Transcript
You grew up hearing that your kind is toxic. The implication was that it’s better to feminize yourself. You should express your feelings more, they said. You should be more “vulnerable.” Otherwise, they told you it’s time to step aside and let the girls be the heroes for a while, which wasn’t in your nature. Still, you suppressed your masculinity.
You were allowed to be an onlooker, a well-wisher, or an “ally.” Otherwise, you were asked to stay in the background as part of a grand social engineering experiment in which time, attention, and resources were lavished on female empowerment. More girls were portrayed as protagonists. More boys were portrayed as oafs or villains. I’m sure all this must have had some effect on your emerging self-concept.
As you withdrew from this collective castigation—the original sin of being male—you found comfort in a pair of rectangles, one big, one small. They would always be there for you: Call of Duty on the big screen; YouTube on the little screen. Each experience was a drip of silliness or ragebait or empty distraction: Dopamine, adrenaline. Dopamine, dopamine, adrenaline. On and on, and you were hooked. My generation let it happen.
Influencers who stayed afloat in that ocean of brain rot are more contrarians than role models. Some of you found Andrew Tate or Andrew Wilson and thought they were cool. Andrew Huberman was better. Nick Fuentes and his incel army? Not so much. Jordan Peterson got a few of you to stand up straight and clean your room. But others wanted you to become exactly what the social justice types always said you were.
Sadly, much of the manosphere that developed in the early twenties was a response to that great wave of social justice fundamentalism. But that became a self-fulfilling prophecy as this grotesque wave spread through the institutions. You should never allow them to define you, neither for cynical reasons nor out of spite.
Instead, ignore all of it. You have a job to do. You have to save the world. I’m not kidding. You have to save the world, and you won’t be able to unless you have your head on straight, your heart in the right place, and your shit together. So before you can save the world, here’s what you need to do:
First, dump your therapist. If you find yourself unable to cope without digging up your traumas every week, you are probably just enriching someone who benefits from your wallowing. People who tell you you’re a victim, whether of society or systems, are robbing you of your agency.
Second, find your footing. You are a man. You were born to build, and this requires the confidence of one standing solidly on two feet. You must be capable of looking in the mirror and seeing your entheos—your inner god. Unleash that god by becoming more sovereign in your spheres of influence. Start with yourself, then move to your friends, then your community, then the world.
Third, find your philosophy. Not just any philosophy. You need the kind that best answers the question “How are we to live?” Not relativism. Not nihilism. It should be philosophy that inspires and guides you to make meaning out of every precious grain of sand that falls through life’s hourglass.
Fourth, practice the virtues. There are social virtues like nonviolence, integrity, and compassion. And there are personal virtues, such as centeredness, courage, and resilience. Virtues are not abstract ethical reflections. They are moral practices. And that means you have to practice them as you would music or martial arts.
Fifth, find your fellowship. Surround yourself with others who are ready to spiral up and out. Spiraling up means continuous improvement. Spiraling out means exploring the edges of possibility. You want not only to become better but also to find wonder in your becoming. It’s crucial to seek out others willing to do the same. Personal growth can be stressful, but stagnation will leave you far worse off. Find the sweet spot between anxiety and ennui and draw strength from your brothers. And never stagnate.
Just know that men with grey in their beards have a lot to share with you, whether their wisdom or their scars. You can learn from our failures, seize your success, and then save the world.
This is your calling.
I won’t talk much about relationships today, except to say that demographics in the West are not looking good. We need the best among us to make families. I realize dating can be a minefield. Some guys are just out to put notches in the butts of their guns, while the rest swipe to rejection. But stay the course. The human race depends on it. Find someone with whom you can make a life. Be the man who commands respect and admiration, and seek the same in her.
Now, when it comes to saving the world, I’ll leave you with the most important advice I can think of: Find your mission. Then pursue it. If it’s a mission you share with others, that’s even better. Then you can form a fellowship to serve that mission. My chosen mission is pretty audacious. I want to liberate humanity from those who would manipulate, coerce, or control us. I want to help build a consent-based social order. You might have a different mission, but if you don’t, you’re welcome on the battlefield with me.
You see, the world’s problems are best solved when people are left free to solve them. It’s too easy to outsource our problems to faraway officials. It’s lazy and corrupt. Men of substance, virtue, and excellence build civilizations. And I hope you are one of those men.
