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  • Thus Spoke ZaraRizzthra

    September 5th, 2023

    Hero’s Journey – How to be a Man in the 21st century
    (Feminism and the Manosphere)

    Hello reader, I’m Vince and I would like to discuss with you a big idea that I wanted to share back in 2019, which is ‘How to be a Man’.

    It gives me a chance to share some alternative perspectives and paths, especially for young men trying to figure it out, particularly in regards to dating, seduction and lifestyle design.
    Not being a victim of your life’s circumstances, or being limited in terms of opportunities or dating options to the place, school, workplace or friend’s circle you grew up with.

    Growing up with the internet, I have observed various men’s groups such as Manosphere for 15 years since 2008, and have known people like Andrew Tate, Kevin Samuels, AMS and BB before they even had a thousand subscribers on YouTube and now they all have more than half a million each, along with all the self proclaimed PUAs out there.
    You name them, I’ll know them.
    I’ve also studied a wide range of different and opposing views from various people outside of these circles as well, to pounding the beat myself, so I believe I have insight to offer on these particular topics and how they can interact and affect you.

    A little back story on me, I had been hyper-competitive for most of my life. This could be attributed to many environmental and/or genetics factors, but it saw me dive head first into any challenge, or topics that piqued my interest.
    I stayed single for a decade after ending my high school relationship, taking the time to explore many different passions and ideologies throughout my late teens and 20s, which allowed me to form an amalgamation of ideas and beliefs to help me navigate the world today.

    A disclaimer however is that I do not consider myself an influencer.
    You don’t want me influencing the planet, because then it might go insane /s.

    So, this begs the age old question for young men,
    How do I be a man?
    How do I deal with women?
    How do I deal with life and who am I supposed to be?

    And I thought, okay, well I can cover that pretty simply without going into much detail. I just wrote down a few things here and should be able to cover this in one simple paragraph.

    Here’s the answer, you ready?

    Watch sports, play sports, be a team player, don’t be a loser. Shoot guns, learn to fight, drink beer, drink whiskey, wear a suit, study hard, work hard, play hard, stay hard(for at least 45 minutes). Own a dog, drive a big car, make money and get bitches. Don’t be a pussy, man up, suck it up, cheer up, keep it up, just do it. Join the army, be disciplined, choose a job, choose a career, choose a family, choose a big az television. And most of all, no poofters.
    There you go.

    Masculinity today in the 21st century is in crisis.
    Young men are very unclear about what their role is.
    That it’s mostly dictated by the environment we live in or by their upbringing, or certain privileges and factors that are mostly out of their control.

    Who they are supposed to be and how are they supposed to go about initiating themselves, or being initiated from boyhood into manhood.

    And I want to talk to you guys today about why that may be, some of the causes of that, how that affects you and what it is that you can do to become your own version of a man or the best version of yourself.

    Many, many years ago I was browsing forums, blogs and videos with the increasing popularity of the internet and YouTube. It was at times a bit creepy and weird actually, but to put it simply it was just men’s dating groups.
    And while I was lurking around these groups, I noticed a common pattern of discussion which was very similar to a conversation I had with a friend of mine at the time. And he had mentioned that these ideas really resonated with him.

    So, using a strong masculine frame and special qualifying techniques /s,
    I looked him in the eyes and asked, why is that?

    And he said something along the lines of, well like you and many other guys that I know, I was brought up in a single parent household by my single mother and I didn’t have a dad around. And, as you know, in the 60s feminism happened and men’s rights were squashed and men had their testicles cut off and essentially oppressed by women and now they’re pussies and don’t know what to do with themselves.

    He also alluded to the idea of hypergamy and the rise of social media, modern dating apps and porn, in which women get unlimited validation from simps, and guys based on various factors that are out of their control such as height, looks, generational wealth etc. now don’t put in any effort into themselves and waste their time with various escapist activities, waste time jacking off or what have you. And that men will eventually have VR sex devices and both genders won’t need each other anymore and can go their separate ways since the world is overpopulated anyways.

    This guy in a nutshell was describing in his mind the situation of masculinity then and even today. That due to social movements, socio-political movements that happened last century and the rise of modern technology, the role of men has been flipped on its head and that now women are in control. Women are the ones wearing the pants and in all areas of life from judiciary, education, sexuality, and the bringing up of kids, women are now the ones that are in control.

    And he was speaking about and referencing ideas from the movement which has arisen even more in recent years, which is about taking back that power, standing up for men’s rights against the insidious power of feminazis; women out there who are crushing masculinity and men’s rights.
    Right?

    Wrong.
    I don’t think so at least. I think this belief that this guy had and many others still have, especially within these groups is actually misguided, inaccurate and is certainly not doing him or men any justice.
    And I wanted to discuss some alternatives here.

    Basically what a lot of people would say when asked, at least 5 or more years ago what a feminist is, they would probably say ugly, fat, lesbian and hates men? Or something to do with getting a vote and now they’ve gone too far, which means that now if a man looks sideways at a woman, he’s gonna be accused of harassment.
    If he has sex with her, then he’s likely that he’s gonna be accused of rape.
    If he has children with her, then he’s gonna have his kids ripped off him and his property taken away by her.
    Now, this is a very simplistic explanation for very complex situations.

    And in my opinion, regardless of what you believe, it’s something that is not gonna benefit you as a man, or men who are at all confused about their masculinity or place in the world.
    And you may be starting to think, why am I now talking about feminism to men in order to help men?
    Because there are a whole lot of areas that I can use this platform for and rant about in my sleep that guys will find very interesting about sexuality, seduction, and lifestyle design, and will actually be more important to me in terms of business return, but I decided that this was an important topic to talk about.

    Men’s rights, feminism, how those things interact and how they’re gonna affect you. Because in my mind, if you start to unplug from an ideology and then plug into another one, you need to be really careful about what that ideology does to you.

    The point of this post is to shed some light on some very complex and nuanced ideas, to clear some misconceptions, and to clarify the point of the men’s movement that we’re involved in, which is that we are starting to question the status quo.
    We’re questioning our parents’ morality.
    We’re questioning a society that says that we must do what?

    All that stuff on that list above in order to be a man. That we must go to school, get a good job, work ourselves to an early grave, must marry the first woman we get with, must breed, must vote and act and operate in exactly the same manner as our demographic or our parents or society have prescribed to us.

    And for the guys who are involved in this kind of movement, they’re starting to question that and go, well, actually, why should I do that?
    And does that really benefit me?
    Were those structures built for my benefit or were they built in a way that means that I am actually a slave, that I don’t have choice and that I don’t get the best out of my life?

