EastWind from the SoSuave forum has come to the existential conflict of the bitter taste of the red pill:
So, after reading through the most prominent articles of Rollo’s, Roissy’s and some of Dalrock’s, alongside this comment and this comment by Mark Minter, I’ve reached a point of depression and giddiness at the same time.
Their take on the female imperative, female behavior, marriage, relationships and everything else rings so true to me, it’s unbelievable. I find it impossible that any guy could read these posts, then go back outside and compare what he sees and what he has experienced and is experiencing to what he has read and not see the truth in it. Maybe the reason this understanding comes naturally to me is because I’ve seen and experienced enough (emotional) pain at the hands of fellow humans to know for damn certain a human being is capable of just about anything given the right circumstances, and maybe it’s because I’ve dabbled in this “game” and “manosphere” stuff for near to ten years now, ever since I was 15, so I am actually an example of someone who was, in a way, brought up with it.
And I see the divorce rate and the cock carousel riders and my friends who get knocked around by their girls and my colleague who announced he’s going to be a daddy and he’s so happy and, isn’t life full of miracles, both methods of contraception they were using failed at the same time, what a coincidence, and he’s an engineer who deals with fail rates, no less. So now he’s going to be a daddy on a PhD salary because his girl will stay at home and, what do you know, the baby’s due two months after she’s getting her degree, another happy coincidence.
And I’m starting to wake up, not from the dream of happy equal relationships, I had forgotten that years ago, but from everything, and I realize:
The true red pill doesn’t tell you, as a man, that women are sh1t-testing you, it makes you see that everything and everyone in your life and society is grooming you up to be a provider, to be someone who does work for other people’s benefits, to give your money and LIFE for some cause that is not your own.
It’s enough to seriously depress a man. This had been creeping up in the back of my head for some time now, Rollo and co. just had the words to give it a shape; that most of what we do is utterly pointless if we let go of trying to obtain women. Suddenly nothing matters much anymore.
I’m supposed to get a good education, a steady job, a comfortable apartment, for what? Other people tell me it’s so I can take care of a family, but now the only reason for me to do so is for mysecurity and convenience, I find myself planning out my life without a woman, with a comfortable minimum of expenditures and “furnitures” and a maximum of free time and enjoyable activities, with a job that provides me with enough cash to live, do the things I like and put some on the side in case I do get old.
But it’s scary. It’s fucking scary, believe me. Suddenly the questions everybody is asking, here and in real life, i.e. “how can I get a girlfriend?”, “how can I get laid?”, “what will I do/what will become of my family if I lose my job?”, they lose all their importance. I find myself wondering why I should have to head to some place everyday, whether I want to or not, whether it’s interesting or not, when I could be doing more enjoyable things, and no matter how much you love your work, there’s always more enjoyable things than work. My PhD topic is somewhat interesting, but I’m pissed off by the “office politics” going on at my institute, even though it’s a bloody university, and you know what? If I leave, or am made to leave, it doesn’t matter because I only have myself to take care of.
So a side effect of realizing that you will never find a woman who will be thankful for the sacrifices you make for her is utter and total freedom. And freedom is huge, and it’s scary. And I can’t handle it. I’m sticking with my position because, well, it’s somewhat interesting, but mainly because I don’t know what else to do. I’ve never been prepared for this, never been told that dreams can be reached, how to reach them.
And another thing is, and this is for you, Rollo, well, what about women now? I’m 25, I’m eligible, and every woman my age, even the nice, kind, beautiful, sweet, intelligent ones, who gives me serious attention creeps me out because I know what she’s really after.
The Red Pill makes you see that the only people who love you for who you truly are is your parents, if you’re lucky, and every other person in this world is going to expect something from an association with you, with women expecting your life for it. And this is why we cry so miserably when our parents die (I did when my mom died), it’s the subconscious knowledge that no-one will love us like they did, be there for us like they were, without expecting anything in return, simply because it was us.
All my friends and family tell me, well, yes, bad things could happen to you, but you just have to find the RIGHT girl, and in my eyes all of them are insane. This isn’t like having to take the right street in a peaceful German town or you’ll get mugged, this is like walking around Johannesburg blindfolded.
I’m not trying to fight the concepts, I see their truth. But I can bloody well be disgusted at the way the world works.
So what about the “giddiness” I talked about up there? Well, feeling free makes you giddy. It makes you VERY giddy. The feeling that your life isn’t planned out or that there’s only one true possible path is positively exhilarating. But it’s also extremely scary.
Eastwind finds himself on the cusp of something great, but at the same time scary. He’s the first of a generation of Game aware men who were ‘raised’ in a post red pill internet culture. He’s part of a generation of men coming to terms with the very disturbing realities the still evolving manosphere has presented for him, but he’s still in a position of choosing how he will use that awareness to plan his future life.
There are going to be more men like Eastwind in the coming decades. Men asking ‘what’s the point?’ as they move into the primes of their lives. These are the guys who will truly be men going their own way; unmotivated by life plans that were presented to him, but rather men reimagining those plans according to the unplugged reality they’re now aware of.
