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TL;DR
Some Mexican female vloggers have banded together and started a social media campaign to get Belinda, a fit Mexican pop star and actress/model, to gain weight. This illustrates how women deal with competition: women resent and seek to sabotage an exemplary woman in their midst, whereas men admire and seek to emulate the exemplary man's success. Link to YouTube video (in Spanish). And a possibly NSFW link to a Google Image Search for "Belinda".
Body/Text:
Now, even though this campaign is in jest only, we know that it's at least half-serious, given the way that social media platforms (especially tumblr) have evolved in the past few years. There are other issues that could be mined from this online situation, but for the sake of this post I will merely highlight that this whole situation illustrates the way in which women deal with competition. They are hardwired to resent and sabotage, and often they do so by banding together to tear down the most successful woman (or women). Of course, once the latter is carried out, that female mob will disintegrate and the women will go inevitably back to backstabbing each other, until the next Queen Bee emerges.
Contrast that with how we men generally view competition. Rather than resent it and find ways to sabotage it, we admire it; and those of us who aren't lazy fucks sometimes even try to associate with exemplary men so that we may learn from them and emulate their success.
Lessons learned:
Nothing new. Just an illustration of female-vs-female dynamics, and how that contrasts with males-vs-males.
Summary: As the title suggests, she does not care about you. You care quite a bit about you.
Body:
The more I internalize the Red Pill, the more I realize that this woman-chasing that guys here aspire to is utterly futile for someone like me.
As you may know from my post history, I'm autistic. I never understood why the autistic guys here seem so hung up on pursuing women.
Women are utterly immoral and the hot ones that can get away with it will throw you under the bus the second they get the chance. If you're social poison, they'll actively use you as fodder for their feminist "who's-been-more-oppressed" circlejerks (omg, a creep approached me today!).
To my autistic brothers, I say this: No one cares about you more than you. No neurotypical man or woman cares about you in the romantic or loving sense. No CC-riding slut cares about you. No woman cares about you.
I often feel like empathy and emotional intelligence is just an excuse women use to pretend to be emotionally involved. Ever see a woman (other than a therapist, who tend to be in the top 1% of emotional empathy, usually by virtue of just being nicer) genuinely give a fuck about a man's problems? Moreover, ever see a 20-year old hoebag care about a man's problems (unless of course, she "loves" him)?
You make your own destiny. I have a tremendous skill at manual work and numeracy. I'd rather build a drawer or a cabinet than go out to meet women, dancing like a fucking clown so they might, just might, decide to sleep with me, any day. And given the fact that this is a very niche job, I feel like a could make quite a bit of money. Then the same girls who berated me endlessly are going to come crying back, not because they love me, but because of bank. Because that's essentially what you are to women, gentlemen, a wallet, a dildo and a shoulder to cry on.
Lessons Learned:
Self-love is better than any external love.
You're a tool to women.
Autistic people should not consider taking the romantic advice here, rather taking the self-improvement and self-love advice more deeply.
MGTOW is a valid option.
Summary: For some of you still swallowing the red pill, you have a mental understanding of what TRP is, but you don't completely understand why it is yet. You don't know in your gut what the truth is yet.
I've been there. Getting unplugged from blue pill indoctrination is difficult. It's difficult because every day you're walking around in the blue pill world -- a world made by humans. You're constantly getting blasted with the same message you grew up believing. But good news: the real world -- nature -- is thoroughly red pill. You can get a big dose of reality by going caveman.
Body: Going caveman is going out into nature and living as a basic human, a Human 1.0. Basic humans have a harsher but simpler life. A Human 1.0 has four simple goals: get food, get water, don't die, and bonus points if you find and fuck a mate.
Creating food, finding water, and building shelter are three fundamental skills you're very good at but haven't used a lot in your life. Particularly, hunting an animal, skinning it, roasting it, and eating it in one go is a primal and gratifying experience. Hunting an animal with your own hands is seeing the reality of the food you eat every day. It is the exact same relationship as what society tells us women are and what women really are. If packaged meat is to oneitis, then hunted meat is to a ONS. Experiencing it makes you appreciate what your food really is and that life is simpler than society makes it appear. Knowing you can feed yourself is the same as knowing you can bed a woman, since that's also part of the Human 1.0 skillset that's built into you.
If you haven't gone out into the wild before, it could seem daunting to go out your first time. However, the truth is the wild is a very safe and comfortable place. A man can kill anything that approaches him in the forest. He is the king of the jungle and animals know this. Additionally, a forest is filled with abundance and useful tools. When you start seeing nature as something you control instead of something that controls you, you will have insight into the same perspective that you can adopt with women.
Time to go caveman? Here are some tips: go do an activity like hunting or fishing or camping your first times out. Don't expect to be successful, just enjoy nature and try to learn. Leave a true primitive experience for after you understand how your area works. Each state has many laws for all of these activities, so pay attention. Be simple with what you do and don't buy a lot of stuff. Try to find public land over 10,000 acres or several miles across.
TL;DR: Get out into nature to find what being a basic human is like. Understanding basic humanity exposes you to the same reality of TRP. Killing and eating an animal makes the meaning of life clearer, and you will see parallels with the reality of women.
Summary: New to a city, looked through Meetup.com, could not find any male-specific groups that I could become a part of. Similarly, the few that do exist, such as at Harvard for over 200 years, may be forced to accept women.
About Me
I'm an MGTOW trying to get healthy and focus on myself, make some core friends, and start over in a new city. I was very overweight due to medical issues and I'm now getting back to running long distance after an extended period of time of eating very well and lifting light. Heavy lifting will come soon. I'm an entrepreneur with a location that just opened its doors last week (healthcare) and have a second business underway. I'm busy, know very few people, and want a group or two that I can join to ease into a social life.
Meetup:
Just what the title says. I found 8 different women's only groups - Moms, single women over X age, women's wealth and health groups, women's outdoor exploring, etc.
There were activities that are primarily enjoyed by men, but they are not exclusive to men. Hiking, rock climbing, business networking, you get the idea.
This is another data point that confirms TRP for me and it's a bit saddening. It could just be that there isn't demand for it, but I tend to side with TRP in that there is no way they'd be allowed to exist. It's too bad too. I am looking for a few friends to help me establish a base in a new city. I think it'd be easier to do without the distraction of women there. Alas, I'm out of luck.
Harvard:
Just yesterday the Washington Post had an article about Harvard's last male-only club that's been active since 1791. The Porcellian Club keeps to themselves, causes no trouble, and has some of the finest men in history claim membership. FDR says his biggest disappointment in life was not being asked to join. Now, the anti-male climate we're in wants to force them to accept women in the name of reducing sexual violence on campus. This nonsense forced them to break their 250 years of silence and speak out:
“Given our policies, we are mystified as to why the current administration feels that forcing our club to accept female members would reduce the incidence of sexual assault on campus,” Storey wrote. “Forcing single gender organizations to accept members of the opposite sex could potentially increase, not decrease the potential for sexual misconduct….
It's unfortunate they have to speak up for themselves against such obviously baseless attacks. I'll be watching that fight closely.
Alternatives:
Activities bring people together. If you're social enough it shouldn't matter if it is co-ed. But the gender discrimination is here and very apparent.
I plan to find the least appealing activities to women and attend them - business networking, real estate investors club, even hiking might not be too crowded. I don't dislike women, I just don't want any women as friends and I'm not looking for anything more at this time.
Lessons Learned:
It's only discrimination if it hurts women
Finding a positive group of men is not easy
If a club that includes Teddy Roosevelt in its history and isn't safe, nothing is
Well, I just kind of try to do my own thing, I go to work every day, workout every day and that because I'm only 24 I won't even hit my prime for 10 years, why dedicate the best years of my life to someone? I explained that I have friends with benefits when they started criticizing me for being at a bar alone, (I just stopped for a couple drinks on my way home after work) They started preaching at me how I am on the wrong path. I mega-triggered them when I said, "what's the right path? Getting married so in 15 years my wife and her friend can go out on girls night and hit on men half their age?" (which is what they were doing) they left within minutes. I just thought this was a funny experience that you guys would appreciate.
