Petty Machiavellianism for the Modern World

     Psychologists are full of crap. Not completely full of crap, but largely full of crap. I think that the problem originates with the fact that most psychologists are leftists. And to be a leftist you must necessarily ignore the existence  of reality. This group then seeks to influence the lives of others. Also, leftism is a utopian ideology. That is, it is concerned not with what is, but what should be.

      These foundational problems lead the field of psychology to get behind some really stupid ideas. One stupid idea posited by the field is that passive aggressiveness is bad. They even have a diagnosis for people who frequently engage in passive aggressive behavior...as if it is a disease. The entry on Wikipedia states that passive aggressive behavior "is damaging". Really? It "is damaging"? As if that is a fundamental characteristic of passive aggressiveness. So if it is not damaging, is it not passive aggressive?

     Really, passive aggressiveness isn't good or bad. Its just a strategy, a way of handling things. I don't know where psychologists get the idea that things are always best handled in a direct manner. Frequently in life, dealing with things in an indirect manner is preferable to more direct means. In fact, when in doubt, use indirect methods. It is true when dealing with loved ones, for whom you have the best of intentions. It is even more true when dealing with your enemies.

     For the last 15 or so years, my wife has worked with a particularly horrible woman. When everyone else has to take on extra work, she is always able to get out of it. When the employees were given the more flexible shift options, this woman tried (and almost succeeded) in having the option taken away from everyone, because she didn't want to participate. She constantly makes life harder for others. For some reason, despite several changes in management, no one was willing to do anything about this problematic employee.

     But this woman has a weakness. She is obsessive compulsive and she hates change. Everything on her desk has a place and she can't stand to have people touch her stuff. Instead of waiting 15 years, hoping that management would some day do something about this woman, my wife & her coworkers could have taken matters into their own hands. Using passive aggressive methods they could have driven this woman into quitting.

     Since she is so particular about her work space, the other employees should have moved her stuff every time she left her desk. I'm not saying they should trash everything. That would have been too overt. But little things like moving a pen to the middle of her desk, slightly askew, would have bothered her. Or moving her horse figurine to the other side of the desk, moving her lunch to a different spot in the fridge, or turn her keyboard face down. These are childish things that wouldn't bother most adults, but they would have driven this woman crazy.  If she ever asked who was doing it, the whole office could then gaslight her by saying "No one went near your desk." After about a week of this type of behavior, this woman would have started looking for another job.

     Of course this does rise to the level of Cesare Borgia. But we live in crazy times and going around annexing neighboring cities isn't held in as high esteem as it once was. The fact is that this is the type of thing most people face in their daily lives. It may seem petty, but it is perfectly reasonable to handle a situation when management is unwilling. The methods above would have been effective in this instance and would have been deniable by the participants. That makes them doubly good. Another person in my wife's office who was willing to play petty office politics was able to screw my wife out of a major promotion and about a $20,000.00 per year pay raise. This person didn't gain anything by do so. Like the say, you either play or you get played. Who cares if someone thinks that being passive aggressive is bad. I'm sure Machiavelli would have approved.

Crazy Old Man Rants: The Metric System

     I don't frequently agree with liberals, but occasionally they are right about some things. For instance, you will sometimes hear a college aged libtard say something like, "Herpa derp, the rest of the world uses the metric system. We should too."

     I really couldn't care less about what the rest of the world does. Not caring about what the rest of the world did used to be one of the great qualities of Americans. And it seems that our recent decline (the last 15-20 years) is directly correlated with caring more about the opinions of the rest of the world. Nay, I say that caring about the opinions of other nations is at least a partial cause for our decline as a nation,

Remember kids, never listen to a hippie.

     We were the leaders, not just of the free world, but the entire world. We were the most awesome country in the world. People literally risked their lives to get to this country. Even now, after we've lost a large degree of our awesomeness, people will still risk death just to come to this country. Females who trek from Central America to the U.S. will most likely be raped along the way. Some will even be raped multiple times. But hey, apparently being raped and suffering a life time of herpes outbreaks is still better than living in Mexico.

     That's how awesome we were. We had such reserves of awesomeness that even after significant declines, we're still the best...even if just barely.

     But, on the point about America switching to the metric system, our little libtard friend is correct. But as usual, even when a liberal happens to be right about something, they will inevitably be right for the wrong reasons.

     Case and point, America should not switch to the metric system because everyone else is doing it. I don't care what they do. No, we should convert to the metric system because it is a better system than the one we have.

    Without Googling it, how many teaspoons in a tablespoon? How many quarts in a gallon? How many cups in a pint? How many yards in a mile?

    Now if you do know most of this, then I would guess that you do a lot of cooking and/or you're a woman. For some reason our current system makes sense to women. And that actually makes sense to me. Because women have an ability to understand the inanely complicated. I think this is because women are themselves inanely complicated and thus take to our current system of weights and measures like a moth to a flame.

     Now, I will demonstrate the superiority of the metric system. The base measurement for mass in the metric system is the gram. The two most used measures for mass are the gram (g) and the kilogram (kg).  There are 1000 grams in a kilogram. See how easy that was. Here's another: the base measure of distance is the meter. There are 1000 meters in a kilometer. Every thing is base 10, so it's easy to remember.

     But here is where Americans get tripped up, they say "Well, how many pounds are in a kilogram?" To which I say, "It doesn't matter."

     Do you go into the gas station, reach for a one liter of Pepsi, but then stop and ask, "How many ounces are in a liter?" NO! Do you know why? Because it doesn't matter.

