To Each His Own

In a couple of weeks I’ll be making my first and only personal appearance this year at the 21 Convention in Orlando, Florida. This event will be unique in a number of ways. To my knowledge, this convention will be the first large-scale gathering of Red Pill writers, bloggers, podcast hosts and thought-leaders ever organized. I’m truly appreciative of Anthony Johnson in being open to my suggestions for speakers. It was a collaborative effort in this regard and over the course of this year we did our best to collect a group of speakers who would represent many different aspects of Red Pill intersexual dynamics. My only regrets are that we couldn’t fit more speakers in to the schedule and some men I highly respect were unable to attend this year.

It was my hope that this ‘new and improved’ 21 Convention might eventually be an annual Red Pill summit of sorts. This build up hasn’t been without a bit of controversy from the previous Purple Pill speakers who used the 21 Convention’s prior events as a platform for their blogs and coaching businesses. That was to be expected just as the same tired criticisms of the Red Pill were too. I have no doubt that the previous ‘life coaches’ taking issue with this event’s Red Pill turn sincerely believe they have some valuable insights to help men become ‘better men’. The problem, however, becomes one of how these coaches would direct men according to the Blue Pill preconditioning they have never been able to disabuse themselves of.

I understand the necessity these guys must feel with regards to discrediting the Red Pill as a praxeology. The dots we connect in Red Pill awareness are often at odds with their deeply held Blue Pill ego-investments and hopes, as well as a threat to their (often LARPy moralistic) “Man Up but not too much” profit model. In fact, even just the idea that the Red Pill should be a praxeology of men’s collective experiences about intersexual dynamics is enough to make them want to disqualify it. Their criticism is that, as a praxeology, the Red Pill is long on explanations and short on solutions – solutions you can presumably get by signing up for their email blasts and coaching sessions.

The praxeology that is the Red Pill is inconvenient for them because it tears away the veneer of their Blue Pill idealism about women and reveals some very unflattering truths about them and the feminine on-whole which they still largely have on a pedestal in their heads. Red Pill awareness has a way of exposing the pretty lies that make for the good marketing material that most Purple Pill coaches depend on for their livelihoods. I mean, when 80%+ of men are Beta, who wouldn’t want to buy the secret 12 point list of things a man must do to be a real man and get the woman of his dreams?

Two Complaints

There are generally two common complaints I read coming from Purple Pill life dating coaches. The first is easy, and one I’ve refuted so many times I wont bore you with repeating myself, and that’s the presumption that Red Pill awareness must be false or detrimental to a guy because it makes guys so angry with women. This is the easiest dismissal for critics because it is true; men do go through a phase of anger when they unplug from the Blue Pill illusions they’ve been so convinced of for the better part of a lifetime. And yes, some get stuck in this phase and some do become despondent because they don’t want to face the abyss it represents to them. Some go MGTOW, some turn into Purple Pill coaches themselves because they don’t want to accept the whole of what Red Pill awareness means. But most men go through this phase and come to an acceptance that there is hope in a Red Pill paradigm for them. They come to see their new awareness as a safety net and boldly embrace rebuilding themselves into better men based on this full awareness.

So the sales pitch then becomes, “Don’t be angry with women like those Red Pill guys. You can still live in Blue Pill happiness and harmony with a loving unicorn ‘Quality‘ woman by following these 5 simple steps to make yourself into the man women want you to be.”

What the Purple Pill anger critics (deliberately) refuse to get is that the Red Pill isn’t (and was never) intended to get men to hate women, but rather to inform men about the inherent nature of women so they wont hate women for what they can never be to them. This is the disillusionment that men who still cling to Blue Pill idealism can’t seem to get past – they cannot abandon those Blue Pill hopes that they believe women are capable of fulfilling for him, but the Red Pill disabuses him of. So they get angry. They get angry at themselves for ever having believed in them. They get angry for having wasted so much time investing themselves in them. They get angry, most importantly, because they realize that women simply aren’t built to fulfill the hopes his Blue Pill conditioning made him believe should be possible.

The Purple Pill coach believes that this Red Pill realization leads to men hating women. The second complaint I read from them is that Red Pill awareness gives men some license to feeling like victims. This criticism is deductive to coaches for two reasons; it serves his ‘get-rich-quick-on-the-internet-by-selling-sunshine’ man-up and do better to qualify for women blog template, and it discourages men seeking answers from becoming Red Pill aware in a way that crushes their still Blue Pill belief set.

For the record, and as boldly as I can put this, if you are Red Pill aware man and still believe you are a victim of some sort because of your previous Blue Pill indenturement to pedestalizing women or the Feminine Imperative, you are only a victim of your own lack of vision. Red Pill awareness has set you free – free from the blur and distraction that a feminine-primary social order would pull over your eyes, free from the delusional Blue Pill hopes that are only greater shackles for a man, and free from never seeing the intersexual pitfalls you were prone to fall into before. But Red Pill awareness comes at a cost; the truth may set you free, but it doesn’t make it pretty. If you have a responsibility as a Red Pill aware man it’s that you are never allowed to play the victim. You now know the rules of engagement. Play it well, change the rules if you can, but you are no longer allowed to say you didn’t know the score.

Most Purple Pill coaches know this victim complex is bullshit, so they deliberately conflate Red Pill awareness with MGTOW or the MRM or even the “flip side of feminism” in an effort to muddy the waters and dissuade men, who are genuinely hurting and seeking answers, away from the real life-changing influence that the Red Pill represents.

