerners are refusing to worship the various false idols that comprise our dying culture. Running on the corporate hamster wheel to pay off six figures of student loans that you racked up so you could get that job on the hamster wheel to begin with, spending what little discretionary income you have left on pointless objects you don’t need, and working towards being unhappily married to an irritable sow who will divorce you at the drop of a doughnut and move halfway across the country with the kids out of spite – no one would call that a sane or sensible way to spend your life.
When the pseudonymous Asia Times Online columnist Spengler unmasked himself last April, he stated his reason for choosing that nom de plume was as a joke – the name of the German scholar who wrote The Decline of the West appropriated for a column in an Asian newspaper. A bad joke, but it has a point. The name of this blog, In Mala Fide, can be thought of as a jab in that vein. The moral configuration of Western society, as chronicled on this blog and others, requires its best citizens to rebel, to go against the grain, to behave in mala fide in order to secure their own fortunes.
Take the concept of game, for instance. Conventional wisdom holds that women want nice guys who will respect them, dote on them, and treat them like princesses. Any guy who tries this, however, will end up getting LJBF’ed by every girl he wants to bang. On the other hand, complete assholes often find themselves up to their chins in vaj. The conventional wisdom of dating and courtship is wrong, so wrong that an entire online community sprung up seeking to uncover methods of seduction that work. Boobus Americanus opposes game, denounces it as manipulative and dehumanizing, and the fact that it works doesn’t cross his mind at all. If you practice game in your personal life, you are, according to the dictates of modern society, behaving in mala fide. Members of the MGTOW movement, who reject the values of our corrupt culture, are another group of individuals behaving in mala fide.
Behaving in good faith according to the principles of our degenerate civilization will inevitably lead to your demise. It is not immoral to behave in bad faith in regards to such a society – you have no obligations to a culture that only seeks to harm you and keep you down. Rebelling is the only sane and moral option in an insane and immoral world.
Filed under: Game, Sexuality, Zeitgeist | Tagged: Game, H.L. Mencken, In Mala Fide, Kamal S., Lawrence Auster, MarkyMark, MGTOW, Sexuality, Spengler
amen brother.
to many of us who have taken the red pill, you don’t need to say anything other than the 3 words that your title comprises.
i suppose you’ll also have to explain to the stragglers the significance of “ferdinand bardamu”, yet another man renowned for acting in mala fide.
Or the other route–Homeless, not participating in it anymore.
I worked in a taxi company that had a two tier pay system, those that had children and mortgages–got head of the line priviledges. Us single European men—got the shaft. I was faced having to compete against a White trash woman, impregnated by a black man and then left. She is alone with a kid now, And I am forced to compete with this. I couldn’t. She got head of the line priviledges and I got second dibs.
A man can not compete against a woman. Everysingle time whether in jobs, hitchhiking, or other, the woman gets ahead. They get more money, people hire them before you, people use them more.
If one goes to the factory, your supervisor or team leader will be a woman. 54% of college’s student bodies are female–leading to a more woman dominated culture.
I’m dropping out. I will not be led by a woman, I will not work with women, I will not work with minorities either. Everything is backwards, rebelling just gets one in hot-water or fired—dropping out is another solution. I am choosing Dropping out. Everything is going to hell.
FB –
It’s quite true that collaboration with a corrupt system is not in the least a moral imperative.
What has happened is very unfortunate — nothing short of a catastrophe really. The real catastrophe is that the entire system has been corrupted. It’s unlike any other “political disagreement”, because this one is the aftermath of a social revolution that went right to the marrow of the entire system.
It’s that deeply systemic nature of the problem that makes these “in mala fide” solutions the only truly viable ones. And it’s not surprising that increasing numbers of men are seeing this, and dropping out of the system, such as it is, and following a system-contrarian path.
I’ve remarked in the past that men find themselves in precisely the opposite situation that women did circa 1960. Women famously sloganized that for themselves there were no personal solutions, so that “the personal is political” –> in other words, women needed the power of the state involved in order to change social relationships in the ways that women wanted them changed — negotiating that kind of change with men, absent the coercive power of the state, would not have led to what the feminists wanted, and they knew it. They also had a keen sense of their own political power, and deployed it rather brilliantly well. I am no fan of feminism in content, but one must admit that the feminist social and sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s was the most successful social revolution in history, when evaluated against its own stated goals.
As for men, we are in the opposite position — there is no political solution, at least no viable one, for the problem we face. Anti-feminism is a dead-letter in practical political terms as anything other than a lunatic fringe. This will remain the case until there is a critical mass against the aftermath of these revolutions, and given the “general reset” and systemic nature of the revoluitions in question, such a critical mass is unlikely to develop soon. Yet, we you point out , FB, men face a host of problems living in the current world — problems imposed by the system, by the political machine, by the state. These are *political* problems, to be sure, but there aren’t viable political *options* for us. So, for us, the personal is not political, but rather the political is personal: there are no political solutions to the problems we face at this time, only personal ones. And therein lies the logic behind living “in mala fide”.