I'm going to start by saying I have no interest in PUA stuff. I simply don't care to waste my life spinning plates when I could use it on stuff I enjoy. I'm closer to MGTOW than PUA but I still have the biological drive to be around women so I'm curious how to make this work and thought here was a decent place to ask.
I understand female psychology, which makes it difficult to deal with them as people. After spending years listening to lectures on evolutionary psychology and male/female social interactions I'm kind of autistic with women now. As someone who doesn't do well lying (I don't like the bullshit, I'll take the fallout of honesty instead) how do I balance this with my need for female company?
I just came out of a year long relationship and I'm now trying to get my shit together for myself but I'm torn on this one point. I accept I have a biological need for women and my mental health is better with a companion around, but how do you engage someone who is inferior to you and not feel like you're a pro league player at a kids soccer game?
My SMV isn't high and I like that it allows me to ghost, that suits me better than being in the spot light and dealing with relationship drama. But again.. I function better with a female companion, I just don't know how to relate to women any more and since a lot of my interests are on evolutionary subjects, holding conversations isn't exactly a positive place to be. I know I need to learn to control my autistic ways of applying evolutionary psychology to everything, but it's the way I see the world these days.
I work in corporate sales and in telecom so our company sells to about 95% of businesses of every industry and I prob meet more people in one week than most people meet in 6 months and by far, the most horrendous people to deal with are WOMEN.
This is the U.S. and 95% of them are obnoxious, confrontational, toxic, flaky, petty, completely unaccountable, stupid, bizarre, ignorant, creepy and with just about all of the charm and character of a pile of shit.
And worst of all they get off on shitting all over anyone they can and ruining their day. I've never met a man in all these years who 'got off' on ruining someone's day like cunts do. You'll be talking to a female in management or even the occasional female owner of a firm for weeks and you think the deal is going to close and then suddenly out of NOWHERE she will suddenly act like she had never spoken to you, like she doesn't even KNOW you and pretend like you're bothering her in an obvious attempt to piss you off so you will retaliate and then there have been times in years past when I wasn't as experienced, they would try to get me fired on top of that!
Creepy, psychotic absolute PIECES OF SUBHUMAN TRASH. Lower than feces. Luckily the majority of people I deal with are still men and that is where the bulk of my sales happens, so I still enjoy my job to a great extent and don't want to do anything else, but after doing this for 8 years, at the end of the day the last thing I want to do is talk to another idiot, pos CUNT. Men are not 'perfect,' no they're normal. Big difference. Men are held accountable for everything, women are NOT. That's why women have degenerated into such scum as human beings in this idiot country.
So I just completely stopped dating. I know what women are really like from having to deal with them in a business setting and their real character comes out. In a relationship it just takes longer. Sure there's OCCASIONALLY decent females I run into, but they're only about 2-5% of women I have to deal with and 100% of the time they're of course married. Women today in the U.S. are absolute trash and losers.
I'm just wanting to know if there is anyone else here who works in sales and deals with the same bullshit and horrendous behavior.
Summary: Money is life, take steps to ensure that you will have it in the future.
The Red Pill is about looking at objective truths and using that to your advantage. The Cold hard truth is preferable to the comfortable white lie.
That being said there is a curious blind spot that seems to permeate this place regarding the subject of Automation and the idea that the "Free Market" will provide like some Benevolent God and reward your blind devotion.
Robotics and AI combined will create the greatest disruption/catastrophe/opportunity depending on your position and point of view.
Inevitably, some of you will claim I am crying wolf, like the Luddites of old. Except I suggest you read the actual "Boy who cried Wolf" fable.
It ends with the Wolf appearing and fucking up the unprepared townsfolk.
The point of that fable is that "Crying Wolf" desensitizes you to the actual Wold. Which fucking exists.
"Crying Wolf" does not mean that the Wolf is not here, it means that it is not here YET and you are causing a false alarm.
New technologies do not create new jobs. Technology is merely a tool that people use for their own benefit. The only reason someone would employ someone else to do a job is that they have bitten off more then they can chew and require help, and have to pay someone else to help them.
Technology is a work multiplier, it allows an individual to do the work of many. Nothing about this says that Technology must create new jobs. This is not a law of the universe, it is a consequence of people using the technology for their own benefit.
Previous inventions which have disrupted labour markets, the printing press, the loom, harvesters etc, all have been absorbed because they were created to do a specific job.
Automation (which is new) is created to do every job.
Rather then replacing a job, Automation replaces the Worker. All Workers.
I'm going to steal another Redditor's comment about this because it's funny.
This is what 100 million jobs disappearing looks like
This is Boston Dynamics latest prototype for their Atlas robot.
Ask yourself what jobs does this robot create? Chief hockeystick technician? Head of 2x4 manipulation?
This thing could already do my job, and it's just a prototype.
In case you haven't seen Humans need not apply yet, watch it here I'll wait.
Since time began, all Humans have spend their time doing "work" This is required because this keeps society functioning. We are rapidly approaching a situation where society can continue to function, with only a minority of people having to run it.
There are no answers in this thread because I do not have them. This is something that you have to deal with individually while society re-organises.
If a thought instantly pops in your head after reading this thread, you are having an emotional reaction, and whatever thought you have, they are probably wrong.
Lessons Learned: Adapt or die. And if most discussions about this topic are a guide, if you can think slowly and rationally about this, your already heads and shoulders above everybody else.
In the process of living life things happen. What happened over the last 10 days was an unnecessary soap opera. All of the skills and talents that I've picked up over the past couple of years got shit tested over the last week and a half. Unlike the last time a woman got past the radar this time I used and utilized my support network and let people know what was going on. While the final result of what came of my personal choices isn't clear yet. I can say that I can and will live with the results of my choices.
The answer didn't come from just one source here. MGTOW was important things I learned as an MRA, Red Pill even my run as PUA all came together to give me this solution. May it serve as an example to some other man down the road. These stories are proof that women are still out and will have to be dealt with whether we want to deal with them or not.
https://theredpillnation.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/the-sk-series/ https://theredpillnation.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/the-sk-files-12516/ https://theredpillnation.wordpress.com/2016/01/30/sk-series-12916-learning-my-lesson/
There is a growing trend within the MGTOW community of which I was a part of, along with some similarly minded Red Pill men that due to the apparent risks of interaction with women (false rape allegations, divorce rates, false harassment allegations, etc.) that they should stay away from them in general. As a growing concern of the young people within the community is how to control their libido and how to subdue their urges of engaging with women.
My main concern with such a way of thinking is that your testosterone, the very thing that defines the male body, is what creates libido. Surprisingly men's and women's libidos are primarily related to this very hormone.
I believe no section of the manosphere should ever promote the idea of subduing your libido. You can of course control and use your libido however the hell you please, but if you are to care about men and promote their masculine identity, you should appreciate the libido that they inherently have.
Given the realities that the red pill teaches - hypergamy, gynocentrism etc, we should not let such realities push us down, but rather teach us better on how to navigate the world around us.
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufMIPwSxTjs
summary: I am a religious man who remained a virgin until the age of 25 and refused to touch or even look at a woman sexually. I'm sharing my experience as an alternate perspective, and for the consideration of anyone who hasn't yet had sex.
I was right at that time of life when you first take a serious interest in the opposite sex, when most of your peers haven't had sex yet but there's no peer pressure because it's all new and mysterious. The city I lived in was epidemic with STDs. AIDS was a death sentence in those days, and there was a lot of misinformation, uncertainty, and paranoia about it. The religious right was pushing the narrative that birth control pills were murder, and there were a lot of teen pregnancies in my church. Many of you are familiar with the abstinence movement pushed into schools in the Bible belt over the last several years, it was hard doctrine where I grew up, but few young people were committed to it. As a result of these things, in my community, most of the girls with any prospects in life were very hands off. They had strong boundaries for what they would and wouldn't allow, and were largely in control of most relationships.
I went out formally with six girls, and informally with more than thirty, and it was the most fucked up process. The trend was for a girl to announce she was going out with a guy, kiss him and fawn over him like she was madly in love with him, then dump him the next week and move on to another guy. Popularized by the teen mags of the time, this was supposed to get lots of guys on the hook, so that she had someone to latch onto when she hit the wall. It wrecked me every time. In the church we had all been indoctrinated that humans needed to love and care about one another. I had grown up with many of these young women right alongside me in the same pew, hearing the same message, but then they became callous beyond belief when it came to actual relationships. And their explanations for their behavior were just outrageous, outlandish lies, hypocritical, and not a little blaming.
