While walking in the park, I passed a group of grown men in comic book t-shirts and fedoras pretending to be superheroes. They were completely absorbed in their game, and their childlike enthusiasm was both pathetic and weirdly endearing. It was clear these men longed for some sort of adventure or experience absent from their lives and had turned to fantasy to fulfill it. It got me thinking – what would it take for men like them to live their fantasies out in real life, rather than just imagine them?
Superhero stories dominate our culture. Every month or two a new superhero film smashes box offices around the world. I grew up on comics, and I love these stories. Something in comics speaks to young men on a very primal and spiritual level. People dress up at these characters, attend conventions, and want to live in their worlds. I can understand why.
There are masculine virtues portrayed in superhero stories that go back to ancient times and mythical traditions. Our culture has lost and even demonized these virtues in other forms of entertainment, but not in the modern mythology of comics. Men are drawn to these characters, because they embody what men wish they were.
Fortunately, men do not have to simply read about greatness, they can become it. I know a lot of men who spend their time in fantasy, be it in comics, video games, films, or other passive pursuits who might find their lives more fulfilling if they started pursuing their desires in reality.
I write this guide in the hopes that by using the cultural language of superheroes, I can encourage a few passive men to take action in the world. Here’s what you’d have to do to become a real life superhero:
Get In Peak Physical Condition
Superheros are in peak physical condition. While our culture says all bodies are beautiful and gets angry when healthy men and women tell it otherwise, superheroes only have one body type—jacked. Comics have often been accused of showing unrealistic images of women, but like Roman and Greek art, comics show an idealized body type for both sexes. Actors who plays these characters have to undergo months of rigorous dieting and conditioning in order to achieve the body type they are naturally drawn with. If you want to be a hero, start training.
Develop Unique Skills
Superheroes have unique skills. Many heroes are supernatural or cosmic in nature, but others are just highly skilled men like you or me, who’ve trained in a unique filed. Most know some form of fighting or martial arts. Many have mastered technical, scientific, or business skills that are totally unique. If you’re interested in learning, there has never been a better time than the age of internet. Any skill you could imagine is out there. If you want to be a hero, be constantly learning new skills.
Develop Your Style
Superheroes have style. I’m not just talking about the costumes (though, I’m at least talking about those), but the intention behind them. In a culture that says physical appearance don’t matter superheroes place a massive amount of importance on how they present themselves. Superheroes use their visual appearance to demonstrate their values. As modern clothing becomes more casual, androgynous, and bland, superhero costumes stand out as a bold statement. If you want to become a hero, ditch the screen-printed t-shirts and dress like the guys whose images are on them.
Reinvent Yourself
Superheroes reinvent themselves. Every superhero has a origin story, where a chance event, personal trauma, or difficult challenge forced them to grow into the hero they are now. Rather than shrink from challenge, superheroes use their worst experiences as leverage to become the best version of themselves. Going from being a daydreamer to a real world success will take massive change. If you want to be a hero, be willing to grow and change who you are.
Find Your Mission
Superheros have a mission that goes beyond their own personal happiness. They have a greater spiritual purpose which drives their actions and benefits the world around them. Often this can purpose can be reduced to a simple maxim like “with great power, comes great responsibility.” This mission or purpose guides all of their actions, even when it forces them to make uncomfortable or difficult decisions. If you want to be a hero, find a mission and dedicate your life to serving the world in some way.
Put Your Mission Before Your Woman
Superheros put their mission before their woman. Putting your mission before your woman is the central tenant of game. If you internalize this concept, many other things fall into place. Superheroes often sacrifice their personal relationships for their mission in the world, and are even willing put loved ones in physical danger if it means doing the right thing. If you want to be a hero, you must have a purpose that is more important to you than women.
Find Mentors
Superheroes have mentors. Central to most origin stories is a teacher, or guide who gives the hero the skills he needs to move forward. The X-men all attend a school for gifted individuals lead by a compassionate psychic. Superman found records his father left him. Spider-man had his uncle to show him that he needed to use his powers responsibly. Mentors can take unusual forms, but most great men were taught by great men. If you want to be a hero, find mentorship.
Join A Team
Superheroes form teams. The X-men. The Avengers. Even a loner like Batman has the Justice League. While we can do great things independently, we can do even more in community. If you want to be a hero, band together with like-minded individuals who share your purpose.
Be Willing To Endure Hatred
Superheroes are often hated and feared by the people they are trying to protect. They still do what’s right, and never apologize for who they are or what they believe. In a culture where men are constantly being told to check their privilege, superheros see their unique background and gifts as something to inspire others rather than something to be ashamed of. Know that if you seek to improve yourself, there will be people who feel threatened by it. Do it anyway. If you want to be a hero, be unapologetic about it.
