I am going to argue that those who champion a social vision which places an emphasis on the centrality of the traditional family should refrain from using the word “Patriarchy.”

1. There are two general approaches to thinking about achieving success in any challenging environment; tactically, and strategically.

2. The tactical approach accepts the environment as a given. One is merely interested in learning the rules of the game so that he can develop his skills and make optimal decisions – to play the best poker he can with the cards he’s been dealt.

3. The Strategic approach seeks to change the environment itself over time and to reform the very nature of the game being played – to establish a more hospitable domain. This is inherently a collective effort since it cannot be accomplished by any individual or small group in isolation and requires large amounts of cooperation, cohesion, and consensus. It is also inherently future-oriented.

4. The advocacy seen heretofore, for example in Maximus’ post “The Fear of Manning Up,” to organize and lead a radically Reactionary (by current standards) and social-revolutionary cultural movement – one which seeks either a revival or some updated manifestation of “Patriarchy” – is therefore of a Strategic nature.

5. Why be Strategic at all then if the benefit, if any, will mostly flow to others in the future? I would submit that one can only root the answer to this question in terms of one’s basic philosophical premises. The premise required to justify strategic behavior, especially actions which are personally costly, expose oneself to risk, and have low and incalculable probabilities of success is a selfless concern for the happiness and welfare of one’s posterity – both men and women. This is simply an axiomatic ethical preference – one either cares about it or one doesn’t – but there is no possibility of debating the subject. Again, this idea is a normative value and it either appeals and motivates you (if you think success is achievable), or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, or you are some kind of Libertine, Hedonist, or Nihilist, that is your right, but you are not my intended audience and you may stop reading now if you like.

6. For the rest of us, especially those of us with children and who care about the kind of world and culture into which we will release them, this is a much more palpable concern. As a parable – let us say you were concerned about something akin to a coming apocalypse. You could be tactical and teach your son how to be a ruthless expert survivalist in his future competition for essentials in a Hobbesian and re-primitivized wasteland. In the alternative, you could be strategic and try and stop the apocalypse in the first place so that you can teach your son instead to be a magnanimous man of character, having handed him an environment where that personality and disposition will redound to his success and welfare. The key problem is that it too difficult to hedge against strategic failure and prepare him for both possible scenarios; one cannot always simultaneously (and schizophrenically) cultivate and make habitual the distinct personality and instincts of both types. Some men may be capable of such a dualistic inner nature, but I doubt most are.

7. My perspective is that there is a gradual civilization decline occurring in the West that is, if not “apocalyptic” in its long-run implications then at least profoundly disturbing. The revolution (and, some would argue, degradation) in terms of normative sexual behaviors, inter-gender relationships, the prevalence (or lack thereof) of traditional family structure among our different classes, and so on is all-together but one face of a multifaceted cultural problem, enormous in both scope and ramification, yet with common roots. What we are facing is nothing less than descent into technological barbarism. A Generalized Strategy to ameliorate this situation, and to arrest and reverse current trends, would seek to accomplish what I term a “Cultural Renaissance”.

8. Let me now temporarily segue away from gender issues so that I may draw a parallel to another aspect of our ongoing Cultural Collapse, the Obesity Epidemic. The trends are ominous. In 1985, no state was more than 15% Obese (Greater than 30 BMI). Today, only one state (Colorado) has less than a 20% rate, with a fifth of all states have nearly one third of their populations seriously obese.  There are a multitude of conflicting theories floating around that attempt to explain this phenomenon, (though sedentary lives and contemporary foodstuffs were nearly as common in the much thinner world of 20 years ago), but at root the vast majority of Obesity results from a failure to maintain an energy balance – as it must by the laws of Thermodynamics.

9. That is just another way of saying that more and more people are unable to marshal the discipline and self-control necessary to adequately sustain a regime of diet and exercise in order to manage their weight. They will not choose short-term discomfort to achieve a greater long-term benefit. They have been unable to harness enough willpower to conquer their temptations, impulses, and appetites (whatever their intensity or origin). Even though they directly experience the negative consequences of their behaviors, these repercussions nevertheless fail to provide enough of an incentive to sufficiently motivate them to alter their conduct and improve their situation.

10. This is, of course, just a generic abstract description of what I regard as the fundamental challenge of the human condition in a free society – the problem of self-mastery in a world full of increasingly powerful enticements of momentary pleasures and animal urges which can eventually lead to self-ruination. It is clearly one of the primary functions of a civilization’s culture to equip its citizens with the behavioral patterns and psychological tools they will require to achieve self-control and resist the predictable deleterious temptations and the foreseeable, pernicious human tendencies that they will likely face at some point over the course of their lives.

11. Now, when it comes to helping people make better choices in the face of powerful, even overwhelming, passions, we have only two options: voluntary discipline or imposed coercion. The strongest argument in favor of making certain highly-addictive drugs contraband in a free society is the pragmatic stipulation that a large enough fraction of the population simply cannot muster, for whatever reasons, the requisite willpower to enjoy their fix responsibly and in moderation, and that the harms they impose on themselves and other innocents are simply too great to tolerate.

12. That is the coercive stance. We can already see it at work when it comes to the government’s latest (and seemingly daily-augmented) petty-despotic efforts to tell us what we, and especially our children, are no longer allowed to eat. Recently, the Tobacco-industry standard banning potentially child-targeted marketing has been extended to such cigarette analogues as breakfast cereals, and so, for example, Cap’n Crunch will now join Joe Camel in brand-mark character Valhalla.

