Aristotle famously observed that virtue is the middle course between excess and deficiency. Plato touched on that earlier in The Republic; those with moderate lives are happier on the whole than those whose lives are characterized by excess. Overabundance often occurs when something normally scarce becomes available in nearly unlimited quantity. Let’s see what happens.
Food
Lay off the damn junk food already! A healthy body makes a healthy mind.
Hunger has always been a problem, and it’s just as well that advances in agricultural technologies have done much to alleviate this. However, there are some drawbacks. For one thing, it’s allowed the rise of big agribusiness, while family farmers—an arrangement that has grown the world’s food since prehistory—are getting pushed aside. The grandsons of farmers might still be driving the huge GPS-guided combines, but they’re no longer working for themselves.
Further, modern agriculture has facilitated deforestation and also unsustainable growth in areas that didn’t get the memo about family planning. Worse, the leaders of the Western world are fine with allowing their countries to be safety valves for Third World overpopulation.
Moreover, the food quality has worsened: the meat is loaded up with hormones and antibiotics, the veggies are sprayed with pesticides and weed killers, and so forth. (In fact, one experimental genetically modified bacterium could have caused a global extinction event.) We’re not quite sure what all this is doing to the population, which is a pretty big gamble.
Hormones are going off kilter, one of many things that are messing up our social scene. Testosterone levels in men have been declining steadily for quite a while, and girls are maturing earlier than ever. It’s hard to say how much of this is from our diets (hormones and endocrine-disrupting pesticides), traces of birth control pills in drinking water, or plastic congealers such as bisphenol A.
One fact is pretty obvious: waistlines are expanding. This is quite notable in the USA, and other countries are not too far behind. Cheap food and couch potato lifestyles are making people fat and unhealthy. That’s really not too sexy, another factor wrecking the social scene.
Sex
This kind of speaks for itself.
The dangers of riding the cock carousel have been covered here quite well, and we’ve also described player burnout. Often the dysfunctions of men and women really aren’t so different.
An even greater problem is porn, a cheap safety valve for the sexual marketplace. It’s free for anyone who knows how to pirate the videos. Unfortunately, it’s easily addicting and messes up people’s love lives. You won’t grow hair on your palms, but porn induced ED is no joke. Also, spanking the monkey for hours a day can cause people’s tastes to go off into some very strange directions.
Substance abuse
Even then, bug juice isn’t so bad compared to dumb dust.
Alcoholism and drug addiction are nothing new. What happens when people can get booze for free? The physician Theodore Dalrymple described a job site in Africa where the workers could buy alcohol very cheaply, and sell it to the locals at a steep markup:
I discovered that, when alcohol is effectively free of charge, a fifth of British construction workers will regularly go to bed so drunk that they are incontinent both of urine and feces. I remember one man who very rarely got as far as his bed at night: he fell asleep in the lavatory, where he was usually found the next morning. Half the men shook in the mornings and resorted to the hair of the dog to steady their hands before they drove their bulldozers and other heavy machines (which they frequently wrecked, at enormous expense to the British taxpayer); hangovers were universal. The men were either drunk or hung over for months on end.
Not a pretty picture, is it? The rest of Dalrymple’s article describes why controlled substances should remain so. The argument from pure theory that people should do whatever they want with their bodies doesn’t work so well in the real world. Further, he explains why methadone programs don’t work. The article is definitely worth a read.
Money
Does it ever end?
For anyone who’s ever lived paycheck to paycheck—or worse, agonized about where the next rent money is coming from—the lives of the rich must seem like a dream. Granted, poverty sucks raw Rocky Mountain oysters; I know this from experience. Still, the opposite extreme isn’t quite all it’s cracked up to be. Much depends on what you make of it.
Some guys were born with a silver spoon in their mouths. However, most of us have to go from the ground up, generally beginning with the situation I just described. Later, as we get job experience and start to build a career, things get better. Some will plan carefully and manage finances wisely.
Others, though, go through money as fast as it comes in. Then they blow all their discretionary cash on creature comforts they really don’t need. This results in lots of unnecessary monthly charges (who really needs 500 cable channels?) and junk collecting dust on a shelf. Welcome to the hedonic treadmill, bud! Doing it wrong means you’re still spinning your wheels like you did when you were dead broke; now the wheels are just spinning faster. Nothing is saved for an emergency fund, a down payment on a house, or a retirement account.
