Added note about "Inside the Manosphere" documentary

I have been thinking a lot about those young men in the documentary Inside the Manosphere by Louis Theroux. I wrote a review two posts ago, but something that emerged during and after the viewing was my sympathy for those young men who are so sadly misguided in their goals: domination over financially dependend submissive women, happiness through accumulation of cars, boats and luxury items. These things do not bring happiness. i am sorry for them in their hunger and their diversion of energy into the wrong goals. As my mother used to say, "Goodness is its own reward" and it is. It feels good to be good, happy in yourself and satisfied with your efforts in the world at the end of your life. To know you did well by your fellow being and that you were kind, loving, and productive. Fast cars and expensive watches are such short lived joys, just about the time they are out of the box and on the wrist they have already lost their happy peak. Getting sex by dominating weaker and intimidated partners, very like sex from sex workers, is not as fulfilling as having a loving relationship of equals with someone who is your friend and who loves you for yourself not for your money. It makes me sad to thik of this hollow world of vanity to which they are committed and attached, the same way the world of addiction and alcoholism makes me sad - the full devotion to the five minute or five hour oblivion which ends in craving and slavish pursuit of another high. I feel sorry for addicts and alcoholics as well. It feels good to be free of addiction and sober. I used to be addicted to cigarretts and I can tell you that I am relieved and happy that i don't have to devote my time and energy and health to that slave master anymore.

This whole thing reminded me of the poverty of the exploited girls in the Epstein scandal, their deprived and empty lives that made them think $100 and some new clothes and make-up from the mall was going to make them happy, so convinced that they would engage in a gross and disgusting sex act with an old man to get that $100 which admittedly would be hard to get any other way. I was lunching with a friend of mine who also came from a working class background but my harder than mine. I had a devoted father and mother and my mother had admirable values and lived them. She was a true representative of Christianity - loving, generous, kind, forgiving and happy. We were loved, my father was loved, and he appreciated it and all my mother brought to our lives. My father was devoted to this life they created. Both my parents had been orphaned, my mother actually in an orphanage in her toddler years, my father without a father in his teens, and his mother had to leave to take care of her mother. Both of them put great value into a tight family unit and they both loved it. In most ways wwe were a happy family, except for my father's driniing. My friend also had an alcoholic father and her mother abandoned her children to a succession of family and friends so she could find a wealthy man to provide the life she craved. She succeeded in that. One of her children, her son, lived in depression all his life and died as a result of his alcoholism. One of the daughters became a heroine addict and is now suffering dementia. The other daughter found the right turns to stay in high school, go to college, get a worthy and remunerative career in education and to finally marry a good man. She and I often talk about how our lives were saved through education and our careers. We both have pensions and benefits and we are both happy in our old age. We both feel proud of our lives, too. What is the "Good Life!" Aother excdellent thought provoking look at that question is the comedy special by the same name by Mike Birbiglia! Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com