13. The disciplinary approach seeks instead to preserve as much freedom as is feasible but reform and correct the weak-willed decision-makers’ autonomous choices through positive encouragements, negative pressures, harsh consequences, education and training, and other psychologically influencing methods. But at root, especially in the case of Obesity, I assert that we simply are not going to make much progress in this regard unless you can manage to make people want to eat less and exercise more on their own and by their own volition. It is at its most basic level a question of the psychological change one can inspire in the one who is, in the final analysis, responsible for the behavior.

14. Now let us turn to sex. My argument is that using “Patriarchy” as a terminology of a particular ideal social-vision simply isn’t going to win many of the right kinds of converts required to accomplish a Cultural Renaissance and the revitalization (resuscitation? resurrection?) of traditional Western family structure and life-paths. Why, because it’s clear enough that any progress will require what is essentially a woman’s movement in Reaction against the effects of the sexual-relations chaos unleashed in the past two generations.

15. Why a “woman’s movement”? Because of the asymmetry of sexual desire that is an immutable aspect of the human condition and our gender dimorphism. Here’s a famous (though somewhat dated) study validating the basic common-sense of the situation. Also, there are certain gender-specific phenomena known as prostitution and pornography. I trust these facts need little elaboration here.

16. As everybody who isn’t trying to perpetuate nonsensical social-lies knows, young men want sex so much more, and are so much more reckless and less selective than young women are (even in this day and age), that they are the reactive instead of proactive element. A simple game-theoretic analysis tells us that, in a free and modern society, it is the way that women decide to whom, and under what conditions, they will grant sexual access that will be determinative of men’s responses. (As an aside: if you want the explanation for the few truths of the changes in normative male behavior that Ms. Hymowitz documents in her book Manning Up, this is it.)

17. So young men of all classes, if they can’t routinely find plenty of good willing brides in their young 20′s (which they can’t, tragically) simply don’t have enough sexual discipline or ideological solidarity to support even the strongest philosophical, ideological, or cultural-values movement if it’s mostly a male phenomenon. Too few of us are made of saintly stuff, and our spirit will yield to the flesh.

18. In fact, I would go farther and say it’s almost irrelevant whether any men are part of that phenomenon at all. Only something akin to a cultural revolution in the way that women make sexual decisions will matter in the final analysis. The norm of women’s choices is the independent variable, the norm of men’s responses is the dependent variable.

19. So, strategically, those of us who favor the traditional Western family structure because we recognize that as an institution it is the form A) most likely to result in life-long optimal stability and happiness for most people, and B) that when prevalent it is simultaneously the form most likely to foster a healthy society and civilization, will have to “market” that wisdom to this and future generations of young women.

20. Now, that lawyerly case, while it is entirely accurate in my belief, will already be a challenging one to make. Firstly, it fights against the now-permanent absence of a pressing materialist motivation – women’s sexual choices are no longer bound by a need for male financial support (because of their widespread entry and participation in the workforce) or a fear of unplanned childbearing. Secondly, it is fundamentally a long-term and society-oriented argument fighting against a short-term and self-centered impulse. When traditional talk about things like an “optimal life-path” what we mean is that by forgoing a slightly more fun-filled youth (at least, for alphas and hotties), one derives the benefit of a much better middle-and-old age, and a greater life lived overall. The social argument is essentially Utilitarian – it achieves the greatest good for the greatest number, though admittedly not for everyone since some could do better under the alternative regime.

21. That means that case (especially considering the strength of the ideological opposition) will have to be exceptionally and overwhelmingly compelling and persuasive, both on a factual and ideological level, to have any real effect on the majority of young women’s preferences and behaviors. They are the decision-makers, and so they are the relevant jury, and they are the relevant audience. When you are asking people to reject, en masse, their current behavior patterns as self-destructive and socially-deleterious, you are asking them to do the equivalent of finding themselves guilty and sentencing themselves to rehabilitation. That requires a certain amount of, frankly, flattery and the propagation of the notion that they are the ones in charge.  Sorry, but that’s how these things have to work realistically.

22. Now, I ask you, is naming that desired end state and social vision “Patriarchy,” or even calling it that amongst yourselves, going to get all of us (enlightened women included) very far in convincing these young women? I’m afraid not. And anyway, I don’t really think it’s an accurate description of the fundamental value and power imbalance that is at work here. Patriarchy will only exist in reality when women don’t actually have the life-and-sexuality-options which are available to them right now, and how exactly are those options going to be taken away? Coercion will not be that way unless we suddenly morph into Saudi Arabia.

23. No, instead, women will have to change their preferences and voluntarily reject the seductive-but-injurious options they now have available for the sake of a long-term greater good – for themselves and for society at large.

24. What should we call that instead? We could go the full Orwell here (and also concede the true underlying power dynamics) and call it “Enlightened, Pro-Masculinity, Matriarchy” but the word “Matriarchy” has become as ugly to many men as the term “Patriarchy” has been all-but-destroyed among modern women. Either term just sets up the false “war of the sexes” frame that is the opposite of useful to the cause. The cause, I should reiterate, is to reestablish and update those patterns of though, behavior, and social and family dynamics, that will establish the conditions most likely to produce the best chance of life-long happiness and satisfaction for the most people – men and women together. This is no guarantee of course, just a much more favorable lottery. In this world where pain, suffering, folly, and misery are the defaults, and the ravages of aging so quickly erases our capacities, it’s all about improving those probabilities.

25. So I hope I’ve made it clear that a different term is required to make the case.  Tentatively and provisionally I might suggest “Familiarchy,” but I’m sure some clever wordsmith out there can come out with some better universally-appealing coinage. Most young women still feel warmly about the idea of having a family one day, and a term consistent with that positive desire would more likely prove effective.