Worse, many dig themselves into a rut, racking up tens of thousands on credit cards. The chains of slavery are forged one link at a time. By the time reality hits them in the face, they’re living paycheck to paycheck and the surplus feeds the banksters. Is keeping up with the Joneses really that important? Epic celebrity bankruptcies show that even the rich and famous aren’t immune to bad spending habits, despite making money that others can only dream about.
So how does it look at the high end of the income spectrum? Those who start at the bottom and make it big sometimes discover they’ve traded one set of problems for another. For one thing, there are the sycophants, scammers, and people they hadn’t heard from since third grade looking for an easy mark. As for lottery winners, there are a number of tragic cases where people in many ways ended up worse off than they were. Also, the psychological effects of excess wealth can be quite pernicious. Those freed from the common man’s struggle for survival often end up getting big egos and throw temper tantrums about nothing.
Power
One of them would be delighted to rule the galaxy. The other one is a Star Wars character.
These days, power comes from having a ridiculous amount of wealth. So what are the global elites doing? Should they look to the example of the wealthy in the Renaissance and become patrons of the arts, commissioning immortal classics still celebrated centuries later? Should they do as many Industrial Age robber barons did and promote high culture? Should they give their workers a big raise in recognition of all their hard work that enriched the CEOs?
Nah, ain’t happening. Today’s plutocrats are just as corrupt as any in the world’s history, flaunting their wealth before the masses they consider to be sheeple. You’d think they’d have the sense to rule responsibly and not kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Unfortunately, the party line of the elites is cultural Marxism. It’s an inherently destructive ideology, because it was designed that way.
Why the hell do they do this? Maybe some—insulated from reality by their wealth—really think this will make the world a better place. Others promote globalism for profits: low tariffs and cheap labor. Some engage in virtue-signaling to show everyone how wonderful and compassionate they are. (Those with even a little perspective know deep down that they’re not really that special, no better than the common people they’re lording it over. Surely these must be scary thoughts.) As for the worst, they dream of a world where their posterity rules over billions of docile, deracinated peasants. They consider their social engineering a means to bring this about. Mythology tells us that the Gods punish hubris; may this be so.
In summary
Steer the middle course. Avoid excess, for it is the path to decay and ruin. These temptations lead to illusory happiness, but the ultimate downfall is not long to come. If hedonism is dangled before you like a shiny fishhook, it is wise not to take the bait. When boundless abundance is spread before you, there is yet a better way, which lies in the pursuit of excellence. Simply put, be the best person you can be.
Read More: Hillary And Bill Clinton Are Criminal Masterminds Wielding Incredible Power
Good.
Due to our modern culture of consumerism, pursuit of “happiness” through the above listed is a falsehood too many people unwittingly chase; contentment is the real deal.
Out of the list, the two worst by far are money and power.
For food, sex and substance abuse, there are finite bounds to all these: there’s only so much food a person can eat before he’s bloated and can’t eat any further; there’s only so much women a man can screw in a given hour until until his body wears out and one day he finally realizes that endlessly chasing women is pointless and will give no real long-lasting satisfaction; there’s only so much a person can drink before he passes out and/or kills himself.
However, for power and wealth, there’s no hard limit on how much one can acquire: some will waste their entire lives chasing ever-more wealth and power through trickery, fraud and deceit at the overall expense of society, forgetting that at the end, they are mere mortals and they won’t take it with them after they die.
Plato and all religions universally admonish the dangers of excess and the damage to society such extremes can do, and a wise man knows when to hit the brakes and switch gears to pursue family, philosophy, religion and spread the Truth.
But to modern, echoing, wisdom, as was propagated by Freud, excess is what is good and mediation or withhold is sin. The modern world has reversed the order of things, but only in head.
Globally imposed personal wealth cap say 100 million per person adjusted for inflation would solve that problem.
I used to believe that absolute concentration and dedication to one’s goal is the best way to go, then i realized other important aspects of my life was lagging behind. So yes i believe in balance now, it makes more sense in the long run,
So true. Especially I found when starting a bsusiness and just trying to survive at first years can pass you by you need to set aside time to appreciate other things in life besides the material..
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…
Materialism and degeneracy have combined to probably make us, in theWest, the most unhappy people out there.
The happiest people I’ve ever seen were in Myanmar in the countryisde in 2004.
So poor they didn’t even have bicyles and lived in huts make of tree branches.
There was no trash around like plastic bags as these were too precious to be discarded.
Interestingly enough nopt one person tried to scam us or even ask for spare change in the country. All smiles and civility. Their strong Budhist faith and sense of themselves in a partiarchial society had much to do with it I’m sure.