Once a man realizes this, he is, as Welmer expressed so well, liberated and free. There is no moral imperative to collaborate with, or even contribute to, a system which is bent on our oppression. And in fact, the soft underbelly of the system, based as it is on nearly untrammelled libertinism, provides a key for how men can find their way out of sheepish compliance with the system, and move towards a liberated life of personal choices, not tethered to the values of the system, but to the values of himself. For some men this means Game a la Roissy and others. For others it may mean MGTOW. For others it may be a much more subtle, less titled, less conscious approach which nevertheless is fundamentally subversive in content, and aloof from the system, its morals, mores and prerogatives. All of these are ways for men to live today, and are not only personal coping mechanisms but, taken together, a viable, uncoordinated means for mass rebellion against the system.
As I say, for us men the political is personal. And so when we go our own way, when we act “in mala fide”, when we live the liberated life we wish to, we ought to realize that by doing so, we are, each of us, our own personal revolution.
I noticed the link-back – a note of correction, I’m not the actual author of the essay in question. I re-posted it as a full excerpt.
It was written around a decade ago by a certain “Voyager”, a computer hacker formerly affiliated with Denver’s “303 scene” and the group “TNO” who currently works as a computer security consultant.
The essay’s sentiments grabbed a younger me years ago, and I wanted to share this now forgotten voice with my readership.
As for your content above, what you write resonates with me to a remarkable degree.
I am a firm believer in third options and outside the box solutions. The player/playboy culture of “Game” as it has developed over the last two decades (and most intensely the last 10 years) is one Western male response to the current sexual culture in the Western Anglosphere. The Men Going Their Own Way is another. Both are simply newer expressions of much older sentiments. And neither is really an adequate response to what they seek to fight, though they are both very, very, interesting
Though “game” does represent a more complex set of modalities in our sexual and gendered interactions, and is really quite old. It represents an extreme of decadent Rakishness, scientifically organized. Men going their own way seems to me to be a sort of almost ascetic monastic option, something that again is quite old.
I agree with you, by degrees, on Auster. I have to note that a male “beta” familial provider order is not exactly unique to the West. Some may disagree, I argue that they should look deeper. It is possible, also, that the historical impact of enforced male monogamy as an institution in the West may be exaggerated, due to distortions through the eyes of later Victorian morality.
In many Western cultures (some loose sight of the sheer cultural diversity in the West even 100 years ago) existed a de-facto Concubinage of which the modern French mistress is a distant echo. This middle class and upper class institution was well recognized, even by the Church at times, and I contend that it did at times resemble a mild type of Islamic or Chinese polygamy, was far more widespread and socially important than many would like to believe.
However much certain Western conservations may minimize its impact. Interested readers can dig up sexual anthropology material on this…
I’ve experienced some bit of “verbal violence” from some conservatives for having the temerity to point out contemporary ignorance on such points: in many ways the patriarchal, provider male led, Islamic family well into the 20th century resembled the past Western familial order in more ways than pundits are comfortable with.. given current cultural wars between a decadent Islamdom and a decadent post-Christian West.
There were vast differences in societies, but much of what some assume to be utterly unique to the West is only unique in its intensity and scope, and even then in certain key Western cultures – and the resemblances between both orders is far more profound than most like to admit.
Richard Francis Burton himself, writing in the Victorian age, makes similar observations. I recommend a careful contemplation of Burton’s works.
I contend that the sexual and family order of the pre-19th century west has been considerably bowdlerized not only by past conservatives, but by present liberals who wish to present a certain decadent hedonism as a new liberating alternative to a puritanical and stuffy past. A simple look at the incidence of syphilis in much of the 19th century, and a careful study of social reform literature, speaks volumes.
Modern conservatives do not bother looking at the sexual and familial order 19th century Eastern European villages much less than things closer to home
In order to understand the current zeitgeist, and in order to propose workable solutions, its origins must be fully understood, and past orders may suggest workable solutions to current excesses but only if understood in their own light, and not out of contemporary romanticism.
There is much in the past worthy of salvaging and resurrecting. Some third options may require a far greater breadth of mind than many thinkers like Auster are willing to wield.
On this point, your blog post is refreshing, and I enjoyed reading it.
have to beAnon: Dropping out is a form of rebelion. Welcome to the club.
FB: Nice blog. Nothing wrong with the name. As the blogoshpere grows we can’t all have creative wonderful names. Yours is perfectly adequate. You might also be interested in mine, since we seem to be on the same path.