Superheroes Embody Masculinity
Writing this list, I noticed that much of what it takes to be hero lines up with the advice of the manosphere. Finding a mission, working in a community, and achieving physical mastery are all aspects of traditional masculinity.
In a different era, those young men I saw pretending to be superheroes in the park would have been sparring. Someone would have seen their desire for adventure as young men, put a sword in their hand, and trained them as warriors. Now, our culture values consumption more than heroism, so we sell young men the dreams they want to live as fiction, but never give them the tools they need to take action.
As I was reflecting on the comics I grew up reading, I realized I am now living the virtues I’d read about as a child. When I passed those men in the park, I was on my way to a martial arts class. That evening I blew off a girl who wanted to see me to work on projects I was passionate about. I have a purpose that goes beyond my own happiness, and a community of people who work on it with me.
I feel hopeful even when I see introverted or awkward young man immersed in fantasy, because I know what’s possible. I used to be one of those men, but I changed my life one hour at a time. You can too. Don’t settle for merely reading about adventures, take action and live them.
Read More: Are You The Superhero Of Your Neighborhood?
Ok I will be..MANOSMAN !!
Now all we need is the rebuttal on how to become a super villain muahahahaha! We see many examples of this in fiction where someone is saddled with challenges and how they react. Take a guy like Walter White who lived a life of quiet desperation. He could’ve taken his great knowledge in the direction of his peers, the Schwartz family, but instead he chose a like of a villain. Albeit not an evil man but he did commit some evil acts to continue his path towards becoming a legend. Would we do the same if given the same set of circumstances? We all have a dark side that wants to come out an play sometimes.
If you want to become a super villain simply try to become a Wall St. banker.
The real life super villains would make even the worst comic book villains shit themselves in terror.
I thought this article would suck when I saw the title, but it didn’t. It was actually pretty good. My compliments on an interesting take.
I’ve decided what I am going to be – Sexman.
I will help destroy sexual frustration in the world. I will help all the sexually unsatisfied, sexually unsatiated, sexually frustrated women by having sex with them. There will be no sexual frustration anymore.
My assistant will be – Sexwoman. She will help all men get laid by having sex with them herself. Especially men like Elliot Rodger. No more killing sprees.
Sexman is here!
If only Sexwoman got to Elliot Rodger on time. He left prematurely……
Or ejaculated prematurely.
theres already a hero like that rapeman. Perhaps you can be his side kick…molest lad
We aren’t talking about your secret fantasy, splooge.
Hopefully it does not include land whales! Wait you’re right they don’t have any more libido when they get too fat. Go sexman go!
“what would it take for men like them to live their fantasies out in real life, rather than just imagine them?”
To actually want to. These men that you observed were doing in real life what they actually want to do; play with the fantasy.
To take the scenario into a real life, practical setting, most men who read Soldier of Fortune magazine would shit a brick if actually confronted with having to live the life they are fantasizing about. If that’s what they actually wanted to do, that’s what they would actually be doing already.
What they actually want is what they are actually doing, reading the magazine and having the fantasy.
+1 Insightful
Captain Hindsight with his three penguin sidekicks, wuda , shuda and kuda.
this is pretty nerdy and narcissistic and retarded. Instead of accepting one’s human nature and flaws and to take strength from them, you follow some white knight’s ideal of becoming “better” than humans while the alpha animal human is banging his female equals, not giving a shit about his hairstyle or gay hollywood shit that turns you into Rogers
I really liked this article. It is uplifting and inspiring. Guys should have bold ambitions. Why be average?
My thoughts exactly.
Too many people just accept that they are ‘normal’ and ‘average’. Is it true? Depends on what you mean. I could say, “I’m stuck at my house, I can’t leave.” That’s not strictly true, because: a) I can walk, and b) I have a truck. Yet what if I wholeheartedly believed I was stuck at home? What if I believed it so completely that the idea of stepping out the front door was more terrifying than death? What if I was literally willing to kill anyone who tried to take me out of my home? Then am I truly ‘stuck at my house’? The answer is yes, isn’t it?
So here we see that self-limiting concepts, while generally illusory, can become real with the power of the mind. Can this work in reverse? Can having a powerful mindset in a positive direction cause that to become real? Of course it can. I may be skinny or fat, but when I look at myself in the mirror I can say, “Here is the underpinning of a great athlete. I have it in me to become great. Others have done it, and I can do it even better.” As long as I believe it completely AND am willing to take steps every day to achieve it, it will happen.