These are the Men that the feminine imperative is threatened by – a vanguard of men who are aware of their real value to women and society, and can make life impacting choices free from the influence of the imperative. I understand the ‘giddiness’ in that freedom, but I also understand the hostility that will be leveled at them by a feminized social mindset which can’t afford to have these Men making other men aware of their servitude by exemplifying red-pill awareness in their life choices.
The system will fight Eastwind in every arena; psychological, familial, sociological, financial, political, every feminized aspect that can pull the crab back into the barrel will be used against him. The primary weapon of the feminine imperative is male self-doubt. Doubt that he’ll be able to craft a life by his plan, doubt that he’s wrong about the machinations of the imperative, doubt in the certainty of his new awareness, doubt that he’ll ever experience love in his own context. Because once he doubts his certainty of purpose, once he doubts his power to direct his own course, that is when the imperative welcomes him to its comfortable reality.
The anxiety and fear you feel is the the result of being cut away from a system that’s already established for you. The giddiness is from the potential to create a new system for yourself.
April 29th, 2013 at 10:53 am
@Robert – steal away and make it fly.
Me personally, I thought the quip about Paul Elam and Jezebel spawning a lovechild was golden but yaknow…
April 29th, 2013 at 11:56 am
@Emma the Emo
What would the male imperative look like? Would it look like Saudi Arabia?
I can’t imagine any western woman, outside of those who literally convert to Islam *AND* leave the western world, getting run over by the male imperative.
April 29th, 2013 at 3:19 pm
Don’t hate the game, hate the player.
The problem isn’t that the world expects so much from men without giving “true love” in return, it’s that women have decided to reneg the social contract.
I wouldn’t have a problem being a beast of burden for a young, attractive, submissive, chaste woman who I could be reasonably sure would remain faithful to me, but instead I am forced to choose from a pool of older, flabby, strong, independent skanks who had their fill of the cock carousel before they are finally “mature” enough to settle down? No thanks.
April 29th, 2013 at 3:27 pm
@ Eastwind: By saying this:
“Something’s “useful” if it serves MY purpose, starting with food and shelter and ending with, possibly, entertainment.”
– you are closer to the goal line than you might think.
To cheekily paraphrase a famous quote: When I hear “You’re not a real man unless you [x]” – that’s when I reach for my revolver.
For years like all good boys we sought “approval” by “doing what we were told”. The harness comes off when you no longer care about validation of your existence from some moralistic loudmouth whose life is so shitty, the only pleasure left is to ruin yours.
Then you can run free. Yes it can be scary at times. Freedom is frightening.
April 29th, 2013 at 4:37 pm
Student001, how can I contact you? Or click my name to contact me.
April 29th, 2013 at 6:15 pm
I believe I fall in the category of being “raised” in the red pill culture. I stumbled it back in the days of Mystery and David DeAngelo (SP?). I lurked reading Sosuave and was aware of Rollo before the blog ever existed. Before “read the Rollo and Heartiste archives”, it was read the “DJ Bible”. I remember reading some poster saying how much crap he went through before learning game missing out years. I felt glad that I might not deal with it at all reading that post probably a decade younger than those posters.
But my mind is fixated like EastWind but with a twist on fixation more on “alpha fux, beta bux” and “5 years of Alpha” – Alpha Widows – and the implications. Also, I feel no giddiness.
EastWind question was “What about the women now?” I think we might be asking the same question, but I’ll word it to my words. “What do we do now?”
The common answer is “whatever that makes you happy”. Hell, the second comment in this post concluded that. And I know you’re probably inclined to post the link to “The Plan”. But, none of that is satisfactory.
I think I can put a question that succinctly encapsulate the ultimate direction that EastWind show in that path: “Unless the path is completely off script, how can one trust you’re following your own plan?”
Ultimately, there’s seem to be roughly two conclusions. Some MGTOW type or ONS/STR-at-most type.
No, scratch that. Almost anything but those two seems to speak “chump”. Even career or entrepreneurial aspirations can be framed as another manifestation to be enslaved.
Yet, this own page I read words like “wife” and “fiance” through the comments. Most here follow careers. EastWind is in grad school, I’m sure several parts of the Manosphere would groan.
The manosphere is full of commentators whose comments express a desire for a family. Two particular comments that was quite upvoted was in Return of Kings where one comment in the discussion about betas was that being a reliable, nice beta one mean having a woman who adores and provides her youth to him. Another comment that was really upvoted was a comment relating the life experience of a happy old man whose wife he absolutely love after so many decades.
People and myself tend to look towards role models. Not to sheeply follow. That’s why the key word is emulate. To pick qualities we like to also gain too. But that only works if the people to look at is congruent to the philosophy. And the red pill not only attack the importance behind questions like “how can I get a girlfriend?” and desires like coming in to work, but also qualities and traits to aspire. Because unless it is the opposite, how do you know you really want it versus just a manipulated man? Yet, so many examples even in the manosphere not following the opposite – still have those desires express in some form or another.