When I petitioned my readers to leave a testimonial as to why they thought the Red Pill represented more confidence or a ‘safety net’ to them I got much more than I anticipated from that comment thread. I had been looking for some good quotes to add to the back cover of Positive Masculinity, but what I got was over a thousand revelations about the power that Red Pill awareness has in changing men’s lives for the better. These are men who took what the Red Pill had shown them and transformed their lives with that knowledge. They did this because Red Pill awareness empowered them, gave them the tools, to implement changes in themselves and how they interacted with women and a feminized world. They did so without anger or feeling like victims, and they did so without a Purple Pill hack trying to coax them back onto the plantation and into their failed, and false, Blue Pill belief sets.

And this is what scares the coaches; that a free and open source Red Pill praxeology is responsible for more men taking the initiative and bettering themselves than anything their ‘coaching’ has been responsible for.

Personal Development

I am not now, nor have I ever been a motivational speaker, a ‘guru’ of any stripe, a psychotherapist or a personal development coach. Though I’m humbled to be counted among the Godfathers of the Red Pill, I have never claimed ownership of the Red Pill. It’s always been my belief that the Red Pill – the true Red Pill that has always been about intersexual dynamics – should be an ‘open source’ community. Decentralization is one of its strengths, but it also allows for bastardization from men and women who want to define it.

In each of my books and on this blog I’ve made things plain about my non-approach to men and their own personal development; I’m not interested in making better men, I’m interested in men making themselves better men. I am not interest in making men “Tomassi Men” or in anyway selling them on a template for what I think a real man ought to be. My life and my interpretations of it are not going to be a template for anyone else to follow. Red Pill awareness, based on the praxeology of intersexual dynamics in the personal and social realms, will save and/or improve your life, but that life has to be lived by you as an individual.

That said, of course I realize that men seeking answers will want a codified system of guidelines for their own personal development. I’m not the guy who’s going to give that to you, neither is that Purple Blue Pill life coach with the 12 point plan, neither is the motivational speaker selling you the same tired power of positivity message that’s been around since the 1930s. You are going to come up with that plan, you are going to take what the Red Pill makes you aware of and you are going to apply it to how you live your life. And you will have the satisfaction of knowing that your personal development and the successes (and failures) that came from it authentically came from your own plan and according to your judgement, not someone else’s vision or template.

I wanted to take a moment in this post to preface the 21 Convention by addressing the ways in which men come to unplug themselves from their old, Blue Pill conditioned way of life and reconstruct themselves. Reader Blaximus added this in a recent comment thread and it sums things up well:

Fourth: there is no ‘ system ‘ for teaching or learning Game. None. The process is highly individualized and virtually no two guys will learn at the same rate, or achieve the exact same level of understanding or real world application. No cheat sheets in game. You either get it and apply it and internalize it, or you don’t. It’s not about picking up chicks in clubs. That’s PUA. Game picks up chicks at a funeral. Lol. True game will be disliked by the masses.

Far too many Purple Pill dating coaches don’t want to get this in their heads. They think that because the Red Pill is a praxeology it implies it’s a cop out on developing real solutions for guys. They either don’t understand the necessity for men’s individual needs to personally develop Game for themselves, or they need a convenient dismissal of the Red Pill as ‘those angry guys have no answers’.

I have stressed in more essays than I care to recount the importance of combining what the Red Pill informs Game about with what Game informs the Red Pill about. One is the theoretical, the other is the practical, and neither is complete without the other. Yes, it is entirely vital that you, as a Red Pill aware man, get out into the field to employ the ideas, and test the practicality of how the Red Pill relates to your situation in your environment according to your strengths and gifts. That field may be a night club, or day Game on the street, in a social circle, with your wife of 10 years or in your churches singles’ group. The fact remains, Red Pill awareness is applicable through Game in a variety of environments, social and cultural contexts.

Game Works, but it only works if you turn off the computer and do something. How do you learn from a book? You put it down and you go outside (and yes, that counts for my books too). Investing oneself in Red Pill awareness as a praxeology is not a cop out for coming up with real solutions – it gives men a toolset from which they can create their own solutions. What frightens Purple Pill coaches is that men’s individual solutions, often enough, don’t affirm their Blue Pill romanticizations, their pretenses of morality, or their idealistic inability to look at the abyss and find hope on the other side of it. They want solutions, but they want their solutions to be affirmed by a Red Pill awareness that contradicts their ego-investments.

When your revenue depends on not getting it it’s hard to convince a Blue Pill man otherwise.

I will be discussing aspects of this essay at the 21 Convention in just two weeks. If you are attending I’d like to take this opportunity to extend you a personal invitation to talk with me at the convention and possibly have dinner with my colleagues and I at the event. On the topic of just getting out there in the field and doing it, I know that my friends Christian McQueen and Goldmund will be heading out into the wilds of the Orlando nightlife and I will be accompanying them on at least one of these outings.

Lastly, if you are in the Central Florida area, or if you want to make the drive in for the weekend, and you really really want to attend the convention, but just can’t come up with the funds, hit me up via email, Twitter or leave a message on my About page here and I will personally see about getting you some kind of hardship discount. Remember, this is only if you’re truly desperate to attend.

See you in two weeks.