Artful Prudence

The Dangers of Rejecting Yourself

Rejection can feel unbearable, but there’s something worse: rejecting yourself out of fear of being rejected. A harsh refusal can shatter your ego, leaving you disoriented, perhaps even in shock. It undermines the image you hold so dearly, the self-image you rely on for comfort and stability. Most people cling to a specific perception of themselves, and when that perception is jolted, it causes a disturbance, a sense of irritation that often turns into resentment.

The anger that arises from rejection often carries self-reproach. We feel we’ve missed an opportunity, and that sting is sharper when the rejection is our own fault. We don’t like to miss chances. Opportunities slip by, and when we miss them through our own mistakes, it can feel like a painful reminder of our inadequacies. This, in turn, makes it harder to enjoy the pleasures life has to offer, because those pleasures are often blocked by the hurdles of self-doubt and embarrassment. But it’s only by overcoming those imperfections that we gain the experience needed to succeed. Our flaws point to areas where we need improvement, and it’s through addressing them that we build the strength to move forward, from failure to success.

The Bite of Rejection

Very few people enjoy being rejected. Even those who claim to relish it still feel its sting. What matters is how you respond to it. The way you process and judge rejection determines how deeply it affects you. Much of our suffering comes from our minds. Often, we make things worse by imagining a worst-case scenario that turns a simple setback into a nightmare. Why add more misery to an already painful experience? Rejection doesn’t need to destroy your peace. The key is learning not to let others’ actions dictate your emotional state. If you can cultivate a mindset that remains calm in the face of external chaos, you will preserve your inner tranquility. This is the essence of self-mastery—a stoic, calm approach to life’s setbacks. Such a person doesn’t react with protest or complaint. Instead, they face life’s challenges with dignity and resilience, conquering their passions and staying present.

Your ego can be a tool to help you grow, but when unchecked, it can undermine your best qualities. To truly flourish, you must temper your ego with humility. Strength is most effective when it’s paired with courtesy and modesty, which allow others to see and appreciate your virtues without feeling threatened.

Facing Disillusionment

The truth is, we fear rejection because it reminds us of our own shortcomings. Whether it’s a woman rejecting us or a job offer being declined, rejection forces us to confront our vulnerabilities. It brings clarity to things we’ve ignored or denied. That clarity often leads to disillusionment, as we suddenly see things as they are, without the comforting veil of illusion.

This process of disillusionment, though painful, is necessary for growth. It’s a form of expansion—an awakening that only comes after suffering. Life, it seems, requires a price for the wisdom and pleasure we seek. Rejection is bitter, but if we don’t face it, we remain trapped in the dark, unable to recognize its lessons. Only through direct experience can we fully understand and overcome rejection’s grip.

Rejection is Not as Bad as It Seems

Once you’ve faced rejection, you’ll realize it’s not as terrible as you imagined. As you grow accustomed to its sting, it loses its power. You begin to reclaim the control you thought you lost, not because you didn’t have it, but because you hadn’t actualized it. We often doubt ourselves because we haven’t tapped into our full potential. Rejection forces us to confront that uncertainty and recognize our hidden strengths. It’s a crucial test, revealing our abilities and helping us overcome self-doubt.

I speak from experience: I’ve allowed my own fears and insecurities to turn peaceful situations into sources of anxiety. I let the fear of rejection overwhelm me, only to discover that my worst imaginings weren’t as catastrophic as I thought. The struggle, as exhausting as it was, helped me grow. It pushed me to confront my limitations, revealing the strength I had all along.

The Metaphysical Truth

In the end, rejection serves as a catalyst for self-discovery. It forces us to examine our own self-imposed limitations and provides the opportunity to transcend them. Life’s mysteries unfold in strange and often painful ways, but they are always part of a greater unity, a flow of events that lead us to deeper understanding. The key is not to lose ourselves in the noise of external influences—be it society, culture, or the expectations of others. True growth comes from within, and only by embracing our flaws and imperfections can we unlock our full potential.

In Conclusion

Rejection is not something to fear, nor is it something to avoid. It’s a natural part of life’s process. Don’t let it define you. Strengthen your ego to the point where it no longer reacts to every setback. Cultivate a sense of humility and honesty, accepting your imperfections, and using them as stepping stones to greater success. By doing so, you will turn rejection into an opportunity for growth and self-mastery.

