There is something about Civilization writers. Think of Spengler, Quigley, or Amaury de Riencourt. These are macro-level thinkers with unusual synthesizing power. They managed to discover societal patterns that play over centuries and have repeated time and time again.
We can apply their logic to uncover truths about our society. Our era has shocking psychological parallels with societies past. The building blocks of human psychology don’t change, so the structures built from them tend to converge into recurring forms. There are only so many ways a society can structure itself. That is the mechanism that connects history and society.
Which leads to the biggest lie Modernity tells to itself. The myth of continuous progress. The claim is very true in terms of technological advancements, but very false when it comes to the sociological and psychological status quo. This is expressed nowhere more clearly than in gender dynamics. Structurally, how genders interact with each other is the core of society’s psychological battlefield.
This may sound far-fetched, but at the center of every society and every political system lies the question: Who should get power and status? This is where politics and gender dynamics become one, because for humans, power and status are simply breeding rights. It always has been that way and always will be. The political battlefield is the mating battlefield itself.
Hence, this is the full mechanism:
- Macro historical patterns guide societal psychology.
- Psychology guides politics.
- Politics is the same as gender dynamics.
- As history repeats, the cycle repeats
Again and again ad infinitum. Nothing in the modern gender dynamics is new. The scale and the impact are unprecedented due to technology, but the drivers remain the same. To understand why this mechanism exists, we need to start at the largest possible scale: the rise and fall of Civilizations themselves.
Basics of Civilization analysis
So what is a Civilization? There are different answers to this question. Some more formal, some less. For our purposes, Civilization means a “way of life”.
A way of life is certainly not a static principle. As all things in nature do, it destabilizes through time from the principles of entropy. Therefore, Civilizations are not fixed objects; they exist and eventually do not exist or dissolve. This blurs our definition because we are trying to make categories out of a continuum. But on a macro scale, the lines are visible. Here are some clarity examples:
- Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome – Different but structurally similar.
- Ancient Rome and Modern West – Totally different.
- Medieval Europe and the West – Similar (Christian core and outlook, for example).
- Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece – Totally different.
These are true structural differences in space and time that we cannot ignore. If these differences exist, then they must originate from somewhere. This implies some yet undefined birth mechanism for Civilizations.
We also have the next hint: Ancient Egypt is not alive today. It rose and eventually collapsed. We even know when it collapsed: it was conquered by Alexander the Great. The same is true for the Classical Era (Greece + Rome), the Chinese empire (before communism), the Japanese empire (before WWII), etc. All these “ways of life” don’t exist anymore. Therefore, a mechanism for decay must also exist.
This beginning-to-end observation is what gives rise to what is called a “civilization cycle”. It studies exactly this and gives a name to the undefined mechanisms we observed above.
The Civilization Cycle
The steps between rise and collapse have been studied by historians, and the basic structure is presented below:
Formation → Expansion → Crystallization → Decline → Collapse
Each writer varies this structure to present their own model. For example, Spengler has the Culture-Civilisation contrast, and Quiggley has a 7-step process. But the five meta-steps presented above stay consistent. It is not within our scope to get into detail on the historical drivers that give rise to these cycles. However, we have enough information to get an idea of the society’s psychology. Each phase has its own cultural and environmental challenges. During the formation stage, people seek a unifying identity. During expansion, abundant resources give a sense of superiority, arrogance, and positivity. During the decline, entrenched interests paralyze the society.
We can then classify the West by examining its traits. Pick your Civilization model, and you can analyze each stage at different resolutions and accuracy. But there are points of agreement: The rationalism, i.e., the avoidance of empirical data (e.g., blank slate), the urbanization, and the cultural stagnation that are rampant today are traits of Civilizations in decline.
The modern West, is a Civilization in decline. Our social institutions are collapsing, our morals don’t hold up to reality, and the psychological strain on the citizens is immense and visible. However, these variables discussed – our philosophies, social forces, and outlook – have nothing new compared to societies past. This is a historical fact. And this historical fact leaves the question: Why does this happen?
We have a deeper question, so we need to dig even further into Civilization psychology to get an answer. Nobody nailed this answer except Amaury de Riencourt.
Amaury de Riencourt, the unifying force
Riencourt managed to analyze societies by assigning them a collective psychology, not unlike the Jungian collective unconscious. Riencourt’s book Women and Power in History has the following thesis:
- There is a Female spirit and a Masculine spirit. These are psychological archetypes deep in the human soul.
- In every era of history, one has the edge over the other. This creates the historical cycles.
Riencourt talks about Masculine and Feminine in the psyche, not men and women. Something more fundamental. These are psychological archetypes that exist in all humans.
A useful parallel is the concept of a warrior spirit. All warriors are distinct humans, so they are different. However, at a macro level, the psychosynthesis of all warriors is similar: they have to overcome an opposing force, with courage, strength, persistence, and ingenuity. This grouping allows us to study them as a single psychological entity. Our grouping of Male and Female psychology works similarly.
