“Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.”
One of the major hurdles I had to really come to terms with when I decided to start getting involved with the new male paradigm was why I was so passionate about it in the first place. Ever since I began contributing at SoSuave and the manosphere in general, I’ve always tried to make a point of not emphasizing my past sexual and relational experiences to base more global ideas upon. Women’s default position is to do just this; personalize the instance to come to a universal conclusion. Not only is it the pinacle of solipsism to think your experience should define the frame for everyone else, but it myopically ignores that exception usually prove a rule.
That was my basis for not wanting to relate too much of my own experiences. People can draw too easy a conclusion from the conditions that molded your point of view. This is actually one of the easiest ways to read a woman because their experiential sense of self-importance tends to define their reality. I wanted a more pragmatic approach, and this all came at a time for me when I decided to add a second major to my university studies – behavioral psychology with an emphasis on personality studies. Game, or what would become Game, influenced this decision for me. I wanted to know how the TV worked instead of that it just worked when I turned on the power.
All that said, I was still left with the question, why the fuck do you even give a shit whether guys unplug? I unplugged without the support of an internet community of Men comparing experiences, why even bother? I have had what most Men would consider a very good marriage for over 15 years now. I have a whip-smart daughter, I make good money, I’m successful at what I do, I’m well travelled, why is it so fucking important to make my voice heard?
It’s when I’m forced to answer questions like this that I have no choice but to apply my own personal experiences to the equation. I’m loathe to do so because it’s far too easy for critics to mold them into some purpose that serves their perspective – he’s bitter, he got burned, this is his catharsis, he’s vindictive, etc. However, it’s necessary to present these experiences as observations for a better understanding. I wont pretend to be unbiased, no one is, but I do take the pains to be as self-analytical as I can in what I offer.
So you want to know what my problem is?
My problem is living in a world teeming with young men who’ve become so conditioned to believing that anything remotely masculine is to be ridiculed, vilified and subdued until they have no concept of what it truly entails much less pass off even the possibility that it could be something positive and attractive.
My problem is when a personal, AFC friend swallows a bullet because he literally “can’t live without” the girlfriend who left him.
My problem is watching a pastor’s pretty wife leave him and 4 children so she can pursue her hypergamy after 18 years of marriage because he pedestalized her and deprecated himself every day of their marriage.
My problem is when a 65 y.o. life-long chump cries in my lap about how he’s been consistently blackmailed with his wife’s intimacy for the past 20 years of their marriage and wont man-up for fear of losing her.
My problem is talking a close friend out of killing the wife he married too young at 19 and the man she just cheated on him with in the parking lot of the motel he’s spent all night tracking her down to find with their 3 children crying in the backseat of their minivan at 4am.
My problem is civilly sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with a hyper-religious sister-in-law and the new millionaire husband she married just 8 months after her former AFC husband of 20 years hung himself from a tree when she decided “he wasn’t the ONE” for her. My problem is staring at the brand new tits and Porsche she bought herself with the money from the home he built for her that he busted his ass for just 3 months after he was in the ground. My problem is emphatically teaching my 22 y.o. nephew how not to be the AFC his father was, while tactfully pointing out the hypergamy of his vulgarly opportunistic mother.
My problem is watching my father, though decaying from alzheimers, still playing out the Savior Schema in an effort to get laid that he’s thought should work for his entire life at 68 y.o. My problem is watching him feebley default to a behavior that obsessively motivated him to succeed until he was forced into early retirement at 53 and his 2nd wife left him promptly after that.
My problem is consoling a good friend who’s fathered 3 daughters with 2 wives and is being emotionally manipulated by his 3rd (another single mommie BTW), who’s become so despondent that he dreads going home from work to deal with his personal situation and wait’s with anticipation for the weekend to be over.
My problem is counseling a guy who thought the best way to separate himself from “other guys” was to be ‘chivalrous’ and date a single mommy with 3 children from 2 different fathers, only to knock her up for a fourth kid and marry her because “it was the right thing to do.”
My problem is dealing with a 17 y.o. girl who’d just witnessed her new boyfriend being stabbed 30+ times by her ex boyfriend because he believed “she was his soulmate” and “would rather live in jail without her than see her with that guy.”
My problem is trying to explain to ‘Modern Women’ that – after 15 years of marriage, my wife could still model swimwear and confidently respects my judgement and decisions as a Man – I didn’t achieve this by being a domineering, 1950’s caveman-chauvinist who’s crushed her spirit, but that it is an understanding and adherence to living a positively masculine role.