    If you’ve come into this movement, you’ve started to question things like, well, being a nice guy and being helpful and accommodating and giving and buying girls stuff and opening doors and trying to take them on three dates and not touching them and all that gentlemanly stuff, which has nothing to do with feminism, that’s to do with old school chivalry, that’s to do with repressive norms based on tradition and religion.
    And when you’ve tried that enough and you recognize that that doesn’t seem to work, does it?
    When we all try that at some point, then you question that and you go, alright, well, what else is there?
    How else can I operate in my dating and seduction life?

    And that’s where you find groups such as these or start to listen to people who’ve got alternative views.
    And once you start to unplug from one set of assumptions, inevitably you start to question other ones, which is why this is not just about seduction or dating, it’s about health, it’s about lifestyle, it’s about finance.
    It’s about being an autonomous man who gets to make choices in his life, not being a victim to a structure that was implanted upon you from birth.

    Now, I’m not a scholar of gender. This is not my area of expertise, but I think it’s important that I now give you a really brief history of feminism because a lot of guys out there are really confused about it or have already made assumptions, and have designated the enemy as women or other men for that matter, but particularly women who stand up for their own rights, in terms of losing power. And I want you to actually start to question that idea and think about where did you get those ideas from? How many people have you consulted? And how much research and effort did you actually put into it?
    Because one view is not always the entire truth.
    Feminism in a nutshell has been the pursuit of equality between gender.
    That has always been its overall goal. Because throughout history, women have been second class.
    Women have been downtrodden, women have been controlled, women have been violently oppressed throughout almost all societies, except if we look very far back into history into hunter gatherers societies, often they were more egalitarian.

    But once we saw property arise, power arise, armies arise in civilizations, then repression of women became the norm. The things they tend to be better at aren’t valued as much either. And feminism is always looking to deconstruct and to criticize the patriarchy.
    The patriarchy is something which can be seen as an unnatural power structure. It is something that, for the most part, has been created by men and tend to benefit men more. And as feminists would say, patriarchy doesn’t just hurt women, it hurts men too.
    Because the patriarchal system is governed by people at the very top who get to dictate what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman.

    Masculinity and femininity become institutionalized rather than being allowed to exist on a spectrum which is where it truly does because within all of us we have these aspects of feminine and masculine.
    But in old school masculinity, in the patriarchal conception of what it means to be a man, there’s very little variation and very little choice.

    You have to be a certain way because it’s perceived that the nature of man and woman is essential, that it is timeless, that it is set in stone, that it’s biological and that there’s no point in fighting it because that’s the way things actually are.
    Which may hold grounds for credibility to an extent, but feminism was starting to question those assumptions about, is that really true?
    Are women always passive, caregivers whose only role is to look after the family and essentially be the servant of their man or is there more to women than that?

    So, loosely speaking, feminism is divided into three epochs or eras where women and the men who supported them were looking to right or to equalize certain imbalances that were clearly existing.

    So the first wave of feminism happened in the late 19th century, early 20th century and it was about democratic voting rights because in America and every other country where there was democracy, democracy was not for everybody, it was for rich white men at the time, pretty much.
    It was not for minority groups, it was not for women and so of course it wasn’t actually democracy, was it.
    It was just funneling power up into a small group of people and so women of that time stood up and said, well actually we should be able to vote in this democratic process, we should be able to engage and decide who actually governs us, and the assumption was, at that time which was common across the board, that women were not as intelligent as men, that they were not as rational as men, and that they couldn’t really be trusted to make decisions about who was in power because they we’re either less educated or if they had their period they might vote for the wrong person.
    And this was basically believed by most people and the first wave was questioning that and the women of that time fought hard for the rights to be able to actually vote and also to be able to have some rights in terms of property because prior to that time women didn’t really have any rights, they were essentially the property of their men and therefore under control and at the whims of whatever it was they deemed to be their rightful place.

    The second wave of feminism happened in the 60s and this is the one that the original protagonist from my story was referring to.
    The 60s happened, bra burning, lesbians, hate men, and testicles cut off men somewhere along the line.
    The feminism of the 1960s did not happen in a vacuum, it was not just this random thing that occurred out of nowhere because in the 60s particularly in America there were a whole lot of people standing up and questioning all sorts of traditions and rules that had been in place for generations, if not centuries.

    Alongside the feminist movement was the civil rights movement which was again standing up for the rights of people who, based on the colour of their skin were not allowed to be involved in the democratic process who didn’t have the same rights as white people.

    You also had a counterculture movement which was questioning all of the morality of their parents where guys start to grow their hair along, get high and listen to The Doors and learn how to dance and express their feelings because prior to that that was not done was it?
    If you’re a man you had short hair and you were tough. You didn’t dance in the fields with long hair.

    Alongside this, was happening the sexual revolution. Prior to that sex was sinful, wrong and legislated against except in the very small confines of a married couple. Anything outside of that was wrong and often illegal.
    Sex was not experienced for joy, for experimentation, for connection.
    And the young people of that time started to go well screw that, we’re going to go out and explore our sexuality because it’s pleasurable.

    And in that time, the feminist movement was huge in terms of deconstructing sexuality and looking at the fact that for women, it was not just solely about reproduction for them. And alongside that, you had access to simple, cheap contraception.
    The advent of the contraceptive pill meant that for the first time in history, women could separate their sexuality and reproduction, which meant that they gained control over their reproductive rights.
    They could choose not to have kids and do what they want. And alongside that came rights for abortion, which is a very touchy topic today.
    But abortion always happened, whether it was legal or not. It just happened very dangerously and women died from it.

    When it was legalized, again, it allowed women to take control over their fertility, which is a very terrifying thing to the patriarchy and certain men because it starts to deconstruct control over women.
    When a woman gets to decide who she gets with and why, that’s a terrifying thing to the men who can’t handle women who are not controlled.

    But from that era, totally, completely the opposite of having your testicles cut off and being repressed, that allowed people to start exploring, started to explore a spectrum of masculinity and femininity, to start to explore sexuality in very different ways that had ever been accepted.

    People stood up and questioned their government and said, why is it that we’ve sent 50,000 of our young men over to some South-East Asian country to massacre peasants? Yeah, is that a just war?
    Because prior to that, you didn’t question warfare, that your government or your king decided was just because they had divine right or because their ideology was correct and held authority.

    You just ran over the trenches at the machine guns. For God and king and country or whatever reason they could convince you was worth dying for. That era was really special in America, in Europe, in Oceania or in many places around the world where people started to really question the status quo. And feminism was a vital force in that.

    Third wave feminism, which is from the 90s until today, is looking at a more kind of post-modern and decentralized view of gender relations.
    Because the first and second wave was initiated and campaigned by white, generally middle-class, upper-class educated women.

