Remember Jonathan McIntosh?
If you don't, let me refresh your memory.
Earlier in this decade, McIntosh and his partner,
Anita Sarkeesian, were running the YouTube
channel Feminist Frequency, which purported
to critique today's popular culture from a
feminist point of view.
But their criticisms were so off the mark,
and so bigoted, that multitudes of people
were disgusted and enraged by watching them.
Numerous channels began criticizing their
videos, and found a huge audience.
There are many currently successful channels
on YouTube that owe their initial success
to McIntosh and Sarkeesian.
For me, too, coming across Feminist Frequency
was a transformative moment.
As a liberal feminist, I always knew that
there were radical feminists on the fringes
of the movement.
But seeing how the feminist establishment
embraced Anita Sarkeesian, made me realize
that the radicals have now become the mainstream.
It was one of the main things that alerted
me to the rise of the social justice warriors
and the danger that they present to liberal
society, and prompted me to start this channel.
Looking back, this was an important cultural
moment.
Many anti-SJW movements, insignificant until
then, united together, and helped each other
find an audience and grow.
GamerGate was the initial spark, but Feminist
Frequency provided the fuel that turned it
into a large fire, and I am not at all sure
this would have happened without Sarkeesian
and McIntosh.
They played their part so perfectly, providing
one juicy video after the other, videos that
were so bad that they were just fun to dissect,
ridicule, use as platform for counter-arguments,
and just have a good laugh.
It was so easy that everyone had a go.
Years later, the anti-SJW movement has become
a true cultural and political force, whereas
Anita Sarkeesian is all but forgotten.
She still uploads regularly on her Feminist
Frequency channel, but only a few thousand
people watch her videos.
McIntosh, on the other hand, survived.
After leaving Feminist Frequency, he started
his own channel, called Pop Culture Detective,
and his criticisms are quite popular.
He is one of the biggest SJW channels.
I've watched a couple of his videos and didn't
feel an urge to react to them.
I didn't find them to be offensive like the
Feminist Frequency videos were.
McIntosh has learned his lesson, and found
a way to make his points in a more civil manner.
So I just ignored him.
But recently he popped on my radar again,
when he got involved in a cultural battle
that I am following, the battle for the soul
of Star Wars.
McIntosh made a lengthy Twitter thread, defending
The Last Jedi from those who claim that it
is untrue to the spirit of the earlier movies.
And his thread was acknowledged by none other
than Rian Johnson, the director of The Last
Jedi, who, apparently without knowing who
McIntosh is, endorsed it, and indicated that
it helped him understand where his critics
are wrong.
Yes folks, that's right.
As if Rian Johnson wasn't deep enough in shit
already, he just committed one of the Internet's
cardinal sins, and went full McIntosh.
You never go full McIntosh.
I sympathize with Johnson.
He is currently dealing with a terrifying
thought, the thought that he will go down
in history as the man who destroyed Star Wars,
and this is not a happy place to be in.
So he is grasping at any straw, anyone who
defends his movie.
Some of the defenses provided for The Last
Jedi were good, but McIntosh's isn't one of
them.
In fact, it is terrible, and Johnson only
hurt himself by endorsing it.
What it did do, however, is make me want to
take a closer look at McIntosh's work, and
when I did, I realized that there is still
enough juice in it for me to stick my fangs
into.
So now, I am going to criticize that McIntosh
thread and show how wrong he is.
And then, we will have a look at one of his
Pop Culture Detective videos, a video about
Star Wars, and see just how deep his misconceptions
go, and what that says about his brand of
feminism.
But first, let's go through his thread, shall
we?
A handful of The Last Jedi haters in my mentions
are offering up a fascinating misreading of
the final showdown between Luke and Vader
in Return of the Jedi.
I think it's worth taking a moment to discuss
because it may help explain why these guys
hate Luke’s character so much in Episode
VIII.
The misreading: Luke Skywalker uses his great
warrior skills to defeat Darth Vader.
Once he’s proven himself in combat and stands
victorious, Luke does the honorable thing
by showing mercy and sparing his enemy.
Thereby saving himself from corruption and
redeeming his father.
What really happened: Luke tries to avoid
fighting but gives into anger.
As he bests Vader in combat, Luke realizes
his great mistake - winning this fight means
losing his soul to the Dark Side.
The battle itself is corrupting him.
Understanding this, Luke throws away his weapon.
Notice that the misreading (above) reframes
Luke as a badass warrior, and reframes his
refusal to kill Vader as an act of mercy stemming
from a position of power.
This is significant because Luke beating Vader
in combat is explicitly depicted as a moment
of weakness, NOT strength.
The desire of some fans to re-imagine Luke
as a powerful warrior, who spares the bad
guy out of benevolence, is consistent with
the way male heroes are often represented.
It’s the way Batman is framed when he doesn't
kill The Joker.
But Luke Skywalker isn’t the typical action
hero.
Luke’s arc in the original trilogy ends
with him not only refusing to kill the bad
guy, but refusing to even fight a worse villain.
This is why Luke’s force projection standoff
with Kylo in The Last Jedi is so perfect.
It's the ultimate expression of everything
Luke has learned.
The fact that an iconic figure like Luke Skywalker
was explicitly framed as *weak* for fighting
a murderous villain like Darth Vader is a
pretty subversive message, especially for
a male hero in Hollywood.
And it’s something that, 35 years later,
some fans still refuse to accept.
So, what McIntosh is saying here is this:
violence leads to the dark side.
Therefore, if Luke fights, he opens himself
up to the dark side's influence.
He knows this, and he tries to avoid fighting
Vader, but Vader gets him to lose control
and turn to violence.