Rather than acting in male fide perhaps it is better to step back and ask–what do I really want to do? Forget societal expectations and hit the road jack. Live on your motorcycle for a year sleepiing in a tent and showering in fitness clubs. Get a job as a welder in Nebraska, or work in the tar sands mines up in Alberta. Travel overseas if the desire is there. If you are academically inclined attend university and study, but only if it is your heart’s desire. A college degree from a state school is not worth what it once was, so only do it if you plan to be the very best at what you do. The difference between this choice and the choice to live in bad faith is simply a matter of attitude. Why choose bitterness? The world of 1952 is gone.
“Interested readers can dig up sexual anthropology material on this…”
Any suggestions,Kamal?
My hat is off to you, Ferdinand.
One problem is that dating sites are set up in a way that requires men to put forth considerable effort. One has to send ten emails to get 2 or 3 replies, and the emails are supposed to be creative. In a class I took in the Spring, a girl came on to me persistently. Now that that’s started happening, lo and behold, I’m “taken.” That’s probably part of the reason it does happen. But which man do women want. Do they want the one who is indifferent to their looks and who goes off on his motorcycle, or do they want Don Draper to go after them for sex. I suppose there’s indifference in Don Draper, but there’s also an engaging side to him. I remember reading an article discussing the appeal of rock stars to women, and the authors argued that there’s a strange sense in which women like the feminine and expressive side of a rock star. A rock star is masculine and commanding and at the center of attention but is, invariably, putting on a fake show of submission and vulnerability in relation to the woman. There’s a dual quality, and it’s similar to the concept (something I remember reading about, related to Freud’s ideas, I think) that women like a man to simultaneously be rigid and devoted to some system of power and authority, to be authoritarian with regard to his work or philosophical groundings (to follow the rules and be willing to impose them, in effect, through his devotion to some system of power or external form of validation, maybe in the way a man who has a girlfriend has already been validated by a third party), but to also provide her with some sort of openness and sense of wildness or freedom (someone who breaks the rules in some way or who would, through himself, allow her to break them).
Of course real world is like you describe it. And it always was. Think of the Spartans: they used to give little food to the boys to force them to go to the market and steal. Those cought stealing were, of course, duely punished. Lesson: Be a good boy and you starve, so look out for yourself. You Mala Fide had to re-discover this eternal truth because you have been brought up by a protective family, but every ghetto boy learns it very early and lives by it. By the way, no one dares to talk about that, not even Roissy, but we humans are built so that men can get sex only with the application of some kind of soft coercion, chasing and cornering the girl, which is of course strongly condemned by society. Of course I personally never did it nor do it nor intend to do it in the future and I swear in bona fide, in bonissima fide.
Reading this thread makes me think of the book “Into the Wild” which was made into a movie a couple of years ago. There were a lot of people who just never got the point of that book, and a lot of people will never understand game either.
The ugly truth is that there will always be fresh blood (men) to feed the system.
The system doesn’t care if you practice game because it results in you not breeding. The system doesn’t care if you practice MGTOW because it also results in you not breeding and they know the majority of men will never embrace MGTOW so there will always be fresh blood (men) to feed the system. The ‘artofmanliness’ blog is setting men up to be sent into the meat grinder with the same chivalry bullshit. AFAIKT, they don’t even understand the current reality of modern relationships.
I’d be interested to see if practice of game is somehow resulting in more single mothers because the Govt. would be quite pleased with that as it gives them more control over more lives. Also, Govt. would care less about an increase in STDs as that will provide population control and kill more people off. Plus, more medical records for them to peer into. Hope for the best; expect the worst.
Men get the honor of paying for all of this, of course.
I’ve almost gone off “into the wild” a few times myself. That’s most likely the way I’m going to die; I just have to decide when. No way I’m dying in some hospital staring at a white ceiling surrounded by feminists and manginas. I haven’t decided if I want to go into the forest or out to sea. One thing is for certain, I won’t die surrounded by a loving wife and children because that’s obviously not an option in the West.
The only way I’d end up in a hospital again would probably be if I didn’t have any choice in the matter, such as after some future heart attack or something. I had an appendectomy years ago, and that’s all I can take of hospitals.
Did any of you think about having children using a surrogate mother and an egg donor?
You get protection from the matriarchical family courts and you also get to pass your genes and more importantly, your culture to the next generation.
It’s crossed my mind, but I don’t think I could do it. It sounds challenging, to say the least.
Sure, I’d be glad to recommend a few books, I’ll throw together a nifty little reading list.
The anthropology of courtship, sexuality, marriage, and families, fascinates me to no end. The relations between men and women are fundamental to a social order, and what one sees in a society on these matters speaks volumes on that society’s destiny.
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