Atomised, part 2: Sympathy for the Incel

IMMORTAL ASEXUAL CLONES: YES NO? Did aella's birthday gangbang generate positive externalities? Why is Cam's fridge full of dead chickens?

These are the big questions of our age and we are the only ones brave enough to tackle them.

Join us as we wrap up our discussion of Houellebecq's Atomised (also known as The Elementary Particles).

The sexual marketplace has no safety net: Houellebecq says individualism devours the rational structures meant to protect us. Rich argues we've already mostly solved this problem in the economic realm. Sex is harder tho. Are there any positive-sum status games to play here?Why do we tolerate redistributive policy for wealth but not for sex? Is Freddie deBoer a hypocrite for clowning on incels? 

Bruno visits the Lieu de Changement: A sex commune with much kindly compassion for the outcasts masturbating on the fringes. Could this scale beyond extremely rule-following Germans? Is enforced monogamy the real solution, or has that ship long since sailed?

Houellebecq's rhetorical sleight of hand: is paternal love purely instrumental? Do hippies really have a direct lineage to sadists and serial killers? Is the hedonic treadmill of transgression a real thing? probably not but we love our cheeky boy.

One trillion identical Cams: Michel's solution is to eliminate sexual reproduction, individuality, and desire entirely. Would this even work? Is H being serious or just proving the problem is insoluble? What happens to science and progress in a world with no genetic or ideological diversity?

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) penis size chat
(00:05:41) Brave New World and other failed utopias
(00:15:30) The intractable problem of inceldom
(00:25:58) Sexual social democracy and compassion for the lone masturbator
(00:37:22) Houellebecq's rhetorical sleight of hand
(00:41:30) the hedonic treadmill of transgression: hippies to serial killers
(00:47:25) positive externalities of aella's birthday gangbang and other status games
(00:54:01) Rich rants about positivism and quantum physics woo
(01:00:22) the third metaphysical mutation: asexual immortal clones
(01:11:12) Next book announcement

 

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NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

• Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — Robert Louis Stevenson
• American Pastoral — Philip Roth