Preface

Since I’ve never took the time to write a piece on my outlook with regards to the current state of red-pill, I thought it would be a good time to write a piece expanding on what I have already talked about in the past before I opened this blog, with the intention of making you consider a few alternate viewpoints, and the hope that you find some utility in these reflections. In general, I think there has been a bewilderment, a sense of untidiness accompanying the unfolding of the red pill, chiefly because a great deal of men are stumbling on it without any firm base or consciousness of the game they are inevitably playing, and so their perception and discernment are still quite juvenile in this respect. In my estimation, most men who are finding out about it still don’t know what to make of it; they are furnished with this foreign knowledge – they don’t know how to operate or manipulate it to fit their needs and wants. The reason for this is simple: they are inexperienced, they have a deficiency in practical knowledge, and they stumbled on the red pill precisely because what it aims to offer meets their aspirations. As a matter of fact, most men who seek the red pill are impoverished in some way or other, often that poverty relating to a shortage of women, or shall I say, a shortage of meaning.

Man’s Principal Motive

So, is it that man has strayed from leading a meaningful life that he stumbled upon the red pill, with the hope that sleeping with as many women as possible will settle his difficulties? or is it that he already leads a meaningful life yet still faces a recurring difficulty with women that he believes chips away at his contentment, knowing that he can amount to something greater had he found an answer to his problem? In my outlook, the greater majority of men reflect the former, and they come with a very particular frame of mind – their sole intention is not to uncover their purpose and actualise their fortune, but rather to satisfy their pleasure-seeking. They are not looking for a favourable, masculine identity in pursuit of a skill they are intensely passionate about, that truly invigorates their life with a superior meaning – they are looking for a cope, but they are not conscious of it. Their cope is hedonism, or shall I say, sensual gratification; an unending flow of it. And is there anything more destructive, looking far into the future, than a man who’s reduced himself to a wretched, capitulating his seed to satisfy his craving at every turn, without stop, indifferent to moderation, gladly tending to indulgence.

This is the typical man who stumbles on the red-pill. After he’s done his rounds of reading the sidebar and the likes, he goes out of his way to spend two thirds of his time trying to figure out the mysteries surrounding the nature of the feminine. Interestingly, this young man starts lifting weights, fixing his diet and refining his attire, all with the principal aim of appealing to a broader pool of women, and ultimately, with the conclusive aim of bedding as many of them as he can bear without suffering that sting of rejection. However, one must ask himself a direct question – is he adopting these habits for himself or for others? when you get down to it, why is he going out of his way to reorder his way of life? And more importantly, what is the underlying incentive behind his amends? Is he doing it for himself, because he has a bona fide care toward his potentiality, or is he doing it to make someone else feel good because he doesn’t feel at ease with himself? This is a fundamental question any man should ask himself before diligently tackling the red-pill and everything it supplies man.

Red Pill as a Toolbox

The red pill is a means for man to find out the truth about women’s inherent nature and a man’s inherent capacities to orient himself toward dominance. But more than that, it is a means for him to acquire a firm understanding of sexual strategy, to learn how to play the game to his benefit and acquire the ability to distinguish the real from the fake in order to lead a life free of slavery, ignorance, undue compliance, etc. But that isn’t everything that the red pill advocates, of course, it also furthers the idea of establishing an impetus for your life, to have something to do, so that you don’t fritter away with mediocrity in pursuit of vanity. But the latter is often neglected, as most men join the ‘manosphere’ to resolve an insufficiency tied to women, that is, to fill the void of scarcity that unsettles their urges. And that being their dominant sentiment, they lose themselves in the process, as they commence with a mistaken frame of mind and yield unsatisfactory results. In truth, the red pill is nothing more than a toolbox for man, not an ideology that you cautiously and unreservedly adhere to; you single out whats useful and discard what isn’t. Contingent upon context and period, everyone makes use of the tools that best fit his own frame of reference, preserving enough openness of mind to be willing to adopt new tools when the spirit of the time demands it.

Man should not, therefore, study red pill material with the sole purpose of sleeping with more women, this is nothing more than a degenerate cope that should, if you are to lead a noble existence, be discarded and replaced with a spirit of inquiry, so that you have the agency to find out what it is you want to do with your life – that’s ever more important and always comes before knowing how to deal with women. This is not to say that one should not become sensible of the ‘game’ per se. Actually, that is a necessary building block that comes a little later. However, unless you have established your worth and found your place in the world as a man of higher worth, you should cease entertaining the notion of becoming a master at playing the ‘game’, as there are, I believe, serious dangers to eluding purpose for pleasure, denigrating your value in pursuit of becoming experienced with women. Think about it, if you were to follow the trail to its end, and gathered the experience you sought, and slept with a desirable amount of women; what happens after that? what’s left of you? have you built anything that cuts across the hedonism that you so uncontrollably yearned for and pursued with relentless passion? Though sexual strategy is amoral, neither good nor bad, the noble man should caution himself against the ruins of promiscuity while being conscious enough of the game he’s playing, and at that, who he is playing with. Let us be truthful with oursevles, what is more noble; being ever discriminating and exacting with your relationships, or being haphazard and cheap, with a careless ‘anything goes’ attitude, driven always by that blind sexual appetite? The red pill grants you an advantage over the herd, in that it teaches you how to handle and control women to your benefit and hers, but that shouldn’t be a reasonable justification to misuse the wisdom in order to satisfy your inner weakling that longs to drool over every platter that comes in view.