    These are women who had some resources behind them, who had some education, who were able to stand up. And so it tended to be Eurocentric or Anglocentric.
    And so the new wave of feminism, which is happening today, is still not about and never really has been about man-hating, bra-burning and being a lesbian.
    It’s about looking at micro-politics around the world of women’s rights, women’s issues.
    The fact that still in Africa lots of young girls get their clitoris cut off.
    The fact that there’s more sexual slavery or more slavery happening today than there ever was, even in the height of the slave trade.
    In America, women are sold into sexual slavery.
    Women are still traded and bought and sold as cattle, more or less, in many places around the world.
    The feminist revolution in terms of allowing genders to be equal is not nearly finished, and it certainly hasn’t gone too far.

    Now, there’s been a reactionary movement, which has grown since the 80s, the manosphere, the men’s rights movement. And these are loose organizations of men who perceive that there are gross injustices systematically against men in the Western world.

    There are a lot of very hot topics within this, particularly in terms of things such as custody, rights to children, and these are areas that certainly in some areas need to be addressed, in that often women are given custody of children because they’re perceived to be the primary caregivers.
    But that’s not a feminist idea. That’s an old archaic idea about what women’s roles are actually. If we’re talking about gender bias, it’s actually based in old-school thinking.

    Modern feminist or equality based thinking would perceive that men and women should be able to raise children with the same level of care.
    There shouldn’t be a gender bias against it, but it’s not the fault of the feminists that that kind of thing exists.
    Some of you might be thinking hey, you wouldn’t be saying that if you had your kids taken off you, and I’ll be going into more detail on this further down but it’s important to be discerning and to effectively read honest signals over a longer period of time.

    Some men’s rights advocates may also bang on constantly about false rape allegations or false sexual harassment allegations.
    And It’s interesting because I personally teach and encourage guys to harass women all over the world. That’s a part of what I do. I target groups of men and I teach them some calming techniques and some good harassment skills and they can go about their day while the sun is out and approach women in retail stores, cafes and bookshops and all over the place and harass the shit out of them.
    We might come up and go, hey you, and talk about something that interests us. And she’s like, oh he’s harassing me, that’s kind of cool.
    And in my personal life and in the many of guys that I have seen, spoken with and even taught, not one has ever been accused or taken to court for harassment or falsely accused of anything.
    Not one of us has been falsely accused of rape, although I’m personally responsible for a lot of people having sex. And every time a student gets with a girl, I kind of count that as one of mine as well, so technically I’ve been in hundreds of relationships. Joking.

    But seriously, rape is not a funny issue. And according to the men’s rights sphere, most of the time there is no rape and that it’s mostly false rape allegations.
    There have been studies done by the FBI that look at false allegations of any kind and there is no more evidence to suggest that any more false allegations have happened with rape than murder or anything else.
    It’s around two percent, or something like that.
    Women don’t generally allege rape against men for fun because it’s not a fun process to have to stand up in court and talk about a traumatic event, a very, very personal event. And unfortunately, most women don’t report these situations.

    I am very close to a lot of women, friends, and people confide in me because I don’t judge them on a personal level, because how can I possibly judge them?
    I’m the biggest weirdo of them all.

    From my anecdotal research, the instances of women experiencing sexual violence are pretty damn high. And for guys who don’t actually communicate in detail with women, or intimate with women, they won’t see this either.
    They’ll perceive that, oh yeah, well, does it really happen?
    And if it does, well, did she kind of deserve it?
    Because on account of what she was wearing, or the fact she had a drink or whatever other reason people use to justify that kind of shit behavior.

    I know what you might be thinking, cue Dave Chapelle’s stand-up comedy skit of him telling women not to wear a slut’s uniform because it confuses men and you wouldn’t wear a police uniform and not expect people to come up to you and ask for help.
    Now, I love Dave Chapelle but putting comedy aside, the issues that women have faced in the past, they still face today.

    In the Western world, women certainly do have a lot more freedom and a lot more autonomy than they ever did, which is really awesome. Particularly for pick up artists and seducers.
    And interestingly enough, pick up artists and feminists are unlikely allies.

    Ideologically, it’s not very different. Because I personally believe in being able to have relationships based solely on the fact that we’re attracted to each other.
    I believe that I shouldn’t have to pay for a woman in any way, shape or form.
    Unless I feel like buying a dinner or feel like buying a coffee, I shouldn’t have to do that.
    It can make her feel more feminine or taken care of yeah, I mean who wouldn’t want free things on the premise that it is happily given without an expectation in return, right?

    I saw a video floating around on social media recently where a guy was unknowingly recorded in the gym, he had approached the girl filming her leg press set and in an upset tone he uttered, Oh by the way, if someone helps you, you should say thanks, and he walked off like it was a zinger moment.
    To the outside observer it seemed apparent that he had previously helped her un-rack some weights the other day and she didn’t say thank you afterward. And although she could have just said thanks to be polite regardless, she may have assumed that he, and many other guys only offered help to her specifically expecting something in return, and if it’s not given then they may get upset or aggressive which he did, so you need to be honest with yourself first and clear with your intentions toward others.

    The few women that I know that would stand up and say that they are actually feminists, because I’ve talked about this in the past, that the worst thing you can call a man or the worst insult you can call a man is a loser.
    Which is based on a very old concept of what a man has to be.
    He has to be competitive, he has to win, he has to have massive resources behind him. He needs to command the respect and the fear of other men. And if he doesn’t, he’s a loser. He’s out of the game. It doesn’t count.
    It’s the worst thing you can call a man, really.

    And I’ve said previously, one of the worst things you can call a woman is a slut. And again, this is based on very old school thinking, which is that a woman’s value is based on when and how and under what circumstances she decides to have sex with somebody.
    Not on her character or her heart or her achievements, but on the basis of did she sleep with him and how long did she make him wait?
    But I might update this because a lot women might be just as worried about being labeled a feminist than they would being a slut, at least back then. Because it was completely out of fashion.

    Although now it may be trending due to some things like the Barbie movie, which I haven’t even watched myself. But as you’ll notice, there will always be pushback when things are taken out of context, and this has been the case with a lot of what I’ve said in the past too.
    We will often refuse to accept an idea simply because the way it was expressed seemed unsympathetic to us, or it makes us feel and react in a certain way whether we’re aware of it or not. Then it just becomes an endless back and forth of spite and doesn’t really help anyone.

    Contrary to the manospheres’ perceptions that this feminazi elite is running the world, it has been something that was totally hijacked and bastardized in the 80s and with the hijacking of those ideals of the 60s and 70s into consumer culture.
    There was an article written many years ago, which was about odd couples, people who had different ideologies and still seemed to get along.
    So, they had a Catholic priest and a Jewish atheist and they used to be buddies, and a Greenie and a Logger.
    Wondering, How Do Those Two Get Along?
    And then here’s me, the misogynist pick up guy and friends of mine who would consider themselves a feminist, and we get along very well, thank you very much.

