Having a “prime directive” vision combined with a little bit of Patriarchy, a little bit of Proverbs 31, and a lot of Money is what keeps the ship afloat.
Readership: All
Reader’s Note: In this essay, upper-middle (and higher) class marriages are referred to as UMC/+ Marriages, while lower middle (and lower) class marriages are referred to as LMC/- Marriages.
Length: 2,800 words
Reading Time: 9.5 minutes
Introduction
Last week’s posts, Is Patriarchy for Deplorables? (2021 May 31), Patriarchy is the Default Context (2021 June 2), and Dolearchy Trumps Patriarchy (2021 June 4), argued that those LMC/- marriages having husbands and wives that stay together tend to have a higher percentage that are patriarchal. I do not mean to say that patriarchy is more prevalent in LMC/- overall or that it does not exist in the UMC/+.
This post will further explore class differences. It will be argued that it is Patriarchy, among other things, which hold marriages together. These other things include a “prime directive” (i.e. shared vision, shared values), social cohesion for the LMC/-, and for the UMC/+, a comfy cushion of cash. Taken together, this shared vision and lifestyle motivates women of all classes to “fit into the program”. The alternative is a failed marriage, and a broken life.
Traits of the LMC/-
Women in the LMC/- tend to have a polychotomy of expectations in marriage. LC women tend to sleep around in their search for “love”. (Translation: Being humbled/defiled by a Tingle inducing man.) When they do happen to find love and possibly marriage, they lack the skills necessary to make it work out. They consistently give in to the worst aspects of their feminine nature and destroy the relationship in the process.
A Christian might say that their relationships typically fail because of gross spiritual disobedience.
MC women indulge in fashionable trends in clothing and dating, and cling to a fairy tale dream of marrying up. When this doesn’t happen in a timely manner, they settle for the kind of men they rejected during their prime years. Underneath this façade of fashion sensibility, MC women also want to be humbled/defiled by the tingles, but they amalgamate this expectation with a feminist sense of entitlement and various Progressive aphorisms which are not very true. Many MC women also assume that marrying up is a basic prerequisite for marriage. Thus, MC women want contrasting elements and are thoroughly confused about what they want in a relationship.
A Christian might say that their relationships typically fail because of gross spiritual confusion.
Traits of the UMC/+
Under the last post cited above, Ed Hurst and RedPillBoomer described specific traits of the UMC/+.
Ed Hurst wrote,
“Those upper staff people are simply a different kind of people entirely. They could make their way through any lower class social situation with no trouble, but they remained a world apart. Their education is not the whole story; there’s a mass of cultural exposure that is hard to explain. Their kids had a completely different orientation on life, a sense of purpose and future that made them tolerant of things for which the lower class kids would whine and rebel. The UMC kids in that setting could get along with the other kids, but they knew they weren’t part of the common society.”
“These people had a vision of ruling the system, and their commitment to that is overwhelming.”
“…they never forgot their destiny…”
“[They had the mindset that] someone in their ranks was not a part of [the broader] society…”
RedPillBoomer wrote,
“Quiet, focused, and ENVIED/DESPISED by many who thought they had some advantage that others didn’t have…”
“…the parents PLURAL were committed to their values: achievement –> advancement –> progression –> not derailing a ‘good thing,’ i.e. not f’ing it up with divorce, drugs and alcohol, or anything that would significantly interfere with the family’s ‘prime directive.’ These values showed up in their kids (achievement –> advancement –> progression upwards).”
“…you almost ALWAYS saw a mom AND a dad involved in those kids lives.”
“[Some key elements of] Patriarchy… with a pinch of egalitarianism thrown in the mix… [For example, the mom] usually had some side gig going on while she shuttled those kids to all those activities they were involved in – maybe real estate or something, or going to school to get a degree (not gender studies or some ridiculous degree, something like an education degree) so she could produce future income once the kids were old enough to take care of themselves, by their late teens.”
“…their advantage was their mom and dad did something similar and passed it down to their kids to include an inheritance when they died.”
“[They] still “get it”, i.e. understand that [certain elements of Patriarchy] STILL works, that it STILL produces results: ‘old fashioned, out-dated, and… d@mn effective!’”
What Ed and RPB are describing are practical aspects of the ADIEU collection of traits (Attractiveness, Discipline, Intelligence, Education, Upbringing). These characteristic mindsets, habits, and traits not only explain why the UC are more successful in marriage and sticking the landing, but they also contain the underlying reason why the “elite”/UMC/+ are so influential over all of society.