As it happened, I got set up on a blind date by a guy who wanted to mess with me. He set me up with this homely chick, sight unseen, to try to put me into an awkward position. This girl had never had a boyfriend, and mainly wanted to impress me by telling stale blonde jokes and showing me how good she was at Super Mario 3. She had no fashion sense, no figure, and her laugh was so annoying and crass. I had decided to play along because I didn't want to be on the hook for hurting her feelings. One night we're getting busy (lights out of course), and she isn't saying no, and I suddenly realize I'm about to fuck one of the ugliest girls in the school. And all I could think was, "this is some sort of pussy cartel, where I have to settle for some loser if I'm ever going to get anything for long anyway. We're studded out like steers." It was such a crushing realization, and the opposite of every moral I believed in. I zipped up my shit and busted an excuse to leave, and broke it off with Fugsmerelda the next day. And she spent the next three years of her life trying to get even with me for that, for a relationship that had only lasted five days. That wretched experience was the last straw, I decided to go completely abstinent, to not touch a woman or even look at her sexually, and this was how I planned to live my life until such time as they could treat me with respect.
As you have guessed, only the Picassofaces were willing to do that. So I missed all the sexual good times. I missed senior prom, senior trip, summer flings, and four years of crazy university sex. There were a lot of lonely times, and not a few subpar women trying to force their way into my life. My religion was not a help, it was a massive hindrance for this. Evangelical thought of the time forbid masturbation as murder, which created a lot of guilt. The university worship group organizers were actually putting pressure on us to "date" and marry the subpar girls of the group, but even intense kissing could get you blackballed from the group. It was an even more unworkable situation than high school had been, and the only way to win was to not play.
As long as I could fill my time with interesting pursuits, I managed, but the need never left. The loneliness became unworkable around the time I turned 25. I couldn't wait anymore, but I had completely lost any skill with women in the course of avoiding them. Mentally, we were farther apart than ever, at that point I had no idea what they even wanted. My older coworkers didn't give me much hope that things would get better- they were bitter old fucks shifting from cubicle to stripclub and back. I wanted to cut my own dick off and just somehow go on without any of this nonsense. I wanted to go back to a time before puberty, when the everyday was light, and on a good day the best of us could deal with each other like peers and not like prey. But even though I wasn't having sex with any of the women, they were still causing drama in my life, so I figured I might as well collect my whore fee if I'm getting fucked.
So I gave up extreme abstinence and entered a relationship. I was halfhearted about it, wasn't that into the girl, so my first time having sex was a drunken fumble. Even after that, at our best, the sex wasn't worth the drama, mainly because I sucked at it, having no experience. A more experienced woman might have made up for my mistakes, but this was a nerd girl who didn't even know how to give a beej. And this is something I want every church person reading this to know- if you're trying to be oldschool abstinent and save sex for your wedding night, don't think that you'll magically know what to do on that night. You won't, and if you're bad, she might not ever want to give it up for you again. And she WILL expect you to put out like Ron Jeremy on your wedding night, and she'll take it personally if you don't got any game. Figure out what to do before that day comes.
I broke off that relationship and went back to abstinence for awhile, until I met the woman that eventually became my wife. She was a virgin at 24, a fat slacker, but she has a cute face and is a very likable person. Having tried everything else and failed, I decided to just push the relationship as hard as I could. This caused her to cut me off, but a mutual friend showed her my picture and she liked what she saw, so we ended up becoming lovers. I pushed hard for us to get married, and got her to agree within a few months, nobody else was in the picture as you can imagine.
So we got married. In the course of the normal bickering about who has to do what, I tried a few tricks to get her to do what I wanted, which largely failed. Drama was a game no one could win, she would always bring tit-for-tat. And she has the standard "I have to feel good about it" rule that women have, that causes normal conversations to break down. Like I said before, being out of the game for so long, I really didn't understand women, so we got in a lot of fights over nothing.
Then I thought, "I seemed to do best when I pushed the relationship hard, why don't I try that again?" So I started trying to charm her, I'd dance with her, rub her feet, take her to fancy places and be all cuddly. This didn't improve the sex that much, but something started to change in her. One day she wasn't feeling well and we had a tiff, and then she was sick in the bathroom. And I took a washcloth, ran some warm water on it, and reached over and cleaned her up. And that day something dramatically changed. She started looking at me differently. The drama just went away. She started doing what I asked, not everything, but a lot, lost weight even. It was like she finally felt safe to love me like she had always wanted to. Not everything is perfect, but it's a livable marriage, and there are more pros than cons. But best of all, I killed the female sexual partner drama.
Now all I have to deal with is the female mother drama, the female sibling drama, the female mother-in-law drama, the judgmental church female drama, the work female drama, the facebook female drama, the female cat drama, the female neighbor drama, the postmenopausal female neighbor drama, and the female letter carrier drama, so I'm really livin' the dream.
tl;dr: Abstinence can kill your game and stall your sexual prowess while the pressure on you to perform increases. Extreme abstinence won't kill the loneliness unless you lack functioning genitalia. Evangelical religion might fail you when it comes to relationships. If you're looking for a LTR, sometimes doing the counterintuitive thing and pushing the relationship forward can result in a more livable situation than a protectionist strategy. If pushing the relationship worked for you before you got married, try to keep pushing it after you get married. If you're a virgin, pick a direction to go in, either sexual or extreme abstinence, and stick with it, because trying to switch back is horrible. If you're trying to be oldschool abstinent and save sex for your wedding night, don't think that you'll magically know what to do on that night. If you're going extreme lifetime abstinent, get a pet for friendship and maybe one of those foam pussies you can fuck.
tl:dr MGTOW is highly misrepresented and deserves a lot more respect amongst male gender than it gets.
If you're here reading this, then you likely know what MGTOW is and the purpose behind it. However, whenever I read on various message boards and Facebook groups I’ve noticed that it gets a bad rep around the internet. MGTOW is obviously going to get a ton of backlash from women because it is a direct threat to their sexual strategy, which is to be expected. However I feel that the reason why MGTOW gets such a bad rep is because a good handful of the community are known to be “nerds” and “neckbeards” who just sit around and complain and use MGTOW as an excuse to castrate themselves from society.
This defeats the real purpose of how MGTOW is supposed to be used and people use this common denominator to criticize what MGTOW is about.
Whenever I discuss MGTOW to other men in face to face conversations (especially in older and married men) the reception has been overwhelmingly positive.
A lot of men have told me that if they could go back and change things, they would have pursued some of their personal goals and checked off things on their bucket list that it seemingly impossible to do while tied down in a relationship. Even those that are in happy relationships seem to understand why MGTOW makes sense and can come to a rational agreement and support the freedom that MGTOW gives men.
Personally I believe MGTOW is an important phase in life that all men should go through. However it is not meant to be a lifetime commitment as it directly challenges our biological need to procreate and reproduce. It is understandable that a lot of men choose the MGTOW route as a reaction to the lack of quality women in the dating market. Or use it as a means to improve their SMV and return to the dating game at a later date. If someone chooses to opt out for life, then there's nothing wrong with that choice either.
What I have noticed is that a lot of the young generation of men (18-23) are waking up extremely early and applying a lot of MGTOW principles at a very young age. Are we seeing a generation of young men that will opt out of dating altogether?
What are your thoughts on the impression that MGTOW gives to the masses? Do you believe that we will reach a point where it will become a mainstream lifestyle for most men?
PS: I think a pronunciation change should be applied here. (MIG-TAOH) sounds so much less authoritative than (MIG-TOE). You don’t go an (TAOH) a car to the shop for repairs, you (TOE) it. That’s just my personal opinion though.
Thank you for reading.
There are a lot of New Year's resolutions in this sub. You, like most people, could have started whatever it is you are starting today, January 1st; three months ago. But you didn't. Whatever the excuse, it always boils down to laziness.
