Values versus Style

I must confess to enjoying dating 29 year-old women back when I was a young man. Don't read too much into the word "enjoy", as a group I genuinely enjoyed them as human beings.

Thinking back on it, compared to women in their early-20s, most women who were 29 and still single were facing the issue of short-shelf-life and had taken a hard, hard look at what they were really looking for in a man.

A 22 year-old wanted a guy who had a cool job, oodles of money, that they could dress like a Ken-doll, who entertained them, who would party all night if she wanted him to, watched all the right movies and TV shows, drove the coolest car, lived in a swanky condominium that he keeps spotless and had a couple of time-shares in places she wanted to vacation and was a vegan and into cross-fit and......

Most 29 year-olds had been in several relationships and the looming big three-oh made them pare down the list. Her list might include: Has a job, does not lie, is not abusive, is not gay and does not play around. He can drive a flivver and wear odd clothes as long as his hygiene meets certain, minimum standards.

There are exceptions, of course. The 70 year-old widow who badgered her boyfriend (78) to get his teeth capped because they looked yellow in the pictures she posted on Facebook. 

But in general, adulthood is about making choices. If you insist on this, you cannot also have that.

Style vs Values

A value is something that is not negotiable. Style is your preference for how things might be.

For some people, having the very newest "thing" is a value. It is core to who they are. For me? Meh.

Couples that endure have similar values but can vastly different styles. I am an early riser. Mrs ERJ is a night owl. Those are different styles and they can be complementary.

Delayed adulthood

The delayed adulthood of Woke Culture fosters the unexamined life. If every mistake is forgiven and every loss made-whole, there is never any incentive to sort values from style.

The person who buys into the entire Woke mindset remains like the 22 year-old girl described above. They are incapable of letting-go even the most frivolous and unimportant detail of the archetype Progressive and they demand that you conform to the same degree.

This is very useful to those heading the Progressives. Their foot-soldiers become relentlessly self-policing like the grannies who did neighborhood watch during Mao's Great Revolution. Because their foot-soldiers remain in a state of arrested development they remain vulnerable to emotional appeals.

It is probably not a coincidence that worker bees and worker ants are in a state of arrested development. Biologically, they are pre-pubescent and cannot produce progeny. The only way they can pass even a portion of their genetic endowment up-field is to submit to the queen. And passing on our genetic endowment is the biological imperative.

Stretching the analogy, the opinions of "celebrities" fills the roles of the pheromones that direct the behaviors of the worker-bees. They tell the worker-bee what credit-card to buy, what kind of shoes to wear, where to live.

If you accept that delayed adulthood is a planned goal of the Woke Leadership then it becomes clear why abortion (for instance) is a hill they are willing to die on. Nothing yanks you into adulthood like having a child. It pares down your discretionary resources and forces you to make hard choices, just like the 29 year-olds I was dating.