    It’s interesting, I’ve been sharing about dating and seduction privately and publicly for a number of years now and I’ve never received any kind of direct criticism, any kind of direct attack from feminists, or women at all unless they misunderstood me then got clarification.
    Only support because women perceive that what I’m actually doing here is teaching men to be honest, to be clear and to actually operate from a point of equality.
    We’re not trying to buy you, nor trying to impress you for that specific reason. I’m not going to try to trick you into marriage.
    I like you, you like me. That’s it, that’s what we’re trying to promote.
    And any woman who’s got any brains will see that’s a good thing.

    I want more of those guys in the world.

    Because there’s still a perception that feminism equals not feminine. But as I was about to say, the several women that I know who would stand up and say they are feminists are in no way unfeminine.
    They’re very sexy and they’re very sensitive. They love men and they have relationships with men. Most of them are not anti-men, they’re anti-inequality. And these are the kinds of girls that you definitely want to date. Because they’re women who go about their lives from place of autonomy and independence.

    They earn their own money, they study, they find their own place in the world. And then when they choose to engage with a man on a sexual basis, it’s not because they’re looking for a provider or for somebody to save them or to become a princess, it’s because they want to be with that guy.
    There is no conflict of interests in this kind of thing.
    There’s definitely conflict of interests with people, certain conservative worldviews, that perceive that women should be controlled and dominated by men. And that it should be institutionalized, but absolutely it shouldn’t.

    Now the main reason that I bring this whole topic up is because I know that a lot of guys out there, especially young impressionable men who are experimenting with all of these new ideologies and methodologies and concepts, will come in contact with the manosphere.

    It’s become really big a few years ago, and even bigger now and is continually growing. But there are a lot of guys online sharing and writing vitriolic, nasty, anti-women, anti-feminist, anti-feminine blogs, Instagram comments, Facebook groups and whatever out there, and as you’re starting to unplug from the matrix as I talked about earlier, you’re gonna start to come in contact with these a lot of these ideas too.

    Now I certainly encourage you to be discerning, even with everything that I say and to check out new ideas.
    That’s the whole point of what we’re doing here.
    Questioning old beliefs and checking out new ones.
    But I always encourage guys to think about, what is it that’s effective for you?
    Because you can either have a really strongly held belief or you can have flexibility and change.
    That’s why I’m actually anti-all ideology.
    I don’t think that there is a single ideology on this planet which allows for the vast spectrum of human experience that’s out there.

    There’s not one answer for everybody, the shoe that fits one person will pinch another. And there are certainly different concepts and ways of living that you can experiment with. But if you believe that something has to be one solid, specific and unmovable way, then you immediately destroy all other possibilities in your mind.
    And if that ideology doesn’t allow you to connect with people and is destructive and violent and hateful, then it’s stealing your life.

    An interesting topic is the concept of memetics, this looks at the way that ideas and ideologies infect your brain. And these memes can essentially bounce from brain to brain.
    That’s what I’m essentially doing now too, trying to infect you a little bit.
    And if those ideas and memes are really very strong and rigid, they can take a person over to the point where they’re blind and they can’t see anything else.
    And you see that with extremists of all types. Once they believe something that is so solid and they are so right, then everyone else is wrong.

    If you know me, I’d implore you to tread down the steep slope of Carl Jung’s work as he’s one of my favorite people of all time, along with many different thinkers out there of past and present.
    But, here’s a thought experiment, once you completely convince yourself or yourselves as a collective that you are the victim(s) and that they are the evil ones or that everyone else is wrong, whether there is truth to it or not, you can justify doing anything to them, can’t you?

    One of the things I love about Spirituality or even Buddhism is that it doesn’t necessarily have a prescribed morality code.
    It doesn’t say, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. It says, there are actions that are skillful and there are actions that are unskillful.
    Thoughts, feelings and actions that are skillful and others that are not so skillful. And you’re welcome to try them all, and you’ll reap the benefits and the rewards and pay the price of each one of those.

    So for the guys out there who want to have an exceptional life, who want to have a vibrant love life too, you want to start looking at what are skillful actions, what are skillful thought processes and which ones are not.

    Because within the manosphere, the men’s rights movement, and others out there, there is a lot of hatred, bitterness, recrimination and victimhood that is being espoused.
    Guys are blaming their problems on the feminist bogeyman. And it’s very easy to blame feminists, just like how anyone can be scapegoated, which has certainly happened to me before so I know how that feels, and I’m sure it’s happened to you.

    If we look at what has actually caused the crisis in masculinity, let’s look at another narrative for a minute.

    So the original story of the guy in the beginning alluded to the fact that it was feminism that caused it.
    I’ve got an alternative narrative for you, and I’m not saying that this is necessarily the truth either, because any historical narrative is far more complex than just one story from one person or group.
    But let’s look at this and this was my experience.

    Coming into the new generation from the baby boomer generation to the 60s and 70s generation, our parents still tended to get married pretty early.
    By the time my dad was in his early 20s, he already had my three siblings and then me, the youngest of four.
    I just turned 33 and I’m still like, damn, I’m not entirely sure if I could deal with having kids quite yet.
    I don’t know how you did it, dad, mum and anyone else that had or has kids at an early age.
    Married very young, having kids, and suddenly you have a situation where divorce is possible. Because prior to 1960s divorce laws, you couldn’t have no fault divorced.

    You couldn’t just get divorced because you were like, you know what, I’m fucking sick of this, I don’t like you. Or I want to go out and join the monastery or something.
    You couldn’t do that really, you had to prove that there was some major fault in the relationship through abuse or neglect or something for a court to be able to nullify it.

    That changed so that people could just get divorced because they wanted to get divorced. And for the first time really, massive amounts of men, or women could just leave.
    They could go, you know what, I just want to grow a beard and ride a motorcycle through India.
    And many of them did or they just pissed off and went their own way.

    A lot of my male friends or peers growing up were in a similar situation, and a huge number of my particular demographic too.
    One of the first things I’ll say is what’s your relationship like with your dad?
    And as one guy once said, well, it’s like my daddy always used to tell me…

    Yeah, exactly. Right?
    So you have a situation where a generation or half a generation of men are growing up without a clear father figure or male role model in the home for whatever reason.
    And as a result, there’s a whole lot of single parent mothers who are not necessarily feminist, just women trying to do the best they can, bringing up kids, trying to play the role of mother and father in the absence of a father figure.

    To me, that seems a more likely explanation for why we have a generation of men who are kind of lost.
    And also because there has been deconstruction of what societies mean.
    Because a century ago, wherever you lived in the world, it was very, very clear what it meant to be a man. It was very clear.