He defeats his father, and stands on the edge
of the dark side, but catches himself in the
last minute and goes back to a non-violent
mode.
This is the lesson he learned here, and this
is the lesson he applies in The Last Jedi,
as he does not fight Kylo Ren.
But the disgruntled fans misread what happened
in Return of the Jedi, and thought that we
saw Luke being a great warrior and defeating
Vader, and then sparing him out of mercy.
They saw his turning to violence as a manifestation
of strength, not weakness.
That's why they can't accept his pacifist
stance in The Last Jedi.
I agree that Luke's outburst in attacking
Vader is depicted as a moment of weakness.
And I'm pretty sure that most Star Wars fans
see it that way, although there are probably
a few who, like McIntosh claims, think that
Luke is being a triumphant badass.
But McIntosh, and Rian Johnson after him,
is trying to extrapolate from these few and
portray all the critics as having that misconception,
and some in the SJW media have picked that
up and try to run with it.
So it's incumbent upon us to show why they
are wrong.
Let me start by going back to something I
tweeted after I saw The Last Jedi.
I didn't hate the movie.
A lot of it was crap, but I thought that there
were a couple of interesting things in it.
One of them is Luke Skywalker's arc, which
I, too, thought that the angry fans are getting
wrong.
So I made a couple of tweets about it.
The first tweet read: "People have complained
that 'The Last Jedi' is an SJW movie.
I didn't get much of that vibe.
The vibe I got from the movie was a Buddhist
vibe."
And I added to that a second tweet: "Many
have interpreted what happened to Luke at
the end as the result of his fight with Kylo
Ren.
I don't think it had anything to do with it.
I think he reached nirvana."
Now when I say Buddhist, I don't mean literally
Buddhist.
I mean Buddhist in spirit.
I think what the movie is trying to tell us
is this: the Force is a oneness, and all beings
come from that oneness.
If we all gave up on our individuality, and
just learned to flow along with the Force,
there will be peace.
If you are really good at it, you can even
dissolve into the Force and maintain your
consciousness in it, like some Jedi do.
So evil, according to this movie, does not
stem only from selfish individualism.
It stems from individualism itself, since
individualism differentiates you from the
Force.
That is why all the acts of heroism that the
characters perform throughout the movie turn
out to be futile.
The only act that helps is an act of self-sacrifice,
a totally selfless act.
And even with self-sacrifice, it can be good
only if it is completely selfless.
The movie shows Holdo's self-sacrifice in
a positive light, and Finn's self-sacrifice
in a negative light.
Why?
Because in Fin's act there is still a part
of himself.
Along with saving his friends, he also does
it to get revenge against the First Order.
It's notable that the former is a woman and
the latter a man.
The movie seems to indicate that women are
superior to men, because for them selflessness
comes naturally, whereas men have to learn
it.
It shows that Rian Johnson might have already
been Full McIntosh when he made the movie,
and that he is one of those people who do
not believe in gender equality.
But let's stay focused on the Buddhist element.
Now, I think that the metaphysics that George
Lucas created do lend themselves to this quasi-Buddhist
story, and I thought that Johnson made an
interesting choice when he went in that direction.
But as I kept following the drama around the
movie, I realized that I am missing something,
because I am not a Star Wars fan.
For the fans, Luke Skywalker was a hero, a
role model that they looked up to.
As someone who is creating within an established
universe, Rian Johnson did not have the ethical
license to change the essence of this character
too much.
Johnson himself, in some of his tweets, claimed
that he believes he remained true to Luke's
character, and this is obviously why he also
embraced McIntosh's interpretation.
So, let's now ask, is Johnson's Luke true
to Lucas' Luke?
Absolutely not.
Because in Lucas' original trilogy, the heroes
are individualists.
Luke is not selfless.
He regards living beings as distinct individuals,
and fights so that they can maintain their
individual freedom.
He is taught the Jedi philosophy of selflessness,
but he never fully commits to it.
He sometimes performs selfless acts, but never
transcends his self entirely, which is what
a Buddhist would try to do.
When he refuses to kill Vader, it is not an
act of selflessness, it is an act of self-control.
It is Luke imposing HIS good side over HIS
bad side, after the latter took control for
a moment.
And yes, it is also an act of self-sacrifice,
allowing the Emperor to kill him, but this
is done as a tactic, a desperate attempt to
win after all other ways failed.
This is the hero that millions of Star Wars
fans idolize, a man who wins because he imposes
his will over his dark side – not, as McIntosh
so condescendingly thinks of them, because
he shows mercy to his defeated enemy.
And this is the hero that Rian Johnson has
demolished, when he made Luke into someone
who runs away from the fight.
Johnson has essentially turned Luke into a
hermit, like some monks.
But the inspiration for the Jedi was not Buddhist
monks.
The inspiration for the Jedi was the Samurai.
The Samurai were usually Buddhists, and they
were indeed supposed to be selfless.
But along with their selflessness, they also
had purpose.
They served a cause, and they learned to be
selfless so they could totally commit themselves
to that cause.
The cause of the Jedi is to protect the republic
and maintain peace and order in the galaxy,
and Luke had run away from it.
He did it, he says, because he came to the
conclusion that the power of the Jedi can
only lead to bad.
And this is diametrically opposed to the message
of Return of the Jedi, where we saw the hero
using his power to overcome the dark.
Let's go back to Jonathan McIntosh's tweets.
Apparently, he believes that Luke's weakness
was in the act of turning to violence.
Actually, the violence itself isn't the problem.
As long as the violence is done out of love,
out of wanting to defend people from oppression,
it is heroic and positive.