Compare that with our lazy crackhead welfare collecting scum wearing nice clothes begging on the side of the road while living in a free subsidzed apartment..
Or people with their brand new cars and granite counter tops high on meds to keep them “up.”
I don’t know. It is great to be nationalistic, but there has been a lot of opression against the muslim population there. Apparently because they had moved during colonial times and therefore are not considered one of them. Things like getting towed out and left stranded in the sea, immolation, land taken by the gov, etc. are some of the more extreme examples.
Fuck the muslims
I find that ironic, because muslims are probably the most traditional and patriarchical group as a whole, who preserve their culture and values.
But when their numbers become large enough, they won’t hesitate to eliminate westerners.
They already outnumber westerners.
Global wise, yes
In western countries, they are still minorities.. at least for now. The numbers will increase though.
I believe there are some majorities in Eastern European areas, such as dagestan and EU -stan countries and they seem ok. I think it all depends on the region and the prevalent variant they practice; some are good, some not
I disagree to a certain extent. Western consumerism is fine for responsible fucking adults. The problem is, very few children born after the year 1990 grow up.
When I was adopted, my father was over 40, and he’d grown up in a house with Victorian Era values (he called his father “Father”…never “Dad”), and he passed those values on to me. My mother grew up in a house where family was considered the most important thing: God help us if people weren’t at the table at 6pm when dinner was served. Discipline was harsh in the Sommerset household, but never unfair: the only comparison I can think of was my time in the Army. NCO’s would make you pay for being 1 minute late (or not being 15 minutes early!), but it was a rare NCO that harassed his troops for no reason. And those that did would up with career-ending NCOERs or being “Post Beautification NCOIC” and being in charge of mowing the lawn.
Consumerism enriches the life of the responsible adult by offering new technologies and innovations that increase quality-of-life. To the pre-pubescent manchild that prevails in society today, it is ruinous: they learn no self-control and are addicted to instant gratification. The Greatest Generation that pioneered the auto industry, early computers, and advanced medical science at a rapid pace had the maturity to handle the wave of products hitting the market.
Whereas today we throw out a $700 iPhone just because some hippie metro engineers in Cupertino decided you should.
You’d get the same response if you hit one in the mouth or fucked one them in the ass. I am not much older but I grew up in a different world/patriarchy
”Western consumerism is fine for responsible fucking adults. The problem is, very few children born after the year 1990 grow up.”
Now we have adult “babies”. Not kidding. Its gotten that bad.
Agreed. Self-reliance and personal responsibility are completely lost on the current 18 to 25 years-old here in Italy, except for those who come from a difficult economic background that had to learn to fend off for themselves.
I suppose that’s even worse in the US, where people are so well off that cooking at home instead of eating out evey day is actually a good way to save a solid chunk of money.
I think men need to go through a manhood initiation ritual in his teens. Where everything is stripped away and he learns how to deal with hardship.
Men are forged in fire that is neither too cold in which he is useless or too hot in that he breaks.
Even greater general responsibility at a young age in his teens with a older male mentor would lead to a mature man.
Yeah, I often joke that we should take all 18 years old to a place like Burkina Faso with nothing other than the clothes on their back and let them fend off for themselves a couple of months. Then we’ll get them back home (if they survived). I’d bet they would have a much more practical vision on life, as well as much straighter priorities
“I think men need to go through a manhood initiation ritual..”
We used too. It was called doing a hitch in the army or marines (with a tour or two overseas). A functioning military is a intregate part of a strong nation, but maybe thats why we don’t have that anymore.
Our male ancestors had this ritual younger though in the age range 13-15 years old though. Wonder if its feasible today.
What was the advantage of delaying this to 18?
No one, but we’d have to first change the laws about age of consent. That’s two important social revolutions before we can see any reasonable improvement in people’s character.
Why burkina faso ? the suburbs of a major european city would work too.
Because access to clean water and food would still be easily achived. Also, if they die in the middle of nowhere there are no autorities to raise a stink over it.
Nature and iron makes Men tough.
Cultural change precedes any legal change. Treating young men and women as adults instead of children will go a long way to allowing them to shoulder the responsibility that comes with legalization.
I don’t disagree, however forcing minors into dangerous situations (even if it’s for their own good) would be considered a criminal act, therefore any parent who would adopt this method would find themselves prosecuted by the law, not to mention that it would be impossible to have government endorsment to employ it on a large scale.
True. But a cultural change in attitude is needed nonetheless.
Wouldn’t call teens minors.
