Recently I’ve been giving some thought to a lot of interpersonal dynamics I’ve witnessed over the years that, frankly, resemble something out of a tabletop strategy game like Diplomacy, in which one person’s actions can lead to a reaction, followed by another action in a manner very similar to the events leading up to World War 1.
For those not historically inclined, the War to End all Wars started because a Serbian nationalist shot the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire – which ruled over Serbia – and a short while after Germany, Russia, France, England, and the Ottomans were slaughtering each other.
The ultimate result was Literally Hitler™.
How did that happen?
There were so many entangling alliances that the smallest act triggered the war. Serbia had Russia’s support, while the Austrians had Germany’s. France, in turn, did not want to see Germany dominate, but called on England for support. When the Austrians finally declared war on Serbia, both countries honored their alliance commitments, and thus followed the worst war in history up to that point.
The war then ended with a lopsided peace treaty that left Germany economically and financially crippled and forced to admit fault for the war.
And in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn’t fully understand - oh wait, wrong story.
These international dynamics and the destruction caused by a relatively insignificant action can be brought down to a smaller level.
One anecdote from my own observations I can’t go into too many details, but I’ll describe it as follows:
A certain community institution was dying and needed to replenish its membership. However, that required changes to the institution’s building for reasons I won’t go into. The problem was, it would have required a century-old women’s social club, which had no ownership stake in the property, to meet elsewhere for the first time in decades.
Although they could have easily moved their meetings to someone’s home, these old women were adamant about keeping their meetings at that specific place and, in my opinion, control over something that wasn’t theirs. They pressured their husbands, who told the institution’s leader that if it went ahead with its plans they would basically ensure its financial destruction, as it relied on local donations. It would have also torn the community apart. They ultimately did not move forward with the upgrades.
All so a group of old women could meet in one space as opposed to another, but fundamentally so they could maintain control.
What I described above is what has recently been referred to as The Longhouse.
In a February 2023 article for First Things, the author described it as follows:
The most important feature of the Longhouse, and why it makes such a resonant (and controversial) symbol of our current circumstances, is the ubiquitous rule of the Den Mother. More than anything, the Longhouse refers to the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior.
Jonathan Haidt explains that privileging female strategies does not eliminate conflict. Rather it yields “a different kind of conflict. There is a greater emphasis on what someone said which hurt someone else, even if unintentionally. There is a greater tendency to respond to an offense by mobilizing social resources to ostracize the alleged offender.”
I’m going to stop right there and says that there is also a different kind of response – mobilizing social resources, especially men, to make it infeasible for the alleged offender to leave The Longhouse.
The Longhouse is like Hotel California - you can enter but you can’t leave. The difference for us is, you’re born into it.
That is effectively what happens at the beginning of the show Firefly. The Alliance is an intergalactic Longhouse, and the Independents are, literally, trying to become independent of that longhouse. Mal Reynolds represents at an individual level that desire to break free.
But while the Independents fail, and the planets remain within the Alliance Longhouse, Mal has more options. He buys an old firefly ship, names it Serenity, brings in a crew, and flies outside of the Alliance Longhouse’s control.
It’s important to stop and understand how The Longhouse works. It’s not a physical space or a tangible entity. It’s a social network of individuals connected by mutual acquaintances and held together by the adherence to and internalization of certain values and beliefs. Too often, they aren’t fully aware of it and respond instinctively.
Think of Jack Aubrey from Master and Commander; he may be “master and commander” of his ship Surprise, but that is within the context of his role implementing the will of the British navy and, by extension, the British empire. When he says “this ship is England,” he is conveying that connection and that their obligations do not stop with themselves.
While the British Empire could be called an imperial longhouse if you’d like, the distinction is that the ship’s commander is a man acting on behalf of an empire run by men. Thus, it championed masculine values.
Whether the Alliance Longhouse in Firefly is feminine or not (seemed to be mixture), the buck clearly stops with Mal. He adheres to his own code of honor and enforces it on behalf of himself, not a greater entity.
This is reflected in the first episode when he insists that Jade not make sexual remarks to Chloe, the ship’s mechanic. When he refuses to obey, he’s ordered to leave the table. Jade grumbles, but obeys. There’s no other person to appeal to or pressure or threaten Mal. There’s no fallout from Mal enforcing his own preferred boundaries and standards.
This is obviously not how it works in the modern West, specifically the United States.
Barring some exceptions, The Longhouse decides what is allowed and what is not allowed in almost every aspect of life, both private and public.
Gender Relations in The Longhouse
One example that clearly comes to mind, and is probably the most important, is how it affects dating/marriage/intergender dynamics.