Women as a Complement

Oddly, many men become more desperate rather than stoic when they’re granted the knowledge, and so with that understanding they swiftly discount their composure and restraint. Sadly, this is true of many men. The red pill will not solve your inward, hidden desperation, it often gives you a reason to exacerbate it. Thus, unless you learn to control your urges and tend to moderation, you will feel very much overpowered by forces that seem out of your control, even though they are within your sway. Unless man takes the intiative and conquers himself, he should at once stop trying to conquer women. No man who hasn’t conquered himself is fit to conquer women, and even if he endeavours to do so, he will in due course injure himself, as there are dire consequences that come with self-abandonment that appear only later – they are bitter, ugly and self-defeating. It is all-important to consolidate yourself, deeply and thoroughly, before trying to make total sense of said knowledge, that is, if you aspire to use it rightly and without running the risk of having it tamper with your character in ways so deplorable. It is helpful to remember that you become what you repeatedly practice, and if you find yourself practising a sham that causes inward discordance, you are inviting mayhem that is far uglier than being incompetent in dealing with women.

The red pill teaches, does it not, that women are nothing more than an accompaniment to an already fulfilling life – what are the implications of that? Well, one of the implications is that you should not treat a complement so lavishly so as to make her feel as if she is more than that. In general, a woman needs a man more than a man needs a woman, but a man has a very hard time bearing in mind his superiority over her, as the nature of his conditioning has convinced him that she is his equal, and that by portioning his power, he is making both himself and her a favour – this is a myth, and if you haven’t figured it out already, it has brought about a terrible collapse where male dominance is concerned. Man, being the dominant figure in the relationship, must consistently assume that role by nature of his being, the implication of that is thus; unless he destroys that insistent desperation and need for validation that lurks beneath the surface, he will repeatedly repel her, making her feel more superior than she actually is, shifting the power dynamic between the man and the woman – this is how women grow more controlling and masculine, as there’s no man to restrain them and assume dominance. Their needs aren’t being met and thus their urge to submit turns into an urge to command a man who is assailable, compliant, and easy to deceive. A lack of dominance in a man tends to manifest as a contemptible effeminacy, a vulnerability that makes the woman resent him by lack of spine, authority and self-respect.

Loss of Respect

In this way, man has shattered his solidity and lost her respect by disrespecting himself – this is the point at which man brings the worst in a woman, irrespective of how gracious, feminine and modest she was toward him – her cruelty will make its way up, and for the first time, he will discern a side of her that was quite foreign to him, and he will wonder to himself why her behaviour has took such a drastic turn. Unable to control himself, he’s lost all sense of sight. You see, a man, after having supposedly swallowed the pill, thinks himself fit for leading a relationship and guiding a woman. Having never been in a proper relationship and believing, by his arrogance, that he’s figured out all there is to figure out, he misleads himself with the supposition that there is no encumbrance to pursuing a relationship. Keeping a woman and having her respect you for a prolonged time is harder than merely attracting and sleeping with her. Unless you have a sufficient degree of emotional mastery, prolonged intimacy starts to undermine your frame control – you become unduly emotional, she catches on it, then you’re in troubled waters. Soon enough you realise that you weren’t half as fit as you thought you were for a relationship. You didn’t consider the extent to which you will be emotionally tested. Not to mention, the true shades of her character start to make themselves clear to you, and your preconceived notion of who you idealistically think she is starts to collide with who she’s turned out to be.