    You basically had one choice, which was that if your father was a blacksmith, you were a blacksmith.
    If you’re an aristocrat, you’re an aristocrat.
    If you’re a slave, you’re a slave.
    If you’re of this religion, you stayed of that religion.
    You went through whatever initiation processes that were prescribed in that society in order to go from boyhood to manhood. And It was very clear what you were supposed to be.
    And I guess that was pretty good if you were happy with that one choice. But if you happen to have any inkling of a desire to be anything other than that, it wasn’t so good.
    Because if you stepped out of line, you’re an outcast. You’re a loner. You’re a queer. You’re a faggot. You’re a nerd. You’re a communist or whatever.
    People needed to accuse you because you stepped out of line of what this narrow model of masculinity had prescribed to you.

    That was the power of the patriarchy. Keep everyone in place. Do your job, go to war, die when told to. Don’t question. And be a fucking man. Man up. Don’t be a pussy. Or whatever, one line is a thrown at men to just keep them in their place.
    But, I’ve got emotions, like, I want to express myself and write and I don’t really want to do tha-“Man up, man up. Be a fucking man.” Right?

    I’m actually really grateful for the fact that my dad wasn’t around when I was growing up. Not that I don’t have a father. I do. I love him and he’s actually a great guy that would have my best interests at heart. But he wasn’t there as my primary influence in terms of masculinity.

    A lot of guys who are on these internet forums and social media are complaining about the fact that they don’t have a masculine presence and they’re not respected and that they’re lost and they’re frustrated and it’s, uh, the women’s fault, and so they can just go jack off or something.

    But for me, growing up as an immigrant with siblings, in a single parent household in the 90s with actually a card-carrying feminist, I’m the poster boy of what the Men’s Rights Activists would say is, you know, why men are fucked.

    I was brought up by a woman and my older sister who taught me to value kindness and compassion, to dress nicely and not be so unkempt.
    She taught me how to cook, which is also good because then I get the most out of my workouts and I can invite people over and seduce them with my cooking skills, and she made it very clear to me that it was a good idea to treat women with respect and to demand respect from them in return.
    Not to be their doormat, not to be their prince charming who was trying to do everything for them, but just to expect that there would be an equal exchange.
    That was the basis of my ideology, but there was certainly a piece missing in terms of masculinity.

    I didn’t know what the fuck it meant to be a man aside from what I learned from my brothers or through my peers or online personalities.
    I didn’t know how to go about that at all.
    I was a shy, skinny sensitive kid who didn’t fit in the school system, because the teachers didn’t like me on account that my brother had got into trouble before me and gained infamy.
    I had an interest in bodybuilding, literature, playing games and enjoyed daydreaming in my own world most of the time.
    And having older brothers and going to an all boys high school in the early 2000s, well, that was not really okay.

    That was what delinquent misfits or nerds did, or that being into bodybuilding meant that I was secretly gay, and whenever I stepped out of the prescribed model of masculinity, I was punished because it didn’t fit and most people didn’t like my variations on masculinity so I had to either mask them or adapt to fit in.
    Even to this day a lot of my inspirations are women, because anyone who is exceptional at something inspires me regardless of gender, and with the help of mirror neurons I learned most of my social skills from women, and building thicker skin took a lot longer for me due to my inherent sensitivity.
    I still remember being the only one out of my siblings shedding a tear at the end of the first Pokémon movie released in 1998, and feeling embarrassed that nobody else did.
    My brothers or other men were always there to bully or punch down based on their own experiences, or to toughen me up for the world, or that’s just how things we’re back then, so I learned to stand up for myself and at times get into organized fist fights which I have done so very well up to this day.

    But I am grateful for that because what it meant is it sent me on a journey to choose my own masculine archetype.
    You can either decide that not having clear masculine role models means that you’re a victim, means that you are hard done by, or you can decide that that’s an awesome opportunity to choose.

    And that’s what I did.

    I went out on my own and I found mentors through martial arts and fighters, through leaders, through artists, through writers and thinkers, through other contemporary men of my age and of past who were trying to figure it out as well, bouncing ideas off the women that we came across along the way.
    So as a result, my own personal masculinity evolved and grew and came into fruition to the point where today I do feel very comfortable with myself.

    I don’t know how to tell you guys how to be a man, but I certainly know how to be me pretty well right now.
    And to show other guys how to step out on a path to self-discovery and autonomy regardless of your past.
    And that comes first and foremost by not being a victim, and not blaming external circumstances for your situation, even if there we’re many unfair injustices and wasn’t your fault in any way.

    It’s not about manning up and being tough, it’s about taking responsibility for the fact that we live in a deconstructed, chaotic, intensely mad world.
    And yes, it’s confusing, but it’s also exciting.
    It provides us with opportunities to grow and to change and to experiment with all sorts of things that we never were allowed to experiment with under the old archaic ideas of what a man and a woman must be.

    And along the way, we get to experiment and play and share time with women who are going through that journey as well, because there is nothing more beautiful than being with a woman who has chosen to be with you.
    Of being with a woman who submits to you because she wants to, not because she has to.
    And there’s nothing more amazing than seeing what a woman can be when she is taken out of the box and not controlled.
    Because as we’ve seen, there is so much more to her than just being a domestic slave. And when somebody is able to feel free, only then will they choose to stay.

    I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a mother or a caregiver, or being a father or provider, or choosing to take on those roles, as long as it is a role that is chosen.
    But when it’s forced on you, if any role is forced on people, it’s not a pleasant position to be in, is it?
    I’m sure you guys have all experienced that in one form or another, imagine playing a sport or a video game and not being able to ever play the postition or role you wanted or felt most comfortable in.

    If you’ve been a nerdy kid, if you’ve been a guy who’s been brutalized at school, if you’ve been bullied, if you’ve been teased because of your race, because of your height, because of any interest you had that was outside being a lax bro or being a footy head or whatever very brutal and limited conception of what masculinity is, you’ve probably been punished for it.
    And so have women who stepped out of line.
    And my role is to stand up in front of men and say, fuck that, do whatever the fuck you want to.

    Go and try out, all sorts of different things.
    Experiment and understand that your masculinity is your own, it’s your choice.
    Because what makes a man really sexy, really powerful, is a man who is at ease with himself.
    It’s not all of those other buzzwords, and really simplistic conceptions of what masculinity is.
    It’s a man who’s cool with himself.

    The reason women like me really is that I’m just okay with myself now.
    And that took me a decade or more of not being okay with myself and being confused and living an existential crisis and testing and trialing and all this stuff along the way to the point where, yeah, okay, cool, I know myself now. I’m okay with myself. And women go, cool, it’s a guy who’s okay with himself. I want to be around him.