The moment of weakness was when Luke started
to fight out of anger and hate, and that is
what we are supposed to see as negative.
McIntosh, as usual, misses the point.
Ok, Johnson's defenders might say, but decades
have passed since then.
Luke has realized that the force is dangerous,
and decided to become a hermit and remove
himself from the battlefield, just like some
Samurai became Buddhist monks.
Well, sure, I can see that happening in feudal
Japan, where Samurai swords were the most
lethal weapon.
But is pious pacifism an option for a hero
in a universe where Death Star technology
exists?
Billions of people have died by the hands
of the First Order, deaths that might have
been avoided if Luke Skywalker, the most powerful
warrior in the galaxy, didn't abandon his
post.
Choosing this path has completely tarnished
Luke's image.
Let's take a real-life case of Buddhist pacifism
in the face of brutal tyranny.
Mahatma Gandhi was known for preaching non-violent
struggle, and for the successes his way had
when his people applied it to oppose British
rule in India.
But another force working in the world at
the time was Nazi Germany, and here Gandhi's
non-violent stance was challenged.
Gandhi considered the Nazis to be a monstrosity,
and yet, he opposed violent struggle even
against them.
Instead, he wrote personal letters to Hitler,
trying to get him to see the error of his
ways.
He also wrote an open letter to the British
people, advising them to not fight the Nazis,
because fighting and killing is worse than
being conquered and subjugated.
And in 1938 he wrote an open letter to German
Jews, advising them to not accept their persecution,
but to oppose it non-violently.
He acknowledged that this will probably lead
to them being mass murdered by the Nazis,
but, he wrote, "even the massacre I have imagined
could be turned into a day of thanksgiving
and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance
of the race even at the hands of the tyrant.
For to the god fearing, death has no terror.
It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking
that would be all the more refreshing for
the long sleep."
Now, in Indian culture, where Buddha and Gandhi
operated, this makes sense.
Since it considers your life as an individual
on Earth as something that you should aspire
to transcend, we can see why Gandhi would
think that this is the best option.
The Jedi actually have a very similar view,
as expressed by Yoda.
12:42 – 12:53
But Luke does not accept this view.
21:24 – 21:41
And Luke does not accept this view because
he is a product of Western culture, where
it makes no sense.
And since most of the people idolizing Luke
are also part of this culture, it is wrong
to demand of them to accept their hero going
down this path.
They are not Hindus, Luke was never a Buddhist,
and in that context, his pacifism constitutes
a criminal dereliction of duty.
Luke was supposed to bring balance to the
force, not leave it in darkness.
This is what I had to say about McIntosh's
tweets.
Now, let's have a look at his video.
The video titled 'The Case Against The Jedi
Order' was released on the last day of 2017,
strategically coinciding with the release
of 'The Last Jedi' earlier that month.
McIntosh, however, isn't dealing with the
Disney Star Wars movies, but focuses on the
two trilogies made by George Lucas.
At first glance, you already see why his current
videos are better received than the Feminist
Frequency videos.
As you may recall, the main project of that
channel was a series called 'Tropes vs. Women
in Video Games', which aimed to show how video
games condition gamers to be violent and oppressive
towards women.
And yet, in the entire series, Anita Sarkeesian
fails to show even a single case in which
a video game advocates violence against women.
Instead, she makes assumptions about how the
male gamers are affected by these games, assumptions
that are based on her perception of what the
nature of men is.
And her perception of the nature of men is
rabidly hateful, to the point where she basically
dehumanizes them.
We find none of that in this video.
McIntosh is focusing on the pop culture artifact
he is criticizing, and he is actually talking
about the problems of men, and how culture
might exacerbate them.
This is a more humane approach.
But once you start to get into what he is
saying, you see that he is still in Full McIntosh
mode.
In the beginning of the video, McIntosh characterizes
the Lucas Star Wars trilogies as coming of
age stories, and I agree.
He then points out that Luke's and Anakin's
growth is being guided and shaped by the principles
of the Jedi.
Then, he says this:
When McIntosh uses the word "stoic" here,
he does it in the colloquial sense.
However, I shall take this opportunity to
provide a brief overview of Stoicism, because
it will be relevant later.
Stoicism is a school of thought that was founded
in Athens, in the 3rd century BC, but reached
its height in Rome, in the first two centuries
AD.
The stoic philosophers believed that happiness
is achieved when we live according to our
nature.
The essence of humans is rationality, so to
live according to our nature, we must develop
our mind through philosophical thought.
We should accept the irrational side of our
nature as well, but use our mind to shape
it, and direct it towards a virtuous life.
We must not be enslaved to urges, passions
and drives, but learn to control them.
We must also understand that we are part of
a teleological universe, and thus rationalize
every bad thing that happens, and learn to
see it as necessary and therefore good.
Once you achieve this state of mind, you become
free and happy, no matter what situation you
are in.
Some Stoics were slaves, but with the stoic
thought, they claimed that they achieved spiritual
freedom, peace of mind, and happiness.
The stoic thought was highly influential on
the development of Western culture, and was
one of the forces that took it out of its
savage origins, and turned it into a civilization
that tries to use reason to devise a better
world for itself.
The human ape, once an animal driven mainly
by base urges, was transformed by this civilizing
process, into an animal that lives in a world
of increasing peace, prosperity and wellbeing.
But Jonathan McIntosh characterizes stoicism
as a bad thing, part of the dark side.
Let's follow his reasoning.
McIntosh begins by describing the Jedi order.
He completely disregards the quasi-Buddhist
nature of its philosophy, and focuses mainly
of the fact that it is male dominated.