Years ago there was this subsection of the internet called “The Manosphere,” (now it’s whatever you want to call it, if it really even exists) a collection of blogs and websites discussing intergender related issues that really came down to young men asking “how do I get the gurlz?”
The question, of course, is one that only makes sense in The Longhouse.
Men in masculine/patriarchal societies don’t ask that kind of question, because what women want matters less than what other men want, particularly those who wield power and impose their will from the top down.
It’s also a question women aren’t asking themselves of men, because in the Longhouse they don’t have to. There is not and has never been a section of the internet where women coalesce to swap notes on “how do I get the menz?”
In a patriarchal society, women mold themselves to become man’s ideal of the feminine in order to gain their approval and access men they desire. Men are primarily concerned of what other men think, not women. Women have to earn their approval and meet their expectations, because it is men who assert collective control and dominance over society and culture.
Jack Donovan observed this almost a decade ago.
In healthy patriarchies, men push themselves to earn the respect and admiration of other men. They work to prove their strength, courage and competence to each other. Men pride themselves on their reputation for mastery of their bodies, their actions, and their environment. They want to be known for what they can do, not just how well or who they can screw. And they sure as hell don't waste their time trying to figure out what they can do to bedazzle bimbos.
This dynamic of women seeking to become a man’s ideal female was what inspired the famous WW2 pinup illustrator Alberto Vargas to stay in the U.S. Originally from South America, he visited Paris and was on his way back home when he stopped in New York City and was immediately struck not only by the beauty of American women, but how they conveyed a sense of “well, what do you think of me?” that invited, rather than challenged.
His pinups of scantily-clad, feminine women proved controversial and at one point the military considered censoring them, but the proposal received pushback from commanding officers who insisted they were critical to soldier morale. In some cases, killed soldiers were founding in foxholes clutching cut-outs of these women (all of who were real) that represented the masculine ideal of the feminine.
In The Longhouse, men (whether they realize it or not) seek to become women’s ideal of the masculine that does not go outside of its control. It’s a costume that may appear manly, but lacks all the qualities that make genuine masculinity outside the control of the feminine.
In The Longhouse, men don’t care what men think as men, because what men think, in a social sense, doesn’t matter. They might care what a man thinks only in the sense that said man is representing the will or values of the den mother or The Longhouse.
Further, to operate in said society men have to speak in a feminized language women can understand. They have to communicate in the feminine, or face consequences.
The result is men become more and more drama-driven, effeminate, passive aggressive, conflict avoidant, and catty - and they expect other men to be the same.
There are problems with extremes in both types of societies, but within the context of The Longhouse, men who participate in mainstream society and culture are in a perpetual state of submission to the feminine. It permeates everything down to interpersonal relationships between men. And it gets worse with each passing year.
Even when men are presumably exercising “authority,” “dominance,” or asserting themselves, it is only done with the conscious or even subconscious internalization of the feminine and with the approval of the “den mother.”
Thus, men who are deemed “masculine” in The Longhouse are in reality those who have molded (or gelded) themselves into a persona that women they desire seek and understand, and these men express themselves in a feminized version of the masculine that neither threatens nor challenges the authority of The Longhouse.
The greatest telltale sign of a Longhoused man is the total absence of male protective instinct. There is no greater threat to The Longhouse than men who still have an instinct to protect, because eventually that instinct is triggered over something the Current Regime has slatted for destruction.
You have too many men like that, and you have revolution.
Authentically masculine men find The Longhouse’s concept of the masculine repulsive and contemptible. In particular, they find modern culture suffocating and emasculating. They look at how men comport themselves on the internet while trying to hold themselves up as the ideal man to aspire to, and find them to be annoying, bitchy, and dishonorable.
They see it as effeminate for a man to obsess over how to gain approval of the feminine in order to validate their own manhood. They refuse to accept the “rules” of The Longhouse and, when possible, rebel against it.
Frankly, that’s the problem with so many gurus telling young boys how to be a real man with a Prosperity Gospel-style message, when the situation is more like telling a prospective convert how to be a “real Christian” during the Roman persecution.
Becoming a “real” man in the Current Year doesn’t necessarily gain you tangible advantages. In many cases, it’s roughly the equivalent of being a property-less bachelor in colonial New England. At best, you’re tolerated, but restricted. At worst, you’re seen as a direct threat to both The Longhouse and men who have been longhoused themselves.
Authentic masculinity typically won’t earn you praise or respect from Longhoused men, and their “antiquated” attitudes will draw confusion and bewilderment from rank-and-file modern women.