@Rollo – One thing to ask direct as the above maybe too convoluted. The sosuave post you linked, you did not answer anything directly. Only used as an example of a trend and the mainstream pressure he will likely face. At the same time, he did attract many advice from others on the forum. Any do you particularly endorse or any you say to not listen?
April 29th, 2013 at 6:22 pm
@Good Luck Chuck
I feel where you’re coming from but it seems like you’re neglecting women’s true nature with wishful thinking. Your “young, attractive, submissive, chaste woman who I could be reasonably sure would remain faithful to me” — still desperately desires the cock of hot alpha men. Pretending otherwise is wishful thinking. Societal structures and shaming can prevent her straying from you, but don’t doubt that she desires it. Much better to actually be the alpha guy she desires.
eon’s comment at April 29th, 2013 at 10:11 am was a dead on explanation of this dynamic.
April 29th, 2013 at 11:32 pm
[…] has swallowed the Red Pill. As quoted by Rollo, he’s both excited and frightened [emphasis not […]
April 30th, 2013 at 12:34 pm
eon,
“If she is with an alpha, perhaps no other man will be able to create a pull strong enough to change that “xxx” nametag to one with a “yyy”, but the fact remains that the suicide rate for a widower skyrockets, while the death of a spouse has no equivalent emotional effect on women.”
Are you sure this is only due to greater love, felt by men? Men also do other risky, daring stuff, it’s how they’re built. Women are more often too risk-avoiding to do something like that. She will think about suicide, but will be too chicken to do it.
April 30th, 2013 at 2:01 pm
Some women have jumped on funeral pyres.
April 30th, 2013 at 2:15 pm
An interesting take on the FI:
http://owningyourshit.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-address-to-ny-state-libertarian.html
April 30th, 2013 at 5:44 pm
This.
I’ll re-iterate: I’m seeing, but I don’t know how to act. In a way, I’m frozen with fear that I might take a wrong path. I even KNOW there’s no “wrong path”.
I’m also wondering how much of George Calin’s “the lower class is there only to scare the shit out of the middle class” is true. A lot of my motivation to stay in the PhD is, of course, fear of “social demotion”. Don’t they have me by the balls… but I’m awakening.
I’m aware a lot of the manosphere would groan just because I am in grad school. As you may have seen from my posts, I don’t read a lot into it. It was “the thing to do”. I don’t hate every day of it but damn near.
The really dangerous part is being from the middle class: you have too much to lose to just take on a “devil may care” attitude, and not enough to gain to really put in a lot of work.
April 30th, 2013 at 6:44 pm
Hi Rollo,
Hope all is well. Im looking forward to the book! I wanted to ask is there any way I could get your blog posts in PDF/ebook format. That way I can read them on the kindle. I would be willing to pay for the service. if yourself or anybody knows how to do this please hit me up privately on femedy@gmail.com
Thanks!
April 30th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
Didn’t read all comments so excuse me if it’s been said, but you do have a chance of getting sick, maybe not at 25, but around 50, sure. So there is a good chance with no one to take care of you at 50 (parents gone, etc), you might want to at least invest in a surrogate child or something. Also Philippines is the only country that doesn’t allow divorce, maybe look outside Western culture.
April 30th, 2013 at 9:25 pm
@EastWind I’m new to this MGTOW stuff, but not new to Game theory. Are these asshats convincing you that your grad. degree or PhD is a bad idea? Educating yourself and improving career prospects is BAD? Don’t listen to these uneducated basement trolls who haven’t gotten laid in years. Building your career and skillset is ALWAYS a smart move, as part of game is your career power & status. These MGTOW guys who pump gas will not get far once they are over 35. Stay the course, and don’t let some internet asshat tell you that your degree is a bad idea, esp. when it’s paid for by stipend. Unless that degree is in some bullshit discipline.
May 1st, 2013 at 2:38 am
Leftbelt,
I’m well aware of the very positive aspects of getting a PhD. Nobody is going to talk me out of something I want. But it doesn’t hurt to become aware of the fact that this isn’t the only path in life. Who knows, at the end I’ll probably finish it.
But I feel much more free knowing that the world isn’t going to end if I don’t.
I’m not sure you’re getting my meaning here.
May 1st, 2013 at 12:25 pm
@Kate
Yes.
I think I can see why you might have posted this Kate. I think I can put myself in your shoes and feel both revolted and upset that my own nature is being impugned when I’m quite certain I would never do anything as selfish as is suggested in the sphere. If I’ve hit the mark, let me say that your feelings are appropriate.