Nonetheless, this is not to suggest that a man unfit for love should never, under any circumstance, experiment with commitment until he has ‘plenty’ of experience. I believe a great enduring lesson is known when a man suffers a terrible heartbreak – a transformative experience that coerces him into a new perspective and attitude, assuming the agony and trauma was sharp enough. You often don’t know how much upheaval is needed to shock you out of your eternal sleep, and one blow may not be enough to kindle lasting change. On the one hand, you have people who are quick to catch on to their insufficiencies when shit really hits the fan, but on the other, you have incurable fools who demand multiple blows to the heart for them to show signs of life. Experience is a ruthless teacher, but in that cruelty lies the most rewarding transformation of masculine essence. No one wants to get burned by the blazing fire, but like getting rejected, there is no more useful experience than immediate contact with a hard reality. It is not so reasonable to try and avoid a rejection, for instance, or carry a continual dread of losing a woman, for that is a rather short-sighted frame of mind. Consider the big picture, what will be the consequences of losing a woman you care about, or having her betray your loyalty? These are tough questions to consider, but the upshots of such ‘ugly’ experiences can almost always be wielded to your ultimate betterment. Too much ego will always, and I mean always, make loss harder than it actually is. An inflated self-importance always aggravates defeat, as it usually stems from scarcity and insecurity more than abundance. Let us, then, not invite betrayal or disrespect, but let us be assured and confident that even if these were to occur, the experience itself will be of great utility to us, because men lose only when they have admitted defeat. So long as man has his eyes open and his vigour intact, he never loses, he either discovers or prevails, irrespective of how tragic the circumstance is. This is superior ‘outcome independence’.

In Closing

To avoid making this piece too exhaustive, I’d like to close with a few conclusive remarks. The red pill should be taken with a grain of salt, not as verbatim and with a serious compliance. Further, the intention with which you proceed makes a sizeable difference. Whether by pleasure-seeking or self-respect, your leading sentiment will determine how practical and convenient the teachings will be. Unless you have thoroughly thought about what you want to do with your life, having discovered a higher aim for your existence, that is, a ‘why’ to live, spending your precious time learning sexual strategy to indulge in hedonism is an invitation for disaster. If you haven’t sorted yourself out, don’t distract yourself, don’t search for copes in an attempt to forget your difficulties. Man’s chief obligation, above all, is to immediately take responsibility of all the things that undermine his fortitude. That being said, an inability to carry your burdens and rectify your problems renders you incapacitated, half a man with a feeble spirit.

If conflict is unavoidable, force your enemy to fight on your terms. Target their Achilles heel. Make the war cheap for you and ruinous for them.

When an object tempts you, it reveals your bigotry and narrow-mindedness. You focus on the likely advantages and barely see the trials ahead.

When things go wrong, you grow depleted. Flaws emerge. New, unplanned difficulties arise, leading to further losses and sacrifices.

The stronger your desire for the reward, the more carefully you must examine what it demands. Beyond obvious costs, account for the invisible ones: the goodwill you might squander, the bitterness of defeated rivals, the time it will take, the strain on your allies, and more.

History is littered with the corpses of men who ignored the true cost of their ventures. Guard yourself against unnecessary conflict if you want to avoid their fate.

When battle grows tedious and eagerness fades, when strength and resources are drained, your enemy will regroup and strike. Even smart commanders struggle to reverse the collapse once it begins.

The true master of war wins where victory is easy.

To be unfailing is to act only when success is certain, and to defeat enemies already weakened.

A fundamental law of war: attack weaknesses with your strengths.

No force is entirely powerful or entirely weak. Every army, no matter how formidable, has flaws; every weak force has hidden strengths. Even size can be a vulnerability.

Force your enemy to reveal their weaknesses. Fatigue will expose even more. New cracks open the way for you to dominate. By knowing both your strengths and limits, you can destroy any enemy.

Don’t assume abundance guarantees success. Excess often creates its own poverty. It’s not what you have that matters, but how you use it.

True protection is good judgment. It means having the strength to say “No,” even when “Yes” would seem generous. And to say “No” sparingly, but firmly.

The true warrior focuses on what he controls—his skills, his tools—and uses them creatively. By adapting to time and circumstance with foresight, he outlasts his enemies and wins the long game.

A good plan without the means to execute it is worthless. Start with what you have. Hannibal triumphed because he understood reality: his army, his enemy, the land, the weather. He adapted his goals to fit his means. Versatility is constant adjustment.

Spiteful intentions spoil excellence. Knowledge, used bitterly, only deepens the harm.

The clever player never moves the expected piece—and never the piece his opponent hopes for.

All things praised too highly at first tend to fall short and invite disappointment.

The daring endure hardship, and by their goodness and bravery, they meet fortune and are crowned with victory.

Keep a stock of witty sayings and heroic tales, and know when to use them. A well-timed joke wins more hearts than a stiff lecture.

The secret to persuasion is knowing what people value most. If you know a person’s burning need, you hold the key to their will.

Study their character, speak to their obsession, and you will control their strongest emotions. This is the surest path to ruling their will.

Passion brings significance. Touched by greatness, it creates monumental power.

The discreet avoid drawing attention to themselves, even when acting nobly. The wise command respect without grasping for it. If you beg for attention among the wise, you expose yourself as a fool.

Know which cards to play. The cheapest card that wins today is worth more than the expensive one that failed yesterday.

To give pleasure to others is the highest virtue of kings. It wins trust and lasting loyalty.