I am writing this to tell you that you are going to reach your goal, whatever it is. Most goals you not only have to work to attain, but maintain once you've achieved it as well. A six pack, a change of personality, fighting some sort of urge, whatever it may be. Once you earn it, it'll be a cinch to keep, you will barely have to try to keep it going. You cannot, even for a minute, let yourself or someone take it back from you after you fulfill your ambition. Do not be weak.
Do not stop either, once you start, you fucking follow through with it, be a fucking man, you vagina. When you set foot outside your door to begin your trip to a vacation, do you stop? On your cab ride to the airport, do you tell your driver to turn around because you don't want to spend the money? Fuck no, that's because you're excited about going, you have nothing else on your mind except sandy beaches and beautiful women (and maybe your dog sitter, if you have a dog). Use the shit out of that testosterone that your balls give you, don't stop once you start. Not until you are finished.
Maybe you don't have a resolution, maybe your resolution doesn't quite apply to what I have told you, but this is still a good way to go about life. Motivation for myself starts in my chair. I think about what I want, how I'm going to get it, then the second I stand up out of my chair, I don't stop until I'm finished or can't progress anymore in that particular day. Fixing something on my car, running an errand, just getting shit done in general. For the long term shit like losing weight or finding a higher paying job, I practice the same thing. I get up out of my chair as a symbol of the start of my endeavor, then whenever my goal comes to mind later on down the line, I immediately ask myself 'how can I get closer to [insert goal here]?' Everyone has their own method, do what works for you.
There is a lot of advice in this subreddit, a lot of self-improvement guides and help if you bother to ask for it. I love this sub, I figure I would try to give back a little bit.
TL;DR You'll achieve your New Year's resolution if you don't stop. Once you leave to get to your vacation, you don't stop until you get there, apply that to life.
Introspection is an important tool to discover how you tick to optimize your potential.
Take the Meyers-Briggs personality test here:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
Answer the questions with complete honesty so your results don't turn to horoscopes from Us Weekly.
Once your personality type is scored, check here to read your personal description:
http://www.truity.com/view/types
You can also Google your personality type's strengths and weaknesses.
From there, you may understand yourself better and know how you can avoid vices than can be dominant in your personality type, and to utilize your strengths.
Here is a small example of what I learned from my personality type, ENFP:
I seek emotional intensity from a centered viewpoint and therefore am spontaneous. With spontaneity and other traits in the personality type, I seek high-vision ideals and am driven to BEGIN those large projects. However, as I am keen to use my emotional state as a guide to how achieve my goals, I can easily get bored from a mundane task in the aforementioned project and may possibly leave it all together. Because of this tendency, I learned that I must rely on mindfulness through meditation to keep myself in check and always be centered.
It is important to note that these are simply guidelines that can help your personal improvement and should not be taken too close to heart. No personality type is better than another- they can all be optimized to their fullest potential.
tl:dr
Getting a vasectomy in early Jan'16. I have no kids yet, but preserved a few samples at a cryo facility just in case.
Body
I realize there will be a ton of members disagreeing with me, this is my view of all this and how I'm controlling my future.
I made the decision to get a vasectomy in early '16. I looked up a cryo storage facility and stored a few samples of semen the last couple months. The doctor was hesitant when she learned why I'm storing if I"m a perfectly healthy male. I'm paying for a service, my reasons don't matter but I told her flat out that I'm preventing myself from being trapped by a woman. Her audacity to ask me what my girl thought about this decision and that she needs to be okay with it since it's both our decisions. I almost flipped out, but kept my cool. I simply replied with this : "Tell me, when a woman gets pregnant and the guy doesn't want to be a father, is it okay for the guy to force the girl to get an abortion?". Her response: "Of course not, it's her body and her choice". I blankly stared her in the face with a smirk for about 10s. When I realized this intelligent doctor didn't get what I was after, I simply said: "Well, this is my body. You said xxx for the storage correct?". Nothing after that. It felt good to throw that in her face because clearly she thinks when a man makes a decision about "babies" it's both parties decision but when a woman wants a kid, it's only hers. Jerked to some porn and left.
Why am I doing this?
Here is my plan for the future. I don't honestly know if I would want kids. I don't care if I'm 40, 50 or 60. If I decide one day that I want my DNA to run around then I'll do it. Here's how though. It won't be with a partner like a wife or LTR. Before I made this decision, I thought hard and promised myself, if I do this I swear that I will not have a kid with a wife(not likely, been there) or a gf. Ever. The likely-hood of being divorce raped (common law raped whatever) is very high. I will be stuck. So, working on my career I will probably have a good amount of money one day.
I will pay for a surrogate. It will be a legal contract, the kid will legally be mine by law. I'll get a nice young healthy 19-21 surrogate to carry it. I'll pay her hospital bills etc but when the time comes that kid will be mine and mine only. i don't care if the kid wants to know its mother one day, what I care about is its mine. Nobody can extort me for child support or anything. I'll be wealthy enough to pay for a sitter or live in nanny. i don't care if it's expensive. Doing the math of paying child support with my salary right now i'll end up paying over 225k over 19yrs. A surrogate will be way less than that. If a live in nanny is not the option, I'll figure out a way. But whatever happens, the kid will be mine.
This might be controversial thinking or "going too far". Like I said, this is my plan and my choice. I refuse to become a statistic. All relationships end in no condom sex because why would you not. Girl goes on birth control yadda yadda and boom, like two friends already, surprise baby. I'm fighting against it.
Lessons
No lessons really. Just an insight of what you can do as a man to take back control of your life if you are the kind that likes LTRs and not always worry about condoms and if she's not lying etc.
Bonus points if you don't tell your next LTR you're snipped. When she gets pregnant you calmly get another sperm count test done and show her the results. The power gratification you'll feel when you kick her out will be priceless.
I'm interested in opinions. I made up my mind but I like to listen to various perspectives.
There was a popular post yesterday on male suicide and how no one gives a shit about male suffering.
When you first make the realization that, as a male, nobody gives a shit about you. That you are utterly disposable. That you are not worthy of sympathy. That speaking of your problems will only harm you or be met with indifference. When you first make that realization, it may feel like a mourning. You may have an overwhelming sense of sadness, about all those people that when pressed would say that they are there for you, while knowing that nothing could be further from the truth.
I believe that everyone has battled demons at one point or another in their life. Some more than others, some bigger than others. Some demons may feel insurmountable, even more so knowing that you have to face them alone.
So let this be your second realization: If nobody gives a shit about you, then you don't have to be sad.
Nobody is coming to your rescue, so you might as well not feel so bad about yourself.
That's when you realize that you are a free man literally. You are free from your emotions, and you are free to shape your life like you want. You are not necessarily free of problems, but you are free to defeat them.
This is my first time posting on TRP. My old man told me this witty little story when I was younger to explain to me the difference between male and female mentality. ( This story was told to me in Ukrainian so I'm translating this the best I can.)
Once upon a time, there lived a married couple on a farm. The husband worked tirelessly on the fields growing his crops and taking care of the animals while the wife took care of the house, knitted clothing for the family, etc. God saw this hardworking couple and decided to help them out. He disguised himself as a traveler and passed by the fields that the husband was working on. Upon their meeting God taught the man how to work the fields more efficiently by showing him how to craft better tools. God helped out the woman in the same way. The household now prospered. After a while God decided to visit the couple again this time as himself. Upon visiting the farm he asked the man " Your crops are so rich and cattle is so healthy. Nobody in the village is comparable to you, how did you do it? " The man was very thankful for the praises, but replied with "God you wouldn't believe this but a random traveler was passing by. He decided to help me for no apparent reason and taught me the techniques which sprouted these magnificent results." God acknowledged the man and continued on to meet the wife. Once he confronted the woman he asked her the same sort of question. The wife picked her head up high and said "I was doing the work that I usually do, when suddenly an idea popped into my head. A WHOLE NEW WAY OF DOING THINGS! Thus I followed my instinct and now you see these wonderful results."
As I was thought in grade school the moral of the story if what you take from it. Depending on what you trying to get out of swallowing TRP is the type of moral connection that you will make to this story. Some may see this story as something that should warn you about a woman's sneaky personality traits , some may connect it to today's feminism , while others may look at the man in hopes that they can be as simple, virtuous and hardworking as he is.
Novembeard is in full swing. I can honestly say this is the first time I have participated in it. My wife would constantly nag at me to shave, I felt people at work were shaming me into shaving.