He acknowledges that the Jedi present a welcomed
alternative to the usual male movie hero,
in that they are not daredevils who rely on
physical strength, but rather deliberate and
peace seeking monks, who rely on intelligence
and dexterity.
However…
So, while the tweets we saw earlier defended Star Wars as presenting a better version of masculinity
than regular Hollywood movies, here McIntosh
tells us that even that is not good enough.
He then points out that the Jedi, according
to Lucas, are influenced by the lawmen in
Hollywood westerns, and says…
And…
So, here's the problem.
McIntosh characterizes Jedi masculinity as
stoic masculinity, in which the hero is demanded
to repress his emotions.
Which, as we shall see, he regards as a bad
practice.
But let's talk first about the claim itself.
Is McIntosh right that the Jedi are stoics?
No, he once again misses the point.
He gets slightly closer to the mark a bit
later, when he says…
No, Jonathan. Not to deny their emotional selves. To deny their selves.
A Jedi is actually encouraged to be connected
to his emotions.
What he is not supposed to have is a self.
A Jedi is supposed to be completely selfless.
And when I say "selfless" I don't mean it
in the Western sense, where it means momentarily
transcending the self to perform an altruistic
act.
I mean it in the Eastern sense, where the
self is basically seen as the root of all
evil, and the aspiration is to permanently
transcend it.
For the Jedi, emotions are bad only if they
tie you to your own self, prevent you from
letting it go.
And that is why they are completely different
from the Stoics, which emphasized individual
freedom, and preached that the self should
be in control of the emotions.
The Jedi, as we said already, are much closer
to Buddhism.
McIntosh doesn't get that, and so he misrepresents
what happens when young Anakin is brought
before the Jedi council, to determine whether
he should be trained.
Usually, potential Jedi are detected at an
earlier age, before they had time to develop
strong emotional ties to other people.
Anakin, however, is already deeply connected
to his mother, and the Jedi observe this as
something that will prevent him from transcending
his self.
That's why they initially reject him.
McIntosh misses that, so he characterizes
it thus:
To remind you, the Jedi are not counsellors
for child health.
They are an order, and Anakin wants to join
this order.
They are not forcing him to do anything.
He can give up on his ambition to become a
Jedi, and go tend to his feelings.
But they are telling him what is needed to
become a member, and why he is unfit.
McIntosh, however, makes it seem like this
is something that all children in the society
have to go through, that they are all told
to detach from their emotions.
Of course, he is talking about our society.
To strengthen his point, McIntosh says that…
Wrong.
A true Jedi does not have to bury his emotions,
because he has no selfish emotions.
Luke, however, did not receive full training,
and does have selfish emotions.
That makes him vulnerable to Vader's manipulations,
and that is why he is advised to at least
bury his feeling and hide them.
Here we get to  the point.
After misrepresenting the Jedi, McIntosh now
uses them as a manifestation of Western culture.
He characterizes it as a culture that trains
men to bury their feelings, to detach from
their emotional selves.
The result, he says, is harmful to boys and
men.
We now carry on with Anakin's story.
The Jedi have decided to gamble, and train
him after all, hoping he can overcome his
problematic starting point.
But the teenage Anakin, after failing to become
completely selfless as a Jedi should, is being
torn apart because of his personal feelings
towards his mother and towards Padme.
McIntosh, tied to his narrow, Western-centric
view, still has it backwards.
He still sees the Jedi as individualists,
like the Stoics.
We see how McIntosh's misreading leads him astray.
He doesn't see Anakin as someone who is failing
the Jedi doctrine of transcending the self,
but as someone who is failing the allegedly
Jedi doctrine of detaching from his emotional
self.
And he claims that George Lucas is trying
to tell us that this is Anakin's failure to
become a man.
He shows that when Anakin expresses grief,
or shows fear, or allows himself to love Padme,
it is characterized as a negative thing.
This, he claims, is because we are trained
to believe that such displays of emotion are
un-masculine.
We shall soon discuss whether or not McIntosh
is right, and this is indeed what our society
trains men to do.
But one thing is for sure: he completely misunderstands
the story of Star Wars.
McIntosh is right about one thing: the Jedi
do indeed handle Anakin's problems badly.
But that, of course, is the story.
Lucas shows us that the Jedi, because they
are selfless, are incapable of understanding
what Anakin is going through, and completely
fail to provide him with the help and counselling
he needs.
Because Lucas, as we shall discuss, does not
think that Jedi philosophy is what our social
order should be based on.
McIntosh, once again, misses the point.
And he misses the point yet again when he
tries to understand Jedi philosophy…
This offhand remark shows how hilariously
wrong he gets it.
It shows that McIntosh doesn't recognize that
the entire Jedi philosophy is inspired by
Eastern thought.
He thinks that Lucas is just using Eastern
concepts when convenient.
Correct.
So, according to McIntosh, the first domino
is the loving relationship with another person.
That leads to fear of loss, etc.
But, as we've determined, this is a misreading.
The first domino is maintaining a sense of
self.
Having a loving relationship, where you are
loved for who you are as an individual person,
is merely part of it.
McIntosh mischaracterizes it, and, based on that…
And here we have the Full McIntosh.
Society, according to Jonathan, is teaching
us that women are bad for men, because society
is inherently sexist.
And so, men are taught to fear and suspect
women, and that to be masculine means that
you must not allow yourself to love them.
According to McIntosh's own emotional domino
theory, this is the first domino in what leads
men to detach from their emotions altogether.
And this domino effect eventually leads to men
lashing out at the world, and becoming aggressive
and hateful.