What I think you are missing is just how highly the beta will internally value women *before* coming to any red-pill realization. This devaluation that you may be feeling isn’t devaluation, it’s market correction. Blue-balled blue-pilled beta males value women higher than themselves, higher than most anything in their life. They internalize a hatred of being single because they place so much value on women that the sexual/relationship approval of a female is essentially the greatest thing on earth for them. To shine a flashlight on another topic for discussion for another day, I would wager real money that there is biology involved that predisposes teenage/young-adult men to feel this way. It explains why men who marry young are so absurdly loyal to their wives (and it sets them up for so much disaster if they ever get divorced). It’s actually a healthy thing that men go through this stage when you consider that very young married couples with babies need a lot of work from the man to make life easier on everyone. If guys were indifferent to women at this stage of life, childhood mortality might have been a lot higher through history. Men get stuck in this phase of life because they just are not taught to be men first. Enough supposition for now…
Kate, and other ladies reading this, I want to try to convey to you just how highly valued you are by blue-pilled men, but I’m honestly left without words to describe it. You are over-valued, you are worshipped, you are doted on in fantasy, you are the first thought when waking up and the last before falling asleep… even for men who are virgins (perhaps especially so). The pure singlemindedness which is spent on women in the blue-pill male world is probably inconceivable to a female, even for the truly narcissistic ladies.
You, as a woman, were over-valued, still are over-valued by many men in the developed world. You were so over-valued that even men who had been burned many times by many women would not wake up and realize that they were assigning attributes to their girlfriends that simply did not exist in a fellow human. Red pill knowledge destroys that over-valuation and returns men to a state of reason. This allows them liberty in thoughts about themselves, it allows them to be selfish for the first time in their lives and NOT feel like a loser for looking after their own interests instead of pursuing girls.
It is a shock to many blue-pill men to realize that women are not the purely caring, wholly altruistic, always beautiful, intensely pleasant things that we all sort of took you for in our youth.
That is not an insult. You are what you are.
We simply, as previously blue-pilled men of many years, had the wrong idea. It’s hard to see the truth sometimes.
Despite the market-correction, we still love women, it is in our NATURE to do so. We still want to think the best of you. We’re simply faced with the (to us) unpleasant reality of recognizing that women have the same human nature we have, just from a different perspective and different motivations.
Yes, some women threw themselves on funeral pyres, women are just as capable of good works as men. We were simply under the mistaken impression that you were naturally more capable than we were.
May 1st, 2013 at 1:18 pm
Jeremy: So, men and women are equal? KIDDING!!! :)
Nice comment. It is sort of my impression that the women who did that did so not only out of loyalty but also in the sense that their lives were, in some ways, over anyway. Without a man they were nothing. I should really do some research to see if its accurate that widows would become akin to outcasts/pariahs. Was a widowed woman looked upon as a burden to society or was she looked upon as disloyal to continue living without her husband?
May 1st, 2013 at 1:32 pm
@Kate
This is absolutely true. I have no documentation to back this up. But unless I’m going insane, I recall that in human history there has always been a tendency for widowed women past child-rearing age with no family to be considered a burden and sometimes outcast. Women’s value was historically locked in their ability to give a child to man. If that time was past then their value to society was often regarded as minimal at best. Mind you, that probably had a lot to do with just how brutal life could be in a monarchial/agrarian society before the industrial revolution. Asking a woman past 40 in the 1500s to help plow a field was probably like asking the wind to blow the moon away.
May 1st, 2013 at 2:39 pm
Jeremy: So maybe a childless woman was expected to immolate and one with a family was not? Time to do some reading! Would be a good article topic for me.
ps: Stop looking up my dress!
May 2nd, 2013 at 3:29 pm
Eon….
“One frequently hears of remarried widowers who continue to moon about their dead first wives, but for a remarried widow to show any such sentimentality would be a nine days’ wonder. Once replaced, a dead husband is expunged from the minutes. And so is a dead love.”
– H.L. Mencken
May 2nd, 2013 at 4:14 pm
Kate,
I only mouse-hovered, that’s not the same as looking.
May 2nd, 2013 at 5:43 pm
@Martian:
http://therationalmale.com/2011/10/03/war-brides/
May 2nd, 2013 at 7:18 pm
The power of the Female Imparative. A little off-topic here. As we know, an NBA player came out as gay this week. Now I’m thinking, OK, there’s no way women can touch this topic to steer it in their direction.
I was wrong.
Jason Collins (the player) came out, I don’t have a problem with it. Apparently he was “dating” a former college girlfriend for eight years. She’s not bitter, but boy is the media. Collins is said to have “misled her” and being “dishonest” and so forth. OK, Collins was a bit foolish on this, but shouldn’t ANYONE, male or female, be held a bit responsible for whatever happens in a relationship if you’ve dated someone EIGHT years and you don’t get married or breakup much earlier? Any smart man OR woman would think, “Wait a sec, we’re closing in on a decade here and he’s not going to marry me. Perhaps I need to get out of this.”
But the media is siding with the betrayed woman … please. If the shoe was on the other foot, Collins wouldn’t be getting a break here.