    Now, you can’t not have relationships if you’re a heterosexual male, you’re going to have to engage with women.
    And the question is, are you going to do it skillfully or unskillfully?

    Are you going to go into it with rigid ideas, thinking that all women are gold diggin’ 304s or that they’re always out to get you and that there is intrinsically a power play or a power struggle all the time?
    Because if you are, then you’ll prove it.

    You can always be good with yourself, you can always prove any position. Anyone who is very close minded, or the way they think has calcified over a long period of time, or they are an extremist of any type has this philosophy that explains exactly why they are always right.
    And you can always filter for evidence to prove that you’re right and delete, distort, and remove anything else that doesn’t agree with you.
    Most of the time people only really see what they want to see, for example if you like someone you’ll only see their good traits, if you hate somebody you’ll only see their bad traits, everyone has every trait whether they conceal it well or you subconsciously choose not to see it, this is a selective focus by the reticular activating system, and I have mentioned this previously.

    So if you go in with these kinds of attitudes, then you won’t be successful. And it’s the same as in seduction or any other skill in life, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    Imagine two guys walk into a bar, one of them believes that women go to bars to get free drinks and to validate themselves by being mean to guys and the other guy believes that girls go to bars to get laid.
    Which one’s true? Neither, both, maybe?
    But if you hold the viewpoint that girls go to bars to get laid, you’re gonna walk up to a girl and go, hey there, what’s your name?
    I’m Vince and because you’re here to have a good time right? Well, I’m here to do that with you.
    Whereas the other guy is gonna go up and say hi and she’s like hi.
    And he’s like no fucking drinks for you, no free drinks.
    And she’s gonna go, whoa, okay dude. See ya.
    And he’s going to be like, see I knew it, I knew it. That’s all they want, free drinks.

    Positions of perceptual effectiveness is what I’m looking at. What works in terms of having an effect or result.

    Okay, now, what are some things that do work?
    Being clear works.
    Being direct works.
    Being calibrated and not talking her ear off works.
    Emotional impact and not being logical all the time works.
    Expecting that the woman is going to invest in you as much as you invest in her works.
    Looking her in the eyes works.
    Holding her hand and squeezing gently works.
    Projecting my sexuality through my eyes works.

    All that other negative and complicated strategies like negging or cheesy pick up lines and other shit doesn’t really work, not nearly as well in my experience.
    Cutting people down doesn’t come from a place of inner confidence, and simply talking to someone is enough to convey interest without using a corny pick up line.
    But if you’re somebody who isn’t particularly confident in social settings for whatever reason, like you’ve always worked a field that isn’t social, then you can be a bit more clinical about it at first, and keep at it until it feels more natural to you.
    I may know a lot of it but I’m not here to teach you all those manipulation tricks or to take advantage of things like social proofing by befriending a bunch of girls and orbiting or going about it in an indirect way.
    The point of this post is quite the opposite of that, to be direct and not to play mind games.

    So gentlemen, please be aware and be careful of the memes and the ideas and the ideologies that you pick up.
    Particularly as you start to unplug. Unplug all sorts of stuff from the social matrix.
    Question, but don’t get paranoid. Question, but don’t assign blame simplistically to another group.
    That’s the way governments and kings and powers of be throughout history have managed to manipulate their populations, as well as lying by omission.

    It’s the Jews’ fault. It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s the women’s fault, or whoever is over the next hills’ fault. No it’s not. it’s the guy who’s saying it’s somebody else’s fault’s fault.

    It’s more likely some of the bigger corporations, the industrial military complex and people at the top that are playing games just to rape the earth and keep you all in your place.

    And as you start to unplug and go,
    Not paying a bunch of taxes, nope.
    Dealing with bitcoins, yep.
    Not being a chivalrous idiot, nope.
    Not believing what the media says to me, nope.
    Do all that. That’s the good stuff.

    But be careful about where that then plugs into. Because you can just as easily get hijacked by some extremist group who believes that the queen was a lizard based on her earlobe, and you can take some of those theories way too far. Yeah?

    This is potentially your only time on the planet, we never know. But this is a really beautiful and precious and unique time where you have choice to travel, to learn, to grow, to experiment with all types of everything that was ever possible in humanity.

    And are you gonna look back on that time and think, well, at least I fought for men’s rights on the internet, or at least I cut him or her down a couple notches in the name of my political views while sitting in the comfort of my home, which might make you feel better about yourself in the moment.
    But if the one world government is coming and if the lizards are going to plug us all in and pretty soon we’re all just gonna be wired up in our little pods, having our DNA sucked out. Or world war 3 in the atomic age and climate change is inevitably going to wipe us all out within a couple of decades due to overpopulation and our carbon footprints.
    Well, we may as well have spent those last precious years of our life traveling, exploring, experiencing, sharing amazing experiences, loving and spreading orgasms all over the place than doing anything that was bitter and hateful, right?
    Maybe? No? Yeah?

    My one piece of advice, particularly to young guys, is don’t get married and have kids really early. Because it takes a long time for a man to figure out who the fuck he is.
    Well it did for me at least, I had no idea really until I was in my late 20s, and if I’d gotten involved in a very serious, deeply committed relationship that resulted in children earlier on in my life, I would have probably fucked my life up, and I would have had a whole bunch of mess to deal with too.

    I mean, people do this all the time and they make the best of it.
    So, it does happen and they’re like, I love my kids and they’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and really I commend them because one of my goals is also to see family units get along better and for men and societies to improve.

    But if you guys wanna live extraordinary lives where you get to truly explore your own personal masculinity before you settle on anything, then take a lot of time for yourself. And don’t necessarily listen to the pressures of your parents or your grandmother or peers, or society or the woman that you’re with or whatever else it is.

    Allow yourself to grow and to change and experience relationships. Because becoming good at relationships is something you have to practice just as you need to practice approaching girls or any social interaction.

    It took me a few semi long-term relationships, lots of learning, experimenting and reflecting, to be in one where I’m like, yeah, this is pretty good and we’re not gonna cause massive amounts of trauma and damage to one another. It’s just a really good experience.
    But allow yourself, because you have this luxury in this time where you don’t have to just settle down, get married and fit into that box of what you’re supposed to do.

    You can choose not to. And lots of people around you, not the feminists, but the status quo, will often try to pressure you into those boxes, but don’t let it.
    Allow yourself that time to experience truly what you are as a man.
    And then in relation to women, and create a situation where equal rights is something that is negotiated between partners. And then the ideas of submission and dominance are things you get to play out in the bedroom.

    They’re not things that the state dictates to you.
    Yeah, it’s true. Many women do like to be dominated.
    A very intelligent and powerful woman once said, yes, of course, every woman wants to be possessed by one man, if he deserves it.
    That if you are a man who is strong, not tough, who is powerful, but not domineering, then of course a woman wants to be with you and she wants to submit herself to you. She wants to devote herself to you.

