Congratulations, I'm Sorry

The King had linked to a StrategyPage article yesterday, which I read this morning, which caused me to browse the site a bit more, and I wind up seeing this:

June 9, 2007: The government has backed away from a plan to legalize prostitution. A cleric has advocated using an old Shia custom of "temporary marriage" which, in effect, made prostitution, or shacking up, legal. Of course, you needed a cooperative cleric to sign off on the deal. This usually required a fee. The proposal was meant to placate the many impoverished young Iranian men who cannot afford to get married, and are rather restless as a result. There is already a lot of prostitution, and the new proposal was seen as another ploy by the corrupt clerics to extract more money from the people, in this case, horny men. As a result, the government has backed away from the proposal. Many ultra-conservative clerics want to maintain the ban on prostitution, and the clerics running terrorism operations don't want illicit sex interfering with the recruiting of suicide bombers (who are assured of 72 willing girls in the after life).

That's about it, eh? The human condition, neatly summed up in less than 150 words. Guys who want chicks, but can't get chicks because they have no kwon, and what in the H are we gonna do about that? The gubment as usual is helpless, and the church should help but it's been corrupted by power-lust...and what we're left with is the same old, same old...I caint GIT no, I caint GIT no...

It's comforting to Otto -- and not that surprising, either -- that life in the good ol' People's Republic of Iran is about the same as everywhere else. I think that simple factoid gets lost on a lotta folks. I hear them explaining to We, The Supposedly Ignorant that these are different CULTURES, you see, with different MORES and different PRACTICES and different PARADIGMS, and how dare we attempt to apply our own particular TEMPLATE on them. The key is UNDERSTANDING, you see, and the path to that is through DIALOGUE, you see, and we pursue war and violence instead and that's so WRONG, you see...

And I reply: There's nothing to see here. Nothing new under the sun. Guys want to bust a nut. Don't overthink this.

You can blather on about "oversimplification" all you want, but The Real Deal in all these shitehole parts of the world is about guys and kwon and chicks. To make kwon, you need a job. The social and governmental structures in places like Iran and the Sudan are absolutely incapable of providing them. So you have large numbers of idle males, slogging around and fully aware of their worthlessness, but still wanting chicks...who are fully second-class citizens, flying economy and wanting nothing more than a guy with some kwon who can provide a little comfort, and a dwelling, and kids, and all or most of the basic Good Things in life...but there are no jobs and no kwon...and that's when guys turn to violence and buy into about ANY harebrained set of ideas...

Bitch about the downsides of capitalism all you want, but the fact remains that it employs large, LARGE numbers of males who would otherwise act out violently.

The greeting of capitalism to a male, all males, is: Grab a shovel, get to work, and let's make some kwon.

The greeting of all other socio-economic models, including the weird sort of feudalistic cult that is the Present Day Arab Middle East is: Congratulations, I'm sorry. We have nothing for you except hate and loathing. Get used to it.