Goodwill isn’t enough. Make sure no one blocks your progress.

And above all: never mistreat your friends. Don’t demand from them what they are unwilling to give.

I desire to save you needless and undesirable trouble by firing your way a heavy dose of reality to spur your contemplation. Don’t stroke a fallen angel as she’s perfectly able to make you feel singular, momentous, appealing. They say, don’t they, that you should never fondle with the devil if you don’t know what the consequences will be – to avoid playing with the captivating blaze of women driven by madness. This is harder than you think. For like women, men too like to tend to danger with an open fist. And where sexual desire is concerned, more so. When we gaze at the devil, that clever and illusory rogue, what we see are not the out-turns of yielding to her tempting double-dealings, but the high prospect of furnishing our urges. Our bigotry is doing the talking for us, and what we hear is but a figment of imagination. She has led you on so carefully, as she delicately laid down the snare and pulled the wool over your eyes.

Does it matter at that point whether your eyes are unlatched or closed shut, you’re fancying grand portraits of amusement, indulgence and stimulation, and you don’t feel regretful for having been sweetly bamboozled into a contrived manner of thinking that keeps you on edge, hopeful, but ultimately thwarted and defeated. And you know, don’t you, the perils of hope, and how ruinous its effects can be in the midst of tragedy and tribulation. Hopefulness succeeds only when it is casted under the light of mindfulness, and if you grow too dim, no amount of hope will recover a situation you don’t truly see or care about. To live in expectancy is to await disappointment, for to anticipate is to assume you have sufficient knowledge and total certainty of what lies in wait. More often than not, that chronic expectation is mingled with a shudder of fearful doubt, and so to give up your expectancy would demand that you part with your anxieties. But what makes you think you’re ready to stop trying, to renounce the vanity in worry and live so freely, so honestly, that none of life’s horrors can phase you? Such a freedom comes at a cost, however, and that cost is often disorientation or a loss of one’s bearings.

Kafka says, “I am free and that is why I am lost.” In other words, the liberty many earnestly seek has unforeseen outcomes many decide to leave unnoticed, and man being so miserable in nature, he many a time can’t put up with a way of life so unconstrained that it leads him off course and into sin. On the one hand, man is anxious because he’s frustrated by obligation, longing for relief; yet on the other, when released from his chains, he’s confused and wretched for a different reason – moving from one edge to another, he can’t determine where the congruous centre lies. Thus, he incessantly knocks around, swerving and getting lost in an attempt to find himself, even though he doesn’t know how himself looks like, which always leave him wandering around with a sense of poverty. His life becomes a heavy digression, for he starts to notice for himself that whether he is handcuffed or undone, he is still cursed by a feeling of discontent. When you furnish the damned with too much liberty, you don’t make them happier; only more miserable. A wretched can’t be on the loose, unconfined; you worsen his shape and heighten his misery. Don’t be so certain that freedom is a universal cure, for doing so is presuming that everyone bears enough composure to keep it under control and reap its benefits. This is not the case, and for most people, it grows into a shameful agency that loudens their decadence and further dilutes their already pitiful shape. Perhaps for the herd, subjugation is more worthwhile than liberty, and liberty more worthwhile to the anomaly who, by his righteousness and solidity, can wield his independence to serve not only himself, but those who stand in need of his influence.

Maybe your object should not be to keep a tight rein on your anxiety and desperately try to abolish it. The truth can be more subtle, in that you learn to capitulate your necessity to preside over it, and instead allow it to transpire as it may. Then your life is not one constant grapple with a feeling you can’t ever keep up with – then you can learn to play the witness who, among the confusion, can watch without drawing half-witted, baseless suppositions that determine his leading sentiment. Impressions come and go, but your perception does not. Adapt yourself in such a way that passing impressions don’t hold enough right to unsettle you. In my estimation, this is what good judgement is all about; accurately distinguishing the empty from the solid without reducing yourself to a poor bastard in the process. Often, it is that illusory sentiment of emptiness that arouses anxiety, for you are not absorbed in anything, distracted by copes. You are simply there, with yourself, and nothing else. That lack of content troubles you, because you remember that you have been running away from yourself, trying hard to keep yourself busy, so you leave behind your desolation and find some restfulness in the amnesia that comes from conscious interference. We are all perpetually interfering with ourselves to bury our disquiet and immerse ourselves with as much leisure as possible.

