Be the Kind of Man that Would Have the Kind of Life You Want

I had a sort of mini-revelation a few weeks ago. I was gonna write about it then, but didn’t get around to it, so I have no idea what inspired it. If someone else had this idea and I’m ripping you off without acknowledgment, I apologize.

But anyway, the mini-epiphany is a fairly simple concept, but it’s not something I ever put together. Here it is:

To get what you want in life you have to be the kind of man who has what you want.

It’s simple, no? Yet, it’s an elusive thought.

You can run through the approved life script, you can work hard, you can develop yourself, you can learn game, you can lift weights, you can expand your intellect, but in the end, it will all be for naught if it is not helping you progress towards your goal.

The first part of this is determing your goal. What do you want out of life? You need to decide where you want to be before you can get there. I’m still working on this myself, but I’m inching closer.

But once you’ve decided where you want to be, how do you determine what you should work on to get where you want?

Know the type of man who will have what you want, then become him.

Is there a career or job you want to have? Become the kind of employee an employer in that field would hire.

Do you want a promotion? Become the type of man your boss would promote.

Do you want your own business or to become rich? Become the type of man who would run a successful business.

Do you want to master a skill? Become the type of person who has mastered that skill.

Do you want to attract a certain type of girl? Become the type of man that type of girl couldn’t help but swoon over.

Do you want to live the life of an international player? Become the type of man who would quit his job, travel everywhere, and attract attractive women.

Whatever you want to have in life, find out what type of man who has it, then become that man.

****

To do this, find out who has the type of life you want. Find as many of them as you can. You have the internet, it shouldn’t be hard; there’s probably a part of the blogosphere devoted to it.

Study what they all have in common; what virtues do they share? What defines them as a group? What have they all done the same? What experiences do they share?

Once you understand what makes that type of man that type of man, become that type of man. Develop those virtues. Do those things. Have those experiences.

****

There is a corallary to this.

When you consider doing something (or not doing something), ask yourself the question:

Would the man who has the life I want do this?

Would a successful, rich business owner spend his evening watching TV? Or would a successful rich business owner spend his evening working on his business? What would Bill Gates do?

Would the martial arts master lie sleep-in, then laze about the house for the morning? Or would the martial arts master get up early, exercise hard, then practice his forms? What would Musashi do?

Would the successful novelist spend an hour on Facebook? Or would the successful novelist spend that hour on the next page of his novel? What would Orson Scott Card do?

Would the type of man who attracts a pretty, traditional young girl looking to be a mother spend his day masturbating to pornography? Or would he be reading his Bible and spending time developing himself as a man? What would the elder at your church with a loving wife and 6 children do?

Would the international player stay home surfing the internet? Or would the international player go to the club grinding approaches? What would Roosh do?

When you do something, you must ask yourself whether the type of man you want to be would be doing that something.

If the answer is no, maybe it is time to change your behaviour.

****

I admit I make it sound easy. It isn’t. I struggle hard with this. Even St. Paul had this problem.

“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

But finding out and acknowledging what you should be doing is the first step you have to take before you can accomplish your goals. Actually carrying out what you should, will require harnessing your willpower and ability.

In conclusion, become the type of man who has the type of life you want.

Lightning Round – 2012/10/24

Are you masculine enough to deserve the feminine woman you demand?
Related: Feminism can not exist where masculine men do.

The Captain gives entitled whiners a smack down.

Oneitis causes death.

A good wife is a home maker; a bad wife is a home breaker.

A women declaring oneself a born-again virgin would be a greater deal-breaker than her not being a virgin. If a woman has slutted it up, she should at least be honest about it instead of living in self-delusion.

Marriage: What’s in it for men?

Athol has a post on the effect of vasectomies on sex. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a negative effect, as semen gives benefits to women and a  vasectomy may block some of those.

This seems fake to me. I’ve never seen a women be that rationally calculating before.

An interesting hypothesis: Feminists cry because they are brain-damaged.

I am in favour of chivalry as a concept, but I believe it should be reserved for ladies and not wasted on ungrateful feminists, sluts, and egalitarians.

Sometimes, Roissy can really turn a phrase.

The etymology of the word slut. It is exclusively female.
Related: SSM has a revelation.

The Captain opines on black men and the manosphere.