I got tired of the bullshit. My wife tried to push me into shaving last week because "I wouldn't look good enough for pictures with her."
One of the first things her mom does is take a family photo of us on my daughters birthday party 11/7/15.
I'm to the point where I say fuck you woman, I live for my own happiness first and if you join in my happiness so be it.
It also helps that I'm off my death enhancement medication. Loving life again. I won't let some asshole bring me down due to their jealous nature. But I will admit the last time I went Solo, I cracked underneath the pressure...the fear of the unknown...fuck that shit.
Go men! Grow your beards! See how manly you look on Nov 30th. Then say fuck the system and grow it to Dec 31st. Or trim it, beautify it, whatever. Up to you. Just don't shame your fellow man and tell any women to go shit on themselves if they try to emasculate you.
The Revolutionary War isn’t some random factoid in your history book; you can feel those men riding against a tyrannical and outdated monarchy. These brave men, God bless them, physically plowed the land and cleared the forests on which the masses now masturbate.
George Washington was a stud. He was a young kid who grew up without a father in hard-scrabble early colonial times. He was going to either die or go to the top.
George Washington was at war for most of his adult life. He lead the attack that started the French and Indian War when he was twenty-two years old. Throughout the conflict, Washington consistently was outmanned and outgunned, but somehow survived massacre after massacre. Factual and well-documented accounts of his battlefield exploits sound like overly-dramatized Hollywood scripts.
In July of 1755, British troops under the command of General Edward Braddock were ambushed by French, Canadian, and Native American troops. It was a blood bath for the British, who suffered massive casualties. Washington rode up and down the lines, trying to quell the chaos. He had “two horses shot beneath him and four bullets through his coat,” but continued his duties. With “most of the other officers either killed or wounded, it was the young provincial colonel who took command” and led the remaining men back to safety. (1)
The Native Americans knew who Washington was, and specifically tried to kill him that day. An Indian named Red Hawk “told of shooting eleven different times at Washington without killing him.” Fifteen years later one of the Indian chiefs from that battle requested to sit down with Washington. Recalling that fateful day, he said told Washington:
I called to my young men and said, mark [the] tall and daring warrior. He is not of the red-coat tribe--he hath an Indian's wisdom, and his warriors fight as we do--himself is alone exposed. Quick, let your aim be certain, and he dies. Our rifles were leveled, rifles which, but for you, knew not how to miss--'twas all in vain, a power mightier far than we, shielded you.
The old Indian Chief continued,
Listen! The Great Spirit protects that man [pointing at Washington], and guides his destinies--he will become the chief of nations, and a people yet unborn will hail him as the founder of a mighty empire. I am come to pay homage to the man who is the particular favorite of Heaven, and who can never die in battle.
Whether or not you believe the religious allusions doesn’t matter. The point here is that George Washington was a brave, brave man. To learn more about his other exploits, I'd recommend Ron Chernow's Pulitzer prize winning biography called Washington: A Life.
It’s Your Choice
Some people work 9 to 5’s they dislike and watch three Netflix series a week. Others become archetypal warriors who are prepared to sacrifice everything for their people. You are free to choose either path.
People some times label these types of social commentaries as “male fantasies” and connect them to notions of “teenage angst.” They claim breaking out of the mainstream grind is ‘unrealistic’ and just an attempt to escape from responsibility.
In reality, breaking out of the 9-to-5 grind involves taking on more responsibility than the average person. A lot more. The ‘mainstream’ lifestyle is one of dependency - you work for other people, are taught by other people, and essentially derive your whole life purpose from others. People in this mindset thus imagine that the only alternative to working for ‘the man’ is wasting away on the couch all day. Morons.
If you want to fully self-actualize, you do need to break away, but do it quietly. Don’t become a hippie, or a hipster, and don’t do drugs. None of those lifestyles are actually rebellious. They all react to ‘The Man.’ If you adopt a reactive position, you will still be unable to proactively create your reality. It's like teenagers arguing with their parents - you can yell all you want, but at the end of the day they still hold all the cards.
If there are people or institutions that are legitimately oppressing you, then you have to confront them head on - if you ‘tune in and drop out man’ you’re going to end up in a field somewhere listening to music specifically designed for your demographic by major corporations.
Learn to Love Responsibility
At first it can be uncomfortable admitting that most of your problems are self-made. However, once you get in the habit of taking responsibility, you get a lot more control. If you won’t take responsibility for yourself, you may never have to deal with public failures and defeats, but your time and lifestyle will largely be determined by others who are less cowardly.
Disregard people who try to tell you what is and is not ‘realistic.’ These people are usually just projecting their own insecurities and weak worldviews. A common road block for people who want to get into the self-development mindset is: “This all sounds great, but I’m already really busy, and I have bills I need to pay. I can’t just give up everything and follow my dreams.”
Listen, no one’s saying you should ‘give up everything.’ Stop thinking the alternative to working in a cubicle is finding yourself on a backpacking trip in Europe or sitting on a beach drinking all day. There’s nothing wrong with traveling - but if you do it (or anything else for that matter) with the intention of escaping, then nothing will change.
Conclusion
The move to make is towards true independence - financially, emotionally, and educationally. You can talk about what’s ‘realistic’ all you want, but the fact remains that some people do live like George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. Some people do what you love and make a lot of money doing so. Get off the sidelines and step onto the field - it’s where true ‘security’ lies anyways.
Sources:
(1) http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/washington/george2.html
(2) In God We Trusted by Jeff Wallace
Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.
-T.S. Elliot, The Waste Land
If you were born before the Renaissance, would you miss concepts that hadn’t been invented yet? How would you even conceptualize ideas like ‘rationality’ and ‘science?’ Would you ever realize you were living in a ‘Dark Age?’
Perhaps some day people will look back on this era as the first time technology went too far. Or, when humanity was not yet mature enough to handle its own technical advances.
“Here’s a 2010’s man, class. Look at him staring at his phone. People back then didn’t know how damaging screen addiction could be. A whole generation of kids with ADHD and low testosterone, raised under a government that collected every email and text message. Poor things.”
I have no idea if we’re in a Dark Age or not, but I do know that I want culture off my back. I am done with having advertisements downloaded into my subconscious. I am tired of complaining about our political system - it’s become cliche.
Everything is fast and plastic wrapped and synthetic. America is a quick high that will get you hooked so fast you wont know what hit you. You’re not allowed anywhere near the Real. Don’t go to war for yourself - watch football. Don’t have a significant other - watch porn. Don’t learn how the universe works - go into debt and receive a degree. As Baudrillad said, mistake the signifier for the signified. Live one-step removed from reality.
A country with 700+ military bases abroad that brags about bringing democracy to the world. The world leader in obesity and mental illness that claims to have the best lifestyle. I don’t hate America, though, I’m really glad I live here. Most of the people I know have baggage, but are nice.
What Can We Do?
For one thing, we can stop trying to escape. It doesn’t work: not now, not ever. Even if you saw the best Netflix series ever, you’re still going back to the cubicle on Monday. Even if you said a really funny joke while you were three beers deep and a cute girl laughed and you won your fantasy football matchup on Sunday, you’re still going back to the cube. Theodore Adorno defined the whole landscape of 20th century critical theory when he stated, "to be entertained is to give one’s consent."
I’m starting to be less entitled. Somewhere along the way I learned it was O.K. to not go all out. I learned to see Hillary Clinton as a grandma who cared about me. I learned that struggling was bad and everything is a joke. The feeling I experienced when my fantasy football team did well was definitely sexual and/or orgasmic in nature, which makes sense because our culture is largely based on jerking off. We gleefully masturbate to new iPhones and cars and Facebook likes. Marx was right to call it commodity fetishism.
The move to make is away from mass-produced cultural forms, and towards your own unique experience in the world. It doesn’t matter if you want to be a bee keeper in Montana, you can’t go wrong doing you. Become a five-star general in your own universe. Stop viewing life as a sappy Showtime movie, and instead approach it like a game. Start making strategic plays; even if your first move is to just put on some underwear, it will still feel good.
