French author Michel Houellebecq predicted the r9k/incel phenomenon in 1994

Houellebecq is a famous French author. He wrote mostly on nihilism, individualism and sexuality.

In 1994 he predicted the current "incel" predicament in his novel Whatever. Whatever is about his own experiences in a I.T. company. The two heroes are salarymen; one is 28, very ugly, and still a virgin.

Houellebecq reflects that in any free market, there are winners and losers.

More than that: there is a Pareto principle mimicking the law of universal gravitation (the top men have sex with an unlimited number of partners, the lowest men have none at all).

At the end of the book, the ugly hero kills himself after having seen a white girl kissing a black dude in a nightclub.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whatever_(novel)

"The thesis is that the sexual revolution of the Sixties created not communism but capitalism in the sexual market, that the unattractive underclass is exiled while the privileged initiates are drained by corruption, sloth, and excess."

Interesting
Keep your chin up chap

Stop posting on Veeky Forums.

I'd like to read it, how difficult is it?

Do you have a justification for your request?

The purpose of a containment board is to contain.

more like this isnt a new phenomenon

robots are victims of society, not social science pioneers

The only containment boards are mlp and soc

What you meant to say was that this social phenomenon was already going on before the internet exploded. The internet just enabled a more accessible, collectivized expression of it. Which the book obviously doesn't predict at all.

>waaah im a woman the fact that ugly males have feelings makes me uncomfortable

While I feel slightly inclined to agree with you, NEETs/virgins etc have been around for a long long time, I just think technology has allowed them to congregate and bemoan their anger in echo chambers

>wahhh im a pedophile who wants to rape children but society says that's bad wahhh

>roastie got BTFO and has to use the pedo card

>everybody I don't like is a pedophile
We have reached a new low

hmm. I feel like something else is going on in that novel. I haven't read it but that's a pretty shallow cultural commentary if so.

He didn't predict it, it just also existed in 1994.

Fucking brainlets.

>t. /pol/ brainlet

I read the novel you're talking about. It's called "Extension du domaine de la lutte"

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Very easily readable I ended up getting through it in less than a week. It's quite short if I recall (I read it over two years year ago.) I really enjoy Houllebecq he's worth a try and whatever is the most easy of his books to get through though I think submission and the elementary particles are much better

What about OP needs to be contained? lol serious question.

While r9k is referenced, the post and its content are not really written in that style or mindset. Does the mere mention of male jealousy and loss of self worth against a racial backdrop preclude the possibility of rational discussion outside the specter of "containment"?

Does he write this shit ironically? I mean, he can't actually believe that we're living in such a thing as a "totally free" economy.

What's your point exactly? That a society that isn't laissez-faire or anarchistic isn't free enough therefore his arguments don't work?

I mean, anywhere in the West, you can start a business. You can try to take whatever job you want, if you're qualified.

That constitutes freedom of a kind.

Daily reminder that Houellebecq isn't respected by any litfag with a minimum taste, at least past his first two novels.

not an argument

I just think sex isn't a great metaphor for economics.

....it's just gross

This would be really interesting if it wasn't for the interracial couple driving him to suicide. I can't take it seriously with that

A "totally free" economy would effectively be no economy at all, that is, it wouldn't be reducible to this or that type of economy, e.g. a "laissez-faire" or "anarchistic" economy. All ideologies would have free play.

It's certainly "freedom of a kind," but the use of the phrase in tandem with his appeal to the criminalization of adultery kind of undermine his argument's tenability in my eyes. Making it a crime doesn't stop adultery, and simply being married or in a relationship doesn't guarantee you'll have sex.

How so?

As a separate question, how does your discomfort when faced with gross things constitute sufficient grounds to exclude from Veeky Forums the discussion of this particular author and his literature?

The predicament that lead to the incel movement already existed before he wrote the book it's been a phenomenon since the 60's. The main character committing suicide demonstrates he wasn't predicting incel he just showed the character opting out of life all together

Well he isn't saying sex is a metaphor for economics, he's saying that liberalism is such a pervasive ideology that it injects itself into all arenas of life, including sex.

>and simply being married or in a relationship doesn't guarantee you'll have sex.

I would argue that it did when when marital rape wasn't considered rape.

if houellebecq had been born in the 90s instead of the 50s he'd be on r9k wearing panties and stockings y/n

You shouldn't post Houellebecq on Veeky Forums, it riles up the Marxists; they'll be shitposting for hours.

that makes even less sense then. what about liberalism would cause the outsider phenomena? limonov's novels attest to the outsider in a brutally authoritarian society.

Actually, what we have in the world is a totally free economy, in that it was freely allowed to develop into whatever form its constituents enabled it too. What you're describing is an ideologically pure "free" economy, which is only possible as a hypothetical, in a snapshot that undermines the significance of the idea, or with the introduction of extreme controls to keep it so.

His argument is a soft one, by all means. Hell, individual points within that argument are pointedly bogus.