1 yr ago I finally resigned from my last job and i couldn’t be happier now… I started working from my house, over a site I stumbled upon on-line, for several hours /a day, and my income now is much bigger then it was on my office work… Last paycheck i got was for Nine thousand dollars… Superb thing about this work is that now i have more time to spend with my family… http://chilp.it/728813e
Personally, I think the whole phrase “quality of life” is a synonym for comfort in most cases. And ever-increasing comfort leads to these manchildren you speak about. Hence the warnings against excess.
“…Theodore Dalrymple described a job site in Africa where the workers could buy alcohol very cheaply… The article is definitely worth a read.”
yeah sure. let’s get controlled by the government to keep ourselves in check. DEA is the ultimate red pill organization.
“Steer the middle course. Avoid excess, for it is the path to decay and ruin”
Good advice. Aristotle was correct and I think this is why the elites hate the middle class so much – because it is, as been described as ‘traditional middle class values’ that has been the key to keeping families together.
I read a long reddit thread the other day about what Sith Lord could beat Yoda. Darth Sidious is widely considered to be the most powerful of all.
Just needed to point that out.
Every saber form, highest level of sorcery, rule of 2, artificial selection, shrine under temple, blah blah blah.
“Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.” – Victor Hugo
http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/209/235/35d9sa.jpg
With the migrant country such advance civs will be quite close to you and will replace in a matter of a few decades!
As for wealth, it’s even worse for the people who inherit the wealth. John D. Rockefeller was a self-made man and he had a lot to be proud of. Fast forward to Nelson Rockefeller and he’s a liberal Republican. Now, we have Jay Rockefeller who is a liberal, globalist Democrat. All good things must come to an end I guess.
http://www.savethemales.ca/000165.html how porn causes homosexuality, paedophilia, and other degeneracy. And it will only get worse. In all areas, the world is worstening. The flip side is that although there will be less good people, the ones left may be better than usual due to resistance against such evil.
I wonder what our resident nihilist thinks of this article…
Anything to excess is a bad idea…..even, or maybe especially, austerity.
Also, what is excess for you may not be excess for me. You really need to take your subjectivity into account.
If I fuck 4 women a month I think of that as a light month. If I fuck 12 women in one month I am being excessive. In order to even say “excess” you need to know your baseline.
I do agree with the author on the dangers of porn however….
What would you say to someone eating the following diet? Would you say it is excessive.:
Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.
Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.
Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.
This is the 12k calorie diet Michael Phelps consumes while training though. It is not excessive at all for HIM.
In the end, I would suggest that living a life of austerity will not make you happy if you are not suited to an austere life just like heaping on the excess will not make someone with an austere temperament any happier.
Given how the gut microbiota can effect your metabolism, I have to wonder if our diversity policies have caused the obesity epidemic by introducing all these immigrants from foreign ecosystems who handle our food, from the fields and slaughterhouses to the supermarkets, fast food joints and sit-down restaurants.
http://www.nature.com/ajgsup/journal/v1/n1/full/ajgsup20125a.html
Biodiversity would be a good thing, as an organism exposed to new bacterias would grow stronger from surviving the “invasion”. In any event I don’t think you point holds water. Food is either doused in bacteria-killing substances for preservation and/or cooked, thus removing all bacteria. If something could survive those processes, it would have gotten to you anyway through longer routes.
Live like a king now, live like a pauper later. Live like a pauper now, live like a king later.
in my experience it has been, live like a pauper today, live like a pauper later. Doesn’t hurt trying for sure.
How long has your experience been?
Your words ring true –
>> “When boundless abundance is spread before you, there is yet a better way, which lies in the pursuit of excellence. Simply put, be the best person you can be.” >>
If a fortune befalls you, remain creative and alive. I’ve seen a few wealthy pigs that humanly amount to nothing whatsoever. Think Kardashians.
Also the common serial divorce rapists/gold diggers can become vain wealthy thieves with blood on their hands. They’re never the ‘best they can be’ and if they ever had a ‘best’ then it likely never amounted to much.
Insurance brokers are also useless eater non productive parasites. Any parasitical and predatory occupations that are licenced to pull money out of thin air will arrest a culture if their racket is allowed to grow. Take insurance/tax industries that allow their employed licencees to tax, police, regulate and stifle the honest real productive workers in society. The innovators, creators and builders (men) create real wealth and build for civilization its culture and infrastructureare. To tax and short change the productive men is just as destructive to a civilization as if you had an SJW president that smokes crack. Or an improperly managed and uncontrolled woman acting as the head of a house. Both result in an eventual train wreck for all. SMACK THE BITCHES back into their humble places and throw chains on the elites. It’s necessary and must be done periodically. Elites are extremely lucky if they aren’t beheaded. Chains would be soooo sweet.