Education
The biggest obstacle most people have in breaking out of the matrix is lack of education. They were deprived of an education about what really matters and have been conditioned their whole lives to rely on other people - parents, teachers, professors, ‘officials’ - for information about how the world works. Folks, why would the people who run the show (whether it’s your parents in the household or the government in society) tell you exactly what they are doing?
“O.K. Tommy, we’re sending you off to college so you can get the partying out of your system. Then, you’ll graduate in debt so you have to get a full time job as soon as possible. Luckily, that diploma really represents ‘can show up to work on time’ and ‘isn’t a criminal,’ so you should probably be able to find some work. Have fun!”
It’s not even a conspiracy- it’s right in front of your eyes - you just don’t want to look because it’s scary to come to different conclusions than other people. Begin to take back your life by obsessively studying the world around you. Use your own experiences to gauge what’s true - forget about what’s ‘normal.’ You’ll start to realize things like:
-Every society is a pyramid with certain people on top
-Every country is going to have some brainwashing
-Happiness is an individual thing. No institution or system can give it to you
Yesterday I picked up the “Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus. Wow! I can hardly understand the guy. I feel like there is an ocean of meaning behind each one of his sentences. Who are these people with the ability to write at that high of a level?
Ignorance
28% of Americans said that they haven’t read a book in the past year. Those stats are taken from a poll too. How many of the remaining 72% were too afraid to admit that they didn’t read that book, they skimmed the first 10 pages? Thank god for guys like Camus or we’d all believe that the only thing to read is “28 ways to stop procrastination and begin living!” How can we possibly say we know anything when we can’t even understand books that are in English? I should only speak for myself but let’s face it, how many of us are going to pick up the underlying messages in Homer on the first try? Yet we’re all ready to jump on the next “quick fix”.
Judging from my title, it’s pretty obvious what I’m going to advocate. The mystery is why we are not more interested in diving into the depths of our mind, especially when it’s clear that there is a lot more to dive into. Why do we stop educational pursuits once finished with school? The up-front answer is that school turns us off. Learning gets associated with busy work and once you have your diploma, you’re free! Free from learning? That’s stagnation. Isn’t that the state where you mull over the same opinions until becoming that angry old man?
Heretics
It’s as if the educational pursuits have been sectioned off for the special ones among us. Who are the special ones? The financiers of course! The Steve Jobs! The business world has done nothing but speed up exponentially in the past 20 years. Anyone in business has had to revamp their strategy entirely in order to “keep up”. I can’t help but think of my 55-year-old father who has re-grown his umbilical cord and plugged in his phone. The leaders of business are heralded as the intellectually elite among us despite immersion in the most frantic business environment in human history. I question our judgment as to who we should be taking advice from. During a stock market crash, the wise ones buy back in right when the market is about to turn. It’s time to buy back in on your education.
Have you seen I Am Legend? Remember when Will Smith has conversations with mannequins? Look up when you walk down the street or into a coffee shop. Where is everyone’s attention? Their phone. One game I like to play is to predict when people will reach for their phone… again. The technological revolution, with all the benefits it does supply, has shredded our ability for concentration. Facebook, E-mails, advertisements, and pressure – all of these things have created a whirlwind in our minds that we are still in the process of getting caught up in. I’m not innocent.
Employment
What does this mean for you and me? It means that there is an enormous opportunity to be a pioneer in slowing down during the age of speeding up. It’s safe to say that people don’t read or write with the levels of concentration that were upheld in the past. And yet people today seem more egotistically bound to their opinions and apt to tell you that they have it all figured out. This is all while they can’t stop their shaky leg syndrome and uncontrollable cases of wanking; the act of habitually reaching for your phone with no purpose in doing so. Wanking is shameful and will void you of your life-force.
Where do you start? Begin by formulating in-depth sentences on your thoughts and values. If you question what grounds I am basing my opinion upon, simply ask someone who their favorite presidential candidate is. First off, in today’s day and age if you don’t have an opinion, you’re probably a terrorist. Second, my point is that people’s opinions will almost always fall flat on their faces if probed. “Why are you going to vote for Trump?” “Umm. Well, he’s going to create jobs and he’s a business man. That’s good!” And then we all vote for him based on this nonsense. “Hope and Change!” How ambiguous can it get? As a culture, we lack grit behind our opinions but also have the unwritten rule of never questioning each other. Patriotism YARRR!!!!
Separate yourself through genuine education. You’ll develop a unique and detached perspective of society, a valuable perspective. It’s fun to write and put your stuff on the web. You’ll receive feedback and learn to be completely humbled by legendary writers. How does Camus write like that? His chains of thoughts are on a different level! There’s mysteriousness in embarking on the journey to figuring these guys out. What do they know that I don’t? Lastly, like I am in the process of discovering, you’ll realize that a lot of the stuff you once felt adamant about didn’t have solid structure. It was just repetitive thinking that had sat around and got stale. It feels good to throw it out. Admitting you don’t have it all figured out is probably the first step in figuring it out.
The writer E.L. Doctorow said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
I think we can all attest from personal experience that the cultural pressure to get a stable and well paying job is strong. What I’d like to examine is what a stable job means for a human being in the long term. First off, let’s scrap this idea that everyone is going to find a job they are “passionate” about. This absolute sham is indoctrinated during grade school and seems to be the auto-pilot response as to why people do what they do. “So why did you choose to get into accounting?” “Well, I’m just really passionate about numbers and helping people.” Give me a break. The large majority of people stay in their jobs because of the security it offers. We submit to sacrificing 80% of our time in order to gain the privilege of telling ourselves we are stand-up members of society.
Habits
What’s difficult to reconcile, especially at a young age, is that habits sink in. When we’re 23 years old, the brain is still malleable and our options are still wide open. These years are pivotal in terms of personal growth and finding a wholesome direction for your life. Many people would argue that joining a large company and working long hours is a wholesome direction. I think for the majority of kids that choose this path, it’s a death trap. As Benjamin Franklin put it, “most people die at 25 and are buried at 75.” Meg Jay, PhD, wrote a book called “The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter” Backed by neuroscience her argument is that during our twenties we set in stone the neural patterns that will stick with us for the rest of our life. If during our twenties we choose to work 9-5 each day at a job which doesn’t stimulate our curiosity into the mysteriousness of life, do you think one day we will wake up and then start to live?
This is arguably the most common misconception among modernized cultures and we even have a name for it; mid-life crisis. The thought process is that if we create a career, save money, and live by the rules, then we will have the time and opportunity to live in a utopia. This is flat out wrong. If we establish workaholic habits during our twenties that are characterized by doing nothing more than legwork for “the man”, how do we expect to break out of these habits come 40, 50, or 60? This is what I call being employed by culture. Culture offers the promise of safety. We will have financial and social security but we will not be exploring our fullest potential as human beings. When we figure this out at 40, we will most likely already have enough responsibilities on our plate to keep us serving the system.
The System
This is no accident either. Most people will say that the 9-5 structure is the way the system has evolved. A common phrase used by those who uphold the leviathan is “reality”. The 9-5 structure is “reality”. The real story is that the 9-5 structure is inculcated during the educational years and then blindly accepted by the majority while transitioning into the workforce. As we pointed out in another post, one of the founding fathers of the American educational system, Thomas Alexander, is quoted for referencing how the American system will emulate Prussian design. “The Prussian is to a large measure enslaved through the medium of his school…his learning instead of making him his own master forges the chain by which he is held in servitude…the whole scheme of Prussian elementary education is shaped with the express purpose of making ninety five out of every hundred citizens subservient to the ruling house and to the state.” This is the way it works. We don’t see it as a social construction precisely because it is a social construction. We have been swimming in the 9-5 from day one and label it as “reality” while continuing to ride the conveyor belt of servitude.
Taking Control
What can you do about it? At the risk of sounding cliché, you can begin to take control of your story. Begin to employ yourself. Find anything you can commit to 100% and go that way. It was MLK who said “faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase” I’m not advocating for people to give up everything at once. That will come naturally. If you read what we said about beginning a new routine, the moral of the story is to begin by taking one pill rather than the whole bottle. The same methodology can be applied here. Start with your free time. Take it back by all means necessary. I don’t care if you are tired from your job. This is your life. If your habit is to go home after work and half-heartedly flip through channels or browse the web, nothing is going to change. The time you spend alone with yourself is the most precious time you have. This is your proving ground. It’s where you decide who you are, what values you uphold, and ultimately how you are seen in the eyes of yourself and others. When no one is around, what are you doing?
