Be the culture you want to create?

As you say, preposterous, but suppose you want to do it anyway...

You'll have to find a location where polygamous families are at least tolerated. There are places like that (even in the US), but US law frowns on polygamy.

You'll need a very healthy financial support system. Starting a really, really big family takes a lot of resources. You'll need several farms with good soil, machinery, workshops, and expertise in raising good value cash crops as well as crops for immediate consumption. Cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, etc.

You'll need to find healthy young males and females to join you, else you might have a problem with genetic disorders resulting from in-breeding. For best results, decide what type of tribe you want (physical features) and find good looking heterosexual guys that have high sperm counts. Find women with broad child-bearing pelvises. The men must have a strong tendency to do what they are told. You don't want too many independent thinkers in this crowd.

Speaking of sperm counts, do you have a big dick, powerful (overwhelming, really) sex drive, and a high sperm count? Are you a natural born order-giver, enforcer, ready-fisted macho guy maximum leader? Tribal founders have to be tough sons of bitches. You'll need both brawn and brain.

MOST OF ALL you should already have a dominating ++ type A personality. You can't merely want to be the top dog, you need a personality that communicates loud and clear that YOU are the HIGHEST TOP DOG, and you don't brook rivals. Plus you'll need the strength of character and physique to make your TOP DOG status stick. A sickly inability to use force will be a problem.

How do you like the personal nicknames of Big Daddy? Fearless Leader? Mein Fuhrer? Your Lordship? King? Rex? You should be comfortable (desirous, actually) hearing these honorific titles, and be able to detect the slightest touch of irony in their utterance.

You must feel totally entitled to every perk you claim. First night privileges (Droit du seigneur) with each newly wed couple (the woman, usually, but you might want some variety) should just feel like the LEAST you deserve.

Good luck, Your Lordship.

I should default to thinking "what does this mean to me as a mortal evolved biological organism?" — yupamiralda

I think you're mistaking darwinism for philosophy. Common error.

True, but dar-winners don't start out by thinking of themselves as mere "mortal evolved biological organisms". Human dar-winners should think of themselves more along the lines of God's Anointed Favorite. Being convinced of your superiority is half the battle.

A more serious question is this: When hunter-gatherer bands started forming up into tribes, and became self-labeled as "Jack's Tribe" or whatever, what philosophical advice from an on-site Philosophy Forum advisor would have been most useful? Here they are, 12,000 BC; literacy is still 7,000 years down the road, so we can't write out any instructions.

I would suggest a myth which features Jack"s Tribe always coming out ahead in every battle, and always pulling success from the jaws of failure by practicing careful thinking and common sense. (Common sense won't have earned such a bad reputation 12,000 years ago, so we can use the phrase).

The end of the age of Hunt and Gather is probably too early to lay justice and mercy on Jack's tribe. We'll come back in... oh, 8,000 years, and give them the good news.

I think as soon as h. sapiens reached - well - sapience - then her capacities could no longer be considered in only biological terms. As soon as the capacity to wonder, to speak, to tell stories, manifests, then you're no longer an organism like any other. I think a large part of the attraction of biological reductionism is NOT having to contemplate the implications of that - you can evade the existential dread, the uneasy feeling, of not knowing who or what you really are.

(Splendid, and little-noticed, book from about 2010, Why Us? How Science Re-discovered the Mystery of Ourselves, James le Fanu, a UK MD and science writer. Author gives a brief account of his book here.)

So I know this is preposterous. But I feel like the point of philosophy is either: 1) making giving up on biology easier to handle, 2) influencing, including dominating, the parent culture 4) training to be a certain part of the parent culture or a specific subculture or 4) cultural creation. — yupamiralda

For me, the point of philosophy is to learn to clarify, understand, and explain my beliefs and values in an effective way. It's training to help achieve whatever goals I decide I want to reach. You seem to have already selected a goal - to create a social group which you can mold as an expression of your will. It's certainly not something I'm interested in participating in. Then again, I'm 66 years old and I've had a vasectomy.