May 3rd, 2013 at 7:37 am
Jeremy: I just found it comical to see your gravatar with the binoculars under mine. lol
May 3rd, 2013 at 11:09 am
Eastwind,
re: “I’m also wondering how much of George Calin’s ‘the lower class is there only to scare the shit out of the middle class’ is true. A lot of my motivation to stay in the PhD is, of course, fear of ‘social demotion'”
I wouldn’t say that’s not true. What I would say is that the truth is barely, just a thread barely, more complex than that.
One of the mighty frustrations I have with the manosphere is the wild misunderstanding of capitalism that is combined with both a misplaced arrogance of self-attribution of great understanding of capitalism, together with a religious/dogmatic commitment to the whole mistaken understanding.
I attribute it to two things: (1) hardly anybody actually READS anything – it’s all just the simplified bullshit they hear and mistake for understanding – most of the jackoffs totting off about capitalism here let on in just a few statements that they’ve never actually read the Wealth of Nations. Personally I find it hard to reconcile in my own head, for example, how someone who actually read Wealth of Nations could read ANYTHING from Ayn Rand, for example, and not recognize it for the rank intellectual piss that it is, (2) what’s really struck me as I’ve grown older is that I think a difference in my experience from many others’ is that I actually know Capitalists personally – the big “C” kind – the kind that actually have capital and wield it like it is capital, not there mere currency of the common laboring man. When you understand how these folks think and see you and me and the world around you, Carlin’s statement sounds kind of like he knows the same people.
The trouble with the lower “c” ideological capitalists you see strewn about the manosphere is that they don’t really seem to understand what capital is. They’ve spent their entire lives seeing only the labor side of capitalism. They’re like fish who don’t recognize the water they swim in, where currents come from or go to, or why.
If they did understand capital, they’d understand what a grave responsibility it is. And if they understood that AND they knew Capitalists – the big “C” kind, they would understand that we have much to fear indeed, especially when so many bluster about with the dogmatic certainty of their misunderstanding of economics that they take for revealed wisdom.
Ok … second point:
re: “I’m aware a lot of the manosphere would groan just because I am in grad school. As you may have seen from my posts, I don’t read a lot into it.”
You have the right attitude just not enough of it. Any such groan should immediately qualify your dismissal.
There is a certain class of mentality that has the intellectual range necessary to understand just about two pixels on the moving, dynamic economic kaleidoscope. “Grunt! Technician”, “Grunt! Engineer”. Of course technician and engineer are very important things and I teach my very young children calculus and robotics and application development … but I also teach them type 1 and 2 errors, controlled experimentation, two foreign languages, athletics and as they get older it will be more and more fighting arts and dancing.
Your advanced degree, assuming it is not from a for-profit college, will open many doors for you. Just because some troglodyte who finds his way into these parts can’t be made to understand that those doors exist, or else is in denial of them for some kind of ego-self limiting defense mechanism that he needs to discuss with a psychologist but never will because he “knows” they’re all full of it … don’t, don’t, don’t let that stop you.
Study the careers of the people who become Fortune-500 CEOs. None, but none, have these self-limiting cognitive problems. There’s wisdom on the manosphere that can be freeing, but no shortage of ego-rot either.
May 3rd, 2013 at 12:11 pm
Woman is like nature. Nature is cruel and indifferent. Sometimes it’s alluring and beautiful but it knows no mercy. It can’t be reasoned with. It can be conquered and dominated – it must be, for survival.
The feminine enjoys to be dominated by what she perceives to be superiour. That’s part of her psychology.
How many men would be monogamous, if it were socially acceptable to get a woman pregnant and move on to the next one without paying a dime? What if men weren’t ridiculed but intrinsically valued being superiour to women? What if women were materially dependant on a man, directly, not whoring themselves to uncle Sam? How many years would it take for most men to become pretty vile under those conditions?
To quote Robert E. Howard
“Hell, the world isn’t worth reforming or even aiding as I can see. Men are swine and most women are fools. Befriend a man and he’ll betray you. Fondle a woman and she’ll double-cross you – whip her and she’ll cringe to you.”
A lot of people are only kept in check because of some form of subjugation. Hidden, beneath all the social etiquette, the raw vileness in people is growing because our society does not genetically select for kindness or reasonable cooperative behaviour. It selects for individuals who are successful in a modern corporate structures, who are successful in the modern way of life.
That modern life-style requires a feminized population – the environment(population density, no frontiers,…) demands it.
That’s the feminization of men. But the term is a bit misleading. This feminization is also taking a hold of women. Not every trait we see today in women is raw genetics. e.g. Women used to be good mothers for their children, having their best at heart. Now, modern ideas about how they are supposed to nurture and raise their children are more important. Their mind-f*** takes priority.
Rare is the woman who is feminine on the one hand and on the other hand hasn’t been mind-f***ed by let’s call it modern nihilism.
The Feminine Imperative is part of that modern mindset.
May 3rd, 2013 at 10:18 pm
OT but every time I hear it or think about it I think that my nomination for “most beta song of all time” is Stabbing Westward, “What do I have to do?” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsVpL8TDLA&feature=share&list=FLx-LwlxTIc70IselW1TSucg
ugggghhhh!