The gendered terms come because these psychological archetypes emerged from the outlook of each gender. Each gender has fundamentally different brain chemistry and a different societal reception. The schism is deep enough to define completely different challenges and objectives for each gender. Collectively, these create the different outlooks and, at a macro level, define the Male and Female psychology. The traits of each are explained in detail on the Origins of Blue Pill blogpost in detail. A short version of each gender’s biases in the psyche is as follows:
- Female Spirit: Cyclicality, Lives in the now, Has purpose from nature.
- Male Spirit: Logical, Needs to create purpose, Linear in time.
These deeply antithetical viewpoints cannot co-exist. Society is stratified in eras when one or the other prevails. When the Male or the Female spirit prevails, it imposes its psychosynthesis into the society’s software. The archetypes themselves become the psychological archetypes of the society. This creates some predictable societal forces that will be analyzed below.
Male Spirit Prevalence
The Male spirit arises from a need for “progress”. It arises from scarcity in resources or in the psyche; this is a calling to face the world. It aims to battle and conquer nature. A society adopts variations of the following traits:
- A Warrior-Aristocratic social order: martial values, loyalties, hierarchies.
- Collective identity over individual autonomy
- Fertility is a Civilizational priority because of armies and colonial expansion; they need more people.
- Marriage is functional and stable: sometimes arranged and economically driven.
- Low social mobility for women: family and kinship dominance.
- Cultural output: monumental, purpose-driven: think Philosophy, the Protestant Reformation, and Science.
Here are examples of such societies: Archaic Greece, Early Rome (Republic), Qin/Han China, Early Islamic Caliphate, Early Medieval Europe. Different Eras and cultures, but the same macro-level psychological forces were present in all of them.
Female Spirit Prevalence
Arises from stabilization and safety. The Feminine Spirit emerges when external constraints diminish. What happens to drive it into power?
Wealth increases, large cities increase. Security replaces danger, armies professionalize and become secondary. Bureaucracy centralizes power, the society becomes collective. Finally, kinship networks weaken, and people become detached from their roots and geographically mobile.
These are not random. These are natural female traits. Collectivization, female flight, and a shift from hard to soft power are textbook evolutionary psychology. This is the female evolutionary strategy enveloping the psychology of the society. Women gain social visibility and psychological authority from this, though not always political power. These patterns are extremely predictable for any Female Spirit Era. All these societies had them: Hellenistic Greece, late Rome, Tang China, Heian Japan, Enlightenment France, Weimar Germany, and the Modern West. Riencourt just gave them a psychology. He took societal data and put them in a psychological framework that is predictable. Let us see this psychology in action that he theorized:
- A cosmopolitan, commercial social order: power through wealth and money prevalence.
- Individual autonomy over collective duty: personal fulfillment becomes central.
- Fertility declines sharply: urban women reproduce less, and men prioritize lifestyle. (Ring any bells?)
- Marriage becomes fluid: divorce rises, and so does remarriage.
- Women gain cultural, moral, and social influence: they dominate culture, whether in early salons or late HR departments and academia.
- Cultural output: aesthetic and theatrical, but lacks meaning.
Our current society embraces and celebrates exactly all of these. In particular, it shames and mocks exactly all the traits in the Masculine section. We showcase by example, we compare our modern era to its closest parallel, the Late Roman Empire.
Western culture is the culture of the Late Roman Empire
West and Late Rome are both deeply Female societies. In particular, they became deeply Female after a deeply Masculine phase. That is the source of commonalities, and the parallels are staggering:
The decline of elite masculinity
Rome: soldier → bureaucrat.
Modern: frontier explorer → manager/technocrat.
Rising influence of women
Rome: cults, households, patronage.
Modern: HR, education, therapy, social media, moral discourse.
Fertility collapse
Rome: elites avoided children to maintain their lifestyle.
Modern: same dynamic.
Individualism over collective duty
Rome: civic virtue → self-preservation and luxury.
Modern: same pattern.
Decline of marriage as a structural institution
Rome: numerous legal reforms attempted, all failed.
Modern: same.
Sexual-market elite concentration
Rome: elite men monopolized female attention.
Modern: open hypergamy.
A cultural shift from martial virtue to self-preservation
Rome: citizen-soldier ethos disappears.
Modern: risk-taking minimized; safetyism dominates.
I don’t want readers to read passively. I challenge everyone to fact-check the above claims. Both Rome then and the modern West now show the same social pattern shifts.
This force that brought these changes is what Riencourt calls the Female archetype. It is also exactly the Feminine Imperative that Rollo Tomassi waxes lyrical about. Riencourt’s Female archetype is the macro-level equivalent of what the Manosphere calls the Feminine Imperative. It is not a conspiracy; it is a Civilization pattern. It is predictable, and it has a mechanism.
Ideology → Normality → Cohesion
Let us now investigate how societies get trapped in a certain psychological state and become self-preaching to paranoid levels. We trace the full roadmap from psyche to ideology to entrapment.