So, is this more than just an expression of the power of your will - you getting what you want because you are elite? Is there concern built in to your plans for the well-being and happiness of those who will live in this society with you? What are your obligations? What are you sacrificing? Not to be snide, but it sounds a bit like you just get to get laid a lot.

you just get to get laid a lot — T Clark

Is getting laid a lot incompatible with philosophical goals?

I wouldn't think so, as long as getting laid a lot isn't one's primary, secondary, or even tertiary goal in life. As long as one gets laid as much as one really needs to get laid (which might be quite frequently at times), one can pursue all sorts of elevated and beneficial goals. Eating well isn't thought to be incompatible with philosophy is it? How about maintaining one's tan? Is going to the gym very regularly so that one maintains a slim, svelte body incompatible (setting aside the bit about being healthy)? What about lounging all morning in the public baths? Incompatible?

Some schools of religion and philosophy were rather spartan (20th century meaning), but there isn't anything essentially abstemious about philosophy as such.

OR, is there?

If getting laid a lot is one's primary, secondary, or tertiary goal, one is probably using too much time on that project to attend to study, scholarship, reflection, writing, and so on.

Is getting laid a lot incompatible with philosophical goals? — Bitter Crank

Some schools of religion and philosophy were rather spartan (20th century meaning), but there isn't anything essentially abstemious about philosophy as such. — Bitter Crank

I would guess, with no specific evidence, that philosophers as a class get laid significantly less than average humans. Especially male philosophers. But no, there is nothing specifically unphilosphical about sex. @yupamiralda's proposed social setup does seem to me to have intended sexual advantages for the elite. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

yupamiralda's proposed social setup does seem to me to have intended sexual advantages for the elite. — T Clark

Elites usually have many advantages, not just sexual. After all, if one is a member of the elite and one has to hustle and scramble for only fairly good vintages of wine, merely satisfactory caviar, haute couture from two years ago, and haute cuisine from the frozen food department -- what the fuck is the point of being in the elite? Riff raff can do that well.

I would guess, with no specific evidence, that philosophers as a class get laid significantly less than average humans. — T Clark

OK, so how often is normal? (This should come as both a relief and a disappointment.)

The Kinsey Institute’s 2010 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior provides us with some statistics on the sexual frequency of men and women. Much depended on whether the respondents were single, partnered, or married.

Men

• Only 2% of single men between the ages of 18 and 24 had sex 4 or more times per week, but 21% of married men did.
• Just under half of married men between the ages of 25 and 49 had sex a few times per month to weekly. This was the highest rate in this age category.
• Age was not necessarily a deterrent to sexual frequency. Thirteen percent of single men age 70 and older had sex a few times per month to weekly. For partnered and married men in this age group, the rates were 63% and 15% respectively.

Women

• About 5% of single women between the ages of 18 and 24 had sex 4 or more times per week, but 24% of married women did.
• Like the men, just under half of the women between the ages of 25 and 59 had sex a few times per month to weekly, more than their single and partnered peers.
• Sexual frequency did decrease with age for women, although almost a quarter of partnered women over age 70 had sex more than 4 times a week, according to the survey. — Kinsey Institute

So, it would seem that the average is not Olympian. Of course, these are averages. Some people are having sex 10 times a week to make up for the philosophers who suffer from the Empty Bed Blues.

I think it would be "philosophically" harmful for philosophers to avoid sex (Take note, Agustino). If the proper study of man is Man (per Alexander Pope, born in 1688) then philosophers ought to experience all of what it means to be man. That can be accomplished by not roping off large areas of experience as irrelevant or too dirty to touch. Time and chance will take care of giving one a wide sampling of human experiences, in most cases.

Earth to yupamiralda: Are you paying attention to this discussion?