May 4th, 2013 at 1:36 am
So I’m not somewhat-new to Game (if you count 2 years as “old”) but am new to the Red Pill. Im 17. WTF DO I DO? What am I supposed to do with this knowledge? Frankly, it scares the shit out of me. My whole life has been planned on something as superficial as this. Also, what other posts do I read to learn more about this concept?
May 4th, 2013 at 7:51 am
Case,
very elaborate answer, and somehow I feel we think along the same lines; however, your last two paragraphs don’t make it quite clear what you do, indeed, think about that “advanced degree”. You also talk about these “doors”; what I’m not sure about is whether you’re arguing they exist, so we need some kind of proof on paper of our intellectual capacity (assuming a degree is such a proof) to cross certain doors? Compared to the paragraph just before that, I would say that you recognize the value of both education (and the proof thereof, i.e. a diploma) and “life education”, that is, skills you never get a piece of paper for but teach you invaluable things about life.
I have a German diploma in Physics (not a masters, a good old-fashioned German diploma) from one of the “best” universities in the country. People – most of all my dad – always told me that’s worth a lot and would open many doors. When I neared the end of my studies, suddenly a PhD was absolutely necessary because a diploma in Physics “isn’t worth a lot by itself.” Already I was getting suspicious. A chain of events I’m not especially proud of led to my finding a PhD position and enrolling in it. Now I’m really disappointed because I like to tinker with things and all I’m doing is “technical case studies”, editing of powerpoint slides and pointless internet research. What I’m trying to say is – first it was the diploma that was absolutely necessary, now it’s the PhD. What will it be next? The realization is that I’ve been doing what others have told me is necessary my whole life. Some of it will undoubtedly prove useful (the diploma), but I think the big, big trick in life is figuring out when we’re being led on someone else’s path.
This is where I’m at. And, as pointed out in my SoSuave post, it’s scary. I’m fucking scared to death that I’ll make a mistake, drop out of the job landscape and descend into poverty because I haven’t played “the game” and have proven unable to find something else to be good at (that somebody will pay me for).
So I struggle.
P.S.: It certainly sounds like you have the right idea about how to raise your kids. If you’re not already doing so, please, please teach them to question people’s concepts of “the way to do things”.
May 4th, 2013 at 10:05 am
@Eastwind
The inability of the bureaucracies to distinguish and advance people based on merit (as this requires a value system and standards for judging) has led to the rise of credential-ism. By getting a PhD, you will have more opportunity to advance in these bureaucracies.
I think the big, big trick in life is figuring out when we’re being led on someone else’s path.
The more important skill is being able to evaluate the integrity, goals, and rationale for the path and those promoting it.
May 4th, 2013 at 10:27 am
Getting a PhD IS a meritocracy. It is a shitton of work, you fool. Do you see morons with 90 IQ’s with PhD’s? No.
May 4th, 2013 at 10:44 am
It is a shitton of work, you fool.
Sure.
Do you see morons with 90 IQ’s with PhD’s?
It is unlikely someone with a 90 IQ would receive a PhD, correct.
May 4th, 2013 at 12:47 pm
Eastwind,
Your personal strategy needs to depend on the specific asset/liability mix you have and I don’t have enough knowledge of that to opine too much by way of specifics. One thing I observed for many years is that there are any number of positions that allow either higher ed with less experience or lesser ed with more experience (i.e.: 10-15 years) … the advanced degree opens all of those to you. People looking on with only a bachelors degrees are essentially being told “nothing to see here” and they dutifully move on and promptly forget (if they were manospherean anti-intellectuals) that their own choices locked them out of an opportunity.
In principle industry, government, academia and entrepreneurship are all available to you. Also – I strongly advise against any sense of geographic limitation. Find the best opportunity anywhere it is on earth and get plugged in with it.
It is true that there are multiple economies operating atop one another. The trick is to plug into the highest economy you can. The secret is that the rungs in the ladder separating each layer are so long that few people have the means to cross them. About 20 million American libertarians who think they know shit about capitalism are there to repeat the denial that this is the case, while an equal number number of real Capitalists the world over understand full well their personal economies are utterly locked off from their useful idiot ideological defenders.
There are economies we can’t plug into. Libertarians actually unconsciously, but actively seem to make choices to steer clear of these opportunities, it would seem, because it is probably too painful a reminder that there’s a flaw in their dogmatic ideology and I’ve known many to pretend doors don’t exist because that might lead them to the door that is closed to them.
As long as you don’t suffer that deficiency you are free to find all doors open to you, and even a few that appear to be closed but more or less are just a shit test or sometimes even are hiding a Capitalist who needs someone with sweat and intellectual equity to come along, and try all of them.
What you are in now is the vestiges of a lower order economy that you had to toil in so as to get you were you are today. Higher order economies exist. Thanks to our libertarian ideologues who think they understand capitalism but don’t, higher-order economies are getting harder and harder to find even as they get more and more rewarding to those who figure out how to plug in. Find one, anywhere on earth, plug in, live frugally but be ambitious as all hell. You’ll do fine. Nothing is weighing you down.