In such cases of rebellious men, the den mother in the specific context will attempt to directly impose her will on such men to regain control. If they resist, she will easily find other submissive (read: real) men who will put pressure on the rebels in the form of a faux masculine assertiveness they would not otherwise convey without the den mother’s approval and blessing.
One of the ways Longhouse men faux assert themselves is by infantizing any man who doesn’t comply or go with the program and acting as speech police within any group of men in which topics and conversations threaten to violate the tenets of The Longhouse.
Any man who tries to hold himself to some higher standard of conduct that goes beyond the maximum threshold permissible in The Longhouse gets the toddler treatment by such men, who instinctively feel ashamed for renouncing their dignity to receive a perceived and perverted form of status and approval.
Within male-male relationships, it also means men don’t associate with each other or choose friendships based on traditional qualities such as loyalty, reliability, dependability, consistency, honest, integrity, and other non-romantic mutually shared activities. Instead, they are easily seduced into following drama queens and other histrionic males on the basis that they supposedly have the hidden knowledge to attracting modern women.
Dalrock inadvertently touched on this dynamic in a blog post back when he was still writing about these issues:
As a society we are obsessed with generating sexual attraction in women. We see this ability as the most pure test of goodness in a man. A woman’s feelings of sexual attraction are a mystical force, godlike for non-Christians, and God’s message for Christians. We can’t see how incredibly crass this is because we call it romantic love, but romantic love is far more intertwined with sexual desire than we are willing to admit**. To truly seduce a woman is to make her fall in love with you.
Generating the tingle (attraction) is an obsession with our society, and you can see it in our popular films. The Fifth Element is over the top in this regard on the secular side, as is Fireproof on the Christian side.
Frankly, all sides of the RP/masculine “how to be a real man” debates deliberately or unwittingly ignore the reality of The Longhouse.
You can’t be an assertive, dominant man and thrive or succeed in The Longhouse, because masculine men don’t seek approval of a den mother or submit to her, and the rules of The Longhouse are fundamentally at odds with masculine virtues.
It’s no different than modern schooling; the masculine boy gets into trouble because he’s restless and resentful of having to sit down all day and be compliant like a good little girl and follow random rules for the sake of following the rules.
It’s the apple-polishing, suck-up teacher’s pet who “gets the gradez.”
To succeed in The Longhouse, you have to play by the rules set down by the den mother and become a good Long(house) slave who receives approval and affirmation in exchange for compliance and submission that, in doing so, maintains and preserves The Longhouse.
If you’re so inclined, you can then browbeat other (field) slaves for not being worthy of the den mother’s favor and how all men trying to escape or defy The Longhouse are losers, also known as telling others how to be “muh real menz.”
This cuts all ways no matter which perspective you’re looking at. Trads want to pretend that men are still in charge and by acting in a traditional manner appropriate for the 19th century, that makes a man a “real man.” They refuse to acknowledge any major changes, chiefly how they have had their authority usurped by the State.
But the men who advocate for modern “game” aren’t honest, either. They may know the rules and adhere to them well, but they still carry on as though they wrote them or that they are bending others to their will. In reality, it’s men adapting to an environment, rather than controlling and dominating their environment.
In the film Becket, Thomas Becket is a Saxon in England after it has been conquered and subdued by the Normans. Acting as an advisor to King Henry the Elder, a Norman, he explains that he collaborates with the Normans in order to live.
When the king asks how he maintains his honor, Becket replies:
I don’t try. I like good living, and good living is “Norman.” I like life, and the Saxon’s only birthright is to be slaughtered.
The thing is, Becket is honest about his collaboration with a system that oppresses his “people.” A lot of Longhouse slave pretend collaboration is liberation when they sound more like Saruman in Fellowship of the Ring telling Gandalf they must join Sauron.
The Longhouse slave notion reminds me of that famous scene from Dinner with Andre, in which one of the characters theorizes that modern cities are the new model for the concentration camps because those who built it are also the prisoners who take pride in what they built, not knowing that it is what keeps them captive and unable to leave.
If you want another film example (I got plenty) of this Longhouse slave dynamic, watch The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Colonel Nicholson commands a group of British POWs housed in a camp run by the Japanese commander, Colonel Saito. Saito has been tasked with building a bridge over the nearby River Kwai, using the POWs as labor.
In real life, the British sabotaged the bridge construction as much as possible and sought to undermine its completion. In the film, however, Nicholson decides to make the best bridge possible and employs all his resources to have it finished on schedule.