And yet, the UMC/+ life script doesn’t work for anyone LMC/-. Deti and Novaseeker discussed this in ADIEU HUSsies Sell a Broken Script (2021 May 12). This is because those in the LMC/- are lacking those practical aspects of the ADIEU collection of traits. But this is not all they are lacking. They are also lacking a vision, a sense of purpose, and the financial buffer necessary to cover their @sses.
Are UMC/+ Wives Egalitarian?
There was an argument about whether UMC/+ wives are truly egalitarianists or not.
LastHoldOut countered that RedPillBoomer’s description of the mom with a side gig is more reminiscent of the Proverbs 31 woman, rather than an egalitarian wife.
Deti wrote that the UMC is more egalitarian because:
- In today’s society, women have been brought on par with men in every meaningful way: legally, politically, economically, socially, educationally, and professionally. Women are legally permitted to do everything men can do. So it’s natural that more women in the UMC would expect to be treated as “equals”.
- Most men and women in the UMC got there the same way – education and employment. It’s natural that a woman who, through her education and job, isn’t any less qualified than her husband is to make decisions, will expect to be treated as an “equal” in her marriage.
- Most men have been conditioned hard and deep to see women as equals. Most men in this set have UMC mothers who were “equal”. They went to college with and work with women who were equals, a few of them being superior in intelligence or work ethic or upbringing.
- The Marriage 2.0 model on which most UMC marriages are based, is premised on happiness and self-actualization. The woman’s happiness and self-actualization are just as important as, but no more important than, his are. In theory. (In a patriarchal model, the foundation is roles, operation within roles, and headship/submission. In patriarchy, some things are more important than others at different times.)
- These people don’t know how to do it any other way. No one, absolutely no one, teaches, preaches, expects, demonstrates, or extols true headship or submission. What you have is a lot of Christian men LARPing at headship (servant leader, you must love and respect her and get her what she wants because that’s what a true leader does) and Christian women LARPing at submission (you submit when he is doing what you want and expect him to do and you’re pleased with him; you need not submit otherwise). But this is neither true headship nor true submission. This is because headship is burdensome and makes men unhappy; and because submission requires trust that these women don’t have for their husbands, and that scares them, and that makes women unhappy.
Liar businessman closing a deal and crossing fingers back at officeAnd yet, Deti concedes that UMC/+ marriages cannot ultimately be egalitarianist.
“We cannot have unhappiness in the Marriage 2.0 model. Unhappy marriages in this model are failed marriages.
I have said this so many times: Everyone needs to remember that there is absolutely no such thing as an “egalitarian” marriage. In any relationship between 2 people, one is the dominant and the other is the submissive. Whoever occupies these roles can shift, but someone always acts as the dominant, and the other always submits. It can’t operate any other way. It just can’t. Someone has to make the final decision. Someone has to “break the tie”. In most UMC Marriage 2.0 marriages, that person is usually the woman, because she manipulates, threatens, frauds and gaslights her way there. Most of the time, the woman sends this message:
“I need to do this my way, or else I will be a b!tch to you, refuse to have sex with you, sh!ttalk you to our friends and my parents, sulk and pout, and otherwise make everyone in this house miserable. And it’ll be that way until I get what I want.”
Man, it’s hard for me to imagine a stable UMC/+ marriage having a wife like this. I don’t doubt that there are many like this, but on the face of it, this seems more like a LMC/- wife’s behavior.
“The idea that patriarchy exists among the lower classes is absurd. Lower-class and matriarchy are interchangeable terms.”
The Prime Directive
NovaSeeker made a noteworthy point that the non-military upper middle does have certain characteristic elements of egalitarian, sans patriarchy, but that this is tempered by an unwavering dedication to the “prime directive”.
“The woman has a career that is high-powered like the man does, but they follow the same “prime directive” approach, and they instill this in their kids.
That “prime directive” approach is, I think, a key factor. It’s why, for example, they tend to be sanguine about late marriage, fornication in the 20s, experimentation in college and the like … because almost all of the kids (not all, some do go off the rail, but most don’t) follow the “prime directive” of “achievement –> advancement –> progression –> not derailing a ‘good thing,’”, as you say, and so they indulge, but only to the extent it doesn’t mess up the prime directive. And so it’s understood that there are limits — and all the kids who grew up that way understand this intuitively.
I first saw this when I was in college, because I came from the LMC and was thrust into an environment with a lot of people who grew up UMC and UMC+. They had the “prime directive” approach. They joined sororities and partied and had a grand old fornicative, drunken time in college, but when it came time to bear down for papers and exams, bear down they did with gusto and got those grades. Got those MCATs and med school admissions, LSATs and law school admissions, those spots at McKinsey. Boys and girls alike. There was more hooking up than BF/GF relationships (and this was back in the 1980s, when that wasn’t the norm in the broader culture yet) in the college set, because the “prime directive” mandated that they not be limited by a relationship in pursuing the path of “achievement>advancement>progression” in an unfettered way after graduation, following the “logic” of where the “prime directive” mandates they go, and not be “held back” by “feeling conflicted” about relationships.