As a result, women suffer the aggression of
men, and men suffer the psychological pain
of being emotionally damaged.
Everyone is suffering, and it's all because
of systemic sexism.
To counteract, allow me to present a very
brief overview of the history of masculinity
in Western civilization.
Humans evolved from the apes, which means
that they have certain natural drives, such
as aggression and dominance.
This nature cannot be changed, but what humans
can and have changed is their second nature,
the way they act on these natural impulses.
In the early days of human civilization, which
were much more violent than today, masculinity
was expressed through physical prowess.
But as social order gradually took over, humans
had to learn to subdue their violent impulses.
The Greeks were ahead of everyone, and taught
their men how to control their drives and
passions in order to become virtuous, a process
that reached its apotheosis in the teachings
of the Stoics.
These teachings than spread, and became one
of the cornerstones of Western culture.
From here on, men were taught that a real
man is someone who controls his drives and
passions, and doesn't allow them to take over.
This had several manifestations.
The noble class made the teachings of the
Stoics part of what it means to be a nobleman,
and as the courtly society began to emerge
in the late Middle-Ages, this led to the rise
of the concept of the gentleman, someone who
is above the brutish nature of Man.
By the 18th century, this resulted in an extremely
genteel masculinity, which by today's standards
looks effeminate.
Christianity, meanwhile, also absorbed Stoic
thought, as part of its teachings of how to
become a peace loving Christian person.
In the case of Christianity, however, control
often became repression.
Since Christianity regards certain drives
and passions as coming from the devil, men
were taught not just to control them, but
to try to get rid of them altogether.
This is impossible, so these impulses became
repressed.
The common folk, in the meantime, remained
quite brutish and violent.
But as the modern state emerged in the 19th
century, and the ambition was to overcome
the old class system, the idea was that every
man should become a gentleman.
In the Victorian Age, this meant that every
child was taught to behave in a civilized
manner, a combination of aristocratic decorum
and Christian self-repression.
For many working-class people, however, this
felt like oppression, especially since it
wasn't really suitable for the harsher reality
that they lived in.
the result was that they rebelled and accentuated
their masculinity, making it more tough and
dominant.
This tougher masculinity started to rule the
streets, and it was also used by some organizations
populated mainly by working-class people,
such as the army or sports teams, which encouraged
it and directed it to their means.
There were other opposing forces.
The romantic artists emphasized feelings,
rebelling against Victorian stoicism, while
the psychoanalysts claimed that the stiff
upper lip of the Victorians, the repression
of emotions, is psychologically damaging.
At the same time, we need to remember that
the world was changing.
In the modern age, with the advancement of
technology, reality became increasingly more
comfortable and peaceful.
The old masculine toughness, necessary to
deal with a harsh world, could gradually give
way to softer types of masculinity.
In the modern world, masculinity is always
in flux, reevaluating and redefining itself,
to find the right balance for the time.
This was a highly simplistic history of masculinity.
But what I wanted to emphasize here is how
complicated the issue is.
Masculinity is basically the second nature
of men, the thing by which they subdue the
ape inside, so they are not harmful to the
society around them, especially to women.
It is a constant struggle to tame the wild
beast, and it is made harder because of these
complexities.
There are many opposing forces that comprise
masculinity, many different traditions, and
masculinity is demanded to always find the
right balance between them, as well as adjusting
for the culture and the time that it is in.
for many men, indeed, finding the right balance
proves to be too hard, and they suffer as
a result.
McIntosh is right about that, but he completely
ignores all of these complexities, and, as
usual, makes it seem like the whole issue
hinges on just one thing that we should fix.
This is not how you should approach such an
issue.
In the next part of his video, McIntosh talks
about why Anakin turned to evil while Luke
became a hero, despite the fact that both
of them were subjected to Jedi teachings.
You don't say, Jonathan!
Have you considered that maybe this is what
Lucas was trying to tell us?
If we strip away the space opera stuff, the
story of Star Wars is a story that we have
seen in Hollywood movies before.
It is a story of an American who joins an
Eastern martial arts cult, and excels because
he refuses to fully internalize the Eastern
philosophy of selflessness, instead bringing
his American individualism into the mix.
Anakin fails because he fails to find the
right balance, and the Jedi fail because they
are ill equipped to properly deal with what
he is going through.
The Lucas Star Wars movies are an indictment
of the shortcomings of Jedi philosophy, and,
indirectly, of the shortcomings of Buddhism.
In the comment section of the video, several
commenters have made that point, and their
comments got a lot of upvotes, showing that
many Star Wars fans do get it.
McIntosh's response to that was that if you
watch Lucas talking about it, you see that
he truly believes in Yoda's philosophy.
Well, let's have a look, shall we?
So it appears that McIntosh is right, and
Lucas does truly believe in the emotional
domino theory that he put in Yoda's mouth.
But, what does Lucas say just before that?
So, it has nothing to do with emotional detachment.
The issue here is finding the right balance
between selflessness and selfishness.
When you are too selfish, that is the first
domino in the chain, the one that leads you
down the emotional path that ends in suffering.
This was Anakin's failure.
When you are too selfless, you are basically
a good person, but you are unable to understand
and help people who aren't as selfless as
you are.
This was the Jedi's failure.
Luke is the one who represents the right balance.
And this is where Rian Johnson failed.
The fans were expecting Luke to be the one
who brings the new balance to the Force, the
one who creates a new and better Jedi order,
which combines selflessness and individualism.
Instead, Johnson seems to think that Buddhism
is the right answer, and created a movie that
is Buddhist in spirit.