And my biggest problem is seeing 14 y.o. AFC symps all ready to sacrifice themselves wholesale to this pitiful, mass-media fueled, pop-culture endorsed, idealized and feminized notion of romantic/soulmate mythology, all because some other AFCs trapped in the same quicksand they are, are affirming and co-enabling each other to further their own sinking and spred this disease to other AFCs. It’s infectious, and complacency, like misery, loves company. My fear is that I’m only one Man, and I can’t possibly be enough to kick these guys in the ass like their AFC fathers were unable or unwilling to do.
This is why I bother. It really is a matter of life or death sometimes. Understanding Game, for lack of a better term, how and why it functions, is literally a survival skill. Think about the importance of the decisions we make based on uninquisitive, flimsy and misdirected presumption we have been conditioned to believe about love, gender, sex, relationships, etc. Think about the life impact that these decisions have not only on ourselves, but our families, the children that result from them, and every other domino that falls as a repercussion. We rarely stop to think about how our immediate decisions impact people we may not even know at the time we make them. What we do in life, literally, echoes or ripples into eternity. That’s not to go all fortune cookie on you, but it is my reasoning behind my desire to educate, to study, to tear down and build back up what most would ask, “why bother?”
October 26th, 2011 at 11:20 am
Amen!
October 26th, 2011 at 11:41 am
Preach on, Rollo Tomassi.
October 26th, 2011 at 11:41 am
Damn.
Two things:
1. Fix your RSS Reader title. It’s just your URL right now.
2. Add some formatting to break up the text wall, maybe a header or some bolding.
Shame to hide that quality behind a couple of easily fixable barriers.
Also, Rollo Tomassi is FAR more memorable than Rational Male. I’d recommend rebranding while the blog is still new.
October 26th, 2011 at 11:53 am
Brutal list. The “why bother” comes down to empathy though.
October 26th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
How do I change the RSS Title?
October 26th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Thanks for sharing Rollo.
October 26th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Powerful words sir! Thank you for your efforts, I (and I’m sure lots of other men as well) appreciate your wisdom and taking the time to share it with us.
October 26th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Thank you for this. this is pure yang, masculine power.
Stories & anecdotes capture the imagination and feed the soul in ways that data cannot. Humans are storytellers. The proto-humans no doubt invented language just to share the stories of epic hunts, and the failures and successes of love.
Thanks for sharing stories from your life. The illumination into motive and reasoning is an act of leadership in the community, and the vulnerability that can only come from trues strength.
October 26th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Thanks for taking the time and spending the energy to help. I’m in the process of unplugging another friend and your writings are a key part of that.
October 26th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
I don’t believe all these “my problem” actually happened, but it doesn’t matter as they are perfectly plausible and pedagogic.
Keep “bothering”: guys like you are seeding a huge and inevitable change in society, making History.
In your elder years, you’ll see how thing are different from now (I’m not saying better or worst) and know that you played a role on this.
October 26th, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Off-topic but relevant:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2011/10/j-crew-president-jenna-lyons-reportedly-in-midst-of-ugly-divorce/
J. Crew president divorcing artist husband Vincent Mazeau for a lesbian relationship. Hypergamy or sexual fluidity?
October 26th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Butch-ism
October 26th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Powerful stuff. It’s a fucked up world we live in, but you’re doing some of the best work towards fixing it out of anyone out there.
October 26th, 2011 at 1:08 pm
I think this is the most poignant post/note I’ve ever read in the “Manosphere/Gameosphere” since discovering it back in 2005.
You are absolutely right. For many men, the right knowledge and frame very well might be about survival or a permanent life altering decision. I remember the absolute volcanic rage I felt when I learned my ex-wife had been cheating on me. The aftermath of that in late 2004/early 2005 is what led to unplugging from the Matrix.
You sir are truly doing great work here. I forget when I first discovered you and some of your writings, but it was pretty early on, and you helped me tremendously. Thank you.
October 26th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Excellent piece, thanks.
I just finished reading the latest article of Mr Price on The Spearhead and this is a good pairing.
It is the vocation to help others that makes the history.
Last funny note, as a non-English mother language sometimes I am in trouble understanding familiar expression, so “talking a close friend out of killing” for an instant I had a doubt if that meant you convenced him to desist or you helped him to do that without he screwing everything :-)
And maybe it is easier for a foreigner notice typos like “wait’s with anticipation” you Englishmen have a thing for apostrophes, I say after reading tenths of blogs of any kind. This will remain a mystery for me.
