An essay by Derek Suszko, associate editor of the St. Croix Review, on the predicament of young white men with high IQ in today’s society:
The hardest thing for the middle-class white chud to accept is that he is in fact highly disposable in both intellectual and sexual terms. The chud thought himself high-value on the basis of his ability to discern the failures of bourgeois-bureaucratic culture when his primary asset (his verbal intelligence) is only valuable in the material service of such a culture.
There is such a surplus of dislocated white men with 120-145 IQ that they are completely redundant at the individual level. All through adolescence the chud was proud of his intelligence. He came to understand (painfully) that women didn’t much value it but still had hope that modern social conditions would find a place where it put him in some track or position of authority. But the existing social structure really has no particular need for him and is in fact ideologically hostile to his advancement, especially when he retains a contempt for the gender-mixed “consensus based” norms.
Chud doing the actual work, Chads supervising on the side. Funny, but eventually leads to the collapse of society.
The above average iq (110-120) man with good sociability is far better fitted for the modern algorithmic economy. When he’s highly good-looking, this is the zone for the true middle-class “Chad.” He can make the transition from college frivolity to bourgeois marriage to bureaucratic professionalism far better than the intelligent chud. He may see problems with the culture, but he never has the narcissism to think he is the one to work to change it. This is really the kind of man comfortably middle-class women want to marry today.
This story is part of the broader hollow out in the developed world of (white) men and women who formerly would have been in the upper professional bourgeois. Many men don’t get there anymore. Intelligent women get there at far higher rates, but many find no adequate men to marry. Since “intelligence” is no longer a correlate for “status” both men and women are sexually selecting (even for marriage) on the dominant bass of looks, as this is a far better indicator of status in the algorithmic world anyway (and sexually more excitable, if less compatible for the long-term).
It’s, in fact, even worse than that for the intelligent chud. A formidable diagnostic intelligence has actually itself become an indication of status failure. If you can explain the system too well, you’ve dearly lost to it. It indicates a youth wasted on unaffiliated (and unfunded) contemplation instead of employment and professional advance. Very few chuds ever really achieve algorithmic success, and the ones who do are rarely the most discerning. The chud despised the bourgeois culture he had no choice but to submit to, and now he’s doomed.
It seems true that having such a surplus of theoretically capable men sinking into service work or low middle class would spell danger for the social order, but you have to take into account the psychological considerations. The chud hits his late twenties in a state of narcissistic exhaustion. He demands someone begin the work to dismantle the geriatric-liberal order, but he himself is too broken to go about it himself. The chud’s downfall is his inability to overcome self-consciousness. Without his self preservative and energy sapping narcissism, he must face the realization of his own pragmatic inferiority. This might be the catalyst to real organized action, but the chud is prematurely aged. Much of his “activism” has been performative online antics. With the onset of bitter middle age, the chud may keep yapping on the Internet but in his heart he has given up.
Mr. Suszko’s observation on intelligence and success is spot on. Above average intelligence in combination with good social skills and/or looks gets one further ahead than exceptional intelligence; at least, this has been my observation with my childhood classmates and society at large.
I don’t completely agree with his assessment that intelligent, disenfranchised men will quietly sink to a bitter middle age where they just yap on the internet. Historically, large populations of unhappy men leads to violence and the collapse of social order. But our age has all sorts of technology that might placate these men. Regardless of what actually happens, we would likely know for sure in the next 10 to 20 years in this world.
Temple of Zagan 