The Luke storyline here is that he lost his
faith, until Rey comes and rekindles it, bringing
him back to himself.
But when Johnson shows Luke returning to himself,
it isn't the Luke that Lucas created.
It is a Buddhist Luke, one that has become
as selfless as the Jedi were.
We are almost at the end of McIntosh's video.
Is there anything else you wish to tell us,
Jonathan?
Three months?
Doing what?
You are just talking over Star Wars clips.
I bet any content creator watching this is
laughing their ass off right now.
This video is more than twice as long, it
has more editing, I had to re-watch the prequels
and reread the Stoics, and read that book
that you recommended.
That, along with the writing, recording and
editing, took me about two weeks.
And that's while doing my daytime job.
And I'm considered slow.
[If you guys want me to have a faster pace,
consider supporting MY Patreon.
If I make enough I can leave my daytime job.
Links below] I guess maybe McIntosh needs
more time because he must have long sessions
of connecting to his feelings before every
new paragraph that he formulates.
Or something.
Let's recap.
Jonathan McIntosh believes that Western society
sees emotional detachment as an important
part of masculinity.
Because of that, it teaches young boys to
detach from their emotions, as part of the
process of becoming a man.
This creates deep psychological complications,
denying men the ability to love, or to express
important emotions like fear and grief.
Since they are afraid to lose their masculinity,
men bottle up their emotions, and as a result
they become angry and violent.
He claims that popular culture plays a part
in this programming of men.
Towards the end of the video, he even calls
upon men to rebel and change the culture.
But when he gets down to providing an example
for this process, he fails miserably.
His interpretation of the Star Wars movies
misses the point by twelve million parsecs,
and only ends up showing how wrong his entire theory is.
No, Jonathan.
It is you who has it backwards.
Our society doesn't teach that masculinity
means emotional detachment.
It teaches that masculinity, among other things,
requires emotional control.
Men are allowed to express any feeling that
they have.
What they are not supposed to do is to let
their feelings overcome them, to the point
where they lose control.
And that is because a man who is out of control
is dangerous to those around him, since he
is physically strong enough to cause serious
damage.
That is why loss of control over your emotions
is usually depicted as a weakness in popular
culture, including in Star Wars.
Emotional detachment, in our culture, is seen
as a negative thing.
We believe that it is bad for Men to bottle
up their emotions.
But a lot of men, for all sorts of reasons,
end up emotionally detached.
Many times the fault is indeed at the feet
of masculinity, that is taken too far, either
by the individual himself or by the men around
him.
It is a complicated problem that requires
thoughtful and sensitive handling.
But when you mischaracterize it in the way
that McIntosh does, you will only cause damage.
You might wonder where McIntosh gets his misguided
ideas on masculinity from.
Well, we really don't need to look far to
find the answer.
He tells us himself.
At several points in the video, McIntosh turns
to get advice from his own Master Yoda.
So, Johnny Mac recommends that I read Bell
Hooks, the renowned radical feminist.
I never read her before, so this was a good
opportunity to see what the fuss is about.
So I downloaded the book he recommended, a
2004 publication called 'The Will to Change'.
I read it, and, I must admit, it was illuminating.
The premise of the book is that feminists
should acknowledge that men are also hurting
in Western society, and offer a new type of
masculinity, one that will make men happier.
Hooks admonishes what she calls the man-hating
feminists, who see men as the enemy.
She says that this kind of feminism is outdated.
The new feminism regards all of us, men and
women, as victims of the system, a system
which she calls the Patriarchy.
The Patriarchy is imposing on men a form of
masculinity which is bad for their psychological
well-being, and makes them hurt the women
in their lives.
So, instead of fighting against men, the new
feminism fights to bring down the Patriarchy,
a revolution which will benefit men as well.
So radical feminists actually love men, but
Hooks says that they have failed to deal with
the sufferings of men in everyday life, and
show this love.
This is what this book aims to fix.
But as I read into this book, I realized that
there's something very important missing in
it: men themselves.
It does, of course, talk mainly about men,
but it doesn't give them the chance to present
their own story.
That story that I told above, in which masculinity
has evolved out of Man's attempt to subdue
the beast inside and become civilized, is
brushed aside.
The attitude towards women, of course, is
an important part of this story.
When the world was a harsher place, men were
the ones who took the hard mantle of work,
war and politics, and tried to shield women
and children from these things.
This resulted in the development of traditions
that placed men in charge.
As the world became a more comfortable place,
women could get more involved in the spheres
that belonged to men, and the balance of power
changed.
In the liberal society, we believe that there
should be gender equality, and we work to
get rid of patriarchal traditions.
It is part of the ongoing process of creating
a more enlightened masculinity.
None of this is present in Hooks' book.
There is no acknowledgement of the millennia
of texts which document the evolution of masculinity,
and how it was primarily a story of sublimation.
She just gives her own description of the
masculinity of today, and acts as if this
is what masculinity has always been.
And this is because Hooks is a feminist creationist.
She does not believe in evolution, in the
process by which the human ape has become
more civilized.
Instead, she believes that today's humans
are the result of a single act of creation,
sometime in the distant past, which has created
the Patriarchy that shapes our consciousness.
It was created by men, and the men of today
carry that original sin with them, and as
long as they don't acknowledge it and bring
it down, they share the guilt.
Hooks pretends that her brand of feminism
isn't hateful like that of the feminists she
calls man-haters, but actually, it has taken
their hate and ratcheted it up to a new level,
implicating all men in the crime of violence
against women.
And the fact that she disguises it with pretensions
of love just makes it all the more insidious.