Lottery winners take the cake many times in becoming fat squandering and hoarding pigs. The squanderer and the hoarder – the decadent non-producer/parasite will either pick one or the other – or they’ll try to be both. In Dante’s Inferno, he described a 4th ring of hell where the spendthrifts (compulsive hoarders) and the spiteful unconsciencious compulsive wasters of treasure and resource are trapped. Like an eternal purgatory, the hoarders and the wasters tug and bemoan at each other over their material obscessions and hedonisms. What a riot. He did call it a ‘comedy’.
When a society is pulling out of a nosedive, masses will often stampede in search of top hat elite pigs that don’t contribute anything or create anything for culture or civilization. If the elites aren’t fortunate enough to squirm away, they get gutted savagely. Or they claim a new lease on life covertly wandering about as an anonymous bum. They still remain eating, shitting non humans. Fucking animals with bucks to sling and do reckless damage to good people, or worthless bums. But the affluent and wealthy who remain positive and who create marvels and who remain personable and human I do respect very much.
Lottery winners are quite amusing. It’s not uncommon for them to rack up so much debt and lose so much money off of poor investments and scams that they end up going negative.
I swear the lottery is rigged. There are a few of the gas-food plex stations that seem to get the jackpots, the places where you order a sandwitch on a touch screen and robot workers make the food but you can’t chat them up behind the 6 foot high partition. Mom and pop liquor stores and independent grocers get consistent baited small wins on scratch-offs but never seem to win any of the big prizes, ever.
It’s been said that the lottery is for people who are extremely bad at math. You have a better chance of becoming the president twice than you do winning a powerball jackpot on a one ticket purchace. If that isn’t enough, it’s rigged too. On the night of the draw, a big mothercomputer crunches all the electronic entries at 10:00 pm and picks a combination that hasn’t been entered. With successive draws the jackpot becomes astronomical and the number of players exceeds the number of combinations. Then a guaranteed win is inevitable and the government controlled lottery commission is forced to cough up a big wad of money to some lucky soul.
TRUMP being a casino man should offer ‘Trump scratch-offs’ and then he should eliminate the income tax. The lottery is a tax of sorts and it is voluntary unlike the income tax. You see many working people go into a quickie mart and purchase three dollars worth of soda and chips and then they blow ten bucks on scratch offs. No one in their right mind would willingly pay 333% sales tax on their chips but that’s effectively what the scratch-offs amount to. And it’s voluntary and everyone is happy. No IRS forfeiture, no seizure, no goon squads selectively crushing small businesses with audits to make way for the new Walmart. No corruption, just a great looking pile of TRUMP SCRATCH OFFS with Trump smiling in his toupee. And Ivanka and Melania scratch offs too. How sexy is that?
Then you save all your spent Trump tickets, bundle them up and put big rubber bands around them, 100 at a time. Save the bundles up in a big paper bag and carry the bag in at tax time and that’s all you need to zero out your tax liability. The money goes to the same place anyway.
The lottery is a poor man’s tax. That’s why Georgia uses it to subsidize college.
Any young guy should commit to reading a handful of books on minimalism. Learn the psychological mechanics of consumerism versus minimalism. If you commit to minimalism at age 22 then you have just opened up an incredible life for yourself. You need to realize that minimalism is not a gritty life of sacrifice and staying tough. It will actually provide a lot of happiness (much more than chasing your tail via pedestalization of inanimate objects). It doesn’t come right away but soon getting through the day on 10 bucks worth of consumption will make you far happier than some cheesecake at Starbucks and those three beers with your bros as you bitch about whichever of your bros didn’t make it to the sports bar as you try to game international fives (American 9’s).
Minimalism generates happiness. It’s not a game where you just learn to accept less happiness. That’s the takeaway.
–Give yourself a few months to cut sugar out of your life completely for all time. This will actually make you far less hungry and you save even more money because of that.
–Don’t give a dime to Hollywood either through movies or cable for the rest of your life.
–Library for all entertainment needs.
–If you must drink, buy yourself underrated costco whiskey and drink minimally. Getting drunk is a stupid waste of time and is usually a social approval game which shouldn’t be valued as much as it has been.
–Day game and cheap asshole date game. Clubs are a huge waste of money and time
–Ebay for ties, shoes, blazers.