And furthermore, we have no idea what the human is actually capable of. Super strength? Moms have lifted cars off of their children in emergencies. Psychic abilities? Twins are known to feel things happening with the other in real time. Invincibility? Shaolin monks can learn Iron Skin, and break fully sharpened spears by having them pushed into their stomachs.
Who the fuck knows what we can really do? Fucking NOBODY knows. All we do is THINK we know, and set our expectations based off that. And who gave us those expectations, those parameters? Our parents (who were probably still kids when you were born, read a man under 30). Society, the very same feminized Western society we hate. Media, whose main concern is to sell you something, generally by pointing out that you’re deficient in some way. Government, who tells you that you’re in omnipresent danger and that only Big Brother has the power to save you from it. Your boss, who usually doesn’t want you to know either how much he’s earning or how easy his job is, and who withholds knowledge from the employee to keep them subservient.
If you want my opinion, the human mind/body complex is like a futuristic supercomputer that’s still running the Apple II mouse program. Until we can load up some more interesting software, it’s useless. It’s like having a Lamborghini sitting in your garage with no gas, and you’ve never even heard of gas before. Are you really using your Lamborghini properly? This bears serious consideration.
If everyone has bold ambitions, won’t bold become the new average?
What an average it would be!
Elliot Rodger saw himself as a superhero, a superhero of the twisted, feminist, “Hunger Games” kind. Don’t be that kind of manboobian, pedestelizing “hero”.
I think his father has much to answer for: directing the creation of an evil movie in which a “you go girl” feminazi child becomes a hero by killing children, and a feminazi son who became a PUAHater feminazi monster by killing others.
He was more like a super villain, was he not? The access to resources, the twisted mindset, the vow to mete out destruction as punishment to those he feels have slighted him. And of course, the fact that he was just plain wrong in both mindset and action.
That opening vignette about grown men pretending to be superheroes is one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever read.
Kudos to the author!
Articles like these are necessary to balance out the dread and politics that we’ve been digesting lately.
And you have the authority of John Milton to support that observation:
Of Education
http://www.bartleby.com/3/4/1.html
Really? For the first time no racism in your comment(s)…this brings a tear to my eyes. Good selection of a quote…
I don’t write about race that much because black people generally bore me. By contrast I feel well disposed towards Jews, East Asians and other tribes who seem to function better in the modern world.
Geek popular culture poses a real danger to the men susceptible to it because: (1) The market keeps producing more of it every month – new comics, new movies, new novels, new games, etc. And (2) thanks now to the internet, much of the older stuff usually doesn’t go away but stays more or less current along with the newer stuff.
This growing mountain of geekiness apparently acts like what psychologists call “supernormal stimuli” to certain kinds of men, and we see the popular culture representations of these men in Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons and in the scientist and engineer characters in The Big Bang Theory. I’ve known some fairly intelligent guys who find these fantasy worlds which borrow, superficially, a few ideas from math, science and technology far more obsessing that doing real math, science and engineering. That has an opportunity cost, because these men might have accomplished some useful things with their lives otherwise. Instead they wasted more than 10,000 hours of their youth on make-believe.
I think the same can be said for video games. I myself have become wrapped up in perfecting my in-game character. Spending countless hours in the virtual world when a lot of that time could’ve been spent working on myself/my skills in real life.
That’s not to say video games are inherently bad, though. I still love them. But it can be VERY easy to spend far too much time on them and in that sense they can be dangerous if you aren’t disciplined.
Just noticed you did actually mention games. Oh well.
I grew up before computer games, and I know little about them.
Become a cryonicist?
I met this guy a couple times before he went into cryo in 1991. If we can take his story at face value, he had an action-hero youth most of us can only dream about:
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/Interview-JerryLeaf.html
I like that article. Very good job taking what seems like a silly theme, but then turning into something that tells you how to capture that energy of a superhero and eventually have others perceive you the same way.
Don’t forget communication skills though. I think everyone could benefit from voice training at some point in their lives, and doing something like joining an improv club. You need both if you want to be able to fire off one-liners like an action hero does!
Secondly good point on how the masculinity is what attracts people to them. The same could be said for recent cult hits like Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, and Game of Thrones……those series feature male characters who are not feminized pussies. For example, in spite of my high opinion of myself I’m pretty sure that SoA’s “Happy” would kick my ass in a fight.
I think the most realistic of superheroes is Batman.
No superpowers. He is an ordinary human being.
He has trained himself to be an expert in martial arts, stealth, and psychology.
The most relatable superhero of them all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Hu1gLo8m0
I nominate Frank Castiglione a.k.a. Frank Castle, The Punisher. Terrible movies, but a relatable character.