So far fewer relationships than were happening on other campuses with a different kind of student, and also the relationships that did happen were mostly ended within the last 3-6 months prior to graduation — a few survived, but they are notable for their exceptional nature. The prime directive was, for the most part, vindicated, and this wasn’t questioned by most — the kids who grew up in this class knew that this was the way it had to be, and they accepted it (for the most part). They were raised with this logic, this directive — it was a part of them.”
Case Study 1 – Dissimilar Visions
I know of more than one LMC/- girl who got into a relationship with an UMC/+ boy, expecting marriage. Her “prime directive” was to marry up. But to him, she was just a fling that went extremely well, good enough to stick it out with her for a good while longer than usual. But in the end, he never took her seriously, because their relationship didn’t fit into his “prime directive”. In her dreamy state, she never discovered this until she got dumped. Afterwards, the LMC girls naturally came to the conclusion that his “prime directive” was poon, but this isn’t entirely true. Poon was only his immediate directive. Moreover, this script is right out of a Jane Austen novel.
A Christian might say that their relationships failed because of being unequally yoked.
Case Study 2 – The Vision must be shared
I also know of at least one LMC/- girl who successfully married up to an UMC/+ man, much to his parent’s shock and disappointment. But in spite of the fairy tale exterior, she was always unhaaappy because she clung to the LMC/- expectation of “love” and romance. She was unable to see herself as merely a shiny cog in the UMC/+ machine. He was perpetually angry that she couldn’t “get her act together”, and this worked against her vision of “love”. So she eventually took the LMC/- path of divorcing him, and she walked away from the fairy tale with a child and modest winnings. His parents congratulated themselves on being right with bittersweet satisfaction. Of course, money was never a problem.
A Christian might say that her relationship failed because of a general malaise characterized by a lack of love, respect, like-mindedness, loyalty, and dedication.
Case Study 3 – The Vision must be Steadfast
Tomi Lahren was a solid MC striver, but she had enough genetic breeding to allow her to jump track into the UMC/+ by marrying up. However, true to her MC nature, she got confused about what it means to be UMC/+. Her LMC Churchianized upbringing showed through when her Feminist and egalitarianist “(false) convictions” deceived her and destroyed any chance of that happening. As things are now, I would consider her “successful” if she were able to stay in the MC past 40.
A Christian might say that her relationship failed because of double-mindedness.
Conclusions
All things considered, and seeing how marriage has fallen to the wayside as of late, it might be accurate to say that LC women are DTF, MC women F up, and UC women F around.
Concerning the UMC/+ in particular, Novaseeker added,
“This continues with decisions later in life, too. Indulge, yes, but not in a way that interferes with the prime directive. That’s the basic approach to life, and they simply do not understand how other social classes who were not raised that way behave differently. And among those of their own class who fail to follow the directive? Well, there is substantial disregard for them, frankly. Borders on disgust.”
Yes, UMC/+ women may indulge in egalitarianism just as much, if not more than LMC/- women, as all women like to dream, but – and this is the critical point — they keep it in check so as to not upset the apple cart of success and status. The overarching dedication to the “vision”, and financial security are what allows them to do so. As RPB pointed out, they must incorporate certain key elements of Patriarchy (namely, a loyalty to the dynasty) just to keep everything together. For those UMC/+ women who go off the rails in their indulgence of feminism and egalitarianism, they can only do so because sheer wealth makes up the difference. But even then, there are certain limitations, as Case Study 3 has shown.
Case Study 3 also illustrates how the LMC/- tends to pick up and imitate the worst aspects of the UMC/+ — the arrogance, the self-indulgence, the entitlement, the concept of relaxed leisure, the gluttony for luxury goods – these are the ostensible traits that they associate with the upper class. They fail to “get the point” about the key aspects that make the UMC/+ successful – the dynasty-based value system, the social dexterity, the vision, the sense of purpose, the diligence, the steadfast dedication to purpose, and the commitment to inter-generational continuity.
Related
- Σ Frame (Jack): Parenting is for the elite. (2020 March 16)
- Σ Frame (Lexet): Aristocratic Hypergamy (2021 May 14)
- Σ Frame (NovaSeeker): The Upper Middle Class Career Life Script Model (2021 May 17)
- Radix Fidem: Our Prime Directive (2021 June 6)