Hooks rejects the notion that male violence
stems from natural human urges which men need
to control, and that patriarchal attitudes
displayed by men are remnants of past traditions,
which the liberal society is trying to overcome.
She admonishes those scholars who provide
such interpretations, and blames them for
not having the courage to acknowledge the
Patriarchy.
The Patriarchy, as she defines it, is a socio-political
system that insists that males are inherently
dominating, and endowed with the right to
dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain
that dominance through various forms of psychological
terrorism and violence.
What evidence does she provide to substantiate
the claim that such a Patriarchy exists?
Virtually none.
Mostly, she relies on the words of male feminists,
who share her ideology.
Sometimes she provides testimonies from other
men, but these testimonies can easily be explained
by the liberal model.
Hooks, however, spins their words to make
it seem like they have been conditioned by
the system to be dominating and violent towards
women.
Apart from that, she doesn't bother to provide
any evidence.
She just says that feminists have debunked
the old notions that non-feminists rely on.
But even then, she exposes the weakness of
her arguments.
In the beginning of chapter four, she asserts
that it has been shown that there are cultures
in the world in which rape is rare, proving
that men are not violent by nature.
But this is a failed argument.
If rape is rare, it means that it still exists.
All that the existence of such cultures shows
is that they have done a better job at training
men's second nature.
But Hooks thinks that she proved that violence
is a learned thing, not a natural impulse.
Therefore, the fact that men are told to control
their emotion isn't designed to make them
less violent.
The way Hooks tells it, it is designed to
make them less caring, so that they can be
better dominators.
After she effectively erases the independent
voice of men, Hooks proceeds to dehumanize
them.
In the first chapter she declares that men
are incapable of love, because Western society
forbids them to love and express love.
This is a truly baffling claim, since for
the past two millennia, at least, Western
culture has regarded love as the most divine
thing, and male artists have expressed love
in every possible way.
Now, if the argument was that men's emotional
repression is stifling them from expressing
their love, then we could have a conversation.
But Hooks deals in absolutes.
She defines men who live within Patriarchy
as incapable of loving, and thus removes them
from the conversation about love, leaving
women as the sole authority.
She continues to dehumanize men throughout
the book.
Patriarchy, she claims, is teaching men that
in order to be masculine they should dominate
women, they should feel no pain, they should
express no emotion except anger, they should
constantly crave sex, they should fear and
hate women, and more.
She acknowledges that not all men act in this
way, but claims that this is because they
resist the Patriarchy, or she provides some
psychobabble to show that their good behavior
is actually an expression of their inner hate.
She also admits that many women behave in
the ways she ascribes to men, but blames this
too on the Patriarchy.
As a man, I could recognize very little of
what Hooks calls masculinity in myself or
in most of the men I know.
Impulses of violence and domination have been
in me since I was a little boy, and the socializing
process is actually the thing that made me
sublimate them.
And I could recognize some of it in the masculinity
of old, but we have progressed since then.
For Hooks, however, the Patriarchy is a constant
fact, and any progress is just on the surface,
while inside men remain the same.
So she has no problem relying on examples
from the past, and treating them as if they
are still relevant today.
After she debases men in such a way, Hooks
can offer feminism as the cure.
In chapter seven, she presents an alternative
masculinity, one that she claims will make
men happier and better.
The alternative she offers is partly what
masculinity already is today, and partly can
work only if her creationist beliefs are true.
But she presents it as a radical alternative,
something that men will have to work hard
to achieve.
The first step, of course, is to accept feminism
and overthrow the Patriarchy.
In other words, she doesn't want to help men
find a way to become better.
They are in such a debased state that they
are incapable of becoming better on their
own.
She wants men to submit to her, so she can
reprogram them.
This rhetoric is quite familiar to anyone
who knows a bit about the history of Antisemitism.
In the Middle Ages, Christianity and Islam
portrayed the Jew as a wretched being, and
kept Jews in a wretched state.
In both cases the attempt was to get the Jews
to convert, but Christianity also couched
it in a language of love.
We don't hate the Jew – we love the Jew
and want to save him.
As Western culture progressed, we realized
that this is not love - this is hate.
You'd expect us to outgrow this medieval logic
by now, and yet here it is, embedded in 21st
century feminism.
The pretention of the book is to show greater
understanding of men.
But there is no honest attempt at understanding
here.
It is actually an attempt to monopolize the
discussion of men's issues, make feminism
the only solution, while silencing any other
idea.
This is hardly surprising when you remember
that Bell Hooks is also one of the main proponents
of intersectional feminism, which is, at heart,
a power-play by black feminists.
Intersectional feminism presumes to interlink
all the different oppressed groups, and create
an ideology that acknowledges the problems
of all of them.
But remember that in radical feminism, the
solution to the problem is always to bring
down the oppressive system.
So actually, what intersectional feminism
does is to interlink the oppressors, and the
result is that ultimately it all comes down
to just one oppressor: what Hooks calls the
"imperialist white-supremacist capitalist
patriarchy".
Every other oppressor is linked and dependent
on this one oppressor, so if you bring it
down, they will fall as well.
That's why intersectional feminists hardly
bother to fight for oppressed groups in third
world countries – they believe that it will
work itself out once you bring down the imperialist
white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
This is also why white women are slowly being
nudged out of the movement, since they are
part of the white supremacy.
Again, it is an ideology of hate and exclusion
that disguises itself as love and inclusion.
In chapter six, Hooks provides a critique
of capitalism, and quite an effective one
at that.
She talks about how capitalist society conditions
us to find our self-worth in work, but since
it fails to deliver satisfying jobs for everyone,
many men feel worthless.