May 4th, 2013 at 1:49 pm
deti quotes HUSsies:
–you gotta learn Game so you can get a girl to love you and marry you. Otherwise, you’ll die old and alone and NO. ONE. WILL. EVER. LOVE. YOU.
This one is comedy gold, because the projection of women’s fear onto men is so blatant and obvious. And the irony is thick, because even though Giggles the Incompetent claims to know all about men, if she’d ever read Feldstein’s little book For Women Only she would not let such a stupid comment float by uncorrected.
Given a choice between being loved, and being respected, men choose respect hands down. It’s women who crave love.
Men can live without love. Most men do, sometimes for many years. But living with contempt – the opposite of respect – is corrosive and harmful. So men should avoid that. And in the modern world, that often boils down to avoiding most women.
May 4th, 2013 at 2:04 pm
Getting a PhD IS a meritocracy.
In some fields, yeppers. In others, not so much.
It is a shitton of work, you fool.
Yes, it is true that many PhD’s are now just attendance and obedience awards; “Do this shit ton of mindless regurgitation of your advisor’s prejudices, and you, too, can call yourself ‘Doctor'”. Thanks for pointing that out.
Do you see morons with 90 IQ’s with PhD’s? No.
Ever met someone with a dual PhD in English Lit and Women’s Studies? No? Oh, you’re missing a real treat, let me tell you.
May 4th, 2013 at 2:21 pm
You live in a bubble. Ever meet someone with a dual career at Walmart and JiffyLube? No? Oh, you’re missing a real treat, let me tell you. Then talk to me about the “idiot” PhD.
May 4th, 2013 at 2:59 pm
You live in a bubble.
How do you know this to be true?
Ever meet someone with a dual career at Walmart and JiffyLube? No?
Non sequitur, but I will grant you obviously have more knowledge of both career options than I do. Perhaps you should consider management ?
In any event, I’ve known a variety of working people in my time, some were very bright, some were very dull.
However, from personal observation, I can state that someone who holds a dual PhD in English LIt and Womens’ Studies need not be of above average intelligence, and in fact, too much intelligence would be a hinderance, not a benefit. Smart people find regurgitation of rote learned claptrap to be tedious…
Oh, you’re missing a real treat, let me tell you. Then talk to me about the “idiot” PhD.
Did you know that there are PhD’s that do not require any original research, or any dissertation? They exist, I have met some, and some of those “Doctors” are definitely of subnormal IQ. They call themselves “Doctor”, and the sign on their faculty office says “Doctor”. When and if such people are affirmatively promoted beyond their level of incompetence, they are still “Doctor”…
It seems you are not aware of the effects of diversity, grade inflation, and affirmative action on the .edu world, for some reason. Perhaps you will realize at some point that the world is larger than just your little corner?
Please pay attention: not all PhD’s are the same. Thus, not all holders of PhD’s are of equal intelligence. This can readily be verified by observing the “studies” faculty, so my observation is testable, if you understand what that term means.
Summary: It is quite possible for diligent people with subnormal IQ to obtain a PhD. They merely need to be a protected minority, and choose the right course of study.
May 4th, 2013 at 4:18 pm
I worked in an environment with a load of PhDs. Technical ones actually. Pretty much 1/2 and 1/2. 1/2 needed to be taken very seriously and for that matter were paid like they should be and pretty much if you didn’t take them seriously on the basis of your merits you were promptly run asunder. The other 1/2 – uhg. Sadly, the other 1/2 included in its number some of the highest paid of all.
Not sure what the point of arguing it is. A PhD is a technique, a key to certain doors. It is by itself not a certificate of smarter than thou. In fact the insecurity that some have about their aptitude and relevance was palpable. The more insecure, the more they played politics and one was forced to watch the back. The more competent, the more one could relax and just work on the matter at hand.
If you ask me: it isn’t here or there. What is odd is the resentment of PhDs. Like – do we resent electricians or mechanics? Are all electricians and mechanics competent? No. Are there electricians and mechanics who are shysters? Of course. The special fury reserved for PhDs comes across like a chip on the shoulder or ax to grind. PhD is a technique, method, etc. It’s not for everyone, myself included. Find your own way, be and let be.
May 6th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
We getting too caught up on the PhD thing. It’s a proxy to the main point. What EastWind took and ran with the major question I posed is “Unless the path is completely off script, how can one trust you’re following your own plan?”
PhD are only one example. How can one really know you just like the subject and getting the PhD is the best path to study more or just pushed by the system to become a better cog? It applies to so many things.
Look around and I’m sure you can find comments and posts that argues just about any path that is not a rock star or female-guard-impregnating-cell-inmate will find something that make such path questionable (both socially and professionally to mention it out). Nuance of reading to really understand get dry at rejustifying to oneself every time something is read that indirect or directly questions the path. And the reasoning and logic remains there. Yet at the same time, plenty of commentators or even posts is made about a desire for a family or something conventional – but how to tell that it is a real desire or just another manipulated man?