    Because some old school ways of thinking is scared of that because some men know that they don’t really have that power.
    They need it dictated to women.
    They need to suppress them and use force or violence and ideology to hold them down.
    A real man holds a woman down with his own presence.
    She wants to be held down by him.
    She wants to be possessed by him.
    Not forced to be.
    And then you can have a functional, amazing relationship.

    Some of you may want to try and rush this whole process too.

    We’re all guilty of this at some point, y’know when we’re all inspired and motivated in the moment to get fast results, fast muscle gain, fast growth or whatever.
    And I’ve been through the motions of this for various reasons and feeling a sense of urgency due to some external pressure.
    Like, there’s this life hacking industry, there’s a real obsession with faster equals better yeah?
    That faster is better, like the most efficient and effective way to do a pushup so that you don’t waste half a second doing a pushup wrong or so you get the most optimal results in the fastest possible time.

    Now I’m all for being effective and working hard, don’t get me wrong, and I don’t think you should have to go through exactly the same amounts of heavy research or trial and error that myself or others went through pounding the beat in fitness or seduction, spending thousands of hours trying to figure it out, because we already have and you can ask.

    However, it is in the process that makes you into a man.

    It’s like, if you just learn how to do things, like you hear about those meditation things that you plug in and suddenly like you’re meditating like a Zen monk who’s been meditating for 40 years because it adjusts your brainwaves or something.
    Even if that’s true, which I doubt. You miss the point of meditation.
    It’s not to just like have that instantaneous hit, like here I am in Zen.
    It’s the process of learning how to have discipline to watch your mind, to observe the changes in your body, to go through those processes, that’s the point of the meditation.
    That’s what develops your character, your resilience, your equanimity and all of those awesome things.
    If you can just plug straight into it, like i’m in Zen state, okay, well that’s nice.
    I mean you can do that, just fucking take LSD.

    Like, yep, okay, I’m Zen now.. But it doesn’t really help you as a person when you come out of it yeah?
    So enjoy the process, It’s not just the outcome of having a good body or having all the girls.

    I know a lot of people that go through this process find themselves having a lot of hardships, and getting a mentor for instance, can ease that transition, not having so much trauma along the way.
    Yes, you do need mentors and role models, but at the same time, be wary of turning one into a God.
    Now, I don’t know the real truth about the universe, that isn’t what I’m here to talk about, but I do believe humans intrinsically worship, whether it be a deity, person or thing.
    This has been evident across all people, cultures and timelines throughout history, and you have to be very careful of where majority of that is being channeled, your intentions behind them, to what degree of intensity and the ramifications of them.
    People have tried turning me into God sometimes too, maybe as a joke.
    But they’ll write and say, I take your word as the bible or I’ll do anything you say, I’ll be your acolyte for life. And I’m like, whoa, that’s really nice of you but I don’t actually want that y’know. I don’t want anyone to follow me anywhere for life, please.

    Yeah, I can act as a mentor because I’ve been somewhere on a path and experienced some really weird things, but I’m also always looking for mentors in my life.
    The fact is when you step on the hero’s journey, there will be hardship and pain and doubt, that’s part of it.
    The shadow side of this journey is just as important as the achievements or the golden points along the way.
    What I would say is it’s more important to look at how do you process those periods.

    So the most practical thing I can always suggest to people is to learn meditation because it allows you to step back into objectivity and watch the way that your ego and your identity and your reactive behaviors inside yourself work.

    Because it’s such an insidious little fucker that will keep trying to put you back into a place of victimhood, of blame, and of like, I’m just this way or woe is me, I tried so hard, everyone is on steroids, he’s just good looking or tall or I did x amount of approaches and girls don’t like me, and so uh, I hate women or uh, I’m a loser.
    So, being able to process your process is the most important thing.

    You know where you wanna go, okay, so you’re looking around, you’re looking for models of masculinity or models of success, and you’re saying, okay cool, that guy has a fucking awesome body, or that guy seems really healthy, or that guy’s got heaps of girls in his life, and we understand now it’s not always just because of genetics or just because he’s super cool, it’s because he went through a process and learnt it.
    Or maybe he was just super fortunate to have the right circumstances throughout his life, and the right mentors or role models.

    So yeah, definitely model people, but at the same time, each individual’s journey is gonna be different, and the demons that you have to face along the way are the things that will pull you off course.
    It’s okay to go down a path, and for it to be difficult and for you to realize it’s not the right path, but to be pulled off course for five years due to a shitty belief, that’s the thing that’s stealing your life.

    So I think the most important thing is that, learn to process your process from an objective position, and also become as clear as you can early on about what you’re willing to put up with and what you’re willing to give.
    Because most people have vast amounts of their life stolen by other people’s agendas.
    Because they’re trying to please somebody else, because they don’t wanna rock the boat.
    They’re literally living for other people’s belief systems or other people’s desires.

    Be really wary of that, and you’re gonna have to do an inventory of all the people in your life to see where you’re bleeding time and energy.
    Because it’s happening, there are people around you that are not necessarily doing it out of Machiavellian agendas, they’re just doing it because if you let somebody treat you in a certain way, they’ll treat you in a certain way.
    People treat you how you train them to treat you.
    And I just don’t have nearly as much drama and insanely close minded or bitchy women in my life anymore now because I just don’t put up with those kinds of women. I did in the past because if she was hot and a psychopath, then well.. maybe, it’s kind of worth it?… No?

    When you get true choice in your life. You realize that, there’s plenty of attractive girls out there who are actually grounded and awesome and are not going to destroy my life.
    And it’s not about like a battle of the sexes, it’s about being discerning and choosing what you’re going to put up with in life and showing people that when they step over your boundaries that you go, gently, once.
    I’ll do it gently once. That’s not cool, I don’t do that.
    And if they do it again, I’ll say see you later.
    But more often than not, they don’t because people test boundaries all the time unconsciously or consciously.
    I even test people’s boundaries consciously all the time to see how they will respond with me. And if I see that someone has clear boundaries, then that’s good.
    It means that I can have a solid relationship.
    I can have a trade with them.
    I can work with this person.

    If someone’s a pushover and easily manipulated, then I don’t want to be around them because I don’t want to have people under me who I’m always manipulating nor do I want people attempting to manipulate me constantly.
    But people will. There are lots of people who do like that or who just fit into those situations.

    I won’t get into shit tests here but if someone is constantly trying to test you in you anyway, you can either call them out on it or again decide who and what you’re willing to put up with.

    Something that I’m personally investigating all the time which is incredibly complicated and messy, is the sexuality of two people, whether it’s opposite genders or same sex genders or whatever, is a very, very dynamic and complicated and messy thing because we’ve got different people’s agendas and fears and desires trying to reach some point of compromise.