She also talks about how working too hard
prevents men from developing spiritually and
emotionally.
I think these are valid criticisms.
The problem is, she doesn't call it capitalism
- she calls it "imperialist white-supremacist
capitalist patriarchy".
And so, instead of thinking of how to fix
capitalism, the solution she offers is to
bring down the Patriarchy.
Once again, intersectional feminism shows
that its true goal is to sideline any other
human concern, and direct everything and everyone
against its own perceived enemy.
The bottom line is that you can't transcend
hate if you believe in the myth of the Patriarchy.
You have a choice between two models.
One sees today's Western society as a liberal
society which strives to achieve equality
and freedom for all, and works to eliminate
patriarchal traditions.
The other sees today's Western society as
a Patriarchy, which is designed to maintain
the domination of men over women.
The former assumes good will on the part of
men, the latter assumes that they have bad
will.
So if you choose to adopt the latter, you
choose to hate men.
Hooks might be honest in her attempt to overcome
the hate, but she fails badly.
She does a pretty good job of disguising it,
from herself and others, with the pseudo-loving
language that she uses.
But the problem when you do that is that one
of your apprentices, who isn't as clever,
can then try to mimic you, and end up exposing
you.
As I read the book, I realized that this is
exactly the hateful logic that was displayed
a decade later, in the most blatant and ugly
way, in the work of Anita Sarkeesian.
McIntosh is better than Sarkeesian at disguising
the hate.
He avoids using words like Patriarchy, which
he knows are a dead giveaway.
But, by quoting from Hooks, he exposes that
he has internalized her misandry.
McIntosh is still full of himself, and we
all know what that means.
It's also quite obvious that we can find the
influence of this ideology in The Last Jedi.
Just like Hooks disregards the story of Western
civilization to tell a different story, so
does Rian Johnson throw away the old Lucas
story to tell a different story, in which
the old heroes are portrayed as patriarchal
dominators.
In Lucas' story, the Jedi were Buddhists,
and Luke was the Westerner rebelling against
them.
In Johnson's story, Luke is the Buddhist,
who denounces the legacy of the Jedi because
they wanted power.
At one point he suggests that the Jedi were
vane and believed that the force belongs to
them.
But we never saw any sign of that in the Lucas
movies.
There's one last thing I want to touch upon.
Believe it or not, McIntosh actually managed
to make me laugh with his video.
And no, it wasn't the three months part, because
I remember how long 'Tropes vs. women' took.
It's this part.
And if all fails, you can always join Jedi
Anonymous, a help group run by a wise and
articulate Jedi…
I mock it not because I don't think that men
should turn to counselling when they are in
distress.
But that's when they can't handle it themselves,
when they don't know how to end the suffering.
Then they should ask for help, and there are
ways to help them.
Ending the suffering, however, will only get
you to a level of non-suffering, which is
a neutral level.
There is a level above that neutral level,
and that is the level of happiness.
We have mentioned several groups in this video
– the Stoics, the Buddhists, the Samurai,
the Jedi – and we've discussed the philosophical
differences between them.
But there is also one thing that they all
share, and that is the aspiration to greatness,
to a life that transcends regular human life.
And the reason they want greatness is that,
according to their beliefs, it carries with
it the promise of ultimate joy.
But to achieve this greatness and this joy,
you have to be prepared to make sacrifices.
Before you get there, you have to go through
hardship and pain, and give up on things.
But McIntosh doesn't even realize that there
is this higher level.
To him, there are only two levels – the
level of suffering and the neutral level – and
his highest aspiration is to achieve the neutral
level.
That is why he can't tell the difference between
the Jedi and regular folks, and thinks that
the difficult path chosen by the Jedi represents
society at large.
If Anakin is suffering, he always has the
option to leave the Jedi order and end the
suffering.
But if he chooses to stay, he must deal with
the suffering in the Jedi way, if he wants
to achieve greatness.
But McIntosh, because he doesn't recognize
greatness, can't tell the difference.
All he cares about is that someone is suffering,
and we need to end the suffering.
That is why he is so censorious.
He doesn't care if an artist created something
great, which brings joy to numerous people.
If the art causes discomfort to someone, it
has to be censored.
That is also why he is such a dilettante,
who never bothers to do any serious research
and study the subject that he is critiquing.
A great work of art opens new horizons before
you, and if you engage with it and allow it
to take you where it wants to take you, you
can grow as a human being, become greater
than you were.
But when McIntosh approaches art, all he cares
about is displaying his moral superiority
over it.
Instead of opening his mind and letting the
art take him on a journey to the unknown,
all he can offer is banal readings that feel
like a seminar work written by a first degree
student, where all he does is to take some
feminist theory and show how it can apply
to the work in question.
The art is reduced into nothingness.
And this is also the thing that bothered me
the most about The Last Jedi.
It is such a small movie.
Lucas' Star Wars expanded our world, compelled
us to deal with alien situations and question
our prejudices.
Rian Johnson took the universe that he created
and reduced it to something that feels like
current day America.
There is no greatness in the movie.
The Jedi way used to be something that takes
a lifetime of training to achieve.
Now it has been reduced into something that
can be learned in a couple of days.
And this smallness is also the thing I see
the most in Jonathan McIntosh, the reason
why he makes me sad when I watch him.
Just like Rian Johnson made the Star Wars
universe small and unexceptional, so does
McIntosh do to every subject that he touches.
Which makes it more amazing when I remember
who he is.
When I watch him do his thing, it's hard for
me to wrap my head around the idea that this
shallow, lazy, banal and pathetic little man
might one day be remembered as one half of
the duo that killed feminism.