     So if tomorrow you get the hankering to make some home made bread, and find that when you get to Wal-Mart all the flower is now sold in 1kg bags, don't ask "Well, how many pounds is that?" Because it doesn't matter. And besides it is 2.20462 lbs per kg. And I did know that from memory, even though I checked Google to make sure I was right. Originally I carried out the decimal two places further than Google. You have my permission to be impressed.

      And don't think for a second that I am proposing that there should be some kind of government mandate saying "From now on we will all use this." First of all, private companies have the right to use whatever system they want. And if you or I don't like it, then we can choose not to buy their stuff. Second, if the government were to get involved, then it would undoubtedly screw up what should be very simple.

     Instead I wish that companies, say Pepsi, would just start labeling their products with the metric system, and nothing else. No additional info telling how many ounces. Just the metric measurement. So we would have .5L, 1L and 2L bottles of Pepsi.

    I guess I would pass one law regarding the switch. I would make I legal to smack the crap out of anyone who dared to ask, "But how many ounces is that?"

What is Masculinity?

     I have thought about this a lot, and I think I may have actually figured it out.

     I could just tell you, but internet "gurus" say that search engines hate short posts.

     So first let's talk about what masculinity is not.

     PUA gurus and their man whore followers say, or I sense a strong implication, that a high notch count is manly. And certainly in centuries past the manliest men would accumulate large harems to satisfy their every sexual whim. These women apparently thought it better to share one manly man than to have one substandard man to their self. But being able to bed drunk women with questionable morals (the general PUA tactic), does not equal masculinity.

This guy is not necessarily masculine...in fact he's probably not.

     Some men who have acquired significant wealth would have you believe that the financial success is the measure of manhood. And of course a man should financially care for himself and his family. There is nothing manly about a grown able bodied man who won't support himself or his family. But to assume that financial success, in the absence of any other masculine virtue, is all it takes to be a man is ludicrous.

Although I'm definitely jealous, this isn't masculinity either.

     I have known criminals that tout their criminal activities as signs of their manliness. They say silly things like, "Ain't no one gonna tell me what to do, cause I'm a Man!" As if rebellion against the powers that be for no reason and often with no benefit equals manliness.

     And the last group I'll touch on are the pseudo alphas. These guys are every where. And it has gotten worse with the rise of the Manosphere. These guys think that all it takes to be alpha is a scowl, a bad attitude and a disregard for others. These guys, because of their lack of self awareness, think they have attained manliness when they've only heightened their douchebagginess.

     So what is manliness? What does it take to be a man? What is the essence of being a man?

     Strength. Strength of body. Strength of mind.

     Strength is the foundation of manliness. Out of it grow the other masculine virtues. Even Jack Donovan's 4 tactical virtues grow out of the bedrock of Strength.

Rosie's strong, but not masculine.

     Now I'm sure someone is saying "No way! Woman can be strong too!" And then they'll probably spew some feminist, girl power clap trap about women being stronger than men.

     I don't want to get into my opinions on strength as it applies to women, except to say: yes, women can and should be strong. But strength is not the essence of femininity. A woman can be weak and still be womanly.

     Not so for a man. For a man, strength is a part of who he is. Men who eschew strength, as is so popular these days, cannot hope to be a masculine man.

     This is why the America is full of men with an identity crisis. American men under 40 have spent their entire lives in a society where the attitudes concerning masculinity are largely shaped by women who hate men. This latest wave of feminism is an attempt to bring the strength of men down to the level of women. And the previous generation stood by and watched it happen.

     But this is why we're here. We know there is a problem. But there is also a solution and it starts with those of us who see the problem. The first step is to be a man.

     Start working on yourself.  Become the proverbial light shining in the darkness. Become a beacon of manliness.

     Start working on your weaknesses. Are you skinny and weak? Hit the gym. Don't like working out? Man up. Are you not well read? Head over to Project Gutenberg and start reading the classics for free. Read Plato, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli. Read the writings of the Founding Fathers. Hop on over to Amazon.com and grab a copy of The Way of Man by Jack Donovan (<---By using this affiliate link you help support the blog. And seriously...read this book.)

Steve Reeves had at least 1/2 of the masculinity equation down pat.

     Become a man that other men are drawn to. Being a man that other men want to emulate is the first step in gaining influence with other men. And only by influencing other men can we stem the tide of suckage in this world.

What I See

     Problems...everywhere I look I see problems. Some of these problems seem totally unrelated, and of course many of them are unrelated. But for the longest time I've had a feeling that I couldn't shake. A feeling that some things that seem unrelated are in fact related. A feeling that some problems have the same root cause.

     I hear people propose solutions, but they don't understand the root of the problem and thus their proposals are, at best, just a band-aid on a gaping chest wound. But I think I may have found the root.

     I'm not the only one to see the root of the problem. There just aren't enough people talking about the root of the problem.

    The problem is that men have become weak. They possess not just physical weakness, but mental weakness and weakness of character. And when half of the population is being taught through television, through the internet and through the public education system that Weakness is a virtue, then that culture is doomed.

     Well, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of  seeing ignorant and/or morally repugnant individuals tell young men that weakness is better than strength, that ignorance is better than knowledge, laziness is better than diligence and that status is more important than character.

Welcome to Masculine Ideals. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm the manliest man ever. I don't for a second think that I am perfect. I was never a  professional athlete. I was never the CEO of a fortune 500 company. I don't have a college degree, a prestigious career or even a high notch count.

I'm just some guy. A guy who regrets the decline of masculinity. A guy who thinks that masculinity is good, and that society suffers when there are fewer masculine men. A guy who has himself, at times, slipped into decidedly unmasculine ways of thinking and behaving. A man who is determined not to make those same mistakes again. A guy determined to be better.

So bookmark this page and come back as together we explore how to be better men, and in so doing, just maybe, add a little good back into the world.