Second, begin to look at what you need in life. There is a hilarious skit by Louie CK where he mocks people who complain on flights. “YOU’RE FLYING” he exclaims. Albeit the comedic value, the underlying message CK puts forth is gold. We live in an age where each one of us lives like the Kings of old. We have an abundant supply of food, access to unlimited information, and a constant stream of entertainment. What more could we ask for? We have it all and yet we are still wrapped up in our mid-life crises. Christopher Wallace hit the nail on the head in saying, “more money more problems.” Not that I think money is a bad thing. Money is and can be a useful tool. I am targeting the cultural infatuation with material things as opposed to mental prowess. We have a plethora of examples from pop-culture pointing out that overdosing on the good life is not only unhealthy, but crude. Yet we continue to feed ourselves with mainstream news, television, and junk-food seemingly unaware that those are the moments to regain control.
Asking the Right Questions
What’s more important to you? Command of your mind, education, and life-force or Porsche’s, clothes, and whatever else materialism wants us to awe over. In many cases I don’t think this question has been properly thought through. We’ll say education but act under the spell of materialism. The trick is to transform the means to yours ends into ends themselves. Said otherwise, if wealth comes through your focused and persistent effort, so be it. If wealth doesn’t come through your focused and persistent effort, then that is fine too. It’s about making what you do in life come alive and knowing that is wealth itself. It’s not that this awareness is unachievable in the 9-5. It’s that the 9-5 structure is stigmatized with pre-existing biases from the education system; work is bad, recess is good.
I like to say the modern system keeps us in balance by keeping us out of balance. For 80% of our time we are tied to the monotony of the 9-5. Then we have 20% of our time to childishly lash out with our adult fantasies. Balance is maintained by keeping people fluctuating between the two extremities of dull and flamboyant. I advocate for the middle way. Anyone who has ever been successful at anything will tell you one pointed consistency is behind their mastery. As Calvin Coolidge said, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” Whether or not the 9-5 routine was designed by the higher powers, the fact remains that it is a blender for persistence. How can people be persistent if they are half-heartedly in a job which takes up the majority of their working hours? They can’t.
The takeaway is to begin and begin now. People are not homogeneously at the same level of conscious awareness. This is why the Greeks said “Know Thyself”. One piece of advice may work for one person but faulty for another. It’s about making wise decisions to optimize your human potential during your time on earth. You must know yourself in order to guide your story towards wholesomeness. We can’t know where it will end up but that is the beauty in writing your own novel. Have faith and be fearless.
Link to website: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/blog/for-those-about-to-propose
Mod Note (Andy): Best of Eddie, this was originally posted in January 2011.
With Valentine's Day two short weeks away, some of your girlfriends are no doubt ratcheting up the pressure on you to pop the question on the most romantic day of the year. Maybe you already live together. Maybe you've been going out for a few years. Maybe you met her in a Chelsea dive bar on Tuesday. It's no matter. They all want the same thing.
Allow me to introduce Charles Brandes. Sure, he's a big shot today pulling in an estimated $16 million a month, but he wasn't always. He was once just a young monkey like all of you. And therein lies his cautionary tale. For it was at that point in his career that he met Linda King Formo, a single mother earning $6 an hour as a librarian.
Brandes started his own firm in 1974 and was content to grow his AUM over the subsequent decade. He met Formo in 1983 and, after a three-year courtship, they were married in 1986. Even though he wasn't a BSD yet (he made about $180,000 in 1986), he obviously went into the marriage with some reservations, evidenced by the pre-nuptial agreement he presented to her which she refused to sign.
Let me say that again for the cheap seats, because it's important that you get it. He presented her with a pre-nuptial agreement and she refused to sign it. She allegedly told him at some point before the wedding that, "I will have no claim or interest in your business", but she denies ever saying it and it's impossible to prove and not legally binding anyway.
Fast forward 18 years to 2004. The marriage is over, and they're in divorce court. Charles is now a very big deal, and the lifestyle he has lavished on Linda could be described as over the top by any sane measure. By California statutes, he can only be forced to pay her $36,400 per month in spousal support but, either out of genuine concern for his soon-to-be ex-wife or his desire to head her off at the legal entanglement pass, Charles gives her a home in Rancho Santa Fe, a beach house in Del Mar, a Central Park penthouse and two other Manhattan condos, and two condos in Salt Lake City. To alleviate any liquidity concerns she might have, he throws in $18.7 million in cash.
Guess what?
It's not enough.
The interest alone on the money he gave her generates $155,000 a month. He throws another $350,000 a month into the pot, bringing her monthly income to a staggering $500,000. But she's just scraping by, and has now set her sights on the $140 million he has in various S-Corporations. The reason she can't make ends meet?
$30,000 a month at the casinos $340,000 Mercedes Maybach Upkeep on her various mansions The 210 pairs of shoes in her closet Half a million a month doesn't go as far as it used to, yo Just so you don't think she's not deserving, she'll tell you she was instrumental in his success. How? She convinced him to dress better, get a nose job, and she busted his balls to work harder 'cause mama needs new shoes.
Guys, I hope you see where I'm going with this. You might be worthless today, but chances are you won't always be. You pay for car insurance, health insurance, life insurance (if you don't, you should). Why would you leave such an obvious financial vulnerability unprotected?
The best advice I can give is don't get married. Ever. There's just no percentage in it for a young guy with significant earning potential. Especially if there's a major income disparity between you and your significant other (hedge fund manager vs. $6 an hour librarian).
But I've been married three times myself. Just so I don't sound like a hypocrite, if you must get married - by all means protect yourself. A pre-nup doesn't mean you love little Susie Rottencrotch any less. And she won't hesitate to sign it, if her intentions are pure. If she does hesitate, that should tell you something.
Have a great weekend, guys, and don't fall into the Valentine's Day trap.
This is an older article by /u/typhonblue that some of the younger posters may have missed.
Its a fantastic tale of privilege, princesses, manipulation, and gender expectations.
There once was a queen who was sovereign over a modest but prosperous queendom. On the day her daughter came of age, the Queen took her daughter aside and showed her the source of her prosperity.
In the stables, far from prying eyes, was a broken old horse wearing a worn leather bridle with a rusty iron bit. The horse’s coat was worn thin in places, his mane falling out, his legs trembling from the effort of keeping himself standing.
‘He’s ready for the knackers, my daughter.’ Said the Queen matter-of-factly. ‘And there he shall go in due course.’
‘This is the horse that built the queendom!’ The princess said. ‘Surely he should have some sort of retirement! And a proper funeral.’
‘No, my daughter. You must respect his role; his role is to sacrifice for us, therefore even in death we respect his role by allowing his body to provide a last benefit. It will be the glue factory if he doesn’t live to make it to the slaughterhouse.’
‘Besides, it is not him that is magic. His bridle is the magic, my daughter. When you place it on a plow horse, the plow horse will be so proud to wear it and so proud that you placed it on him that he will work himself to death to fulfill your needs. It is his pride that makes the magic work; and his pride that gives it its strength.’
With that the Queen lifted the bridle from the old horse’s head. The old horse let out a rattling cough and, trembling, knelt. After a moment even kneeling was too much for him; he lay on its side. A few moments more and his last breath shuddered his broken body like a paper doll on a string.
The Queen watched the horse’s death with a cool detachment.
‘That poor horse.’ Said the princess, dabbing at her eyes with a lace kerchief. ‘He was pitiful.’
The Queen stared at her daughter, her demeanor solemn. ‘Controlling your sentiment is the price of leadership my daughter.’ Replied the Queen. ‘Speaking of which, after you place the bridle upon a horse’s head do not let yourself want it; do not take it off him before you are done with him; above all, do not explain its true nature to him. Now, you must select the horse that will wear your bridle.’
The Queen’s daughter took her time selecting just the right plow horse to wear the bridle. In due course she found a strong, handsome draft horse and all the queendom came to celebrate her placing the bridle upon his head in a great festival.