>tfw I am houllebecque but without his genius

So your Jean Raspail?

you're also probably a teenager or in your early twenties. houellebecq's in his fucking sixties. give it time, you'll start figuring shit out
or better yet, you'll grow out of being a pathetic loser

no I fucking hate French people

ie I'm the core of Houellebecq reader, nihilist loser without aspiration trying to find a literary equivalent of my own nothingness

>what about liberalism would cause the outsider phenomena?

Isn't that painfully obvious?

Not everyone in society is Bill Gates, and that's a function of capitalistic inequality.

Liberalism obviously doesn't have a problem with that kind of inequality as long as it is based on merit and competence.

In other words it necessitates a hierarchy, which is based on either skill, competence, work ethic, beauty, sexual charisma and even nepotism and corruption.

i read like half of la carte et la territoire for a class but dropped it once i finished the related assignments. my professor was convinced it was his best.

beauty, sexual charisma, and nepotism aren't merits or skills. like I said, something is off about the comparison.

We do not have that sort of free economy because certain parts of it e.g. the organ market were not allowed to "freely develop." The constituents who asserted their freedom to traffic in organs have been nominally excluded, and are consistently removed from formal economic intercourse wherever they visibly appear.

I know that it's impossible in the sense that I mean it, unless each person in the economy has their own, unique ideology, and that's not likely to happen anytime soon, but its valid hypothetical existence still undercuts his claim of total contemporary economic freedom.

Unfortunately for you, beauty and sexual charisma are merits along with the faculty which allows nepotism

>beauty, sexual charisma, and nepotism aren't merits or skills.

No, but they still constitute part of the hierarchy even though they are unfair. People just don't want to say it out loud because they have been inculcated with humility from Christian slave morality ever since they were children.

>People just don't want to say it out loud
They're literally some of the most criticized concepts in the world.

If you don't have haters, you ain't poppin'.

desu that's the book of his I enjoyed the least his style of writing's pretty consistent but I found the subject matter of the elementary particles, whatever and submission more interesting.

You're kind of missing what I say here. This hinges on the previous understanding of "freedom of a kind", that introducing restrictions to the market or any other aspect of policy is an element of freedom of self-governance of a polity. But that's just a minor point, unimportant really.

The part of my reply that is actually important is this: you talk about his claim of total contemporary economic freedom, but I do not read that in the images in question. I believe it is fairly obvious that when freedom is mentioned, any reasonable audience must understand that it refers to "freedom of a kind' and not some sort of ideologically pure conception of freedom.

SHE

IS

SO

FUCKING

CUTE

Nepotism is criticized surely, because it's seen as a corruption of character.

But very few beautiful people will admit to being beautiful, and will try to appear as meek and as humble as possible, even though they know that their beauty helps them in life.

>introducing restrictions to the market or any other aspect of policy is an element of freedom
This is nonsense. Something regulated is not something free, and to say that regulation is freedom simply because a majority vote for it and abide by that vote or because their elected representatives vote for it and enact it is nothing but a language game.

To what you think is the "important" point: if he means "relatively free economy," why doesn't he say that instead of "totally free economy"? That is, assuming we are talking about Houellebecq, which would be the case if this film is a faithful adaptation of the work in question. Otherwise I suppose I take umbrage with the phrasing of the scriptwriter.

so what does the criticism of being shallow refer to if not beauty for beauty's sake?

He's making an elementary point about the order of an economic system.

You can't say that an economic system where *anything goes* is free, because that would mean that you had no consumer rights, no property rights, and no workplace rights, all of which are things that are defended with force by the government or by yourself(e.g with a gun).

Not to mention that social trust is a huge part of economics. If you don't trust that you will get your good in the mail when you order something from Amazon, there's just no way you'll give them your money.

okay line up everybody, fuck this dude against your will because he feels entitled

>
Not to mention that social trust is a huge part of economics. If you don't trust that you will get your good in the mail when you order something from Amazon, there's just no way you'll give them your money.

Actually you could give them your money, because in such an "anything goes" system, money has no value.

>You can't say that an economic system where *anything goes* is free
Yes, I can, and I do. This is what the word "freedom" means: to be rid of something. It is only an absence, never an addition. I'm not saying it's desirable, though.
>b-b-but what about the positive vs. negative freedom distinction
It's not real, there's only one kind of freedom, and that is, to be free of something.

The criticism of shallowness is literally just resentment. Everyone is shallow, some people are just honest about it.

There's no need to argue against such an illegitimate order, the scorn was more than enough.

So, do you think that free will is incompatible with the physical laws and determinism of the universe?

>people aren't entitled to love and intimacy


You sure that's a world you want to live in?

that's not true.

You can't be TOTALLY free and yet subject to laws and causality.

>that's not true.

Yes it is. Nobody on the planet wants an ugly partner.

>It's not real, there's only one kind of freedom, and that is, to be free of something.

Couldn't agree more, being fre from the dictatorship of your desires by giving yourself your own law.
Whether it is individually, by moral laws
Or socially, by political laws.