Finally I get the occasion since you spoke about RSS and site layout, I wonder why you require a mail address to write comments. Just curious.
October 26th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Brilliant.
October 26th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Wow, this will be an article to link to for a long time whenever someone (specially women) complain about manosphere men making a mountain about a molehill with men issues.
October 26th, 2011 at 3:03 pm
There’s a lot more I could add to the list that I wish hadn’t actually happened.
October 26th, 2011 at 4:15 pm
Look forward to reading it in your book.
October 26th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
This might be off topic but this is a good read.
http://postmasculine.com/a-new-masculinity
Your article and this one are some if the best reading I’ve read in the past year.
October 26th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Great post. Really highlights the problem with the force fed feminism we see everyday and how it affect male psychology.
October 26th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Feminism is so wide-spread, so deeply embedded in every facet of society that literally any man can get sucked into it. Indeed, the norm IS to get sucked into it.
Doesn’t matter if you are intelligent or stupid. When you have been beat over the head with it your whole life, you know nothing else. I know some extremely intelligent men, analytical and pragmatic men, who take feminism hook, line and sinker. It can be a blind spot for even the best and brightest of our kind.
Looks like your blog has been getting a surge in traffic(or at least commenters). Keep up the great work!
October 26th, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Brilliant and heart breaking.
Tell me if you’ve got a similar experience though…
In many, many of these real life cases (and I got a list just as long if I really sat down to make it…on second thought, I will – great blogfodder idea Rollo), you try to unplug these men, and your explanations fall on deaf ears.
I’ve tried. Many, many times.
Here’s why it’s better to actually write about this stuff on teh interwebz – the guys the stumble across our blogs and comments are guys who are already open and receptive to the message. That is what drew them to the manosphere in the first place.
Once they get “here” they also have a myriad of corresponding voices all preaching the message in different ways, but ultimately reinforcing the narrative.
Why bother? Because if we can’t reach the people we know in real life, at least we know that we are reaching somebody else with the truth.
October 26th, 2011 at 11:55 pm
Yes. And I was one of those confused ones who stumbled across these blogs 3 years ago — and learned so much since then.
You guys are like the band of brothers I know I will never have in real life. Keep writing.
October 27th, 2011 at 8:25 am
I’m one of the people that asks why bother.
I get it now.
I guess I’m lucky that I have so many strong male role-models in my life.
October 27th, 2011 at 9:26 am
I think it’s just this:
“You can change your site’s title or the “Just another WordPress.com site” tagline in the top two fields of Settings → General in your dashboard.”
October 27th, 2011 at 9:41 am
Thank you, thank you, thank you (and Keoni as well)
October 27th, 2011 at 10:31 am
I don’t know many flesh and blood guys who are troubled by the matrix, but that’s largely because I don’t know a lot of flesh and blood guys. Other than ego stroking, a motivation I have for sharing what I’ve learned is that my younger self would have wanted to know. If that younger self was hungry without even knowing it was hungry, so too must there be many men out there hungry yet fighting against opening up for a mouthful.
October 28th, 2011 at 4:23 am
I just want to thank you as well. I been lurking around for awhile and finally decided to comment. You’re one of my favorite bloggers.
December 15th, 2011 at 12:08 am
Wow. Brutal list to read.
I wonder about my nephews (and my niece, as well) in this messed-up world. Especially since my two brothers are far more whipped than I’d like to see them.
September 6th, 2012 at 10:57 am
[…] of Professor Mentu’s post Rollo left a comment and a link to an older post of his that asks Why Bother? I’d read it before in the archives and it affected me just as deeply reading it again as when […]
September 11th, 2012 at 4:31 pm
[…] my post What’s Your Problem? I mention a 65 y.o man whom I used to counsel who’s wife had emotionally blackmailed him for […]
September 17th, 2012 at 1:53 am
Good example of male thinking: your friends’ problems are your problems. It wasn’t necessary to say that you glory twice over in your friends’ victories. It’s exactly how you would take down a woolly mammoth, or build a civilization.
December 29th, 2013 at 8:20 pm
[…] What’s your problem?.~Rollo Tomassi […]
February 3rd, 2014 at 5:15 am
This relates to why you bother:
http://www.aspentimes.com/news/10025636-113/aspen-oksenhorn-lost-stewart
Still in shock over it.