And it begins

So, this is turning into a loooooong back and forth between me and Adam Piggott, concerning the aims of a man.

It was all prompted by a post Adam did based on an email he received from what was obviously a rather depressed guy. Adam has forwarded my post to him too. You can go to this post of mine and read the link on it to catch up if you had no idea what I am talking about.

Adam has since responded by a further post here.

And what has become clear to me is that there is a kind of communication gap, which I feel I am mostly responsible for as it is not a new thing.

I have a tendency to see something that to me is obvious but tends to be clearly less so to others, and so I will try to explain it from my perspective but invariably miss some apparently crucial bit of information that would allow the normal humans to understand my perspective.

Because it is not usually clear to me why so many others don’t see perspectives that are obvious to me, it tends to lead me to be more verbose in my writing than is probably good or necessary. Which also irritates me no end, yet if I write just what I think is necessary it comes across as mystical haikus by an insane person to most people. So I try to cover as many of the possible gaps as I can in the hope to transmit the crucial aspects that differentiate my view from that of most people. And it’s all mostly futile.

Nevertheless, it is good for me to practice trying to communicate better with the species of humanoids found on this planet, so here goes:

Succinctly, Adam effectively says:

• You need to make something of yourself before you attract the right woman for you.
• Everything else is details and you should focus on that first because chasing after some dreamgirl is pointless anyway if you aren’t amounting to anything as humans measure success.
• How you feel about it is irrelevant, this is how it works.

I’ll let him say if I have in any way misrepresented him.

My points instead are:

• Sure, materially speaking that is how it works most of the time, but (and it’s an important but):
  • Telling a depressed guy that has as an aim to be in a relationship, and who is relatively young, who has had little or almost no experience of women that that is just how it is and he should just buckle up and first make something of himself over the next few years, is unlikely to lead that man to anything positive.
  • Materially speaking is not just semantics; it means related to, involved with, tied to, the material world. That aspect that we as Christians are told to not indulge in.
  • The most important aspects of life are rooted in the metaphysical, not the material.
• Really, I thought I made it perfectly clear that what I thought was wrong with Adam’s “advice” was that it was not helpful. I didn’t say it was necessarily wrong, but it missed the point of how to motivate the man towards the things he desires.

I mean, the very paragraph where I explain this is taken by Adam to mean I am somehow contradicting myself, which I find astonishing, since it’s a clarifying statement of my critique.

As for “doing things” and leaving a mark before you get the girl, sure, that is generally how it works out, but it’s wrong to think that is how you motivate yourself. The motivation is the other way round. You want the girl? So become someone worthy of whatever fantasy girl you have in your head. 

That aside, the example Adam picked to possibly act as some evidence against my perspective is far from perfect since apparently the individual concerned may have worked as a male escort, and in any case was already known to police, and was a diagnosed schizophrenic. So not exactly your common incel. Frankly I find him irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Nor, did I say the man should try and get his dreamgirl before making something of himself. I simply stated that the motivation to make something of himself will not come from telling him to buckle down and carry on unloved and unknown and unsought for in his crushing loneliness for years before he can even think of getting into a relationship. Which essentially is what Adam’s advice boiled down to.

My whole point was that as a motivator, imagining who that woman might be and using that image as a motivator to get you to make something of yourself is far more effective even if you remain just as single and alone for the same length of time described above as years.

Lastly, while I accept that this is Adam’s and probably most people’s perspective on the matter, it is not strictly a fact that if you meet the right girl when you have not yet made your mark in the world you will either be in constant anxiety at the thought she might leave you, and/or that she would. The first serious girlfriend I had lasted 13 years and I had no mark to be made yet and very little money and I had left home with all I owned packed into a car to get as far from my parents as I could. My “fame” at that point was limited to the fact I was unafraid to get into physical fights regardless of numbers against me. That was really about it. In any case I never had any anxiety about being dumped, and in fact I was not. Ultimately it was me that walked away from that relationship.

I also find his statement that

Becoming worthy is conquering the world, which means making a man of yourself.

Rather telling and also amusing. I certainly never had to “make” a man of myself. I was born male and that is really all there was to it.

I have always been thoroughly unconcerned with the perspective of needing to be thought of as “manly” or “being a man” or such concepts. The simple reality is that I was born male, will live every second of my life as male and will die as a male. It is simply a fact. The obsession the Anglos tend to have with being thought of as “a man” is rather telling and a little Shakespearean. In a “the lady doth protest too much” kind of way.

And if one is that way inclined, that is, to worry about being perceived as, or needing to somehow become a man, then, yeah, I am sure one of the many neuroses such people have will certainly extend to the fear of their girlfriend leaving them. And I can see that manifesting too.

Which brings me full circle back to the depressed guy as well as Adam’s ending point about being “fixated” on finding a woman and that being wrong because it would determine the success or failure of your entire life, while it (the finding of the woman) not being entirely in your control.

There is, from my perspective, quite a bit of bad logic there.

Firstly, one could argue that being able to find the right woman and reproducing with her, for the majority of people, is the real measure of success or failure of your life. Unless you are Nikola Tesla, from any one man’s perspective, your line dying out with you is unlikely to improve mankind. There are always exceptions of course, but as a rule most people think their way and their thoughts would be best and thus, procreating and furthering such is a pivotal aspect of life. It is truly few who intentionally choose to not get married and not have children. Priests are among them. Most other men would consider it a failure at life.

Secondly, I don’t see the looking for the right person to make a family with as being a fixation at all. At least no more than I see breathing as a fixation. I hardly ever consciously think about breathing, yet it is absolutely necessary and I do it all day every day. In short, you can go about your day and do what needs doing and still be breathing, or looking for the right woman.

Thirdly, as I said at the start of my critique, the point is that there really is someone right for you out there, no matter what kind of freak you are. Obviously making yourself as appealing as possible, helps your chances, but even the misshapen, unfortunate gargoyles of life have someone out there that will love them. Knowing this is no more an obsession or a fixation than knowing that one day you will die.

Fourthly, not having something be entirely in your control is a far cry from having no control over it at all. Potentially any number of women I was with could have been suitable or “good enough” to make a life with. Regardless of that, due to my character (which may be seen as unfortunate by many, perhaps) I had certain requirements in a prospective mate that are very probably unreasonable. And yet, eventually, I did indeed find possible suitable candidates, and ultimately, even the precisely right one for me. And if someone like me can do it, believe me, most people can do it, but… you do need to apply yourself. In my experience of life, those men who focus on making money or a career and so on, in turn to eventually, get the dreamgirl, rarely accomplish it. It like guys who work like slaves for 40 years to get to retirement only to find their pension is worthless and you’re out of time and energy to even know what you wanted to do in the first place. The guy who goes through life naturally and who is always on the lookout for the right person, the way one might be on the lookout for a red Pontiac firebird, tends to more readily find it, and he’s usually less obsessive about it than the guy who wants to make a man of himself first, in order to later get the girl.

All of this simply to say that despairing at one’s loneliness and current state of the world, is not the way. And when a person confesses their despair in such a matter, the correct way to advise them, is hardly to double down on their need to be harsher on themselves and their already harsh (and erroneous) perception of the world. The way to motivate them to see the light is to remind them that one day, they will meet that woman, and they can approach life from the perspective that whatever unpleasant task you need to do today, is fine, because it advances you a little further along the path of when you do meet her, and perhaps also in terms of your material well-being.

That’s really the only point I made.

And now you see why writing is a love-hate thing for me.