A good look into the insane, rambling mind of a frivolous divorcee, hypocritical feminist, and self-indulgent narcissist. Fascinating reading of a hamster going full-tilt if you can stomach the pure, unfiltered mind vomit of a horrible example of womanhood.

The church-going travails of a traditionalist.

Teaching teens game. I’m interested in how this will go.

Proof of the attractiveness of the dark triad.

Seems Frost has jumped on the Koanic Tech/Edenism band wagon. Not sure if I buy it, but it’s interesting. I plan to learn more.
Related: Forney has created an Edenic link aggregator.

Frost is picking himself up after arriving back to where he began.

Let the boomers starve.
Related: Screw the boomers, they fucked us over hard.

The “war on women” is a dangerous myth.
Related: Women are beginning to realize the damage feminism has done.

Whited Sepulchre prescribes some truth pills on Obamacare.
Related: Death panels? What death panels?
Related: Yeah… Our health care is not better than the Yanks’.

Vox has an interesting post on the lawsuit against the Italian geologists. Not sure what to think, but he makes a persuasive argument.

Wright on why libertarian purists should vote for Romney.
Related: Romney kills a speech and rips liberal a new one.
Related: Why are there so few female libertarians? I think it’s simply because women are herd creatures, while libertarianism is an individualist philosophy.

If Romney’s stable family and home threaten your values, there’s probably something wrong with you.

Tim 2012. I’d vote for him.

The squeeze on the middle class.

The people you meet on public transit. Hehe.

If you’re giving child support and poor, it’s about to get worse.

Some humour from /b/. Hehe.

The unintended side effects of divorce on ballroom dancing.

Steyn on the feds controlling children’s lunches.

I might have linked this before, but it bear repeating. Paul Krugman is a dishonest hack.
Related: An excellent chart comparing the Reagan recovery and the Obama “recovery”.

Peak oil is the BS of dishonest hacks.

The IRS sells your private information for only $35.

The implications of being able to genetically identify potential future criminals.

12-year-old shoots home intruder. Props to her.

(H/T: SDA, Instapundit, Maggie’s Farm, SSM, Alpha Game)

Lightning Round – 2012/08/29

Patheos discovers the fruits of feminism and they don’t like it.
Related: Feminists should not lie to young women.
Related: HUS also responds to the Rosin piece that started all this.
Related: The hollow fruits of feminism.

Religion makes you beta. Not overly surprising, given the state of modern churchianity.

Masculinity and civilization.

The Red Pill for the manosphere: Each man must decide which is more important, love or sex.

If you marry, marry someone with a low partner count.

So, your parent’s divorcing decreases your life span by 5 years.
Related: “Parental divorce during childhood was the single strongest social predictor of early death.”
Related: The causes of divorce.

O’Rourke on the baby boomers. Excellent like most of O’Rourke’s stuff.

The real war is on children, not on women.

UMan provides a lessons on what girls like.

Cane with a some great satire on his previous Christian game debate.
Related: More on last week’s Christian game debate.
Related: SCA enters the Christian game debate with an excellent post.
Related: Vox advices has a Christian convert to game.

Why don’t men just get it?

Eye contact is important.

How not to be a racist: hehe.

A great piece on marriage.

Let’s have more teen pregnancy.

Why boys don’t read.

As a conservative who also listens to Rage Against the Machine, I found this to be very interesting.

Once you sell your soul once, it’s easy to sell it again.

Atheists demonstrate their open-mindedness.

And yet the socialists still want to have the government control the US’ and Canada’s resource industry. How stupid can they be?
Related: Socialized medicine in action.

I can’t believe that it took 7 years to find that standing in front of a bulldozer like an idiot makes you responsible for your own death. Stupid crusaders.

The former editor of the NYT admits to the NYT’s bias. Will wonders never cease?
Related: Jonathan Chait also admits to media bias.
Related: The leftist media enforces their bias.

Surprisingly, the NYT writes critically of single-motherhood. Unsurprisingly, the lack of “marriageable men” is blamed.
Related: A personal response by someone raised by a single mother.

Hey, slutwalkers…

This is the mainstream article of the week. Read it; it’s awesome satire and highly enjoyable. It’s got all the feminists, and other assorted idiots against it.
Related: Romney sounds like a decent fellow. Between this and the previous piece (read it) I think I might be coming to actually like Romney.
Related: The people who will be deciding the election. Oh my…
Related: The GOP does something right. Oh, yeah.

