Incels and Intimacy

For years, I have attempted to critique the semantics, labeling, and discourse around incels. My argument, very simply, is that every person with $200 has access to sex. Prostitutes do not turn anyone down for being short, poor, or awkward. Even homeless people have sex (with each other).

The stereotypical incel has no job, lives with his parents, and doesn’t work out. These are all choices, since construction sites, moving companies, waste management, pest control, restaurants, movie theaters, cleaning companies, retail stores, grocery stores, and warehouses are all hiring. The gym costs $20 a month, and if people in prison can get fit, then there is no excuse.

Incels lack the desire to do these things, and they lack the desire to see a prostitute. Their true frustration has to do with their own depression, as well as the real decline in physical health, which means that people (both men and women) are less attractive at the bottom 30% of society than ever before (unless you’re really unto obesity, then you’re living in paradise).

One of the big reasons why people are depressed is loneliness and alienation. Even when living in a city, going to school or the workplace, and being surrounded by others in public transportation, this feeling of being alone is growing.

The inability to connect with others is the result of an individual’s unique barriers and boundaries. The terms “introvert” and “extrovert” supposedly describe a person’s ability to “get energy from social interaction. Yet any honest appraisal of introverts will find that, around people they trust, they do not become exhausted by social interaction. In fact, introverts often are at their most energetic and find the most meaning in life when they are surrounded by people they can trust, such as their best friends and close family.

To summarize:

1. No one is an “incel.” Everyone with $200 can have sex. Even homeless people have sex.

2. People (both men and women) are extremely depressed, and lack the desire to have sex, go outside, meet people, make friends, make money, or party.

3. Depression and loneliness exist in a feedback loop.

4. Loneliness has nothing to do with the “availability” of people for urban dwellers. Physical loneliness does exist in extreme situations — being in a cabin in Alaska. However, most loneliness is the result of a lack of trust.

5. The lack of trust creates a lack of intimacy. The incel phenomenon has nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with trust and intimacy.

And to make it even simpler:

Sex isn’t the problem; the economy isn’t the problem; the internet isn’t the problem; and strictly speaking, “loneliness” isn’t the problem. There are plenty of people around willing to have sex, to be friends, plenty of jobs — no one is forcing anyone to use the internet. The reason why people don’t have sex, jobs, or friends is because of internal barriers they have to trust and intimacy with others.

These barriers to trust and intimacy are flippantly referred to as “autism.” Autism is a very real disease which does impact an individual’s ability to empathize with other, to pick up social queues, and people with severe autism (25%) are nonverbal. Highly functioning Asperger’s have difficulty modeling the emotions or motivations of others. They cannot understand others, and they have trouble making themselves understood, especially when it comes to the nuances of communication, including facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice, enunciation, and pacing.

In the same way that blind people often have a better sense of hearing, people with autism may have a heightened musical ability,¹ better logical thinking skills, and may connect better with animals.

But only 1% of people are on the autistic spectrum. It is possible that lonely people share many of the same struggles as autistic people, but the causes of those struggles are different. A series of words circles a single concept which is the cause behind a lack of trust and intimacy: values, alignment, norms, familiarity, identity, team, quest, telos, religion, tribe.

I do not share my values with many people. By their standards, I am not normal. Often times, if I were to share my deepest thoughts, I would make others uncomfortable. I do not share an identity with anyone around me. I certain do not feel like I am on the “same team” with my neighbors, or that we share some “quest” or goal. I do not work together with my friends to accomplish anything. I do not have any strong collective religious or tribal identity.

The opposite of this profile would be the following: “I believe that, deep down, we all share the same human values. I’m a pretty normal guy, and I feel at home in my surroundings. I like to go to the same familiar spots, and I am excited to go out and try new things, because I know if I get overwhelmed I can always go back home to relax and recover. I have some familiar spots around town that I like to frequent where I know I will find people who know me. I have a shared identity with the people around me. I’m part of a team, whether that’s my local sports team, my team at work, or my group of friends. We’re always working on a project and trying to win or succeed together. I am part of a strong religious and proud of my ethnic community, which keeps me grounded. I am very close with my family, and family means everything to me.”

If that paragraph makes you throw up, then you might be more like me.

It is possible to ascribe these attitude to certain “inborn” traits. For example, agreeableness. People who are more agreeable are less likely to worry about whether a doctrine, dogma, hobby, or habit is “good” or “bad.” They are not going to sit in the corner of the party thinking about how they wish they were at home doing something else. Instead, if people are watching sports, even if they have never seen the sport before, they will “fake it till they make it.” They will become curious about the sport and attempt to become involved in the fandom.

Alcohol and drug use generally lowers the sort of inhibitions people have about “going with the flow,” and makes it easier for people to trust and have intimacy with others around them. It is no coincidence that drugs and sex are linked.

Evangelism

Becoming popular, or at least socially integrated with a new group, is a matter of aligning your values with the group. If the group likes drinking and going out to parties, you need to conform to that norm. If the group likes anime and Dungeons and Dragons, then you need to learn to love being a nerd.