So you're simply just butthurt about Houellebecq's hyperbole then.

Well, boofuckinghoo.

Are you really free if you are weak in a world of people stronger than you, even if there are no real rules?

People are entitled to act in their own self-interest, as they are able.

This is an important distinction, as the idea that "everyone should be able to have this" as usually stated does not mean "without any contribution of any kind and no matter what they do". Some people say the first, but treat it intellectually as the second.

I'm not that guy. I was agreeing with your implicit point. Sheesh.

Nice try

ah, so you're shallow. someone's beauty can change depending on the reception of the observer. to reduce attraction away from it's psychological elements is stupid.

There is no such thing as "free will" as the metaphysical libertarians or Christians define it, neither is there such a thing as "determinism" as the materialists define it.

Free will is a much easier proposition to attack than determinism, though. The former is flatly solipsistic: I know that I cannot make a six-sided die come up twenty seven through an exertion of my will.

Determinism is trickier, but equally false. It usually rests on the assumption of a singularity: that technology will surpass human intelligence and thus be able to predict our behavior totally while operating under its own power. This usually leads the determinist to make assertions to the effect of "humans can never truly know an objective fact because they are biased and determined by physical circumstances." But if humans are determined by physical circumstances, why would the machine that can predict us, that we made, not be determined by these same set of circumstances? So it follows that the behavior of the prediction machine can be likewise predicted by a more intelligent machine.
I think that question is nonsense. But, of course, all of these machines will have been made by humans (or machines made by humans) that have determined behavior, so the original problem of determination bias is never really solved.

To me this is a nonsense question.
Right, but I don't stop there, I break the dictatorship of my will over me ("moral law," when it becomes apparent) through thoughtless desiring abandon: the law of sensuality. I destroy the one with the other.

The "I think that question is nonsense" in the third section shouldn't be there, sorry, I thought I cut that out.

>I would argue that it did when when marital rape wasn't considered rape.
>WAAH WAAH I CAN'T EAT THIS CAKE I PAID FOR

I didn't reduce attraction away from it's psychological elements.

I'm simply saying that there is nothing wrong about being shallow, and the people who think there is something wrong about it, are the same people who refuse to go to the gym 3 times a week to try to look more physically appealing.

which is houellebecq's best novel? - i've already read The Elementary Particles and am interested in reading more of his work

pic related

>Right, but I don't stop there, I break the dictatorship of my will over me ("moral law," when it becomes apparent) through thoughtless desiring abandon: the law of sensuality. I destroy the one with the other.

So we agree that a social organization or a market can never be free, they can only free themselves from a law by submitting to another.

So the question is never "how can we be free?" but "to which system of laws should we submit?"

Whatever is his best.

okay, but its still a criticism and a huge assumption on your part. if everyone was shallow, like you say, no amount of gym can fix ugly.

thanks

Ok, ok, we know, as the Greeks, you can be shallow by deepness

And that is true. No amount of gym can actually fix ugly. Some people are just born beautiful, and didn't have to lift a finger.

It's unfair as hell, but it still gets incorporated into the broader hierarchy of the modern economy and social structure. You don't see ugly people advertising clothes.

Beautiful people simply get a better deal in life.

Well, "social organization" and a "market" need to have a set of rules for them to function (since they are systems by definition), and as you said earlier, trust is necessary for cooperation.

But I don't think either of those things you've listed are "real questions." I know how to be free (rid of), and I know that I will only ever use laws that benefit me, or at least, use all that is in my power ("laws" that I create or agree to abide by for a certain period of time included) to benefit me. I don't submit to any systems: I make them mine, and do away with them if they cease to have utility.

>So the question is never "how can we be free?" but "to which system of laws should we submit?"

And ultimately, the only true question is still "What is good?"

Is the movie better than the book(translated)?

nice circular logic there.

Circular in what way exactly?

These are simple ideas that people seem to enjoy dressing up with sound and fury. More people want to be with and around attractive people and always have. Ugliness has always been an object of ridicule, although western beauty standards have shifted about a bit. People have preferences and act on them when capable; occasionally these preferences may contradict each other and cause seemingly 'irrational' behaviour. It is not a profound or novel assessment.

people are ugly because they are ugly. if psychological factors or health factors or whatever have no relevance to ugly, then you are just left with a vague term that feeds back into itself.

I read that in ancient Greece it was considered attractive for women to have a unibrow. What the hell is up with that? Apparently women who couldn't grow one naturally would often paint it on.

this

Some people are born ugly and some people are born beautiful.

The rest are average, and can tilt their looks either way by going to the gym or stuffing their face with Cheetos 24/7.

But shallowness is what we were talking about. And there's literally nothing wrong with being shallow.

I mean, people pluck out their eyebrows so that they can draw them back again these days. It generally ends up looking about as retarded as a monobrow (usage rules for monobrow vs. unibrow?).

Read 1001 Nights and look at how many times a woman is described as having a beautiful eyebrow "like a bow"