Sounds like a MGTOW mentality though. How do you find girls to bang? Girls are materialistic and you can’t change that. They won’t follow you in your hut.
“How do you find girls to bang? Girls are materialistic and you can’t change that. They won’t follow you in your hut”
Exactly. Was thinking the same thing.
Overseas MGTOW. Two weeks of foregoing lattes and dessert gets you an hour with an international nine.
Frequent air travel is far from minimalism. Airfare costs anywhere from €450 to €1000 depending on destination, distance, season and destination popularity.
So avoid frequent air travel. Also the low cost carriers around Europe and Asia are far cheaper than that.
Maybe overseas life is not for you?
For the girls it is but not the minimalism tbh.
Fair enough. I think minimalism is a constant joy, frankly. You find out how little you need and how brainwashed you’d been in my opinion.
Where is that magical unicorn country with girls who let a minimalist bang them if I may ask?
Just stay in Omaha friend. If bangable, attractive women are ‘unicorns’ to you, and you clearly don’t want to believe in it..then stay home. It’s not for you.
First, I’m not from the USA, let alone Omaha (where did you get that from?)
Second, I don’t say attractive women are unicorns, I say that attractive women who accept a non-materialistic life are. Seems like you are reluctant to reveal what country that is anyway.
What do you mean ‘non-materialistic life’? What kind of asshole wants to make a ‘life’ with a woman? Looking for WUV? Like TRUE WUV with that special girl that you connect with? Good luck.
As far as the country that has attractive, affordable women. Try any non-Anglo country. A big part of the minimalist points I mentioned above is to have money for women. Like I said, where I’m at now, just two weeks of skipping latte and dessert gets you an hour with a nine. I was laying out the idea of minimalism to help the young dudes, not to get trolled by some beaten down soul like you.
Who was talking about love here? It all boiled down to “no attractive girl would follow you to a shabby place”. Now it seems that it was all about paying hoes for sex with your latte money. And no need to bark at me or insult me like you did. Bye.
Ha ha. What a bitch. GTFO of the manosphere, you fraud. I was giving financial advice (spun from my mistakes) and sharing minimalist principles to young readers so that they can…hmm…I don’t know…HAVE MONEY AND LAY OVERSEAS NINES…. or something….. and you baited it into a shitstorm. Fuck off with your emotions.
“What kind of asshole wants to make a ‘life’ with a woman? Looking for WUV? Like TRUE WUV with that special girl that you connect with? Good luck.”
You, sir, killed it. Well done. Very well done.
And he calls himself ‘redpiller’
“Day game and cheap asshole date game. Clubs are a huge waste of money and time”
I hear what you’re saying, but what do you do for female affection? As someone else here pointed out, women are materialistic and will not be impressed with your Ebay shoes. Don’t go on about masturbation, that’s not a substitute. Minimalism is a good thing in many ways, but the sex life suffers.
I live overseas.
“I live overseas.”
I live in western europe – the zeitgeist here is only slightly better than in the USA.
Asia for me. Latin America in the past. I’ll be visiting West. Europe soon for the first time.
Europe will disappoint you as will eastern europe watching it sucumb to westernization. That said, I would definitely recommend you visit europe and savor the last of a 2000 year heritage before it becomes a islamic ghetto.
Yeah I’m not expecting much in terms of social fun for myself. I’ll be with friends for a few weeks of relaxing and sightseeing. I’ve met enough W. European girls through the years to know that they are not the answer really. I think they’re cool in general but not any kind of paradise situation. White skin is an overall red flag for me, personally.
I hear ya. Try to take photos of the architecture – especially if you go to Rome – before europe becomes Sharia compliant and the dismantling of all buildings, structures and sculptures commences.
Ha ha. I laugh but I know you’re hardly joking.
I’m joking of course, but also saddened about what europe will be like in just 150 years.
When I say Ebay shoes, I mean used Italian, refurbished.
Used shoes? That’s a bit yucky lol
Here’s some 800$ shoes for about 120$
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SANTONI-Mens-Brown-Oxford-Leather-Shoes-Size-12-D-Made-In-Italy-MINT-355/201677987968?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D38530%26meid%3D301b598d19204da9ba1a1048a208e9a8%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D201678678558
Got a pair of $125 Geoxx runners for $7.95 at a used store. Agree that used shoes have to be barely worn.
Do women really know the difference between an $800 pair of shoes to a $120 pair of decent dress shoes? Some may, most won’t. The ones who do are the ones you want to avoid.