Religions also work this way. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all have certain beliefs and rituals which must be respected and affirmed. It is not enough to tolerate these belief and rituals, but to actively participate in them, and even to evangelize. It could be said that Judaism is not conduct external evangelization, but it has plenty of internal evangelism, where it constantly reinforces norms among the in-group.

Qiruv in Hebrew means “to bring close,” and is the term for the conversion of non-observant Jews back to Orthodox Judaism. These efforts are not public-facing since they are not targeted toward gentiles, but it is wrong to say that Judaism is “not evangelical.”

Contrary to popular belief, Jews conduct a lot of outreach to non-observant Jews to increase their adherence to Zionism or their observance of the Torah. Birthright Israel has a budget of $72 million. Hillel, a campus outreach program, has a budget of $58 million. Chabad Lubavitch has a yearly revenue of $126 million dollars in America. This number is somewhat deceptive, since much of the work done by Chabad staff is on a volunteer, non-profit basis.

By contrast, the Catholic Church only has a yearly revenue of $887 million. Since there are 10x more Catholics in America than Jews, this shows that Jews are, in fact, twice as evangelical as Catholics. I have not listed the wealth of donations to synagogues, but only three specifically Qiruv-focused organizations, which would make this disparity even larger. It is true that the church itself owns hundreds of billions of dollars in assets — real estate and other investments. But this fact only emphasizes the point. If the Catholic church was as evangelical as Judaism, it would liquidate its fancy assets and investments, and put all of that into free trips to the Vatican and Sunday schools. Instead, the Catholic church is relying on mass immigration and high birth rates to keep its numbers up.

Theoretically, there should be a group out there for everyone. Yet adopting a list of beliefs, dogmas, or values is difficult. Even if there were some philosophically perfect set of beliefs, how many of us would find it inconvenient to our own selfish desires? Jesus said to give away all that you own, and how many of us follow that? How many people are sexually chaste (no masturbation)?

Incels can have sex for $200, and lonely people can join a church. But they don’t want to, even if it would be good for them. The feelings of intimacy and trust that people are looking for cannot be found in prostitution, and the feeling of faith in God that people are looking for cannot be found in “just go to church.” People want to be romantically seduced and fall in love, or struck with revelation and filled with the Holy Spirit. No one “chooses” to fall in love, and no one “chooses” to receive a vision of God. These are things that money can’t buy.

Negative Alignment

Alignment is like a magnet. You can be positively aligned the people and things you love. Yet, it is also possible to be negatively aligned with the things you hate. The process of “negative alignment” occurs on the same lines as positive alignment. Sex, which can produce the most powerful feelings of love, can also produce the greatest feelings of abuse. Parents, with whom we are naturally predisposed to love, can end up becoming the people we hate the most.

Even people who do not have positive alignment in their life (church, community, mission) will still often have negative alignment (hate their parents, hate Republicans, hate liberals). It may seem counter-intuitive, but mutual hatred can wrap around and become a form of group identity. We both hate Republicans, or we both hate liberals, or we both hate our parents. Hatred can become a mechanism for creating positive alignment. It should be no surprise that the loneliest generation is also the most polarized and hateful generation. Hate is an attempt to solve the problem of loneliness.

Loneliness is the result of barriers within us. To break down those barriers we have to do things that are uncomfortable or make us afraid. Hatred is a strong motivating force which helps us push beyond these limits. Every human emotion serves a purpose.

Understanding how loneliness leads to hatred and polarization is not to excuse for violence. But if a solution to polarization is needed, it can only be obtained through such an understanding.

Why are migrants to Europe so violent? Explanations on the far right are biological: it must be in their blood. Other explanations are religious: it must be Islam. Other explanations justify the violence: it is revenge for racism and white supremacy. A less popular explanation is that when people are removed from the familiar, homogeneous, traditional community they grew up in, this creates loneliness and alienation, and hatred, polarization, and violence are rational responses to this “culture clash.”

This is not to morally justify the violence of migrants, but to explain it. On the other hand, white nationalist terrorism is also on the rise, and has much of the same origins. The Christian church, which was the center of European communal life for hundreds of years, has evaporated and been replaced with what are essentially prisons run by women. I am referring to public schools.

The alienation and loneliness of women does not usually transform into violence. That does not mean that female despair is any less painful, but from the perspective of social or political stability, it is less actively destructive, externally. Teenage girls cut themselves, commit suicide, and live quiet lives of despair. Men, on the other hand, are much more likely to lash out and adopt ideologies which destabilize and challenge the political order.

Extremists justify this, and say that a system which produces so much harm deserves to be destroyed. Moderates ignore the problem. In fact, most liberals are too busy saving starving children in Africa to worry about the extremist next door.

BLM was never a problem, because black violence is inherently chaotic and disorganized. BLM never had a constructive political goal besides more government welfare and less police. White extremists, on the other hand, are extremely purposeful and organized in their violence. BLM, while not a problem in itself, presents secondary risks. White extremists observe the “double standard” and become infuriated.

1. (2020) An Exploratory Study of Imagining Sounds and “Hearing” Music in Autism: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7101292/