Boredom is both the fiend and the genius, for it haunts our delusions and preys on our timidity, but it too opens up a door to he who is forbearing and eager to know about stillness. The monotony of boredom is rather riveting, for it can turn out to be a most creative and original endeavour if carefully attended to and looked closely. First it is accompanied by feelings of intense inconvenience, but once lived through, by feelings of genuine strangeness and tranquility. This is partly why remaining still in solitude is a confrontation with discomfort for most people, despite the practice being free from hardship; it is precisely by our inability and unwillingness to sit, do perfectly nothing and be fond of it that we are so unsettled within ourselves and have the insistent craving to do something. How about you learn to revel in nothingness for a while, so that somethingness doesn’t drive you away from yourself? Most people look stable outside, but are faintly and hopelessly wobbly within, as they have never searched for inward soundness through attending to their highly strung inclinations and aversion to boredom. If you desire mental soundness, you require inward silence, and the way you accomplish the former is by accustoming yourself to exploring, patiently and without making a lot of noise, the wilderness and backwoods of your own inward awkwardness.

That’s exactly why tedium is concealed insight, it has a brilliance to it that first confounds you, then astounds you. If we are to seek higher knowledge, we must be prepared to suffer quietly the ramifications of our own inessential distates, that have, more often than not, added extra flesh to our difficulties and embroidered our concerns to such a degree that no amount of rationalization is sufficient to extricate us from their hallucinatory force. What I am pointing it is basic in nature, but a society driven by serious abnormalities must turn back to its roots to find out how estranged it has come to be. For once the individual is alien to himself and others, he’s everlastingly running into himself and nurturing a bitter hostility. This unending inward disagreement makes him loathe, by a menacing distance and projection, the people that encompass his environment, irrespective of how worthy and moral their natures are by comparison to his own. What he sees is not what they are, but what he is – if it is hatred that drives his impulses, it is that which tinges his perception and spurs him to unearth that one abominable quality about them that makes them fallible.

There is much resemblance between isolation and independence, the latter often being the consequence of the former. Many are inclined to tell you that isolation is dangerous and may prove destrutive to your mental well-being; they will go the extra mile to talk you into avoiding it, because they know, from intimate experience, how terrible a thing it appears to them, as if it has the irreversible power to completely strip them of their will to survive. In my experience, this couldn’t be further from the truth, for what I have learnt amidst the suffering and chaos of isolation is enduring, illuminating and of great use to my higher intention. But for a while, I have always had a lurking suspicion; that perhaps the insight imbued in aloneness is, more often than not, failed to be seen by people’s unrestrained lack of forbearance and open-mindedness when faced with a most challenging divorce. In other words, most people never get to thrust out enough into the dark and hidden waters of the unfamiliar to rise above the common threshold and cast themselves in a novel, almost unusual light.

Many of us are summoned at many points during our life, we are spurred on by a higher power to take the initiative in a set direction, we get what is called the ‘call to adventure’. How many are conscious enough to pick it out when it reveals itself? How many are conscious and courageous, to not only recognise a favourable opportunity, but also to swiftly seize and leverage it to realise new heights? I think mediocrity suffers a serious disease; namely, that the average man is not only driven by a baseless fear that misleads and betrays him, but by his unmindfulness, he misses everything advantageous that unfolds in his life, hardly using it to cultivate and enrich his current state. Moved by his interminable and persistent dread, promising chances that invite him to enter solitariness and shoot up are turned down; without knowing anything whatsoever of its implications and effects, he blindly leans onto his preconceptions and remains fixated on them with his life. A preconception rooted in a lack of knowledge is of little use, and the sooner you realise a false impression, the more likely you are to unknot yourself from its adverse consequences. And if truth be told, isn’t mediocrity one grand misapprehension that perpetuates itself, simultaneously full of pity and blind of its own difficulty and deficiency. What I observe in the common man is a shared damnedness and docility, as if reality is materialising before him and there’s nothing he could possibly do to affect it, except comply with it until it reduces him to ashes. Moreover, consider man’s fondness for comfort, and how it pleasantly lures him into immobility and worse, lifelessness.

That tragic inanimateness is man’s nemesis, for it gradually wears him out and destroys everything he established, while quickly shrinking his unrealised potential. And once man’s soul is completely sapped, no amount of affirmative encouragement will be helpful, as by then he has already made up his mind and unfortunately, found some ease in his dreary, unpleasant state. Often, man is unhappy but forgets he is so, and raw, unfabricated reality becomes so insufferable to swallow that he greatly believes he has no other answer but to remain condemned to slavery, deliberately yet unconsciously hiding away and covering that base ruin he cowers at and despises. We have all, at some point, slipped into some near form of lethargy, where all we want to do is wallow in our pity, pamper oursevles with harmful pleasures and quench our appetites. But we shall not forget an inarguable and evident truth: the cyclical nature of things occasionally demands that we tumble hard to our death – this is the bitter aspect we deliberately keep away from – for during that descent into madness, you are given the chance to be renewed, then consolidated.