Student loans are a cancer.

To liberals, the real conservatives are the centrists.

The war on dihydrogen monoxide.

Paul Krugman is wrong? I think it would be more newsworthy if he was actually right.

(H/T: GL Piggy, Troglopundit, Maggie’s Farm, Althouse, Instapundit)

The Bookshelf: The Way of Men

The first book I read on my trip was Jack Donovan’s The Way of Man.

The book is a theoretical discussion about manhood and what defines a masculinity. In terms of writing style, the book is written in an engaging and clear manner. It reads well and communicates effectively without slowing down as theoretical books are often wont to do. It is an enjoyable read.

The first couple chapters  introduce the concept that “the way of men is the way of the gang”. Essentially, masculinity is defined through a man’s interactions within a small group of other men gathered together for resource acquisition and mutual security. Essentially, manliness was defined by man’s position in a small war band or hunting party.

From there he describes the four tactical virtues men that defines a man’s worthiness as a man within his gang: Strength, Courage, Mastery and Honour. He makes an excellent case for these virtues being the defining traits of masculinity and I would agree with him on his chosen traits. They represent what I’ve noticed masculinity is generally defined by.

After a discussion of the virtues, he writes of how “being good at being a man” differs from “being a good man”. The four tactical virtues are the virtues that define masculinity, on who demonstrates these virtues is good at being a man. Other virtues (piety, charity, temperance, righteousness, etc.) may make a man good, but do not necessarily make a man good at being a man. (I like the implicit acceptance of virtue ethics by this book).

This distinction is important and brings this book far above most other writings I’ve read on masculinity, which usually conflate being a man with the author’s own personal morality, often to results that don’t quite sit right. Christian writings on masculinity often conflate Christian morality for males with masculinity,excluding obviously masculine men who might not follow Christian morality from being a man. Game advocates often define masculinity through a male’s attractiveness to women making masculinity dependent on female approval and implicitly denying the masculinity of men who aren’t superficially psycho-socially dominant. Society as a whole usually either defines masculinity through anti-social thuggery, reducing masculinity to nothing more than the gratification of base urges and denying the masculinity of men dedicated to higher values, or the approved beta life path, making masculinity dependent on providing for women and denying the masculinity of those who don’t “man up”. It’s good to have someone define masculinity in a neutral way apart from the moral preconceptions of the author.

He then discusses the way of the gang in relation to civilization for a few chapters, with a chapter focusing on Rome in particular. As society becomes more civilized and peaceful the need for gangs decreases, so men  redirect their gang activities into simulated (ex. playing sports or games), vicarious (ex. watching sports or war movies), or intellectual masculine (ex. economic or political competition). Men will be content in civilization as long he has sufficient redirection for gang activities, but increasingly our society is limiting men’s opportunities for participation in masculine activities.

He illustrates with a comparison of the Way of Women and the Way of Men through a comparison of  Bonobo and Chimpanzee society, respectively. If men become too decadent and their opportunities for gang activities too few, civilization will become a “Bonobo Masturbation Society” where meaning and purpose are replaced by “fun”.

These chapters are excellent at explaining why men are in a crisis of meaning in our modern society despite being more prosperous than ever.

The last few chapters summarize the consequences of the previous discussions. Men have to choose whether to have civilization with access to a meaningless world of pleasure and fun, the Bonobo Masturbation Society, or a more meaningful society of the Way of Men. He discusses how reasserting the Way of Men is impossible in a democratic society and requires the collapse of prosperity, security, and globalism.

These chapters are rather bleak, as the only solution given to the modern malaise besetting men is collapse, but I can’t argue that it’s not true.

He then gives some advice on starting your own gang. This last chapter is the only part that may be practically applicable to your life, the rest of the book being a theoretical and philosophical discussion of masculinity.

Overall, this book is an excellent exploration of masculinity, and I think Donovan gets everything exactly right. This is simply the best book on masculinity I have read.

Recommendation:

If you are at all interested in men’s issues or masculinity (and you are reading a manosphere blog, so you probably are) or if you’ve ever wondered how to be man, read this book. In itself, it won’t really help you become a better man or improve your life, but it will give you the theory necessary to understand what you are missing, so you can begin to find solutions for yourself.

Buy the E-book here for only $5.99