The princess basked in the adoration of her people as she brought out the bridle and made to place it upon the horse’s head. But soon as the bit hit the back of his tongue, the bridle transformed from worn leather into spun gold and silver, embedded with pearls and rubies.
The princess gasped at the sight of it and so did her people. She glanced around herself; now all eyes were no longer on her, they were on the draft horse. Resentment stirred in the princess’s heart.
Sensing her daughter’s discomfort, the Queen interjected. ‘But lets not forget the woman behind the draft horse.’
The gathered nobles agreed with their queen and toasted the princess’s choice.
True to her mother’s words, when the Princess had a need, the draft horse would provide. When she felt the queendom threatened by northern barbarians, the draft horse built a castle to thwart their ambitions and led the charge to repel them.
When the queendom was gripped with a famine and the princess felt the first stirrings of fear for herself, the draft horse pulled the plow faster and harder than any horse could because of the pride he had for his bridle.
But the princess was not happy. She seethed silently to herself. How the plow horse was admired when he wore the bridle! People would stop and stare and remark on how strong he was and how much he had accomplished. They awarded him titles for his great deeds. And each admiring glance and handsome trophy was a dagger in the princess’s heart.
After all it was her needs he lived to fulfill; her benefit he bowed to; her frailties he sacrificed for.
She should have the bridle! And all the attention given him should be rightfully hers! But remembering her mother’s words, ‘don’t let yourself want it; don’t take it off him until you are done with him; and above all don’t explain its true nature to him’ the princess resisted giving in to her jealousy.
One day a passing dignitary from another land happened to mention the beauty and majesty of the castle built by the plow horse. How wonderful it was and how ingenious the plow horse had been to build it. The plow horse preened under the dignitary’s compliments and the princess fumed. It was enough that her own people admired the plow horse; but must she bear a stranger’s admiration for the plow horse as well?
The princess, unable to contain her anger any longer, cried out, ‘He may have built it, but he built it for me!’ And clomped from the dignitary’s presence.
That night she went to the stable and crept to the horse’s stall. Watching him rest with the handsome bridle—surrounded by all his medals and trophies—bile rose in the princess. ‘Give the bridle to me.’
The plow horse woke and used to giving the princess whatever she needed, dutifully allowed her to grab hold of the bridle.
‘Stupid horse, I let you wear this bridle, but it was always mine. I just used it to control you! And look what you did! You were supposed to live for my needs, but you saved the best in this world for yourself!’ She pulled the bridle from the horse’s head. It turned back into crackled leather and rusted iron in her hands.
She stared at it, dumbstruck and so did the horse.
Once the horse saw the bridle for what it was, old, worn—and above all a bridle—his demeanor changed instantly. He reared up, pawing the air with his great hooves. In her haste to get out of the stall and away from him the princess dropped the bridle.
The stallion turned his head to the stable door. The door was open. In her greed for the bridle the princess had forgotten to secure it. The stallion’s nostrils flared, catching the scent of long night runs, open water and wild grasses.
He bolted through the open stable door, trampling the bridle to pieces in his escape.
The horse gone the princess looked at the cracked leather bridle now laying broken on the ground. Off the horse’s head the magic was gone—there was nothing left in the bridle to want—and she felt a dawning horror as she finally understood her mother’s warning. The bridle’s only real worth was its ability to control the plow horse and she had lost its magic forever.
Summary
Some users have requested an exploration of the statement satiating desire isn't about feeling good. It's about ending suffering.
I am still slowly making my way through the side bar and learning at a slow contemplative pace, so this post may be a little premature on my part. Nevertheless; I would like to take the opportunity to both offer the following exploration between desire and suffering and to make an entrance into this community in a way that I hope to be valuable; at the very least to form the foundation of a valuable discussion.
I would first like to make a housekeeping note between desires and needs. While the difference between these two words may not be material outside this post; while we are here I'd like to form the following difference to aid the discussion.
Needs as contended by Maslow are the fundamental things that that a person requires to live; ordered in a hierarchical way. These needs form the basic motivators of a human that when met, that person is able to reduce their suffering and to be able to move on to meeting greater needs. I will extend this contention to reproduction; the more of a persons basic needs that are met, the more likely they are to successfully reproduce and raise a child in a community. It is important to note, that while generally, needs are met linearly up the hierarchy, in reality, person's needs will flow up and down the hierarchy.
Desires are the feelings one experience when there may be a need to be met. I say "may", since in today's world of consumption and fem-centric ideas of masculinity, our senses are often confused in to desiring things we actually don't need. Let's explore some common desires and relate them back to the hierarchy.
Body
Any smoker who is reading this will now be feeling the desire to smoke a cigarette. The smoker/addict will hamster away that desire and apply a need to the desire to justify its existence. "I'm bored/tired/need a break/it calms me/ it helps me focus, etc". What is the basis of this desire, no non-smoker needs a cigarette, so where does it come from? It come from suffering. Every smoker who hasn't smoked for around an hour (perhaps less) will feel an empty feeling inside caused by the withdrawal of nicotine. It isn't particularly uncomfortable, in fact it's hardly noticeable, however once a smoker is able to fill that emptiness with nicotine, he will be able to fill all of his moments of loneliness, stress and discomfort with the drug. He will satiate his desire (end the suffering) without actually satiating any needs, and hence his dependency will grow. In this example, the desire isn't associated with any real need.
Not all the food we eat is delicious, so what exactly is hunger, if not to enjoy oneself through taste? Hunger is suffering, and we know that we can end the suffering by eating, so we eat. The suffering (desire) is caused by not having met our most fundamental need on the hierarchy.
Why do you have the desire to attain your dream car or other material crutch? It is because you now have a need to meet the esteem of your peers and community members. Will this car/watch/house make you happy? No it may periodically help you end your suffering (though in most cases the purchasing of these items don't actually guarantee that you have met the esteem of your peers, you've just been tricked into thinking that you'll be loved for buying this thing.), though there is nothing that this thing can do that will make you happy (other than maybe some utility that it has - for example; going fast, which can be fun).
This can get confusing sometimes. If you have a sore back you may organise to get a massage to relieve the suffering, or you may get a massage without having anything wrong with you, in which case there is a distinct difference between pleasure and a reduction in suffering. We can extrapolate this back massage example to fucking. It the desire of every beta to be validated by women, and we will suffer immeasurably because of it. We will suffer because women will despise us for needing them and their validation. Women are attracted to self actualised men or the next best (hypergamy). It is these men that get the back massages for pleasure. It is these men who fuck for fun and don't hate women or themselves in the process. Though woman will likely hate them for not providing reproductive utility. It is these men who will quite happily plod along doing there thing, whether it is being a Siberian Muscle God, Salty Pirate King or like in the above example; enjoying your self actualisation and removing the value from women's validation like u/Challengedge.
All that being said, what is the point of posting on TRP without an unapologetic dose of misogyny?
What is the difference between men and women? We can argue the difference in many ways and through a number of lenses. Most notably in this sub, it is the difference in our reproductive strategies. I put to you that a more fundamental difference between men and woman is that:
A woman's highest need is to be loved. Only once she is loved a woman can reproduce and convince a man to raise the child.
A man's highest need, is to be free. Only once free, are men able to better themselves and then their community.
It important to again note that the meeting of these needs doesn't always happen in a linear fashion and that until one has achieved some measure of self actualisation, one will suffer in one way or another. The more you grow as a man, the more your motivations will be based on self and less on the reduction of suffering. That is to say, the more your motivations will be based on self and less on the validation of women and our insufferable enslaving cunt of a society.
A look at this hierarchy also gives us an insight into why so many of us become beta and fem manipulated; we need to pass through the esteem/approval seeking stage of personal growth before we can self actualise and in this world where we have suckled on the tit of mothers validation for way too long; our esteem and self worth has become based on the meeting of females reproductive needs (provider to a single spouse for the child of another man). This has crippled too many of us from reaching our higher, truer and greater calling of self validation, actualisation and transcendence.
The basis of our motivations for being here is primarily to reduce suffering at the esteem level of our needs (we are not loved by society i.e woman). However, I think most of us have come to realise that female validation is no longer needed in our lives (since probably the age of five), our suffering now becomes based on the need to be free. We can now see the name for this sub as less of a cheeky irony and more of an apt contention of the most masculine of needs.