This bitterness or acidity of life is not only all-important, but of the essence. For without that momentary discontent and indignation, the sweetness of living would be compromised and our sincere eagerness would quickly turn into incessant tedium. A life free from hardship is one occupied by monotony, and since variety is the spice of life, one must live through not only sweet glory, but bitter defeat; then he knows something of thankfulness, contenment, kinship. Man then comes full circle; on the one hand, the bitter teaches him to contend with hardship to solidify his nature; on the other, the sweet teaches him to acknowledge in gratitude where he came from, nudging him to preserve a great humility and as much as possible, a lack of vanity. This, then, is man’s chief object: to give himself totally to aloneness, growing so familiar with such a state that he begins to seek it more than tremble at it. This apparent loneliness will inform him of the worth of quietness, the sense in peace, and the independence in becoming self-standing. For the first time, he will savour the liberty in renouncing helpless reliance and having as a goal the desire to make strides and prosper in the direction of his aims; skywards.

Ultimately, man’s ascendancy, in spite of its many deterrents, is glorious beyond ideology, belief, and contention, an admirable demonstration of heroism, man-power, and judgement. And there’s but a few cases that move me more than seeing a man who came from an unfortunate scarcity of resources; endured poverty and by his determination and despair, trounced all shortcomings and triumphed in the most exemplary and manly fashion. To perceive a man that came from the very bottom – powerless, weak, vulnerable – and to see him shoot up and gracefully climb up the ladder with all his might; that is a most heartening experience that I shall adore and revere forever, a testimony of his thorough conviction, toughness of character and sheer will. These are the lives of men we should honour and commemorate, for their spirit and attitude is the paramount display of man’s inestimable greatness – the same greatness that lies within each individual man, and though each man has differing capacities and abilities, each embraces a worthy paragon that can be a meaningful and telling contribution to civilisation. Now, whether he believes that to be accurate or not is contingent upon his judgement and understanding, but that doesn’t take away from his aptitudes and potentiality.

Today, we are living in a time of a most menacing baseness, where the most impermissible and dishonourable acts of wickedness are not only acceptable, but inexplicitly endorsed and advocated by a society so unsure of itself, that it hardly pays heed to its own terrible downfall. Indeed, these sins are championed with a detrimental and all too injurious incentive in mind, but who cares about all that, anyway? When man relinquishes his power and carelessly pursues the path of self-gratification, pleasure, and corruption, he no longer concerns himself with how he is being exploited by a society that evidently doesn’t care about his robustness and strength. With the rise and looming popularity of pornography, onlyfans, and the likes, we have thrashed out an all-time low, a prevalent tragedy among young, effeminate men who have been undressed, exposed and abused under the veil of ‘progress’, thoroughly stripped of their honour, integrity, purity, cleanliness and general essence. The adverse effects of masturbating to porn couldn’t possibly be more stressed – really, what porn is doing to the average young man is more catastrophic than you would like to think.

Not only does it deprive him of sensation, deaden his sexuality, tear down his responsibility and wreck his frame of mind, but it also alienates him, deceives him, dispossesses him, and ultimately puts him in chains and leaves him dying in the privation of hopelessness, foolhardiness and an imperceptive nihilism owing to his undiscipline, immoderation and pleasure-seeking. Pornography has brought out the worst in man, and especially in the weak man who never suffered the burden of composure or restraint and always appeased himself through following the path of least resistance; the comfortable and immediately accessible means that compounds his difficulties, weakens his self-possession, and paralyses him by sensory disruption and provocation of an ungovernable anxiety. Instead of coming to terms with his ugliness and facing rejection head on like any gallant man out in the wilderness, learning some self-restraint and actualising his inclinations to his greater benefit, he decides to disregard all potential goodness and follow a degenerate and ungodly path, always synonymous with the aimless, the empty, the purposeless, the vain. If it’s cheap and easy, it’s probably shameful. Anything that brings shame to your name is not only antagonistic, but undermining and unfavourable. There is nothing more antagnostic to the stout man than the careless pursuit of busting his life-force to satisfy his own self-indulgence – one of the most despicable forms of self-abandonment known to man. The weak man is not concerned with the preservation of his own power, as the strong man is, he is mostly concerned with the preservation of ecstasy, of permanent gratification; that is the great danger.