    So this is not stuff that’s easy to explain, especially on social media, and truth without tact is cruelty, which is really why I’m now trying to warn against making simplistic explanations of anything like I have done in the past with word limits on posts.
    Because people will make assumptions unless you make it clear cut.
    For example, if you say you like straight hair, people will assume you hate wavy and curly hair. My natural hair is actually really curly and not many people that know me know this.
    Another example is my previous posts which had nothing to do with the vaccine, it was to do with corruption of authority, and in the workplace specifically. However a lot of people made assumptions but it’s not necessarily their fault because I didn’t make this information clear enough. I personally got the vaccine and had zero issue with people that chose not to.

    Your personal journey is your personal journey and an ideology is only going to act as a guiding light. And at the end of the day, you’re going to have to negotiate this one-on-one with girls or your partner.
    It’s something that I’m continuing to investigate and learn about and I will continue to speak about because that’s what my role is, to try and help men and women get together in a better way.

    Everybody here has an idea of the road they need to go down and it’s not until you start going down that road, do you realize you’re going to make a course correction.
    Ultimately, I think we all just want to find more happiness, fulfillment and peace and we think this or that will bring it to us.

    One of the best personal reflections on my path was the way I did it, which was by testing extremes pretty early on.
    It’s dangerous to test extremes especially if you put yourself out there because they can break you, but that’s what I did.
    Because rather than kind of live in fear or something, I decided to step into the fear even if it meant pain, failure, humiliation, intense scrutiny and judgement about my character, or assumptions from others based on limited information about me, which is actually something I willingly subjected myself to for years and even now.
    Which lead to some very interesting events in my life too.
    It also meant me getting involved in different ways of thinking and nihilistic thoughts that nothing meant anything.

    It involved me getting involved with drugs, or exploring some crazy ideologies, trying some outlandish stuff, giving anybody the benefit of the doubt, or getting involved with a relationship that was kind of toxic because I was looking to test where the extremes of my human experience were.
    And I’m glad I did that because it did help me to correct my course earlier on maybe than some people.

    Many of my experiences both good and bad we’re able to give me an understanding of the darkness as well as the light too, which I needed, and in my opinion is absolutely imperative as a coach.
    You need to be able to understand the pain, the frustration and the fear of your clients in order to be able to be effective with them.
    Otherwise you’re just like a positivity robot or you get too caught up in toxic positivity, saying things like, just be yourself and natural and fun and cool or just do it. And guys will be like, uh man I’m really questioning the existence of everything. I mean.. I don’t know how to just do it.

    So going through all that was really helpful. I mean that’s the way I did it.
    I went to whatever extreme, wherever my fear was, and went okay, I’ve got to go into that. And not so much as to smash the fear but just like move into it and let it envelop me and then dissolve it and step through it and see okay, that didn’t kill me.

    And that’s what I do in all aspects of life now.
    That’s what I teach all the time in terms of approaching or learning a new skill or getting over a phobia.
    That fear always exists, it’s there. And the simplest way I know to get through it is to step into it and allow it to take me over but not to take over my thinking.

    It’s like, I feel it completely. I feel the physical manifestations of it because that’s what anxiety is.
    It’s physical manifestation of an incorrect idea which is that a thing or that activity or that women are dangerous.
    And if we latch onto the concept of it then we get stuck in it.
    But if we just feel it and observe it and then this is where meditation comes in, I allow it to just resolve and dissolve and then I step through and then I realize okay, I’m stronger. I can move through that.
    I guess that’s what I’ve done.

    Lastly, being in a relationship and uncovering your masculinity are not incompatible at all, it can work perfectly fine together.
    But I would say that if it happens at the wrong time then yeah, it can pull you off your path.
    Because the hero’s journey for a man is a solo journey for a lot of it.

    It’s something where when you’re a young guy and you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re stepping out to try and figure this out.
    What often happens is a man starts to step onto his path and he starts to follow his dream and he starts to become more vital.
    He starts to become more masculine, more attractive. And so women suddenly get attracted to him.
    And it’s very common that in this early stages of your journey that you’ll meet a girl that is awesome or you like or have great chemistry with, or it’s better than any girl you’ve had before.

    And then she wants to get in a relationship with you and shut down that journey.
    It’s not that she’s trying to necessarily collapse your dream, she just wants to get a hold of you.
    And it’s very common, this happened to me and I see this with guys all the time as well, guys will come out inspired and they’re all charged up, guns blazing and they’re doing all this cool shit and they meet all these girls and then there’s a really pretty girl or someone he’s really attracted to and then they go, well, she’ll be my girlfriend.

    And then six months later, they might go through a break up because he’s lost the vitality and the power of what it was that made him so attractive in the first place.
    Because he wasn’t done yet. His journey was not nearly completed. And there is no real completion to the journey, right?

    I mean, the journey is cyclical.
    The hero’s journey goes throughout a man’s life with challenges and evolves and changes with time. But certainly in that very first journey where you’re really experimenting with your sexuality, your masculinity, your drives, your desires, if you get in a relationship too early and stay there at the expense of your mission, then yeah, it can be detrimental.
    However, when you reach a point, and it’s not just a single point, but there will be certain points in your life where you’ve gone through trials and tribulations on your journey and you’ve come out and you’re successful and you’re powerful and you’re at a point of kingship, then yeah, you’ll meet a woman who reflects that, who’s at the same level and then being in a relationship with her is the best thing you could possibly do. Because that’s where you’re a mirror to each other.
    Where she sees the power and you see the power in her and you exponentially increase that in each other. So it’s definitely not the case that being in a monogamous or a long-term relationship will destroy your masculinity or your path in life. But the timing of it can, definitely.

    And I’ll leave it there for now.
    Thanks for reading.

  • Chapter One

    August 18th, 2023

    The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

    From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

    In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

    As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

    “It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Henry languidly. “You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.”

    “I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,” he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. “No, I won’t send it anywhere.”

    Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette. “Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”

    “I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”

    Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.

    “Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.”

    “Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I really can’t see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you—well, of course you have an intellectual expression and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless beautiful creature who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don’t flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him.”

    “You don’t understand me, Harry,” answered the artist. “Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”

    “Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward.

    “Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”

  • Chapter Two

    August 18th, 2023

    “Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?”

    “Not at all,” answered Lord Henry, “not at all, my dear Basil. You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet—we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke’s—we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very good at it—much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me.”

    “I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry,” said Basil Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. “I believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.”

    “Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,” cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the garden together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.

    After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. “I am afraid I must be going, Basil,” he murmured, “and before I go, I insist on your answering a question I put to you some time ago.”

    “What is that?” said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.

    “You know quite well.”

    “I do not, Harry.”

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