Yeah I like The Punisher too.
He’s my second choice, after Batman. Again, no superpowers.
And for those who haven’t seen this, here is a clip from Dirty Laundry, again involving Frank Castle, The Punisher
Castle is nobody’s white knight. He’ll go after a hero or a villain. Gotta respect that.
only problem is that he has this dumb thing of not killing anyone ever. so he really doesent help people since the bad guys just come back and kill more people
Doc Savage would perform brain surgery on the bad guys he defeated so that they became harmless if not useful members of society.
i still prefer punisher and moon knight’s way of doing things
The only problem with Punisher is that he doesn’t go after the worst scumbags out there: the central bankers, politicians, Jesuits, Mason and other Satan worshipping wackos.
Batman is the most relatable superhero.
You know, for billionaires.
Screw Batman. If I wanted to become a superhuman, I’d want to train with the guy who trained Bane.
They both were trained by Ras Al Ghul.
Apparently Ras al Ghul got better at his job between Batman and Bane, then.
Yeah but he dies at Batman’s hands, indirectly at the end of Batman Begins.
“I don’t have to kill you.
I just don’t have to save you.”
– Batman
Nope. Batman spends 8 years in wilderness training to become what he is. He leaves his life of wealth to understand the difficulties of life.
He is perfectly relatable for all.
This is the training for Batman
All of the above can be accomplished by doing one simple thing: join the military (even better if Special Ops).
Isn’t the military about killing other men for nefarious reasons these days?
That’s precisely why I signed up, and also the reason I got out. Still, less than 10% of people have the balls to do it.
I think cartoonish heroism is dangerous. It conveys the message that heroism is not for you and me, instead heroism is men with supernatural abilities that can never be earned through virtue, but only through accidents of birth (e.g. Superman, Spiderman).
Spiderman wasn’t born…he was bit by a spider and acquired his superpowers.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/15-of-the-biggest-badasses-who-ever-lived-that-youve-probabl
Just wear tights and coordinating boots. It’s the one action that knocks out much of the superhero to-do list.
Excellent read. I’ve found myself obsessed with breaking physical and mental/intellectual plateaus for many years. I’ve been a massive fan of Steve Rogers, Batman, Rorschach, Wolverine, and other superheroes since childhood, usually favoring the more human/near human ones for their greater relatability. I love DragonBall Z as well, mainly Vegeta and Piccolo.
I’ve done powerlifting and strongman training for a few years now, and delving back into the Captain America comics and movies has me thinking about how artificial enhancement can raise one’s ceiling if approached carefully. I’m tempted not just by steroids, but by genetic doping as well. There are treatments out there that aren’t really all that far away from the Super Soldier Serum/Red Room Serum, in terms of their effects.
Maybe I’m a little to obsessed.
this advice can just as easily be interpreted into being a super villain as well. And we know chicks love the bad boys(loki comes to mind)
I’ve tried to become a superhero but unfortunately the cops tend to follow me mercilessly when I walk around wearing tights with my underwear on the outside.
Stupid cops.
You know, I’m really not a fan of superheroes, I think they’re juvenile. When I saw the title I thought this was going to be one of the dumbest articles I’ll read this year. Turns out I was wrong. I enjoyed it. Thank you.
Yeah, same, he did a nice job hooking the comic culture with the past and our predecessor’s worship of mythical figures.
The superhero film I am looking forward to is next year’s Atom Bomb:
Batman vs Superman, directed by 300’s Zack Snyder.
Ben Affleck as Batman.
Here are the pictures
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2643263/Ben-Affleck-bulked-Batman-role-assistance-Matt-Damons-cousin.html
So they’re casting a faggy hard leftist mangina as Batman. Figures.
Yep. Bale was paid 50 million to return but he declined.
Affleck’s got enough hate already for his casting. Remains to be seen if he can do justice to the role.
Can you think of any superheroine who got that way through rigorous self-development, comparable to Bruce Wayne’s?
The role model for American feminists – Wonder Woman
The only rigorous self-development program for this is RIGOROUS EATING.
I think one of the reason super heroes remain so popular is they are one of the last genres that really celebrates masculinity and masculine virtues as this article points out. Super hero comics and video games have, much more than most media, withstood the onslaught of feminization this culture has suffered from. It’s probably why feminists and social justice warrior scumbags are targeting those areas so hard right now.
This seems like equally good advice for women.
To be a red pill Man is to practically be a superhero in the feminatrix we call US reality.
In a recent Iron Man movie, Iron Man threw his Iron Man suit away for the sake of Pepper Potts.
I cried manly tears when I saw this.