Would you want your son to be devoted to incessantly watching erotica on the internet, wasting his life away with no object in mind, so totally impulsive that even when he tries to turn away from it, he finds himself obsessing over it like an addict enduring withdrawal. Really, can’t you see the absurd dejectedness in that, the dismal ruins of his psychology? We are imasculating men of their essence and we are preying on them until they all turn impotent, powerless, and lame enough to be worth nothing aside from servitude. We are stupefying their manhood, we are turning wolves into thirsty domesticated dogs that obey everyone except themselves and whose only objective is to stifle their urges and serve the devilish scheme of those who are disregardful toward their betterment. You see, the price we pay for being outrageous is being of service to a devil that is very apathetic towards our maturing and all too compelling in dangling a carrot in front of our mouth to get us under his wing; to oversee our base desires and carefully and subtly direct us towards them, yet keeping us ignorant that he is doing so.

Consequently, watching pornography is precariously fondling with satan, while proving unfaithful to divine nature. If you don’t think degneracy is innately satanic, look around and attentively observe the intense derangement of modernity – the insanity, frenzy, hysteria, outlandishness, and freakishness that drives the young ages. It’s abnormal and simulated, sick and deviant, inhuman and neurotic. And it seems to me that all this lewdness is accompanied by a lack of sensitivity, a sincere lack of enlightenment and sophistication stemming from grief, misfortune, resentment, mistreatment and unconscious and traumatic trickery. When you perceive such perpetual filth all around you, does it still amuse you how such a lost cause strayed from itself and then found itself binding to the coarseness and obscenity of hollow self-stimulation? A society so hell-bent on masochism and hedonism, with a fiercely impassioned liking for sadism and cruelty, as if to compensate for the soreness of their wounds, as if to respond and put up a fight against their own continuance and defy those who can unravel the music. Those who seek to rebel against the good for their perceived higher good, which is actually a lesser evil, are nothing more than discomposed people with a necessity for non-compliance. What they care about is not uprightness, but habitual rebellion against the unexceptional or conventional, even if the unexceptional is superior to the side they are fighting for – it matters but a little, for they find satisfaction in the act of going against the grain, regardless of how sensible or insensible it may be.

Further, they are not sure of their ideas, they are only half-sure, and that is why they are dumbfounded and at sea with themselves. These young men, filled with promise, are throwing away their seed because they have nothing better to do, if they did have anything more worthwhile, they would quickly realise that such an indulgence is lifeless precisely because it strips them of their force. Man must know that if he’s not willing to suffer for his pleasures, he will suffer a greater form of suffering; namely, the suffering of little meaning, the suffering succeeding abandon, decadence, and overindulgence. You must not only take hold of your direction with a firm hand, but you must also totally abandon everything that is causing you to abandon yourself. Think for a moment, sit by the table, ponder the ‘why’ behind everything you’re blasting, how disrespectful you’ve been toward your good, how irresponsible you have grown with your amusements. All vulgar pleasures that quickly make you resent yourself are the most humiliating, dishonourable and unspeakable – they will urge you to fall asleep, in culpability, unease and annoyance. Then, once you’ve arisen, they will compel you to reconcile; a trial of character that distinguishes the firm from the frail.

You can toss off your life away, or you can decide to stop abusing yourself, restlessly, till the end of time and start to take care of yourself with a little concern for the future that’s approaching you. The young man often has nothing to do with the future, and he’s still fixed to a past he feels bitter about, and so he neither has the foresight to fashion a desirable future, nor the capacity to be fond of the present; that is all-eternal, unchanging and gracefully fluid in nature. Whether we’d like to accept it or not, the tragedies and torments of the past can’t possibly be reconditioned to fashion our wants, needs, emotions, and bigotry; unless we learn to earnestly accept them, they will plague us far beyond their passing, and that is a serious disaster of its own. You must do away with ruinous copes to go on sustaining a meaningless existence, you must shift your gaze and have a good look inside, until you have horrified yourself enough by your hideous weakness that you don’t allow it to sweep over your light any longer, at once adapting your plan and vacating the prison you once harboured so helplessly and dependently.

The impotent man; defenceless, weak, incapable, he who imprisons himself without foreknowledge, he who, in spite of his impoverished state, still desires to be imprisoned, finding a sense of comfort in the gradual deterioration of his own sensitivity, strangth of character and individual influence. At which point, he is no longer individual; he’s split, segregated and disunited within. He divorced from his rectitude, alienated himself and passionately followed a path he’s irresolute and unsure he can rightly handle, without paying the ceaseless consequence of a violent, unquenchable appetite. This is why man ought to continually guard himself against the overwhelming pleasures that beset him and learn to restrain himself enough to be able to curb his urges without allowing them to destroy him or compel him to pursue a path which he knows is unworthy of his chief objective. But among such pleasure, purpose loses precedence in the weak; the flimsiness of the flawed is not straight enough to conceive its prime concern, what it perceives is the immediate pleasure that is wooing and hypnotizing, that it desperately craves and seeks, and that, once it stands before it, is unable to turn down.