I actually was into the shoes/ties thing for myself. I like good stuff. No one notices and I don’t expect them to.
Ok. If you like good quality because of craftsmanship then it’s understandable to obtaining a pair. Getting a pair to impress someone is a sign of insecurity.
Yeah. To impress women, a guy is much better off with tats and bad-boy casual wear. But I like the traditional dress. I can’t imagine trying to front around like I’m a biker or something. Way too old.
Used neckties are even greater jackpot on ebay. Masterpiece Italian ties for 15-40 bucks.
Good idea on the neckties on Ebay. The ties in stores today are awful. I still like the Jerry Garcia style ties.
Need to see if I can get one of these for a good discount
http://www.watchmaxx.com/watch/patek-philippe-5207P-001?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cse&utm_term=5207P-001&gclid=CjwKEAjwydK_BRDK34GenvLB61YSJACZ8da31Y1ecjj7jSRSQD53br13eU2Pu83ofqtc0yUXspbZtRoC5ijw_wcB
I agree with this, but yes…women will notice these things…..depending on the women. I am under the impression that many of the women I meet study male clothes and watches so they can better asses the assets of potential suitors.
Yes, dressing neat, clean, and presentable versus expensive. Would they know the shirt was $300 versus $20 or $30 if both were custom tailored?
Many — yes….but that is the type of girl I date…I like very fashion oriented women. Would some other women? no. But the ones I tend to go for notice
Ha ha. Three-quarters of a mill on ebay. There’s nowhere else to go. 200$ in china. Try chrono24dotcom for quality used watches though, seriously.
This goes for women too, right? I mean, if you do too much casual sex you will end up unable to commit to a single woman.
Beauty is to be found in Balance. If you don’t need something, or if having it doesn’t at least considerably improve something else you already own/do then it’s a waste. I make exceptions for entertainment, but even then I prefer something that comes cheap and has a lot of uses.
If you really need to buy something, pick the cheapest product that suits your needs best (with caveats for quality). For instance, I bought myself a mid-tier smartphone, which I use for work, as ebook reader, as a music player, as a photocamera and as a GPS. For what I paid (about $200) I get my money worth out of it. I would have never bought an iPhone because I’d have to pay three times the money to do the same stuff.
Sure enough, we could argue that an higher-tier product would do the same things much more smoothly and offer a broader range of applications, but that’s where the concept of being wasteful hides.
By the way, I didn’t forget to list making phone calls. I make very few phone calls at all. If I need to speak with people about something that requires more than four messages or a one minute conversation, we meet.
I have been walking around Kraków the past few days lamenting how quickly Poland is becoming the US (at least in the larger cities). Yesterday afternoon, “The Seven Deadly Sins” popped into my head.
Off to Wrocław today. Unfortunately I expect more of the same.
It is darn sad to upvote you. If what you say is true degeneracy spreads faster than the common cold. I had somehow the idea of Poland being more conservative though. At the very least do people tend to understand their ailment, for what it is?
Eh… I struggle with it, too. This is my 12th trip to Poland in the last six years. Every time I come, I can see (and feel) more and more of the Western influence. But I continue to see Poland at a crossroads. The traditional, conservative country vs. the new, progressive Poland.
I think as you get older you find that “less really is more.” Any time I look at buying something, the only factor that comes into mind are long-term maintenance costs and hassles.
TL;DR: Money doesn’t buy happiness yadda yadda. I disagree with that. As the article rightly points out, great power nowadays comes with great wealth and I prefer to have more power than less.
Once you get the money you get the power. Once you get the power, then you get the girl….sad I have to quote a fictional criminal to make a point, but there you go.
Well that’s sort of my point too. You can’t get girls by being too minimalist.
“Well that’s sort of my point too. You can’t get girls by being too minimalist”
In fact today one can’t get chicks and be even slightly minimalist.
Unless you’re a modern day Charles Manson.
Manson had drugs, and indeed drugs are a magnet for females.
Money will never make a man happy. That said, it is better to be an unhappy man with 500 million dollars than an unhappy man without 500 million dollars.
Money cant buy happiness but it will brighten your day.
….
Seadoos, dunebuggies, you cant be sad on one of those.
This first step to get off this treadmill is to realize that females will always judge a man based on resources and hence therein lies the root of why most men pursue superficial shit: to get female attention and approval ultimately sex. Seriously. Most men do things in life in order to get laid.
Exactly. All those skyscrapers you see are built by men who wanted to impress women.
I could live in a hut if a 10 accepted to live with me there.