Ideology emerges from a society’s collective psyche. For example, nobody disputes the myriad blessings of Christianity (eg, positive outlook, epistemology, and open-mindedness), but Christianity is a Female religion: It is forgiving, open-minded, and pacifist. It was adopted because the Late Roman Empire was Female in psyche. In contrast, it could have never adopted Islam (a Male religion), for example. Only compatible concepts can be adopted and celebrated. Similarly, in the West, the psychology is Female. This psychology is the framework of our Civilization’s ideology. Ideology comes from the collective soul, and once that is set, it cannot change (without changing the soul again).
A set ideology is not ideology anymore; it is normality. People stop second-guessing their deepest assumptions. For the participants, these are the rules of the world now. Ideology has become reality itself. The social institutions serve the people, so they serve this normality. They must reflect the dominant worldview to survive. The collective soul is fixed, and the only concern is cohesion. They become cohesion engines because their legitimacy depends on enforcing the normalized values.
This completes the circle. Our current society has a Female psychology. The ideology of this Female psychology is expressed exactly the way Riencourt predicted. Exactly the same way it was expressed in Late Rome. The change to Female worldview happened during the sexual revolution. From then on, we have settled into normality. The society and its institutions, then, become a vehicle to preserve this normality.
This leads to a unique insight. The institutions that the modern manosphere blames are not a cabal or a conspiracy. They are doing their job as intended. They are making society cohesive. They are maintaining the psychological equilibrium. Here are examples:
- Modern therapy: the goal is to push people into normality. The normality is Female nature.
- HR departments: same function as therapy, but for the business world.
- Universities: Science is the manifestation of Philosophical metaphysics. Before the idea gets verified, the idea needs to exist. The modern avoidance mechanism is ultra-specialisation: Ignore the problem by refusing synthetic thought. This is already an adaptation above other similar-era institutions. Think of priestly schools, Confucian scholars, etc.
- Law: similar to universities. The law has to serve what is considered fair in a society. With this viewpoint, the Western law does its job correctly.
These are not independent phenomena; they are the predictable behaviors of institutions in any era where a Spirit dominates. The society technically works as intended. The problems the Manosphere has identified are emergent and systematic from historical cycles.
Essay extras
Extra I — Post Script: Author’s Notes
This essay is not written to view the world as deterministic and resort to nihilism. We indeed uncovered some of the deep secrets that rule our world, but notice the difference: once the structure is visible, it stops being personal!
A known system can be manipulated to our advantage. A personal feud cannot. Neuroscience backs this up completely; living objects and non-living objects are processed in different parts of the brain. Make the switch. Start seeing society as a mechanism, not as something personal. This will allow you to spread your wings and grow.
Extra II — A Case Study: Divorce
To nail the point, no other social institution proves our main thesis than divorce itself. Every Female society had similar divorce norms as now. The only difference is the intensity with which they are enforced now. Take it away:
Late Classical Athens (4th century BCE)
Hetairai (courtesans) gained cultural influence.
Marriage norms:
•Divorce was easy for men and tolerated for women.
•Affairs with hetairai were common.
•Male investment in the household declined; extramarital life increased.
Hellenistic Egypt (Ptolemaic period)
Women could own property, run businesses, and sign contracts.
Marriage norms:
•Divorce was equally accessible to both sexes.
•Adultery laws existed but were inconsistently enforced.
•Serial marriages were common in cosmopolitan urban centers like Alexandria.
Late Republican & Early Imperial Rome
Elite Roman women gained mobility, education, and property rights. They also had political and religious roles (e.g., Livia, Agrippina).
Marriage norms:
•Divorce was easy and common for both sexes.
•Adultery became a normal social behavior.
•Serial marriage was widespread.
Tang Dynasty China (7th–9th century AD)
Women rode horses, played polo, and traveled freely. Urban commercial women had property rights.
Marriage norms:
•Women initiated divorce at historically high rates.
•Urban elite women engaged in serial partnerships.
•Concubinage and extramarital affairs were accepted.
•Marriage was seen as companionate instead of a duty.
Courtly Love Era (12th-13th century AD)
Noblewomen were cultural focal points. Literary and social life centered on feminine aesthetic ideals.
Marriage norms:
•Extramarital romantic relationships became celebrated.
•It was embedded in culture as courtly love.
•Female choice in romantic affairs increased.
Enlightenment France (18th century AD)
Salons run by aristocratic women shaped political and intellectual life. Women influenced taste, literature, and social norms.
Marriage norms:
•After the Revolution, divorce became legal and surged.
•Affairs were nearly universal among the nobility.
•Divorce was illegal earlier, but practical separation and serial affairs were socially normalized.
The Modern West (1960s–present)
Public, cultural, and moral authority shifted heavily towards women.
Marriage norms:
•No-fault divorce.
•Serial monogamy.
•Normalized affairs.
•Online dating leads to fluid partner selection.
The only difference in our era from the historical past is the severity of enforcement. Enforcement today feels so unfair because it is amplified by technology and state power. Everything else has played out exactly as it did in the past.
Hard to digest, huh? Manosphere indeed needs a strong stomach.
