The following Blog entry was posted on AVFM forums by one of its members, Maxx. It is edited and republished here with his permission. ED
Comforting lies are essential to keeping men compliant, ignorant and productive within any gynocentric system. Keeping men ignorant and productive is something that progressive (secular western) and traditionalist (Islamic middle eastern) cultures are equally invested in doing. Different cultures hold men compliant and productive by promoting different sets of lies. Detailed below are a handful of truisms that have become increasingly popular in our secular progressive western cultures in recent years. But how ‘true’ are they?
“Never judge a book by its cover.”
External appearances, more often than not reflect internal states. A 27-year-old girl with Botox lips and fake tits in a forty thousand dollar Gucci dress stepping out of a limo while someone else holds the door open might not be a vapid, materialistic gold digger, but she probably will be. A girl with half her head shaved and the remaining half colored blue ‘might’ not be a secular progressive abortion-loving feminist social justice warrior, but she probably will be.
Most of the time, in fact, external appearances are valid and viable indicators of personal virtue, qualities, and states. Making snap judgments off the back of them and tailoring responses and reactions accordingly can in practice save a lot of time and energy. The occasional cases where external appearances are misleading are the exceptions rather than the norm. In no place is this truer than in the realm of physical fitness.
Roy Nelson is one of the top heavyweight mixed martial arts fighters in the world. Straight up one of the baddest men alive. Not that you could tell by looking at him, but he’s the sort capable of dispatching much larger men:
Most top MMA heavyweights look like the herculean Adonis hitting the dirt, not the short fat man cleaning his clock. As we advance through life both observing and interacting with various people, we can effectively build a pretty reliable set of possible correlations that will permit us to effectively size-up and evaluate everything around us; people we interact with, are confronted by and determine how to respond most effectively to them. There might be a pro-life Christian girl who’s a registered Republican and yet has a half-shaved bald, half-painted blue haircut going on, but I wouldn’t bet my ass on being able to find her in a hurry.
Always judge a book by its cover. Proactively accumulate data on the people you interact with to dramatically improve your ability to draw snap judgments by observing general patterns. Do that and you can look forward to a future where you are usually right about most people and only occasionally pleasantly surprised.
“There is no ‘I’ in team’”
This aphorism is used to promote selflessness and sacrifice in the common interest. Those that typically end up sacrificing the most are men. It is a false platitude exactly because every member of a team isn’t equally useful, ever.
Are the men that bring in all the new business at a large multi-national corporation as valuable as the women in the HR and compliance departments processing trumped up sexual harassment cases and making sure everyone has their top button done up? Are all the men that bring in new business equal? Of course not; there are star performers there are grunts, and there is dead wood.
Was Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the soccer star scoring that goal in the gif to the right as valuable as the other ten members of his team were on the day he scored that goal? Are star players as valuable as the scrubs on ANY day? The more indispensable a given performer is to a team that surrounds him the less the rules that apply to the collective will apply to him. Star performers must reach out to one another and build effective alliances within wider teams. They must recognize and remain cognizant of the positive value they add as individuals and demand compensation according to their skill. They don’t need to be signing up to unions which permit the weakest members of a given collective to demand and petition for a cut of whatever spoils secured as a result of the guts, determination, hard-work and or vision and creativity of a handful of star performers.
There is no ‘I’ in team, but there is an ‘I’ in ‘winner’.
“Just be yourself.”
Nothing will stunt a man’s growth more than internalizing this toxic little mantra you’ll find plastered across the social media feeds of narcissistic young women and girls everywhere.
At a basic level, it’s used to evoke the idea that it’s better to be yourself than to attempt to adhere to anyone else’s rules or expectations. At face value, it sounds true and simple enough. But most of the time it’s awful advice that has prepped an entire generation to fail and to adopt a tendency of externalizing accountability for their shortcomings when they do. The truth is everyone has an immediate natural response to a given situation or challenge.
The “natural” reaction to a punch in the face is to turtle up. At the very least it’s to flinch and turn away from the strike. It’s certainly not to slip and then counter. You are never going to win a fist fight “being yourself.” You have to interrogate your natural response, and if it proves ineffective in yielding your desired result, you need systematically attack and overcome it proactively.
To achieve the success you must “be yourself,” right? But that doesn’t mean stubbornly refusing to adapt when Plan A doesn’t survive the first contact with reality. If the first time someone throws a punch your way you flinch, cower and eat a punch in the mouth accordingly, try not just to do what comes naturally next time. Attempt to do something else.
What comes most ‘naturally’ will seldom be the most effective strategy. Most children, when confronted with adversity, cry and ask someone to remove whatever is the source of their antagonism. “Just be yourself” is the mantra of a generation conditioned to continue processing the world around them like infants, long into adulthood. From entitled feminist women bitching about man-spreading to every entitled ‘nice guy’ nerd complaining about the how the universe just isn’t ‘fair’ because swimsuit models aren’t lining up to see his lightsaber collection. “Just being yourself” must go hand in hand with a commitment to be ruthlessly interrogating who you are and thinking proactively about exactly who you want to be going forward.
“Never give up.”
While determination in the face of adversity is commendable, it goes hand in hand with the ability to intelligently “give up” effectively and know when it’s appropriate and wise. In fact, any ineffective strategy must be discarded to achieve growth and forward progress. All too often masculine vigor is channeled into dead ends by evoking this hollow mantra.
There is a time and a place for giving up entirely, just as there is a time and a place for giving up ends by evoking this hollow mantra. A masculine determination can be exploited by those evoking this platitude to keep men chained to an apple cart forever chasing a carrot on the end of a stick that’s somehow forever just a whisker out of reach.
Sometimes it’s good to give up. If you are hitting your head against a wall, abandon that approach. Of course you should never give up on striving for an alternative in the face of failure, but that’s not the same thing as “never give up.” Don’t allow those who demonized giving up to stunt your growth as a man. When something isn’t working, absolutely give up on it.
There are also times you need to give up on people. Life is too short for you to carry deadwood or to retain friendships and relationships with individuals who suck on your vitality, who find it easier to mock you because of the journey you are on than growing the balls to embark on their journey. Giving up on people who simply don’t get it is the least of two evils. You can take horses to water and leave them to figure out how to drink on their own.
The successful man, the capable man, is a man that has given up on a thousand and one failed approaches and strategies for success and advancement. The unsuccessful man is the man that refuses to give up on an unsuccessful approach because someone once told him to “never give up,” he took it the wrong way and never looked back. Being bull-headed is a double edged sword and all men must be mindful of the dual nature of this quality.
I’m reminded of some of the greatest fighters that ever laced up a pair of gloves. The rugged masculine bull-headedness that drove them to take stubbornly on and believe they could topple champions who stood tall atop piles of vanquished foes, was for them the same virtue that in their twilight years drove them to ruin. The same drive that makes a man a champion fuels him into combat, again and again, each time with significantly diminished skills against hungry young lions in search of that elusive final vindication that might only come at a long-term cost if it even comes at all.
The same quality that makes a man great can eventually leave him a carcass stripped bare by vultures and hyenas.
There is a time and a place for giving up entirely, just as there is a time and a place for giving up on one thing and attempting another with the same objective. The smart play is to know the difference.