Ha! My skyscraper is taller, girthier, and more environmentally friendly than yours!
I like a tall skyscraper, but a short one with solid girth just scrapes the hell out of the sides and makes me smile.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/asHT7eh4AwG9G/200_s.gif
lol reminds me of Dave Chapelle talking about how a guy could fuck a girl in a card board box and be perfectly happy falling asleep there afterwards haha
and that’s why most men aren’t great men. Getting laid is not the end goal of a superior male.
Yes they will always judge a man based on what he can offer to her at the moment. Whether it’s making her feel good (physically and/or emotionally), provide food, money, fun, adventure.
This is why women will rather date abusers than spend any time with a “boring” man. If a Man bores her and she does not feel anything when she is around him, he is considered dead in her eyes.
Women cannot stand boredom. When they get ‘bored’ for long time, they go nuts. They always need and crave drama and some sort of emotions.
Yeah, like I mean… You think Eve’s Daughter’s wanted out of the Garden of Eden so you could sleep on the ground and rub bits of flint to make fire?
Dream on while no one is looking. (Arches eyebrows in contempt).
YOU can NEVER have too much POWER https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e963ebfcec3ca1b0b4cb886331a33950fa05bfac36f14f62c67a091ecf29a404.jpg .
“Sex”
“Also, spanking the monkey for hours a day can cause people’s tastes to go off into some very strange directions.”
Sex and masturbation both increase testosterone and are perfectly fine for you; and you should be spanking it when your not otherwise horizontally mumboing. If you think you really have a problem with porn, then cut it; but sexual attraction to arousing videos and images is normal. You’re brain/body’s seeing sex and telling to to do it and pass on your genes. Something else, potentially far more medically pressing, would be wrong if you weren’t attracted to it.
http://chaosandpain.blogspot.com/2013/07/no-fap-more-like-no-fucking-way.html
ttp://chaosandpain.blogspot.com/2010/09/enough-already-sex-and-baddassery-are.html
http://chaosandpain.blogspot.com/2010/09/enough-already-sex-and-baddassery-are_07.htm
Nice article.
Live life with moderation except when you are on a mission.
A lot of people try to relate money and unhappiness but there is bigger picture beyond that. It’s not money that is focus. Money is just a tool that gives you more option.
You want to travel to another country? Need money
You want to go skydiving because that is your hobby? Guess what? You need money.
You are hungry and you want to eat pizza? How are you going to pay for that?
A lot of people think that they got so much money but they are unhappy. You know why? Because that person does not have life mission anymore. He is bored so he is just trying to chase his next stimulation to get drunk, high, aroused, etc Short Term stimulation.
If you decide to build a bridge and that was your 4 year goal of making that happen with beginning to end, you would be so busy that you wouldn’t even feel “unhappy”. Because that is your life mission, you will do what it takes daily to build your path to your goal. Everything you do daily will be one step closer to making that happen. A man needs a PURPOSE in life otherwise he is going to substitute that with fast food binge, fast instant sex, drug, alcohol, short term pleasure and the cycle continues and he is going to feel exhausted and unhappy from his hedonistic choices.
If you have a lot of money but you are unhappy, it’s not the money that is causing it. You are doing it wrong. You have chemical imbalance in your body, your T levels are low and you have no motivation and purpose to live life. You have to have life purpose. What is your mission? Find that.
This was going great until you said ‘chemical imbalance’.
By “chemical imbalance”, I meant men who suffer from very low testosterone.
Great article, it also goes a long way to being proud of fighting, I work at a gym and do my best to stay looking and feeling my best, issue is, on a cheat day I will buy a burger or some other shitty pleasantry that I crave, but once I buy one it gets even harder to resist the next day, not only cutting into fitness and adding weight, when I was eating out everyday I spent 500$ a month on food.
The article was good but comments are nothing but pro authoritarian dirt bags.
Thailand and the Philippines require military service of youth which supposedly is a masculine “rite of passage to adulthood”. But on return use their skills to join gangs so every street corner motorcycle service also sells meth and strong arms the locals.
Very few Countries in the world with mandatory military service are anything but shitholes and raging alcholics.
You want our youth to go forced being mercenaries in the middle east as a first “growing experience”?
This isn’t like WW2, instead of fighting Hitler and Stalin, they are now chasing after imaginary ghosts and goblins.
Cable companies literally will not offer an internet only subscription that is cheaper than a cable bundle. Gee, I wonder why.
Sincerely yours,
-Adolf Hitler