He thinks doing this will make the bridge a permanent testament to British resolve in wartime conditions and under captivity. But gradually he begins to identify more and more with Saito, and despite being technical enemies, their practical objectives become increasingly aligned to where Nicholson actually tries to prevent the bridge from being demolished by British commandos.
Only moments before dying does he realize he has lost sight of his duty.
Religion
Another example of The Longhouse is the church. Contrary to what you might hear from feminism, many churches are an extension of it. Ignore the leadership faces on the website. Authority roles too often mean as much as Theodon’s as king when he was under the influence of Saruman and Wormtongue; during that time Rohan was, practically speaking, ruled by these two men.
When Eaomir refused to submit to that, he and his men were banished in a Longhouse-style manner.
In the case of the church, too often you’ll find the true leaders aren’t the pastor and board of elders. It’s the elderly gals in the women’s prayer group whose husbands are the pastors and elders, or very generous tithers.
If you offend those ladies, the entire church leadership will come down on you.
If you need further examples in a religious context, I humbly suggest you visit dalrock.wordpress.com.
If you need an example of how this affects church worship music, let me throw a few examples.
Church worship in a Patriarchal environment:
Church worship music in The Longhouse:
Longhouse Politics
Modern politics is fully condensed into The Longhouse. If you want to be a modern politician or elected official, to one extent or the other your success will be predicated on conforming to the norms and values of The Longhouse and speaking to the masses in a way that makes sense to them.
Of course, some of you will say “what about Trump? Isn’t he a masculine man and succeeding in politics?”
Let’s be blunt.
Whatever you think of it Bad Orange Man, Trump is a braggart and a blowhard known for what he says and not what he does. Can anyone tell me exactly a major policy decision he enacted while president? Anything he did in all those years in real estate?
He did in fact do things, but nobody remembers it because it wasn’t as impactful compared to his words. He creates drama through his antics and words that riles up his enemies, emboldens his fans, and keeps his name and face in the spotlight.
Contrast this with Julius Caesar, a man who also dissented against the prevailing regime. Few remember anything he said, despite being a gifted orator. We know him for what he did, because that mattered way more than what he said.
When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he was expressing dissent and rebellion within the context of a crumbling patriarchal empire.
When Trump offered a stern, defiant face for his prison mugshot in what is, practically speaking, an act of submission, he was showing dissent expressed within the context of a crumbling Longhouse empire.
In other words, there will be no Caesar Americanus marching triumphantly into D.C. to take over. The Longhouse of the modern West will fall apart at the hands of a far less aesthetically appealing character operating within a framework The Longhouse has to maintain to survive, but will eventually be its demise. It’s the equivalent of a farmer selling farmland to stay profitable until finally there’s no farmland left to sell and he goes bankrupt.
It’s funny to see so many Republicans and moderates bewail Trump and wonder why he’s got so much support. All I can say is it’s like wondering why only violent people volunteer to be the executioner, or why vampires keep volunteering to work at a blood bank.
Do they see men like Calvin Coolidge or George Washington running for political office today? Do they think men with their traditional sense of dignity, gravitas, and self-respect would tolerate the effeminate behavior, the drama-queen antics and childish tantrums that goes on without concluding that violence is the only proper response? Do you think they’d tolerate foreigners taking over public office and then spewing hate against the native people?
The site 1776 United had a shirt that conveys the sentiment well:
Assuming they tried to go through the political process, do you think The Longhouse would permit such men to gain any traction?
It’s why despite all the shenanigans that happen, Trump remains in the spotlight. The Longhouse may hate men like that, but it can’t resist him either. They can’t ignore him, whereas a man with a certain level of dignity, who calls out The Longhouse for its childishness, immaturity, degeneracy, and decadence, would be completely censored and ignored - his existence would offend people of all political stripes and backgrounds.
This is not an endorsement or condemnation. It’s merely an explanation for people trying to understand modern politics.
In Conclusion
In the past, somewhere in the upper echelon were men imposing standards from the top down. Even when it was women literally enforcing those standards (like a nun in a Catholic school), those standards were not set by the nun, and ultimately it was the priest’s role as an authority figure to ensure she was obeyed.
But somewhere along the line those men who filled those institutional roles absconded their responsibility, and the patriarchal hierarchy was replaced with that of The Longhouse. They failed to train the next generation of men to hold the line, who compromised rather than maintain the integrity of whatever entity they controlled.
And so gradually all those institutions fell apart, and we’re witnessing the fallout now.
Men may want to escape it, but are unable to. Others will find Serenity by fleeing to some place where its influence is minimal.
But the first step is acknowledging what’s going on.
It seems many will never take that step.