OK, so how often is normal? — Bitter Crank

My estimate completely without any specific data - Average normal sexual frequency = Average forum sex frequency + a bunch. Perhaps fdrake can give us some statistics.

Earth to yupamiralda: Are you paying attention to this discussion? — Bitter Crank

Do you blame her/him? This is only the second post and we're behaving like some sort of cynical old farts. If we're not careful, he/she will think we're bitter and cranks. What a crappy welcome to the forum.

I think we're treating you unkindly on your first posts. To be fair to me, I did start out with a serious response. If you will participate, I promise to address your ideas respectfully, if sceptically. Bitter Crank on the other hand ...

Well, I appreciate the responses.

My life circumstances are very unusual. I don't have much internet access. I had enough to post this, check on how it was doing, and then days later reply. I have to be prudent about how I use my limited internet time, but for the time being, this site is still worth a bit of it to me, so I'm posting this. Anyway, it's better for me to consider a response rather than banging something out while my hackles are up. I'm not really here to argue, I'm mostly immune at this point to persuasion, and I'm not looking for prospects here. I'd like to see opposing arguments to see if there's anything I need to consider. I expected opposition, but more in an amiable "lolz, if that's what you want to do, I mean I guess. But here's the choice I'm making and why I feel justified." Reality wasn't that. I keep catching myself expecting too much out of reality.

I look at the post I started with as a communication failure, although it's probably a useful failure, so bluntly stating my animating philosophy, and it was also a very instructive failure. That kind of bluntness is more or less acceptable and even salutory when we're talking about the relatively anonymous internet. But I don't live on the relatively anonymous internet. It shouldn't surprise you that if this is approximately what I think, I spend most of my life concealing that. In my day-to-day life, I'm polite to a fault, many people like me, and those who don't, I do what I can to be invisible to them. I'm not trying to blend in. People who know me know I'm quite unusual (but good-mannered), and the choices I make with my appearance are suggestive of transgression but only for those who are perceptive. I'm very playful with signals like that, and I'm always looking for confirmation (and hostility). On the grossest physical level, I often draw attention away from my above-average face and towards my respectable torso and tremendous calves, but one signal I'm not sending is that I think it's worthwhile to spend time chasing numbers at the gym.

Part of my intent with going on like that for a bit is that by showing what care and consideration I put into my appearance, I try to put into everything. That's what I got mostly from Leo Strauss: the communication of a philosopher to the "city" is highly problematic, unless one desires, like Socrates, to be a martyr (or like a supposed Son of God I could name).

I've also got a profile on a dating site, and my provisional strategy had been an over the top display of my genetic fitness, learned skills, taste, and desire to be a father. From my mistake here, I'm trying a different tack and emphasizing playful collaboration there, although the project is explicitly declared as Family, although sub-goals might include such conversations as "ok, so: gender roles. what has been isn't working anymore. What works for us?"

I want to reiterate my gratitude for this site existing and its role thus far in my education. =)

I acknowledge my role in taking the conversation in an .... unproductive direction, but I did start out with a serious comment which I'm still interested in your response to:

So, is this more than just an expression of the power of your will - you getting what you want because you are elite? Is there concern built in to your plans for the well-being and happiness of those who will live in this society with you? What are your obligations? What are you sacrificing? — T Clark

T Clark: For most of my life I wanted to be a videogame designer. So that's how I think of it. Yes, I'm putting myself at the top because I'm doing it mostly for myself, but I want to give other people something to live for, a game to play, that they can't easily get from mainstream culture. I don't believe in building a structure where everybody but me is miserable. Some will be, some won't.

Of course it's just an expression of my will to power. Do you have a suggestion as to what other thing I could honestly be interested in? =)

Of course it's just an expression of my will to power. Do you have a suggestion as to what other thing I could honestly be interested in? =) — yupamiralda

I don't know you, but from what I read of what you've written, you seem to be a person of will. I am not. There are other ways to live one's life. I suspect this is as much a matter of temperament as of anything else.