May 6th, 2013 at 5:50 pm
Heartiste just made a new post and I believe it is quite relevant. Especially this quote:
There are whole armies of beta males who spend months and even years in book clubs, at speed dating events, and in bars and happy hours hoping to meet that special someone but coming up empty every time, while convicted murderers sit in cells as ladies basically throw caution to the wind and hurl themselves at them.
With context that the woman has created a dating website for the convicts.
While many advice given to improve and go for things for oneself. taiyuu_otoko response which seems to be end the tread on SS is a form of “do what you want”. Well, once again, unless it something… criminal… most things one “do” are in the area what the “armies of beta males” do. What is measurably different with the knowledge? Unless one take to the conclusion which seems to be MGTOW which tend to mean dropping from careers, education, and etc with some somehow be the exception where one is taking school or hitting the gym purely for the self. But there’s quite a number who seems to operate to be the exception.
May 6th, 2013 at 6:22 pm
You can not take the Heartiste post literally. Again, NAWALT. Just because a few dozen nutjobs go date Alpha convicts, the other 99.99% of women will not. Yet, we conclude “All women love convicted killers”?? Get your heads out of your asses.
May 6th, 2013 at 6:25 pm
I know the PhD thread is done, but I really want to know the “red pill” logic behind considering education a bad thing? I am a man who has taken his education and career seriously. I have a LOT of money, and can basically buy anything I want. I basically do whatever I want, and answer to no one. How can you obsess over being Alpha, yet espouse living like a poor broke beta? I really want to understand this. How is having a kick ass career and a shitton of money a BAD thing? (what the PhD represents, as far as perception of building your credentials, even though it may not play out that way)
May 6th, 2013 at 8:41 pm
@Dreamer
Your confusion seems to stem from the wholesale acceptance of the “alpha/beta” dichotomy; a dichotomy which the originators of the terms cannot even define.
This is evident in your obsession with “your own plan.”
For instance, could you even study at a university in the majority of the world even a few centuries ago? Did you personally create said universities?
Consider this requote:
I think the big, big trick in life is figuring out when we’re being led on someone else’s path.
The more important skill is being able to evaluate the integrity, goals, and rationale for the path and those promoting it.
May 9th, 2013 at 7:48 am
@ leftbelt
You miss the streaming thread entirely, ahem oh the left of the bell curve you have women swooning for convicts( i had a look at that site by the way 70% are in for 1st degree murder) and moving towards the mean by 1,2&3 standard deviation you move by degree of assholery. The sampling distribution of the sample mean is not the same as the population mean but in this case does it make any difference what inferences we make. It s as clear as spring water…
May 9th, 2013 at 6:52 pm
What inferences we make are everything. Do you really think HB9s and HB10’s are pursuing these inmates? Are you that much of an idiot stuck in his Stats 101 textbook? Are MGTOW types really this retarded? The women who are chasing these convicts are most likely obese 2’s and 3’s. Wake up and check the kurtosis, you fool.
May 9th, 2013 at 6:55 pm
Clear as spring water? LOL, why don’t you actually try dating a woman one day. I can assure you that models are not lining up to meet convicts, you delusional internet MGTOW idiot. Your irrelevant reference to Central Limit Theorem only proves your detachment from reality. I have lost all respect for anything MGTOW after reading only 2 Rollo posts.
July 16th, 2013 at 11:50 am
Laws must change. That is the end game.
Knowledge is good. Self determination is good. However, the dystopia will progress until the family laws are rebalanced (or the society colllapses).
August 21st, 2013 at 10:19 pm
[…] Fear and Freedom […]
August 28th, 2013 at 9:45 pm
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May 6th, 2014 at 11:02 pm
[…] Try to keep this last part in mind as you read what I propose in these next two posts. I read a lot of guys in various forums getting despondent after having the red pill make sense to them, but that despondency is really a simple lack of not having a path already preset for them to follow. Instead of the easy answers and prerequisite responsibilities that the blue pill and the Feminine Imperative had ready for him to follow, now in his new awareness he’s tasked with making a new path for himself, and that’s both scary and exciting at the same time. […]
January 26th, 2015 at 4:04 pm
Man this blog is so great–even better than Heartiste. I need to spend an hour every day until I have read every post here.
January 26th, 2015 at 4:07 pm
Let me add, this 25 year old dude is lucky. It is 10X as depressing to discover the red pill *after* being a beta divorced dad at age 35, with daughters!!! I no longer get to check out, go MGTOW — first, my ex is already getting 55% of my income and second, I care about my daughters — now and in the future. The backlash that is coming from men, the increased MGTOW, is going to come into effect and hurt MY daughters in about 20 years when they should be enjoying a good life.
I’m doing my best to prepare them.
Fuck, feminism has literally stolen the good life from both women and men of generation X. Generation X got so fucked.
The Gen X women are beyond fucked up and we Gen X men have been punished by it for 20 years now.